Roach World
Katy boarded the giant insect and carefully applied the
slick fungus to her forehead, not too much, but not tool little either. The inside of the roach was the type of
comfort you get from familiarity, an acquired taste. The long legs of the insect could be seen by
me with the modified vantage points, more than one view entered into her head
to be understood, and she saw the dancing dust in front of Katy as well as each
of the six, powerful legs, and the same color as the desert around her, dun. The antennas picked up her commands, modified
with metal wires, and she readied myself for the start of the race.
A lot was at stake here. If Katy failed to win the race,
she would be taken away and been a slave on a ship in the Oort cloud, not what she
wanted. No person wanted to go
there. The ships ended up being hit many
times along with the unpredictable nature of flying things, and the trash that came
in like a sneaker wave. Criminals lived
out there, many times going mad or being eaten by space slugs.
The trials made Earthlings a particular target for such
insidious work. The years became short for prisoners, the slaves of
slaves. The wrong people had gotten the
weapons and destroyed the Earth and Mars, the latter a memory and now dust,
too.
Katy turned the data with thought and saw Ali, her best-friend
and fellow racer. Katy cried about that
the night before. No matter the end of this competition, they’d never see each
other again. The winner would enter into
university and become a Priest of Knowledge.
The losers went to the Oort cloud.
Katy had to win. Did she want to?
My mother massaged her neck and told her that friendships
end, the night prior.
“Dear, the world isn’t fair. We only get one life, and it’s hard enough on
Earth. Nobody comes back from the Oort
cloud. Being sent there is a ticket to hardship
and death, Katy.” Her embrace warmed Katy’s
heart. Katy wanted to be a baby again and
not have to make this decision. Curse the gods!
“Katy, don’t think of it being selfish, think of it as me
losing you.” Katy allowed her mother’s
love soothe her, and she knew that Ali had her reason, too. Now they were enemies with good
memories.
“I know, mother. I know.”
Now they were enemies with good memories.
Katy and Ali attended school together where we learned
how to cultivate the mind control fungus and make it a human tool to control
the giant roaches. They rode within to avoid the toxic Earth. Bugs survived the disaster and grew to be
giants that plagued the Earth for thousands of years before humanity fought
back and used them as means of traveling on the radioactive world, to produce
again.
A memory came to Katy’s mind as she thought about Ali, a
brilliant student. The stars shined for her
and those around her. Katy wasn’t quite
as popular. She never had been.
Katy saw Ali in my mind as a child. They ran around the ancient
caves, all sacred but full of places to get into trouble in them. In Katy’s mind, Ali sprinted and climbed the
walls of the underground structures, turning them into monsters and fiends. Katy and she ran together and found fossils
of ancient creatures.
“The world has died many times,” Ali said to Katy.
“How do you know that?”
“I can see with the sedimentary rocks, the strata with
fossils. Humans are monsters, too. We’re a force all of our own, given
everything and only loving it when it’s stolen and ours alone. I guess that’s
why Earthlings are cursed and ordered around by other beings in the solar
system.”
“You have too much energy in that brain of yours,” Katy
said back then, “Give me some.”
“Come with me. I’ll show you a magical sight.” She began to descend to the more forbidden
caverns and trails. As children, they
warned both of poisonous gases and harmful unknowns that scared them with
mystery.
“We can’t go down there,” Katy had said.
“Sure we can.”
“What about the gases and possible unknowns?”
“Well, they’ll never be known if we don’t find them first,”
Ali said.
We made our way down deep into the cave. I grunted the
whole time, which embarrassed me.
As they descended, they smelled odd gases. Ali held her composure and went down further
and further toward the darkness. Katy grabbed
the light we carried in our purses and began to see the floor. Ali went down a tunnel, and Katy followed her
as fear infected my mind. The noisome
grew more and more pungent.
“It’s the perfume of the gods,” Ali said.
“If they had gas, I suppose.”
“Don’t be such a Negative Nancy. I’ve been here hundreds
of time, and I’m still the best chemist in my class.”
“I’m not used to snorting stuff. Why is it called the
perfume of the gods?” Katy asked Ali.
“Because you will have visions if you inhale enough gas.”
“Oh, so you mean once you’re intoxicated, your mind will
be elevated to a higher state while you’re poisoned?”
“Everyone is a critic,” Katy said back to me.
As they hunched over, they followed my light into a
chamber with a giant rock table in it. A
few skeletons sat in a corner, covered in gold and charms.
Had humanity been so stupid that it depended on shaman
and later the news to keep order? Had humanity ever truly stared itself in the
face and acknowledged reality? Those
thoughts bothered Katy while Ali grabbed a glowing rock and put it into the center
of the low standing table. She took out
two rocks and ignited a flame with them on old wood. The humid air spun around the chamber. Katy
coughed.
