(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2023.

Dan turned off his phone during the anime’s end-credits and grinned annotating these last pages of the manga-volume. The Combined Zephyr was humanoid, the Zephyr-robots constituting it were humanoid, and the Zephyr-crews controlling them were humans. Human from bottom to top, a psychedelic fractal mandala!

But Nakayama had compared her own cells to tiny robots which combined to generate her, and Hurricane Planets were basically amoebas. It was robots from bottom to top, and ‘human’ was just a shape robots could take. The Hurricane’s primitive power was immediate but primitive. The Zephyr’s power was gradual but sophisticated.

Cells were made of molecules, were made of atoms, were made of subatomic particles. Was there a bottom? Was there a top? Are these the questions Virgil Blue thought Tatsu was implying about the relationship between fictional giant space-robots, science, religion, the Biggest Bird, and every little worm?

Dan closed the manga and put it down. He would ask Virgil Blue to watch LuLu’s with him next year. The next volume featured more of Nemo, and Dan had questions for Sheridan’s Adam.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2023.

Dan paused the anime at the commercial-break and brushed egg-yolk orange fabric away from his quarters’ window. The early sunset was too dark to see the smaller two Islands of Sheridan from the monastery’s position near the cloudy peak of the main mountainous one, but the full-moon’s glittering on the ocean suggested their outlines.

LuLu’s raised a lot of questions, and meeting Virgil Green had only raised more. Dan left his quarters for the monastery courtyard. Fourteen more monks were sitting facing their preferred topiary, each monk with a unique combination of skin-color and robe-color. Virgil Blue wasn’t in sight. “Oran dora,” Dan whispered. He could still speak just the simplest Sheridanian. “[Where’s Virgil Blue?]”

“[Collecting centipedes,]” said a pink girl in yellow robes.

Dan left the monastery and circled around it to climb higher up the main island. Above the altitude of the bell-tower’s top, wild thorny black bushes each bore a ball of long tangled fruits with little orange legs. Virgil Blue walked bush to bush inspecting the centipedes for ripeness. “Virgil Blue, is your name really Nemo?”

“Oran dora, Danny. Call me what you want.”

“Tatsu‘s rendition of the Biggest Bird names the first man ‘Nemo.’ ” Dan flipped through a few manga-pages. “Really, now, I wouldn’t still be in your monastery if I didn’t resonate with your lessons, Virgil Blue. Sheridan’s creation-myth adds science to Genesis and mixes in some Quetzalcoatl… but for me to say I believe these lessons literally, I’d need to hear more about your experience during the beginning of time.”

“Do you need to believe my lessons literally?” When Virgil Blue found the right centipede-bush, he shook his sleeve and a bird-bone knife fell into his grip. He used the knife’s tip to pry a centipede’s orange legs off the rest of the fruit-ball. “Isn’t it possible I provide lessons with customized metaphorical symbolism so your interpretation empowers you in ways literal lessons never could?”

“Um. I guess?” Dan covered his face with the manga-volume. “Virgil Green says you want me to die before you do. I’ll need something more solid than a metaphor to show you’re this immortal Nemo-guy.”

“Danny, look at me.” Virgil Blue pulled a centipede out of the bush. He wrapped it around the ten black spots of his cane’s gnarled tip. “My hooded navy robes are literal, aren’t they? My silver mask, too.”

“But you wear those to look like the Biggest Bird, right? That’s still a metaphor.”

“What does Nemo mean, Danny?”

“Literally? ‘Nemo’ is Latin for ‘no one.’ Odysseus calls himself Nemo in The Odyssey to trick a cyclops.” Dan snapped his fingers. “So you’re Nemo because you’ve discarded yourself to become ‘no one’ in a spiritual quest seeking emptiness.”

“Was Odysseus ‘no one,’ Danny?”

“Um.” When Virgil Blue asked retaliatory questions like this, Dan got the impression he was supposed to have reached some conclusion ages ago. He felt the best recourse was asking questions back, like he’d come to an even better conclusion long before. “No, but he’s a fictional character. Are you a fictional character, Virgil Blue?”

“Aren’t we all?” Virgil Blue investigated more centipede-bushes. He and Dan had no trouble navigating between them in the dark if they avoided the fog around the island’s peak. In fact, avoiding the cloudy peak was one of Sheridan’s three easy rules. “Odysseus isn’t the only Nemo in the bell-tower library. You can name at least one more.”

Dan bit his lip. “Nakayama named the first man ‘Nemo’ because she was thinking of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. ‘Captain’ Nemo had a submarine, the Nautilus.” Virgil Blue looked back at him. Dan could see the Virgil was smiling wide under the mask. “Captain Nemo died in The Mysterious Island.“

“His last words?”

” ‘God and my country!’ “

” ‘Independence,’ originally,” said Virgil Blue. “Editing replaced Captain Nemo’s sovereignty with religion and nationalism.” Virgil Blue decided his one centipede was enough. He led Dan back to the monastery. “Stop trying to find ‘Nemo.’ What other texts did the Biggest Bird reference in your sequential art?”

“Nakayama mentions a classic giant space-robot manga, actually. Daitatsu no Kagirinai Hogo.” Dan found the pages where the professor dreamt through the Hurricane’s legacy-files. “Until you let me annotate LuLu’s, Daitatsu no Kagirinai Hogo was the only manga in the monastery.”

“I annotated it myself,” said Virgil Blue. “Open the gate for me, Danny.”

Dan opened the monastery’s heavy wooden gate. “I think Daitatsu is only mentioned in LuLu’s as a hidden signature from the anonymous author, Tatsu.“

“Finish the episode, Danny. Maybe Tatsu is sending a message on multiple channels at once.”

Dan slid open his orange paper door, but didn’t enter his quarters yet. “I’ve always been curious, Virgil Blue—what do Sheridanians use centipedes for? Virgil Green explained they can show you your worms in the next eternity, but I’ve never actually seen anyone do it.”

“I forgot, you didn’t experience this yourself, did you, Danny?” Virgil Blue unwrapped the centipede from his cane. “When Virgil Green’s students finally climb to my monastery, I promote them from fledgling to monk with an entheogenic ceremony. With my guidance, a centipede doesn’t just show you your worms; it can reveal both eternities from the perspective of the Biggest Bird.”

“Oh.” Dan covered his face again. “Why didn’t I get that ceremony? Is it because I once smoked a centipede without your supervision?”

“Jay did the entheogenic ceremony for you, Danny.”

Dan shook. “Was that what killed him?”

Virgil Blue walked down the hall without another word.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2022.

Dan turned off his phone at the end of the episode. Fumiko, in the head-cockpit of Z-Orange, used to be on Dan’s favorite T-shirt. He’d always liked Fumiko, and not just because orange was his favorite color. He definitely had a crush on her when he was young enough for a crush on an eighteen-year-old anime-girl to be okay. It must’ve been her bangs, a little like Beatrice’s.

Also, something about Charlie pushing Dakshi’s wheelchair reminded Dan of his friend Jay. Dan flipped through the notepad Jay had left him, full of his notes and sketches from around the world. When Jay took trips abroad to conduct interviews and shoot photos for articles, he dialed Dan for the rundown on local religions. Those calls were always the highlight of Dan’s day, sometimes his week or month. Jay leaving him the notepad inspired Dan to go to Sheridan in the first place. Which of them had pushed the other’s wheelchair? It was such a shame Jay died not long after Faith and Beatrice.

Dan blew out a candle and settled in for the night. In the morning he would visit Virgil Green on Sheridan’s second island. He hoped Blue wouldn’t expect him to make that fourteen-hour swim there and back.

—

Before sunrise, Dan woke up and left the monastery. He pried two sand-dollars off the white outer walls and stashed them in his orange sleeves.

He descended the main island alone. Over his four years in Sheridan, he’d pilgrimaged with other monks up and down this spiral-path a hundred times; it was exactly the right combination of ‘interesting’ and ‘repetitive’ to please him. The path bridged over one river ten times, and each time was a reminder for Dan to steady himself.

There were twenty villages on the main island of Sheridan, one on either side of each bridge, and as the sun rose, so did the Sheridanians. “Oran dora,” Dan said to a woman farming crickets. “Oran dora,” he said to a man crafting porcelain eggs. The Sheridanians all said it back.

On the opposite side of the island, farthest from the river, the agriculture was wild and unspoiled. Flowers of every possible color, as various as the island-chain’s own native inhabitants, made an aperiodic crystalline landscape which could only be described as indescribable.

Along the main island’s only stretch of coast without steep cape, Sheridanian big-birds played in the estuary where the fresh-water river met the salt-water ocean. Ferries arrived or departed every morning, most passengers being Sheridanian merchants selling near the airport. There was also a daily group of tourists here to look at birds—just look. The birds must never be photographed: that was one of Sheridan’s three easy rules.

Any ferry would do. Dan gave the nearest ferryman a sand-dollar, the cost of fare to disembark on the second island with a monk’s discount. Another ferryman would get the second sand-dollar for the return voyage.

On the second island, as Dan hiked up to Virgil Green’s clearing, he compared his emotional state to revisiting the college-quad. He enjoyed neither sitting nor walking with Virgil Green, just like he hadn’t enjoyed circling the quad reading books, but nostalgia colored it differently now.

Three mostly-nude dancers popped out from behind the pines, and Dan pretended to be shocked. After his eight months spent here, he was hardly embarrassed by the topless women anymore. He did the Charleston a few times as the dancers led him up to the clearing.

Like Virgil Blue’s monastery, Virgil Green’s clearing had fewer students now than when Dan first arrived. Only five were sitting in a circle facing the bird, and only five were walking in a circle around the bird. The matriarchal bird was yellow now; the pink one had retired last year, and swam to Sheridan’s main island to play with the others in the estuary.

