Chapter 10
A Most Exclusive Apocalypse
Behind the pall of morning, Antares burned.
“It’s a cloudy day!” said Tippi.
Xoz looked to the sky.
“I’ve seen clouds from above: never below!”
The 1,000-pound octopus grabbed his bat and ran around in a circle, luxuriating in the neutral firmament.
“Lina,-2!” said Tippi, bouncing. “Document the clouds! Document it all!”
“Okay!” said Lina-2, who earmarked a fraction of the crown’s memory to the blank sky.
“I wish I could see the clouds,” lamented Big Rehoboth. “But fortune has left me farsighted.”
“Let me describe the day,” said Tippi. “It is grey and gray, every which way.”
“Is it grey like me?” asked the monolith.
“No, no.”
“Is it gray like me?” called the mollusk.
Xoz was that exact gray!
Tippi said, “Hey!”
The travelers idled with Big Rehoboth, who poked 2,000 feet out of the earth, and 1,000 into it. The monolith resembled a stream-worn pebble, dropped in the mud.
“I was built in 3610, by archivists from Allentown. They hoped to revive Free Science, so I was a beacon for talent.”
The monolith represented an ideological shift within the Neo-Massive School: it was outside.
“There was a schism over me!” crowed Big Rehoboth.
Wee Sheol was snug underground, but the 3600s had a cleaner relationship with the sky, and Big Rehoboth was built for maximum exposure.
“In the 3400s, supply chains got shaky, and the planets got quiet: the Red Pagans, Homestead Aphrodite, and the Gas Moon Kids. Records grew spotty. Pluto fell into mystery, but nobody pressed to investigate. The kings of space mothballed their DTs and god-rods, and Earth calmed down: for a few years, at least.”
“Was Venus really terraformed?” said Xoz.
“Almost, their ‘indentured servitude’ hook went public, stole that trick from the Martians. Anyhoot, I saw my last human in 5998. The 60th century was such a deep escalation of themes: the last-act tech, the monasteries, The Clench, I had a riverfront view for all of it.”
“Didn’t you say your sapiens move out in 4022?” quizzed Xoz.
“Anyhoot?” said Tippi.
“The Allentowners did, but squatters assumed the low meadow for 2,000 years. Sometimes they tried to break in, but my only entrance is at the top. Lina, my data dock should be compatible: would you like to come up?”
Tippi and Xoz unleashed a series of emergency winks, and everyone save the monolith ran 15 miles north.
“Sitrep: I told Big Rehoboth we’re foraging berries.”
“Tips, we were there. Lina-2, welcome to Infiltration Unit. Your call sign is Achilles, and your membership is provisional.”
“Why Achilles?”
“Because of your obvious flaws.”
“Fair, if unsparing. What are your call signs?”
“We don’t have call signs,” said Tippi.
“I thought you were Lil’ Caligula and Large Caligula.”
“Those are just for casual.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be Flintlock Barbafloss?”
“That’s a totally different thing,” said Xoz. “My vote is bounce, because this scene is odd.”
Lina-2 disagreed.
“We could use an update, and we’re making good time. Big Rehoboth promised us a quantum library. QLs were just getting good in the 33rd.”
“I can’t trust someone who’s been trapped in one place forever.”
“Do you mean Big Rehoboth, or me?”
“All I’m saying is I’ve just met you, Achilles.”
“The monolith isn’t connected to Wee Sheol’s geothermals,” deduced Tippi. “Big Rehoboth seems far too functional.”
“Stone cold, Tips. I like where this is going.”
“We’re not going to kill Big Rehoboth.”
“Achilles, I’ll entertain your opinion once you strangle a moray eel on steroids.”
“What!”
“Tell you later, Tips.”
“Xoz,” sighed Lina-2. “Do you know where we’re going?”
Back at the monolith, Tippi explained their crisis.
“Lina-1 needs a magma injection.”
“How complicated!”
“Big Rehoboth, have you seen any mammals?”
