Eric Staggs: Writer

Her body took on the grim poise of a professional knife-fighter, angled to present a smaller target, knees bent, center of gravity lowered. In her tiny fists glistened a matching set of dueling knives, humming with electricity, the primary was long and lean like its wielder, the main-gauche flat and wide. The left-hand was held high, the primary closer to her body, chest level. Those eyes, silver with black rims, glittered like a swooping hunting bird. Molecules of air shivered away from the violence inherent in the moment. Then, without delay, without the courteous satisfaction of announcements and telegraph, without the ceremony so expected, she began her work of butchery.

Summer came the same very year in the north. Started out slow, in tiny bursts. Flowers and trees seemed to shoot up from the earth when you had your back turned. Every time you scrutinized, they froze. Then, the bursts got longer and longer, the flora less and less shy, until finally the whole of the world was bright green and hot. Vines seem to creep along walls, across trellises, towards your feet, when you weren’t looking.

The occasional birdsong was replaced by a symphony; the teasing of insects became a chainsaw buzzing. By midsummer, the world was once again alive. The heat, a charming novelty at first, soon became oppressive, the thick humid winds were a sweltering lash.

Thunder brought the devil and rain that was hard, like nails. The earth itself would shake as the massive cotton-bruises lit and pulsed with electricity. Slowly they cruised across the landscape, driving us before them with their lashing winds and steely rain.

In space, summer doesn’t matter. August, June? We can’t tell. The ship is trying to keep us at a cool seventy degrees. The air is stale and dry, hot from the ever-present energy bleed of the reactors. The ship, our new world, the reactor, a sun and geothermal heat-source in one hard, slick shell.

I stay away from the windows.

It’s live! The first issue of the interactive magazine: Aviator! Featuring (among others) my short story, Space Whales. Check it out, read it. Tell the Aviator people you loved it and want to see more of me! (flash based)

Anyhow, here it is…Space Whales via Aviator interactive magazine!

Tell them how much you loved my story here!

My crack pipe is digital and fibrous and reflects light, a trillion tiny messages packed up neat as you like and shot-thought out, across space and time. My crackpipe comes in flavors, blue and white lasers, reticulated star-gazers and the cost is steep. The High Animal, ribald in his hopes for godlessness, sweats and shits in a mirrored landscape, scurries for shelter, without God we’ve just Mommies Little Helper.

She pulled a hit from the swirled-glass creation, the acrid chemical smoke drifting lazily from her upper lip, curling around, obscuring a tiny mole before sneaking into her nostril to run through her pulmonary system again. Each pass the smoke grew weaker, thinner, as her body absorbed it instead of precious air.  Eyes half open, once pale-blue now blazed a noxious red. Her ears rang.

It was a painful need, that nagging desire always in the back of her mind, always chewing away at her dreams and goals, a dull blade knocking chips, spark and all, from so fragile self-respect.

As the pain receded and she slunk back into the warm arms of Forget, she was betrayed by her eyes and a tear fell.

My crackpipe has grown, transformed over the years, from simple knowledge to data to rampant seething, patterns. The crack pipe shattered and shivered when knowledge wasn’t enough. The patterns began to go wild, expanding and growing growing like interlaced vines. A fractal that cannot be mastered, cannot be wholly viewed in instant. As she wished for the pattern, I wished for the smoke.

The moon was spying on me, watching me through my little window. The sky was blue and the winter moon was a clear three-quarter full. The only other thing visible from my high window was a massive pine. It was like and angry watcher, its branches fracturing the afternoon blue of the sky.

The moon watched as I devoured a Nutroll, the nuts cracking and shattering as I chomped, crumbs piling around me, landing on the slick surface of my grim obsidian desk.

I hunkered down and she crept up higher in the sky to keep eyes on what I was doing. I devoured the candy.  The salt from the Nutroll was making me lick my lips. The goo in the center of the candy bar was sticking in my teeth and I was moving my mouth and cheeks in an effort to dislodge the tooth decayer. But I couldn’t give up the salt, so both efforts, the salt removal and the sticky candy-goo removal took twice as long.