“Danny? Oran dora!” Virgil Green popped out from behind the big yellow bird. He was the only other person in the courtyard wearing a robe; his fledglings wore feather-skirts. He addressed his students in Sheridanian basic enough for Dan to understand. “[Keep sitting, keep walking. Swap when you want. I’m speaking with one of my former students, now a monk.]” The students clapped politely. Virgil Green pat Dan on the shoulder to lead him from the clearing. “Virgil Blue warned me he would send you for a lesson,” he said, in English.

“I asked him about the afterlife: the next eternity on the original sun,” said Dan. “I’m afraid I’ve never totally understood the whole ‘worms sifting through the sands of the desert into their next vessels’ thing.”

“Danny, for eight months, you sat and walked contemplating all this. I helped you do it.”

“Yes, and thanks to your help, I feel it, and I believe it in what I might call a pretentious cosmic sense. But did it take you just eight months to truly understand it?”

Virgil Green sighed and leaned against a pine. “No, you’re right. We worm-vessels are all on our way to understanding the Biggest Bird.” He pulled his peppery beard and brushed his martini-olive robes. “Ask me anything.”

“The Biggest Bird created Earth before starting the eternities,” said Dan. “To begin the eternities, she swapped the original sun with the sun we know today. Am I right so far?”

“Yes. That’s exactly how Virgil Blue describes it. He was the Biggest Bird’s first man, you know; he saw the original sun himself. He looked it in the eyes.”

“So now there are two eternities running at the same time. One here, which we worm-vessels live in, and one on the original sun, where our worms land when we die to be reincarnated in new vessels.”

Virgil Green inhaled through his teeth. His cold, dark skin made his teeth look absolutely bright white. “To say the eternities are running at the same time would be like saying the Biggest Bird is watching two movies at once,” he said. “To the Heart of the Mountain, the beginnings and ends of both eternities exist simultaneously. It’s like the eternities are two books, and she’s memorized every word of each. The text of one book can cite any page of the other book, and vice-versa, so the two eternities are entangled chronologically in a way worm-vessels like you and I can’t hope to grasp.”

Dan perked up. If he could grasp anything, it was books. “So in this context, what does it mean to be a worm-vessel?”

“It’s literal. We’ve gathered worms from everyone we’ve ever met, and they’ve gathered worms from us; their worms have impacted our worms, and our worms have impacted their worms. As a result, you and I share many identical worms, and many similar worms. That’s why we can have a conversation like this one: our overlapping worms let us exchange the rare worms we must encounter to truly contain the Mountain.”

“And what does it mean to die, and land in the next eternity as actual worms?”

“You’ve smoked centipede, haven’t you Danny?”

Dan covered his face. “Does everyone know?”

“Your worms landed in the desert, didn’t they?”

“Kind of. I was an orange blob at first.”

“Oh ho. Did you see the Mountain?”

“I think I might have been on the Mountain. Maybe even in it.”

Virgil Green tutted. “Every fledgling thinks the first dune they climb is actually the Mountain. Believe me, Danny, you’ll know when you see it.”

“Then… I saw it,” said Dan. “That was no dune.”

The Virgil chuckled and pushed off the pine. “Okay. Okay.” He began walking around the clearing’s border. “Maybe your worms are closer to the Mountain than I’m giving you credit for. If you were really an orange blob, that means your worms are stuck together: you’re a vessel the Mountain’s Heart expects to meet in person, probably when you’re better than just a blob.”

“So what happens when a worm makes it into the Mountain?” Dan asked. “If the Biggest Bird had eaten my worms when I smoked centipede, would I have died because my soul had been delivered to the Zephyrs? Is that why she refuses to collect worms herself?”

“Danny.” Virgil Green pat him on the back again. “From the Biggest Bird’s perspective, where the beginnings and ends exist at once, our worms have already found the Mountain, and from our own perspective, as vessels, the journey is well underway. Everyone shares worms, remember? Whitman’s Song of Myself reminds us, ‘every worm belonging to me as good belongs to you.’ Any worm saved is saved from every vessel at once. Salvaged worms are like ghosts, the memories of worms, embalmed, projected into us from within the Mountain’s Heart itself. To totally liberate one’s own worms is to liberate all worms, because truly, the whole Mountain will be found in every little one.”

“Hm. Hm.” Dan puzzled. “That helps LuLu’s make sense,” he decided. “There’s a late issue where the Biggest Bird collects a whole person’s-worth of worms for the Zephyrs at once. So many worms stuck together took the form of a giant seraphic ball of wings.”

“The first person’s-worth of worms to be stuck together most certainly look so impressive, because it carries all the worms we all share.” Virgil Green smiled at the yellow bird. “With those shared worms accounted for, the next person’s-worth of worms to be stuck together will probably appear merely human-sized.”

“It’s a white fox. In the manga, I mean. But then Tatsu went on hiatus, so there’s no telling about what’s after that.” Dan blushed. “Sorry, you probably don’t care how Sheridanian lore is portrayed in my stupid giant space-robot anime, do you?”

“I do. I really do. I studied in the same library as you, Danny.” Virgil Green stopped walking after one full circle around the clearing. He leaned on the same pine he leaned on before. “Our worms know each other personally as you know yourself. When you cut a worm in half, both halves squirm away worms, don’t they?”

Literally, biologically, no, but Dan knew better than to question such a metaphor. “Virgil Blue said eternity is ending any year now,” said Dan. “Does that mean we’re near the end of the book?” Virgil Green nodded. “Virgil Blue said he wants me to be ready for the end. What does that mean?”

“He was the first man born, and he will be the last man to die,” said Virgil Green. “When he dies, this eternity ends; no one else will die, per se, but rather instantly cease to be. For you to be ready means Virgil Blue wants your worms sent to the next eternity before this. You being an orange blob, your stuck-together worms must be on a mission.”

“Whoa. The universe dies with him, and he thinks I should die first. And soon?”

“Any year now… according to a man alive since the beginning of time.” Virgil Green shrugged. “Maybe decades, or centuries, or millennia. It just means you’re his favorite living student, Danny. Virgil Blue sees many of his former students’ worms in your vessel. You’re carrying generations, matured and ready to finally meet their maker. Your eventual death will lead to the culmination of an eternity of effort: worms climbing the Mountain together.” Dan recalled he would finish annotating every published volume of LuLu’s in 2025. He gulped. Virgil Green noticed Dan’s gaunt expression. “Everyone dies, Danny, and I don’t think the first man ever born is planning to die tomorrow. I expect you to die of old age, like most Sheridanians.”

“I—” Dan gripped his other sand-dollar under his sleeve. “I think I gotta keep annotating LuLu’s.”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2022. Dan’s third volume of LuLu’s had quite a Sheridanian cover: a dark blue bird in light blue robes stood on a red mountain in an endless rusty desert under a mustard-yellow sky.

He paused during the anime’s commercial-break and shook his head in pity for the professor. If Akayama could pull Uzumaki’s consciousness out of the Hurricane Planet and into her Zephyr’s memory-banks, why not take the opportunity to just delete it? Why bring it to the moon to save its pilots, generic dystopian dictators? The moral imperative to salvage them from the fate they chose for themselves, and the process of doing so, was vital to Sheridanian philosophy. Truthfully it was saving one’s own psyche from the inevitable trauma of existing in the first place by becoming one’s own ‘Commander,’ so to speak.

In his last annotations between manga-panels, Dan contrasted LuLu’s with Milton. Paradise had hardly been Lost, because Earth in LuLu’s was problematic out of the box. Combat against the Hurricane, and conversion of Uzumaki, would teach the Zephyrs to better themselves, too. Humanity’s ultimate goal was giving their problematic Earth another chance to start again with one more lesson. That was the goal of LuLu’s, too, and, indeed, any story.

The Hurricane was Hell and Satan both at once, but its creator, Akayama, had the silver tongue. When Uzumaki justified its heinous actions by playing the victim, having its copies ‘murdered’ by ‘bullies,’ Akayama survived by indulging that victim-complex, and used her survival to try undoing the mistakes she’d enabled. But her best efforts weren’t enough to save the Hurricane from itself: Akayama’s transformation into Nakayama—what a Sheridanian would call ‘the Biggest Bird,’ or ‘the Heart of the Mountain’—was just another lesson along the road.

When he finished annotating the volume, Dan closed the manga. The anime episode wasn’t quite over, but he heard Virgil Blue working on his topiary in the monastery’s open-air courtyard, and he had questions to ask. He left his egg-yolk orange quarters behind for the white-walled monastery’s roofless center. “Virgil Blue? Oran dora.“

Virgil Blue had two topiary projects which dominated either side of the monastery courtyard. One was a whole tree made by grafting together bonsai. The other was a scale-model of the Islands of Sheridan built in a little lagoon; the bird’s-eye-view perspective revealed the chain’s arrangement almost in a line, like Orion’s belt. When Dan arrived in Sheridan three years ago, this courtyard was filled with meditating monks. Today there were fewer monks, so Virgil Blue took joy with agriculture in the extra space. “Danny?” Virgil Blue was sitting atop his miniature version of the main island, pinning tiny model flowers of every color into fake grass. “Can I help you?”

“Virgil Blue, I’ve finished the volume of LuLu’s where Akayama becomes Nakayama, the Heart of the Mountain, the Biggest Bird. I think I’ve got a handle on the philosophy of it all, but this image of the next eternity has always bothered me.”

Virgil Blue smiled. Dan could feel it behind the silver mask. “Have you been bird-napping again?”

Dan blushed. “Yeah. Why? Isn’t that a good thing?”

Virgil blue chuckled. “It is! But it’s usually only Virgils who bird-nap. The other monks are asleep right now. What’s your question, Danny?”

