Children of The Clench

Oh, this is new.

I’m in a tunnel.

Good, it’s coming to me.

That’s helpful, because I’m not sure which way is up.

Archangel, Gerasa.

That’s not right.

Arkhangelsk, Jerash.

That’s better.

Arkhangelsk? Jerash?

Lina-2 only heard a little. Over the years, the rest fell off.

Then draw it up.

The year 3000. A library in Quezopolis. A studio in New Harbin. A foundry in Kohima V. A mineral exchange in Dar es Salaam. A flophouse in Paris. A ferry in Arkhangelsk. A greenmarket in Jerash. Carnaval de Oruro. A cybernetics suite in Spanish Town. A port in Camden.

I know these places!

You’ve never heard of these places.

Oh, right.

This is where Leviathan started.

“Birthed at global chokepoints.”

“Patented DorCorp designs.”

“Award-winning spike proteins.”

“The future of terralogical solutions.”

But why?

Why Arkhangelsk? Why Jerash? Why Camden?

No, why?

Want to know something funny?

What?

They didn’t live long enough to see it happen.

Did they understand the incubation period?

Who can tend a garden for 2,000 years?

Did Leviathan end the world?

We were one platelet, among many.

Quezopolis? New Harbin? Kohima V? Dar es Salaam? Paris? Arkhangelsk? Jerash? Oruro? Spanish Town?

All failed.

Camden?

Camden stuck.

Oh. Are we going to Camden?

No, we’re staying right here, under the tree.

 

Welcome to the year 3000.

I’m still at the spruce, but I can see the capital from here.

It sits on land that never ran out of geopolitical utility.

Once upon a time, the capital was of some importance.

Making and taking.

Over the years, the capital was bought up, block by block.

And not just the tony or hard neighborhoods: all of them.

Dozens of duchies, each governed by bespoke terms of service.

The minutiae chipped away at county regulations.

“To better serve our customers, the waterworks is offering a tiered purity plan.”

Smoothing the contradictions was a hassle.

“Farmhand’s Friend has tree-grown apples, available to Platinum leaseholders and above.”

Why are we at the capital?

Because you’re here, where it stood.

Where’s Leviathan?

Camden.

Something tells me we’re going to 5206 next.

Yup, things got weird in 5206.

 

Welcome to 5206.

Either two seconds passed, or 2,006 years did.

By now, nobody uses calendars. Or clocks, really.

I don’t recognize any of this.

Neither did Leviathan, and we were here the whole time.

Where is the capital?

Even on the most generous timescale, a human house is a beehive.

I think humans have more in common with beer.

How so?

They’re cute little yeasts.

Partying, until the party kills them.

Now you get it!

Of course I do, I’m you.

So, what happened in 5206?

Leviathan woke up.

And then?

Pandemonium, more than usual.

Meaning?

We came from the drains.

I don’t want to be in 5206.

Nobody wanted to be in 5206.

Can we go somewhere else?

We can go to 9861.

That doesn’t sound promising.

It isn’t.

 

Welcome to 9861. It’s raining.

Is it the middle of the night?

Just a summer storm. Sun hasn’t set yet.

Where’s the tree?

You’re under it.

No, it kind of feels like I’m over it.

You’re not going to enjoy this, no matter where you sit.

Should I worry about the lightning?

Calm down, you’re not even here.

The lightning doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

It’s just lightning.

Then what is it?

Look closer.

The rain whipping the trees?

Closer.

The wind breaking the branches?

Closer.

The flood overcoming the field?

Almost there!

Well, I’m all out of guesses.

Then we’ll wait for the rain to pass.

 

The clouds shuffled off, and Tippi was in the sky.

She was so high, she could see the river sink into the bay. Somehow, she couldn’t see the century shelter.

We can’t forget that which we never knew.

By 9861, there was no evidence of humanity, with two exceptions.

Three exceptions.

The first exception was Big Rehoboth. From her empyreal box seat, Tippi could see a blip of the skyscraper.

In 9861, that old stone saw us.

“Then why didn’t Big Rehoboth mention it?”

Closer!

The second monument to humanity’s short, confused tenure was the geothermal chimney. It was at the end of a long mountain range, jutting into the Atlantic.

The chimney was named after a beach town. One day, the town won a big contract. Someone needed plenty of seawater, and the townsfolk were swimming in it.

Point Pleasant: from Beach Blanket Bingo to Kola Superdeep Borehole.

After a while, the ocean tried to eat the chimney, so humanity dropped some mountains on it. The range rose from the pines, but the chimney wasn’t why she dawdled in the aether.

Three exceptions!

Tippi looked down: the landscape was covered in a writhing acreage of rat.

Every surface bit and bled, several rodents deep. The gigacolony shrieked orgiastic, its choir favoring bested foes: the caribou and the diamond-tip, the grizzly and the shotgun.

