Heather Farthing's Blog - Posts Tagged "post-apocalyptic"

10,589 or thereabouts. Hopefully this'll be the first full-length story I finish and distribute in print!

All characters are storylines are (c) Heather Farthing and may not be reproduced or redistributed in part or in whole. All rights reserved. (C) 2016

Soundtrack: Bring Me to Life, Male Version--Dan Vasc
Red Right Hand--Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Chapter one

I am a merchant, coming home after a long shift at work, to find my mate has surprised me by bringing our children over with dinner. They are beginning to molt, and the males have my coloring, the females already so tall and strong.

“Here,” I say, holding out a chunk of ice from the ground. “It’ll taste like ash, but it’s all we have right now.” My younger sister squirms and turns her nose up before giving the ice a lick, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

The herds are restless. Something bothers them, but I don’t know what. The big male, the bull, bellows and stamps his feet, and then charges without warning. He has never charged at me before. The first massive, flat foot plants on my spine, and then there is nothing.

“What’s that?” I ask my mother, looking skyward. A streak of orange pierces the sky.

“It’s just a flying star,” she replies, a touch of excitement in her voice. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I shift my feet, unsure. Something about it is wrong, it’s too big, too close…

I stand in front of the incubator, watching for tiny eggteeth and the sound of peeping from inside the shells. Not today, not yet, maybe tomorrow. A bright light from the window draws my attention. What could that be? It’s too early for dawn.

Light.

Bright light.

Red light.

Seeping in to my dreams.

My eyes slide open, not for the first time. I see red light. I see shadows. Nothing ever moved before, but now they do. The shadows. They pound against the glass. Why? Let me sleep.

I close my eyes again, but something has changed. The umbilical attached to my belly disengages, retracting into the top, and now I am alone and my chest hurts.
I am in the trees at the edge of the beach, watching a bright light out at sea. As I ponder what it could be, I realize the ocean is receding, fast. Marine reptiles are beached in the water’s haste, a fortune in fish and edible kelp exposed to the cloudy skies. My heart sinks, because I know as quickly as the tide left, it will come back even quicker.

I rumble to the rest of the House and neighbors, sending out a deep, resonating word into the trees from my chest: run.

I bring up the rear, watching over the House’s young ones, counting them over and over again, leaping from branch to branch. Beneath me, the water begins to rise, and now the animals are running, a thunder of feet, predator and prey side by side.

My grandson, barely old enough to shed his juvenile down, slips from his mother’s back, plummeting to the current below. I make a dive for him, and I miss, looking skyward as he hangs from his mother’s tail.

I plunge feet-first into the salty, brown water, and can’t fight against the raging current. I feel myself slipping, battered by massive legs and broken trees. My lungs burn burn as water feels them.

I can still feel the water in my lungs.

Instinctively, I kick hard at the shell, butting it with my nose, scrabbling at it with claw and tooth. This substance is harder than eggshell, meant to drain and then open at the sides instead of being picked apart by tiny claws and an egg tooth.

There are figures on the other side of the synthetic shell, three. Two pound against the shell, sending shock waves through the thick, embryonic fluid and my eardrums. The third stands at the side, a series of neural wiring plugged into something mounted onto their wrist. One of the figures stands back, looking down at a similar object on theirs. The third leaps to the top of the giant, synthetic eggs.

My chest hurts and my limbs feel heavy.

I remember breathing. I remember cool air in the lungs, in and out, and I remember inhaling water, and I remember the times I drowned.

Please, I beg silently, as the big shadow assaults the top of the egg, and then scrambles down again. Please, I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die again.

When the big shadow comes back, it carries something long and and slender, raising it over its head, sending the other two shadows scattering. The object is held high, and I realize what is going to happen just in time to bury my head and face under my arms and tail, nose to my knees.

The glass shatters like starlight, sending me and the blue embryonic fluid cascading, cold and sticky, onto the floor, landing in a patch of glass.

Everything hurts. The circle of ten attachments when my umbilical attached, the rent skin that slid across glass, still poking into my hip, my chest.

Something’s wrong. I can’t get air in or out. Blue spills out of my mouth and nose, my belly muscles clamped and cramped. I burn inside.

“He’s not breathing,” a female voice whimpers, and then there is another at my side, banded fingers holding open my mouth, a warm, fanned tail wrapped around my back, stroking the sopping, sticky down.

“Get it all out,” she whispers. “Pi, get my bag!”
The bigger shadow pulls me away from the female, angling me face down. The position seems to work, and there is more blue, and a deep, wheezing sound, cold inside my lungs.

“Good, good,” the tall figure, a male, mutters approvingly, thumping my back. “You’re strong. You can make it.”

The third shadow brings a white leather bag, which the female with the banded fingers digs through, pulling out a tapered tube she fits over my snout while the third straps it to the back of my head. Blue comes out in torrents, splattering onto the floor, and then air is forced down my lungs, and again, and again, and repeat, until I’m drawing ragged, shaky breaths on my own.

