Roach World Draft: I Will Edit It More

 

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.