Excerpt from The Candle
Georgene beamed a mouthful of perfect, platinum teeth into the roadside pile of rubbish she had spent the last hour sifting through. Her smile abruptly upgraded into a maniacal grin, as she thrust a mechanical arm into the garbage. She extracted her target from the putrid heap with the swift precision of a chameleon’s tongue. Georgene scanned her surroundings as she stood and stashed her treasure in the chest pocket of her overalls. The panoramic view before her was a landscape of frigid desolation, gorgeously devoid of Wanters and Takers; dangerous scavengers that notoriously hunted people like Georgene. The Wanters would only deactivate her to steal her hard-earned trinkets. But the Takers would rip her muscles from her supplemental bungees, remove her keen, augmented eyes from their orbitals, and drain her veins of homeostatic nanobots, either to sell on what was left of the Black Market, or just for the joy of watching her suffer. Either way, all that would remain of her would be a pathetic puddle of ancient flesh and viscera. The nightmarish thought sent her heart pounding loudly in her polyurethane chest cavity with rapid thwacking. Her heart placement had been severely shifted in a violent scrap she’d gotten several mooncycles before. The bionic woman squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head vigorously in a futile attempt to rid herself of those unwelcome memories. She opened her eyes to the musty taupe sky. The light was fading. Georgene sighed, thinking of how sunsets were about as vibrant as dishwater these days, and started the journey home. Missy would be waking from her nap soon and they had great deal to celebrate that evening.
Georgene moved with an unnatural urgency that was too smooth for human capabilities. She moved silently, save the light flutter of her worn overalls chafing against themselves. The now coffee-black, starless sky warned that she be inside lest she wanted another encounter with scavengers. The cracked asphalt of what was once an interstate and the arid wasteland that stretched on either side of it was littered with debris, bones, and the still-rotting corpses of scavengers and victims alike.
She glided in long strides over the broken road like sentient silk. As she maneuvered through a cemetery of crash-landed hovercrafts, drone booths, and other automotive carcasses lying in unmarked graves, she heard a rustling from behind what once was a minivan. Georgene halted noiselessly, listening. The rustling grew more violent. Georgene’s eye-apertures widened, her eyebrows pierced with anxiety. She placed her hand over her heart to both muffle its obnoxious mis-beating and to cover the precious item sheltered there in her pocket. The rustling ceased unexpectedly. Georgene remained still and silent, fully confident that the invisible enemy had sensed her. She readied the retractable saber which spent most of its time nestled between her arm’s carbon fiber ulna and radius. She took a wide stance and bent her spring-hinged knees, ready for combat. It was then that from behind the dilapidated vehicle stepped a ruin-rat, tangled up in garbage. It was the largest ruin-rat she had ever laid eyes on. Without hesitation, she rushed the struggling creature and ended it with one swift slice. She flashed that maniacal smile again and quickly collected the two perfect pieces of the rodent, stuffing each half into a thigh pocket. Georgene hurried home, smiling all the way for the feast she had happened upon. This truly was a day of celebration.
Georgene stood at the foot of a small hill, wooly with long-dead foliage. She performed a final scan for Wanters and Takers to ensure the undiscovery of her most vulnerable secret. The coast was clear. She stooped down and grabbed a generous handful of the thick, dead flora and threw it back with grandiose flourish. The wooly foliage lifted away from the hill like a throw blanket covering the entrance to a pillow fort. What covered the hillside was indeed fabric and dead things alike, as Georgene had found a shipping container stocked with hundreds and hundreds of ghillie suits. That absurd finding proved to be their most precious resource. Georgene flipped the ghillie-blanket back behind her and inhaled the thick, cool hair that announced her safety with its olfactive comfort. Deep in the safety of their makeshift hovel, Georgene navigated the labyrinth of narrow hallways she and Missy spent the better part of six months constructing. The confusing path was a failsafe in the event scavengers discovered the entrance to their lair. The labyrinth would give the women plenty of time to prepare to protect their dwellings. Georgene held her arms slightly out at her sides to let her supple, silicone fingertips trace the earthy hallway as she walked. She let sweet memories of those days in the dirt, building their refuge, their beloved home, wash over her in a stream of gentle vitality. Her mechanical and digital enhancements had been new and glitchless then. She was able to use her spectacular abilities to create this underground haven. Finally, she emerged from the labyrinth into the Grand Ballroom, as Missy called it. It had a vast, domed ceiling and a circular perimeter that Missy once claimed made her want to waltz. The architectural mud masterpiece was grandeur relative to the cramped hallways. The Grand Ballroom, of course, was also the only room they had.