“See there?” the big one smiles, clicking his teeth. “You’re a tough guy.”

“How’s he doing?” asks the second male.

“Blood oxygen is rising,” the female replies, sounding relieved. “Blood sugar’s low, iron’s low…everything’s low.”

My eyes focus past the breather, onto the blue-smeared floor. I see hands, fingers. They move when I move my fingers. They flex and bend and leave clawmarks in the blue.

The coloring is…strange.

All newborns are covered in black and gray and white speckled down, like dark ash. It is the same for one who cracked shell with tooth and claws, and one born from glass and blue. Adult coloring comes later, when the juvenile down is shed, replaced by fine filament and beautiful display. Newborns have no spots or stripes or decorative coloration…but I do.

I have stripes. They’re blue and run along my fingers and hands in oblong shapes, meeting at a series of blue squares at my wrist, and then longer blue along my arms, like…bone. I look like a skeleton laid over shadow.

“You can admire yourself later, Runt,” the big one says, unbuckling the breather from the back of my head.

The female and the second male each take an arm, rising to their feet.

“No, no,” says the big male in an authoritative tone. “He’s big and strong. Let him do it on his own.”

“Brute,” sighs the female.

“Trust me,” the big male replies. “Give him a chance.”

Three sets of feet back away from me, the female leaning over, hands on her knees. The big male strides to the end of the room, stepping on a floor button, causing a pillar to rise from the spot, supporting a vessel.

Only one? But hatchings are done in groups, just like in nature.

A terrible, stabbing pain pierces my belly, causing me to double over and whimper.

“Brute!” growls the female.

“As soon as he gets his slurry, he’ll be fine,” the big male, red and black, answers causually.

“But the vessels are—” starts the second male, cut off by a growl from the red male.

I want that vessel more than anything.

“There’s glass,” snarls the female.

“You’re going to patch him up anyway. You may as well do it all at once.”

I need to get my legs under me. I need to get my torso up. I remember how to do this. Knees, elbows, glass poking into my skin like hot embers raining from the sky.

I remember crawling under branches, under furniture, playing games as a child, chasing prey through the woods, hiding from larger predators. I remember the feel of the motion, first one arm, then one leg, the glass in my palms and knees, tail dragging sluggishly through the blue.

“See? You’re a survivor, aren’t you, Runt?” the red male asks kindly. The female gives a disapproving scoff.

Food, hunger gnawing at my belly. I remember the fullness of a good meal, dinners spent with the House, the joy of blood, still warm, spilling into the mouth while something dies. I remember weeks of hunger, cold biting at the limbs, cramps in the belly, getting harder to get out of the nest every waking cycle.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, painful, muscle-aching drag by drag, the vessel of slurry gets closer and closer. I remember how good it feels for an empty stomach to get filled, for the warmth inside, and it keeps me moving.

When I am next to the pole, I am on my knees before the red male. His feet, the end of his tail, and left arm are blackened, like he waded through the thick ash looking for survivors. His body is red with blackened stripes and spotting, his muzzle black with iridescent red striping like clawmarks, the coloring of a leader.
I reach up for the vessel, but it’s too far, and look up at the commander. His eyes are a shocking, incongruous blue, with thin, slitted pupils. His mane of black, irredescent display feathers hangs beneath his shoulders, long and wild.

Red. Red like blood, blood spilled after a shower of stones, flesh split by flying glass, burned by cinders raining from the sky.

Red like the Imperial House, Dracomimus. Of course they would pay homage to the imperial bloodlines in the commanders. Strange, a male commander. Not unheard of, but unusual.

“You want this?” he asks, taking the vessel from the stand. I nod, tossing my head, reaching my hands out like a child, grasping at the air with my fingers. He holds it above my head, way out of my reach.

“Show me what you’re willing to do to get it,” he orders in a stern voice. “Stand up.”

“Brute, stop being a jerk and just give it to him,” sighs the other male.

“He can do it,” Brute retorts. “Can’t you?”

I nod, bobbing my head and clicking my teeth, and notice the railing around the stand, the places for other vessels to be. On my knees, I can’t reach them, but if I can get my feet under me properly…

The world spins, like tossed around in a tsunami. I waver, catching myself on a cold, sticky hand, edging my feet beneath me. I remember standing, walking, I remember the placement of the legs and the feel of the muscles. One, two, three…

Too fast! Way too fast! The world spins and I’m grabbing the stand for balance, holding it tight and shivering, coughing specks of blue and retching.

“See?” Brute asks smugly, holding out the vessel.

Delighted, I pull open the lid and find nothing inside.
Hunger grips my belly, endless shadowy days and dark nights of falling behind panicked herds, scavenging on feral animals slowly starving to death.

I look up again at Brute, his mane hanging into his eyes, around his snout.

