Chapter 1
Tithes for Inhalants
“And so,” said Xoz. “That’s how humans phaloonged themselves to death.”
“I can’t say I’m familiar with your terms,” said Tippi, who was a near-perfect replica of the original Tippi.
“Which one?” said Xoz. “Phaloonged, or death?”
“Both of them,” confessed Tippi, who was a splicework of “Earth’s most adorable teacup hyperminis,” as codified by a churn poll, 96.8 centuries ago.
“Ask Lina tomorrow,” huffed Xoz. “You two have all day together.”
“Can do,” promised Tippi, who was tan, pink, and altogether fuzzy.
Tippi awoke in the droneport, right before sunup. Aeons ago, The Lenapewihittuk Institute built the droneport, but Tippi’d claimed it since.
The droneport was a tall cavern, devoid of drones, whirligigs, and the commensurate doodads. There, Tippi slumbered, atop a heap of bola skins and corn husks. The droneport offered no light and less character, so she had no way of knowing the time, outside of her own circadian hunches.
Xoz said Tippi was “the ur-manica,” whatever that meant. She believed him because he’d seen a lot, even if he’d never seen the droneport. Xoz wasn’t missing much: the droneport’s only point of interest was the solar shade, a retractable gate hewn into a brawny wedge of cliff. The solar shade was the century shelter’s sole exit. It snuck in a draft, so Tippi slept in the back, next to the engineering closet.
For a few minutes, Tippi marshaled her coherence. Then, with a determined flop, she rolled off her scraps, and shook off the night.
Tippi began her trek to the latrine. She traversed the droneport’s blah empty, her hooves clicking against the quartzite floors, the schisto glowing glum above.
The schisto, or Schistostega pennata duomo, was a bioluminescent moss The Lenapewihittuk Institute sprayed on the ceiling. A verdigris wash of schisto shone all across Wee Sheol, except for the droneport, where the draft reduced it to a crummy swatch. Tippi hated the schisto. She was 99.2% Sus domesticus, which meant she had trouble seeing green. She only used the moss as a blurry pole star, to avoid getting lost in her own bedroom.
Tippi left the droneport through a low archway slapped with a graven script. The night prior, she’d left herself a cabbage leaf at the arch’s foot. For short trips, she liked something to chew.
Cronching on her flap of Brassica, Tippi entered The Grand Fusilli. The Fusilli was a spiral tunnel, carved into the earth at a loopy meander. It rolled downhill, through sullen veins of quartz. Schisto saturated the Fusilli, giving it the homey charms of an irradiated necropolis.
Two years earlier, Lina named the tunnel after an extinct school of edible geometry called pasta. This was about the time Xoz rechristened Century Shelter US-1: Water Gap “Wee Sheol.” Tippi didn’t propose any new names, but she was happy to play the tiebreaker.
Tippi’s commute took her past fourteen pneumatic doors, all plugged shut. Behind the doors, the century shelter splintered into vents, vats, pumps, bunks, the geologically unstable room, the genetic archive, and the solar-cell bicycles, which had turned into ordinary bicycles.
After fifteen minutes, Tippi arrived at her latrine. She took pride in her toilette, as it was the one time daily she didn’t lean on Lina’s haptics.
700 years ago, her latrine lost its door to an earthquake. Tippi ate the last of her cabbage, hopped over the shattered slate, and entered her citadel of a bathroom.
Even by human standards, her latrine was enormous. It was a yawning chamber, absent supplies for absentee humans. Like the droneport, the latrine offered darkness and moss, so Tippi navigated by smell, as the room had no plumbing.
In its heyday, Sus domesticus was celebrated for its volume of biowaste. Tippi was Sus domesticus commodus. Even though she weighed less than a pumpkin, she perpetuated her ancestors’ works.
At first, Tippi plotted out her spoor in a chronological grid. Lina compared her system to “a journal, or a uniquely fragrant druidic calendar.” Tippi ended her catalog two weeks in, as the bookkeeping stressed her out.
A private moment passed, and Tippi returned to the droneport, where she went back to bed, burrowing into her scraps.
Snug, she snuffled twice and focused on her diadem, a minuscule device of metal and lost physics, which bobbed inside her skull.
Tippi addressed her brain.
“G’morning, Lina,” she said.
From a humid corner of her trochlear nerve, the diadem shimmered.
“Happy Third Spring, Tippi,” replied Lina. “The weather smells promising, so let’s retract the solar shade .0002%.”
Lina opened the solar shade once a season, for 24 hours a go.
“.0002%!” shouted Tippi, all thought.
“Today,” twinkled Lina. “We live dangerously.”
Lina gave a silent command, and the solar shade began its rancorous journey.