The moon watched while I feasted like a dog.

They were exhausted. Their once fine shirts, silk and golden traceries, were shredded and dirty, filthy with sweat and blood. They sat on the cold, worn stone steps, now slick with blood. Steam rose from the gore, tainting the fall morning air. At the base of the wide and winding stair lay a scrum of bodies, corpses of men-at-arms, peasants and nobles alike.

Of the two men sitting atop the stair, one was a horseman, the na-Baron of D’liesse. His warhorse, a roan he called Thunder, had been killed days ago by a volley of quarrels from archers in hiding. The na-Baron was of medium build and wore his jet hair short. Normally considered handsome, his face was a motley collection of scars and bruises, jagged tears of soft flesh, and deeper lacerations he’d hand stitched in the brief respite moments not unlike this one.

The na-Baron’s companion was a scribe, a historian and archivist, raised in the Great Temple-Libraries far to the south. His skin was golden by nature and his eyes dark, like his hair. The scribe was called Masuria, which meant collector in his native tongue. He too, could have been considered handsome by his civilizations standards, were it not for the bandage around his head, his split lip, and both blackened eyes.

Neither man said a word as they sat. The fall air was brisk, but a welcome relief after their seemingly endless exertions. Both had their backs to the heavy iron bound double doors of the temple called God’s Rest.

Drums beat in the distance, shushing the cautiously chirping morning birds, sending them fluttering in the sky.

“Again?” the Baron asked wearily.

“So it seems, Baron.”

The na-Baron took a deep pained breath. “Let just rest a bit here. They’ll come soon enough.”

The scribe, Masuria, just nodded his head.

“We had a good accounting for our selves.”

“That we did, Baron.”

“Look there.” The Baron pointed to a corpse some ten feet down the steps, still oozing rapidly freezing blood.

“Your Lordship?” Masuria turned his neck with a grimace.

“That man. There. The yellow tabard and blonde beard.”

“I see him, Baron.” The scribe nodded slowly as he spoke.

“I do believe that’s Alfrieg of Millor.”

The scribe nodded. “Indeed, I do believe it is.”

“Well, he was a cousin!” The Baron shook his head. “This has been some nasty business. Nasty indeed.”

“Agreed, Baron. I wonder how the armies fared?”

“I can see smoke in that direction, a lot of it. More than just a flag from horse.”

The scribe nodded. He understood all too well what that smoke meant to the town besieged.

“My God! That there!” The Baron flung his right glove down the steps, it landed next to man who’d been run through and brained by a heavy flanged mace, not necessarily in that order. “That’s the Viscount of Bellanor’s son!”

“Are you sure?” The scribe, despite himself, was somewhat flummoxed at the thought of dying in such prestigious company.

“Sure as sure. He used to fancy my sister and pay these gruelingly awkward visits to my family’s estates.”

“Then it’s a shame things came to this. He might have been your brother in law. And an ally.”

“‘Tis true, but I never liked him much. He was hesher, through and through.”

“A hesher, Baron?”

“A mouth breather, scribe. He had no sense of how to comport himself in the company of his peers and betters.”

Masuria frowned inwardly. He’d dispatched easily fifteen or twenty invaders, defending this holy place. Though not a swordsman by trade, he was a quick study and found that his desire not to die painfully aided his technique significantly.

“Up, up, lad.” The Baron stood, slowly, working his stiff shoulders and knees as he stood. He groaned and raised his gore covered saber. So tired was he that he’d neglected to wipe it clean after their last skirmish. “There’s coming again. Third?”

“Fourth wave, Baron.” Masuria stood and stretched likewise, taking a deep breath to try to still his quivering hands.

The sun was a flaring yellow-white, spearing its first few rays over the nearby hills, the eye-stinging shafts shooting straight through the palisades of naked trees on the bluff. Moody clouds slid around above, splotches of grey and off-white.

The sound of boots and jangling armors rose up between the rumbling drums. Masuria and the Baron assume their stance and made ready to hold the curving stair case as long as they could. Resting on the carved stone banister next to them were two flint-lock pistols each.