Ali put her face down and sniffed the smoke, letting it
gently intoxicate her before she lay on the ground and began to have
seizures.
“Are you alright, Ali?” Katy asked. “Are you okay?” She shook her and then decided she needed to
call for help, even if they ended up grounded until the grass grew again.
Ali stopped convulsing. With her eyes rolled back, she
stared at images in her mind. Katy could see a red spot on her forehead. The spot turned into fire, and her body turned
red. Katy became frantic and began to
shack her.
“We have to stop them…” She said, like sticks on stones,
a strong whisper.
“Stop who?” Katy asked.
“The ones who know things.”
Ali stopped moving. Her skin turned pale, and she
coughed. Katy went over to her as the
stones began to fade. She took out my
light, warm to the touch but pale as if the sun denied her.
Katy spent years wondering about “The ones who knows
things.” Ali attempted to pry into her during our soft years. Katy couldn’t
explain that day. Neither of them wanted to go down into that which could be Hell.
Hell, yes, this decision would be Hell on Katy’s back, a personal
sin that haunted her in the final moments of their friendships. The explosions would start to scare the roaches,
and both would ride across the desert of Earth and try to survive, to have the
opportunity to be Priests and power over knowledge, the saving grin. People don’t think that tragedies would befall
them. Humans are weak in spirit, Katy
thought.
Ali sat in her roach, its sides hued with red clay, as Ali
enjoyed decorating her ride. She
attempted to create the illusion of power, to make others distracted as well,
as they attempted to pass her or cheat by eating legs, and then Ali would limp
to the finish line, only to be sent to the Oort cloud.
Away from the sun, creatures awaited the failures flung
far out in the unknown. The satellites that tried to get further exploded. It seemed as if an invisible hand wanted them
to stay away from the universe, as if they were unbidden pests. Sure, the humans destroyed two worlds. Why
didn’t the so-called gods stop them prior to the destruction.
She realized her thoughts might enter their domain. One survival trick you try to learn is to
control thoughts, don’t let them ramble in your head about certain topics. The gods spared no mercy on the creatures of
the solar system. Unlike the old models
Earthlings followed, the gods did not want to be worshiped. They were to be
obeyed. They spoke to humanity through death.
The spoiled child through a tantrum during its time, using
nuclear weapons and lasers to punish mankind through consequences for wanting
to be Icarus, to steal their thunder and make them learn how small and
insignificant they were to the stars. One looks up and gets lost in the number
of stars and planets. Galaxies spun to
red and dead, old elliptical grandmas dying with all her children.
She thought of Katy now, wanting to embrace her, to tell
her how their friendship got her through the pain of losing her mother in the
fire, the place where someone left a stone light, a radioactive one, and her mother
jumped into a fire instead of having to deal with cancer, the contagious kind.
Yes, cancer lived in lurking closeness with its friend
fear. Humans designed many diseases to
fight against itself, and they lingered in the most unusual places right in
front of a person. Some people turned
into all sorts of mutants during the great wars that ended the light of life,
and the gods’ silence and help. Ali
figured they’d all deserved it.
And now she would enter in to the most painful activity
of all, betraying her friend to survive.
Why is survival so selfish? She asked herself. She realized the answer came in the code of
DNA humans carried. They thought of
themselves with thoughts, not the greater good, but the greater self that would
become the ruler of all, good and bad.
The leaders on the destroyed worlds stayed deep underground
in the same bunkers as when the Earth burned with the devil’s passion. The world moved that day, and they fell deep
under poisoned water that would fry them if they ever did decide to show up and
be killed by their children and their children’s children.
The Race Began
Katy put my will into the creature’s legs, and forced the
roach to move faster and faster across the shifting sands and winds that came
at them.
Ali, damned Ali moved in front of Katy and Katy cursed. She spent time attempting to get around her
and was confused by the red clay.
Had she enhanced the
bug? Katy became annoyed and kicked one of six legs at her. Her roach responded by turning over but was
pushed back up to safety when hit by another racer. The fair as it was square, racer ran ahead of
both of them.
“Katy?” a voice said into her mind. She got a mental image
of her voice patterns.
“We’re going to have to work together. When
we’re in the last mile, we can kill each other but not now.”
I thought of the devil and wondered if the being would
put a trick into Ali’s mind, and she would skitter away on her promise and
survive.
This race came down to survival. Katy thought again of
her mother and her warm embrace the night before. She could hear her mother singing her lullabies
and telling her the atmosphere made the stars twinkle.
“You’re my only child.” The words made Katy want to die.
How could she leave her mother to a fate of losing everything. Katy loved her mother and wanted her mother
to be happy, to not think about her face the second she would get onto a ship,
gone forever
Katy began with more determination and decided to cooperate
until she could see if Ali told the truth.