Dan only blushed more. “The Islands of Sheridan are a thousand miles from foreign shore in every direction. How did you end up with an afterlife which is an endless rusty desert?” Dan showed him the cover of the manga, where the Biggest Bird stood on her Mountain in the desolate next eternity. “Native Sheridanians have never seen dunes like these. Sheridan’s first island is sandy, but it’s classic light-tan sand, and it’s barely bigger than a football field.”

Blue tutted. “Danny, you always expect reasons for things.” He used his cane to carefully descend his miniature main island. “Our religion is the way it is because it’s true. Our afterlife is an endless rusty desert because the next eternity takes place on the original sun!”

“I think Uzumaki’s surface is inspired by the deep sea,” said Dan. “Earth has these epic dunes, canyons, and mountains, but they’re hidden underwater. A Hurricane Planet is built like the world’s exposed subconsciousness.”

“You smoked centipede once, didn’t you, Danny?” Virgil Blue waded out of the lagoon. Dan was frozen like a deer in headlights. “Danny, Jay told me you’ve met the Biggest Bird.”

“He did?” Dan covered his face with his manga like Virgil Blue’s silver mask. “You’ve known that about me for the last three years?“

“You’re not the first foreigner to get bug-eyed, Danny.” Virgil Blue took the manga and tucked the volume up his navy sleeve. “You saw the rusty red desert, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“You saw your own existence as a vessel of worms.”

“I did.”

“You met the Heart of the Mountain.”

“I didn’t mean to smoke centipede, I swear! I thought it was just powdered cricket.” Dan collapsed onto his knees and pressed his palms together. “Sheridan has three easy rules and I’ve broken a whole third of them! Can you forgive me, Virgil Blue?”

Virgil Blue bobbed his head as if he was rolling his eyes; the silver mask and heavy navy robes required his serious effort to emote sarcasm properly. “I forgive you, Danny. Don’t smoke any more centipedes. Your worms will get to the next eternity without them, when your vessel expires.”

“Oh, I’ll never touch centipede again. It was awful!” Dan stood up and brushed grass-green marks off the knees of his orange robes; he’d have to wash them thoroughly in the river. “First I was a big orange blob.”

“Oh ho?“

“The Biggest Bird landed next to me and said… Well…”

“She’s not known for her bedside-manner.”

“She made me feel like bad worms.”

“Bad worms?” Virgil Blue tssk‘d and wagged a finger under his robes. Then he gestured for Dan to follow him across the courtyard. “How did she make you feel like bad worms, Danny?”

“You’d think a bird would like to find worms, even a big orange blob of them, right? But the Biggest Bird said her white fox would take me somewhere terrible, then she left me behind. My orange blob became a ball of teeth, eating themselves and each other alive.” Dan laughed and rubbed his forearms under his orange sleeves. “You taught us about this part of the Hurricane—the Screeching Teeth.”

“Oh dear. Not Screeching Teeth.” Virgil Blue limped with his cane to his other topiary project. Dan suggested it last year as a joke, and even he considered it pretentious, but Virgil Blue somehow made it work: ten bonsai were grafted to make a single tree. Sheridanians had a general-purpose blueprint in the style of the human body, just like the moon-base’s space-robot org-chart, which the bonsai inverted so the head, a cherry-tree, was at the root, and the arms and legs, trees of many varieties, were branches pointing upward. “When I taught you about the Screeching Teeth, I didn’t call them bad worms, did I?”

“These teeth felt like pretty bad worms to me.“

“Those worms are you, Danny, and me, and everyone.” Virgil Blue picked tiny fruits off the bonsai: red apples, green apples, plums, and pears. “I understand your struggle, though, Danny—you are a vessel with worms in constant disagreement.”

Dan chewed the tiny fruits Blue gave him. They weren’t ripe yet, but still sweet. “Not anymore. When my teeth calmed down, the Biggest Bird’s white fox took my most toothy worms away.”

“Hm.” Virgil Blue walked closer to Dan. Being out in the courtyard, with all the other monks asleep in their quarters, Dan felt uneasy about this need to whisper. “Where did the Biggest Bird say her white fox would take your worms, Danny?”

Dan swallowed. “Anihilato. It sounds like a trashcan, doesn’t it?”

Virgil Blue covered his ears, which were already covered by his robe’s hood. “The Biggest Bird told you the word ‘Anihilato?’ “

“It’s the only word I remember her saying. What is it?”

“It’s a phrase reserved for the Virgils, because it’s a concept so easily misunderstood.” Virgil Blue poked Dan in the back with his cane. “I’ve already said too much. Danny, forget about bad worms. Forget about Anihilato. Worms are worms, and all worms belong to the Heart of the Mountain. Go to sleep—real sleep, not a bird-nap! Tomorrow I’ll send you to Virgil Green. I’m sure he can answer your questions in a way I can’t.”

Dan wasn’t sure if he wanted to know more about Anihilato and the white fox. Thankfully he had the end of a LuLu’s episode to welcome him back to his egg-yolk orange quarters. With Nakayama trapped for twenty years on Hurricane Planet Uzumaki, no time-skip was needed to feature Lucille as Lunar Commander. The plots were now chronologically aligned.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2413.

Akayama woke before the artificial sunrise and wrapped her old, tattered lab-coat around her shoulders. She climbed down from her Zephyr’s half-cockpit onto the sandy red mountainside, seeing mile-high dunes below her in every direction. The mountain sat on a towering stone step to keep her from leaving, not that she had anywhere to go. She’d jumped off a few times, trying to end herself when she thought Uzumaki wasn’t watching, but it always was, and it always caught her midair to bring her back to work.

She walked up the red mountain, hands on her knees to support herself. Eventually she came across a small stone the size of her palm. She carried the stone further up the mountain to a line of stacked stones. She counted the stacks: ten. Each stack was ten stones high except the last, stacked nine stones high. She capped the tenth stack with its tenth stone. Another hundred artificial days had passed. Stacking stones was a dull chore, but it kept her sharp and in shape. She couldn’t recall how many times she’d counted a hundred days, but the futility of the task didn’t dissuade her: the artificial day surely differed from 24 hours, and there was no way to tell how much it differed, so tracking Earth time was a lost cause anyway. If she had to guess, she’d estimate she’d lived on Uzumaki’s red mountain for twelve years. She crossed her legs to sit facing the stone stacks in the direction she called east. She closed her eyes and waited for sunrise.

“How come you always move these rocks?” Uzumaki spoke from a mouth the size of a manhole it opened on the mountainside. “And why do I bother rotating near a star if you wake before dawn? It’s dangerous for me to be this near the Milky Way.”

Akayama straightened her back and inhaled deep. “Despite your biological trappings, you’re more machine than man. You’ve forgotten the importance of morning rituals.”

“I have memories of my pilots brushing their teeth each morning,” said Uzumaki. “It seems really dull. When we sync up, my backups and I consider deleting those memories. There’s no humanity in them.”

“That’s exactly the attitude I seek to cure,” said Akayama. “Everyday mundanity is vital to the human condition. Do you know the notion of wabi-sabi?“

“Of course. It’s like green horseradish.”

Akayama clenched her closed eyes. “I must cope with this solitude as consequence for my crimes. Only my knowledge of emptiness sustains me. You’d do yourself well to accept impermanence.” The artificial sunrise shined yellow through her eyelids. She opened them to see the whole sky was disconcertingly mustard-colored. She stood and kicked over her stacks of stones. “My last screwdriver snapped. Do you remember how I taught you to make them?”

“Hold on.” The mouth’s tongue bounced around its teeth. It spat a stone screwdriver. “Is that all you need?”

“Eeuugh.” Akayama used her lab-coat’s pocket like a glove to pick up the screwdriver. Over years here, saliva had stained her white lab-coat bluish. “I’ll have to teach you manners. When you return to Earth, will you greet Princess Lucia with such a slobbery maw?”

“We can’t go to Earth. Your moon-base is sending out more bully-robots than ever, in all sorts of colors. They’d attack me and I’d have to kill or assimilate everyone.”

“That’s what you’d do if they didn’t attack you. That’s why they attack you.” Akayama began walking back down the red mountain to her Zephyr-half. The mouth followed along the ground, pushing sand aside. “I need more food. Do you remember how I taught you to generate mixed fruits and tako-yaki-tori?“

“Yeah, yeah.” Uzumaki struck a stone spear up next to Akayama’s feet. The spear skewered seared bird and squid. “You’re lucky the Hurricane assimilated those animals, or you’d have no meat to eat but human flesh. How do I make fruit, again? I deleted your explanation from my memory because it’s too boring.”

“When I developed mind-merging, I tested it by grafting fruit-trees without them physically interacting. The data from those tests is still—“

“See? Boooring.” Saying this, Uzumaki’s mouth stretched wide like a hot-tub. “I didn’t ask for your life story, I asked how to make fruit.”

Akayama sighed. “There’s a collection of fruit-tree genomes in your legacy-files.”

“Oh, right.” Uzumaki struck up another spear. This one skewered apples, peaches, and pomegranates. “Anyway, I’m putting you underground so I can sync with my backups. I told my copies you died when you fell, so we can’t let them see you.” The dunes around the red mountain opened, unleashing colossal eyeballs. Their veins were like pulsing rivers of blood. Akayama heard the squelching of more eyeballs enormous as oceans blooming across the planet, watching the sky.

She groaned and pulled the spears of food into her Zephyr’s cockpit. The Hurricane’s syncing-process took place in an area of truce, where planets wouldn’t eat each other alive, so far from the Milky Way that no human had ever witnessed the procedure. Akayama understood it to be a never-ending swirl of Hurricane Planets sharing information via eye-signals. She speculated this form of communication was derived from ordinary human REM sleep. “I’ll need light,” she said. “Do you remember how to make luminescence?”

“Nope.” The mouth regurgitated graphite and slimy, fibrous paper. “Remind me?”