“The feeders aren’t working, but I believe Atrissa brought something for you,” he admits kindly.

“You’re cruel,” the female growls, pulling another vessel out of her bag.

“He’s learning his own strength, aren’t you?” he asks, turning from her to me.

Cold, sticky, shivering, and starving, I glare at him, but imagine still being on the floor, in the glass and the blue. My muscles protest, shaking, painful, but I am standing.

“Here you go,” the female offers, handing me a vessel of pureed meat and blood, baby’s first meal, easy to digest and gentle on a stomach that’s never digested anything.
I drink deeply, choking on blue and slurry, slurping. She grabs the vessel away from me, me grabbing for it, stumbling when I lean away from the stand.

“Not so fast,” she chides. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

She holds the vessel for me, controlling how fast it spills by the angle of the tilt. She has the tawny coloring of a female, browns and creams that make them invisible in the trees. Alternating tan and white stripes band her fingers and her plain, unadorned tail, the fan in a pleasing, symmetrical pattern. She is lovely.

When the vessel is empty, I grab at her bag, looking for more.

“That’s it, love,” she replies, pulling away. “You’ll get more when I check you in at Medical.”

“Is he that bad?” asks the second male.

“He’s all scraped up and wheezing,” she explains. “I want him under observation, too.”

“Can you fix that incubator?” the commander asks, looking past me.

“If I can get the materials, maybe,” the second male answers. “Circuits are blown, but the connections are still good. It might not be what it was.”

“It can’t be helped,” the commander purrs, turning to me. “The showers.”

The female holds out her hand. She has delicate fingers, for stitching wounds and finding unseen injuries and ailments. They’re probably very touch- and heat-sensitive, too.

“No, no,” Brute says again, intercepting her. “You can do it yourself, can’t you?”

I click my teeth in affirmation, taking one painful, hesitating step, and then another, before letting go of the stand and wavering, nearly falling. I remember walking, I remember paths through the trees, the backs of big herbivores, a big carnivore. My tail knows where to go for balance, but I miss having primaries on my forearms.

“See?” Brute asks gently. “He doesn’t need your coddling. He’s strong.”

The female growls softly.

Past the feeding stations, into the next room. Like the hatchery, it’s a vast place, walls lined in rows, with spouts hanging near the top. I know what to do, find one, stand under it, step on the button. The first three don’t work.

That’s strange. There wasn’t food ready for me, and now the water wasn’t working. That shouldn’t happen.

On the fourth shower, the blast of cold water hits me like an avalanche, my breath catching in my throat, cold lungs hacking blue and snow. It shouldn’t be cold, not this time of year. The seasons are all out of whack, since…

The female grabs my arm, pulling me out of my memories. I am in a dimly lit room full of showers, standing under cold water.

“The heaters are out again?” Brute hisses, turning towards the second male, yellow-green with a blue snout covered in yellow, branching striping, like a slice of brain tissue, the mark of a technician.

He holds up his arm, where a crustacean shell runs from wrist to elbow, a slit in the outer side letting the yellow primaries free.

“Yes,” he whines. “The whole sector. My clan is already solving it.”

“Sorry, Runt,” the red commander sighs apologetically. “It’s the best we can do for now.

Sweet-smelling soap spills from the guttering spout, dissolving the blue, unsticking my down. I scrub it in quickly, but thoroughly, finding white under the blue, white like bone.

When I’m not sticky anymore, I step away from the shower and the water slows and stops. I shiver in the emptiness, sopping down sticking to my body, tail wrapped around me for warmth and modesty.

“Over here,” the technician calls from deeper into the room.

I take slow steps toward him, and find him pulling a plain blue set of clothing out of the wall, and a blue towel folded nearby. The female wraps it around me, and my heart skips a beat at her clean, sweet smell, like tiny flowers blooming in the night.

She holds me close, wrapping the towel tight and holding me close, wrapped in her arms and tail, her hands rubbing my shoulders to help soak up the water. Her body is warm and she smells good.

When I am warmer and reasonably dry, she helps me into my clothes while the two males discuss power outages and failures. The Nest is on a geothermal vein, which should make such things impossible, but they’re talking like this sort of thing happens regularly.

The commander looks up at me, looking me over from head to toe. All three of them have adult plumage and markings. That shouldn’t happen, either, unless I’m the last of a later hatching. Did everyone else already pass through before, with the older hatchings waiting on me?

“Are you ready to meet the team?” the red male asks.
Clicking my teeth and tossing my head, I nod.

Chapter two

All characters are storylines are (c) Heather Farthing and may not be reproduced or redistributed in part or in whole. All rights reserved. (C) 2016

<-Chapter one

Soundtrack:

Fibonacci Sequence--Dr. Steel
The Day the World Died--Miracle of Sound

Chapter two

Everything burns, if you get it hot enough. Trees, flesh, bone, even stone.

