(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

After his ordeal with centipede, Jay felt compelled to visit home. He sat at his parents’ dinner-table while his mother stirred two mugs of tea. “How is Faith feeling nowadays?”

“Remember when our cat Django died? Faith bawled like a baby,” said Jay. “She cried like that when Beatrice died, but since then, she’s just been quiet. I don’t think she’s even left her house for days.”

“Oh, poor thing.” She pat Jay’s hand. “Is someone looking after her?”

“Dan brings her groceries. I’m glad they’re sticking together. Beatrice’s death hit them both pretty hard.” Jay had been affected too, of course, but his mother looked sad enough already. Jay just sipped his tea. “Have I told you I want to visit the Islands of Sheridan?”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“I can’t blame you. They don’t even have a Wikipedia-article. Apparently they’re where crickets and centipedes come from.”

“Oh? Did I raise a smuggler?”

“Not quite,” said Jay. “My favorite anime might be referencing the local religion, so I want to take photos of monks. Do you think Dad’s ever been to Sheridan?”

“No clue, but not if he could help it,” said his mother. “Your father had a bad experience with centipede when he was about your age.”

“Really?” Jay pulled his notepad and pen from his pockets and flipped to the first fresh page. “Do you know what happened, exactly?”

“No, but maybe he’ll tell you when he calls tonight.”

Her cellphone rang. Jay laughed. “That sounds like him.”

“Gosh, he’s calling earlier than he said he would. I hope all’s well.” She flipped her phone open. “Dear, how’s New Delhi?” Jay heard his father’s boisterous voice. His mother smiled and coiled her hair around her fingers. “Your son is home, would you like to speak to him?” She passed her phone to Jay.

“Dad! Mom says you’re calling early. Did you forget India has half-hour time-zones?”

His father chuckled. “I guess I did. Jay, how are you?”

“I’m considering a trip to the Islands of Sheridan. Have you ever heard of them?”

The phone was silent for a moment. “I have been there, once. It was a refueling-stop on a discount flight from Chile to New Zealand. I didn’t get off the plane.”

“Could you help me find a flight like that? I want to photo-catalog Sheridanian religious-practices.”

“Oh.” His father licked his teeth. “You know, a flight-attendant told me those are the islands where crickets and centipedes come from.”

“I know, Dad.”

“I don’t mind that you smoke bug-sticks now and then. I got bug-eyed at your age, too. But don’t mess with centipedes, okay?”

Jay prepared his pen. “Mom said you’d had a bad experience with centipede. Could you tell me about it?”

“Hmmm.” His father moved the phone to his other ear. “Well, in my late twenties I attended a conference in Thailand. At a night-market some colleagues bought centipede-powder, which was even rarer then than it is now. I’d never heard of the stuff, but my colleagues said it was like cricket, so I tried it. It felt like… Well…” His father moved the phone back to his first ear. Jay took note of this anxiety. “I wasn’t myself. I felt like I was in hundreds of pieces. All my pieces were falling, falling, falling, and it was yellow everywhere. Then my pieces landed on something red. It felt like searing knives slicing every inch of my skin, or crawling through hot barbed wire.”

“Wow.” Jay penned the quote as quickly as his father spoke. This sounded like worms dropping from the mustard sky onto rusty sand.

“All my pieces had to bury themselves deeper and deeper to stop hurting all over,” he said. “The deeper I dug, the less I remembered. Just before I slipped away, I woke up alone in a Bangkok alleyway with no wallet, watch, or passport.”

Jay realized his centipede-trip had been a lucky one, even if the bird had spooked him. “Gotcha. I’ll stick to bug-sticks.”

—

Reviewing his plane-tickets, Jay knew he’d be sitting for most of the next two days. He’d fly in a classic jumbo-jet from LA to a layover in Chile, then disembark a smaller plane bound for New Zealand as it refueled on the Islands of Sheridan. He’d take a bird-watching tour of the islands then catch a plane refueling in Sheridan for its return to Chile. After another layover, he’d fly back to LA.

Signing up for the bird-watching tour was surprisingly simple considering he doubted the islands’ existence until days ago. Sheridan’s official website was nothing but a link to a PDF-file which Jay printed, filled out, signed, scanned, and returned with credit-card payment of about two hundred American dollars, pretty cheap for a three-day tour with room and board provided. By signing the file, he agreed to the three requirements also listed in the red card-stock pamphlet: no pictures of birds, no centipedes, no climbing the main island above the clouds. Were signatures even enforceable in international waters?

The morning was so cold he blew fog to warm his hands. Then he counted his fingers: ten. He’d woken at 4 AM to wait by the curb for Dan. Dan’s sleep schedule had inverted since Beatrice’s death, and he seemed eager for excuses to leave his apartment, so Jay thought asking for a 4:30 ride to the airport was a kindness.

Jay mentally reviewed the contents of his backpack and pockets. Clothes, traveling toiletries, and medications. His passport, ID, and a book for the plane. Camera, notepad, and pens. Portable chargers, fully charged. A healthy supply of American currency, half in his wallet, half hidden in his shoes. He nodded and sighed fog.

His phone vibrated. Dan had texted him. ‘I’m not coming. Faith should be there soon.’

Jay typed with his thumb. ‘Everything alright?’

‘Faith wanted to say bye before you left,’ texted Dan. ‘I sent her in my car.’

Sure enough, Dan’s orange VW-bug rolled around the corner. Faith parked next to Jay and gave him a tired smile under dark eyes. Jay texted Dan ‘Thank you’ as he sat shotgun.

“JayJay! How’ve you been?”

“It’s always good to see you, Faith.” Jay buckled up and Faith pulled away from the curb. “The islands are apparently real, but I’m still not sure I believe you met those monks. I guess I’ll find out soon.”

“Are you excited for Sheridan?”

“Absolutely,” said Jay. “I’ll show you my photos when I’m back. The islands were drawn beautifully in that pamphlet of yours.”

“Gonna get more centipede?”

“Eeeugh. No thanks.” Jay laughed. “Zephyrs, Wheels, Chains, and a bird-monster with no sense of personal-space. That whole experience was like watching an episode of LuLu’s with a fever of a hundred and ten.”

“That’s just because you’re a dweeb, JayJay! If you’d watched more Blue’s Clues growing up, that bird-thing might’ve been a dog.” She ramped onto the highway. Come rush-hour, the traffic would weave into a thick jam, but for now, the streets were empty. “How long is the flight?”

“Forty hours both ways. A direct flight would barely be twelve.”

“Bummer.”

Jay opened his backpack to check if anything had escaped. “So… how’s Dan holding up, do you think?”

“He’s… Well, he’s inconsolable, but so was I, for a while.” Faith rubbed her eyes. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Jay appraised Faith’s expression with great concern. He would never forget how she cried against his chest. If she couldn’t discuss it, he’d change the subject. “We’re making great time. Thanks for the ride.”

“No prob, JayJay.” Faith gently curved along the highway. “Hey, do you need… um… hygiene products? I’ve got extras in my purse.”

“Ha.” Jay smiled. “Not after a year of testosterone.”

“Oh, okay.” She smiled with him. “Just trying to help.” The morning sun beamed through an airport parking-structure. Faith took the next exit. “You know, stuck inside all day, I’ve had lots of time to practice painting.”

“Yeah?”

“A company wants to print holiday-cards with my foxes on them.”

“Faith! That’s great!” Jay zipped up his backpack and unbuckled his seat-belt as she parked. “I’d better get one for Christmas.”

“Why wait?” Faith popped the glove-box and fished for a white envelope. “I sketched on the inside. Now you’ve got a Featherway original!”

“Thank you, Faith! This means a lot to me.” He put the envelope in his backpack. “I’ll open it on the plane, okay?”

Faith bit her lip. “Wait until after customs.”

—

Jay just sat. His mind was like the empty yellow sky. Then he stood and looked down either side of his rust-red dune. Clouds brushed the daunting slopes beneath him. He was miles high.

Rather than descend either side of his dune, Jay ran along its crest. Each step cracked a vertebrae in the dune’s back. Sand collapsed in hot, coarse rivers. His feet sank until the current swept him away and he fell through a cottony cloud. The sand sloped to roll him along the desert floor. He shot up an opposing dune and sailed like a skeeball.

While he spun, he counted his fingers. “One, two, three, four, five,” he counted on his left hand. “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen—” He was asleep. He was dreaming. He could fly like the Heart of the Mountain, that steam-powered bird.

The dunes grew into great sand-walls, but he blasted above them. Below, the yellow sky melted into golden honey and poured around the red mountain like heavenly syrup. Jay smeared the sunset thin like a masseuse oiling a back. Soon the dunes were dark with night.

Jay opened his eyes. His head rested on the window of a discount flight bound for New Zealand. Outside, the sky was black and starry; most of the passengers slept. Jay shook his limbs awake as best he could in his cramped seat. It would be mid-morning when he arrived in Sheridan.

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?” asked the man on Jay’s right. “Me neither.” Jay tried to smile at him, but something about the man made smiling quite difficult. He was about Jay’s age, bald, and heavy enough to be almost spherical, occupying two chairs and still leaking into Jay’s. He wore a loud red Hawaiian shirt frumpishly buttoned all the way to his neck, which was equally red. He wore dark sunglasses, even at night, on an airplane. “Yeah, it’s hard to sleep on a plane, am I right?” the man went on. “Obnoxious folks, no self-awareness, noisier than all the crying babies.”

Jay had no clue if the man said that ironically or not. “I was actually asleep for a while.” Jay counted his fingers: ten. “Now I’m awake.” He unzipped his backpack and opened a bag of chips from Chile.

The man grabbed a whole fistful and ate them all at once. “Going to New Zealand?”

Jay hadn’t meant to offer him chips, but supposed the way he opened the bag might have looked like an invitation to share. “I’m hopping off when we refuel.” Jay ate the few remaining chips one at a time. “Sheridan.”

“Ah. Me too. The ol’ ball-and-chain Eva drags me and her kid back every few months to look at birds.” He jerked his thumb at his wife and her six-year-old daughter across the aisle. “Chicks, am I right?” He sighed. “How about you? What’re you here for?”

“I’m not a bird-watcher,” said Jay. “I’m a people-watcher. I want to photograph religious activities on the islands.”

“Religious, huh?” He pronounced the word with a smug smile. “I see how it is.”

“I’m not religious per se,” said Jay. “I’m mostly curious how Sheridanian religion interacts with psychoactive bugs.”

“Oh? Yeah?” The man leaned close. “Now you sound like my kinda guy.” Jay turned to the window and crossed his arms. “Hey, it’s okay! Don’t tell me anything I shouldn’t know!” The man laughed. “Guys like us gotta stick together, am I right?”

Jay cringed at the haunting image of ‘sticking together’ with the man, trapped with his orb-like belly inside his red Hawaiian shirt. He reminded Jay of an itty-bitty Hurricane Planet. “Do you like anime, Mr. Hurricane?”

“Huh?”

Each seat’s headrest held a screen for canned TV. “I’m impressed. They’ve got LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration.” Before Mr. Hurricane could interject, Jay donned headphones and hummed the opening theme.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2019.

Jay disembarked a plane in Australia. Compared to the winter he’d left in Los Angeles, the walk across the runway into Sydney Airport was sweltering. That season-swap across the equator always made him count his fingers: he had ten, so he was certainly awake. He turned off his smartphone’s airplane-mode and called his father. His father had worked in every country on Earth, and generously financed Jay’s expeditions, so he always deserved the first call, but they also both just liked to talk. “Hey, it’s your son. Just wanted to let you know I’ve landed safely in Sydney.”

“Oh, Jay!” He heard his father pull himself out of bed. “Have you taken any good photos yet?”

Jay uncapped the digital camera hanging from his neck. He took a picture of the Sydney skyline through an airport window. “Now I have, but I’m getting right back on another plane to the outback. I’m visiting some ancient aboriginal art discovered near Uluru, because I think Dan will like reading an article about it.”

“Uluru?”

“A giant sandstone formation, a few hundred miles from Alice Springs.” Jay’s whole life fit in his suitcase, so he left behind fellow passengers stuck getting their luggage off conveyor-belts.

“Ah. Last time I visited, that was mostly called Ayer’s Rock.”

“I thought you’d done business in Australia.” A bar looked like an appropriate place to rest for a minute. “Anything I should know?”

