(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 1994.

Dan woke in his bedroom, frozen with fear. His eyes darted in the dark, finding faces surveilling from afar. His mouth was dry, but he tried to swallow, tightening his throat. A scream died in his neck.

Eventually Dan managed to move his toes. He barely tensed them, so his blankets stayed flat. He knew monsters could sense motion and the subtlest disturbance in his blankets would alert them, so he lay struggling to control his body yet unwilling to take any action which would get him gobbled.

A creature jumped into bed with him. Dan tried to shout, but only twitched with all his arms and legs. He breathlessly watched the creature slink up. It exhaled moistly on his neck and dug claws into his chest. Four fangs filled its face. “Oh,” said Dan, “hi Django.” The cat kneaded the blankets and purred. Now adjusted to the darkness, Dan saw the surveilling faces were toys on shelves and cabinets. “Django, help me. I gotta go to my parents’ room, okay? Can you take me through the hall?” Django the cat leaned on Dan and curled into a circle. It licked its fur and settled in to sleep. “Okay.” Dan sat up on his own. He checked for monsters under his bed before setting his feet on the floor. He selected a stuffed animal—a purple Teddy Bear—and flipped his bedroom light-switch.

Django blinked in the light and swayed its orange, stripey tail. “Mrow.” It hopped to the floor and followed Dan to the door. “Mrow.”

“You wanna come?” Dan peered down the hallway. His purple Teddy Bear checked every corner for movement. “It’s not so far. We can make it.”

“Mrow.” Django slunk through Dan’s legs and sauntered to the kitchen. It turned to see if Dan was following. Its eyes gleamed green. “Mrow.”

“Oh,” said Dan. “You want food.”

Dan followed the cat to the kitchen. Django sat by an empty bowl beside a sealed container of kibble. “Mrow.”

Dan put his Teddy on the tile floor and put both hands on the container’s lid. To remove the lid, Dan had to grunt and twist with his entire body. Django stood on its hind legs to stick its head in the container and smell the dry food. “Just a little, Django.” Dan scooped whole handfuls of kibble into the cat’s bowl. “Just a little.”

“Jillian?” Dan spun to see a latina in a white bathrobe and a black man in boxers enter the kitchen. “Jillian, are you okay?” The man knelt to Dan. He had wire glasses and a close haircut. “It’s past midnight. Why are you out of bed?”

“Django was hungry,” answered Dan.

“Django’s fine, Sweetie.” The woman lifted Dan in one arm and his Teddy in the other. “Your father will feed him when he leaves for his flight in a few hours. Right, Dear?”

“Sure thing.” His father hoisted Django by the armpits and held the cat to Dan’s face. “Wanna say goodnight, Jillian?”

“Wait! I remember!” Dan kicked the air. “I woke up because I had a nightmare!”

“Oh, Sweetie.” The woman brushed his hair back. “Let’s get you back to bed and you can tell me all about it, or I can read you a story.”

“Thanks, Honey.” His father ambled back to their bedroom. “Jillian, my plane takes off before you’ll wake for breakfast, but I’ll call home tonight when I land at my layover. Be nice to your mommy, okay?”

Dan said nothing as his mother carried him to bed. She tucked him under the covers and set his purple Teddy Bear beside him. “I’m sorry you had a bad dream, Jillian. What happened?”

“I was in a desert with my friend Faith,” said Dan, “and we went in a hole in the ground, and in the hole there was a monster with arms and legs. And it ate me!” He waved all his limbs emphatically, like he was making a snow-angel.

“Faith?” His mother pulled the covers to Dan’s chin. “I don’t know Faith. Did you meet her in preschool?”

“Preschool?” Dan looked at his hands as if for the first time. “Mommy, how old am I?”

“You’re four years old, Sweetie.” She felt Dan’s forehead for fever. “Why?”

Dan sat up. “What do you keep calling me?”

“Sweetie?”

“No, what’s my name?”

“Jillian,” she said. “Your name is Jillian Diaz-Jackson.”

Jillian inspected her fingers like they’d changed. “Was it always?”

“Of course.” She felt her daughter’s forehead again. “Are you okay? You seem confused.”

“I don’t wanna go to bed.”

“Oh,” cooed her mother. “Poor thing. Did you know I had nightmares too, when I was young?” She tucked Jillian’s long hair behind her ears. “I had the same nightmare every night, so I learned to realize when I was asleep, and then I knew the nightmare couldn’t hurt me. In fact, I could control my dreams, and fly, and have fun! So do you remember what that monster looked like?”

Jillian frowned and nodded. “I’m scared I’m gonna meet it again! I know I’m gonna!”

“But if you do, you’ll know you’re dreaming! You can count your fingers to make sure: you’re supposed to have ten, but in a dream, you’ll have more. Then you can tell the monster, ‘you can’t hurt me! Make me a sundae!’ “

“Yeah!” Now Jillian smiled. “Make me a sundae!”

“That’s right!” She bumped her forehead against Jillian’s and they both laughed. “I’ll wake you in the morning, Sweetie. Tell me about your sundae on the drive to preschool, okay?”