The fear of fire is an old one, ancient memories of trees disintegrating with people still in them, homes lost, prey gone, the smell of singed feathers and blackened flesh.

The things we need, the things we care about, burn faster than we can escape.

The horror reached out of the sky in the night, when the blaze was brightest. It touched the ocean and the ocean evaporated, along with it any animals that weren’t far enough away to only be cooked alive.

The water rolled out, leaving the seabeds dry and the marine life exposed, gasping for air and groaning under their own weight. When the water was finished rolling out, it rolled back, and took with it coastlines and places farther inland.

That wasn’t the worst of it.

Where the horror touched the water, the heat of its grasping hand ignited the atmosphere and blackened the skies. Cities built on the ground and in the trees and on the water evaporated, like the ocean. Poison rained down on the places not lucky enough to be settled close enough to be wiped out in a single, fiery breeze. The sky hid in the only place it could, and the land got colder.

And then there were the in-between places, the places close enough to burn but not close enough to vaporize in an instant. Thousands were awake when the hand of the horror from the sky touched them, thousands were woken by the sounds of avians and pteros and all manner of terrestrial things fled from the nameless monster that scalded the skin and the lungs.

And hundreds were deep in a REM cycle at midnight.
Everything burns.

I wake screaming before I even know why, and brain confused and unable to tell the features of my sequester. The walls are fire. The décor is fire. The furniture is fire.

I am fire.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know…some kind of seizure?”

“We haven’t dealt with any seizures.”

“Lucky for him, he’s the first. Get him some sedative before he tears something. Oral, with numbing agent.”

The fire is in my mouth and in my lungs. It burns away flesh and nerves and I can’t feel pain anymore. My flesh is melting away, skin and feathers peeling away from scorched bone, and I am nothing more than a skeleton lying in a field of ash.

***

I can still smell smoke.

My throat itches, and has a peculiar cold feeling inside.
I’m sore all over. My arms and legs are heavy. When I open my eyes, the lights from the bio-luminescent fungus is too strong, prompting them to close them again. My arms sting when I bring them up to cover my eyes.

“He’s waking up!”

“Move over! I wanna see!”

I stretch and twist in the nest, tendons burning.

“Don’t you have rounds to make?”

Giggling and running footsteps.

“I reduced the ambient lighting,” a male voice says. “You can open your eyes now.”

I open my eyes, everything white and out of focus. I blink a few times, until I can make out the stool across from me, and the blue medic seating himself on it.
Blue, all over, with green streaks in his short, tame mane. His arms and legs are blackened, but his primaries are alternating black and white with some gold. The fan of his tail is blue and green, with gold around the green eyes, tail wrapped around the stool to keep it out of the way in the tight space.

“I’m Bleed,” he smiles, gesturing at his snout, cream and rusty red, like used bandages. “Medic clan. Have you thought of a name yet?”

I bob my head to answer in the negative. He taps on the carapace of his wrist-mounted computer.

“You’re supposed to get slurry as soon as you wake up,” he explains. “Your deficient in quite a lot of vitamins and minerals, and Atrissa wants them brought back up. How do you feel.”

I stretch my legs and wince. His pale blue eyes flicker over me, understanding deep inside.

“Have you tried to speak?” he asks.

I bob my head again.

“Does your throat hurt?”

Again, a head bob.

“Try to say something. Anything,” he suggests.

I lick my teeth, feeling sticky and thick.

“Water,” I ask, but nothing happens except a harsh cough that painlessly scrapes my airways.

“Hmm,” Bleed purrs. “Could be the sedative, could be the damage from aspirating the amniotic fluid. Don’t overdo it, but we’ll keep an eye on it.”

I look askance, feeling hot. Even a peeping newborn can make some noise, but not me. Lying on my side to face the medic, I can see my hands and arms up to my elbows, and the very detailed skeletal patterns in my down.

“You’re piebald,” Bleed observes. “The white is entirely without pigment, down to your skin.”

I turn my hands over and look at the markings along the palms, just as anatomically correct as the ones on the backs of my hands. That is a very specific sort of defect.

We’re not meant to have defects. We’re supposed to be stronger, more efficient, better. There’s no room for failure, not with survival on the line.

“The synthetic lights don’t produce UV radiation, so you shouldn’t need to worry about burning,” Bleed tells me helpfully, looking away from my hands and back to his computer, which makes me wince, lashing my tail. Burning under my feathers shouldn’t be an issue in the first place.

“If I catch you spying on patients again, I’ll skin you alive and feed you to the pteranodons!”

It’s the female from before, but her voice is vicious and makes my down fluff, claws coiling in fear.

She’s carrying a vessel of slurry, striding into the sequester like she owns it, white and tan head held high, tan-brown and cream banded tail held even higher. Behind her, the oculus to the sequester closes with a swish.

