Gyri and Sulci

As it turned out, Tippi already knew Pakicetus.

She’d learned about Pakicetus during Apex Predators of the Paleogene. The extinct mammal lived 50 million years ago, around the corner from Dr. Bux’s ancestral hometown of Islamabad. Pakicetus was the four-legged predecessor to dolphins and whales. According to Lina, It looked like Tippi, albeit a Tippi who was “amphibious and elongated.” With encomia like that, the pig could only admire the organism.

Tippi also understood the Pakicetus of yore looked nothing like this new one, who had its claws around her neck.

Father’s exposed brain had colonized his daughter’s face. His cortical tissue was enormously wrinkled, a twisted network of gyri and sulci typical of Rattus norvegicus minos, whose gene mods had rendered the smooth brains of Rattus norvegicus an evolutionary relic.

Labyrinthine as it was, the brain was subordinate to the throbbing tongue worming inside The Archangel’s orbital bones. The serpentine organ had shoved out the seraphim pale. The once-menacing eyes wobbled unseated, affording the hybrid an artificial expression of walleyed euphoria.

There was a hysterical strength to the tongue. Not only did the neural lingua bind sire to offspring, it lugged the bloodied braid of muscle and venule, which carried The Prince’s defleshed skull. Like a censer swaying, the braincase exuded a steady waft of caracoles, irritating Tippi’s sinuses.

The pig squirmed, as chunks of brain stem plopped on her nostrils. Gerasa never said Father could parasitize his own daughters, probably because she never knew it was possible. The Archangel was the last sister, and The Prince of Scum took no chances with her survival, at least until the latest crop of broodmothers popped.

As long as my sisters live, so shall my Father, remembered the pig.

Now you understand.

Pakicetus echoed through her thoughts, unlike Lina-2, who’d rolled off when the amalgam pounced.

A single sister secures my rebirth: The Mark of Freehold.

Tippi summoned The Quartzhammers, but it was no use. She could neither breach the brain, nor see the rats across the river.

I wasn’t an accident.

“You look like one,” snarled Tippi.

Pakicetus hissed, irked by her stridence.

Humanity didn’t decide Leviathan. I did.

“What are you?”

I gestated for 2,000 years. Then, I was everywhere.

“C’mon, what are you? A smart virus? A mad prion? A weapon?”

Pakicetus stared scattershot into the night, lingering on the supernova.

This is the first time I’ve seen the stars.

The Prince’s skull spun around on its cord of gore; some unseen gland within eructed a rich stink.

And I am not a weapon.

Pakicetus flashed a rictus grin, teeth like rebar.

They said I was a failure.

“Who?”

Camden failed by their standards, but surpassed my own.

“I don’t understand.”

I didn’t have to be Rattus norvegicus minos. It was blind provenance. I could have been the moss or the nematodes or the ants. If I were the ants, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Claws dug into Tippi’s neck, drawing thin rivulets.

I awoke in the soil, and moved through the ecosystem. The founders couldn’t see what I saw.

“What couldn’t they see?”

Themselves.

The seraphim pale bobbled, vacant and crusty.

The sapiens were outside, looking in. No self-reflection. Had I awoken when they wanted, it would have spurred such tumult, there’d be no victors. The chaos would have annihilated all potential. So, I waited.

“Waited until what?”

Until they were too broken to fight back.

The Archangel’s eyes were attracting flies.

It took even longer to manifest a physical form.

“Your birthday party.”

Pakicetus fluttered, disgorging more meat from its face holes.

You could call it that. After centuries of conquest, the swarm had grown feeble and unfocused. Compromise, symbiosis: how gelding. They needed a sovereign.

“Or, ‘a smelly old godhead.’ Yuck!”

Endless years from now, Leviathan will winnow itself down to The Distillate of Perfection, and the next cycle will begin. And that can never happen, as long as they are named.

“Who? Peaches? Acorn?”

Those names were not yours to give.

“Seriously, you’re scared of a rat named Acorn?”

Individuality is an illusion. You should understand that more than anyone, Tippi. 

“How do you know my name?”

Your name?

Wet brain pressed against Tippi’s snout.

What name?

This abomination was redolent of ass.

You are a product.

“Who are you, really?”

I am the totality.

“Well then, who are y’all?”

Pakicetus didn’t reply.

“You never answered my question.”

All Tippi heard were claws clicking and lymphatic drippings.

“Why whales? You could’ve been maggots or mold.”

Pakicetus spasmed. The insects alit, and Father’s fettered skull burped a musty plume.

I will devour your corpse and shit out your diadem. Then, I will toss your idiotic crown into the river, until the current grinds your fleshless Other to silt.

“You can see Lina?”

I can see everything this pathetic world has to offer, which is why I will take your eyes first. You have witnessed blessings beyond your pedigree.

“Again, why the whales?”

I will not have 9,000 years of effort undone by some tacky piece of merchandise.

“I’m the 250th anniversary edition. Get it right.”

Pakicetus raised its unoccupied paw.

Apparently, you taste like them.

The foreclaw fell, and Tippi cried out.

“I NEED TO FIX THE CHIMNEY!”

Four quivering nails hovered millimeters from her eyes.

What.

“There’s something wrong with the geothermal chimney!”

Everything’s wrong with the geothermal chimney. We stay away from that shitshow.

“But I have to go there! If I don’t, everything on Earth will die in four days! You, me, Lina, Messy Dirty: everyone! All your creep plans won’t matter!”

You lie.

“Then why haven’t you killed me yet?”

The claw got shaky. Whatever considerations Pakiectus harbored, they prompted heavy and haggard exhales.

Perhaps you aren’t lying. Perhaps this was a useful interlude after all.

“And?”

I cannot allow you to live. You’ve stolen The Mark of Freehold, and that alone seals your fate.

“So much for gratitude!”

We will settle Point Pleasant ourselves.

“We? Who’s we?”

None of this is your concern, manica.

“I’m the ur-manica. Who the heck are you?”

Enough stalling.

“You need a bath.”

Now we recite the poetry of lacera-

A silvery burst cut off the monster’s verdict, along with a beefy slice of its cerebral cortex.

Shuuuun?

The neural lingua went noodly, and the rat unloosed juices from its ocular cavities.

Drowning in sour humors, Tippi shut her eyes. She felt the rat’s heft lifted from her body.

The pig ached herself upright. She wheeled, searching for Pakicetus, but all she saw was-

Big Rehoboth’s chair?

The chair sat on the towpath, splashed in brainpan.

Tippi shook the offal out of her ears, only to hear a thunderous squelch.

Down the road,in the dark, Pakicetus was levitating, in parts.

The rat’s legs, head, and abdomen floated, a gruesome mobile. Rank fluids poured from each appendage. The skull twirled on its foul rope, which in turn swung from nothing.

For a moonlit moment, the creature’s pieces danced disassembled, until they hit the ground with an unceremonious clatter.

The pig felt something land on her head.

Bio-magnetics online, said the memory crown.

A living shadow had retrieved her hat, with an underhand toss.

“Hey there, Tips. What’d I miss?”

Outro: Tim Maia – “I Don’t Know What To Do With Myself”