Authors: Andy Futuro

Cloud Country (19 page)

Saru tried to send the light to nice places, to the pretty nebula over there, to that bright pattern of stars, some to the sun, and some to the few beautiful places she knew of in Philadelphia so Ria could be home. And then Saru sat alone, dangling her feet over the edge of the cliff, feeling them click into a gentle sync with the world below, and she found herself hating it. She wanted to cry again, but didn’t let herself, because she felt she would be crying more for herself than for Ria, and so she screamed, stood and arms-back shrieked at the stupid world. It felt like maybe the world heard her, and the shriek echoed through the skies, and scared the shit out of everyone everywhere. Or maybe it was her imagination.

There was a crack behind her, like snapped ice. She turned and saw that the fake sky was crumbling, the hills and the cages, the poor ragged bastard, the rats, the sterile gardens, the empty McMansion, all melting and fading into swirls of light, melding back into the structure of the scintillant. The glowing destruction raced towards her—this is it!—and then stopped at the cliff. Saru watched as the playground Ria had built broke apart with her pattern, no longer slaved to her will, and the light ran free.

Nothing came to fill the fake sky or fake ground. It was just space, vacuum, and her cliff island floating far from the body of the scintillant. Saru became conscious of her breath, and the squirting of her blood through veins, the creak of muscle and bones, and even the low, power-plant sizzle of her brain. How much air did she have out here? Was it just as much as was held in the force field around this piece of dirt? Or did the scintillant know she was there? Was it splitting atoms, pumping in enough oxygen for her to last indefinitely? Did it know what else she needed? A bathroom? Food? She shivered.

The dried corpses from the zoo laughed in her mind—one of us! One of us! It’s just what you deserve, you murderer! Hey, Ria killed you; I avenged you, kind of. I saved the world, maybe, or increased the chance it would be saved. I got rid of a pretty big variable, dontcha think? But even she wasn’t convinced of that, couldn’t bring herself to think of it without the tears making another attack on her eyes, without the sickness in her stomach and stress gush across her body accusing her of doing wrong. Maybe it was fair, this punishment, being stranded out here to starve or freeze or suffocate, watching the Earth, wondering if the prize was worth the price—probably not. It was biblical, the kind of headache masochism the old McChristian God loved to fling around. Could she paddle back? Saru knelt by the edge, trying not to look down, and flopped her hand around, accomplishing nothing. She laughed a crazy laugh, and flopped onto the ground, and spread out, and rolled around, and just laughed and laughed, imagining what she must look like—why would anyone kill these guys? They’re comedic gold! And somewhere inside the laughter, Saru was crying again.

There was a growl, rattling the ground like space had hit turbulence. Saru sat up. A dog was sitting in front of her on its butt, right out in the middle of empty nothing. Saru could tell without knowing how that this was Ria’s dog, Ria’s cephereal. In her periphery she saw strands of light fluttering up and down and winding their way to the dog. Luminescent antlers sprouted from its skull, pulsing and branching and bonding with the light of the scintillant.

A ghost appeared in front of the dog, a hollow outline of a person, light pouring in to give color and solidity. A face emerged, serene and beautiful—Ria. The cephereal was trying to bring Ria back. But not Ria—another corrupted copy of her, missing pieces, more pieces than ever because Saru herself had broken them apart and flung them away. And what would this new Ria think of Saru? Would she remember being murdered yet again? It wasn’t likely to improve her attitude towards humans. Saru yelled and grabbed at the rocks on the ground, and hurled them at the dog—shoo!, shoo!—and they fell pathetically short. She tried to use her mind, her thoughts to attack the dog, but even the attempt at glimpsing its pattern made Saru scream in agony, and it felt like her brain was frying in her skull.

Another growl, an earthquake, knocking Saru to her knees, this one coming from behind her. It was her dog, her cephereal, walking through midair, coming towards her. Saru’s dog leapt at her, and she braced herself, and the dog’s body traveled through her. It was not hair, not meat, not force, not substance, but light, and hot, and cold, and electricity, the feel of a struggle in her brain to interpret a conundrum. A vision of molecules sliding past each other, ships in a heavy fog, passengers waving to the strangers on the other deck. Saru spun drunkenly, watching her dog, still feeling like she’d discovered a new sense, like replacing all her blood with mouthwash, or falling asleep in the beam of a cloud shear. Her dog continued its charge, and when it struck Ria’s ghostly blueprint it was solid. Her dog’s claws rent holes in the ghostly body, jaws snapping on the neck, ripping it to shreds, so the light spattered like blood. The tentacles of light withdrew from Ria’s dog. It growled its anger and the two dogs fought.

Saru watched the cephereals attack one another, clawing and biting, shrinking and growing, open wounds of light that bled pretty into space, growls rocking her island like a raft in a storm. More dogs appeared, spectators. One to her left, sitting in empty space, and then one on her right, and then more, and then many, so they formed a circle of magical dogs watching the gladiatorial combat of their friends. Saru wanted to root for her dog, but she didn’t know how, and so she stayed quiet, and simply tried to keep her calm, slipping into that space between thoughts, tightening and controlling herself, so if she had to take on an enemy cephereal she could at least go out fighting.