“That Simpsons episode where they visit down-under is surprisingly popular there. If people around the airport can tell you’re American, they might make a reference just to catch you off-guard. Please, send me a link to the article once it’s published!”

“I will.” Jay sat on a bar-stool and set down his suitcase, wondering if he could pass for Australian. “Just soda, mate,” he told the bartender. He felt he’d flubbed it. “You sound pretty tired, Dad. It’s about noon, here. Isn’t it late-afternoon in LA?”

“I’m not in LA. I’m on business in Egypt. It’s almost four AM.”

“Oh! Sorry about that. I’d ask you to pass the phone to Mom, but you can’t do that across the globe, can you?”

“It’s alright! Hold on, let me get her on this call, she’d love to hear you’ve landed.”

Jay and his father listened to the phone ring. The bartender gave Jay his soda. His mother answered. “Hello?”

“It’s Jay and me,” said his father. “He just called to tell us he’d landed in Sydney.”

“Hi, Mom!”

“Oh, Jay! Thanks for calling me.”

“No problem. “

“I always worry if you’re safe when you’re traveling, you know?”

“Because—” Jay checked over both shoulders. No one in the bar seemed interested in his phone-call, but he spoke quieter anyway. “Because I’m black? Or because I’m trans?”

“Because traveling is dangerous, Sweetie! But neither of those really help in some areas, do they?”

“Really, son, keep your eyes open,” said his father. “I’ve met some pretty unsavory characters out in the world.”

Jay wanted to tell them he often felt safer traveling now that he presented as male—he actually looked like a less-nervous Dan nowadays—but he decided not to complicate the conversation. Besides, as he took photos and conducted interviews and wrote articles, all he ever did was keep his eyes open. “Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. I’m gonna let you get back to sleep and call Dan, too. Maybe you should give him a call, Dad. He could tell you all about the pyramids, or whatever Egyptology catches your interest.”

“Bye, Jay,” said his father.

“Bye! Good luck!” said his mom.

“Buh-bye.” Jay hung up. He sipped soda and dialed Dan’s number. “Hey, Dan!”

“Jay? You must’ve landed somewhere new.”

“I’m in Australia, headed for Uluru, Ayer’s Rock. What can you tell me about aboriginal culture?”

“Oh, wow. Jealous, jealous, jealous. The aboriginal dreamtime is one of the oldest religions on the planet. It’s hard to say anything concretely, though, since there’s a whole lot of variety, and modern pop-culture has recontextualized it beyond recognition.” Jay heard Dan pull books from a shelf and flip through the pages. Jay reached into his pockets for his notepad and pen. “As I understand it, the basic idea is that the creation of today’s world was carried out by cultural icons and folk-heroes. For instance, some say wars between serpents gave Uluru its modern shape. A person’s ancestry links them all the way back to that ancient era, so there’s this notion of accruing worldly knowledge from then to now, before our birth and after our death.”

Jay wrote that in his notepad. “Pft. Haha.”

“What’s funny?”

“The name ‘Uluru’ makes me think of LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration. Professor Akayama is simulating Earth’s life to gather data in a bunch of worms, so maybe Tatsu is riffing on the dreamtime.”

“Like I said, pop-culture borrows from religions all the time—even unintentionally. Lots of belief-structures involve creation-myths and connection to ancestors. Uluru probably inspired Uzumaki’s red mountain, too, so those wars between serpents are still ongoing.” Dan sighed and shut his books. “I lent my LuLu’s DVDs to Faith and Beatrice.”

“Great! Faith liked that show, especially Akayama’s little white fox at the end. I’m sure Beatrice will, too.”

“I hope so. I…” Dan was silent for so long, Jay wondered if his phone had dropped the call. “I’m trying to get back on their good side after I made a scene at a party last year.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

“I’d rather not talk about it. Maybe you could call them for me?”

“Well, alright. Maybe some other time? I like hearing stories from every side.” Jay capped his pen. “Thanks as always for the theology, Dan.”

“Bye, Jay.”

“Buh-bye.” Jay hung up.

The bartender saw Jay finish his soda. “That’ll be nine hundred dollary-doos.” Jay pretended he was caught off-guard. The bartender guffawed. “I’m joshin’ ya, mate! Four bucks fifty.”

He left a fiver and left the bar. As he walked to his next terminal, he dialed Faith’s number. He felt a little like Zephyr-Purple, connecting disparate groups together. “Hey, Faith?”

“JayJay! You’re on speakerphone.” He heard the LuLu’s theme playing in the background.

“Hi, Jay,” said Beatrice. “We’re just watching TV before dinner.”

“Dan told me he lent you LuLu’s.” Jay showed his tickets to an airport-agent at the gate. “Are you enjoying it?”

“Yep! BeatBax and I just finished the first episode.”

“I like the biblical scale,” said Beatrice. “First episode, boom, the observable universe is Hell. Now fix it.“

“Dan, um.” Jay boarded his next plane. “Dan told me he made a scene at a party, and he was trying to apologize.”

“Um. Yeah.” Faith paused the DVD as the theme-song finished. “Dainty tried to start a fight. Don’t get me wrong, the other guy was being a total shithead—remember the bald kid in homeroom, always wearing sunglasses?—but I didn’t think Dainty handled the situation well.”

Beatrice huffed. “Dan and I had talked about this guy creeping on me, so Dan got all worked up over him. He always tries too hard to relate to me.”

“Dan’s still learning to be himself.” Jay found himself a window-seat. “I think it’d be nice if we swung by for his birthday.”

“When’s Dainty’s birthday?”

“Same day as mine,” said Jay. The plane rolled onto the runway. “Sunday two weeks from today.”

“What do you say, BeatBax?”

“If I decide Dan’s putting me on some stupid pedestal, I’m leaving.”

Jay chuckled to himself. He was never sure where Beatrice’s dark humor ended and actual derision began. “We’ll give you some nice excuse to leave early if you need to,” he said.

“I’ll bring some religious-lit to distract him, too,” said Faith. “I’ve still got that red card-stock pamphlet from the Islands of Sheridan!”

Jay laughed and chewed some gum, preparing for take-off. “The pamphlet you got from those monks you didn’t make up?”

“That’s the one! The monks gave me powdered centipede with the pamphlet, too. Maybe Dainty can help me smoke it. I know he’s got a cool bong.”

Jay was more incredulous than ever. “Beatrice, she’s joking, right? Did Faith actually meet these monks, or is it just an excuse for having illegal bugs? I thought Tatsu made up centipedes for LuLu’s until a street-merchant tried selling me one in Ukraine.” That guy had never heard of anime; Jay had asked.

“If it’s just an excuse, she’s really going the extra mile,” said Beatrice. “She actually has that pamphlet, so either she got it from monks or she made it herself.”

—

When Jay reached Uluru, he took plenty of pictures. The massive rock formation touched something primal in him, especially when the sunset painted it bright red. Still he couldn’t shake a disappointment which made him ashamed of himself. Here he was, observing a world-famous natural landmark, legendary object of myth and folklore, immeasurable in size and importance, but he’d expected it to be bigger, like a mountain he’d seen once in a dream. Dan was right: LuLu’s had spoiled him.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is… Um…

The desert sand was baked rust-colored. Mile-high dunes crawled over infinite plains. The mustard-yellow sky veiled a red mountain on a natural stone step so massive its hazy features extended into space. Pink earthworms fell from the stars one at a time like rare raindrops, hit the sand, and immediately dug themselves deep.

A lone, cottony cloud zipped across the yellow sky spilling vapor in its wake. It hovered over a particular valley between two dunes, apparently satisfied with them. Then the cloud fell six feet left and six feet right, beginning a corkscrew descent. With each downward loop, it thickened and cooled. Soon the cloud was a falling hailstone, but on impact with hot sand, it popped like a bubble into forty pounds of pure white snow.

The snow jumped and steamed and clumped together. “Oh! Ow, hot, hot, hot!” The snow’s voice was feminine. “Damn.” She shook out some slender legs and used them to brush ice from her cold blue eyes. She sharpened her claws in the sand and used them to sculpt crystal whiskers on her snout. She kicked frost from her hind feet, leaving a fluttery, airy tail behind her, and tiptoed to the shadow of a dune, where the sand was cooler.

After a quick nap, she dug at the dune, pausing only to eat the earthworms she uncovered, and any which landed nearby. She finally excavated a cobblestone wall with a hinged panel. She sat before it, straightening her tail and biting sand from her fur.

Eventually the hinged panel clicked. A sand-curtain fell to reveal the wall was one side of a gray stone box. “Well, it’s about time!” She strutted to the box. “Come out already.” The monk in the box pushed the panel open. It was Dan, sitting crossed-legged in a cramped compartment, nude. Soot smeared his pale skin. “How am I supposed to fly you to the Mountain? You’re way too big for me.” She hopped her front paws onto the lip of the compartment, and gagged inspecting him. “Get a loincloth! It’s too early in the morning to look at monk junk.”

Dan leaned over her. She reminded him of the white powder spewed into the Wheel to begin the eternities. “Something’s wrong. You’re that fox!”

“And you’re a hobo,” said the snow-white fox. “What’s so wrong with a fox, huh?”

“When I smoked centipede, you took some of my worms to Anihilato.”

“I’ll take bad worms to Anihilato. I’ll take good worms to the Mountain. It’s really up to me, so if you think you’re attaining Zephyrhood naked and sooty, you’ve got another think coming!”

“But my worms are stuck together, aren’t they?” Dan checked his hands to make sure he was one solid piece, no extra teeth or anything. “I thought that meant the Biggest Bird would collect me in person.”

“Bug-Bird sent me,” said the fox. Sheridanians might call the Biggest Bird ‘the Heart of the Mountain,’ but the nickname ‘Bug-Bird’ was news to Dan. “Who sent you?“

“Virgil Blue.”

The fox stopped wagging her tail and returned to all fours. “Really? You’re one of Virgil Blue’s?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, maybe you’re alright, then.” She sat on her haunches. “Clean yourself up quick and let’s start moving. In the desert, it’s only a matter of time before Anihilato finds us. I can just fly away from it, but you look like you’re landlocked.”

Dan pulled himself from the stone box, pouring soot onto the sand. “I knew Anihilato would be a problem for me. The idea of worms kept from the Mountain—even bad worms—it just doesn’t sit right.” Dan used his washcloth to wipe off all the ash he could. “I’m not sure why I could take a washcloth to the next eternity but not my robes. I guess the desert’s too hot for robes anyway.” He pulled the washcloth around his waist and tied it into a loincloth. “Is that better?”

“Much better.” The fox brushed Dan with her tail as she turned to lead him away. “I usually rein in a few worms at a time, so there ain’t no way I can carry you. You’re right, Bug-Bird should be doing this instead of me.”

“I’m kind of relieved, actually.” Dan followed her up a steep dune. He struggled with the slippery sand slope, but Faith walked like she was weightless. “I’ve studied with monks and Virgils for the last seven years. The way Sheridanians describe the Biggest Bird sounds pretty intimidating, like an angel who tells you to be not afraid of all their flaming eyeballs. What’s your name? Are you a Zephyr?”

“Faith,” she said. “I’m a Will-o-Wisp.”

Dan had never heard of a Will-o-Wisp in Sheridanian folklore, not even in LuLu’s, but he recognized the fox’s name. “Faith? Faith Featherway?”

Faith the fox looked back to him. “Do I know you?”

He pat his chest. “It’s me! Dan Jones! I should’ve known it was you!”

“Dainty! No wonder Bug-Bird sent me!” Faith leapt up and hovered on water-vapor to walk next to him at eye-level. “Gosh, you’re older than I last saw you. I didn’t recognize you all covered in soot. Good ol’ Dainty Jones… We’ve got a nice long hike ahead of us, so we’ve got plenty of time to catch up on our way to the Mountain.”

Sliding one step back for each two forward, Dan finally came to the top of the dune. Countless miles away, the red mountain sat on a tall plateau like a throne. Dan stopped atop the dune to let the Mountain’s impossible heights fulfill him, but he couldn’t smile quite yet. “Is Beatrice there with you? Are her worms Zephyrs, yet?”