On the far Northeast, Missy’s nose twitched, and eyes fluttered open to the delicious smell of ruin-rat roast. Missy sat up slowly in her bed that took on the appearance of a massive, dead, moss ball. Ghillie suits had been stuffed carefully with more ghillie suits to the perfect firmness for her slipped disk and sleep apnea. Missy swung her legs to the floor and planted her tender, crooked feet on the bedside ghillie-rug.
“Have you been out all day, Geegee?” Missy inquired, barely awake and already cross with the intrusive disorientation of dementia.
“Not all day. I was foraging for a special occasion,” Georgene projected a patient tone for Missy’s old ears. Missy scrunched her already deeply-lined face in suspicion and bewilderment.
“What special occasion? We don’t know anybody besides each other!” Missy snapped hoarsely. She was already getting overstimulated, mood turning for the worst.
Having sensed this, Georgene stopped what she was doing to their ruin-rat meal and walked over to Missy with a softened expression. She wiped her hands with the tattered rag hanging from her overalls then grasped Missy’s velvety, wrinkled hands in her own and looked in Missy’s evergreen eyes.
Georgene thought of how assertive and present Missy was as a young woman: How she’d read a room full of people and burn the page to ash with spontaneous lecture on how sexism was contributing to the perpetuation of the apocalypse or the ethical decorum of choosing to get your dog from a shelter over a breeder. Missy had once been quick as a whip and present as a gift, like her mother, and just like Georgene.
Georgene came back to the moment and spoke to Missy gently, like one might speak to a child with the intention of treating them as an adult.
“Today is your eightieth birthday, Missy. Which means its also the fifty-fifth anniversary of my transhumanist procedures. You are now the same age I was when I decided to become this,” Georgene willed her left pupil to expand as wide as the aperture would allow, took a photograph, and printed a perfect image of her perspective out of her smiling, gaping mouth. Georgene paused to ensure she was not having this conversation alone. Holding Missy’s hand, a little tighter now,
“It is also the fifty-fifth anniversary for The Great Malfunction of 2021,” She continued slowly, trying to read Missy’s face for signs of recollection, treading lightly as not to trigger another violent episode, “When you lost your parents and brother to the coded virus which invaded their minds. Your mother was my daughter. Your brother, my grandson.”
Georgene searched desperately in Missy’s eyes for a semblance of understanding. It had been over six years since Missy remembered the family that was taken from them.
Neurology and psychology were ignored as technological advancement cut corners for convenience. Humanity paid the price on that fateful day dubbed The Great Malfunction. All customers with a Cognitive Enhancement Device (CED for short) implanted deep in their brains experienced long, grueling deaths as every one of their minds short circuited in unison. The survivors were never the same, and most eventually adapted to this new world as Wanters and Takers.
Cora Poe 2021
Excerpt from Ashes to Ashes
They both simpered lightheartedly and wrapped their arms around each other as all sound and vision ceased in that fatal, final instant.
The last moment.
Sterling and Symm.
Their relationship was one of snarky exchanges, snide comments, sarcasm, and snogging.
They shared an equally nihilistic view of existence yet enjoyed each other’s company in that realm of understanding.
Symm lay with their legs over Sterling’s as they played the Third Earth News on their social media implants supplied courtesy of the Third Earth International Government, TEIG for short. TEIG enthusiastically supplied most everything since the migration.
A panicked voice played in the minds of the two lovers, “Eighteen weapons of mass destruction are en route from Second to Third Earth.
Fifty minutes to contact. This is not a drill! This is not a drill!”
This was extermination.
The two must have played with the hypothetical of nuclear fall-out a hundred times over. Neither felt unnerved or terrified.
They simply walked out to the deck, sat together, drank together, and waited for the last moment.
Cora Poe 2/13/18
Excerpt from Gaia’s Scorn
The cracks in the cement became great gorges through which countless were lost. The sky sleeted needle-sharp hail that stabbed into the pores of my face. The natural horrors of the last few months had yet to lose their menacing luster.
Many years ago I lost my credibility in the science world by giving caveat to such circumstances. I was ignored, dismissed. We had the technology to avoid catastrophe, but doubt, fear, and particularly greed would not allow us to change.
Now we must, because if we do not, we die.
Colonizing another planet was the master plan in case our world ever turned against us. But she swallowed our ships.
I have started to ponder whether or not I am losing my mind.
I think she wants us to stay so we cannot flee to another world and destroy that one. Then the next. And the next. I think Great Gaia’s wrath is that of a woman’s scorn. We genuinely believed that we were the captains and she the vessel. Now that the world is ending, it is our duty to go down with her.
Cora Poe 3/5/18