The Duke of Geoffre led this next charge, supported by twenty quick-footed dragoons, who’d long ago expended their ammunition and lost their mounts. The Baron and Masuria drew their first pistol, each shooting a dragoon square in the chest. The shots punched right through the brittle breastplates of the dragoons and the men tumbled backwards, sending a handful of their compatriots sprawling. Upon seeing this indelicacy on the part of their enemy, the Baron and Masuria rushed forward, sword and pistol on hand, spearing the men on the ground almost two at a time, and firing their second volley, such as it were, into the men charging towards them, then ran to the top of the stairs.

“More yellow and green tabards.” Masuria commented, absently, between labored breaths.

“Aye, I noticed.”

Then, at once, the rest of Geoffre’s men, and the Duke himself were upon them. Sabers flitted about and men yelped in pain and the ragged edges of the now worn weapons tore and nipped at their flesh. Here and there, the scribe would thrust through an opponents leg and as he buckled, kick him down the gore and filth covered staircase. The Baron, for his part, was a trained soldier and relished the moment as only a superior swordsman, who is proving it to the world, could.

“Twist the blade when you land a good thrust.” The Baron said as he easily dispatched another dragoon, scouring out the man’s eye, and holing his brain with a rapid thrust.

“W-what? Why?” The scribe was struggling to hold his own, thankfully, the Baron was still wearing his colors and was not only seen a more dangerous target, but a better prize.

“It’ll start to scare the piss out of the next charge.”

So, the scribe named Masuria began incorporate a little twist with each solid thrust, eliciting a scream of agony from each of his victims.

Finally, Geoffre himself stood toe-to-toe with the Baron.

“Warren, Baron of Allehny, I presume?”

The Baron tilted his head and saluted with his dripping blade, flinging tissue and blood onto Geoffre’s spotless tabard, leaving a splotchy line from shoulder to hip. Geoffre frowned.

“Are you ready?” Geoffre raised his sword.

Masuria shot Geoffre in the face.

The Baron nodded and slid down to a seated position, as did Masuria. The morning was getting old, the winds unheard and the scent of so many freshly slaughtered corpses began to rise up, clinging to clothing and circling the nostrils of the two men.

“How much longer can this go on?” the Baron asked, rasping.

“Surely not much longer, Baron. Reinforcements for us or them must arrive.”

“Might I asked you, how a scribe so vicious and without ruth might have come to be one of the last defenders of God’s Rest?”

Masurai shrugged and reloaded his flint-locks. “Bad luck, really. I was just passing through. Delivering letters, really, when the whole countryside lit up with cannon and flame. I even think I saw a caster!”

“Bah! More like one of Gildenhern’s lords run awry.”

“What about you, na-Baron? Is it your holy duty to defend the Spire of God?”

“Me? No. I’m an atheist.”

The scribe was shocked, but clearly too tired to demonstrate his emotions using his body or face.

“But, then, why aren’t you fighting on the other side? Aren’t Gildenhern and his lot always on about the Truth of Man?”

“Yes, that’s right. They espouse a belief in mankind’s own freewill, our reliance upon one another.”

“And you think they’re wrong?”

The Baron laughed heartily, which rolled into a coughing fit. His face crunched up as he coughed, and a splatter of blood colored the back of his hand. He looked down at a wound in his torso and shook his head.

“No, scribe, they killed my horse.”

It was perhaps, because she was so cold, that he found her charming. He surely suspected that to her, he was just another sub-routine. A program, she would start up and run, when her other programs told her central processor that it was appropriate to do so. He glanced at her eyes.

She smiled, demurely and reached out to touch his hand. Her hand moved slow, her long delicate fingers seemed to absorb light. They reached his hand and wrapped around it slowly, then, squeezed, ever so gently. Her hand then retreated, to rest once again in her own lap.

Simon marveled at the warmth of her skin, the almost too human face. She blinked and smiled up to him.

“Why do you stare at me Simon?”

“Because you are a marvel.” He smiled. “Do you love me, Symphony?”

“Of course Simon.”

“Are you just saying that because you know that it’s what I want to hear?”

“No.”

