Like A Fire at Peak Lethal

By the rigors of physics, Xoz should’ve been a pile of sodden suckers. But there he was: lurching on eight legs, slapping and cracking, dumping his whimsy for heft.

Tippi spiraled.

Did I absorb the brine? Is it just kicking in?

Xoz seethed a big blue, like a fire at peak lethal.

No, no, I am dead.

His eyes had adopted a klaxon stare.

And if I am not, I will be soon.

Tippi looked to the floor: Xoz cast a shadow off of his own bioluminescence. He overtook the cave, illuminating nooks shadowed for centuries.

So this is what humans saw.

Xoz roped around the frigidarium. With a stride parabolic, he punched the schisto.

Before they died, of course.

Moss rained down in clumps, and the mollusk climbed the walls, a drowned sun rising.

“HYPERMINI!”

Tippi froze, as a sapience would.

“I found a chess piece!”

“I was testing the rooks’ aerodynamics,” she peeped. “The tests were inconclusive.”

“Looks like this one got stuck in an alcove: 1.5 meters above you. Good distance! Anyway, I got my lungs back, and you’re my best friend. Want to break stuff?”

 

Tippi had spent hours suffering down the Fusilli, but Xoz slimed up it in seconds. Life had a single speed: non-stop.

Xoz attacked the ramp from every angle. The ride didn’t throttle Tippi’s inner ear, as his bag-o’-face maintained its give. Xoz moved like “the spider, the horse, orangutan and fog, cobbled together by a creator with zero sense of self-preservation.” The mollusk swung off the relay stalagmite, just to prove he could.

“Would you believe this is my first time on land?”

“No way!” said Tippi.

“I’ve done micrograv and water, never land. Got a learning curve.”

They thundered through The Patio of Innovation, “a potter’s field for hustle culture and total war,” and Xoz slowed. He pointed to a room.

“That’s my latrine,” said Tippi.

“Anything in there?”

“My spoor.”

“Yeah, we don’t need that.”

“Well, I never expected you to drop by.”

Suddenly, Tippi was flying by the sports locker.

“Wait!” she cried, giddy with good ideas.

The sports locker was smaller than the latrine, and more inviting. The room held exotic nylons and leathers, but 9,000 years of storage rendered most of it unsuited for organized play. But amidst the crud, there was a sparkle.

Tippi nudged over a metal dowel, alloyed meticulously.

“Happy brineday!” she hooted. “I massage my back with this sometimes. I know you don’t have a spine, but-”

“It is a bat,” said Xoz.

“I was going to give you another pebble, but it’s been a day.”

Xoz flipped his new bat between his tentacles.

“All these years, I assumed you were going on about rebar. There is true weight to this gift. It is a kindness for the ages. Thank you, Tippi.”

The mollusk put his talents into the bat, and an aluminum arc ripped across the sports locker. The room filled with particulates, as meek plastics crumpled on a molecular level. Eight arms emerged from the trash mist, each capable of its own death roll, whipping the bat at a horrendous velocity.

“Tips, meet the bat. The bat will be joining us.”

“I’ve already met it!” insisted Tippi.

Xoz slung the bat over his crag, and extended a tentacle.

“That’s two presents for me. Let’s get yours.”

 

As she walked back to Antique Ops, Tippi understood the appeal of scurrying under a half-ton octopus.

Xoz was the only megafauna around, so he could “advertise like Arctodus.” Walking under him was like having a private sky, albeit one that was exploding. Mad colors permeated his tentacles, surrounding her with eight pillars of flame, orange and onyx. Capering under her mollusk, Tippi saw petroglyphs by the yard, but she didn’t have time for minutiae. Somewhere upstairs, she had a present.

The door to Antique Ops was half open, and farting with friction.

“Your suffering ends now” declared Xoz.

He spun the bat with three tentacles and hopped forward. The quartz folded like a cricket cuticle.

“What about the climate controls?” asked Tippi.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Xoz.

The door jamb sucked and wheezed.

The friends entered the archive, and Tippi stopped.

“Ooh!”

She’d only investigated the low cubbies; now she could see the high shelves, teetering into the murk.

“Would you like to stay here, or come up?” said Xoz.

“Up, please?”

With a neon scoop, Tippi was airborne, and darkness swallowed the floor below.

