Chapter 10
That Sizzling Stink of Stardust
Behind the pall of morning, Antares burned, and Tippi fluttered her eyes.
“It’s a cloudy day!” she said. “I haven’t seen one since last year!”
Xoz assessed the sky:
“I’ve seen cloud coverage from above, but never below. How novel!”
“It’s a cloudy day!” shrieked the pig.
The 1,000-pound octopus grabbed his bat and ran around in a circle, luxuriating in the neutral firmament.
“Lina-2, document this day!” commanded Tippi. “Document the clouds! Document it all!”
“Okay!” said Lina-2, who dutifully earmarked a sliver of the memory crown to the blank sky.
“Will it rain?” postulated Tippi. “Or won’t it?”
She then wished for snow, even though she knew it was too warm for flurries.
“I wish I could see the clouds,” lamented Big Rehoboth. “But I’m tremendously farsighted these days!”
“No kidding!” said Xoz.
“Big Rehoboth, let me describe the day,” said Tippi. “It is grey and gray, every which way!”
“Is it gray like me?” asked Big Rehoboth.
“No, no!” cried Tippi. “You’re more of a light obsidian.”
“Is it gray like me?” called Xoz.
His chromatophores were the exact gray!
Tippi said: “Hey!”
The travelers idled the morning with their new friend, who was 3,000 meters tall and 2,000 meters deep.
“I was built in 3610,” said Big Rehoboth. “I owe my existence to a hodgepodge of archivists, from Allentown. They relocated, from down the road, hoping to revive the Free Science movement. I was envisioned as a beacon for talent and materiel, and contained residents until 4022.”
In the same way maglev replaced the steam engine, and razor blades begat The Arachno*Shaver, the skyscraper represented a profound ideological shift within the Neo-Massive School: namely, Big Rehoboth was outside.
“There was a schism over me!” crowed the skyscraper.
Whereas the century shelter was built snug underground (“The 33rd century,” commiserated Big Rehoboth. “A furtive era.”), the monolith was built for maximum exposure, as the 3600s had a friendlier relationship with the sky:
“I only knew space as the purview of the desperate, and the Earth pocked by microstates. When the supply chains went shaky in 3400, the big players cloistered up: y’know, The Red Pagans, Homestead Aphrodite, and the Gas Moon Kids. And the records got spotty as the sys got quiet. No one figured out what happened to Pluto, but nobody wanted to visit, either. The kings of space mothballed their god-rods and diamond tips, and Earth calmed down, for a few years, at least-”
“Did they really terraform Venus?” blurted Lina-2.
“Almost,” sighed the skyscraper. “But Planet Love’s entire ‘indentured servitude’ hook went public: stole that one from the Martians, they did. Anyhoot, I saw my last human in 5998. The 60th century had such a deep escalation of themes: the last technology, the monasteries, The Organic-Synthetic Declension, I had a riverfront view for all of it.”
Big Rehoboth shone like a river-worn pebble, dropped in the mud lengthwise.
“Didn’t your architects move out in 4022?” asked Xoz.
“Anyhoot?” said Tippi.
“The Allentowners did,” replied Big Rehoboth. “But I’ve had plenty of sapiens company. 2,000 years of squatters assumed the low meadow. Sometimes they tried to break in, but my only entrance is at the top. Speaking of which, Lina, my data dock should be compatible: would you like to come inside?”
Unleashing a secret system of emergency winks they’d practiced season upon season to no immediate payoff, Tippi and Xoz conducted a snap vote to induct Lina-2 into The Treyf Pals Urban Infiltration Unit, and everyone ran 15 miles up the towpath, save the skyscraper.
“Sitrep: I told Big Rehoboth we’re foraging berries,” said Tippi.
“Tips, we were all there,” nudged Xoz. “Lina-2, moving forward your call sign shall be ‘Achilles’.”
“Why Achilles?” said the clone.
“Because of your obvious flaws.”
“Fair, if unsparing. Do either of you have call signs?”
“Not for the Infiltration Unit,” said the pig. “We just use our regular names.”
“I thought you were Lil’ Commodus and Big Caligula.”
“Those are just for casual,” explained Tippi.
“Isn’t my name Peckish Barbafloss?” wondered Achilles.
“Completely different thing,” tutted Xoz. “Anyhoot, my vote is bounce. The scene is odd, and I say we follow the river, until that hard left at the pineland.”
“We could use any regional update, even if Big Rehoboth’s sensors failed in 9939.”
“So we’ll only have the last two millennia unaccounted for,” noted Xoz. “An improvement, I guess.”
“How will we get updates?” asked Tippi.
“Big Rehoboth promised us a quantum library,” said Lina-2. “Solid-state hardbody was just getting good in the 33rd century.”
