690. Exploring, 6
I’m reaching the southern Washington lands, far enough from the volcanic domain in the north western end of the U.S.A. It starts raining again as I approach the coastline.
I land around desolate lands and empty broken megalopolitan structures. The rain wets the concrete quickly along dusty roads and broken overpasses. Crumbling bridges are visible all around these suburbs.
All would feel desert and dry if it weren’t for this light rain.
I walk under a non-fully collapsed portion of a long bridge above a dry riverbed, to shelter from the rain.
All is quiet and normal otherwise, but I feel a little uneasy.
Something feels wrong to me. I just once more can’t quite put my finger on something bugging me, that an instinct in me has noticed.
R - What do you think?
No one replies to me, but the shade of a doubt in my mind eventually points out something in the distance toward the more urban landscape. In the south where it doesn’t rain yet.
I notice over the ruins of skyscrapers that sheets have been stretched, like thin curtains of silk.
Some things have been built above this city, likely recently, after the end.
My bluish eyes look closely and notice a hole.
Something thinned down the level of ambient T.I. out there.
Could be alive.
Might be human.
R - Do I really want to try again?
I sigh. I think I’ll pass this time.
But then I look again.
And I notice a hiccup in the flow of T.I.
Ok. It’s not human. Should I say it’s one of them, or one of mine?
I’m feeling more confident lately, if the matter isn’t with humans.
So I’ll head down there to have a look, and hopefully meet a friend. I leave the rain becoming gradually thunderstorm behind as I head toward this city by foot.
~
As confident as I am with magic lately, I want to remain as wise as Blume was, hopefully.
The rain washes the roads with small streams carrying the dirt and muds.
As I approach this peculiar city, I begin to notice the little things that clue me about its history.
Barricades...
Streets littered with rifle casings, at least a few years old. Their metallic oxides stain the concrete and dust buries them.
Also wider stains. These kinds of stains.
Colourful, deep from iron oxides and hazy from phosphates and calcium liquefying and then drying. Here and there.
A while later, by the inner gates left to rot open, there are more of these specific stains. Bigger.
All over the wall, moss and lichen have grown in very specific patterns.
I can almost draw the arm and fingers of a large monster that died there, splashing fluids around.
Years have passed. Marks remain, along with leftovers that didn’t melt.
Another city has fallen.
I enter the silent city where something still resides, while the downpour drains the sky to flood the streets.
I’m a little more careful and look above my head, but I still see no sign of living humans.
I slowly and cautiously approach the area where hiccups happen in the ocean of eitr.
I climb a tower that once, or rather twice really, was inhabited. I find some bits and bobs as I climb the building still in quite good condition.
Some voices in my head chirp, noticing something on the side. A living bug.
A kind of caterpillar, but the size of a good dog, is crawling in a corner of an indoor garden quite high upstairs.
Something’s off. It’s one of them they tell me. Not a good kind.
A bug...
Instead of continuing to climb toward the source of the signal, I head to the nearest open window to the city scape.
The cables, the cloth. All these textiles all around and above the city scape, somewhat randomly, maybe it wasn’t human made?
Was it a hive?
I look closer around me, and I begin to see the hidden cocoons everywhere. All dry and gone for a long time, but not decomposed since they dried.
Again, nature did transform somewhat differently from Europe around here.
But it might be collapsing now.
The larva eats what it finds, but this garden doesn’t offer much. So I’m left to wonder.
The hiccups collapses a little more a few floors above. Something up there is dying now I clearly read.
A being-like-her is dying.
I head upstairs, leaving that larva rummaging around slowly.
More traces of old fights are visible. More husks are scattered.
More biological materials like nails are growing along the walls and ceilings. It’s an environment being built.
The heart of the hive?
I enter the queen’s room uninvited, but nothing remained to prevent me.
In this not very prestigious room near the summit of the tower, there is indeed a monstrous queen.
I can’t really tell if it was initially insect or human. It’s a gross and amorphous body that mixes features of numerous individuals of both kinds.
It’s a gross pile of flesh that doesn’t look natural at all, even for modern rules.
What happened here was a monster. An abnormally competitive lifeform without reason or purpose, and little limits to stop it from doing what anything alive strives to. Eat what it could reach. Grow bigger. Spread.
Age, grow weaker, and die.
The human faces on that huge pile of accumulated tissues don’t see me like a human would. They don’t all have eyes, and those which still do, they’re not coordinated. It’s just repurposed flesh and insignificant lingering traces of the past along the outer skin.
I dodge a voluminous appendix thrown at me. A giant tongue with spikes rising and glue oozing, trying to assimilate me as well. It falls almost flat on the ground.
This tongue collapses slightly, and dries there instead of moving back. The last breath was just drawn and this thing dies. Trying to eat me was its last instinct and action.
The eggs around are all already dead, stillborn I see.
The rain splashing in this room from the missing window behind this mess will gradually wash all this death away.
It’s melting already gently, but it will take a while to turn entirely to nothing.
I’ll wait a few cautious steps away while it melts away. Somewhere inside that pile of flesh there is an artefact now. But I will not get near that thing before it’s fully washed away.
Stepping behind and around, I notice peculiar stains on its side exposed to the outside weather. Cancers? It looks really bad.
Even monsters can get severely sick. The variety of life continues to fluctuate and massive organisms like that might be the weakest to microbiological changes.
I’m puzzled by how this monster came to be, but I don’t think I’d enjoy knowing the answer. It’s over anyway so it’s all peaceful now.
I look outside, gazing at the wondrous landscape left behind. It’s rather beautiful.
~