She hands me the vessel, studying my hands closely, staring at the white, bonelike markings, and watches the way they move when I twist off the lid to the vessel, tilting it back. Sweetest ambrosia, I didn’t realize how hungry I was.

“I sent you his latest data,” Bleed tells her. “He can’t vocalize, but everything else is as expected.”

“Was it the sedative or the near-drowning?” she asks.

“I’m not sure.”

“Finish eating, love,” she smiles gently, all female authority in her stance.

Typically, hens are taller and stronger than cockerals. They have children to protect, and more mouths to hunt for. Because of that, females are traditionally seen as leaders and beacons of physical strength.

Bleed is noticeably smaller than she is. Males are solitary, only joining their primary mate’s household in the even of old age or injury. In ancient times, a male’s job was to be decorative, largely, although an avid hunter himself.

In traditionalist views, a male grooms and sport hunts, but stays out of political office and boardrooms. In some, largely outdated, cultures, a male is not even to speak in the presence of females unless directed.

These days, the Empire works to educate people out of such outdated thinking. The average male may not be as tall or strong as the average female, but that doesn’t make him more delicate or less intelligent.

Still, the nest would have selected mainly females for the leadership roles, and as such, Atrissa is the doctor and Bleed is the assistant.

“Can you get out of the nest?” Atrissa asks. “Brute isn’t here, so I’m going to be more gentle.”

She smiles by clicking her teeth and tossing her head, offering he hand. Her hands are cream from the wrist to the fingers, but tan and brown along the forearms and primaries. She is warm to the touch and my heart skips a beat to feel her fine, noble adult filament against my fluffy juvenile down.

Maybe after I molt, my adult coloring won’t be piebald. As it is, I can’t wait to shed and look like a grown-up again.

She helps me down from the nest and on to the smooth, tan wooden floor of the medical center. My balance holds better, but my joints and muscles are sore, probably because I’ve never used them before.
To my dismay, the same skeletal markings are across my toes, feet, and ankles, as white as a sunbleached carcass on a hot day against the ashy speckle of juvenile down.

“Good, good,” Atrissa beams. “Walk to the end of the room and turn around.”

I do as I’m told, my steps growing with confidence, mimicking all the times I’d done it before.

“Perfect,” she says, and then tells me to line up against a wall, doted with measuring spots.

“That’s…what, two feet and three inches and five pounds?” Bleed asks, entering the data into the computer.

My heart sinks. I’m short and underweight as well as piebald. No wonder the red commander called me “runt.”

After my statistics are measured, I am directed back to the nest, where Atrissa uses a stethoscope pressed against her ear canals to check my heart and lungs, and then a stick of bio-luminescent fungus to see in my nose and down my throat.

“I don’t see anything that shouldn’t heal on its own,” the female medic observes. “Contact me if your throat or chest starts to hurt again, we’ll get you something to soothe it. In the meantime, a technician is coming up to patch your serial number into the system.”

I blink quizzically. My serial number should already be into the system, shouldn’t it? Why would it need to be manually patched in?

There’s a scratch at the oculus. A button on Bleed’s arm opens it up, the reticulated curves sliding open with a clicking noise. The technician from before is there.
Yellow-green. Yellow arm and legs. Yellow main, with a yellow fan with green and gold eyes. Green spots instead of stripes, even on the primaries at his forearms and calves. Wearing the colors of a medic, his snout is blue with yellow pinstriping, the subtly guided swirls and knots of neural circuitry. The feathers of his mane stand upright, light on his temples and stiffer down the middle.

“You remember me?” he asks. “I was there when you were born.”

I smile, flicking my tongue, and nod by tossing my head.

“He’s having trouble speaking, but an ideal patient,” Atrissa explains fondly. “Stop by the commons and get him some slurry, doctor’s orders if the artisans argue. If he gets tired, bring him straight back here.”

“Please, he’s a technical marvel, like I would let anything happen to him,” the technician replies dryly, beckoning to me.

My ankles argue with each step, but my balance gets better and better as I keep walking. The technician smiles approvingly when I reach him.

“I call myself ‘Pi,’” he introduces himself as he sweeps me from the room. “It’s a mathematics joke. The first three digits of my serial number are three one four.”

I smile, clicking my teeth.

“In Blue Sector, we pick our names. The hens even pick house names,” he continues. “Have you thought of one for yourself yet?”

I toss my head in the negative.

“Give it time,” he advises. “Names are special. They define what you think of yourself.”

I look down at my hands and arms. What do I think of myself? I’m defective…otherwise not much.

In the halls of the medical center, a few people look up as I pass, and some even whisper.

“That’s him, the glitch.”

“Gee, I couldn’t tell.”

“That is…alarming.”

I feel hot again, and dip my nose, wishing I had primaries to hide behind. I can still feel their eyes on me, judgmental stares. They can see I’m a “glitch” as obvious as a poison frog. My stripes advertise it, like I may as well be wearing an “out of order” sign.