They spun a web for the other bug to get caught in. The
trick worked, and the strong thread, stronger than steel, made the roach he
rode within appear as a cocoon, stranded, soon to be dead.
“Good job,” Ali told Katy. She moved with haste to be in
front of her friend. Who could she trust. As an orphan, she had no one to come
how to, but she didn’t want to go out into the outer regions of space, to be
lost to legends and woes of failure’s bones.
How could I allow my own demise at the finish line? Ali thought.
The next track went over sand dunes. The insects struggled but didn’t give up
either. The ugly, disgusting bunch of insects may have won evolution’s
battle. She liked to think of them as
tiny as they had been on Earth during the old days.
The old days held the key to the lesson of the future is
the past. Humanity would have to prove
itself worthy, not be sanctioned and controlled by aliens who found new ways to
take away power and embarrass the human race, she thought.
“Hey Ali!” Katy hailed down her friend, the deadliest
creature on the planet at that point and time, “I think we can make the next
ones crawl under that boulder. Her mind
became crystal, and she made her way to the rock. Not strong enough on her own.
“I’m here, Katy.”
She moved the rock down the hill at the group following them. A few
managed to dodge it, but almost three competitors were squished, which their
blood draining out of the creature.
“We need to talk, Katy,” Ali said.
“About the shitty things that happen on this planet?
“I don’t want to kill you,” Katy said. She frowned, a tear going down her
cheek. They ran side-by-side, easily
within the kicking region, the fastest way to turn the being over and be lost
in in the times of forever.
Ali thought about the people in her life, the ones who
left until she only had a brother in prison. The boy became a man behind bars
under the fluorescent lights, eating Tac Meal and water. He’d become lean over the years. Ali felt that she should have tried to do
more to help him. He remaide there,
alone behind bars.
She thought of Lilly, her cousin who’d fallen prey to
strangers who took her away to sell in the slave trade, another form of slavery
to feel, to never be able to control where you were or who you are. Missing all
of these people tormented her. She longed
to say, “sorry” to her brother.
Katy began to feel the love in her mother’s voice, how
she lulled her to sleep as a child, created a world of peace and caring. How horrid it would be for a mother to leave
a child, and yet she felt selfish. Ali
had next to no one but some locked up brother.
Was Ali’s borther worth her mother? She tucked that into her brain.
The finish line stared back at them in the distance. They still stayed in rhythm with the
skittering feet of the roaches. All six
legs pushed themselves further and further, closer and closer to the finish line.
“I have to win,” Ali thought. I can’t leave him.
“I can’t leave my mother with no one, Ali,” Katy
confessed.
“I guess this is where you and I part, kid,” Ali
said. This angered Katy greatly.
Katy angerly thought of the bad times with Ali, the times
when Ali made the situation all about her and how everyone was attracted to her
when they weren’t so kind to Katy. Her mother loved her, and she loved her mother
more than Ali, she told herself.
Katy kicked first but missed. Ali moved aside and then
attempted to ram into Katy.
“All you have is your brother! And he’s a fucking
criminal.” Katy justified another kick.
Ali moved out of the way in time.
Katy saw the finish line, drawn in mirage paint. What did that mean?
Ali saw the strange illusion of the ground going down
into a sink hole while vibrating smoke.
Katy knew immediately that it was an illusion. She didn’t stop running toward it with her hefty
ride.
Ali thought perhaps someone put a trap up, and it was all
so that they would die instead of coming in first. Ali didn’t dare slow down when she saw the other
roaches getting nearer and nearer.
Ali closed her eyes and remembered the words to her
personal religion, “All is the end of vanity. Her world became slower to
her. She kicked Katy hard in the side,
and her ex-friend spun around. Her voice
screamed in Ali’s ears.
“I’m sorry, dear Katy. Perhaps a mirage is faith.” She
felt one with the cosmos around her, and she sighed as the roach went over the
line, Katy still behind her.
She’d felt such anger toward Katy, calling her brother
out like that, like he was worth less than another person. She would make up with him, she told herself,
and she would bring to his world a better world.
Katy put her anti-radiation clothing on and felt the
police cuff her. She followed them into a
larger roach. Tears went down her face.
She felt betrayed but realized she couldn’t hurt anyone anymore than
herself. The Oort clouds called out to
her, her duty for being human, by having to suffer as the Buddha said in ancient
texts.
Ali whispered to herself, “Faith is a miracle.” Perhaps her brother would learn so, isolated by
demons who called themselves the saviors.
I will be our savior, Ali said as she closed her eyes. She heard the other insects whiz through,
their price for wanting to be Priest, and they’d lost their place and face on Earth.