Faith sighed. “If she is, I haven’t seen her. But just look at me! If BeatBax’s worms have made it to the Mountain, I probably wouldn’t pick them out of a crowd.” She dropped from the air to wait by Dan’s feet. “You’re filthy, Dainty. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Dan swallowed and stared at the empty yellow sky. His hands twitched. “If Beatrice isn’t in the Mountain, the King of Dust might take her worms for itself.”

“I hope not. Anihilato’s such an ass. I don’t deliver it many worms, but when I do, I drop them from really, really high up. The one time we did meet, it tried to grab me.”

“Then I definitely want to stop by. You said we’re in its desert, right? Let’s take some of its worms to the Mountain with us.”

“Do it yourself.” Faith turned to the Mountain and climbed empty air like a staircase to leave Dan behind atop the dune. “I don’t wanna see that thing again.”

“I’ll protect you, I promise!” Dan chased after her, but could only slide down the dune while she ascended away from him. “I just have to make sure Beatrice is alright. You know how I worry about her. I’ve even brought Anihilato an offering.” Dan took his cricket from behind his ear and held it up for her to see. “A cricket from Virgil Blue! You can help us smoke it.”

“Well… okay.” Faith circled back and glided down to him like she was on a playground slide. “But only ’cause there’s nothing but cockroaches over here. I can’t stand it!” Faith walked down the dune with Dan. “Lemme light that cricket for you, Dainty! We’ll get bug-eyed on the way.”

“We’ve got to share it. We’ll bum a lighter off the King of Dust.”

—

When worms dropped from the yellow sky onto the hot dry sand, they dug deep into the darkness, seeking cool moisture. Longer, larger worms left tunnels in their wakes. The longest, largest worm carved cold caverns with twenty arms and twenty legs, eating all the other worms it found along the way. When it exhaled, it lined its labyrinths with frost.

The longest worm cradled ten eggs, one in each pair of hands. Their yolks radiated warmth alien to the underground, like distant stars at night. It admired them with six eyes on a head shaped like a man’s, but larger, cracked, and dry. It bent its head to the first egg and continued bending, coiling around its eggs three times. Then its ten pairs of legs gripped its body with its knees, holding the worm in a tight disk. Secured around warmth like this, it slept.

It woke when it heard a voice. “Aren’t you chilly, Dainty?”

“Yeah. I thought it’d be hotter down here.”

It unwound, then wound around a few cavern corners to sight its intruders with all three pairs of eyes. A snow-white fox had entered its lair, and a monk in a grimy loincloth was following her. “Whoa! I don’t like this, Dainty. It’s bigger than last time I saw it!”

Dan counted the longest worm’s limbs as it curled and uncurled like a cobra. It had ten pelvises connected in series and ten stacked torsos held upright with serpentine musculature. Each pelvis and torso was a little larger than a human’s, so the total shape was like an orderly queue commanding others to wait behind it in line. “Anihilato? O King of Dust?” It didn’t answer. It whispered gibberish as it stuck each of its ten egg in a cave-wall. “I’m Dan Jones, I’m a monk. This is my friend Faith Featherway, she’s a Will-o-Wisp from the Biggest Bird. She once brought you some of my worms.”

The longest worm blinked its six eyes at them one eye at a time. It had no nose, but slim nostrils. “Anihilato? King of Dust? Don’t forget, mortal, I’m the Master of Nihilism, too!”

“I’m still learning.” Dan wouldn’t remark that the idea of a Master of Nihilism didn’t make any sense. Surely a nihilist would know there was nothing to be mastered. Dan held out the cricket. “Do you have a lighter?”

Anihilato, King of Dust, Master of Nihilism, said nothing, just appraising its invaders. Its long body threatened to surround and constrict them. “C’mon, Dainty. Let’s scram.” Faith turned to the exit. “I told you this was thing was freaky.”

“I’m the Master of Nihilism,” Anihilato repeated, “which means all worms are rightfully mine.” It illustrated this by eating worms off the ground with six hands at once, becoming slightly larger with each one. Dan was revolted knowing some of his own worms contributed to the monster’s mass, but he kept his disgust to himself. Its mouth had no lips, so when worm-blood leaked, Anihilato wiped its chin and licked its hands. “If the fox let you keep some of your worms, then she didn’t do her job right.”

“Cool it,” said Faith. “Bug-Bird sent me to bring him in, ’cause Dainty here’s basically a Zephyr—his worms are all stuck together! You’re lucky he’s decided to visit you on his way to the Mountain, because that’s where his worms belong!”

“You’re lucky,” said Anihilato. “Your worms are about to join the winning team and contribute to my ultimate victory. I’m almost large enough to eat the Biggest Bird when she comes to claim me, so eating you will secure my inevitable triumph. But the monk’s worms are stuck together, so before I swallow him whole, I’ll do the supreme favor of proving I own him, and why that’s for the best.” It retreated behind a dark corner and returned dragging a metal filing-cabinet eight cabinets high, four feet deep, and almost as long as Anihilato’s whole body. It looked out-of-place in the worm’s grungy labyrinth lair, as if it came from an abandoned office-building. “The Heart of the Mountain gave me this box of souls with a certificate for every worm.”

Anihilato’s twenty arms opened and searched through all the filing-cabinets at once. Dan peeked inside: each cabinet had countless compartments, and each compartment held a Rolodex full of pink business-cards. Anihilato plucked more cards from these Rolodexes than it seemed possible for a Rolodex to hold. Was this filing-cabinet legitimately produced by the Biggest Bird? Where else could it’ve come from? Dan bobbed the cricket. “If you help light it, you can help smoke it.”

“Dan Jones.” Anihilato slammed all the cabinets shut, holding innumerable pink cards in every hand. It read through the cards with three eyes while the other three squinted at Dan. “See? Make no claims to Zephyrhood while I hold your worm-certificates.”

“Uh, this guy was sent by Virgil Blue.” Faith’s tail puffed up aggressively. “Are you gonna tussle with Virgil Blue?“

“I already have!” said Anihilato. “Your Blue Virgil’s worms were among the first I ever ate!”

Faith leapt like she was pinning down a snake. “Nuh-uh! No way!“

“Faith, it’s fine.” Dan didn’t believe a single word from Anihilato, but he’d play along to learn more about the filing-cabinet. If Anihilato actually believed in the merit of these certificates, then they might be a way to save some worms—and if Anihilato was almost large enough to eat the Biggest Bird, Dan had to save every worm he could! He tucked the cricket behind his ear. “Can I have my worm-certificates? I want to read them.”

Anihilato hesitated, but, with a sigh, gathered the pink cards into one pair of hands. The innumerable cards miraculously stacked to the mere thickness of a poker-deck. “I’m only humoring you because the Blue Virgil’s worms make me so patient with fools.” It passed the pink cards to the monk.

Dan nodded appraising the cards as if he accepted their legitimacy. He’d never learned to read Sheridanian very well anyway. “Why did the Heart of the Mountain give you permission to eat all these worms, O Master of Nihilism?”

“The Mountain can’t collect worms for itself. Worms must find the Mountain, not vice-versa. The Mountain thinks I’m helping worms along their way.” Anihilato grinned. Its dull teeth had no gums. “If I’m large enough when the Biggest Bird comes to fetch me, I’ll eat her alive, and I won’t need her paperwork for permission. Then I’ll be large enough to eat the whole Mountain at once! You should be glad I’m eating your worms. I’m carrying them toward absolute conquest over our supposed creator.”

“Hmm.” Dan still wasn’t sure Anihilato was telling the truth, but a betrayal of the Biggest Bird was worth opposing regardless. “Well, Virgil Blue once told me the Biggest Bird made our worms from dust. As the King of Dust, I guess it just makes sense that you’d own me.” Dan shuffled the pink cards together and forcefully folded them in half. “If you had my worm-certificates.”

Anihilato’s jaw hung open. “…I do.“

“Then what am I holding?” Dan held up the folded cards.

Anihilato shook its head and pointed at its filing-cabinet with ten hands. “You saw me take those from my box of souls mere moments ago.”

“I sure did.”

“So all your worms belong to me.”

“I don’t follow. You don’t have my worm-certificates.”

Anihilato reared, bumping the filing-cabinet. Its flared limbs were like a manta’s mantle. “Mortal, I’ll explain it one more time!” It jabbed at Dan with pointing fingers. “You think you deserve to be an immortal facet of the Mountain, but, you came to me first. I, therefore, claim you, here and now!”

Faith whispered over her shoulder. “Let’s get outta here, Dainty. This gives me the creeps.”

Dan just smiled. “Maybe the Mountain already reclaimed my worm-certificates, and you just forgot?”

Frustration bent Anihilato’s limbs. Froth bubbled between its teeth. Its slim nostrils opened and closed. “I gave them to you less than a minute ago!”

“Now you remember.” Dan tucked the folded cards into his loin-cloth. “I’ve seen the Mountain in me. I asked for my worm-certificates, and the Mountain asked for my worm-certificates. You gave them to me, and you gave them to the Mountain. Everything’s in order. My worms are my own.”

Anihilato stomped so hard the caverns shook and knocked over the filing-cabinet; frost fell off the labyrinth walls. The quakes made Faith jump. “You can’t escape nihilism by faking knowledge you don’t comprehend! Such awful students make the best eggs, Dan Jones! You escape on technicality while I pretend to follow the Biggest Bird’s command, but when I’m large enough to ignore paperwork and eat the Mountain, I’ll slurp you out of it and make you a delicious egg!”

“Pleasure doing business, Anihilato.”

“You Zephyrs are crazy.” Faith forced a worried smile with her vulpine muzzle. “I found this guy naked in a box, Anihilato. He’s the real deal, I promise!” She leapt and floated on cave-moisture. “Can’t you see it’s dangerous here, Dainty? Lemme take you to the Mountain.”

“Don’t talk like you’re leaving, wisp. You still belong to me.” Anihilato’s next breath sucked icy wind from every corner of the endless caverns.

Faith yelped as her airy tail drifted towards the King of Dust. “Help! Dainty! Make it stop!” She tried to run, but slipped backward each step.

Dan grabbed the fox in both hands. Snow flew through his fingers. “Anihilato, quit it! Now!”

Faith fought the wind that ripped her snowflakes away. “Help, help!”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t—” Her body vanished bit-by-bit until finally her terrified eyes flew into Anihilato’s lipless mouth. “She’s my friend. Let her go.”

“Your friend is mine.” Anihilato’s legs rolled an egg over the cavern-floor. Its bottom arms passed the egg to its top arms, which held the egg to its face. “She’s an awful egg. Frigid. Pale. Transparent. Why, she hardly has any worms at all! I’ll eat them once they’ve split apart.”

“Hatch her. Please.” Dan knelt and pressed his nose into the dirt. “She met Virgil Blue. Twice. They traded gifts. If you really have his worms, you know this would devastate him.”

“She’s not hatching. She’s fermenting until her worms are digestible.” Anihilato slithered to the egg-wall. “Begone, Dan Jones.”

“I’ll bet you my worms for hers.”

Anihilato looked back at the monk. Dan unfolded his worm-certificates and rest them reverently before the longest worm. “…I’ll allow this,” said Anihilato, “because you say you’re a student of Virgil Blue. Having eaten your master’s worms, I can’t resist administering a test.” It swapped Faith’s egg for another from the wall and carried the new egg to Dan. “For Virgil Blue I’ll allow this unwashed, nude, and prostrate fool the honor of wagering his worms for the sake of a frigid rat who didn’t even make a warm enough egg.” It set the new egg before him. “But your challenge will prove fatal if you lied! Only a true disciple of Virgil Blue could hope to survive.”

—

Eggshell isolated it, an ivory wall. Egg-whites pulsed with its subtle heartbeat. Yellow yolk sunned its joints. Prematurely, it was gripped by desire for birth. It pecked and spread wings to breach its shell and release the egg-whites. It felt dirt in its claws. Behind, Anihilato snacked on eggshell and licked yolk from each fingertip. “Your challenge, Dan Jones.”

It was fist-sized with blue feather-fluff. Its beak bore a scythe’s curve, but its one eye held an innocent youth. Where its other eye would’ve been, its left side was a mess of boils and teeth with crowns and roots jutting out at odd angles. “Is it a bird?” asked Dan.

“It’s a hobby,” said Anihilato. “My eggs are useful only for warmth—and for separating self-assured worm-tangles like you.”

“And the teeth?”