“I work with the neural circuitry and wetware,” Pi continues. “I fix programs that aren’t working properly. In a manner of speaking, I’m the reason you made it to hatching.”

He seems proud of this fact, but I don’t know why. Even he’s bigger than me, with a very useful job.

What is my job? Shouldn’t I know? That is the purpose of the snout markings, isn’t it?

I swivel my eyes to the end of my nose. I can see more white on black, but not the creamy and rusty splotches as a medic. As I feared, it looks like the outline of skullbones.

No wonder the medics sounded afraid. I haven’t seen myself whole yet, but I must look like the specter of death walking the halls of the medical center. Hopefully nobody looked out of the sequesters and feared their time had come.

Pi takes me down the smooth steps that wrap screw-like inside the tree’s inner hull. There are windows spaced out evenly, to let air flow and stave off cabin fever. The breeze coming inside the open oculi smell alive, trees and fresh rain and little flying things.

There’s a warm place in my belly. I feel proud, proud that it survived and seems to have flourished.

Levels below, I smell slurry. My stomach growls. Does everyone wake this hungry?

The archway into the mess hall is very spartan. In fact, the mess is very plain as well, utilitarian tables and simple perches, in front of an alcove staffed by a single purple-sounded artisan. He chuffs when he sees us, purple and orange filament standing on end.

“No, not for that one,” he growls.

“Doctor’s orders,” Pi growls. “Orders come down from Atrissa herself.”

“The medics don’t decide calorie intake for the day,” the artisan snarls, mane lifting. “This one has reached his daily limit already.”

“The medics want him to have nutritional intake around the clock,” the technician hisses, primaries spread out in defense position, tail arching upward.

“I don’t care if Brute himself comes down here and grinds it himself,” the artisan rumbles, showing his teeth. “There are other mouths to feed.”

Pi chuffs. “Give him from my rations, then.”

“That is against regulations,” the artisan grumbles. “I won’t do it.”

“Fine,” Pi replies, suddenly calm, plumage falling neatly into place, raising his right arm and tapping onto the carapace of the computer. A slot in the wall opens next to the alcove, a vessel of slurry, still warm inside.

The artisan jumps onto his counter and rumbles, arms and legs spread in full intimidation, tail raised so the eyes are visible, teeth bared. When the little gliders do this, it’s to make themselves seem bigger.

“Calm down, I took it from my ration count,” Pi sighs, blowing air across his teeth and reaching for the vessel.
I shrink away from the artisan, rumbling threats in his chest. Several others hear the commotion and come running, some adopting intimidation stance out of nervousness, others from annoyance. Their hot, brightly colored eyes passing over me judgmentally.

Of course the glitch is the center of trouble. That’s what glitches do.

Nonplussed, Pi taps again on the computer, bringing down the latticework gate from the ceiling, startling the artisan, who leaps back into his alcove to avoid being crushed.

Pi retrieves the vessel and opens it for me, passing off with a kind smile of a clicked tongue.

“Tensions are a bit high,” he explains. “Everyone’s a bit stressed.”

Chapter three

Chapter two

Chapter three

“That should be the end of it,” Pi states, unhooking the recently-hatched computer from his work station. “See if it fits.”

I slide it on my arm, and find it just a touch too big. I say nothing, hoping he won’t notice, not that I can speak. It crushes the soft down, letting a stripe on the outer edge of my right arm stand, where the primaries will grow after I molt for the first time.

The chromataphores bleed across the carapace like on a cephalopod, forming words.

“Welcome to life, User 00000000.”

I click my teeth. That is not a valid serial number.

“Make sure it works,” Pi beams, pleased with his work. “Try something simple, like the time.”

I press the enter beneath the greeting, and find a selection of applications, one of which is a calendar wheel. Pressing it tells me it is hour fourteen, sixth lunar month of year zero. I test a few other features, news feeds, and the contact profiles of both Pi and Atrissa, pre-programed by the technician.

“Perfect,” Pi smiles again, flicking his tongue. “Without knowing your profession, the Nest won’t give you a stipend, but Brute says you can go wherever they need an extra set of hands or feet until we know what you’re for. Tell the computer when you start working and stop, and do not let Brute catch you filing for pay on leisure hours.”

I click my teeth in understanding, looking at Atrissa’s photograph in my computer. She has idea hunter coloration, layers of white and brown, and piercing golden eyes.

“She’s nice, isn’t she?” Pi asks, prompting me to close the application and cover the screen with my palm, down fluffing. “She requested your service for a few hours. You get your own rations and a stipend, she gets to make sure you’re not going to fall apart on us.”

I crest the hill, holding cloth over my mouth. It looks like snow but tastes like ash, and it blisters if it rubs the skin. It’s deep enough that I can nearly swim through it, but after watching my siblings hack black out of their lungs until it ran red, I’m in no hurry to get it close to mouth or nose. I’d follow the trees, but the ones left standing are burned and brittle.