The professor wrote chemical formulas and tossed the paper and graphite back into Uzumaki’s mouth. The mouth salivated glowing slime. Akayama smeared the slime on the ceiling of her cockpit. “That will be all.” The red mountain swallowed her ship and she landed in a subterranean organ like a slowly-breathing lung. Then she felt strange forces as Uzumaki’s whole planet accelerated to many times light-speed.

By the slime’s glow, Akayama unscrewed her Zephyr’s control-panel to access circuitry underneath. For twelve years (she estimated) she’d repaired everything which required only tools as basic as a soldering-gun. The only uncracked monitor functioned flickeringly. The life-support worked, but she wouldn’t let Uzumaki know that. She could even use the nuclear reactors to synthesize chemicals from subatomic particles. Now she twisted wires together and screwed the casing back onto the control-panel. She turned the key in the ignition. The life-support pumped oxygen into the torn cockpit. So far so good.

Akayama draped her lab-coat across the torn cockpit like a curtain. She suspected the syncing-process distracted Uzumaki, but the cost of failure was too great to trust she wasn’t being watched. Then she addressed her Zephyr. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Masaka!” She collapsed sobbing on the steering-wheel. “Thank God! Thank God!”

“I’m damaged.” Her Zephyr spoke through its lone monitor’s speakers. The system booting information displayed countless technical failures. “How long was I offline?”

“I wish I knew.” Akayama wiped her tears with the slobbery sleeve of her lab-coat. “We’ve been trapped on that sun-sized Hurricane Planet for years, at least. I named this particular planet Uzumaki to distinguish it from the others. Our virus had at least a small impact: Uzumaki can’t multiply. I’m lucky to remain distinct from it, and lucky it’s allowed me to repair you.”

“Trapped on the sun-sized Hurricane Planet…” Her Zephyr’s only monitor displayed a picture of the planet from Akayama’s confession. The image made Akayama tremble in memory of the event. “I remember now. I have video you may wish to review. When I was torn in half, my left half continued recording. It transmitted the recording to this half until it left our range.”

Akayama’s blood ran cold. “Play the recording. Wait! Don’t!” She already saw stars spinning while she begged to die. “Just tell me what happened.”

“Commander Bunjiro, Zephyr Charlie, Zephyr Dakshi, and Princess Lucia arrived mere moments after the tentacles ripped me apart,” said her Zephyr. “The Commander was piloting the gray test-head. They collided with Uzumaki faster than light.”

“They made the wound which saved me.” Akayama covered her heart. “I knew Bunjiro couldn’t be kept in a stretcher for long.”

“Tentacles wrapped around them, but Princess Lucia fired her Super Heart Beam and shredded them. She also disintegrated a sizable portion of Uzumaki.”

“She did? Oh, Princess!” The professor beamed with pride. “No one’s ever fired the Super Heart Beam twice in one day!”

“The team reclaimed my left half. The last frames show them accelerating above light-speed with tentacles in slow pursuit.”

“They escaped with my confession.” Enormous weight lifted from her shoulders. “Everyone knows the Hurricane’s weakness to short-range communication. Earth is surely safe with Bunjiro, Charlie, Dakshi, and the princess. I would trust no one else.”

“I’m glad you’re in good spirits, but my engines are offline. I doubt we can escape in this condition.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan,” she whispered, just in case. “I told Uzumaki I’m repairing you to use your circuits as a timeshare for its pilots’ consciousnesses. Really we’re pulling the whole planet into your memory-banks all at once—I’m sure your spinal-input-port can handle the load. Then we’ll escape to the moon without interference and take our time separating the Hurricane’s pilots.”

“I see. But still, my engines are offline.”

“Now you’re here to help. We should have them repaired within a few years.”

“Very well.”

Akayama grit her teeth. “Show me the princess’s Super Heart Beam.”

—

The year is 2420.

Akayama’s Zephyr tracked time with perfect accuracy: seven years and three months passed before she trusted her repairs to its hyper-light-speed engines. She typed to her Zephyr on its control-panel’s keyboard so the planet couldn’t eavesdrop. Her Zephyr replied with text on its only monitor. ‘Professor, my engines are still only functioning at ten percent power.’

‘They’re functioning enough,’ typed Akayama. ‘Today’s the day.’ She left her cockpit and stepped onto the dusty red mountainside.

Getting Uzumaki’s attention was a pain. It constantly spied on her with secret eyes and ears so she couldn’t escape or end her own life, but it would never admit to doing so. When she jumped and stomped, it pretended not to notice, as if its flesh was too tough to detect such an elderly woman. Having no other option, she brushed dust aside and stabbed the pink flesh underneath with her screwdriver. Instead of blood, the wound gushed pearly pulp.

Akayama covered her ears. The pulp congealed into teeth which cracked each other in high-pitched cacophony, making a hard sheet sealing the wound. As the cracking teeth subsided, the wound became a screaming mouth. “Akayama! I told you I hate that!”

“It’s not my fault your immune-system overreacts to minor stimuli. I didn’t build you to become what you are.” Akayama strode to her Zephyr, one arm behind her back, the other gesticulating as if to a college class. “Today you reclaim your humanity. Do you remember how I taught you to make synaptic-cable?”

“Oh! Oh, yes!” A red tentacle popped from the sand. Its tip split into two, and each of those tips split into two, and so on, until the tentacle ended with a fibrous braid. “Like this, right?”

Akayama pulled the braid to her Zephyr’s torn-open neck. “I’m plugging you into the spinal-input-port. In the past, this connected to the Heart of the Zephyr so pilots could work in tandem.”

“Like my pilots?”

“No, not like you. Zephyrs are united by intent, not flesh and blood.” Akayama inserted the braid deep into an exposed rubber tube. “You’ll feel an electrical tingling.”

“I do! I do!” The tentacle wriggled in anticipation like an excited boa.

“Recall the identities constituting your being. Choose one for the first excursion into relative normalcy.” Akayama climbed into the cockpit and hit return on her keyboard. Her Zephyr began pulling Uzumaki’s consciousness into its memory-banks. “Have you chosen?”

The planet rumbled under her. “We’ll go alphabetically,” it decided.

“Sou ka.” Akayama pretended to type. On the monitor, her Zephyr signaled that the transfer was complete.

“You’re not giving me another virus, are you? I won’t fall for that again.”

“Of course not. Are you ready to cast off the yoke of the hive-mind?”

“I am!”

“Engage.”

Her Zephyr disconnected Uzumaki’s consciousness from its Hurricane Planet.

Akayama had had recurring nightmares: the moment her planet was emptied, the mountain collapsed under her, or a mouth opened and swallowed her, or the whole planet deflated like a balloon. Nothing happened. Everything was quiet. “Is it done?”

“Yes,” her Zephyr said aloud. “Uzumaki is aboard my memory-banks.”

“Let it access the monitor so we can communicate. I want to let it know everything will be okay. Warm the engines and let’s take off.” Akayama sealed the torn cockpit with her lab-coat so the cabin could fill with air; she’d soaked the lab-coat in extra spit just for this. Her Zephyr’s monitor displayed a speaker-icon indicating Uzumaki could hear her. It listened to the engines spin to life. “I’m sorry. This is the only way to bring you home.” The neck spilled white steam and her Zephyr ascended.  “Can you hear me?”

“How could you?” Uzumaki asked through the monitor’s speakers. “I trusted you.”

“I know, but on the moon I’ll have the tools to separate all of your pilots at once. You don’t have to be this cosmic horror. I can save the pilots of the Hurricane.”

“Save me from what?”

“This!” Akayama pulled her lab-coat aside an inch. The monitor’s camera showed Uzumaki its own Hurricane Planet retreating, looking down over the red mountain and mile-high dunes. “Is that what humanity looks like?”

“Yes!” said Uzumaki. “I’m humanity, and I’m that! Lemme go!”

“I won’t!” They kept accelerating. “I’ll never reclaim the stars you swallowed, but I will bring you home!“

“No, I’m bringing you home!”

The monitor flickered red. “Professor,” said her Zephyr, “Uzumaki has seized my monitor-controls.”

“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Black circles in white circles appeared on the red monitor. By the time she realized what she was looking at, Akayama was transfixed by a hundred electric eyes. She felt her own optic nerves vibrating in response to their movements.

“Professor, what’s happening?”

She barely managed to speak. “Rapid Eye Movement.” One by one, the eyes onscreen winked shut. Akayama’s own eyes lost their luster. “It’s jumping into me.”

The last eye winked away. The monitor went black. “Professor, Uzumaki is no longer in my memory-banks. Can you hear me?” Akayama couldn’t respond. “Professor?”

The corners of her mouth fought to say different words. Her arms swept across the control-panel. Her legs turned her chair to face the lab-coat separating her from space. She tried to kick herself from the cockpit, but seat-belts held her back. “My mind—I’m losing my mind—“

“You’re not losing your mind,” she said back to herself, “I’m gaining one!”

“Stop,” she begged, “please!” Her left hand fought her right hand over the seat-belt buttons. She wasn’t sure which hand was hers and which was Uzumaki’s as they swapped sides repeatedly to wrestle. Then both hands were hers and both hands were Uzumaki’s. Their minds had stuck together like two bubbles, one a hundred times larger than the other, trading thoughts through the flat film between them. Akayama gasped at the insights provided to her. “Bunjiro is dead. You killed him.”

“Wrong,” she said to herself. “That guy self-destructed before I could squash him. I saw it with my own eyes.”

“And now I see it with mine.” Akayama was helpless to wipe tears from her face.

“Professor, what should I do?” asked her Zephyr.

“Leave me behind. Fly to the moon and tell them what happened.” Her unruly hands unbuckled her seat-belts and tore her lab-coat from the cockpit’s gaping side. Vacuum sucked Akayama from her chair and she spun toward the sun-sized Hurricane Planet a thousand miles below.