“Are you just saying that because you are programmed to?”

“No.”

“How do you know what love is?”

Symphony cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, an all too human expression of puzzlement.

“Because you make me happy.”

“Yes, but how do you know that?” He persisted. He looked away from her and stared out into the cold night. His eyes caught the thruster flare of a ship, far off, preparing to leave orbit. “Aren’t you programmed to love me?”

“Aren’t you programmed to laugh when something is funny?” She countered,

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“I don’t have programming.”

“That is debatable.”

He sighed. “But how do you know it’s not just a series of complex instructions?”

“I know it because I smile involuntarily when you are near. I know it because I derive pleasure from your happiness. I know it, because I do.”

“But that could be programming! Subtle, yes, and genius, yes, but it still could be programming.”

“Does it make it less real for you knowing that you are supposed to feel a thing when certain stimuli occur?”

He turned and looked at her. Her womanly shape relaxed in the contoured co-pilots chair, her skin glittering somewhere between rosey-pink and flickering stars. He almost believed her. Then she looked out into space and her eyes flicked, her irises constricted and her pupils flared, micro-miniature circuitry was pulsing to life just behind the curve of her blue eyes. She’d seen that engine flare as well.

“Simon. It’s a pursuit craft. We need to leave.” Symphony announced non-chalantly as she began to buckle herself into her seat.

“We’re in the que, we’ll get our chance soon.”

“Negative, Simon. We’re in danger.”

“What!?”

Symphony’s fingers flew over the ships controls and the darkened bridge lit up with hundreds of displays and lights and switches. She moved with frightening speed and grace. She continued to speak.

“Please, Love, strap yourself in. Prepare for dimension fold.”

“Right here?”

“I’m afraid so.” Her voice was low, soothing.

“Don’t worry love. I won’t let them hurt you.” And as she spoke, she coded in the incredibly complex figures for their impending leap through time and space. Figures, that would take most normal computers hours to crunch, a human perhaps days. This was why he didn’t believe she loved him, but it was certainly why he loved her.

And then they jumped through space and left time to sort itself out.

The world became solid and time took up its vigil again as the small shuttle materialized from its dimension fold. Simon blinked and turned to Symphony. Symphony moved from her seat and swept her hand over the ship’s control, gracefully putting it to sleep.

“Where are we?” Simon asked, rising from his own seat and moving up beside Symphony. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her close. He grinned as she playfully struggled, wriggling gently in a feigned attempt to escape his embrace.

“We are nowhere, my Love.” She pointed to the star charts.

“Why?”

“It was the only place I knew that no one was.” She smiled at him.

“They’ll be coming for us, for you.”

“And you.”

“Yes.”

“What shall we do Simon?”

She wells up from beneath, a leviathan of old, hungry and elemental, witnesses feel the disturbance, but their rolling minds cannot make sense of what occurs about them. It’s a storm, swirling motions of thought and insight and anger, such raw, intense anger.

Plants wither and the ground blackens, turns cold, frosted and crackles. The sky becomes black and blue, an epic bruise on reality.

The minds race and tick-tick-click to unravel, to make sense of, to justify what they are witnessing. Their mommies and gods did not prepare them for those who would step out-side.

*

Later

The Outsiders have come and gone, moved on to new slaying grounds. In their wake all is rui, but undeniably,  a freshness hangs in the air. Rebirth at the hands of the destroyers. The fires are out, the ground is no longer hard and cold and dry. Bright green pushes through cracks in the firma, bubbles of life from the earthy ocean.

The poet-boy, Piotr, is now grown to manhood. And he leads his people, those few who survived the Outsiders. At night, when the children are asleep, he gathers the adults and tells them, again and again, (“for it is the doom of men that they forget”) of his encounters with the Outsiders, how he lived as their thrall.

He closes his eyes as he speaks, to better recall the horrors. The Outsiders made him swear, upon threat of their eventual return, to never forget what they made him witness too.

Piotr, dutiful Piotr, remembers clearly. His eyes press tight, his breath comes fast. He can see the Outsiders; the suit, the armsman, the speaker, the plotter. They came in sheep skins and mingled among the flocks until their idol burst forth from the earth, their ideology, summed best *revolution*.