“I’m not sure I can trust someone who’s been stuck in one place for 8,000 years,” added Xoz.
“Are you talking about Big Rehoboth, or me?”
“All I’m saying is I’ve just met you, Achilles.”
“Big Rehoboth isn’t connected to Lina’s geothermals,” deduced Tippi. “Our new friend seems far too functional.”
“Excellent observation, pig” saluted Xoz. “Let’s find the power source, and kick the shit out of it.”
“Must we always open with hostility?” plead Lina-2.
“I’ll entertain your opinion once you strangle a moray eel on steroids-”
Tippi oinked, wildly.
“I’ll tell you later. We have precious little wiggle room built into our crisis, so we need to quit the dithering-”
“Xoz,” said Lina-2. “Do you know where we’re going?”
Back at the monolith, Tippi explained their predicament:
“If we don’t feed Lina Prime enough magma, I will be forced to eat crickets.”
“How complicated!” gasped Big Rehoboth.
“How’d you get your name, Big Rehoboth?” said Tippi.
“For a stretch there, I wanted to visit Rehoboth Beach. Sadly, I haven’t the means to import even a facsimile of myself there, and I have a feeling it’s long submerged. Anyhoot, that was my agenda, until Antares. I could smell the supernova from here, that sizzling stink of stardust.”
“You can smell space?” marveled Tippi.
“Not exactly, but mammals have appreciated that metaphor. Yes, the fall of Antares has inspired me to rewrite my ethos. After endless eons, I have a new purpose.”
“And?”
“I’ve been sitting here by the river, thinking. Like Lina, I too believe the solar system’s fresh out of sapiens. I will continue to meditate on my existence, until our planet is consumed by the Sun. Should all go optimal, I will be the last terrestrial sapience, obliterated in my own private apocalypse. Yes, some microorganisms may be sucking on a thermal vent, lobbing the same peptide fore and aft, but they won’t appreciate doomsday like me. All I have to do is not get hit by a comet.”
“Oh,” said Tippi.
The pig didn’t want to be rude, but she was somewhat distracted; for the second day in a row, she was hundreds of feet above the ground.
Xoz was ascending Big Rehoboth, hauling Tippi, Pig Iron, and the aminos. They were so high, the river was reduced to a sapphire trickle. Tippi couldn’t oink if she wanted to, as her mouth was full of orb; she found their subtle dullness comforting, plus all those unidentified insects gave her a stomachache.
Xoz scaled Big Rehoboth slowly, switchbacking across the diabolical rock. The monolith only appeared sheeny from a distance. There was a single safe route to the summit, and it was surrounded by a network of false paths and ergonomically impossible grips: “an expert composite of the cruelest mountains in the sys,” claimed the skyscraper.
The artisanal gulf between Big Rehoboth and the memory crown kept the conversation cramped:
“Funny this, your century shelter doesn’t appear on my energy map. Lina, you live upstream from me. Why haven’t we met before? Given our proximity, we should be sharing regional energy assets-”
“I was built in the 33rd century by The Lenapewihittuk Institute, an outgrowth of The Mount Olive Free Sci-”
“I see!” said Big Rehoboth, affect starched. “Bring your animals to my library, and let us trade notes.”
This was getting too technical for Tippi; Lina never referred to them as “animals.”
“Humanity accrued a lethal level of technological debt,” monologued Big Rehoboth. “The cruft stacked up so high, nobody saw the minotaur running amok. Retrograde tech, strongmen, propriety goods going down with the company town: my point is, it’s hard to run a spaceport when nobody’s studied nuclear engineering in 500 years, and your n’arbiter can only light a doob.”
“Huh?” said Tippi.
“Sapiens went extinct because they forgot how their stuff worked,” said the octopus.
Tippi scanned the valley. She saw trees, river, sky, and that was it. Maybe the sapiens were gone; maybe they really did get diabetes-
“I’m straying from my key point. You were there too, Tippi!”
“What? With the minotaur?”
“No, you were here, with me, twice!” said Big Rehoboth. “3765 and 3910, we had so much fun together!”
Tippi understood there were other Tippis, but she didn’t expect to meet anyone who knew her multitudes.
“The last flash drop of Tippis was in 3009, the 700th Anniversary Tippi x Proxima Memorial edition, complete with a subscriber-exclusive jack-o’-lantern colorway. Some said Tippisvíni Genetic Holdings overestimated demand for a pet that commemorated Halloween and the deaths of 10 million people, so most T-700s wound up brined.”
Tippi was the 250th Anniversary Edition, and unsure about this topic.
“The Allentowners had two Tippi-700s. The first one spent her years traveling from dormitory to dormitory, raising morale.”
“I would enjoy that,” brightened Tippi.