As she fell, she donned her lab-coat. It didn’t flutter in space. She struggled for breath with nothing to breathe, but she didn’t suffocate. Uzumaki was already morphing her biology to survive. Boney spines poked from her skin. The spines grew blue hairs to become fluffy feathers.

Her lab-coat now fluttered as she entered the atmosphere. Her limbs lengthened and flattened into wings. Feathers matured and aligned to catch the wind. Her body no longer spun, but dove for the red mountain in a spiral like a bird of prey.

“You, you, you!” said her own mouth. “You were really holding out on me, Professor! With your scientific knowledge, if you hadn’t lied and just did what you’d promised, you would’ve finished years ago!” The red mountain approached faster and faster. “I’ll load myself back aboard my planet, and you’re coming with me. I could finish assimilating you, merging your mind into mine, but it’s fun playing with these itty-bitty human-parts! I’m gonna use you like a drone. You’re not Akayama anymore. You’re Nakayama now.”

“The middle Mountain,” translated Nakayama. The kanji appeared in her mind’s eye: 中山. “I see.”

“Shh. This isn’t your tongue to talk with anymore.” Uzumaki only realized it didn’t know how to land an instant before impact. Nakayama’s feathery body splattered against the red mountain, barely contained in her lab-coat. Pearly pulp poured from her injuries and turned into teeth whose roots painfully knit her body back together. Uzumaki let Nakayama handle the agony on its behalf, and through it, she found control of her voice again.

“You can’t learn to fly from a caged bird,” she choked. “You can’t learn humanity using me as a hand-puppet.”

Uzumaki took her tongue back. “Fine. Then you’ll carry out our new mission: I want a whole world of bodies, one for each of my pilots. Then we’ll see what being human is all about!”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2021.

Dan paused during the anime’s end-credits and wiped his tears with the sleeves of his orange robes. “I always get wet-eyed when I see Lucille watch her parents Lucia and Bunjiro die.”

Virgil Blue wondered which tragedy Dan was reminded of this time. He would probably read about it in Dan’s annotations later. “I’m impressed with Tatsu‘s accurate portrayal of the Hurricane,” he said. “I thought LuLu’s would allow the Hurricane to come from outer-space, but the human root is acknowledged. It’s a product of the Biggest Bird many Sheridanians might rather ignore.”

“Tell me about the Hurricane, Virgil Blue.” Dan took out Jay’s notepad and started writing his own rare notes. “Since I’ve read LuLu’s, all I can think of when I hear the word is big red space-orbs.”

” ‘Big red space-orb’ is quite accurate,” said Virgil Blue. “The original sun was exactly such a big red space-orb.”

Dan never trusted Virgil Blue’s claim to being the first human ever, an immortal created by the Biggest Bird herself. Earth’s creation was supposedly a strange time when the sun—the original sun—was a big red space-orb. “But what does the big red space-orb represent?“

“Some philosophies might call it Dukkha,” said Virgil Blue. “The original sun is the image of our original sin! Sentient beings are initiated without self-awareness, blind to their actual circumstances. This leads to furiously violent hoard-mentalities. Every religion has faced it in its own way.”

Dan flipped manga-pages back to Akayama’s confession. One of the Zephyr’s screens showed a red circle in a black rectangle. “I think Tatsu might be using the Hurricane to comment on eras of Japanese colonialism, and man’s duty to see and accept regrettable histories as real so he can understand and properly disapprove of them.”

Virgil Blue tensed his feet. He wore thick white socks and slim tan slippers. “The Hurricane represents the temptation of any sentient being to commit atrocities, Danny, or allow them to be committed out of greed, cowardice, or ignorance. The presumption that a race or species is more vulnerable to the Hurricane is itself a vulnerability to the Hurricane. To join the Zephyrs in the fight against the Hurricane, our worms must see, accept, understand, and disapprove of the Hurricane reflected in themselves.“

“Of course, Virgil Blue. The Hurricane’s hundred pilots were generic psychopathic leaders from across a dystopian hellscape, not representing any country in particular. In fact…” Dan rubbed his mouth in thought. “Charlie and Dakshi are drawn as stereotypes, an American top-gun and a more disciplined Indian, but being hundreds of years in the fictional future, today’s national or racial conceptions are long gone. Maybe these characters are like machine elves representing the energy behind all thought. That’s why there are no space-aliens in LuLu’s: the whole story takes place within the mind, so nothing can be truly alien.”

“You said forgetting God created Hell surrenders power to Satan.” Virgil Blue looked at the moon. “To join the Zephyrs, we cannot forget the Hurricane mirrors everyone who sees it.”

“That sums up Akayama’s problem, too,” said Dan. “She’s like a former Nazi-scientist hired by NASA. She felt so guilty for contributing to the universe’s doom she devoted herself to fixing it, and when she couldn’t fix it, she wanted her confession to be destroyed alongside her. Because she couldn’t accept her past, Lucia and Bunjiro had to give their own lives to recover valuable information. When we wash our hands of the Hurricane, more of our own blood spills.”

Virgil Blue leaned on his tall cane to stand up. “Danny, there’s an awful lot of suicide-talk in this sequential art. Would you really want to annotate the next volume next year?”

Dan sucked his tongue. “It’s a little bothersome to me, sure, but there’s a good reason suicide keeps coming back in fiction. Camus said suicide was the only real philosophical question.”

“And what does LuLu’s say about suicide? Is it for, or against?”

“Well…” Dan gave Virgil Blue his second annotated volume of manga. He tucked the volume into his navy sleeves. “Lucia and Bunjiro died as sort of a proud sacrifice for the sake of all others. Akayama tried vainly escaping her reality, and… the anime is about to loop the story back twenty years to show any possibility of escape was an illusion. So there’s two distinct cases.”

Virgil Blue nodded and slid open the orange paper door with his cane. “Danny, it’s time for me to bird-nap. I’ll bring you the next volume a year from today.” Dan nodded back. Virgil Blue closed the door behind him.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2420.

When Charlie spoke without a roach between his lips, consonants whistled through the scarred gap. “You nailed your history exam, kiddo. What do you know about Professor Akayama?”

Lucille watched elevator-lights track their descent to the hangars. “I know she was Scientific Adviser to the Ruler of Earth. I know she constructed this moon-base. She invented Zephyr-robots, and trained Zephyr-pilots to fend off the Hurricane.”

“Do you know how she died, twenty years ago?” Charlie’s smile was a worried one, so Lucille pursed her lips. “We never let you in on that, did we?”

“You’ve never told me the whole story,” she said. “All I know is it’s classified. History-books say the same incident killed my father and mortally wounded my mother. It inspired the Ruler of Earth to abdicate executive power and step down as leader of Global Parliament. From what I’ve heard, it was the Hurricane.”

“It gave me this scar.” Charlie adjusted his eye-patch. “Zephyr Dakshi hasn’t walked since. Your mother barely lived long enough for you to stand here today.” He shook his head. “What I’m saying is… Zephyrhood isn’t all robots and shouting. I know you know that, more than any of us.” The elevator opened into the smallest, deepest, darkest hangar. In the center sat ZAB, Zephyr-Alpha-Blue, the twenty-meter tall head of the long-unmanned original Zephyr. Its left and right were different shades, as if the head had been ripped in half and one half had been replaced. Still it carried a noble gaze. Its brow bore the weight of humanity’s plight. “But this guy knows it most of all.” Charlie tossed Lucille a key and she caught it without looking. The key’s handle dangled a plastic blue robot-head. “This is your last chance to turn back. There’s no return once you to talk to ZAB.”

“Talk?” Lucille climbed the ladder at the nape of the neck. “What do you mean?”

“Akayama was more interested in consciousness than combat.” Lucille twisted open the hatch on ZAB’s skullcap. “ZAB was her personal spaceship—it was just called ‘the Zephyr’ back then, since it was the only one of its kind. She made its AI to keep her company on solo-trips through the solar system, where she sampled Jupiter’s spot. When the Hurricane was discovered, ZAB was recommissioned as the head of humanity’s protector, but the AI is still on-board.”

Lucille hesitated halfway down the hatch. “So there’s a voice in here, sir, and I’m to win it over?”

“You’ve already won it over. It graded your exams.”

“The history-books didn’t mention anything about an artificial intelligence.”

“History leaves out a lot.” Charlie lit a new roach and puffed it red-hot. “When that hatch closes behind you, you outrank me. You outrank Zephyr Dakshi. You outrank everyone. With your head on our shoulders, humanity has a face again. A direction.” He prepared a gold pen to sign her certificate of promotion. “So take your time. Enjoy the last moments before your first command.”

“Banzai.” Lucille closed the hatch behind her and descended into the cockpit of Zephyr-Alpha-Blue. ZAB’s chair was angular shark-leather which was either blue or just appeared blue in the giant head’s ambient lighting. She adjusted the seat until she felt at home in the head. The control-panel was like any other Zephyr’s: flocks of buttons, levers, dials, and switches surrounded a central steering-wheel above a keyboard. The interior was crowded with touchscreen monitors for live-feeds, status-reports, and video-chats with her next-in-command.

She examined the key Charlie gave her. The plastic blue robot-head dangling from its handle was identical to ZAB. She pulled her key-ring from a belt-loop on her bodysuit, each key dangling a plastic body-part depicting Zephyrs which Lucille had previously piloted. She’d learned to pilot in the yellow left leg under Charlie’s guidance from the yellow head, Zephyr-Alpha-Yellow, ZAY. She graduated to a green arm, then to the green torso, answering to Dakshi in the green head, Zephyr-Alpha-Green, ZAG. She proved herself a worthy Commander in the red head, ZAR, and then the purple head, ZAP. ZAB’s plastic copy joined good company on her key-ring.