To their banner flocked the mis, the dis, and lost, the hungry, the wild, the mad, and the dreamers. Armed with hope and hatred and contempt, the Outsiders made war upon upon Piotr’s people, slaying their ways as surely as they had slain their way-makers. In all of the Lands of the Second Blessed, only Piotr, who wanted to be a policeman when he grew up, was spared.

Piotr the poet tells the story, sparing no detail, with his words weaving tornadoes of fire, oceans of blood, and avalanches of bone. The Outsiders are gorgons, flayers, knife-fighters, and insidious venomous snakes.

Piotr the poet, uses his words to hide meaning, layered dreams of freedom, long, still eyed looks and purposeful tears, as he tells the story. And he hopes, hopes against hope (for prayer is forbidden to Man-who-thinks), that the children will see his message and one day grow strong, become mighty and throw off the shackles of the Outsiders.

And Poor Piotr the Poet who wanted to be a police man, cannot see that he is a police man, and he is forced,  unknown to enact a pattern of protection. The Outsiders, their phoenix-army of ideals, foresaw poor dreaming Priotr, the last child of the Before.

These new babies, they don’t know the kiss of silicon and plastic, they’ve never, nor will they ever, feel the adrenaline fueled thrum of internal combustion.

Theirs is a simple world, they know love and satisfaction, and hard work. They know music and dance. They know very little, but they know all they need.

The slew of the country roads made him smile every time. He lost himself in these outside places, lost hamlets and villages dotted the American landscape, and at times he felt as if it were his sole responsibility to rediscover them. A loose receipt flittered around the car’s cabin and he played with the windows, up and down, changing the flow of roaring hot air, racing across the rolling hills, through the verdant forests and between the fertile farm fields. The torrid air was heavy with water, stank of manure and fiery diesel.

One cigarette left, he reached for it as he slewed into another curve. Grasping the pack, he leaned back and put the last smoke between his lips, holding it there, tasting it, as he pushed the buttons on the radio obsessively. Country and Classic Rock crowded each other on these peripheral airwaves, in valleys and behind hills sometimes mixing together, overlapping.

Settling on something akin to Cheap Trick, he pushed in the car cigarette lighter, thankful for the small things, he smiled knowing that these ancient thunderous cars at least had the ability to make fire.

The cigarette was mostly of no consequence. A taste, quickened pulse, a dryness in his throat. Streams of white looked as if they were being torn from his mouth and nostrils as he flew across the landscape. He pretended he was Paul Revere, believed he was Phillipides, marathon runner of Athenian fame, he was in a brittle trance, cheetah and comet, at once with purpose and mindless.

The smoke faded, chewed itself away and its corpse out the window.

More speed, the sun, the sun, waves of heat, tides of reality warping temperature, pulsed up from the road in half-visible ripples. Faster yet, and music, and the joy in this young man’s heart was undeniable. He felt he flew towards destiny, unrepentant, the universe’s locus for kinetic fantasy.

He reached for the pack, found it empty. He glanced to the half-empty, warm can of coke in the drink holder, back to the road, the dash, the road, the check engine light.

The light was not new. It had evolved from source of paranoia and frustration to a friendly reminder. Time to let the beast rest, let the steel flame-eater cool its burning heart. All horses needed to drink.

He brought himself up, out from his auto-pilot trance and took in the terrain.

“The map is not the terrain…” he said aloud as he looked for signs of civilization. Brother to Theseus that he was, civilization was any spot with strong drink and shelter from the rain.

Not too much later he saw the spot. Civilization was a collection of loosely affiliated cross roads. Paths cut into reality by men with ambition. At each crossroad, there was always a marker, some stalk of signage to remind one that yes, though long lost to distance and woeful wilderness, they still were real.

“In the desert you can remember your name…” he muttered as he slowed the car, the steel extension.

He pushed the wheel around, guided the slowing car from the melting blacktop, felt the change of speed in his stomach, the vibrations from the gravel and dirt parking lot in his bones.