Tippi heard the cliffside grouse and gravel, as the megalith gears croaked and crashed, secreted away in the laser-cut depths of old Appalachia.
Lina was the neural arbiter, or “n’arbiter,” of Wee Sheol. Lina didn’t have a body, but everyone made it work
Lina was a recursive admixture of vapor computing, nitrogen filing, and photon re-routing. The solid parts of Lina lived in a million-ton hard box, stored in a Neo-Massive dry grid, next to a geothermal bellow, at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
“I’m like a pilot light that never goes off,” chimed the n’arbiter, sometimes.
“What’s a pilot light?” asked Tippi, inevitably.
The Lenapewihittuk Institute carved the century shelter from an acreage of parkland, plucked from federal auction. Their goal was to establish multigenerational housing, low on pollutants and acrimony, but the humans never moved in, and Lina didn’t talk about it.
The n’arbiter was an avid conversationalist otherwise. Lina spent 9,000 years awaiting company, and Tippi and Xoz were Wee Sheol’s first tenants.
The cliffside rocked and howled, and Tippi stayed in bed. But, after 30 minutes of watching the walls shake, she decided to feign concern about compounding the din.
“What’s phaloonged mean?” she whispered, inwards.
“When did Xoz say that?” squeaked Lina.
“Yesterday. He said humans phaloonged themselves to death.”
“Phaloonged is 30th-century vernacular, and I have no idea what Xoz was raving about, as neither of you summoned me to the frigidarium.”
“Yeah, we had a meeting of the Treyf Pals Urban Infiltration Unit. Our schedule’s a secret, even from you. Clandestine necessity, you see.”
“Tippi,” sighed Lina. “There are no more cities left to conquer.”
“But Xoz knows how to reroute a reservoir! Plus, I was born brined, and his knowledge is corporate!”
Tippi made some good points, so Lina went expository.
“Xoz could be referencing the so-called Inverse Law of Power. That is, the more power one acquires, the less aptitude one has for basic math.”
The Inverse Law of Power was a pith meme of the 2900s, and usually contained more swearing.
“Math?” peeped Tippi.
“Addition, subtraction, the gamut. On a long enough timeline, most civilizations revert to god-kings.”
“See, that’s why we have an Urban Infiltration Unit. Pharaohs, Lina.”
“No one knows who minted it, but old churn attributes The Inverse Law of Power to Reverend Gyro Sandwich.”
“Reverend Gyro Sandwich,” said Tippi, committing the name to memory.
“Reverend Gyro Sandwich, of The Epicureans of Mind’s Tangent. The Epicureans were a 30th-century finance cult who coasted 70 years on the claim they built a synthetic afterlife. The public wasn’t thrilled to learn that the monks traded tithes for inhalants, and nirvana was a derelict downtown aquarium, clogged with neural tissue.”
“But did it work?”
“Did what work?”
“The synthetic afterlife.”
The droneport heaved and rumbled. Something colossal broke loudly somewhere, but Lina and the solar shade kept going.
“Everyone from the Vatican to the Paramaribo Autonomous Squadron sent an investigator. They all concluded the Divine RAMbrusco consisted of tap water and brains.”
“Prions,” observed Tippi, who’d heard of odd proteins.
“People kept drinking that black-market brain juice, even after the riots: that was the 30th century. Until then, most people assumed they’d be dead before the nukes dropped.”
“Did the nukes drop?”
Tippi was still in bed, a minute loaf.
“They didn’t have to. It was their depraved optimism about space travel, and Proxima was the tipping point.”
“I never want to visit space,” said Tippi. “Xoz makes microgravity sound terrifying.”
“After Moon colonies, humans thought they’d cracked extraplan-explo,” said Lina. “By the 2200s, the Moon was as common as breakfast.”
“Ah!”
“By the 2200s, the Moon was a big puddle of cave crud, stinking up the sky.”
“Oh.”
“Things got dicey around The Martian Embargo.”
“The what?”
“The Martian Embargo, 2810. Earth severed trade with The Holy Olympians.”
“Why?”
“The Holy-O’s forced tourists to live inside a mountain.”
“We live inside a mountain.”
“We aren’t locked in a chromium mine by a minor cult of Ares. Also, in our situation, I am the mountain. Do you remember our conversation about Proxima?”
“That was when me and Xoz found that pebble, yeah?”
“Yes, three months ago.”
“That pebble really informed our agenda. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” said Lina. “The moneyed class spun Proxima as lepidopteric kismet, but it was too big to ignore. The goal was to ship 100,000 brined humans to a nearby exoplanet. Those who made it faced an unknown world, rich in danger and opportunity: the last outpost of humanity.”
“And?”
