Schwesterherz

My little sister is minding the probes.

For reasons I find uninteresting, Dorset relishes probe duty. She’s at the riverside with the builders, eyes locked on the construction, but she notices my arrival.

Whatever rankles this vacuous gash?

Neither of us were born to mother, but only Dorset finds the fact hilarious.

I reciprocate her affections.

Behold a malignant wart: agony in her wake, venom in her piss.

Tell me something I don’t know, she lilts.

I woke up angry.

There’s a sea change! she hoots. What got you sore this morn?

Unlike our older sister, Dorset and I hold actual conversations.

I woke up angry with my wasted potential. I woke up angry at my etched destiny. I woke up angry at our family, and the ritual of our blood. I woke up angry at Father, The Archangel, and Leviathan, doddering in its dullness and weakness. I woke up angry that our existence is headless, and I woke up angry that I know shit about shit.

Dorset chews this over.

Did you wake up angry at me?

I owe her honesty.

No.

Did you eat yet?

No.

Start there. Find yourself a fish.

There’s a stopgap.

Dorset snorts.

Honeyed Gerasa, picking at her very need for nutrition. You need an avocation.

Like what?

That’s for you to decide. I extract purpose from this.

She signals the beachhead. At her command, the artisans scrabble and crash, faster than before, vying for mortar.

Sometimes an artisan of note is ushered into Father’s clique, and Dorset’s mother was one of the best. The last artisans standing receive a reward: they do not pilot their probes.

Because I’m a wretch, I slather my misery around.

They say it’s an honor to become a pilot. Most seem intent on avoiding this accolade. 

Dorset takes an exaggerated swipe at me. I dodge it easily.

The Archangel elected the builders, and their labors sustain Father. They’re beholden to an ancient ideal.

I’m so low, I learn about probe duty.

What ancient ideal?

My sister can’t hide her thrill.

The dominance of creation, you suppurating grub!

I’m unfamiliar.

Our forebears tried to automate their labor, then breed a better serf. Both plans rollicked the social compact: too much freedom sours the mind, too much inequity blunts the drive. Automation and serfdom, they convolute things.

How so?

Both were too material. If reality is suffering, which sanction is left to inflict?

I refuse to answer riddles before sunrise.

Irrelevance, she cackles. There is no motivator like a meticulously curated fear of irrelevance.

My sister is a scholar of cruelty.

There is no earthly pit deeper than the oubliette of the mind.

I am proud of her.

Consider my builders. See how they cobble and scrap! Some may be thinking of real matters: their hunger, their kin. But look at their eyes!  Ravenous, and enthralled by the dominance of creation! 

The artisans wail for my sister, and she inspects their craft. If summoned prematurely, Dorset slaps on repairs.

To build is to be, inaction is insignificance.

She launches the probes, pilots inside. It’s a brutal business, but her pluck is calming, and my tidings are glad.

We’re assigned to the rear flank, I tell her. Scouts caught something downriver, aligns with the noise from the old stone.

My sister indulges in a little dance: Dorset loves an outing.

The weather is far better than yesterday, I add. A good spring.

We have the forebears to thank for that, she purrs.

How so?

Her black eyes shimmer: two pearls of midnight, same as mine.

They created such a mess, they canceled the ice age.

Outro: Health – “Goth Star”