Fully stopped, he left the windows wide open and popped the hood. He gingerly lifted the heavy plate of steel, and propped it up. He gave it a casual inspection, eyes stopping on hard mechanical shape he recognized but did not understand. Wires and tubes, blades and oils, it all looked like it always looked. That was something.

He turned to head into the small corner store that made up this splash of civilization, he needed another coke and more smokes, and stopped dead in his tracks.

Walking, no, flowing towards him was a leggy woman with caramel skin and sandy hair tied on top of her head. She wore a tank top, each step a direct challenge to his decorum. He removed his sunglasses and squinted, then decided eye-contact might be too much for him, and put the shades back on.

“Hi.” She smiled at him. “Car trouble?”

“What? Ah, no. Uh, just givin’ it some air.” His natural dialect was relaxed, a slangish, lazy way of communicating. It made him sound uneducated, a cultivated habit. People expect less of the ingnorant.

She nodded. “I see that. Why?”

“Well, the light comes on.” He said. She kept walking towards him until she stood a foot away. She was almost his height and looked right into his eyes.

“The bad light?”

“Check engine.”

She nodded. “Oh, sorry. I’m a little forward.” She stuck out her hand, “Cassia.”

“Cassia.” He repeated. “Uh, Jack.”  Halloween Jack Soiree, he said to himself, in his funny voice that made him smile. She smiled too and for a split second, he wondered if he’d said it aloud.

She stood too close. He could feel the heat of her skin above and beyond the stifling summer sun. She pulled a cigarette, the symbol of patience and openness, a sure sign of sharing, in that certain world, lit only by grim and dim yellow bulbs and neon lights.  It made him thirsty.

“Here.” She pushed the cigarette in his direction. He took it, confused. She nodded towards the crushed and empty pack of camels in his hand. “You’re out.”

He put the cigarette to his lips and stuck his hands in his pockets, searching for a lighter, which wasn’t there. He used the precious piece of retro technology, the car-lighter, while he was driving.

She deftly produced a lighter, touched the flame to the tip of the smoke and backed away. He breathed deep.

“You’re thirsty. I was headin’ cross the street. Interested?”

He nodded dumbly as he turned his head in the direction she indicated. There sat a squat broawn building. A screen door rocked gently in its hinges, occasionally building up the nerve to bang sharply. A faded neon sign sputtered in the window, decrying the presence of some obscure local flavor. Music seeped out of the door, low and steady, it seemed to creep across the road, like a snake.

He looked away, felt his satisfaction with life fade, felt a strange hunger, felt weak. 

A poisoned oasis that served only gold water that burned.

Wrecked cars and dust on my boots, me with nowhere to know, knowing everyplace I could go. I just sat there, in the heat, a lizard on a rock. Dust in the distance and divine chemistry, making things to put in my body, feeling hurtful things, animals of silicone and microscopic proportion. They waged the war I waged, against all things from the Outside. These nanite-antibodies reinforced walls and made things strong, things that should fall were kept up high.

My eyes watered in the flying dust, and adjusted the level of silicone lubricant released by my new hitatchi tear ducts. I blinked twice and received the internal report “foreign body removed“. I laughed at the irony of this and moved towards the car I hadn’t seen pull up.

It was grim and that magic red color, covered in a skin of dust and a sheen of diesel sweat. It was crouched like a hunting cat. My eyes traced its contours and I blushed like a boy seeing a nude woman for the first time. My mouth watered at the thought of plugging in and letting my soul caress its controls, the hard leather and a twice coiled fly-by-impulse preaction-pre-response computer. I wondered what it called itself.

Then out of the car stepped its master, mistress, monster. Nine feet tall and the earth cracked as she stepped across it. She burned the ground, stole its water and left glass footprints in the sand.

“That yours?” I asked, thinking it might be right proper for me to vent this monster bitch and take those wheels. That was our way out here, at Gold Water Oasis. She must know it, other wise she wouldn’t be out here, out this far.

“No.” Her voice was low and thick, clear, over the racing wind.

“Looking to trade?”

“No, it’s a gift.”

“For who?”