Xoz scaled the graven archive, caterwauling:

“Ukiyo-e, a Wurlitzer organ, a chunk of the Eddie Hazel Expressway, fossilized trilobites, recipes for trilobites-”

Xoz stopped at a metal can.

“What is it?” said Tippi, somewhat drooping.

“This is the trigger to a 5,000-ton diamond-tip.”

“A what?”

“A 5K DT!” explained Xoz. “Holy hell, it’s live!”

“Is it my present?” said Tippi, dangling.

“What? No! A DT is a carbon bomb, first sold as a civilian-friendly solution: no radiation, no toxins, just luxury that goes through you, and the next town over. If you survive, you move, because your property eats your lungs and feet. Why do you think we live underground?”

“What was considered civilian unfriendly?”

“Not a lot! And bummer: the DT’s out too far, parked around Io. Still, I’m taking it, because, like the dandy and his snuffbox, I appreciate craft.”

Xoz shoved the can into his body, securing it within a malleable pocket of flesh. The friends continued their spelunking, until Xoz noticed a new box.

“Tippi: Everyone’s Favorite Pig,” he read. “250th anniversary edition, with accessories.”

“Tippi is my name too!”

Xoz dripped down to the floor. He opened the box, and presented her with a small crown.

“Happy brineday, Tips.”

The metal crown was tined, and lined with lustrous jewels. This was a real diadem, unlike the one in her neocortex.

“I’d give you the sash too, but the fabric looks finicky.”

“Give it!”

Xoz tossed a white bio-fiber sash over her head, and it disintegrated into a fine mist.

“Oh,” said Tippi, dusted.

Recovering the moment, Xoz plopped the crown on her pate.

Bio-magnetics online, said an inert someone inside the crown. Tippi XXL is active. Seek user for imprinting and registration.

Huh? thought Tippi.

Seek user for imprinting and registration.

Every human on Earth is dead. Please advise.

Seek your user for imp-

Please advise!

Tippi XXL is unresponsive. Connecting to Ottar. Searching for O-Tech rep, please hold for the Rahway branch.

With the Rahway branch defunct, the dull muttering sunk into nothing. Fortunately, someone else filled the silence.

“Tippi?” said Lina.

The n’arbiter was inside her new hat.

 

Moonlight greeted them at the droneport. With the solar shade open .0002%, the night soaked in, and a breeze had blown Tippi’s bed to pieces.

Xoz considered her lodgings.

“Nice place. What’s in the closet?”

“We’re not going in there,” said Lina.

Xoz peered outside.

“Dark world. No fake light.”

“How are you walking right now?” said Tippi.

Xoz spun in the moonlight, skin sizzling.

“It’s my nanocarbon suit,” he said. “Jay Square standard: very expensive, very louche.”

Tippi joined him, pirouetting shaky, her crown sucking up moonbeam and spitting out rainbows. Lina allowed them a few rotations before firing off the bad news.

“This afternoon, while we were watching the cherry blossoms, my geothermals were redirected to an unknown system. According to my logs, a manual override was initiated at a geothermal chimney in our region. As a result of the power disruption, I’ve lost diadem contact with Tippi, and accidentally served her hallucinogenic garbage.”

“I lived the hallucinogenic garbage,” said Tippi. “What are geothermals?”

“Energy drawn from the planet. If our century shelter loses geothermals, my pneumatics will rapidly decelerate and collapse. If power is not resumed in seven days, I will disappear forever, locked in a million-ton hard box under the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Oh no!”

“The best-case scenario is you both live your lifespans: able to talk, but rationing out cave crickets.”

“This is the worst brineday ever!” sobbed Tippi.

“I’ve known all of this for hours,” said Xoz.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you’ve been functional had I did?”

“No!”

“Please!” interrupted Lina. “Only strictly salient observations moving forward. Tippi, I’ve inserted a clone of myself into your memory crown. I’m free-riding off of your kinetics, so I can’t give Xoz a private channel. We must share a common conversation space.”

“Why?” said Tippi.

“Yeah!” said Xoz. “Why?”

“Two reasons. First off, I can’t use Wee Sheol’s comms. I’m triaging my reserves, shoving near everything into the slowest protocol.”

“The slowest protocol?” said Tippi.

“2,000 years back, I started a slow protocol. I quieted most of the life support after five millennia. I’ve been here so long, the brined organics are turning.”

“My crystal turnip!”