Still, as long as there is air in the lungs, there is hope. Over this hill will be the capital city of the Empire. The Imperial Council will have an idea, a plan, recovery efforts, emergency rations. As soon as I get over this hill, I can go back for my siblings and tell them it’s over, that we’re safe. We can get Velkar medical attention for his cough. He’ll be fine. I can save him.

On the other side of the hill, the ruins still smolder. The grand redwood trees that were once the bones of the Empire lean and twist, covered in blackened soot. The massive central tree that served as the seat of the Imperial Council lies on its side, the shelters broken like cracked eggshells.

“No, no, no,” I whimper, running down the hill, sliding in the ash.

The smell of it burns my nose, burning wood and flesh. Instinctively, the smell triggers my hunger, but I know in my heart this isn’t the roasting body of a leptoceratops at my great-grandmother’s hearth.

They are frozen where they stood, blackened pillars like statues, turning in fear, crawling along the ground, reaching for salvation. Males, females, nestlings, fused to the ground or the sides of trees or hidden under rubble.

I am in the graveyard of civilization, and there are only ghosts here now.

“I’ll take you back to the medical center,” Pi says, “if you’re ready. Are you tired or sore?”

Stifling a yawn and hiding the pained shake of my legs, I toss my head in the negative and hop down from my perch.

“Good,” he replies approvingly. “Atrissa would use me for spare parts if I overworked you. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

I bob my head enthusiastically. I smell burning flesh and feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks, but I’m fine.
Pi doesn’t look convinced.

I like his office. It’s a little dark in here, lit mostly by the yellow-green, pulsating glow of the neural circuitry connecting the terminals to the Nest’s brain. Stools sit before each terminal, where Pi’s clanmates would ordinarily be working, and readouts on screens showing the data on the Nest and her various systems.

Troublingly, she’s weak. There are errors from every facet of her biology, from atmospheric processing to water filtration. Some of the neural circuits aren’t functioning correctly either, almost like…

Pi yawns. He’s delaying a sleep cycle because of me, which is why we have the sequester to ourselves. “Let’s get you back to Medical before Atrissa comes looking for you,” he says through the yawn, motioning to the oculus.

Pi took me through the deep paths to get here, avoiding the more open commons of the sector, stopping at intervals to plug in his computer and check for things at various levels. He must be taking time from his working hours as well as his sleep cycle to help me.

I look down at the ground. I’m small, defective, and without purpose, and now I’m taking away from others.
I follow him up the spiraled ramp into the hollow trees of the Blue Sector’s commons. The exposed nerve clusters and neural circuitry give way to smooth bark, some with healing marks where the technicians skinned them for access. The sounds of the livestock echo within the tree, trumpeting and bellowing and deep, resonate singing.

Right now, they’re probably exclusively domestic breeds, mostly food, ceratopsians of all sizes, ornithomimids for chasing, and hadrosaurs. There may be a few working breeds and companions, like fleet-footed, herding dromeosaurs or shoulder-riding scansoriopteryns for flushing out smaller prey.
For all our comforts and advancements, we are still much like our little gliding cousins. We still enjoy the chase, the taste of a fresh kill on the tongue. I remember fondly leisure hours spent with the house at the hunting fields and arenas, warm sun on the feathers and the smell of blood and adrenaline on the air.

Pain runs along my right leg, eliciting a strangled grunt, and all the muscles knot up at once, sending me toppling to the ground and landing hard on my right side.

“What was that?” Pi asks, turning on his toes, tail whipping.

It’s nothing, I want to say. I’m fine.

I grab for the smooth bark of the walls and get my left leg beneath me, but my right leg in painfully tight, locked in place and rigid, toes curled into a fist. My blood runs cold when I realize I can’t open it, and I’m helpless on the floor.

The thunder of feet is all around, kicking up dust that makes it hard to breathe. A massive foot almost lands on my head, but I roll from under it just in time. The panicked herd flees in one direction, like the flow of water, heedless of anything in their way. Trees are falling, people are being trampled, and above, the heralds of doom light up the sky.

“There we go,” Pi says kindly, pulling me up against the wall, my right leg stuck out at a strange angle. His computer is linked to mine, sharing data.

“I think it’s a muscle spasm,” he elucidates. “Atrissa is on her way to be sure.”

I look away, pretending to preen. I don’t want her to see me like this, or anyone for that matter. Bad enough that Pi has to take time away from his sleeping hours and working hours to tend to me.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, disconnecting the neural cables from his computer.

I toss my head and click my tongue in the negative, hoping he won’t notice the subtle changes in heart rate, or the way my hands wrap around the thigh to ease the muscle. A soft growl of pain, unbidden, escapes my throat, which is starting to twinge slightly.