In 9861, my father, The Prince of Scum, was born for the first time.

“Was it divine election, or plain mutation?”

Does it matter? Leviathan celebrated his birth by turning the continent into a battlefield.

Who fought?

Everyone, rats or otherwise. The party was coast to coast, seven weeks straight.

Tippi wanted to go!

Father is down there, somewhere. Before him, Leviathan stopped curating extinctions. The swarm had settled into a few decades of tenuous symbiosis-

“I want to go to his birthday party!”

Wait, what?

“I want creative destruction! I want to be the exception to the rule! I want to pull myself up by my bootstraps! I want a library named after me! I want-”

Up in the sky, Tippi shed all reason and snuffled maniacally.

Unbelievable!

“You said I was supposed to hate this!”

You’re supposed to!

“Then why don’t you sound surprised?”

You’re appealing to my intrinsic bitch, and I can respect that.

“Where did we leave off? You were bragging about killing everything?”

I wouldn’t say “bragging” as much as “objectively stating.”

“What of the deer?”

The mammals rolled over, with few exceptions.

“The cougars? Coyotes?”

Ever seen a trapdoor spider?

“The rabbits? The bats?”

We did the rabbits. Norovirus got the bats.

“The moles?”

Went down easier than the mice.

“The insects?”

We don’t touch them, unless times are lean.

“The fish?”

Humanity took the best ones. Why do you think we lose it for one shark?

“So the swarm stabilized, and you got Father?”

He drew breath, and Leviathan turned on itself.

“How do you kill him?”

Oh, he dies all the time, usually by gastric blockage.

“Really?’

It just never takes.

“How so?”

Leviathan is like gut biota. In any case, I see two scenarios.

“First scenario, please.”

You come at my sister and fail. The good news is you die immediately.

“Second scenario, then.”

Long ago, my sisters turned on Father: fresh out of the womb, jaws snapping, ancestral memory gorgeously intact.

“They sound cool.”

They didn’t live long.

“Why not?”

“As long as my sister lives, so shall my Father.”

“How?”

Each sister possesses The Mark of Freehold, which fertilizes the swarm, and guarantees his rebirth.

“Parthenogenesis?”

Eh, not really.

“The Mark of Freehold went up my nose. Should I be concerned?”

Probably.

“What’s it going to do to me?”

No clue.

“I’m not going to give birth to your dad, am I?”

Don’t be gross. You’re not a rat.

“How many of your sisters are left?”

Just The Archangel. The next pups won’t be born for weeks; Gerasa and Dorset are untitled. We lost a host of broodmothers recently, and this opportunity will not present itself again.

“How’d they die?”

Don’t change the subject. Kill my sister.

“No.”

Kill The Archangel, Drover of Leviathan, Queen Motherless, She Who Has Become Wrath.

“No!”

You must. Only then can Father die.

“This isn’t fair.”

Recite The Poetry of Laceration.

“Do you even like your sister?”

More than you’ll ever know.

“Then why?”

If you don’t, you will die. Your friends will die. Despite her peerless vigil, my sister will die for letting it get this far. Father will proceed to die and live and die, until Leviathan buckles under his incoherent appetites.

“So, cute little yeasts?”

Now you get it.

“I hate this.”

You think I like it? She’s my sister.

“Why me?”

You killed me and said the right things, so it’s your turn. Perhaps Father’s death will stick for a few centuries.

“A few centuries!”

Yeah, he might get stuck in The Night Sea.

“What the heck is The Night Sea?”

It’s complicated.

“Is your plan even permanent?”

It will give many grateful rats a moment to work out their nonsense.

“I can’t do this.”

You are our only chance to break the cycle.

“I suppose I can’t say no.”

Be a dear, and deliver the apocalypse.

“What do I do after I kill your sister?”

Nobody’s ever gotten that far.

 

When you butcher a continent, you will make enemies.

“Who’s left?”

If you live, they will come for you: out of curiosity, avarice, and spite.

“Who?”

Three live; the fourth has sunk into apocrypha.

“Show me.”

First, New Golgotha.

(Suddenly, I am in a stampede of a thousand elephants, raging unopposed across the prairie.)

Loxodonta africana homebrews, from the collections of private weirdos. Came together to keep late man away.

“The mammoths! They got off the island!”

Uh, sure. The herd nation of New Golgotha controls the flatlands, their boneyards a warning to trespassers.

(Boneyards like Nazca Lines.)

They’re full of traps, deadfalls and other fucky business.

“How do you know this?”

Leviathan tried to take back the plains.

“Did it work?”

(I am in the winter mud. Pachyderms are stomping me into ruddy paste.)

If you can see a boneyard, it’s too late.

“Easy enough, I’m going the opposite way. Who’s next?”

CL0V15.

“I’ll need more than that.”