Jillian had trouble sleeping after that. The name ‘Dan’ wouldn’t leave. Dan. Jillian. Dan. Jillian. DanJillian.

Jay. A great name. He’d keep it.

—

The year is 2012.

Jay’s mother pulled into the high-school parking-lot. Jay unbuckled his seat-belt and counted his fingers: he had ten, so he was certainly awake. The morning-bell rang and Jay groaned. “New school, first day of Senior year, and I’m late for class. And it’s a hundred and twelve degrees. What a waking nightmare.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t expect the traffic.” His mother parked and unlocked the doors. “We’ll learn the streets soon, I promise.”

“It’s okay. I gotta go. It’s just…” Jay stepped out and slipped his backpack over his shoulders. “I wish you’d listened when I said I didn’t want to move. I don’t know anyone in California.”

“I know. But moving to LA means your father can spend less time on an airplane and more time with you!” This didn’t make Jay smile, so his mother sighed and looked away. “Jilli, what’s that TV show you like?”

Jay rubbed his forearm. “Which TV show?”

“The anime with giant space-robots.”

“Which anime with giant space-robots?”

“Begins with an L sound? Your father brought you the DVD-set from Japan?”

“Oh,” said Jay, “LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration. Why?”

“Look.” His mother pointed at a boy jogging to the school doors. When he stopped to stuff some bulky books in his backpack, Jay saw an orange robot printed on his T-shirt. “Is that LuLu’s robot?”

“Pft, haha. No, that’s Z-Orange. It’s Fumiko’s robot. She’s sort of a side-character.” Jay covered his mouth and giggled. “That guy’s not just a dweeb. He’s an ultra-dweeb.”

“Don’t be mean. Maybe he can help find your homeroom!”

“Alright, alright.” Jay waved goodbye. When he ran into the school, he spotted the boy jogging down a hallway. The books in his backpack must have been heavy, because he caught up to him at a brisk walk. “Hey! Nice shirt.”

“Oh!” The boy jumped when she spoke. All the books in his backpack clunked against each other. “Thanks.” He blushed, apparently ashamed to discuss his geeky fandom.

Jay decided to embarrass himself to confirm their allegiance. “My favorite robot’s Z-Purple. Assembling Z-PORKY is easily the best arc of the show, even if it’s just filler.” He pointed to Zephyr-Orange on the boy’s shirt. “I guess you like Fumiko?”

“Um. Yeah.” The space-robot filled most of his shirt, but Fumiko’s silhouette in the cockpit was obvious up-close. “Have you read the manga?” Jay shook his head. “The first volume is all about life on Earth in 2399. It gives a lot of insight into how the twins grew up.”

“Neat.” Jay’s tank-top was purple like his favorite Zephyr, but it didn’t have any space-robots on it. He’d have to look into LuLu’s merchandise. “I’m new here. Could you point me to Room 120?”

“That’s my homeroom too,” said the boy. “I’ll lead you there.”

—

In Room 120, a girl waved him and Jay to a table for four. She was just under four-foot-six with short white-blonde hair, and she picked at an eraser with her sharp fingernails to spread pale crumbs across her quadrant of the table. The girl sitting next to her was six-foot-one with hair like maple-syrup dripping down her neck as she read a well-worn Bible. The boy sat across from the shorter girl with the eraser and unloaded books from his backpack onto the table, but never looked away from the taller girl with the Bible. Jay sat across from her.

The homeroom-teacher chalked her name on the blackboard. “Alright, I recognize some faces from my freshman art-class, but you’re new here, aren’t you? Yes, you,” she said, pointing at Jay. “Introduce yourself.”

“Oh, sure.” The whole class was looking at him. He hadn’t prepared himself for this spotlight. Jay cleared his throat. “I’m Jillian Diaz-Jackson. I just moved here from New York.” The shorter girl with white-blonde hair smiled and waved at him, then plucked more crumbs from her eraser.

“Ms. Jillian, tell us something about yourself.”

“Um… My dad travels for business as a financial consultant, so he learns lots of languages,” said Jay. “He paces the house chanting foreign phrases to memorize them. So I learn languages, too, whether I like it or not, but only words related to money and international tax-law. Whenever he comes back from another country, he shares all his cool selfies with me.”

“Ms. Jillian, how do you like LA?”

“It’s a little hot,” said Jay, “and I don’t know anyone here.”

“Now you do.” The teacher pointed at the boy beside her. “What’s your name?”

“Dan Jones.” Dan pulled his gaze from the taller girl with the Bible to shake Jay’s hand. Jay thought the name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Had the two met before?

“Danny-Boy Jones,” repeated the teacher. “Tell us about yourself.”

Dan struggled to think of anything about himself interesting enough to share. “I visited my father over the Summer. He was a professor of Religious-Studies. I think religions are really interesting.” He peeked at the girl with the Bible, but she buried herself in the book. “He showed me lots neat books before he died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear about that, Danny-Boy. What’s your favorite book he ever showed you?”

“Dante’s Inferno,” said Dan.

“Why?”

“Because,” said the shorter girl destroying her eraser, “his nickname is Dainty. It’s like he’s the star!”