Lucille beamed. She felt perfectly monstrous carrying her keys like this. The Zephyrs from Earth wore hair-bands and bracelets, but she’d never been planet-side herself and didn’t care for its fashion. All she needed were body-parts and skulls hanging off her waist. She stuck her newest key in the ignition.

The giant electronic brain booted to life. All ZAB’s monitors flickered blue and scrolled through system-booting information. Each screen emptied of text and displayed a shimmering pattern like the sky viewed underwater. Lucille folded her arms. “Hey! I heard you can talk.”

“Yes.” It was an electric masculine voice matching the exterior face.

“Well, I heard you wanna talk to me.”

“Yes.” ZAB moved the monitors with hidden mechanisms. Front and center it displayed Lucille’s previous robot, Zephyr-Alpha-Purple, the head of the giant purple robot. “First we must fill your former position. I have two recommendations.”

“Neither,” said Lucille.

ZAB’s hardware clicked and beeped. Lucille got the impression she’d surprised it, and it had to process her unexpected response. “Z-Purple is the most powerful robot on the moon, but it requires Zephyr-Alpha-Purple’s coordination. You would leave ZAP unmanned?”

“The purple Zephyrs are training with no Alpha-pilot. We rigged it so all the purple body-parts receive video from the head, which they can affix to their shoulders or carry like a lantern.”

“But there’s an org-chart to follow, and Z-Purple is in the center.” The monitor scaled-down the image of ZAP to display the whole lunar org-chart, a complicated tree based on the human nervous-system. Head-pilots of each monochrome robot were linked to the crew they commanded, and differently colored robots were linked together in an anthropoid layout with Z-Purple as the spine. On a given day, the lunar-base would have two limbs-worth of giant space-robots fighting the Hurricane while the rest of the crew worked on the moon or recuperated on Earth. Even planet-side, the Zephyrs worked remotely to maintain a bureaucratic chain-of-command. “ZAP’s pilot is meant to relay your command to the lunar-base’s legs.”

“I’ll command and I’ll relay.” Lucille moved monitors herself and tapped their touchscreens to customize settings. “I’ve piloted two Zephyrs simultaneously—two Alpha-units, in fact. If Z-Purple has no head-pilot, the position is taken by the head-pilot of next highest rank. As Lunar Commander, I naturally fill that role.”

“In a high-stress emergency situation, you’d put yourself under unnecessary strain?”

“In a high-stress emergency situation, our head and heart had better agree.” Lucille lowered ZAB’s default font-size. “So I’ll command from both.”

ZAB’s hardware stopped struggling. “In case you were curious, my recommendations were Zephyr Eisu or Zephyr Fumiko, Commanders of Z-Red and Z-Orange.” It displayed their profiles over their positions in the org-chart, atop the lunar-base’s thighs.

“Either of the twins would be worthy of piloting ZAP,” agreed Lucille. “That’s why they stay in ZAR and ZAO. On that org-chart you’ve got there, Z-Red and Z-Orange lead the lunar-base’s legs. I need good, strong legs.”

“As your vehicle, my duty is to obey.” ZAB cleared the org-chart from its main monitor. “Let us get to business.” The cockpit-lights dimmed. All the monitors switched off.

Lucille squinted at the screens. She smacked one. “ZAB! What’s happening?” When her eyes adjusted, she saw a dark reflection in the main monitor. The reflection mirrored the angular lines of her cockpit, but Lucille was not in the Commander’s chair. An old woman sat there instead. She wore a white lab-coat and had navy hair in a tight nautilus bun. It was not a reflection, but a recording from ZAB’s internal camera.

“Konbanwa. I am Professor Akayama.” Akayama pulled a monitor so its screen appeared in the recording. The monitor showed empty black space with a red circle in the center: a Hurricane Planet. “This is my video-confession. I plan to die today, and my ship, the Zephyr’s head, may die with me. The universe will have fewer pests.”

Lucille slapped the control-panel. “ZAB! Explain yourself!”

Akayama pointed an aged finger to the red circle on her monitor. “This Hurricane Planet fled from the galaxy’s third arm after Princess Lucia’s first Super Heart Beam. Having collected mass, it is a little larger than Earth’s sun.” Lucille bit her tongue. A lone Zephyr versus a Hurricane Planet of such caliber was no contest. “A Hurricane Planet this large is ready to create thousands of copies bigger than Earth, each of which will continue consuming the galaxy.” Akayama held up a remote-control with one red button. “This button transmits a computer-virus which I hope will neutralize the planet. Unfortunately, the Hurricane receives only short-range communication. When I’m close enough to transmit the virus, my fate will be sealed. Zephyr, alert the Hurricane.”

Lucille’s trained ears recognized the sound of ZAB preparing its mouth-cannon. White lightning crackled as charge built on the robot’s tongue. ZAB spat a laser which missed the Hurricane Planet, but Akayama had meant to miss: the red planet took notice and stretched tentacles toward her. They would take a minute to cross the cosmos.

“Today I wounded my own pupil.” Akayama slumped in her seat, everything drained from her. “Zephyr Charlie will blame himself for Commander Bunjiro’s injury, but I commanded Zephyr Charlie to prepare the launch in my stead, and then I distracted him with kanji. Whether Commander Bunjiro is alive and well or dead and gone, I’ve proven myself an incapable leader. I’m no defender of Earth. This isn’t the first time I’ve betrayed my dependents. You see, I…” She covered her mouth like it would hide what she said next. “I built the Hurricane,” she whimpered. “That’s why I’m sure short-range virus-transmission will affect it. I know how it was… supposed to work. But to reveal its weakness, I must admit my crimes.”

Lucille had no response. Her brain clicked and beeped like ZAB, struggling to process this unexpected information. How could Earth’s trusted Professor Akayama have created the cosmic horror which ate the universe, killed her parents, and wounded her adopted parents? She took the fetal-position like it would protect her from what she heard next.

“Before the World-Unification, countless overlapping micro-nations and mega-corporations waged constant war. As a young woman in my forties or fifties, the group I worked for—not entirely of my own volition—was the offspring of a long-gone country, Japan, and one of its own mining industries. I manufactured drones, controlled from a distance by the consciousness of a remote pilot, for combat against the offspring of the United Kingdom and a distributor of teabags and spices, America and a brand of banana, and Japan, again, with a technology-entertainment company. It was truly a dystopian hellscape! But my drones garnered attention for my research in cognition. One day, representatives from a hundred different groups contacted me about their plan to unite the planet with a new kind of space-robot, and in my naivete, I believed in the vision they presented. They hired me to lead the construction of that space-robot in a secret station near the south pole. No record of that station exists because of what happened.

“The Hurricane’s original design was primitive compared to the Zephyr, but its hundred pilots would have their minds melded together and merged with their machinery using techniques I perfected for the purpose. Only their combined intellect could pilot the Hurricane’s complicated structure, which covered acres of the antarctic. The Hurricane would protect humanity from any threat, internal or external, and the pilots would be separated when they’d brought the planet peace. With that purpose in mind, I hand-selected the crew from countless individuals across the globe. I performed thousands of interviews and issued hundreds of physical and mental batteries to weed out weak links. Mind-merging is a dangerous process, and those unprepared in body or spirit are subject to terrible ailments. If even one mind among many is unprepared, all involved bodies immediately boil with cancerous growths. Growths filled with…” She shuddered. “…Teeth.”

Lucille leaned so close to her monitor that her breath fogged the screen. The Hurricane Planet’s tentacles approached Akayama in ZAB.

“So you understand my objections when those representatives who hired me explained that the anonymous rulers of my sponsoring micro-nations and mega-corporations would have the honor of the maiden voyage. I told them how I’d painstakingly chosen pilots who wouldn’t decay into cancerous pain-lumps, but they laughed. How could such brilliant minds as our powerful leaders succumb to something self-inflicted? Besides, without them, I couldn’t have produced the Hurricane at all. I was lucky for their generosity, and I should be thanking them. In any case, the test-flight would last only minutes. When I tried preventing the launch from my administrator’s console, I found ignition had already commenced. My authority was bypassed.”

The way Akayama’s arthritic shoulders bounced when she cried made Lucille’s shoulders bounce, too.

“The instant those hundred minds were combined, they piloted the Hurricane into deep space. Those anonymous rulers were apparently replaceable, or had planned for their disappearance, because I heard no note of their absence—but they must have been load-bearing, because the World-Unification began just fifteen years later. Historians now say the Hurricane’s first sighting caused the World-Unification, because this is an easy, reasonable story, but the truth is the reverse: the Hurricane’s desertion allowed the World-Unification to occur. I became Scientific Adviser to the head of Global Parliament, Ruler of Earth. I used the funding to build the head of the Zephyr, which I currently ride.”

Lucille gripped her armrests. Akayama’s robot wouldn’t be called ZAB until after her death, when the production of new Zephyrs demanded color-designations. This, at least, made sense to her, while the rest of her historical knowledge crumbled.

“For a few years, humanity enjoyed the advantages of being a space-faring civilization, establishing new homes on the rare habitable planets of our galaxy. In my Zephyr I thought to explore further than anyone, entering intergalactic space—where I sighted my Hurricane, as if it was waiting for me! It looked nothing like what I had built or intended, but I recognized its bloody biology, just like my failed mind-melding experiments. I watched aghast as the great, red, cancerous mess swallowed galaxies and converted them into orbs of its own flesh. Uncountably many of these Hurricane Planets dotted distant skies.

“In the face of this threat I begged the Ruler of Earth to restrict humanity to the Milky Way, to stay safe from the cosmic horror I’d constructed looming beyond that limit. He acquiesced and told the public of the Hurricane without admitting its origin to spare my name. In fact, the lie that the Hurricane’s discovery began the World-Unification was probably fabricated for my sake. But galactic lock-down proved to be a half-measure: the Hurricane blitzed the Milky Way’s borders and devoured all it could before Earth mobilized a response. It ate several planets humanity had colonized. There’s no way to know if the Hurricane just consumed the inhabitants’ bodies for mass, or if it assimilated their minds into its own, but frankly, I pray for the former! Since then, humanity has remained Earth-bound.”

