1012. To Kwiatziemia, 5
(Rose)
The river flows weirdly. It reminds me of the river that had seemingly chaotic flow in little Russia. Its varying high and low tides were on peculiar patterns.
Mushio is not here to observe and then model it mathematically, calculating the right moments to cross at low tide.
Tilke with me looks at the surprisingly high waves that are almost regularly engorging the river and its banks. Its water level is in constant change and muddy turmoil often.
It rises after the highest waves. Then it ebbs and we think I might be able to cross on foot without getting wett. For Tilke however, it would be hazardous.
The bogs behind us had some dry paths we were able to use to cross. Even though they shifted from the fluxes of the river in the distance, but milder.
R - I wonder what causes these patterns and waves. How would you like to cross then? I see a few options.
Tilke thinks. I know she’s not fond of the option to cling to my collar as I run pass. She’s not fond of being supported by the giant me generally.
There are no bridges in sight, but the peaceful urban ruins on this side hold many materials. Cables. Poles. Planks perhaps. We could build something.
Or we could fly. I mentioned I was a daiûa. I’m a revenant from the other side and I returned with some knowledge and control of the power from the hidden gods.
That’s one way to put it.
Which way forward will my friend choose as she forges her own path? I’m curious.
R - Not that it would be of too heavy consequences. You can relax on either one.
T - Hm. I want to build a path then.
I smile. All three options were good in my mind, but I especially like this one.
R - There was supporting help, using might, and being an architect of solutions and changes. Which I like. Let’s see what we can find!
Tilke has a good smile now. By the day she grows. A human that reminds me of the lord...
And a piloting creature that keeps reminding me of Beatrice entering Redmia’s red mechanical armour of science fiction and fantasy. A small obsessive loop queerly stuck in my head since I managed to see it and built its tale for me. The only mechanical engineer of uncanny prowess I had met was Computer, and I think he’s no longer around to give me any answer.
I keep my bow strapped to my rucksack for now, as we enter the ruins a little upstream.
We’ll look for materials and cables we can use.
~
Tilke plays the thinking architect and I do the colossus or golem’s role, of picking up what she asks me to and following her lead.
She’s intuitive about mechanical principles already. Balances of weights and materials behaviours.
When I was young I thought steel was hard and solid. Now I’ve had my times to learn it’s rather flexible on some levels, where harder things would break.
I assemble rusty poles into a growing structure, from a safe height next to the river we are to somehow cross.
I get sweaty from working physically so much. But I put up with it.
I want to see, what this new one can be.
And so does she.
All three ways really are about me helping her to cross, but differently. This is the one where her mind is the power brought forward to shine or attempt to.
I’m building a rickety tower for now.
R - Is it to collapse it into a bridge?
T - Almost.
I don’t ask, I’m curious to see what she can make on her own. We sturdy the feet. It’s a tower with good base, too wide to collapse probably. It’s getting heavier and has a level open it its architecture but locked into an arc.
It stands higher next to the other ruins and above the passing river waves, which flows we didn’t attempt to decipher.
I scratch my knees and my hands. I cheat a little, just to ease the pain and the occasional bleeding.
Tilke does worry, but I show her it’s already healed.
T - Who can do that? It’s too fast...
R - About anything with enough medical or biological understanding of it, and open eyes and cell structures to T.I. Which... You only very weakly seem to have?
I peered at her and through, deeper. I looked for the reactive glows modern beings tend to have as they interact with T.I. Her aura is as weak as plants. Her body isn’t that of a daiûa rich from eitr from the other side by nature. She doesn’t hold nor concentrate much at all in her tissues. She’s mostly impervious to it, although visibly adjusted against its ambient flow. Not frail to it, but not especially conductive of it either. She’s closer to what most surviving people and animals were. Freaky daiûas such as I were more the exception.
R - Interesting... You’re more human than I am, in more ways than one...
T - You keep saying that.
R - I know. I still like that expression.