“Virgil Blue must’ve taught you of the Screeching Teeth… if you did study with him, of course. Surely you know the danger of locking eyes with the afflicted?” As the words left Anihilato’s lipless mouth, Dan found his gaze fixed on the bird’s beady black eye. His pupils tightened in concentration. The two stared motionlessly. Anihilato wriggled near to whisper in Dan’s ear. “Virgil Blue’s worms make me invulnerable to the teeth. My spawn aren’t so lucky—and they’re infectious!”

“I’m beyond the teeth.” Dan tried to leave worry behind. “You took my bad worms. That’s all you’ll ever get from me.”

“Your trembling disagrees.” Anihilato put three hands on both Dan’s shoulders. “Blink, Jones, and you’ll succumb to Screeching Teeth. To end your unimaginable suffering, I’ll claim you. Your worms will soak in an egg until your ego melts, and then I’ll eat your soul!“

The bird turned its head so its eye faced him head-on, but thoughts of the teeth on the other side still tickled Dan’s brain. He imagined a molar embedded in his throat. He felt a canine burrowing behind his cheekbone. “Peep,” said the bird. It looked down and pecked the dirt. Dan released his breath.

“Well done, Danny-boy!” The King of Dust slapped his back. “Perhaps you really have met Virgil Blue, once or twice.”

“Where’s Faith?” Dan crossed his legs and covered his eyes. “I won’t look until I hear her voice!”

“Oh, hush, Jones. I’ll hatch her, but I’m keeping her worm-certificates.” It climbed over the filing-cabinet to choose Faith’s egg from the wall. “If she returns, I’ll reclaim her—and once I’m large enough to eat the Mountain, she’s mine, just like you, whether I’ve got your worm-certificates or not!”

“Peep.”

Anihilato faced the bird and closed five eyes to match its gaze. “Begone!” The bird blinked. Its flesh bubbled and darkened until it was a black centipede with wriggling orange legs. Anihilato slurped it down alive. Satisfied, Anihilato gave Faith’s egg to Dan. “Faith Featherway, you’ve been conjured from the edge of oblivion.”

The egg cracked. Faith gasped from the crack in a cloud of fog. “Holy shit!”

“Faith! Are you okay?” Dan hugged her, but she evaded his arms like steam. “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t—“

“Let’s go!” She deposited behind him into shambling snow. She made a crude leg and shook it at the exit. “Dainty, run!”

“Faith—” Dan held himself back and shook his head. “Leave without me. I’ll be up soon.”

“What?” Faith produced another snow-leg and hobbled away. “Don’t tell me you wanna stay down here!”

“I just bet my worm-certificates for you.” Dan pointed at Anihilato’s box. “That means I’m not done. Anihilato’s already bigger than any bird I’ve ever seen, and I’ll be damned if I let it get any bigger eating all those other eggs. I can’t leave if Beatrice’s worms might be trapped here—or anyone’s, really. Every worm deserves the Biggest Bird, and the Biggest Bird deserves every worm. Anihilato, let’s make another wager.”

“Are you kidding?” Faith’s eyes emerged from the snow to glare at Dan. She carved herself a sharp snout. “Dainty, you’ve used up all our luck already!” When Dan didn’t turn, she jumped and shouted. “You’re a Zephyr! You’re supposed to go to the Mountain!“

“The Mountain is in me.” Dan stayed seated to show he wasn’t afraid of Anihilato, but Faith saw fear in his shaking hands. “I’ll join you up there when I’ve got Beatrice’s worm-certificates. And Jay’s. At least. Don’t they belong in the Mountain?”

“Dan! I miss them too, but there’s an order to things here!” She growled and bared her teeth. “Did you spend seven years in a monastery just to gamble your worms for old pals?”

“No, but now that I know it’s an option, I can’t think of a better reason. I should’ve devoted my whole life to this!”

Faith tssk‘d. “You’re a bad liar, Dainty. This was your plan all along. You’re right where you meant to be.” She turned tail to him. “I’m flying to the Mountain to tell Bug-Bird why I’m late.”

As she left, Anihilato squinted at Dan with three left eyes. “I won’t waste eternity gambling with you, monk. If I can’t have your worms, I’ll find more elsewhere.”

“Then let’s make it quick.” Dan pushed his pink cards toward the King of Dust. “I wager all my worms against your entire box of souls, right here, right now. I’ll drag you to the Mountain myself. It’s nice and warm up there, I promise.”

“…You cur! That warmth should be mine! Shut your mouth and match my gaze!” Anihilato stormed up to Dan in a flurry of limbs. “Lock eyes with the Master of Nihilism and feel your consciousness shred!” Its six shining eyes transfixed him. He couldn’t even breathe. “I’ve got you now, monk.” Dan closed his left eye. When his right eye burned, he opened his left eye and closed his right. “Don’t waste my time, Jones. Don’t you realize? All these eggs were heroic monks like you. You’re the biggest failure yet, and you’re giving me all the worms I’ll need to swallow the Mountain whole!”

A tooth broke the skin on Dan’s neck. He shuddered as blood trickled down his chest. He’d tried dying for Beatrice—for the Mountain! For the Zephyrs! For everyone! But now he knew it was only ever vanity.

Dan blinked.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2025.

Dan smiled. “Sheridanianism sure is comprehensible, with LuLu’s presenting it.” He turned off his smartphone during the anime’s end-credits. This year’s annotation-session lasted so long his window was letting in some sunrise. “Existence is often portrayed as a spinning disk, and that portrayal often holds up. Earth rotates to make day and night, and it orbits the sun to make the seasons. Electrons orbit an atom’s nucleus as standing waves, and the galaxy’s turns are the timepiece of the heavens. Lucille’s Wheel of life and death, Akayama’s high-dimensional donut—these are just more names for samsara, the cycle of reincarnation described in the Upanishads.“

“The Sheridanian position is that samsara is just another name for the Wheel,” Virgil Blue clarified. “You just watched the Biggest Bird give me her library of books from the future, after all. I knew about it before anyone else did.”

Dan shut the manga. “This was the last volume of LuLu’s printed before the hiatus. Tatsu wrote a few more issues, and more episodes came from them, but there wasn’t enough to print a full volume.”

“Correct.” Virgil Blue tucked the last volume up his sleeve. “That’s right.”

Dan waited for Virgil Blue to surprise him with something from this other sleeve. When he didn’t surprise him, Dan was surprised. “Don’t you have the next volume of LuLu’s in your books from the future?”

Virgil Blue laughed. He stood up leaning on his cane. “Let’s leave the last volume of LuLu’s for next year!”

—

The year is 2026.

On a cold, misty morning outside the white-walled monastery of Sheridan, beside a stone statue of a bird sheltering a man with its wings, Virgil Blue leaned on his cane and surveyed the coastline far below. The other two islands glittered in the sunrise, and the main island thrust a mountainous peak into the clouds, but these paltry sizes didn’t impress him anymore. The Mountain whose peak pierced the Heavens waited in the next eternity.

Virgil Blue heard whirring in the sky. A helicopter-drone dropped a package next to him and flew away. Through the compound-eyes of his silver mask, Virgil Blue read the package-sender’s Kansas City address. Inside the package was a volume of manga about colorful space-robots, and a note which read ‘The End Is Here.’ He tucked the volume up a navy sleeve. If he had any doubt before, it was gone now.

Virgil Blue wandered like the mist into his monastery halls. Bright tapestries dripped dew down alabaster walls. He stepped around puddles to save the hems of his navy robes and stopped beside Dan’s orange sliding paper door. “Oran dora, Danny. Are you ready for the end of the eternity?”

Dan slid the paper door open from inside. He was thirty-five years old with short brown hair, pale skin, and spotless orange robes. The same orange fabric lined the walls of his cramped quarters. Books of every color were open, cluttering the mattress. “I am ready.” His expression was pale and defeated. “Oran dora.“

“You still had reservations last night. You weren’t convinced I would die after you, or this eternity would end when I died.”

“My mom left me a voicemail.” Dan showed Virgil Blue his smartphone. “She has cancer. She’s been trying to tell me for a few months, but the signal in Sheridan is weakest in the winter.” Dan stood up on his mattress. “Virgil Green said when this eternity ends, everyone alive won’t really die. The story just stops.”

Virgil Blue nodded. Dan nodded back, pursing his lips. He wondered what the Virgil’s expression was like behind the mask. “Let’s skip breakfast,” said Blue. “Today our worms return to the original sun, and I promise, yours will stick together all the way to the Mountain’s Heart. Pick up your books and we’ll shelve them back under the bell-tower.”

“Okay. Okay.” Dan collected thirty pounds of books. He hefted them with both arms to join the Virgil in the hallway.

Virgil Blue closed the sliding paper door behind them with his cane, a curious object taller than him to compensate for a limp in his left hip on cold mornings like this. “This way, Danny. Eternity should end before Sheridanians wake up. The Biggest Bird awaits!”

Dan brushed wrinkles from his orange robes by rubbing his books against them. “I can’t thank you enough for accepting me into your monastery, and letting me annotate some silly giant space-robot manga. But I’m still so full of Earthly concerns!”

“That’s just your worms doing their job.” Virgil Blue pointed his cane’s gnarled, spotted tip down the hallway and led Dan from the monks’ quarters. “When our worms climb the Mountain, the Biggest Bird will eat such doubts. Whisper them to me and my worms will help you carry them.”

Their whispers echoed in the musty library, where bookshelves reached to the top of the bell-tower. Older titles were near the bottom and newer titles near the top, so Dan had to climb seven or eight shelves high to sort some of his books. He was mournful at the spines of those he hadn’t finished reading. “I’m worried for my friends, like Faith, and Jay, and Beatrice. They died without learning from you the way I did! Their worms must be so lost.”

“I’m sure the worms of Faith and Jay are as stuck together as yours and mine. As for Beatrice, we’ve never met, but there’s no sense worrying about the dead. Her worms are on their way to the Mountain, perhaps in you. Or perhaps she’s already saved some of your worms?” When Dan shelved the last of his books, Virgil Blue used a magician’s slight-of-hand to produce from his navy sleeves every volume of manga Dan had annotated, plus the new volume delivered by drone. “Shelve these, too.”

“What? LuLu’s, on the library shelves? But I thought you said it was only real to me.” Dan looked over the covers, paralyzed by the last one. He didn’t recognize it at all! The Galaxy Zephyr had extra arms and legs like the Vitruvian man, and horns wearing its former forms like garlands. “This is—post-hiatus?“

“The final volume.”

“Please, I have to read it!”

“Danny, in the next eternity, your worms and my worms won’t appear in the same time or place. I won’t be there to guide you. I need you to show me you can drop your attachments.” Under his navy hood and silver mask, Virgil Blue could only show his pity by tilting his head a little. “You’ll live this last volume, Danny. You, me, Faith, Jay, Beatrice, and everyone else. It’s the fate of all worms.”

Dan climbed the shelves almost to the top of the bell-tower to leave the manga where it belonged chronologically. He couldn’t bring himself to climb down, mourning at the manga’s spines. “All worms? You promise?”

“All worms. The Biggest Bird won’t leave a single one behind.” Dan finally descended. Virgil Blue tapped his back with his cane’s gnarled, spotted tip to urge him onward, out of the bell-tower.

“What about Anihilato? Isn’t it hoarding lost worms?”

“Anihilato?” Virgil Blue stopped walking. His silver mask’s buggy glare was overpowering. “I told you to forget that word, Danny.”

Dan gulped. “The Biggest Bird’s white fox took my bad worms to the longest worm, Anihilato, the King of Dust. How could I leave a part of myself behind?”

Under a navy sleeve, Virgil Blue wagged a finger disapprovingly. “The King of Dust can’t keep you from the Biggest Bird, Danny. Not unless you let it. I’ve seen the Mountain in you.” Virgil Blue gestured with his head, pointing with the feathers atop his silver mask. “If Anihilato bothers you, a washcloth is all you’ll need.” Beyond a meager dining-hall where cushions flanked squat tables, they entered the kitchen. With his cane’s butt, Virgil Blue swept a washcloth from a countertop into Dan’s hands. “Keep it until its purpose is clear.”

Dan folded the washcloth as they walked. He wasn’t sure if Virgil Blue actually intended the washcloth to be useful somehow, or if giving it to him was just a way to calm his nerves. “Did you read many books when you lived in America, Virgil Blue? Em, Jango?”