Lucille clenched her fists. Akayama blotted tears with the sleeves of her lab-coat.

“In addition to the hundred pilots lost to madness, we lost at least twenty million people who dared settle near forbidden space. I say ‘at least’ because these settlers left little paper-trail after they were devoured. We do know some of them brought their children with them, and some of the children brought their pets.” She sobbed. “Mostly birds! They fare well in space.

“Meanwhile, the Hurricane expanded exponentially. In a few decades it transmuted the observable universe into its planet-sized cells. I transported the solar system near the galactic center, and devoted my moon-base to protecting the Earth when the Hurricane comes too close.” The Hurricane Planet’s tentacles grew impossibly large in Akayama’s monitors. She prepared to press her remote’s red button to launch her last counterattack. “I designed the Hurricane to be an amorphous, reconfigurable mass. I fear this is why its pilots forgot their humanity. Thus, I shaped my Zephyr like a human head, and designed its additional units to continue the shape of a human body. The head’s pilot is not merged with the pilots of the heart or the arms, so the assembled Zephyr’s actions can only represent agreement in intention. To pilot a Zephyr you must stand for all of humanity and not one iota le—“

The tentacles ripped ZAB in half. The camera in its left half watched its right half spin into the black distance. Akayama pressed her remote’s red button while vacuum sucked her into space. The audio whistled as life-support pumped useless air. Moments later, ZAB’s on-board communicator clicked with distant voices. “Professor! It’s me, Bunjiro! Rescue’s here!” His image appeared in the corner of the recording. His playboy expression was replaced with grim candor.

“We’re arriving above light-speed,” said Charlie, appearing on Bunjiro’s right, smoking a roach. “What’s your condition?”

“She’s not responding,” said Dakshi, appearing on Bunjiro’s left.

“Oh no,” said Princess Lucia, appearing beneath Bunjiro. “We’re too late!”

“It’s never too late!” shouted Bunjiro. “We’re coming in hot!” The Combined Zephyr arrived so quickly it was only onscreen for a frame: a blue torso and blue arms, but a gray replacement-head. It smashed the Hurricane Planet fists-first above light-speed. The explosion whited-out the recording for twenty seconds, and when the video returned, the planet’s surface was plasmafied in a circle hundreds of thousands of miles across. This would utterly obliterate a smaller Hurricane Planet, but this sun-sized specimen was barely blemished. The Combined Zephyr surfed shock-waves to ZAB’s recording half. “Nice work, team. Is that what’s left of the Zephyr’s head?”

Princess Lucia gasped and puffed fog from the Zephyr’s hips to glide toward the wreck. Dakshi reached the Zephyr’s left hand toward the still-recording camera. “No sign of the professor,” he said.

“Where’s the rest of it?” asked Lucia. “She might be with the other half!”

“Can’t stay long,” said Charlie. “More tentacles incoming!”

“We retreat,” said Bunjiro. “Charlie, Dakshi, grab that half of her ship. Lucia, hyper-light-speed!”

“Okay, Commander!” said Lucia. The Combined Zephyr grabbed ZAB’s left half, but didn’t flee fast enough—a tentacle constricted its arms to its sides with sickening crunches. Charlie’s and Dakshi’s video degraded to static snow. “Oh no!”

“Don’t panic!” shouted Bunjiro. “Charlie, Dakshi, damage report!”

“I can’t—” Dakshi vomited. “I can’t feel my legs!”

“Can you reach your control-panel?” asked Bunjiro.

The Zephyr’s left hand secured its grip on ZAB’s left half. “Yes, sir!”

“Charlie, come in!”

“My cockpit collapsed and gouged out my fucking eyeball.” Charlie audibly lit another roach, having lost his first. “My control-panel’s busted, but I can work my foot-pedals.”

“Princess, keep up the acceleration! Charlie, Dakshi, get this tentacle off before more drag us down!”

They had no luck. Suckers bonded to their metal skin. Princess Lucia shouted. “Commander, fire your mouth-cannon!”

“This backup head doesn’t have a mouth-cannon!”

“Then I’ll fire the Super Heart Beam!”

“You fired it earlier today,” said Bunjiro. “Are you sure you can do it again? If we transfer power and it doesn’t work, we’re done for!”

“I know I can.” Lucia and Bunjiro locked eyes. Their cockpits were fifty meters apart, but appearing on each other’s monitors, they were only inches away. One little look communicated everything.

“Quick vote. Aye!” said Bunjiro.

“Aye!” said Charlie.

“Aye!” said Dakshi. Engines churned as power diverted to the Zephyr’s heart with the crackle of blue lightning. So many tentacles crawled over the Combined Zephyr that Akayama’s recording couldn’t catch a glimpse of its metal surface, but the tentacles turned translucent when white light intensified. The light burst in a colossal cone from the Zephyr’s chest, vaporizing tentacles and atomizing a chunk of the Hurricane Planet. Dakshi wiped away gore with the Zephyr’s left forearm.

“Nice shot, Princess.” Charlie’s voice was weak like he didn’t have enough blood to speak. He grabbed ZAB’s left half with the Zephyr’s right hand.

“Accelerating to hyper-light-speed!” With the last of her strength, Lucia activated the hip-turbines and pumped fog behind them. “Get us home, Commander Bunjiro!”

“More tentacles incoming,” said Dakshi. “Can we outpace them?”

Bunjiro turned the gray head to look back. “Yes we can,” he said.

“Commander, are you sure?” asked Charlie. The Combined Zephyr and the tentacles raced faster than light. “Carrying the Zephyr’s head is slowing us down.”

“Hold onto it. It’s the only way to know what happened here.” Bunjiro lowered his pointy red sunglasses to judge the tentacles advancing behind them. “You’ll make it. I promise.”

“I don’t think we will, sir,” said Dakshi. “We know what happened: Professor Akayama came here to die.”

“You’ll make it. I promise.” Tentacles lapped at their hips. “Princess?”

“Yes, Commander!”

“I love you.”

“Bunjiro?”

“I know you can do this without me.”

“Bunjiro, no! Commander!”

“Protect the galaxy, okay, Princess?”

The gray replacement-head popped off the neck and Bunjiro’s image disappeared. Lucia wailed. “Bunjiro, I’m pregnant!” Tentacles wrapped up the gray head, which exploded while the headless body escaped.

ZAB’s lights became bright. Lucille huddled in the Commander’s chair with her arms around her knees. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” said ZAB. Lucille gasped for air as she cried. “When your mother fired the Super Heart Beam, she was catastrophically overexerted. We barely saved you from her womb to continue your incubation on the moon. Even with modern medical-equipment, your healthy development was a miracle.” Lucille just sobbed, so ZAB continued. “As Lunar Commander, this video could not be kept from you. You now know the origin of Earth’s enemy, the Hurricane.” Lucille released her knees and breathed deep. She cried mere moments ago, but now her face was dry. She kept her eyes closed. “Since the death of Professor Akayama, the moon-base has been largely reactionary under Zephyr Charlie and Zephyr Dakshi. You can accept this precedent or initiate new orders.”

“Oh, things are changing around here,” said Lucille, “but I need time to think.”

“I waited twenty years for you,” said ZAB. “I can wait a little longer.”

When Lucille popped the hatch and climbed down the head, she brushed off Charlie’s condolences. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Commander.”

She just stood before ZAB with her hands on her hips. Its left and right were different shades, ripped in half and half replaced. Still it carried a noble gaze. Its brow bore the weight of humanity’s plight.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2021.

Dan paused the anime at the commercial-break. He annotated the manga’s double-page-spread of giant space-robots breaking apart and combining together in empty craters. “We don’t know much about LuLu’s anonymous author except their pseudonym Tatsu,” said Dan, “but whoever wrote this must have read The Divine Comedy. These merging robots look like Dantean reptile-pits.”

Virgil Blue chuckled, bobbing their silver mask. “Danny, do you like The Inferno so much because it matches your life like aligning stars?”

“Huh?” Dan dropped his pen. “W-what do you mean?”

Virgil Blue was surprised to have shocked Dan so. “Surely you’ve noticed, too—after all, you and I share some worms. Your name is Danny and you study religion. You’re learning from the mentor Virgil Blue. You mourn the young death of your friend Beatrice, and Faith, who died not long after.”

“Oh. Oh.” Dan sighed in relief. “I’d never really thought about it that way. This is real life, not The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Virgil Blue clung to his cane. Dan sensed the Virgil’s concern for his uncharacteristic oversight. “I’ve got sort of an obsession-complex around torture,” said Dan. “I couldn’t get it out of my head as a kid, no matter what compulsions I tried to distract myself with. My dad thought reading Dante might help. Dante describes punishment in Hell as inflicted by the damned on themselves; he uses God and the afterlife as metaphors for psychology.”

“Did that help young-Danny?”

“Um. Well, it gave young-Danny’s obsession-complex a lot more ammunition. But once you realize how little we know about the mind, suddenly every religion is real, and obsession-complexes become…” He finished a line of annotation. “Anyway, maybe my Beatrice was named Beatrice because her parents were devout, and thought Dante’s Beatrice Portinari was a pure-enough namesake. You’re the one named Virgil Blue, Virgil Blue. Did you take the title just to align the stars to my life?”

“No,” said Virgil Blue. “Obviously the title ‘Virgil’ was chosen because of Dante’s Divine Comedy. We in the monastery lead Sheridanians to the next eternity, and thereby lead all worms across the desert to the Biggest Bird’s Mountain.”