“Field mice, a few centuries ago! They nested in the ruins. One day, they abandoned their lodgings, as if escaping a wildfire.”
“I wanted to visit Rehoboth Beach, but I haven’t the means to import myself, and I have a feeling it’s underwater. That was my agenda until Antares. The supernova has inspired me, imbuing this old rock with new purpose.”
“Oh?”
“I shall meditate by this river, until Earth is consumed by the Sun. Should all go optimal, I’ll be the last terrestrial sapience, obliterated in a most exclusive apocalypse. All I have to do is dodge a comet.”
“Oh.”
Tippi didn’t wish to be terse, but she was hundreds of feet above the ground, for the second day in a row.
Xoz scaled the skyscraper with caution, as there was a single safe route to Big Rehoboth’s roof, and it was awash in false paths.
“Lina, you live upstream from me: why haven’t we met before? Given our proximity, we should be sharing energy assets.”
“I was built in 3249 by The Lenapewihittuk Institute, an outgrowth of The Mount Olive Free Sci-”
“I see! Bring your animals to my library, and let us trade notes. And Tippi: you were here with me, twice, in 3765 and 3910. We had so much fun!”
“You knew my multitudes?”
“They were from 3009, the last ones ever: Tippi x Proxima, in an exclusive jack-o’-lantern colorway. Tippisvíni G.H. overestimated demand for a cloned pet that celebrated Halloween and the deaths of 100,000 people, so I had two. The first raised morale around the dormitory.”
“I’d enjoy that.”
“The second was on pump duty for 30 years.”
“Pump duty?”
“Yes, it was a crucial pump! Now that she’s gone, I can feel my optical organs, fraying and swaying in the dark. Those pigs had pumpkins on their haunches, and an Easter egg about werewolves, it was a song: Where are the werewolves, where, oh where? You unlocked it by feeding your unit 3.1 grams of dog kibble, under a full moon.”
They summited, and Big Rehoboth was still going.
“Sapiens accrued a lethal level of technological debt. The cruft stacked up so high, no one saw the minotaur running amok, and that minotaur’s name was propriety tech going down with company towns. After all, you can’t run a spaceport when nobody’s studied nuclear engineering for 100 years! I can still intercept radiation, the long holler of the cosmos. The universe is an epic poem worth hearing, even if it plods, and characters suddenly explode.”
The flat roof bore an intricate arrangement of rain gutters: a typical Neo-Massive flourish.
“The Neo-Massives thought a worthwhile structure was a big one. Their key influences were Richard Serra, the Pantheon, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Isamu Noguchi, and the Mind Dungeon of Professor Almas.”
Xoz flicked at some crust.
“Spoor,” said Lina-2. “Avian.”
“I am popular with the birds.”
Tippi ran to the edge. She could see the river wend south, a gauzy sapphire trickle. Cherry trees were the size of cauliflower.
“Don’t get too close!” said Big Rehoboth. “The wind is sneaky!”
Xoz squeezed himself thin and hopped around, trying to catch a breeze.
“Patagia!” he yelled.
“No,” said Achilles.
As Xoz extolled the flying squirrel, Tippi wandered over to a low-slung access tunnel, and snuffled into the shadows.
Gro-wonk.
Gro-wonk, replied the echo.
Wo-gronk.
Wo-gronk, sang her echo.
Huh-huh-huh.
HUNKY PUNKS! screamed someone, from the tunnel.
Tippi leapt back, and Xoz was at her side, bat sparking on stone.
HUNKY PUNKS! barked the unknown interlocutor.
“Come out,” coaxed the mollusk. “It’s your children, and we’re here to eat you.”
The bat cracked against the tunnel, shattering some gutter.
“Please don’t!” said the monolith. “I was building up to something grand!”
Before the bat could connect again, Tippi heard a loud flutter, and the tunnel regurgitated a blast of color.
“Meet The Hunky Punks!” said Big Rehoboth.
Hundreds of tropical birds yammered about the roof, wheeling against the afternoon, and Xoz ran away from the parrots.