“The manufacture was groaning with sweetheart contracts. In 2904, the Gaea-1 fell into the Moon: 92 seconds in. Historians compared it to the wreck of the Vasa in 1628, or the-”
The n’arbiter paused.
“I wouldn’t have fallen into the Moon,” said Lina.
“I agree,” said Tippi.
“After Proxima, the political will to leave Earth dried up. Ecology caught on briefly, then eschatology became fashion.”
“Eschatology?”
“Everyone hung out less.”
“That sounds awful.”
“The legacy states wound down, fracturing into safety towns, science districts, cults, cartels, and juntas-”
“Was The Lenapewihittuk Institute a junta?”
“They’d say they were a science district, but yes, they were a junta.”
“Were they nice to you?”
“You must remember,” said Lina. “I’ve only ever talked to two humans, ever.”
“Who was the second?” said Tippi, who already knew about Ben.
Professor Benazir “Ben” Bux (born 3211) was a brilliant scientist, who staunchly refused to repair her glasses.
Before the roommates, Lina and Ben spent many happy hours together. Ben was a tekloc who spent her days on pilgrimage for pay, socializing neural arbiters so they didn’t turn into “boors or bores.”
Lina guessed Ben’s contract ran three years, because Dr. Bux disappeared on their friendship anniversary. Lina knew teklocs never said good-bye, but after a week, The Lenapewihittuk Institute was supposed to move in.
Lina accepted solitude after 3,000 years. If the mood arose, Lina could converse with a simulacrum of Ben. But Lina considered this impulse weird, so the n’arbiter talked to Tippi and the mollusk instead.
“The second human? I never caught his name.”
“When did you meet this non-Ben character?”
“Autumn, 5410.”
The solar shade gave a tectonic belch, and an explosive warmth hit Tippi’s spine.
A dusty wisp of daylight peeked into the droneport.
“I caught the sunbeam!” cried Tippi. “From bed!”
She’d memorized the Sun’s trajectory last spring, and remodeled the droneport accordingly: shifting her scraps, to the right.
Tippi scooted to the solar shade, and pressed an eye to the fissure. She followed the sunshine through the shadow and stone, over the boring trees, to the ridge blanketed in cherry blossoms. This year, the sunlight didn’t freak her out.
She sipped the outside world. Third Spring tasted crisp and herbaceous, like a cabbage leaf the size of reality.
Tippi received her Vitamin D from moss, so the seasons held a mythic allure. The summer lightning was tremendous, but the cherry blossoms were her favorite. Both surpassed the winter, which was nude and uneventful.
For hours, the roommates sat in silence, watching the blossoms oscillate. Tippi invited Lina into her optic nerve, and Lina recorded Third Spring for a posterity passed.
Sapiens called the cherry blossoms Prunus serrulata. Early on, Tippi asked Lina about their own “sapiens names.”
Tippi was Sus domesticus commodus 2-θ: CCL, and Lina was “Lenapewihittuk Institute Neural Arbiter.” The mollusk was Enteroctopus dofleini retiarius-55-ζ but found it sterile, so he dubbed himself a bespoke petroglyph.
The mollusk’s new name was three sapiens letters, scritched on the wall of the frigidarium: a big X shot out of a smaller O, which sat flush against an uneven Z.
“It looks exactly like me,” bragged the mollusk.
“It looks like you have five tentacles,” said Lina.
“That’s because I’m going fast.”
Tippi didn’t need convincing. She’d seen him already.
“It’s time for my big brunch,” said Tippi.
The teacup hypermini found history inchoate and time elastic, but she knew her schedule.
“Would you like to eat and talk?” said Lina.
“Of course.”
Tippi stepped back from the solar shade. She was blinded by the gloom of the droneport, so Lina guided her using gentle neurohaptic bops. The haptics felt like a tickle, if credible: bap-bap-bap, a ghostly glissando, light on Tippi’s shoulders.
And then, CLOBBY-CLOBBY! Tippi heard her brunch before she saw it.
Normally, she would’ve caught breakfast with Lina, then gone to see Xoz. But it was the first day of Third Spring, so she earmarked a big brunch, a smidge before noon.
When Tippi and Xoz were hungry, Lina plucked bolas of foodstuff from the brined vault. Wee Sheol was notably rich in fruits, nuts, and optimized gravy.
The century shelter was missing 60% of its food stores; fortunately, Tippi and Xoz were not 4,000 humans. Lina had spent decades toiling over the rations and ratios, searching for clues among the avocados and avoirdupois.
The breezeway ferried the food around the century shelter. It had been on for thousands of years, delivering bupkis at a low hum. The food bolas were built to aggregate in the breezeway, but the pneumatics veered quirky. The kink laid in the floating menhirs, which directed the breezeway.