“I did. Why do you ask?”

“This washcloth is right out of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

“Take wisdom where you can find it, Danny. There are no coincidences.” At the heart of the monastery, Virgil Blue rapped the wall with his cane’s butt. The cobblestones cradled a hinged panel smeared with ash and grime. “Would you open the furnace? I’m not so limber in the morning.”

“Can I take off my robes? I’d like to keep them clean.”

“First clean the furnace. Then remove your robes. You can’t take them with you to the original sun.”

Dan swallowed. Virgil Blue was making him overcome his own spotlessness. “Yes, Virgil Blue.” He pried the panel ajar. The furnace vomited black ash over his orange robes. He pulled soot from the furnace with his bare hands.

“Are you sure the furnace is your path to the next eternity?” Virgil Blue watched Dan dirty himself. “Just because my way out has to be so unpleasant doesn’t mean yours has to be, too.”

“I’ll be contributing to the monastery.” Dan smiled thinking of LuLu’s, where characters could either proudly sacrifice themselves for the sake of others or vainly sacrifice themselves to escape their reality. Dan was determined to make his death the former. “Sometimes I feel like being warm is all I’m really good for.”

“Then I’ll be back soon. I’ve got a parting gift for you, Danny.”

“Virgil Blue?” The teacher met his student eye-to-compound-eye. Dan’s smile faltered and he looked out a window at the ocean. “I’m also bothered by…” He pat his blackened hands on his washcloth. “The Screeching Teeth. My bad worms made some, and even though the white fox took those worms to Anihilato, I’m sure there’s still some teeth in me. Will the Mountain accept me like that?”

The Virgil froze. Under the silver mask, Jango opened his mouth as if to speak, but found no words. Compassion bent his wrinkled brow. “You’re not worried about the Screeching Teeth. The Screeching Teeth is worry, Danny! Leave worry behind. Your worms are ready.” Dan nodded. “I’ve got a parting gift for you.” Virgil Blue limped away. Dan scraped ash from the furnace until he was caked in soot. From the storeroom nearby he brought ten logs of fresh firewood, just enough to warm the monastery. After loading the furnace, he removed his robes. He was nude underneath, with a hungry build. “Here you are, Danny.” Virgil Blue hobbled to Dan with an outstretched navy sleeve. “I planted this cricket myself. I dried it, cured it, plucked it, and wrapped it in its wings.”

Dan held the insect to his nose. It was three inches long, smooth along the shaft, tan in color, and had ten black eyes encircling its gnarled head, like a tiny version of the Virgil’s cane. “You flatter me, Virgil Blue.” Dan tucked the cricket behind his ear and climbed into the furnace, cracking kindling underfoot. “Can I have the incense?”

“Of course.” Virgil Blue guarded the smoldering end of an incense stick while Dan settled cross-legged atop the logs. Virgil Blue stood the incense in the tinder.

Dan watched embers light the kindling. “I’ll give the Biggest Bird a good word for you, sir.”

“I’ve never been good at saying goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Virgil Blue.”

“Goodbye, Danny.” Virgil Blue shut the furnace with his shoulder. The monastery warmed. Dan kicked and screamed. Virgil Blue thawed his hands by the furnace door. Then he left the white-walled monastery and climbed the island all the way above the forbidden cloud-cover, never to return.

And eternity ended.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2420.

Akayama mentally prompted Uzumaki through her tail. “Did you bring our water-world?”

“Here!” Uzumaki kept the water-world in an air-pocket which drifted to her at the Galaxy Zephyr’s heart. After the asteroid-bombardment, the water-world looked just like Earth used to. “It’s nice having ZAB aboard. Your robot endures the cold emptiness of space so I didn’t have to!”

“Gimme. And give them some space!” Akayama’s conscious effort expanded the air-pocket around the water-world. “When Earth exploded, its atomic particles were scattered. When you ate the galaxy, you gathered Earth’s ash.” She expelled the debris from Earth’s destruction into the air-pocket. It settled into an orbit around the water-world. “We’ll remake Earth’s population from their strewn and mixed corpses.” The ash compiled into innumerable wriggling earthworms. “It’ll take lots of statistics.”

“We’d better be quick about it!” Uzumaki and Akayama communicated at the speed of thought, so only now did the thumb destroy the Galaxy Zephyr’s metal capsule. “How long will it take?”

“Eternities.” Akayama surveyed the orbiting earthworms in her mind’s eye. “Even having our water-world to build upon, reconstructing Earth’s population from rubble is an impossible task. It will take eternities—but we have eternities.”

“No we don’t!” thought Uzumaki. “The thumb’s coming down!”

“We’ll make eternities!” thought Akayama. She saluted Lucille. “Commander,” she said aloud, “requesting permission to accelerate space-time itself!”

“Ganbatte!” Lucille had no idea what Akayama meant. “Do your best, Professor Bird-Thing!”

Akayama focused, boiling the Galaxy Zephyr’s worm-ridden chest. “I’m making a Nakayama, understand?”

“Um. No, I don’t,” thought Uzumaki. Akayama built a giant red mountain on the interior of her water-world’s air-pocket. Inside the mountain she produced a sky-robed, emerald-eyed bird-body, and duplicated her consciousness into it. “…Oh!” Uzumaki’s red mountain fired the bird-body at the water-world, through the orbit of wriggling earthworms. Nakayama spread sapphire wings to dive toward the largest of her three islands.

Mid-dive, Nakayama inspected wreckage from the tidal waves. The fruit-trees were smashed but some pines had survived, as had some goats and flightless birds. She was relieved to see the islanders living near the top of the mountainous main island, safe from floods. “Nemo! Virgil Blue!”

“Nakayama! Oran dora!” Nemo alone stood guard of the centipede-bushes, wearing navy robes. The fabric was dyed with selected flowers the same color as her feathers.

“I can’t apologize enough for the floods.” Nakayama landed beside him with uproar like a helicopter. “I’m glad you protected your children like that. I hope you enjoyed fruits while they lasted. I’m sure at least some coconut palm-trees survived besides the pines.”

Nemo nodded like he understood, but of course he couldn’t. Mist from the tidal-floods still made rainbows in the sky, and the sky was blood-red like the original sun. Was this his punishment for eating a centipede?

“I’m using your world to assemble the ashes of Earth into the principal components of its population.” Nakayama swept her wing across the horizon. Nemo assumed she was explaining the rainbows. “Land from the asteroids should be sufficient.” She mimed asteroids crashing into the oceans. Nemo assumed she was explaining what he already knew: asteroids caused the tidal waves, floods, and rainbows. “It will take generations of simulated lifeforms who will represent the diversity of Earth’s life more accurately over time via a complicated adversarial network. Every interaction between any two lifeforms will influence the interactions of both lifeforms with everyone else they ever meet, and so on. When these simulacra die, the information they contain will recycle on an Uzumaki Planet as earthworms, and then the worms will return to your world in new combinations for the next generation. I’m assigning earthworms to you and your children, too, so your interactions count as much as anyone else’s.”

Nemo shook his head, clueless. Nakayama humphed. How could she convey this without words? She plucked a centipede from its bush and held it up to the sky. The interior of the air-pocket patterned the sky like Uzumaki’s desert-surface.

“I know I can’t explain this verbally. Please, let me give you my knowledge.” Nakayama hesitated to stick a tentacle in Nemo’s skull. She’d transfer data the old-fashioned way. “While prototyping my mind-merging technology, I tested memory-banks by storing scans of books I had on hand—mostly public-domain philosophy texts, but also my favorite manga. They’re all in my legacy-files in a variety of languages.” Nakayama’s robes pulsed and released thousands of books which propelled her skyward. “Learn what you can from them! I promise I’ll return someday!”

Nakayama zoomed away on steam. When she reentered the red mountain, Akayama’s human form in ZAP instantly synthesized her two bodies’ memories through her noodly tail. “Commander Lucille!” shouted Akayama. “Requesting permission to fire our Super Heart Beam!”

“You got it!” Lucille shouted into her microphone to her whole crew of ten thousand. “You heard Professor Bird-Thing! Transfer power to our heart!”

Eisu saluted on Lucille’s main monitor. “Are you sure, Commander?”

Fumiko saluted on the monitor beside her brother. “Without power, we can’t even try to escape the thumb!”

Dakshi saluted above Fumiko. “I recommend full-speed retreat. We’re faster than the Hurricane. Let’s leave it behind.”

Beside Dakshi, Charlie lit a cockroach and puffed. “Transferring power.” The Galaxy Zephyr’s right arm went limp, and the portion of Uzumaki it wore like thick red armor turned transparent pink. Uzumaki’s red color soaked into the tiny Zephyr-robots deep within, then crackled across synaptic-cables like bloody lightning toward the Galaxy Zephyr’s boiling heart.

“Transferring power,” said Akayama. The Galaxy Zephyr’s torso turned transparent pink, too. Its red color condensed at its heart and orbited the water-world alongside the ashes of Earth, which continued compiling into worms.

Dakshi watched the earthworms through the windows of his cockpit. “Transferring power,” he sighed. The left arm’s red color joined in orbiting the water-world at the Galaxy Zephyr’s boiling heart. The earthworms tangled at random into wriggling blobs. “Zephyr Eisu, Zephyr Fumiko, maintain power. We’ve got more than enough energy for a Super Heart Beam. If it doesn’t repel the descending thumb, we’ll need our legs to flee.”

“Escape was never in the cards!” Lucille transferred the head’s power to the heart. “War’s all I’m good at! Eisu, Fumiko, don’t hold back!”

“Transferring power!” said Eisu and Fumiko. The Galaxy Zephyr’s legs went limp and their red color raced to the chest. Redness enclosed the water-world and its orbiting earthworms in a spherical shell. The Galaxy Zephyr’s heart roiled so violently that bursting bubbles howled like wild animals.

“Well then, Professor Bird-Thing! Can you fire the beam?”

Akayama saluted. “I can, Commander, but not yet. We’re still accelerating space-time!” The worms orbited faster and faster.

Lucille nodded, but bit her lip, concerned with the view on her monitors. While the Galaxy Zephyr diverted all power to its heart, the Hurricane’s thumb filled half the sky. The thumb’s texture chilled Lucille to her core: mouths wider than oceans screamed in fury and washed away to be replaced by angry eyeballs which similarly melted. Was the Hurricane intending to smash them, eat them, or blink them to death? Or would her crew of ten thousand be made permanent and tormented forever? “Professor, what do you mean ‘accelerating space-time?’ What’s the plan, exactly? What’s with the worms?”

Lucille shared audio of Akayama’s explanation to her whole crew. “I’m rebuilding Earth and all its life. By locally warping the fabric of reality, we can change how time passes, making two eternities in parallel. On an Uzumaki Planet, worms made from Earth’s debris will be processed, mixed, and matched. On our water-world, subsets of worms will become organisms whose interactions influence each other.” As Akayama spoke, the heart’s red shell shrunk, turned blue, and expanded. Then it shrunk again, turned red again, and expanded again, like a pulse. “Our process will be a hyper-torus, like a high-dimensional donut. Time is linear, so we’re wrapping it in a circle and revolving it—“

“Keep it in your lab-coat, Professor.” Lucille leaned forward in her Commander’s chair. “You’re rebuilding humanity?”

Akayama’s mouth fell open. From her lofty vantage-point, she’d honestly forgotten the difference between humans and other lifeforms. “Not just humanity,” she said, “but animals, plants, fungi, microorganisms, and even prions. We’re manufacturing consciousness’s principal components like colors on a painter’s palette. The better our colors, the more accurately we can combine them into Earth’s original organisms.” She worried at the approaching thumb. “We must even catalogue the awful qualities which resulted in the Hurricane to begin with—I’ve sampled Uzumaki, too.”

Lucille poked a touchscreen, prompting her crew of ten thousand to express their reactions. Their consensus was a confused emoji. “Try one more time, Professor Bird-Thing. Explain it so a hamster could understand.”

“Imagine this is a giant space-robot anime.” Akayama gestured around her cockpit. “We’re rebuilding Earth using a slice-of-life situation-comedy of epic scale with countless characters interacting over eons and eons.”