The two dogs backed away, and circled one another, each battered and leaking. They charged, and the force of their collision nearly flung Saru into the abyss. Her dog had its jaws on the other’s throat. It held, the light pouring out of the neck in rivers, and then Ria’s dog lay still. Its eyes fell on Saru as it bled away, coincidence or accusation, and then it was gone. Her own dog lapped at the blood, and licked its wounds, and they closed.

The spectator dogs disintegrated into blurs of light. They trickled to Saru’s dog, and were absorbed. Her dog grew and grew, larger than the Earth, larger than the scintillant, so large it filled Saru’s vision like it had within the mirthul. Antlers sprouted from her dog’s skull, the veins of light reaching up and out, spreading like a web across the universe, connecting with all the threads of light from all the stars, neurons in a single mind. Saru stared into its eyes, two black holes, and saw within another Earth, where the gray rags of smog were stripped away, blue and green, and gold, ships and stations spreading out across the solar system, planets fertile with technology, cities rising on their surfaces, a people strong and fit to live and treat as equals with the other citizens of this universe. It was one vision among many dark and vile futures. But it was there. It was possible. It could be done.

The dog shrank and padded to Saru’s side. Golden light crept across her skin, moving easily through the lattice of her thoughts, up her arm and down her body, a suit of golden armor. Saru swayed, feeling the sway of the light around her, running the light through her hands like fabric. Her motion guided her intent, hands wrapping the light into a circle. She knelt and placed the circle around her dog’s neck, and her dog sat still and allowed it. The light circle dimmed and took on the aspect conjured by her mind’s eye: a purple collar with heavy spikes. As the collar became solid, the dog too felt more solid—less light and more dog, though still not quite corporeal. The light across her body dimmed, and Saru was flesh again.

“You need a name,” Saru said to the dog, rubbing its fur. “How about…Barks. Mr. Barks. It’s funny because you don’t bark…and you’re an alien…and you don’t care one way or another because you don’t even know what I’m saying, you shit.”

Mr. Barks simply stared.

“Yeah, I thought so.”

Saru sat carefully on the edge of her dirt island, rubbing Mr. Bark’s fur. Idly, she played with the ring on her finger, the playing a way to distract herself from the useless thoughts, to bring her back to the state of focus, the deliberate mind. She was starting to get the hang of this shit. A shimmer appeared next to her, a few stray snatches of light. Saru gave them more of her concentration, until the shimmers clashed into defining lines and drew her own ghostly figure. Features filled in the gaps, a pretty face, a caji suit (though it could have been a tuxedo or a cowboy outfit) some fingers and toes and the other familiar details. John stood next to her, intact, though still with a ghostly glow. The glow Saru added on purpose, so her brain didn’t confuse John’s image with reality. It was important, she was learning, to make rules, to organize her thoughts so they didn’t get in the way of each other.

John looked around, curious.

“Hey,” Saru said. “You took your sweet time getting here.”

“I did not know I could come here,” John said. He walked around, testing his ghostly body, scratching his bare feet against the dirt and stretching.

“I wasn’t sure it would work either,” Saru said. “Impressed?”

“Immensely. How did you do this?”

“I was just thinking about you, and I wanted you here. And I realized that I should be able to do something about it. I mean, Ria built a whole world for herself. And I have as much of a margin as she did at this point…”

Saru trailed off, wanting to avoid those memories, accusations scratching at the back of her mind. John dimmed and flickered like a screen losing reception. Saru grit her teeth and focused.

“Anyway,” she said. “I saw everything that Ria did, so I knew it could be done. I started willing you to be here, really focusing on you, and what I wanted. I felt something, like being back in the mirthul. It was like the Blue God was picking up on what I wanted and making it happen. And here you are. I don’t think you can touch anything though. I think you’re just a projection, just a way for me to talk to you without having to go back into the mirthul.”

“Fascinating,” John said.

“It’s convenient. And this is Mr. Barks. You saw him before. He’s my cephereal. Aren’t you buddy?”

Saru scratched behind Mr. Bark’s ears. She wanted him to behave more like the dogs on the feeds, to lick her hand and chase his tail, but the fact that he wasn’t trying to rip apart the fabric of her existence was a good start.

“It’s funny,” Saru said to John. “I feel strange with you here. Like a part of me is busy, like I’m using up a lot of brainpower. You wanna see if you can get ahold of ElilE and maybe get him to come pick us up?”

John nodded. He closed his eyes in concentration. After a few moments his eyes opened.

“He is coming,” John said.

“That’s a relief. I didn’t have a backup plan.”

Saru patted the dirt next to her and John sat. She willed herself a bottle of champagne, just to see if she could. A bottle appeared in her hand, the same bottle she’d opened in the plane a thousand years ago, memory come to life. She corked the bottle and tipped it over, pouring a drink out for Ria. She imagined the drops floating down to Earth, flecking pedestrians in Philadelphia, looking up, wondering who was spitting on them. The shriek of rats echoed in her memory. Saru shivered and tried to drag Mr. Barks closer, but her arm rippled through his body, leaving her cold. And she realized that even with John, and Mr. Barks, and the Earth for company, she was alone.

###

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Andy Futuro is a time traveler from the future. He lives in a tent and is often lost. His favorite food is ramen.

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