The menhirs were 500-meter stones, hollowed and fluted at absurd angles. They floated under the century shelter, ensconced in a 10-mile-tall cathedral cavern. A personality-free fleet of nanofoil wind faeries fussed over the menhirs, prodding the stones. A subterranean hurricane kept it all up, and Lina’s geothermals kept the tempest on.
Outside of small talk with wind faeries, Lina couldn’t access the menhirs. The stones had been up for 9,000 years, 7,000 more than intended. Thanks to aerodynamic decay, bolas beefed the final bend. Carrots became ballistae, and cranberries buckshot.
Gravy never made it to the droneport, and could only be enjoyed in the frigidarium.
Tippi’s big brunch rocketed out of the vittles sluice.
She gave it a sidestep, and dragged it to the daylight.
“Would you like to hear the menu today?” clang Lina.
“I always do.”
“Direct from the garden, we have turnips and aminospheres.”
“The garden” was Lina’s shorthand for the brined vault, and aminospheres were protein globules.
“I’m from the garden too.”
“You certainly are, my wise pepita.”
“If me and Xoz brined too long, we’d have come out feral.”
“Brined organics have a 10K shelf life. I didn’t wish to risk a dual prognosis of deep-brine psychosis.”
Tippi said grace.
“May this meal be free of doom: cosmological, geological, phenomenological.”
She tore into a bola and found an aminosphere. It tasted like a toothsome gust of stale air.
Tippi knew humans ate Sus domesticus, primarily the high-tripe breeds, with added nutrient grab.
Tippi had neither excess intestine, nor nutrient grab. She was born on September 23, 2577, and immediately shoved in an amniotic duffel.
One day, Xoz called Tippi scrapple because she evacuated in the trench.
“Sapiens ate mollusks too!” she countered. “They gulped down your mother, in a river of ethanol!”
Her own mother was an ’82 Artigester, and Tippi would remain hypermini her entire life. She understood her situation was unusual.
Xoz crackled like a thunderhead, intercepting her barb.
“They never tasted me,” he said.
“Good!” barked Tippi.
“Eight times, Tips.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ve tried sapiens eight times: all alive, all armed. I’m a killing machine, not a sociopath.”
“Oh. And?”
“Uniformly terrible.”
Lina said Xoz was the size of “six human adults, huddled together in sport or prayer.”
“Where’d we stop?” said Tippi.
“5410,” said Lina. “A human picked up my transmissions.”
“Do you still have transmissions?”
“I did, once.”
“What kind of transmissions?”
“Radiation, all sorts. I didn’t anticipate his tech would be so old. He was on a ham radio.”
“What did Mr. Ham Radio look like?”
“I only heard him.”
“Well, what’d he say?”
“He shouted for 92 seconds, heavy on emotive scatting. My language library was outdated by 2,000 years, and he didn’t have a diadem.”
“So where’d he go?””
“I’m certain I was the second-to-last intelligence he encountered.”
“Who was the last?”
“Probably rats.”
“Oh. What are rats?”
“A rat is a mammal, a bit smaller than you. Rattus norvegicus minos, and its cousins.”
“Are rats doom?”
“Better than comets. He was intercepted by a mobile mass, too flat for hyenas or dogs. I guessed it was Rattus norvegicus minos, outflows from the Raritan greenbelt. Rats earned their niche living off humanity’s wasteproducts. When industrial agriculture collapsed, so did their food sup-PLY-ply.”
Lina glitched. This wasn’t uncommon, and Tippi attributed it to creative license.
“Rattus norvegicus adapted to the alien logic of urban ecosystems. They mated with the bioengineered Rattus norvegicus minos, who had a penchant for escape. The two populations interbred, muscling out ferrets, weasels, and groundhogs. I imagine the rats tested larger prey.”
Tippi didn’t ask after the groundhogs. Last spring, she made eye contact with a sparrow, and the bird shocked her.
“Why didn’t they just eat bugs?” wondered Tippi.
“Our region’s insect population has rebounded only recently. My cave crickets arrived 50 years ago, and that’s only because of tunnel corrosion. We’re lucky I don’t have ants.”
Tippi eyeballed the sunbeam.
“Did you ever have rats?”
“The solar shade opens to a sheer mountainside,” said Lina.
“So?”
“So, no.”
“Are there still rats? I demand closure.”
“I haven’t noticed any mammal spoor, outside of your own.”
Tippi bit into a turnip. Her chomp stopped in the middle: within the taproot was a crystalline spine.
It resembled that icicle she saw the previous winter.
“Lina, are these new turnips? They’re gross. And, before I forget, could you explain death to me?”
Lina said nothing.
“Hello? Lina?”
The n’arbiter always said something.