Pi slides beside me, tail over his lap, the length of his bare feet along the floor. The spotting at his ankles is bright green with some yellow, like the primaries at his calves.

“It was a power surge,” he explains.

I look up at him quizzically, grabbing for my knee when a stab of pain passes through it.

“A power surge turned on your incubator and triggered its programming,” he continues. “There were some who voted to flush it, but Brute insisted on otherwise. He had me monitoring it to keep the immune system from taking whether to keep your or not from being removed from the ballot. Atrissa kept the incubator’s lifesigns and nutrient supply in balance.”

I click my tongue and look down at my rigid, bone-striped leg. A power surge, a cosmic mistake. A million, billion, trillion things that can happen in any particular point in time, and all it takes is one applied bit of pressure to change the paradigm completely.

Atrissa emerges around the curve of the ramp, hissing, feathers raised in territorial display.

“What did you do?” she demands of Pi, voice as cold as a glacier.

“Nothing!” he replies, hands in front of his chest, palms-out, a signal once used to show submission was honest and true, without hidden weapons. “I did what you said, walked him straight down here and we were on our way back. I even took a shortcut!”

“I heard about that,” she growls dryly, dropping to her knees beside me. “Thank you for the data, though.”

She grabs my right leg at the thigh, prompting a fluff of feathers and a weak squawk, and begins feeling the knotting all the way to my toes.

“Muscle spasm,” she murmurs. “Overtired? A relaxant should help. This might make you sleepy.”

She reaches into her medical bag and pulls out an opaque box of vegetable plastic, pulls open a slot on the side where tongs are hidden, and reaches inside. She uses the tongues to grab a large, wingless wasp, sluggish and dozy, with clear venom dripping from its tail.

My eyes widen in fear. It’s just a shot, a single sting and then the little creature’s job is done, and it is recycled into the fertilizer for the botanists. Still, nobody likes to be stung by a wasp, even a medically-bred one.

“Hey, look, a calliodromeus escaped from Veterinary,” Pi shouts suddenly, causing me to turn in his direction, his much larger, if skinny, frame pouncing on my wrists and holding me down.

A second later, he lets me go, clicking his tongue in laughter. Atrissa is removing the little insect, its stinger still embedded in my hip, beneath my blue jumpsuit, where my body with metabolize it for maximum effect. She places the wasp in a separate container, marked with the broken ribs denoting biohazard, and turns to Pi.

“Did Bleed teach you that?” she asks as I sniff the air for a wayward dromeosaur.

“Sort of,” he replies, clicking his teeth in amusement.

“He did the same thing when I twisted my ankle in the Food Riots.”

Atrissa clicks her teeth and tongue, putting her supplies away. “I saw so many in those times, I don’t rightly remember them all.”

Atrissa then drops to her knees in the position adults use to carry children and tells me to climb on. I balk silently, even as Pi help me to my feet—er, foot. I feel warm again, hiding my nose behind my arm, leaning on Pi. The last thing I want to be seen doing is being carried back into Medical like an errant child.

“Her venom’s mild,” Pi states, seizing me under the arms and placing me on her back.

Before I know what’s happening, I have my feet anchored to her hips and my hands to her shoulders. Since I’m bigger than a fledgling, she loops her tail under mine and holds either end in her hands. The bands on her fingers match the ones on her tail.
Mortified, I squirm and flail, but that just makes her hold on tighter, my leg sticking out at an awkward angle.

“Be still,” she chides. “You need to keep weight off that leg so the muscle relaxant will work.”

The two of them quietly discuss matters that effect both clans, and common interests from their similar fields. I keep quiet and listen, picturing in my head the things they are talking about.

The Nest is sick. When the others emerged from their tanks, they found very little worked. Prepared food was scarce, leading to the slaughter of livestock, which caused a spiraling shortage in animal husbandry, which led to further shortages. Pi’s clan has been working full days and nights to fix the errors, cobbling together a half-functional sector.

That’s troubling. The Nest was designed to be self-sustaining. With only a single new generation hatched, less than a year old, it shouldn’t be falling apart like this.

They emerge onto one of the round, woody patios, just below the central pillar of the medical center, at the heart of the sector, where the most vulnerable are kept. The bellow of livestock raises from the abyss below, and above the massive node of bioluminescent fungus is set to late evening.

A few faces stare as Atrissa carries me up the path and into the medical center, some whispering.

“That’s him, the one triggered by the power surge.”

“I’ve never seen eyes like that.”

“Eyes? Look at his markings. What’s he going to look like after he molts?”

I cast my gaze down to my stiff leg and Pi’s yellow feet as they move into the medical center, looking up as the oculus opens to the upper reaches. A tall figure is standing against the railing, arms crossed, leaning over the side, and watching.

His bright plumage is unmistakable, as red as blood and dark as shadow. He studies me as we enter the oculus, and I can feel the disappointment radiating from here. This is not a good time for the Nest to have stragglers.