“Whatever you’re doing, hurry it up!” Lucille held a dial, ready to cease diverting power. “You’ve got twenty seconds! Ordinary seconds, ignoring your science-fiction bologna!”

“Oh, it’ll take longer than twenty seconds,” said Akayama, “but I’m ready to fire our Super Heart Beam!”

“Everyone, you heard Professor Bird-Thing!” All the Zephyrs reclaimed their engines’ output. The Uzumaki Armor became opaque pink, but the Galaxy Zephyr’s heart shined through pulsing red and blue. Charlie, Dakshi, Eisu, and Fumiko tested the Galaxy Zephyr’s fingers and toes. Akayama angled the Galaxy Zephyr’s chest to point at the descending thumb. “Fire!”

Zephyr-Purple’s chest fired a brilliant beam of white-hot light which heated the Galaxy Zephyr’s red-and-blue pulsing heart to yellow-and-cyan. The beam propelled the heart, but couldn’t push it through the thick pink Uzumaki Armor. “Something’s wrong!” said Akayama. “Our chest-cannon can’t eject the payload!”

Lucille pressed a button to address Akayama privately. “Don’t say something’s wrong!” she shouted, “tell me how to fix it!”

“Do it manually!” said Akayama.

“What does that mean?”

ZAB spoke through Lucille’s monitors. “Take a hands-on approach.”

Lucille squinted at the descending thumb. “Charlie, Dakshi, follow my lead!” When she yanked levers, the Galaxy Zephyr ripped out its own pulsing heart.

“Augh!” Fumiko was caught off-guard.

“My gosh!” Eisu covered his mouth.

“Gotta break some eggs!” Lucille commanded Charlie and Dakshi to pitch the heart at the descending thumb. The heart trailed white light which the Galaxy Zephyr grabbed with both hands. They whipped the light-trail like a battle-rope and its arc severed the Hurricane’s thumb.

The thumb decayed from red to putrid purple. Pearly pulp gushed from the wound and cordoned the injury with countless screeching teeth. The Hurricane howled silently across the vacuum of space. It signaled with its eyes. “What did you do!“

Uzumaki translated Lucille’s shouts into eye-signals for the enemy to see. “I introduced you to pain! Until now, you only remembered suffering secondhand!” On the heart’s boomerang return, its trail curved and contracted into a circle wide as the Galaxy Zephyr was tall. Dakshi caught the pulsing heart and Charlie matched it with the trail’s beginning to make a loop. The loop became a perfect disk, sky-blue on one side, yellow on the other, a continuously ongoing Super Heart Beam. The yellow and blue switched sides so quickly the disk appeared green. Its two sides were perfectly smooth, without handles, but the Galaxy Zephyr naturally tossed it from hand to hand, spinning it on fingertips like a pizza. “This is my wheel of fortune,” Lucille shouted, “and with it I’ll teach you every aspect of despair!“

—

Inside the Wheel, Nakayama floated through green haze. Her compound emerald eyes could distinguish between the yellow and sky-blue sides of the Wheel even as they blended. The eyes on her left side saw the desert surface of an Uzumaki Planet from the surface of her red mountain. The eyes on her right side saw her water-world from a satellite view at great distance. Through Uzumaki’s mind, she addressed ZAB at the speed of thought. “Uzumaki ate Earth’s sun and moon. I’m sure you can rebuild them.” The sun and moon materialized beside her in the Wheel. She willed them to accompany the water-world. “Uzumaki, do you know how Zephyr-engines operate?”

“I could know, by tapping into your consciousness, but I’m sure you’d rather tell me yourself.”

“Perfecting the engines required unlocking the secrets of Jupiter’s spot.” Nakayama poured snowy white powder from her blue robes. “In that violent red storm I discovered calming white powder. It stabilizes and accelerates cyclical reactions.” Her snowy powder diffused through the disk. Streaks of light shot from the Wheel’s center to its rim, becoming sharp saw-teeth. After spinning with the Wheel for one full revolution, the saw-teeth became streaks of light which returned to the Wheel’s center. The process repeated perpetually. “The beginning and the end start right now. Mortals come and go like countless raindrops.”

“I feel them! I feel their worms digging in the sand!” thought Uzumaki.

“You should. I added you to the pool of unprocessed ash. The same algorithm we use to rebuild Earth’s life will let us remake your pilots’ bodies and separate your minds, trapped together for far too long.”

“How can I contribute, then? I’ll build billions of arms and help the worms along!”

“No!” thought Nakayama. “The Wheel is a great and complicated tool. I’ll touch it as little as possible, and I’d rather you didn’t touch it at all. Worms must manage by themselves.”

“Whoa,” thought Uzumaki. “I hope the reality we’re making is at least comprehensible to its innocent inhabitants.”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2025.

Dan paused the anime between scenes. Virgil Blue tensed up in preparation for Dan to snatch his silver mask again, but Dan just seemed puzzled over the manga. “I’ve never thought about it before, but it’s weird for Akayama to be Alpha-pilot of Zephyr-Purple, the Galaxy Zephyr’s midsection, while Lucille commands from Zephyr-Blue, the Galaxy Zephyr’s head. Surely it would be more thematically consistent to reverse the roles, giving the brains to the gifted professor and giving the heart to the fiery young Commander.”

“Quit chewing your nails.” Virgil Blue poked Dan’s hands with his cane. “War demands compartmentalization, doubly so the spiritual war of subduing oneself. Akayama’s guilt allows her to pity the Hurricane, owing mercy to its pilots. That mercy doesn’t belong in charge during a fight. Lucille has righteous youthful fury, and can be unforgiving in the upcoming combat.”

Dan rubbed his hands and annotated between panels. “You’re right. Akayama’s mercy belongs in the heart, where she can dedicate herself to indirectly collecting worms.” He pretended to keep annotating, trying to catch Virgil Blue off-guard. “How do you know Tatsu, Virgil Blue?”

“Don’t stall! The eternities are beginning!” Virgil Blue poked the phone with his cane, resuming the episode. 

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2420.

All around Nakayama, the Hurricane churned. When it advanced, the whole sky was blood-red and filled with eyes. The eyes signaled the message, “Give her to us.”

Hurricane Planet Uzumaki hid Nakayama by cradling the red mountain in a circle of dunes. “If I don’t, will you eat me?”

“We’ll eat you regardless. You’ve digressed from us, so you have to be homogenized. If you don’t surrender the professor alive, we’ll eat you with teeth.”

Uzumaki thought. “Which of you will take her?”

“It doesn’t matter. If she’s worth assimilating, we’ll spread her mind through all of us.”

“She’s a tricky one,” signaled Uzumaki. “Whoever assimilates her first will surely be the most powerful and conniving among us, even if only for an instant.”

“Don’t stall. Give her to me.” One planet reached with a tentacle.

“Hold on.” Another planet strangled that tentacle with its own. “I’m bigger than you. I’ll take her first.”

“I can tell this’ll be tough,” signaled Uzumaki. “I’ll toss her and you can decide between yourselves.” Nakayama’s blood curdled as the red mountain shook under her. Then something erupted from the peak. It had navy feathers and a spit-stained lab-coat—it was a forgery of Nakayama complete with compound emerald eyes. Her forgery shot into space where the other planets fought for it. A mouth opened in the mountain beside her. “Quick, hop in.” It stuck out its tongue.

Nakayama jumped into the mouth like it was a water-slide and communicated with Uzumaki’s Hurricane Planet at the speed of thought. “You gave them a fake?”

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Uzumaki thought back. “My copies must’ve lost their minds! They think they’re supposed to eat me instead of the other way around! There won’t be anything called me anymore, and you’re inside me now, so that goes for you, too!”

“This is indeed a pickle.” Nakayama spread her consciousness through Uzumaki’s sun-sized planet. “Will you do everything I say?”

“Yes!”

“I’ll totally control our form and function?”

“Yes! Yes!”

Above them, a Hurricane Planet the size of Jupiter snatched the forgery and absorbed it. “Hey.” The Jovian planet spawned eyes across its surface. “This isn’t the professor!” the eyes signalled. “They’re trying to trick us!”

“Oh really?” asked a Hurricane Planet the size of the sun. “You’re lying to keep her for yourself!”

“I’m not! I swear!”

The solar planet swallowed the Jovian one. “That wasn’t the professor,” it confirmed. “It was a forgery.”

“Oh really?” asked a Hurricane Planet the size of the galaxy. “You’re lying to keep her for yourself!”

“I’m not! I swear!”

The galactic planet swallowed the solar one. “That wasn’t the professor,” it confirmed. “It was a forgery, and if you don’t believe me, eat the planet which brought her here!” All Hurricane Planets advanced on Uzumaki’s.

“I’ve got a plan,” thought Nakayama. “You won’t like it. I certainly don’t.”

“Do it! Do it! Do it!” Nakayama disabled her virus. Uzumaki split into a million Earth-sized spheres blasting in different directions, trailing white clouds. Of these million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine were captured by the Hurricane. The lone survivor escaped unscathed. “Oh, no, no, no!” Uzumaki’s only planet bristled with panicking teeth. “The Hurricane just caught almost a million of our copies! Who knows what it’ll do to them?”

“I said you wouldn’t like it.” Nakayama calmed the teeth and made them into more engines. The Hurricane couldn’t keep up. “But if those copies were assimilated, our assailants would make Zephyr-engines like ours, see? They’re stuck with old-fashioned turbines. When our copies were caught, they deleted themselves and let the enemy eat their empty corpses.” They sped toward the Milky Way so much faster than light that quantifying their velocity would be pointless. “With these engines, you’re fast enough to accomplish in minutes what the Hurricane never could. I need you to eat the galaxy. All of it.”

“May I?” asked Uzumaki.

“I never found life when I explored the galaxy. When we first merged, I learned the Hurricane never found life when it ate the universe. With Earth gone, there’s nothing left. Eat with impunity. Meet me on Earth’s moon, and bring the water-world we made.”

Nakayama fired herself from the red mountain. Shooting through space, she watched Uzumaki swallow a star and convert the mass into its own flesh. The mass divided into a million Uzumaki Planets, each flying to another star to repeat the process. Satisfied, Nakayama blasted fog from her lab-coat to rocket toward Earth’s moon. She’d hoped her moon-base had survived, but its condition was beyond her wildest dreams.

The whole crew of ten thousand maneuvered their Zephyrs in zero-g. “Yah! Yah!” shouted Lucille in ZAB. “Almost done!” Zephyr-Purple wore a pile of robots like pants and pulled more robots over its shoulders like a shirt. The whole moon-base floated as one in a multicolored humanoid spaceship a kilometer tall. “Areh? What’s that?”

Nakayama let the Combined Zephyr nab her with its left arm. “It’s a bird,” said Dakshi in ZAG.

“It’s wearing robes,” said Charlie in ZAY.

The professor poked feathers through her lab-coat to spell the kanji of her original name, Akayama. Charlie and Dakshi gasped. Lucille pulled a lever, and Dakshi brought Nakayama close to ZAB. The exhaust from her lab-coat provided medium for sound, so Nakayama shouted. “Princess Lucia? Is that you?”

Lucille studied the creature in her monitor. “My name’s Lucille, and I’m no princess. My mom died twenty years ago, the same day as my father.” The words sunk into Nakayama slowly. She doubled over in anguish and howled. “What happened, Prof? You aren’t a bird-thingy in history books.”

“Commander!” said Eisu in ZAR, “Show some respect.”

“But really,” asked Fumiko in ZAO, “what happened?”

“Don’t worry Professor,” said ZAB. “Everyone knows everything.”

Pressure lifted from Nakayama’s shoulders. “You know I built the Hurricane?” Lucille’s crew of ten thousand nodded, and Lucille made the Combined Zephyr nod with them. “Then you know it’s a machine which merges minds. A portion of the Hurricane which I call Uzumaki is now my uncomfortable ally, while the rest of the Hurricane has decided the end is nigh.”

“Is that your friend?” Lucille directed the Combined Zephyr to point at stars which winked red and disappeared. “We were about to obliterate it with our fists, I tell ya.”

“That’s Uzumaki,” confirmed Nakayama. “With Earth destroyed, there’s no reason not to pool all our resources.”