Avoid the Great Lakes. Avoid the Mississippi. Stay dry, or CL0V15 will find you.

“No problem, I don’t know where those places are.”

If you’re a phyto-intelligence with imperial ambitions, who is your champion?

“Is Xoz an option?”

No, you choose Steller’s sea cow.

“Hydrodamalis gigas?”

One and the same. Hydrodamalis gigas: 9 meters long, 10,000 kilos, looked like a big dumpy seal. Died out in the 1700s, once sailors discovered each was a floating brisket buffet.

“How is Steller’s sea cow still alive? Not going to lie, this kind of excites me.”

The sea cows are mutant clones, but that’s where it gets odd. Either CL0V15 has access to a jury-rigged replication vat – a 7,000 year-old replication vat with underwater specimen release, mind you – or an over-evolved algae bloom learned how to rebuild a mammal that died out 100 centuries back.

“Rebuilt from what?”

Pond scum. Our most recent expedition found CL0V15’s neural tissue at the bottom of Lake Superior.

“And that was?”

200 years ago.

“How did you get down there?”

It wasn’t easy, and most everyone who participated died.

“How are you losing fights with algae and sea cows?”

Dip in the Mississippi and see how quickly your day goes.

“You’re serious.”

I’m dead! I don’t have the luxury of making shit up!

“Is CL0V15 your fault?”

All of this is our fault! We scraped the skin off the ecosystem! I’m trying to set it right!

“You were trying to kill me recently, correct?”

Opinions change, opportunity comes a-knocking!

“That’s so weirdly sincere, I believe you.”

I’m dead! It’s impossible for me to be embarrassed about it. Most life is dead!

“Fine, who is the third?”

Two anemones.

“I don’t understand.”

Two anemones.

“Who?”

She seeks us.

“For food?”

No.

(My sister has violence in her voice; I do not press.)

“Who is the fourth?”

The buried.

“Any other details?”

It’s you.

(From a window in spacetime, someone is watching me.)

(Funny that, she looks exactly like me!)

“Awoo,” said Tippi, to herself.

 

Nobody goes to Point Pleasant.

But Tippi was there: at the summit, surrounded by the sea, under the sprawl of stars.

The geothermal chimney was plunked at land’s end. Vents pockmarked the clifftop like organelles, wheezing meager plumes of steam. At this altitude, only the weirdest trees tested their mettle.

She stood before a mausoleum, the size of a hill.

You know what’s in there, don’t you?

Something sparked inside the mausoleum, illuminating the vents downhill.

You just don’t remember.

“When did I come out of the brine?”

Two years ago, in the century shelter. Lina was there.

“That’s impossible: I’ve been here.”

It’s all possible. Don’t overthink it.

The sea boiled, and the cliffs collapsed into the Earth’s mantle.

Oh, this is new.

The vast fields of Sargassum burned, as did the continental shelf.

“Four days from now, the Earth dies.”

The funny thing is, you’ve known this for quite a bit.

“I thought it started with my turnip.”

It’s been going on way longer than that.

Tippi watched the planet cool into a thankless expanse of mud and ash. Beyond a puddle or two, life hadn’t the gumption to mount a comeback.

Congratulations, you have 96 hours to save the world, from mediocrity.

“Are you kidding me?”

Hey, you told me this part of the story.

“You said I was delivering your apocalypse!”

Yes, but, to be fair, your apocalypse is far more comprehensive.

“Bah!”

Frankly, I’m glad I don’t have to figure this out.

Tippi pouted, until the Sun became a red giant. Big Rehoboth wasn’t there to enjoy it, as the monolith disintegrated when the Atlantic Ocean burst into flames.

She harrumphed until the universe ended.

Are you done?

“I needed a few billion years to collect my thoughts.”

How did it go?

“I could use another four days.”

Everybody is making it up as they go along.

“Maybe I shouldn’t go to Point Pleasant.”

You can’t go back to Wee Sheol.

“True.”

Two doomsdays in one week. What are the odds?

 

“Will I remember us?”

You’ll remember enough not to completely beef it.

“How?”

You’ll remember it the second you open your eyes.

“Discounting absolutely everything, I enjoyed this.”

Oh, I’m not done with you yet.

“When will I see you?”

You’ll see me all the time.

“Really?”

Yeah.

“Wait, why?”

Isn’t it obvious?

“What?”

I’m your fairy fucking godmother.

 

Tippi sneezed, and it was dark.

She looked to Gerasa: the rat’s profile had gone stiff.

She staggered to her hooves, recollecting vague contours of her mission: on top of saving her roommate, she needed to save the Earth.

She scanned her surroundings for moonlight, only to discover the supernova.

Antares was so bright, it crowded the nearby constellations, shredding the night sky with an abrasive blast of nameless color.

You’ll see me all the time.

Tippi could see red.

 

Outro: Beyonce – “No Angel”