The Last Human IV - 56 - What Comes After Death

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Thunder echoed through the trunks, as Anu’s branches began to break. The crunching, splitting sound of alien bark shook the branches and sent echoes crashing through Anu’s inner, winding paths. A pendulous groan swept through the grotto, and cracks popped in branching patterns down the walls, releasing thin streams of sparkling mist.

Poire felt the air shift, like everything had jumped for a moment out of place. And then, he was assaulted by the choking scent of metal dust, and an acrid burning, and the taste of clay and honey. If he had been paying closer attention, he might’ve also felt the sudden absence of feeling, as one of Anu’s great limbs fell away into the void, pulling out the withered roots that had embedded themselves in ancient Scars.

But Poire was too focused on his own  disbelief. He didn’t notice the rumbling that shook the grotto, couldn’t see the glittering blackness that was spreading from the cracks. 

He came all this way. Now, more than ever, he needed Anu to answer. “I swore I would never go back home. My presence would bring certain destruction.”

“Yes,” Anu said with a chorus of voices.

“Why would I? So you can have your revenge? Why would I ever do what you ask?” 

“We are not asking,” Anu said, “We are telling you what will happen. You are—you always will become—the Destroyer.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You cannot deny what is, and what will be.”

“I can deny you.”

“Oh,” Anu gasped, but now Poire could hear the voices fading, extinguished one by one. “Oh, now, we see how much we could have learned from you. Never, never. To lie and deceive would have been such a delicate, incredible power. Alas, we did not conceive of your ways. We tell you only what we see. Your return is inevitable.”

“Why?” Poire asked. “Why tell me anything?” 

What he really meant was why do you care? But even without words, even on the eve of its ending, the alien god understood him as if he were a piece of Anu himself. 

“To us, change is unnatural,” Anu said. “We are becoming what we have never been before. Afraid.” 

The ripples in the wall tried to shift. Struggled. Some broke into spindles, spilling into the twisted gaps of the grotto’s floor. Whatever vision Anu was trying to show Poire, it could not complete. It gave up, and reverted to words. “We wish only to share our knowledge with you,” Anu sighed, “To give our knowledge a new life. All we are. All we have ever been. All we have preserved. All will be lost. We have seen the destiny of all things. All, except yours…”

“How can that be?” 

“You were not supposed to happen. You were impossible. Every breath, every beat of your heart—should not be. And yet, here you are. Oh, Destroyer. Oh, Savior. Once, we used to ask what you are. But now, at our end, we wonder what you will do.”

“It hurts,”  the few remaining voices whispered. 

“It hurts,” Anu agreed, “That we will never know.” 

Another groan shot through the grotto, and this time Poire felt it. In his bones. In the rattling of his teeth and the vibrations in his skull. More cracks formed along the walls, and sheets of near-metallic bark broke off and shattered on the gnarled roots of the floor, or fell into the gaps down into oblivion. Mist still poured from the cracks, but it was so much thinner now. Weak, and barely held any color at all. Instead, an inky blackness spread out from the gracks, carving new veins and glossing over Anu’s ancient bark.

“What comes?” Anu asked. “What comes after death?”

Something loud and heavy cracked far away, sending a groaning shudder through the grotto. 

“Is there anything?” Anu sighed, almost pleading. 

Felt, more than seen, a shadow passed below. Cracks ran through one of Anu’s greatest branches, causing it to sag dangerously. The cracks deepened, until they reached the mutated mass of Anu’s trunks—the alien’s very center. Anu began to split open. The sound was like the crunching of glass, the snapping of bark, and the roll of thunder wrapped together. It shook Poire from his heels to the top of his spine.

The acrid, chemical scent that filled the grotto reminded Poire of the caretakers and researchers back in the Conclave. The smell of the Disease. He’d never realized that they, too, must’ve had it. All of them, oppressed by its clock, ticking with every beat of their hearts.

“This is ending?” Anu said, its voice so much smaller now. Weak and gasping. “It … It hurts.”

Poire knew he should be grateful that Anu was at its end. It had brought humanity to extinction. He should feel relieved or proud. Vindicated, even. Instead, Poire felt only pity for the alien, and pity for all the beings preserved in its cellular memory.

When Anu spoke again, the chorus was gone. Only a single, small voice. Not whimpering, but afraid nonetheless. “We don’t want to be alone.”

“I…” Poire hesitated, “I’ll sit with you. Until it’s over.”

“We always hoped that you would.”

Poire pressed his palm against the wall. He thought he could feel Anu’s ridges pressing back. He breathed in deep, and stared at the twisting curves of the ceiling. At the black, glittering veins dripping up the walls. 

At nothing at all. 

A groan yawned through the cavernous structure, punctuated by throbbing, cracking sounds that echoed into the grotto. The floor shivered and bucked. New cracks punctured the walls and geysers of mist sprayed the last of Anu’s glittering Light into the air and into the void. 

