Odd Little Seedpod

You weren’t hard to find. You reek of the probes.

The pearls of midnight danced through the needles, everywhere and nowhere, all at once.

We ignored you, because you’re not a threat, whatever you are.

Tippi craned her head, wiggly, tracing Gerasa’s glare, as the rat wound around the wood.

But you took my sister.

The spruce swirled and spun, twisting the treetop into a dread cantilever.

I actually liked my sister.

Lina-2 was shouting, but the pig could barely hear-

When Dorset was born, her name was Mulch. To attain The Mark of Freehold, Mulch, like the other aspirants, was assigned the traditional trial: she had to be the first to catch a bird. Rather than spending days chasing the rare jay, she snooped the riverbank and slaughtered a kingfisher in its hole. Her skill earned her the title of Dorset; her peers were culled. I am telling you this, so you know what you’ve cost me.

Tippi focused on those ichorous eyes, and an endless suffering cascaded into her brain.

I am Gerasa.

Her memories went muddy.

You do not wish to know how I earned my name.

 

Tippi’s sanity swirled under the mnemonic assault. She was inundated by the weight of memories: visions of fur and shrieks, loam and blood, and the sort of exhausted exhilaration that can only be achieved by clawing oneself out from under a pile of corpses-

“Tippi, we need to-”

A heap of mangled failures, overconfident in their inability-

“Tippi? Can you hear me-”

Spent vessels, crooked and contused, who had the UTTER FUCKING AUDACITY to-

Warning! Assume an upright posture!

Tippi was ripped back to reality by the nagging of her memory crown.

She’d tumbled some ten feet from the top, further into the foliage, and her back legs were locked around a limp branch. The bio-magnetics of her memory crown were peeling off, along with Lina-2.

“Tip-PI-pi, what happened up there?” crackled Achilles. “Your BI–BI-biometrics are going hay-SKREEMBOH! I can feel your optic nerve downright pulsate! It’s almost like-”

Tippi flailed, upside-down, desperate to cinch the branch with her front legs-

“Almost like-”

But her tiny hooves kept swishing through the waxy needles-

“D-AZZ-le camo!”

Tippi wrenched her back, securing Achilles station.

“Dazzcamo?” pipped the pig.

“Yes! The very sight of those eyes is triggering the analogous biomarkers! If a military-grade mod like caracoles got loose, why not dazzcamo? Another quarterly stretch goal, running amok in the gene pool, I hope the shareholders were happy!”

From her dead hang, Tippi saw the pearls, spinning below her.

Found you.

Twin artifacts of a dead civilization, twinkling with madness.

What an odd little seedpod you are!

Tippi’s haunches began to slip.

“Lina, remember that plan you suggested? The terrible one?”

You fell for me. How sensible of you to embrace your fate!

“Let’s do it.”

“We’re absolutely positive that thing’s going to kill us?”

My sister’s death is my humiliation, and your entrails will satisfy my shame.

“I think so,” said Tippi.

“Then we’re executing the plan, as discussed.”

“The haptic lock?”

“As discussed, with one major difference.”

“What’s that?”

The pearls of midnight shot up the tree.

“That’s how we get down.”

A gyre of violence was coming straight for them.

“Jump, and I will catch you,” whispered Lina.

The spruce teetered and rocked, as Gerasa thundered up the trunk.

“Be brave, my sweet bean.”

Be helpless. Be worthless.

“We will survive this, I promise.”

Accept, acquiesce, and fade!

“It’s time. I love you.”

The rat was on them.

Tippi let go.

She saw death, and aimed for the face.

 

During Apex Predators of the Carboniferous, Tippi had a question:

“Do you think sapiens would’ve found our lives interesting?”

Lina’d been discussing the dragonfly-esque dreadfuls of the order Meganisoptera, and the pig felt curiously insecure about her lack of a 28-inch wingspan.

“Our existence would make for a limited narrative,” explained the n’arbiter. “We live in low-to-no light, and none of us communicate through vocalizations. To your average human, our daily routine would be tantamount to a living death, albeit one with more conversations about biological leavings.”

“It’s like we occupy an uncharted layer of Buddhist hell,” chirped Xoz.

“To Homo sapiens, a story starring you, me, and Xoz might as well be about a stalactite, a filbert, and anagram,” confessed Lina.

“But I would love that story!” insisted Tippi, who was unfamiliar with two-thirds of the terms.

“It’d be too flat for the human palate,” said Xoz. “The anagram and filbert would have to copulate, and then the stalactite would crush them, mid-coitus. It was all Eros and Thanatos with the Great Apes, and that was before machines started writing their scriptures and jokes.”

“I see,” said Tippi, who did not.

Later that day, she lingered at the Patio of Innovation, just to smell the story wax.

 

The pig fell off of the branch and into a nightmare, plummeting headfirst, until-

“NOW!” cried Lina-2.

An invisible vigor coursed through Tippi’s somatic nervous system, as the haptic lock enveloped her every muscle.

She thought she understood the limits of Lina’s haptics. Around Wee Sheol, the haptics amounted to billowy suggestions, or the rare adrenal pinch, which the n’arbiter reserved for diverting faceplants. But the full haptics goosed the pig’s perception; every passing second became its own worldstorm, brewing in miniature. She felt the wind sweep across each individual pore, and could count the exact number of needles prickling her skin.

Between her synaptic pops, Lina-2 drafted and discarded a flight path, a million times over, puzzling over tendons and vectors until-

“NOW!”