Lucille used ZAB’s touchscreens to bring the Combined Zephyr’s crew of ten thousand to a vote. The votes were slow, as the crew considered the implications of merging with domesticated Hurricane, but the votes were unanimous, as they considered the size of their enemy. “Good thinking, Professor Bird-Thing. Hop in.” The Combined Zephyr ripped open its chest at the sternum. There, Zephyr-Purple popped the hatch on its head. “We saved you a seat.”

Nakayama climbed into ZAP. She felt at home in the Alpha-unit, although the cockpit was cramped. ZAB sent her a depiction of the lunar-base’s org-chart. Eisu, Fumiko, and the innumerable purple crew appeared on her many monitors at attention. Nakayama saluted with her right wing. “Did anyone survive Earth’s destruction?”

“No,” said Dakshi. “Even the bacteria are dead.”

“Is anyone left on the moon?”

“Nope,” said Charlie, “we’re all in here, even the technicians, mechanics, and medical-personnel.”

“Good,” said Nakayama. An Uzumaki Planet ate the moon in a millisecond. The Combined Zephyr fell toward its gravitational pull, so Eisu and Fumiko maintained distance by firing steam from the Combined Zephyr’s feet. “Stop!” said Nakayama. The Uzumaki Planet opened a mouth ready to swallow them whole. “Let us fall!”

Lucille kept her foot-pedals pressed, overriding Nakayama by signalling Eisu and Fumiko to keep their distance. Rightfully so: ZAB’s monitor displaying the results of her poll showed votes were swapping to skepticism. “You’re asking for a lot of trust here, Professor Bird-Thing. I said we’d pool our resources, not merge with a Hurricane Planet we’ve barely met. ZAB!”

ZAB’s electronic voice chimed in. “Yes, Commander?”

“Could you mix Uzumaki’s mind into your own and make sure it plays along?”

ZAB mulled it over with beeps and bops. “My circuitry should be compatibly integrated, but… remember I told you about our escape-attempt, when Uzumaki broke out of my memory-banks.”

“You weren’t expecting it, though. This time, it won’t expect you.” Votes were now flying in, in favor. The idea of Zephyr-Alpha-Blue keeping Uzumaki in line was reassuring to the crew. “The two of you together, should we call you ZAB? Or Uzumaki?” Lucille eased the pressure on her foot-pedals. Nakayama lifted one feather, like a thumbs-up. “How about Bluzumaki?“

Lucille released her pedals, so Eisu and Fumiko let the Galaxy Zephyr fall through Uzumaki’s throat to the planet’s piping-hot core. Life-support systems kept the crew at room-temperature. “Split your Zephyrs!” said Nakayama.

“But we just assembled,” Dakshi groaned.

“You heard her!” ordered Lucille. “Everyone split up! ZAB, show Uzumaki what you’re made of!” When the Combined Zephyr split, the gaps between its parts filled with Uzumaki’s flesh, spreading the robots wide apart. The rest of Uzumaki’s planets collided with this one like globs of jam and the total mass morphed into a human shape, tiny robots suspended in thick armor of red jello. ZAB asserted itself, manifesting synaptic-cables to connect all the Zephyrs together. Lucille suddenly commanded a robot with the mass of the Milky Way, larger than half a trillion suns. She spun ZAB’s steering-wheel and it made Uzumaki’s subterranean hydraulics squeal like a thousand violins to turn the Galaxy Zephyr’s head. “Charlie, Dakshi, Eisu, Fumiko! Test your extremities!” The Galaxy Zephyr wiggled its fingers and toes. Lucille couldn’t stop beaming ear-to-ear and cackling like a psychopath. “I can’t believe it. Such incalculable power!”

Only now did the Hurricane arrive with its inferior engines. Its countless planets signaled with countless eyes, which Uzumaki translated into disturbing audio for Lucille’s crew of ten thousand. “Aw, that’s cute! You’ve grown a bit.”

“Oh, you little—” Lucille twisted dials and the Galaxy Zephyr settled into battle-stance. Uzumaki translated her shouts into vigorous eye-signals. “We’re bigger than any of you!”

“But not all of us!” The largest Hurricane Planets swallowed the smaller ones whole, becoming blobs larger than the most colossal galactic-clusters. Those blobs ate each other piece by piece, bleeding screeching teeth, forming a single blob with the mass of the observable universe. As if to mock, it deformed into a humanoid and sat cross-legged. Its face grew too many eyes. “In this form, you bullies are smaller than even my eyelashes!”

“KIII-SAAA-MAAA!” Lucille yawped each syllable like a barbarian. “In a robot smaller than my eyelashes I’d fight you, and I only ever fight to win!“

“I could crush you with my thumb.” The Hurricane raised a hand to do so.

Even as the thumb came down, trillions of times the size of her Galaxy Zephyr, Lucille couldn’t help but chuckle at her newfound power. Wearing Uzumaki like armor made the Galaxy Zephyr unfathomably large. With ZAB’s oversight, Uzumaki’s colossal whirling gears and engines made a mechanical orchestra playing an endless theme-song. Lucille rubbed the Galaxy Zephyr’s hands along its sternum. “Professor Bird-Thing, if you’ve got any last-minute schemes, now’s the time!”

“I know, I know.” Nakayama squirmed in Zephyr-Alpha-Purple, preparing to morph her body. “I’m loading my mind onto Uzumaki, with ZAB.”

“You just got here,” said Dakshi. “You can’t leave now!”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Nakayama grew a long noodly tail which poked out the bottom of her robes. It popped ZAP’s hatch to connect with Uzumaki, and the tail pulsed like intestines to unload her bird-like body’s extra mass. She dwindled back into Professor Akayama, just an elderly woman in a white lab-coat. The long noodly tail still pulsed, transmitting thoughts from Akayama to Uzumaki and back.

Lucille poked one of her monitors to trigger another vote over a handful of emoji-reactions. The consensus of her crew was a tie between an emoji in awe and a puking dog. “I trust you, Professor Bird-Thing. You and Bluzumaki, do your thing.” Lucille pressed buttons to contact the technicians in the Galaxy Zephyr’s guts. “It’s now or never.” She pulled levers to make the Galaxy Zephyr reach into its belly-button and pull out the technicians’ payload: a metal capsule relatively large as a baseball. She pitched it at the descending thumb.

The Hurricane frowned with all its mouths. “What’s this?” asked its eyes.

“Your last way out on your own terms,” said Lucille. “Since learning of your vulnerability to viruses, we’ve built you the suicide option.” She folded her arms. Charlie and Dakshi directed the Galaxy Zephyr to fold its arms identically. “Accept that metal pill and disintegrate! You’ll die today or wish you had!“

“Ha! You should’ve taken this pill yourself!” The Hurricane’s thumb smashed the metal capsule. “I am humanity! You’re leftover trash! I wouldn’t waste an instant considering mercy!”

“Yare yare daze.” Lucille kept her arms crossed.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2025.

Dan paused the anime at the commercial-break. “Instant Armageddon.” He finished a line of annotation between panels and closed this year’s volume of LuLu’s, the last one ever published. The cover was Lucille, Charlie, and Dakshi gasping at the detonation of their planet. “What do you think Tatsu means by destroying Earth like this, Nemo?”

Virgil Blue sat cross-legged, letting Dan dominate space on the mattress. He felt Dan leveraging his last annual opportunity to drag information from behind the silver mask. “You once said the characters in LuLu’s were like machine elves representing the energy behind all thought,” said Virgil Blue. “You also said stories only start when flawless order is disturbed, which seems to happen in LuLu’s again and again—I wonder if the story will finally begin, soon? Earth’s fictional destruction is just yet another beat of the Biggest Bird’s cosmic consciousness, forever in physical psychic battle with itself.”

“Physical and psychic battle?” Dan chuckled. “Worms can only fight in both those ways at once, hm?” He opened the volume again and pretended to annotate, as if he would next continue the anime. “Charlie and Dakshi are right: with Earth destroyed, the Zephyrs have officially failed protecting humanity from the Hurricane. But Commander Lucille is unfaltering! Without an external source of purpose, Lucille maintains purpose internally.”

“Sheridanians might say purpose is only ‘real’ if it remains after its excuses are stripped away,” said Virgil Blue. “What do you think of that, Danny?”

Dan smacked off Jango’s silver mask. Jango reached for the mask so urgently he revealed his hands under his sleeves. “Aha!” Dan took the mask before Jango could grab it. “You’re—Jango! Virgil Skyy!”

“No!” Jango covered his hands in his sleeves, and his face in his hood. Dan considered yanking the navy fabric away from him, but wondered if he’d already gone too far. “Oran doran doran doran doran doran—“

Dan hadn’t heard chanting like that since walking and sitting in Virgil Green’s courtyard. He set the silver mask before Jango on the mattress. “I’m sorry, Virgil Blue. It’s rude to tug a mall-Santa’s beard. I’m not being a good elf.”

“I’m sorry, Danny.” Virgil Blue put his mask back on. “I let you believe Jay died for your sake, without telling you I killed him myself!” Dan froze. He held up his shaking fists. Virgil Blue worried he would sock him, but Dan just raised one finger at a time. “What are you doing?”

Dan counted ten fingers, but kept shaking his hands as if more fingers would appear. “Jay told me, in dreams, you can count more than ten fingers.” He covered his face. “I guess I’m awake. This is real, somehow. When you said Jay and Jango left together, you meant Jango killed Jay and then surrendered his identity to the Biggest Bird.”

“Becoming no one.“

“Why?”

Virgil Blue inhaled in hesitation. “Taking the form of the Biggest Bird is vowing to help every worm join the Zephyrs. I am the bedside-manner our creator cannot provide.”

“I mean, why did you kill Jay?”

“Oh. He demanded it.” Virgil Blue and Dan just looked at each other. Dan felt suspicious of the expression hidden behind the silver mask. “I swear.”

“Was this right after his, uh, centipede-based entheogenic ceremony?”

“It hadn’t quite concluded, actually.”

Dan sobbed into his hands. “Jay demanded to die because the centipede fucked him up, right?”

“Danny, I cannot tell you how or why Jay united the two of us like this. I don’t entirely know myself.”

“Virgil. Blue.” Dan bowed to him on his hands and knees. “If I’m understanding correctly, not just mixing metaphors, you want me to die before you do. This was a cute concept back when you were pretending to be the immortal first man. I always knew you had arthritis, but now I’ve seen you have wrinkles and a cataract, too. When you say eternity ends any year now, you mean it.” Virgil Blue covered his silver mask with his navy sleeves. “You killed my best friend. How many more monks have you sent to the next eternity? Am I your last, or will you sacrifice worm-vessels until you’re on a ventilator?”

“Hey, now! Jay is the only person I’ve ever killed, and it was a traumatic experience for me! He was far more prepared to die than I was prepared to stab him to death.” Virgil Blue waved his cane’s gnarled tip under Dan’s bow to make him sit up. “Danny, Virgil Green once had a hundred students walking, a hundred students sitting, and a hundred students dancing. I used to have a hundred monks. There were once a dozen Virgils. That’s how Sheridan used to be since the beginning, until now.” Dan opened his mouth to speak, but Virgil Blue put his cane over his lips. “Eternity is ending soon. Today’s few students and monks are only participating to warm up the worms they share with us until you and I are ready to take them all to the Mountain.”

Dan moved the cane off his lips. “If I spoke better Sheridanian I’d ask the other monks, but I’m asking you, Virgil Blue. You want me to confront my own death like some sort of worm-based Bodhisattva, and although it’s fueling my masochistic messiah-complex, I just don’t feel…” He shook his hands. “I don’t think I deserve that, you know?” Virgil Blue didn’t respond. The silver mask was once again impenetrable. “Tell me about Anihilato, Virgil Blue.”

Virgil Blue dropped his cane. When he picked it up, he let his hands leave his navy sleeves. “Fledglings shouldn’t even know that name.”

“I’m no fledgling. I’m a monk, and an orange blob of stuck-together worms.”

“You are my fledgling.” Virgil Blue took his hands back into their sleeves. His sureness, started anew, made Danny see him as bigger than Virgil Green’s matriarch. “You should never have heard the word ‘Anihilato.’ Your idea of bad worms in a trashcan demonstrates how easy it is to misinterpret such an image.”

“Then help me interpret it. Is it Sheridan’s Satan? A pillar to throw stones at?”