She shrugs it. But she hears she likely will always be blind to this power that is like magic to me.
Why do I feel so motherly, watching her think? Because perhaps in a way, I think of her as a child, given her size next to me.
She’s a creation born from similar philosophy to Nokaranlık possibly.
In the distant future, there might no longer be T.I. And mutants, monsters and even daiûas such as me, beings like her and me, we might rapidly wither and go extinct.
We’re like lizards that should evolve by returning to the sea we had left before.
For the amount of her that was designed arguably, she was meant to be free and adapted in a more traditional sense of biology. I believe Tilke is meant to be a model of what next humanity can be.
Nokarlık was her masterwork in absolutism, while keeping everything possible.
Tilke might be the more down to earth answer and reasonable, cost effective future for a species.
Although if she’s alone, she still is about a mere human like everyone else. I’d be surprised if she starts reproducing by laying hundreds of eggs like a spider, but we’ll see. I’m thinking too much already.
~
I push heavier struts into position.
I shoot an arrow with a thread attached where she requests me to.
She heard my story, and used it. Now I’m more than nostalgic. I feel a thrill. The thread slides as it was doubled, and carries a heavier cable to the other side. The arrow that was stuck in a tree however breaks and that part of the plan fails there pretty much.
We try otherwise. The river isn’t that big, and a makeshift catapult using the elasticity of a steel pole does the job throwing rocks with ties.
But we’re then running short on threads and cables.
Tilke doesn’t sulk. She looks for other answers. She thinks... I breathe.
I’m smiling wide.
~
Tilke made me push through the tower upper arc the longest poles we could assemble into a bridge.
I’m doing a roman labour, pushing something extremely heavy and immense, using ropes, logs and pulleys to ease it into possibility.
The tower helps pushing it at a high enough angle that when it eventually falls under its own weight, it’ll be already a mast high and far enough so its tip falls on land on the other side.
I’m catching my breath, tired.
R - This was a labour for Herakles and Euclid or Pythagoras... I can’t believe you made me build an entire bridge...
T - I appreciate your help.
I laugh. Good. Pushing with my feet on the dirty tiles of a building floor until it hurts. The towering makeshift bridge is erected, and then falls into position as I yell. First from effort, then from success. Its other end fell into steady enough position across the river. Our end is stuck into the tower of rubbish.
We did it!
I fell down on my butt and breathed more. I’m exhausted. Tilke hands me my pouch of water
R - You’ll need to build yourself your modern mechanised armour when I’m no longer around.
She tilts her head, thinking. She heard my previous science-fiction fantasies about that.
T - I wouldn’t know enough of mechanics and engineering to create a hollow robot I can pilot like you see for me. Let alone find the industries to build the materials.
R - Who knows, someday you might.
If I hadn’t already given her the name of Tilke, I would now ask to call her Beatrice. But I keep my folly to myself. So long she doesn’t become like Redmia.
T - Ah!
Tilke shrieks, as she noticed beasts rose from the bogs and have begun converging toward us. Some kind of frogs I’m unfamiliar with have come out, a swarm of them urging toward us.
I stood up and yanked Tilke away from her stupor so we could step away. We climbed a little higher and further into the ruins. We realised soon enough they didn’t come for us but... the bridge.
Tilke watches in horror her bridge being commandeered and covered by a crawling flood of legs and flesh, crossing the river thanks to it, before her stupor.
T - What the hell!
I’m laughing. A lot. Dünyanın çiçekleri can be more patient and opportunistic than one could imagine.
We watch the migration of these animals, not getting in their way.
Squirrels follow on the path, along other species after the frogs.
Tilke is aghast.
R - You know, more than the expressions of things being meant in more ways than one, which I like to often say; there is another one I far more seldom say, yet love far more. One that is more meaningful to me, by far.
She looks up, still confused. I look at her, as she still learns about this world with a mixture of dread and fascination gradually shifting.
R - There is chaos in life, and we both like it!
~