Poire did not move. Something split and fell and a crash thundered from a nearby cavern. And still, he did not move. The ridges beneath Poire’s palm became brittle. Breaking away. Crumbling to dust. And something, like a hard shell, bit into his hand. His fingers wrapped instinctively around it, and he pulled his hand back. Something glowed between his clenched fingers.

Poire uncurled his fist. A brown, oblong shape shed a faint light. Its skin cracked like thin clay. As Poire dusted the clay away, he found himself holding a pearl, filled with such brilliant color, that it shone almost blue-white. Smooth. Soft. And not a touch of black on it at all.

“What is this?” Poire asked Anu. 

But there was no voice left to answer. 

Only the tremendous cracking of Anu’s dead trunks. Even the geysering mists had thinned out as the last of Anu’s eternal life evaporated. 

Poire cupped the pearl between both hands, and side-stepped over the black vein creeping toward him. The caverns had changed, glittering veins grew for miles, searching for him, but the bark of Anu still responded to his will. He threw himself over the greatest gaps, and impulsed the fragmented remains of Anu to carry him away from death. As he sped back up the branch that had brought him here, he could feel that gravity, itself, had changed as Anu’s mass was undone by the Disease. Where did all that matter go? Does it go anywhere at all?

Veins reached for his droplet. They carved glittering, obsidian lines toward the membrane, but they could not touch it. Though Anu could not save itself, it had at least discovered a way to prevent the Disease from traveling through at least one of its Scars. My Scar, Poire thought. It made the membrane… to protect me. He swallowed hard. Blinked back the wetness in his eyes. And held the pearl out, still cupped between his hands.

The membrane parted. Before he crawled in, he took one last look over his shoulder. Above and below, Anu’s once-glowing canopy now hung like the blackened dendrites of a neural network that spanned galaxies. Millions of Scars faded like stars at dawn. Only, they would never share their light again.

Then, Poire stepped down into the membrane. It did not burn. Instead, it parted into a kind of well. Gelatinous handholds formed the moment he thought of them, and Poire climbed easily down. The well opened on the skies of Poire’s strange world. A wind blew, biting and clawing at his robes, which had grown ragged and frayed, as if he’d been talking to Anu for years, not minutes.

He clung to the tough, gelatinous membrane, and gazed down. His old Tower was nowhere in sight. Not even the foundations peeked through the endless white oceans of sand. How am I supposed to get down, now?

One wrong move, and everything he had learned would be for nothing. 

Poire chuckled darkly. If I died now, I’d never go back to my home universe, and I’d prove Anu wrong. Unless… Poire frowned. 

Unless Anu was right. 

Poire squinted. He tried to guess how fast gravity would pull him. The force of impact. The last moment…

Either way. He allowed himself the barest hint of a smile. And let go. And fell.

His tattered robe whipped in the wind as he gathered speed. He twisted his body until he was falling head first. He held his arms out like an eagle, a mad grin plastered on his face. He started to laugh, even as the wind battered his face. 

Oceans of dunes spread below, so white they seemed to reflect the sky. Jagged spirals of azure and black rose in slow grandeur. Why do they all twist the same way? He wondered. And those little trees. Leafless and corkscrewed, just like the obsidian mountains. And there, embedded in the flats of shallow glass…

Is that what I think it is? He squinted into the battering winds. Sen’s Mirror, a pyramid of alien glass and human-made metal, glinted in the light. 

Mountains rose, blocking the flats from view. The dunes rose, too. Ripples within ripples within ripples... 

Poire’s smacked, head first and grinning, into the sand. 

A geyser of white dust shot up, grew thin, and blew away into nothing. Then, the sands began to churn like boiling water, and sink down into itself. A tuft of gray and black hair emerged. A head, with tiny rivers of sand cascading off the planes of his face. Poire’s wrinkled eyes popped open. Shining and dark and alert. 

He turned toward the mountain. Raised his hands. And he moved the universe so that, without taking a single step, he brought the mountain underfoot. From below, the mountain’s peak had looked sharp and pointed. But up here, the top was a flat plane of obsidian. Poire bent down, and grabbed a fistful of the stone, and willed it into a new shape, a clay pot. Then, he filled it with water. And left it at the center of the plateau. For the one who will come after.

Then, with an outstretched hand, Poire curled his fingers, and pulled the horizon to him. And pulled again, until he was standing in a valley, surrounded by towering rock-like formations that looked like the back plates of some ancient lizard.

But, for his next task, Poire needed space. 

He clapped his hands together. The sound echoed like splitting earth. A shockwave rippled out, blasting away mountains of stone and gravel and rock dust, until Poire was standing on a perfectly level plane of stone and not a speck of debris was in sight.

He knelt down. He pressed his palm into the stone. He raised his hand, and a black pillar erupted underneath him, lifting him into the air. Already half as tall as the Tower he had once toiled for so long to build. 

“There,” he said to himself, for there was no one else to hear him. “A good foundation.” 

The perfect start for a new Scar.

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