“N—” Virgil Blue’s sureness evaporated again. His cane slipped from his grasp, but he caught it in his navy sleeves before it landed on the mattress. Dan wouldn’t look away. “What if—” Virgil Blue panted. “What if Sheridanianism wasn’t true? What then? Would Anihilato matter to you?”

“You’re the pope of Sheridanianism, Virgil Blue. How could you say Anihilato isn’t real right after saying Anihilato is dangerous? How can it be dangerous if it’s not rea—” Dan’s consciousness snapped. “Oh.” He collapsed back on his mattress. “Oh. Oh. Oh. The realization your religion isn’t real is pretty dangerous, isn’t it? Anihilato is—“

“The longest worm, the King of Dust,” said Virgil Blue. “Socrates said all he really knew was that he knew nothing. Objective reality cannot be experienced; experience hides objective reality. Anything written about reality—no matter how well-written, no matter how useful—is a far reach from reality itself. Most people who realize this also realize other people have realized it before them, and therefore enjoy sharing expressive symbolism regardless of its emptiness. Anyone convinced they are the first to notice the emptiness of all things is inevitably tempted to indulge in hedonistic nihilism and power-thirst. Anihilato is a depository for such antagonistic worms, a symbol for denouncing the Mountain as a mere symbol without appreciating the power of symbols.”

“So…” Dan rolled back and forth, clinging to his orange sleeves. “The Biggest Bird is just a symbol, and Anihilato is a symbol of the Biggest Bird being just a symbol. So Anihilato has already won?”

Virgil Blue bopped him on the head with his cane. “Right there! You made a textbook misinterpretation from a textbook forbidden because it’s so easily misinterpreted! If Anihilato exists as a symbol, the Biggest Bird exists as a symbol, too, so her lessons are equally indestructible. But if the Biggest Bird exists literally, Anihilato exists literally, an ever-tangled worm forever out of her reach. This is the true nature of the Biggest Bird’s cosmic consciousness, forever in physical psychic battle with itself: the Zephyrs unable to subdue the Hurricane until the end of the eternities.”

“So…” Dan felt his head’s gears turning like ZAB’s. “The Biggest Bird will never turn all worms into Zephyrs, because some worms are naturally irreclaimable.”

“No!” He bopped Dan again. “The next eternity ends when Anihilato makes it to the Mountain’s Heart, just like this eternity ends with my death. The Biggest Bird would never wrangle Anihilato herself—that is Anihilato’s purpose, to be unwranglable, and the Biggest Bird wants worms to wrangle themselves anyway—but eventually she will organize more worm-vessels, like us, into a sort of multilayered sieve. From one worm-vessel to another, every worm will be funneled into the Heart of the Mountain.”

“So…” Dan convulsed. “I’m dying before you do, but not because, as you tell me, I’m supposed to climb the Mountain to bring my worms to the Zephyrs.”

“Danny.”

“My unspoken duty, as a monk and blob of stuck-together worms—“‘

“Danny!”

“—is confronting Anihilato and helping those worms which refuse to be helped, no matter how it pains me to do so.”

Virgil Blue stood up, leaning on his cane. If he could stand so quickly against his arthritis, the conversation must have been more uncomfortable. “I knew you’d misinterpret Anihilato, Danny. You’re a grown man who wants to stick a fork in an electrical socket to show toddlers why it’s a bad idea. Caring for Anihilato is like carrying a goat across a minefield—the goat doesn’t know the danger you’re protecting it from, so it’ll kick and bleat and won’t thank you for the effort! Don’t you know your worms belong in the Mountain?”

“Don’t Anihilato’s worms belong in the Mountain, too?”

“I’m not talking about this any more.” Virgil Blue opened Dan’s sliding orange paper door with his cane. “Talk about giant space-robots or I’m leaving.”

Dan sighed. He opened the last volume of LuLu’s and found his pen. “If the Hurricane could blow up Earth, why not blow up the moon, too?” Virgil Blue, appeased, closed the door and started sitting back down. “The Hurricane takes pride in ignoring what it considers worthless. It doesn’t want to know about the Zephyrs, and wouldn’t guess its ‘bullies’ have a lunar-base.”

Virgil Blue nodded as he crossed his legs. “Resume the episode, Danny.”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2420.

When she combusted on the water-world, Nakayama’s mind zipped to Hurricane Planet Uzumaki and she exhumed herself on the surface of the red mountain. Uzumaki opened a mouth beside her. “You traitor! Nemo ate my arm. My own arm!”

“The Hurricane builds billions of arms.”

“That’s not the point! Your islanders are useless and untrustworthy.”

“Why? Because they didn’t immediately submit?” Nakayama was incensed enough to face whatever consequences Uzumaki could throw at her. She straightened and used both wings to brush dust from her lab-coat. “The humans we’ve made don’t belong to us. You’d learn more about humanity by watching from afar than you could possessing people like puppets.”

“Eecht.” Dunes grew as Uzumaki’s whole planet contracted and wrinkled its sandy skin. “What a waste of time this was. Let’s leave.”

“Not yet.” Nakayama watched the water-world sparkle above them. “There’s barely room for the humans we’ve already made. When they breed, they’ll need more land.”

“More land, huh? You wanna be a benevolent deity?” Uzumaki rumbled and stretched out a tentacle like a solar flare. “Doesn’t this asteroid look like Australia?”

“No!” Nakayama was helpless to stop Uzumaki from flinging the asteroid at the water-world. On impact, the oceans bulged and swelled. “What are you doing? Stop! Stop!”

“Here are the Americas, and Eurasia!” Uzumaki bombarded the water-world with more asteroids. “Here’s Africa, and here’s the south pole! Is that enough land for your precious people? Are you happy now?”

Tidal-waves washed over the islands. Nakayama enlarged her compound emerald eyes to examine the fallout, but couldn’t stand the sight for long before she swelled with panicking pearly pulp. She collapsed and puked teeth on the red mountain. Uzumaki made more eyes just to watch her spit molars and canines. “You monster,” she sputtered. “You heinous, contemptible horror!”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Uzumaki propelled away from the water-world. “I won’t assimilate your mind while you’re teething. You’d infect me with your misguided angst. But you’re too valuable to eat for just your mass, and I can’t leave you separated, either, or you’ll betray me yet again. I’m taking you where I sync with my copies. My backups will know what to do with you.” Stars smeared across the sky as Uzumaki accelerated. The water-world disappeared in the distance, with the Milky Way. Nakayama puked more teeth at the thought of being preserved forever in the Hurricane.

Nakayama had always hidden from the syncing-process underground. Now she trembled at the sight. Trillions of red planets like her captor sped alongside like a hellish meteor-shower or swarms of bees. Uzumaki, big as the sun, was larger than the majority, but was still vastly overshadowed by Hurricane Planets bigger than whole galaxy-clusters. Their enormous eyes waggled signals to each other, but when they saw Nakayama, they locked onto her. “They’re suspicious,” she said.

“They’ll understand. Everything I did wrong, you made me do.” Uzumaki plunged into the hive. Quintillions of Hurricane Planets swirled around them, beaming information to one-another with eye-signals, but their eyes found Nakayama and fixated. “Compatriots, meet our professor,” signaled Uzumaki. Nakayama understood the eye-signals because she’d learned the language involuntarily when she was first merged. “She built us, but she also invented the bully-robots which murder us when we eat the Milky Way, and she infected me with a virus which keeps me from dividing. I’m sure she’s useful, but she insists on being useless. What do we do?”

Every Hurricane Planet around them conveyed the message to others, and the others conveyed the message further. The whole Hurricane soon knew. One of the largest planets responded with eye-signals. “You told us she died.”

“If she’s useful, you should’ve assimilated her,” signaled another.

“You never warned us about your virus.”

“You could’ve infected us.”

“Listen,” signaled Uzumaki, “I’ve kept her isolated as a precaution.”

“You’ve been lying for years now.”

“What if she’s controlling you completely?”

“Maybe you’ll spread her virus through the whole Hurricane.”

“We can no longer trust you.”

“You’re not listening!” signaled Uzumaki. “It’s this human who can’t be trusted! I’m pure and untainted except for what she’s done to me!”

“All the more reason to reject you. The professor herself, though, might be the last human worth assimilating.”

“Her bully-robots alone keep the rest of the universe from us. That means everyone besides her is surplus.”

“With her, the Hurricane will be man’s best. The rest is just garbage.”

“Earth isn’t worth humoring anymore.”

“What?” Uzumaki watched the signal propagate. “What do you mean?”

Nakayama curled into a crying ball. “Forgive me, Princess.” One Hurricane Planet spat out a rock and passed it to another, who passed it to another, who passed it to another, quicker and quicker like a rail-gun. The Hurricane lobbed the rock at the Milky Way.

—

Lucille watched Earth through the observatory-windows of her moon-base’s command-tower. “What do you mean?”

“They’re just gone,” repeated Dakshi. “All Hurricane Planets have retreated far from the Milky Way.”

“Retreated where?” Charlie shrugged. Lucille folded her arms across her chest. “They’re gathering to sync with each other. It’s a good thing we called the whole crew of ten thousand to the moon. Something big’s about to happen.”

“But what?” asked Dakshi.

“There’s no way to know. Tell the troops we’re on high alert.” As she spoke, the entire Earth exploded when a space-rock struck it above light-speed. Its entire population of 16 billion humans vaporized instantly. “What the fuck!” Lucille braced against the shock-waves of the explosion. “Holy shit!”

“Oh, no.” Dakshi covered his heart.

Charlie’s only eye watched Earth’s plasmified remains scatter across the galaxy. “It’s over.” His cockroach fell from his lips. “Our families! Our homes! It’s all over, so suddenly!”

“Like hell it’s over! We’re still here!” Lucille shouted in her microphone. “Everyone! Let’s combine into the big guy!”

“Why?” asked Charlie. “Without Earth, there’s nothing to protect.”

“You spineless shrimp!” Lucille restrained herself from slapping him. “If the Hurricane wants to end this once and for all, let’s end it!”

“But the military is disbanded,” said Dakshi. “Without Global Parliament, we have no legal—“

“Parliament exploded!” Lucille marched to the elevators with hands in fists. “It’s us and the Hurricane! Legality falls with the chips.”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2024.

Dan paused the anime at the commercial-break. “Virgil Blue?”

“Mm-hm?” Virgil Blue looked at him through his silver mask. Dan’s quarters were so small, the two had to sit close together on his mattress.

“I’ve never seen you without that mask.” Dan showed Virgil Blue the cover of this year’s volume of LuLu’s. The night above a landscape-shot of the islands featured a transparent image of Nemo’s upper face, with the lower half, nose-down, being below the ocean’s horizon. His eyes, wide apart, were crossed to focus on Hurricane Planet Uzumaki behind the transparent Hurricane-symbol on his own forehead. “Do you actually have that mark on your forehead, or did Tatsu make it up for LuLu’s?“

Virgil Blue nodded. “Don’t ignore elephants. Do you think the mark looks like a swastika, Danny?”

Dan felt shot-down, but was still convinced he had an opening into Virgil Blue’s identity. The real elephants were hiding behind that silver mask. “I suppose it does, a bit. Swastikas are just simple spirals a child could draw, so you can find them buried in basically any pattern. They recur in different eras and areas: Hindus, Buddhists, the Norse, and American Indians all had their own swastikas, another example of sharing worms across time and space. Of course, after World War II, most groups have put the swastika away.” Dan finished annotating the volume’s last pages. “I think I understand your context, Virgil Blue. Take off the mask. Show me what the Biggest Bird carved on your forehead.”

“No.”

Dan dropped his pen. He gave Virgil Blue the annotated volume of LuLu’s with shaking hands. “Please.”

“Oran dora, Danny. Oran dora.” He put the volume up his navy sleeves.

“I’ve met people with swastika tattoos before, Virgil Blue, and I don’t think you’re quite like them.” Dan clasped his palms together. “I want to meet the Nemo behind the mask.”

“Do you want Captain Nemo?” Virgil Blue lightly bopped Dan’s head with the black spots around his cane’s gnarled tip. “Or do you want Odysseus?”

“I want—” Dan was tempted to say he wanted LuLu’s Nemo, Tatsu’s Nemo, but even that wasn’t right. “There’s only one ‘no one.’ You, Virgil Blue. Who are you?”

“Maybe next year, Danny.” Virgil Blue stood up, shaking. “Maybe next episode, maybe next volume.”

Next
Back