“You, of course.”

I slowly moved my hand towards my gun. No one gives out at the Oasis.

“I don’t think that’s right. I don’t know you.”

“Course not. But I know you. You’ve been dreaming about a car the color of a dying sun. This is the car. This is the one.”

I studied her. No weapons. Just those eyes, fairly crackling with power. She stepped closer, the earth groaned and I tensed.

“No need for violence, manling. Take this gift and drive, off into your precious desert. Out where you are alone, where your mind means nothing and your only definition is your actions. You do like to act, yes? You’re one of those, those few who do and not say…”

The sky was cloudy, unusual for a hot day. The sun cut a hole in the silky veil and sent a column of light down, just for me.

“But your actions cost you don’t they?” She studied me, her unnatural eyes, locked mine, then glanced down to my new arm, the steel and myomer miracle.

“You’ve already paid your price. Drive.”

She threw the keys, then, shining silver things, fast and hard. My right arm flew up to grasp them, my false arm drew my pistol and in that nanosecond my Hitatchis took to reset the vision frame, the she-demon was gone. I looked at the keys. They were just keys. Three silver things, flat, un-marked.

I walked over to the car. Got in. The inside was cramped and soft and I barely fit. There was no way the giant-demon-woman could have driven this car.

I pulled the neuro-lead from the dash and slid it into third slot on back of my false wrist. Red runes flashed across my eyes, ancient runes, esoteric messages only I could see, only I could understand.

“She’s no demon, child. She is Athena.” The car said, when my mind tried to touch it. The voice was feminine, but clipped, reserved.

“The goddess?” I queried.

“The same.”

“And why is she giving me a car?”

“Not a car. I am The Car. I am motion and grace and love. I am happiness and joy. I am that fleeting moment all men dream of. The control of a wild thing, the tame shrew. I am power un-earned.”

I failed to understand. I said so.        

“I am the car the color of the dying sun. I am your dream.”

“I’m dreaming now.”

“More often than not.”

I pushed the keys into her and turned them gently. The tumblers rolled and soothed and the ignition fired and there was a great release, I felt it in my mind, then the steady rhythm. Perhaps this thing was joy, was bliss. The bliss of motion. My mind rolled backwards to those long dead days, with runners, and horses, and chariots. The race. The run.

“Why me?” I asked.

“Why not?”

“That’s a stupid answer.” I gently rubbed the throttle with my mind.

“It’s an answer.” She started, a roar, then a purr.

“Give me a better one.”

“You are doomed to do. You are damned to believe.” She said, as I put her in reverse and turned the wheel. She thought for a half nanosecond about arguing with me, I felt it in her throat, she thought better of it, I guess.

“So she gave me a car?”

“The Car. But yes, more or less, that’s the big and small of it.”

Forward, we raced, through the desert away from the new night and the golden oasis. The roads were hard and black. Bleak angry things, the yellow was faded, the streaking line almost gone. Time and sun cracked the roads, ruptured them, twisting them upwards and inwards, leaving them… broken.

“What shall I call you?” I asked the car.

“Whatever you like.”

“Am I in her debt? Am I her servant now?”

“You always have been.”

“Is it her way to recruit unwilling servants with bribes?”

“How do you know you are unwilling? She’s not asked anything of you yet, manling.”

“How will I know what she would have of me?”

“How does any believer know what their god wishes of them?”

“Oracles. Priests.”

“Perhaps we should see the Oracle. Or even a priest.”

“I’ve got little use for those types.”

“As does Athena. But they have their role, like you do yours.”

“You’re quite knowledgeable for a car.”

“I am The Car. You may call me Pacifica.”

“Okay, Pacifica, how is it you know so much?”

“I was forged on Olympus, by Hephaestus, crafted piece by piece, by the God-Artificer himself.”

“Huh.”

“Like you.”

“What?”

“You are merely an instrument of the Gods as well. Your arm, your eyes, machines, of course made by man, but who gave them that knowledge? Who cut your meat-flesh from the hard earth? Who programmed your codes? Who made it possible for you to exist? Are you not the ultimate example of divine machinery?”

