They hit the ground.
Tate shattered into a million pieces. His eyes remained whole: two glittering orbs of crimson ice. Celeste tasted blood and fluid in her mouth. She felt the pain of every bone in her body reduced to powder, and expired on an Earth she’d never gotten to know. Her last stray thought? Whether her pet, the red-breasted robin, ever made it this far on its funeral fall.
…there’s no place like home…
An undisturbed quiet settled over the bodies of Celeste Walker and Mr Tate along with the dust of the barren world around them. They lay there, bloodied, broken and finished, resting in the roots of the Crawl. It was morning, though no sunlight could penetrate this deep. They slept on like fallen, wanton lovers cast down beneath their poison tree.
Above, humanity was waking up for the first time in millenia, slowly groping its way back towards reality.
Bonus Content: Tales from the Crawl
Neon Dawn
It was the end of the working day. Reed swiped into his module, closed his eyes as the atmosphere equalised and sighed in sync with the auto-pumps draining excess toxic elements. He stripped off his atmos-suit and bundled it into its grime-crusted locker, slamming shut the cracked glass casing. That’s gonna break one day, he thought, you keep banging it shut so hard. He shrugged at his dim reflection as it hung there in the dirty glass. The crack jaggedly separating him into two asymmetrical pieces.
“Not quite fitting together. Story of my life.”
He punched out of the airlock and into the main living space of the module. The shutters were up and what passed for sunset in the Crawl filtered through the treated glass. Iridescent gasoline twilight smeared itself across the dull surfaces as he shucked off his boots and slumped onto the repro-style comp-couch. Its 1962 specs eased around him, making Reed feel like a part of the past. It suited his mood. He was getting old. There were silver streaks in his dark, wavy hair and his slight paunch was becoming a noticeable gut. He could load up a work-out prog, but what would be the point?
His module was tiny, at the low end of the mid-sec stacks. He worked the pipes; clearing blockages as part of a ten-team, making sure the Crawl’s populace didn’t end up drowning when its combined effluence backfired. The mental image of that made him chuckle. “Let ‘em all drown in their own shit. All eleven billion of the cunts.”
Spending most of your working day in the semi-dark, wading through the crap and mulch of your fellow human beings (and v-borns) didn’t help in developing a warm sensibility towards them. Once you’ve seen what comes out of someone, and the kind of shit they stuff down the pipes, you gain a whole other understanding of people. Nothing is more revealing of your soul than that which you flush away, out of sight from the rest of the world.
He’d seen it all down there; aborted v-borns, butchered cyber-pets, child porno-cubes. The stuff of nightmares flowing along in a multi-lane river produced by eleven billion anuses. He’d like to shove all of it back where it came from with extreme prejudice. Reed opened and closed his fists then wiped at sweat stinging his eyes. “Dammit, I’m getting antsy,” he cleared his throat, “dial-up JLA-1362.”
There was a low-level hum from the module’s primary systems. The boot-up sequence took a bit longer these days. His home was getting old, like him. We’ll get dropped one day soon, Reed thought. I’m getting too many bad-negative thoughts and feelings. It’s not gonna take much for them to see I belong below. It might not be so bad, wired into the Flood twenty-four-seven until his body finally gave up the ghost – except for one thing. Her. He’d miss her down there.
You only got what you were given after being zeroed. All your purchases were rescinded. All ownership was cancelled. You became Crawl property in the same way as a nuke-pac or a hub-car. They’d take her away from him.
Damn, that would be hard.
Boot-up completed with a tinny chime and the air before him pixelated slightly before resolving into human form. Julia smiled at him with that big, honest smile only a program could give. “Hello, Reed.”
He’d had her for twenty-five years and while he’d aged, greyed, and fattened up, she’d stayed the same – and that wasn’t merely a comment on her fine body. She’d stayed innocent as a start-up. Her smile made him feel young again, like he’d only been assigned to the pipes first-time yesterday. Allah, he thought, I think I’m gonna cry.
Julia’s face hazed and recalibrated as she cycled through an emotional shift. “Are you okay, Reed? Do you need something from me?”
The module’s sound system began to pipe out a scratchy jazz track in the background. “Cancel,” he croaked, “no, not that. A beer would be good.”
She emo-shifted back to the smile, “Certainly, Reed. Coming right up.”
Reed watched her sexy sway to the deposit-tube where she bent over, making sure to push her pert backside out so he could get a good view. He sighed. She was a cheap program with the kind of basic settings a needy, alone young man would ask for. He should be over her by now, and have someone real in the module with him. But, he’d never found the right one to share the space with. He sighed again and turned away from the enticing motion of Julia’s 8K-rendered derriere.
“What’s wrong with me?” he whispered to himself.
I could’ve saved up a bit, at least. Given her a personality patch. Improved the settings so there was more to her than the smile, the concerned frown, and the come-to-bed eyes. “What was I thinking?”
Julia phased back into view, holding a perfectly-reproduced bottle of Budweiser in her glitching hand. I’ll have to get that fixed, he thought, taking the proffered bottle. “Julia, can I ask you something?”
“Certainly, Reed.”
“Are you happy?”
“I’m not sure I understand the question, Reed.”
“It’s simple enough. Are you happy? Here with me in this module.”
A flicker of aurora interference passed over her face, “Happy is… what I want you to feel.”
“No, it’s not. That’s your subroutines talking. I want to know if you are happy.”
The glitch became fractal; stark polygons and grid-patterns broke out across her upper body.
“I am happy if you are happy, Reed.”
“No, dammit, that’s not it. That’s not the point. I mean, you’re twenty-five years old nearly and you haven’t changed a bit in that time, not one iota. And that’s my fault, I’ve been a shit. I’ve kept you the same as you were first day I bought you. No downloads. No upgrades. Nothing. I could’ve given you a full personality map by putting in some extra time down the pipes. We could’ve been able to talk together properly, like real people.”
“We do talk, Reed.”
He looked away from her as he carried on, “No, we don’t. That’s the problem. The sound is there, but that’s all there is. It’s the same Q&A routine every time. I can almost see the words in the air before you’ve spoken them. Hello. Yes. Certainly. Here’s your beer. Here’s your nuke-pac. Here’s my ass, wanna fuck it hard?”
Reed looked back at Julia. Her eyes were blinking. Her head was jerking, and her lips were twitching spasmodically. After all these years, with only minor flickers here and there that he’d gotten fixed easy every time, he’d triggered a breakdown.
Shit.
Reed put down his beer, got up and approached her. A wail of static pierced his ears as he reached out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Come back to me. Please.”