“Yes, that turnip was a symptom of the disruption. I’m sorry, Tippi. I hate to think you could’ve ended up like Xoz, inner-voyaging in an emergency.”

“Don’t tell me how to have fun,” said the mollusk, prancing.

This was a day of revelation, so Tippi lobbed out a question Lina generally dodged.

“Was anyone else in the brine with us?”

“A goat,” admitted Lina. “He’s feral, so we’re not bringing him out.”

“Now this is news!” said Xoz. “How feral are we talking?”

“I want to meet the goat,” said Tippi.

“Yes, let us deploy the goat.”

“We’re not getting the goat,” said Lina.

“Goat,” said Tippi.

“Why’s the goat in there?” pressed Xoz.

“It’s a clone, like Tippi, for zoological study. Capra hircus.”

“Can we give the goat a name?” said Tippi.

“The goat already has a name,” said Lina. “It’s Barvus.”

Xoz ceased his strut.

“Are you saying there’s a Barvus somewhere in your guts? What are we waiting for?”

Barvus was the de facto spokesgoat for the nascent field of brine research. Barvus predated the first Tippi by several decades, and served as BarvCo’s mascot until The Centennial BarvCon: 1,000 century-aged Barvi were debrined simultaneously before a roaring crowd in State College, Pennsylvania. That day, science recorded the first 1,000 cases of deep-brine psychosis.

Lina reeled it in.

“Two years ago I debrined you both as you were at risk of preservation failure. I knew your fascial stocking and your memory crown were stored in Antique Ops. Both of your devices function, but they’re so ancient, I had no way of knowing so until now. This was archaic tech in 3200, which brings me to our next point: we’re going outside.”

“What!” said Tippi.

“We’re going five days south. Tomorrow we leave for the river, and follow it for three days. Then, we spend two days through the pines, and another two days down the shore, where we will reset the manual override. Upon our return, Lina Prime will reabsorb me, along with our travelogue.”

“So if Lina is Lina Prime,” said Tippi. “Who are you?”

“Lina-2, naturally.”

“Lina-2, how long will we be gone?”

“Assuming all’s optimal, five days there, five days back. Xoz will carry our supplies, and we can forage as necessary. Think of it as a long picnic.”

“What’s a picnic?”

“Lina-2’s leaving out the best part,” said Xoz. “We’re going to see a human.”

“I never said that.”

“Then who activated the manual override?” said Xoz, hanging from the schisto.

“The geothermal chimney was built before me,” said Lina-2. “It probably needs maintenance.”

“Who’s tinkered with it since? Anyway, I’ve prepared code names. When we meet the human, I would like you to address me as Doctor Dirt.”

“Doctor Dirt,” memorized Tippi. “But why?”

“Dirt is stable, and won’t betray you like the current. I could call myself ‘Lord Dirt,’ but ‘Doctor Dirt’ implies I am learned, and have perhaps visited a library.”

“Sensible. I would like the human to call me Tippi.”

“That’s unwise.”

“How come?”

“The human will try to eat us, so never reveal your true name. Let’s call you Ethel Apple.”

“I like apples. Does Lina-2 get a pseudonym?”

“If anybody asks, Lina-2 is Flintlock Barbafloss, Duke of Buttzville-”

But before the Duke of Butzville could protest, Xoz was across the droneport, shoving an eye in the moon hole.

“Hey!” said Tippi. “You’re hogging it!”

“The night sky looks weird,” said Xoz. “Lina-2, hop in my optics. You need to see this.”

“I want to see!” fretted Tippi.

“It’s incredible,” said Lina-2. “It’s the supernova of Antares: Alpha Scorpii, a distant star many times larger than the Sun. On tonight, of all nights!”

Tippi was addled: yesterday, there was one Sun, and one Lina.

“The light of Antares has traveled 550 light years to be with us,” said Lina-2. “This particular doom happened a long time ago, and Earth is well out of its way. If I subscribed to a higher power, this would reinforce my theology, several times over, but I don’t, so let us appreciate our fortune.”

“The past 10 minutes have been more exciting than the past year!” cried Tippi. “I want to see!”

“It’s red,” said Xoz. “You don’t do reds.”

“Then make it blue!”

Xoz went aquamarine, imitating the finer points of a long-dead star. He watched the supernova, and The Cute Pals watched it on him.

 

Outro: Ken Nordine – “Crimson”