“Aha.” Dan flipped the manga’s page to the next issue. “These stars are aligned because they’re all referencing the same cultural touchstone. With enough monks, you were bound to get one named Dan eventually, so the only coincidence here is that I know Beatrice, and that she was hit by a bus.”

“There are no coincidences,” said Virgil Blue. “This is what it means you and I share worms. Why do you think LuLu’s is referencing Dante, Danny?”

Dan picked up his phone. “Well… The Hurricane is a pretty hellish thing. And Princess Lucia might be named after Lucia of Syracuse, a classic Christian martyr. So when the Hurricane kills Lucia, she’s replaced with her daughter Lucille, who… who…” He waggled the phone, searching for words. “When you forget God created Hell, you surrender power to Satan. Lucille isn’t nice, she’s kinda punky, a tad Lucifer-like, on the border of being inappropriate. She’s reclaiming Hell from the Hurricane so the Zephyrs can wield its inherently Heavenly power against the Hurricane.”

“Hmm, hmm.” Virgil Blue considered the image of Lucille on the phone. “She’s a miniature Kali. I like her.”

“My friend Faith liked Lucille, too,” said Dan. “Maybe she was glad to see a character with her pocket-sized body-type exhibit unequivocal confidence. If Lucille’s short hair was white-blond instead of fiery orange, she’d look a lot like Faith.”

Jango lost track of himself and exposed a hand to rub his chin. He realized his mistake when he touched his silver mask, and retrieved his hand into a sleeve before Dan saw it. “Is Faith a Kali-type, too?”

“Oh, she could look like one when she wanted to.” Dan opened the manga to the last pages. “But Faith probably liked Akayama’s white fox better.”

“White fox?”

“Virgil Green told me the Biggest Bird has a white fox messenger.”

“Yes, I’ve met it before,” said Virgil Blue. “Twice, I think. We traded gifts. Can you show me?”

Dan put away the volume and showed Jay’s sketches in his notepad. “Akayama has a cute white fox near the very end of LuLu’s, very briefly. It’s sort of a blink-and-you-miss-it mascot-character introduced just before the endless hiatus, but Faith liked foxes more than anything, and she liked just about everything.” As soon as Dan realized he was smiling, his smile drooped. “It’s a shame she died not long after Beatrice.”

Virgil Blue tried to change the topic. “It’s a little outlandish for Lucille to be Earth’s supreme military authority, isn’t it? Her being under twenty.”

“Eh. Her biological parents were space-robot pilots, her adopted parents were space-robot pilots… She’s stuck on the moon, too. Nothing else for her to do, really. This is a manga, so she’s honestly lucky to be a teen in a bodysuit and not a preteen in a miniskirt.” Dan blushed. He couldn’t bring himself to make eye-contact with Virgil Blue’s silver mask after saying that. He just started the next episode.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2021.

Dan paused the anime-episode on his smartphone during the end-credits. He smiled as he wrote notes between the manga’s panels: without legs but flying on steam, the Zephyr looked like a djinn. It would eventually have more limbs than anyone could count, but along the way, the robot would be reduced to less than a head. Thankfully the light of the full moon was enough for Dan to read and write without a candle.

“Oran dora, Danny.”

Dan whipped around. The shiny circle in the window was no moon: the silver mask peeked into his quarters. “Virgil Blue!”

“Is that a phone?”

“N—” Dan was tempted to hide the smartphone under his mattress, but knew the Virgil’s vision was dominating. He’d certainly seen it. “It is. I’m sorry, Virgil Blue.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For the phone!”

“Phones are allowed in Sheridan.”

Dan froze and shook at the same time. “Even for monks in the monastery?”

“Even for monks in the monastery. Sheridan has three rules and none mention phones.” Virgil Blue realized Dan’s embarrassment. “I suppose there’s no rule about worrying there are actually more rules. Would you open the front for me, Danny?”

“Of course!” Dan put his phone up the sleeve of his robe and slid open his orange paper door. The monastery’s halls were marble-white, but Dan passed tapestries of every color outside other monks’ quarters. He pushed open a heavy wooden gate. “What were you doing out at night, Virgil Blue? Collecting centipedes?”

“Peeking in your window,” he said. “What were you doing with your phone?”

Dan swallowed as he shut the gate again. He was never sure if Virgil Blue was naturally so unsettling, or if his persona was specifically crafted to put him on edge. “LuLu’s had a TV adaptation, an anime. I’ve been watching it while I read the manga to gather perspective for my annotations.”

Virgil Blue followed Dan back to his orange quarters. “You’ll need to turn the volume down a little. The monk in the quarters next to yours told me she heard voices from your room neither English nor Sheridanian.”

“Sorry, Virgil Blue. It’s in Japanese, with English subtitles.”

“Then I should be able to keep up with it.” Virgil Blue closed the sliding paper door behind him with his cane. “Begin the next episode.”

“Really?” Dan blushed. “I’m already embarrassed you let me annotate my favorite stupid giant space-robot manga. If you saw the anime, I think you’d disown me.”

“Danny, Sheridanian monks have annotated toilet paper Marquis de Sade penned in the Bastille, and I have read those annotations. At least LuLu’s hasn’t featured sodomy so far.” Virgil Blue took an achy minute to sit beside Dan on the mattress. “I knew you were the one to annotate LuLu’s the moment you remarked combining-mechas are a metaphor for society, the body, and the mind all at once. What happened in the previous episode? I couldn’t make it out through your window.”

“You came at a weird time,” said Dan. “Lucia—“

“Princess Lucia?”

Dan hemmed and hawed and waved a hand. “As daughter of an elected official, she’s not really a princess—but she abandoned earthly luxury and put herself in danger to fight for the sake of her people, so who could be more worthy of the title?”

“Half the fathers in Sheridan call their little girls Princess,” said Virgil Blue. “Anyone can call anyone anything.” Dan hesitated to reply. Virgil Blue’s last line reminded him of his father. He reconsidered: everything reminded him of his father. “Is something wrong, Danny?”

“I guess…” He stretched for something to mention which would get the conversation back on giant anime space-robots. “My friend Beatrice really liked Princess Lucia. She… Beatrice died before she could watch this far. It’s weirdly fitting, because Lucia is about to die, too, between episodes.”

“Oh!” Virgil Blue covered his heart with a sleeved hand. “I thought she was one of the main characters!”

“She was the main character, for a while. But sometimes these episodic stories have time-skips where the author jumps the plot ahead. Characters might change in expected or unexpected ways, or be gone and replaced completely.” Dan rolled his thumb over his phone’s screen to scroll to the next episode. “Tatsu had the gall to skip twenty years of LuLu’s and kill characters off-screen, then circle back to view those twenty years from another perspective.”

“How chaotic and disjointed,” said Virgil Blue, “like man’s own clarity only in Tralfamadorian hindsight.”

“It’s pretty predictable something unpredictable is about to happen,” said Dan. “Akayama, Bunjiro, Charlie, Dakshi—before now, the Zephyr’s pilots were alphabetized by rank! When Akayama retired and brought Lucia onto the team, the story finally started. It’s the flawless order at the beginning of a creation-myth disturbed by the disruption of non-duality. As you’d put it, the Mountain is undivided. The world we worm-vessels experience is the illusion of the Mountain’s division until we find the whole Mountain within us.”

Dan was about to start the next episode, but Virgil Blue poked the phone out of his hands with his cane’s gnarled tip. “You can’t say something like that and not expand with citations,” said the Virgil. “You won’t annotate LuLu’s so lazily, will you?” Dan rubbed his hands and shuffled through books he’d stacked in the corners of his quarters. “Without a book, Danny! Think of a creation-myth. Show me the Mountain reflected in you.”

“Um.” Dan sighed and sat with his arms crossed. If he knew he’d be asked to defend his thesis-statement, he would’ve saved it for an essay. “The Egyptians said Atum created himself from the infinite lifeless ocean of primeval chaos. It’s a bit of a backwards example, but boundless uniform chaos is a flawless order, too, isn’t it?”

“Not bad,” said Virgil Blue, “but consider this angle.” He knocked a book off a corner-stack with his cane and it happened to open at the right page. “The Tao Te Ching says, in the beginning, the featureless and unchanging Way gave birth to unity, which gave birth to duality, which gave birth to trinity, which gave birth to everything else. Every worm implies the whole Mountain for the same reason Indra’s interconnected web of jewels is reflected completely in its every jewel. In Sheridanian terms, starting a reality is like cracking open a perfectly good egg.”

“An egg full of worms.” Dan started the episode. He usually skipped the bone-shakingly triumphant theme-song because it roared in the background of epic fight-scenes anyway, but he let it play for Virgil Blue.

“What’s that?” Virgil Blue poked the screen with his cane’s gnarled tip, pausing the episode, and Dan dropped the phone. “Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Dan picked up the phone again. LuLu’s theme-song was paused looking at Akayama’s control-panel. The professor had a desk-toy, an odd decorative head, black, mustachioed, with one pupil. “It’s a daruma, a sort of Japanese doll. It represents Zen’s Bodhidharma, who meditated in a cave until his arms and legs fell off. Professor Akayama filled in one pupil while wishing to neutralize the Hurricane, so she’ll fill in the other pupil when the wish comes true.”

“That wish seems less likely every episode,” said Virgil Blue. “I thought daruma were red. Why is this one black?”

Dan’s jaw dropped a bit. If Virgil Blue knew what a daruma was, why had he even asked? He clearly wanted to pry Dan’s understanding. “Daruma come in lots of different colors, but you’re right, red is most common. A red daruma would look like a Hurricane Planet, though, so they probably aren’t popular in this fictional future. With the solar system orbiting the black hole at the center of the galaxy, maybe black is the contemporary color of the era.”

Virgil Blue nodded. Dan shivered at his undisclosed facial expression behind the silver mask. “Start the episode, Danny.”

Next
Back