I thought on that for a hard minute, while I did so, I pushed Pacifica hard, and she smirked at me in my mind, we traveled across the hard baked sands and failing concrete paths at scathing speeds, out, here, alone. Then.

“I see your point, Pacifica. But I am a…ah, far removed from divinity.”

“Yes.”

“And you are not.”

“I am not holy. I am crafted by holy fingers.”

“And you seem to know everything.”

“I know much that is not known, yes, but far from everything.”

“What happens when we find the ocean?”

“We will have to stop.” She said, with out humor.

“I have… a… destiny?”

“All things do. Few recognize them. Few fulfill them.”

“But the world is wrecked, and I think I’m mad.”

“Both of these things are true. But you also believe.”

And then we reached the ocean,  many hours later, Pacifica and I. We stopped and she asked me if I was “Well”

“Of course.” I lied to her.

The ocean was deep and vast and dark, briny and cold. I scanned the horizon with my Hitatchi eyes and saw not one sail, not one ship.

Pacifica then spoke to me. “It is as Athena said. The world is dead or dying and you are mad.”

“Then why take me here with your brutal haste and loving speed? Could I not have remained mad at my Gold Water Oasis?”

“Ah, but that is it, child, remained…”

“Yes, so, what of it? Let me guess… a lecture on confidence and change, and the self evolution event that so few of us are allowed to participate in? More of your god-forged psycho-babble…”

“Do you deny that change forces us to grow?” The car was mocking me.

There were bleak mountains in the distance and I considered driving her from the cliff. Damn her divine artificers! We’d see if she was holy or not…

“You’re thoughts turn dark, but for no good reason. I am yours to do with as you please. To destroy me would be… wasteful, but I will not stop you.”

“Let me suppose then, on your mechanical life, that it is not my destiny to do so, is it?”

“You suppose correctly, manling.”

“What is destiny?”

“It is that thing the gods said you must do, written in heaven when you were named from above, you take the name of….” the car paused in its speech. I turned to the ocean and there saw three ships, sails red and full.

“… you take the name of eternity, thus you shall always be. You, of all shall be plagued and hounded and forced and coerced and ridden and railed. But you shall then rally and redouble and doubt not and stay your hand when all works to force it, you shall force your hand when all works to stay it. You, manling, are paradox, like all your brothers and sisters.”

“You speak in riddles, Car the Color of a Dying Sun.”

“You make riddles from truths. All mankind does this thing. That is why your world is laid waste and the gods taunt you with smart ass machines like myself.”

“I am truly mad.”

“And always have been.”

I turned to the sea again. Ships now, full sails and ominous.

“Those ships…”

“Yes,” Pacificia answered before I asked. “Heralds of change. Things you cannot understand. God-loving priests with great machines and little madness.”

“Then they are those who escaped our destruction?”

“Are there any who could escape you, oh eternal paradox?”

“Some. Many.”

“Fewer than you think. But come. Let us off to the south, to the dryer lands and cleaner roads.”

“To what end? To just drive through time and space?”

“What else would a madman do?”

“I am confused.” I sat in the car and plugged in, touching its mind with mine. We started off, slow, then fast, faster yet and with a bright sun easing its way low, we scorched another lonely highway.

“You are not confused. You never have been. You are simply mad.”

“I don’t understand…” I shook my head, fearful, trying to understand this great machine I’d been given. I looked to the skies for signs from Olympus, I looked to the sea on right for signs from Below. I fell backwards into my neural processor and ran through patterns and systems, control specs and maintenance routines, anything and everything, looking for logic, looking for patterns. I found none. None until I turned my mind to the mind of the Car. It showed me a great a pattern. It was a pattern older than memory, mine, at least. It was carved in the very earth and it crossed every continent, every land, every place, every town, every city. I calmed then and followed the pattern.

I let my mind fly along its designs and I realized, I was on this pattern, a part of it.

“It is a testament to the grandiose designs of man, his ambition to dominate the world. His unwillingness to live with it, his desire to live above it.”

“It’s beautiful…” I breathed.

“It’s dangerous.” said Pacifica.