With a quicksilver lunge, Tippi grabbed the nearest branch in her jaws. She pinched her haunches up and in, and Gerasa’s maw missed her entirely.

“NOW!”

Once she registered the sting of whiskers, Tippi uncurled her back legs, and kicked.

Two tiny hooves smashed the pearls of midnight.

Gerasa’s scream echoed across the forest.

Stunned, the rat clung to the trunk, slapping at her perforated sclerae with forepaws frenetic.

“NOW!”

Tippi unloosed her jaws and threw herself at the rat, landing an expert thwack on Gerasa’s tortuous back.

“NOW!”

Gerasa regained her vision in a fuzzy instant, but it was too late.

Her nemesis hung on her tail, in a wild-eyed chomp.

Tippi had gone razorback.

The pearls swore, drowning in their own fluids.

You piss-soaked imp!

Gerasa attempted to shake the pig off, but her tail had gone leaden.

You meddling emerod!

Tippi dug her teeth into the tail, until she tasted iron.

You absurd crumb of a maniac!

She bit harder, until she tasted the ventral caudal nerve.

With shoulders cramping and ribcage burning, the rat slashed at Tippi with her back claws, compromising her grip, and sliding further down the spruce.

Gambling on a knowledge of Rattus anatomy, Lina-2 had sketched a deadly choreography, such that Tippi grazed every raw nerve, rough patch, and pressure point on Gerasa’s spinal column. This promenade of pain was all they needed to crack the rat.

I will suck out your marrow! I will shuck out your eyes! I will shit out your skull!

Tippi replied with a stare, forged in the darkest quartz:

“I was excited to go outside.”

She was the 250th anniversary edition.

“I was excited to see everything.”

She wasn’t dying today.

“I WAS EXCITED TO MEET YOU!”

Gerasa’s forepaws seized, useless and stony.

The mammals crashed through the boughs.

The rat hit the ground, landing with a wet slap.

 

Tippi tried to stay awake. The gentle lapping of waves wasn’t helping.

On an ordinary day, she’d marinate in an exquisite semi-somnolence: a near-quiet, punctuated only by the beeps of the boardwalk, the squawk of the gulls, and the majestic thrum of the frigates, alighting at Terminal Avalon, far in the distance.

But it was a Wednesday in mid-October, and she was sleepier than usual. The crowds were gone, and the seabirds were elsewhere, likely plucking their fortunes from a garbage barge. The spacecraft were sparse, and had dwindled down to the occasional export skiff. She remembered hearing something about a trade embargo, but was unsure of the specifics.

The little pig could barely induce herself to recollect the vagaries of Olympian realpolitik. After all, she was at the beach, and snug under an umbrella.

 

Tippi awoke, snuffling and confused, which was typical of her afternoon naps.

The sunset was bleeding into Antares, and the sky was a roaring coral. She would’ve appreciated the view, but she had more pressing concerns.

Namely, she’d been napping on a giant rat.

Gerasa was splayed on her side, motionless, her legs sprawled out at insalubrious angles.

Tippi couldn’t hear Lina; the memory crown got dislodged in the drop.

Her whole body ached. It was the Asparagus World Championship, all over again.

She tried to take a step, but her adrenaline was spent, and she plunked back down on greasy fur.

She considered the fall. Lina-2 had extricated them using gravity, a 10,000-year-old hat, and an overclocked teacup hypermini.

What could Lina accomplish with fresh tech, and a century shelter full of humans? What could Lina have done, if Lina wasn’t Lina?

These were questions Tippi never considered, and they would have to wait, because the rat was breathing.

what. are. you.

Gerasa’s ribs rose and fell, arrhythmic and tremulous.

Tippi looked Gerasa in the eye. The pearls had dimmed.

what. are. you.

“I’m Tippi, everyone’s favorite pig.”

She was too exhausted to appreciate the cruel irony of her statement, but Gerasa did.

heh.

The rat had mistook her introduction for a victor’s gloating.

that’s your. title. yes?

“I suppose.”

what. do. you. want.

“I don’t understand.”

you said. you wanted. to meet. me.

“Is this a trick?”

heh.

Gerasa managed a liquid cough.

heh. nah. real. what do. you want.

Tippi stammered.

“I want my friends to live. I want to feel the sunshine.”

She paused.

“I want to see Antares.”

The pearls of midnight retracted, in deliberation. When they emerged, Gerasa’s broken form tensed with decorum.

it took so much to get here. you have no idea. it can’t be for nothing.

“What? What can’t be for nothing?”

you. are. interrupting.

“Sorry,” said Tippi.

Minutes ago, this creature was eager to disembowel her. Now, she was apologizing to the rat.

fine. fine. all fine.

Gerasa’s eyes were losing their luster.

breathe.

One of the funny pustules on the rat’s neck ruptured, and a sweet mist wafted up Tippi’s snout.

breathe.

It smelled of the rain.

mark of. freehold.

Tippi understood: this was some rare and weird gift.

The pig blinked, and sprouted millions of eyes, telescoping high on fleshy turrets. Her eyestalks dove underground, rooting themselves in every tunnel, den, and nest. Only the microbes could see the dirt better than her, but she could see all of it. Tippi knew the totality of the world’s low and hidden places. No geological secret was beyond her ken. She visited Wee Sheol, The Valley of The Kings, and the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. She saw platyhelminthes fence with their penises. All soil was hers to sift and sculpt. The entire planet was illuminated as one, a subterranean constellation.

And then, she went deeper.

 

Outro: Primal Scream – “Higher Than The Sun (American Spring Remix)”