“Of course, things were easier in the 38th century,” conceded Big Rehoboth. “The second one was on pump duty for 30 years.”
“Pump duty?” said the pig.
“Yes, it was a crucial pump! You’re remarkably different from those two: they had glow-in-the-dark pumpkins spliced upon their rumps, and came loaded with a secret song about werewolves. Where are the werewolves? Where, oh where? You unlocked it by feeding your T-700 3.1 grams of canine kibble under a full moon, it was ingenious.”
Xoz, who could feel Tippi’s heartbeat, paused the ascent:
“First off, Tippi is a 250th anniversary edition, hence her memory crown. She also had a sash, but it was so fine, it decayed in seconds. And, speaking as someone with 300,000 brothers and sisters, it’s annoying when strangers compare you to your siblings, or your clones.”
It was dusk when they summited.
The top of the skyscraper was a guano-specked paddock. An intricate grid of gutters was carved upon the flat, and a low-slung tunnel led to Big Rehoboth’s insides.
“There are feces up here,” observed Xoz, flicking crust.
“Avian,” said Lina-2.
“I am popular with the birds,” beamed Big Rehoboth.
The roof was pure Neo-Massive School, who embraced the idea that every structure should occupy the liminal space between “monument” and “colossus.” The keystone structures of the Neo-Massives were the Pantheon, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, and the Mind Dungeon of Professor Almas.
Tippi ran to the edge of Big Rehoboth, drinking in the gauzy nightfall. At this surreal height, Tippi could see the Lenapewihittuk wend south; the cherry trees were the size of cauliflower florets.
48 hours ago, she agonized over a single sunbeam. Now, she was above it all.
“Don’t get too close to the drop,” chuckled Big Rehoboth. “The wind will sneak up on you.”
Xoz squeezed his body into a flat sail and began hopping around the paddock, trying to catch the beefy breeze.
“Patagia!” he flapped.
“Don’t do that,” snapped Lina-2.
As Xoz extolled the virtues of the flying squirrel, Tippi investigated the burrow. It was a squat rock tunnel, dripping down into the dark. The burrow was framed by a lattice of gutters that diverted precipitation away from living space, and towards essential processes; “drink your rain” was another Neo-Massive tenet.
“In my prior life, I was a ridge,” said Big Rehoboth. “Sight, as you animals understand it, has eluded me since my vision systems decoupled. I can feel my optical organs, fraying and swaying, underground.”
“Then how can you tell we’re here?”
“An imperfect melange of deprecated seismics and short-range thermals,” said Big Rehoboth. “My terrestrial senses have deteriorated, but it’s not all bad. I can still intercept radiation: the long holler of the cosmos. The universe is an epic poem worth hearing, even if it plods and the protagonists randomly explode.”
“Big Rehoboth, have you seen any mammals?” said Lina. “Any Cervidae, Chiroptera, Rodentia?”
“The meadow had field mice, a few hundred years ago. They nested in the ruins: a lively bunch! One day, they abandoned their lodgings, as if escaping a wildfire. I never saw that which frightened them, but they never returned. My vermin-proofing keeps out unwanted visitors. Besides Tippi, no mammal’s been up here in centuries.”
Tippi stared down the burrow, and let its must waft over her.
She was uneager to go back indoors, but she did appreciate an echo.
Groyhn groyhn wonk, said the teacup hypermini.
Groyhny groynhy wunk, returned the echo.
Wunky grunky wonk, she sang.
Wonky gronky wunk-
HUNKY PUNKS
Tippi leapt back.
HUNKY PUNKS, shrieked the new party.
HUNKY PUNKS, replied another unseen interlocutor.
These voices weren’t in her memory crown, or diadem. They were coming from Big Rehoboth’s inners, and were speaking sapiens.
Xoz was by her side so quickly, his bat sparked across the stone.
“Come out, humans,” he cajoled. “It is time to meet your children, and we are here to eat you.”
He whacked the bat against the borrow, shattering an antediluvian gutter.
“Please don’t!” groused the skyscraper. “I was building up to something grand!”
Xoz wound up for another wallop. But, before Pig Iron could connect, a screeching blast of color exploded from the burrow, slapping and pecking at his crag-o’-mantle.
HUNKY PUNKS HUNKY PUNKS, chanted the swirling mass.
Hundreds of tropical birds wheeled and yammered, all around the paddock.
HUNKY PUNKS HUNKY PUNKS HUNKY PUNKS, they chattered, diving and twirling against the sunset.
“Everyone, I’d like you to meet the Hunky Punks,” said Big Rehoboth.
“You said you were vermin-proof!” whined Xoz, as he scrambled away from whistling parrots.
“I said I was a hit with the birds!”