“Is that so? What makes you Dainty, Danny-Boy?”

“He’s so cleanly. Watch!” She blew the white eraser crumbs onto Dan’s side of the table. He cringed, brushed the crumbs into his hand, and tossed them in a trashcan. “See? He didn’t even brush ’em on the floor!”

“What’s your name? And confess your motives for mutilating your poor eraser.”

“My name is Faith Featherway, and I’m sculpting a fox!” Faith held up her eraser with pride. “But it’s not coming out well. It looks more like a cloud, or a blob.”

The teacher smirked. “I remember you from my art-class. You never did stop with the foxes, did you?”

“They’re the best!” Faith penned a black nose on her eraser.

“Not many foxes in Los Angeles,” said the teacher.

“Coyotes are honorary foxes!”

“Are they? You, last at the table. Which animal do you think is best?”

The taller girl with maple-syrup hair put down her Bible. “Birds, I guess? They have wings, like angels.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Beatrice,” said Beatrice. Dan smiled dumbly as she spoke, but she didn’t look at him. “Beatrice Baxter.”

“BeatBax,” said Faith. “Sounds way cooler.”

After the rest of the class introduced themselves, the teacher took a stack of fliers from her desk. “The school wants us to educate our homeroom about illegal bugs. You might’ve seen your parents smoke roaches before, but who here has heard of crickets?” Jay almost raised his hand, but decided against it and kept his hands on the desk. A bald boy in dark sunglasses raised his hand, and so did Faith, and most of the class followed suit. Finally Jay raised his hand, joining everyone but Dan and Beatrice. “That many? Really?” The teacher shook her head. “It was different when I was your age. You, with the sunglasses,” she said, having forgotten his name already, “take off your sunglasses. What do you know about crickets?”

“Bug-sticks,” he corrected. He kept the sunglasses on. “I know you can make bank selling ’em, ’cause they get you totally bug-eyed!”

Some students chuckled. The teacher shushed them before she admonished him. “They’re a dangerous hallucinogen. Never smoke them. One puff is enough,” she quoted from the fliers she passed to each table, “to end up in the rough. So don’t touch the stuff! And take off the sunglasses!”

Jay skimmed the flier. At the top was a photo of a raw cricket which still had its limbs, antennae, and stem. At the bottom was a photo of a prepared specimen, plucked, dried, and wrapped in its own wings. Jay had always found their ten black eyes somehow familiar, like he’d seen them in a dream.

—

The year is 2013.

The school-year was born in hot California summer, and after a brief, parched winter and a misty spring, it threatened to die with the sweltering heat of its birth. Thankfully the end-of-the-year field-trip had great air-conditioning. An hour in the art-museum dried Jay’s sweat from his forehead. While Dan studied a painting, Jay photographed it with his digital camera.

“Early 1300s, the Harrowing of Hell,” Dan recited without reading the placard. “After the crucifixion, Christ barges into the underworld so triumphantly he crushes Satan under the gates.” He tugged his shirt hem. It was his favorite T, featuring Fumiko in her orange cockpit. “My dad gave me a book about it.”

“Neat.” Jay wrote Dan’s comments next to the painting’s thumbnail in the brochure. “Over Winter-break, my dad brought me on business abroad and I toured lots of art-galleries. Look here: the next hallway has a Grecian statue which is part of a pair. I saw the other statue in Italy, so I get to take pictures of both!”

Dan rubbed his chin at the pillars in the brochure. “Artemis and Apollo, twin children of Zeus and Leto. Their bows are drawn to kill the children of Niobe because she boasted about them.” He sighed. “I’m honestly jealous, Jillian. I waste all my time reading about this stuff, but you go there and see it.”

“You’re not wasting your time, Dan. You learn about all sorts of things. Maybe next time I go somewhere I should give you a call. You can tell me what the hell I’m looking at.” Jay flipped to a page of the brochure which he had dog-eared. “What do you know about this statue?”

Dan examined the picture Jay pointed to. It looked like two different statues put together: the left side was a man in rags, but the right side was a woman in a long dress with an exposed breast. It had four arms with each hand in a different pose, and its eyes were wide open like it saw through anything and everything. Dan didn’t need to read the caption. “That’s Ardhanarishvara making classic mudra, symbolic hand gestures. In Hinduism, the destroyer, Shiva, on the left, married an incarnation of the creator Adi Shakti, Parvati, on the right. It’s more complicated than I’m making it out to be, but putting them together like this demonstrates the all-pervasiveness of the Godhead.”

“Ooh. I like that.” Jay wrote in the brochure: deities could be combined like giant anime space-robots. “He? She?”

“Um. I think that’s been a theological argument since the Puranas.”

“I like that, too. Let’s go see Ardhanarishvara.”

Dan swallowed and put both hands in his pockets. “Can we double-back and find another way to the sculptures?”

Jay cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why not finish this hall? I thought you enjoyed all these religious paintings.”

“I do.” Dan turned away from him and rubbed his lips with his index finger. “But there’s a Bosch over there, and I can’t look at it. Eternal torture makes me fidget.”

“You love Dante’s Inferno, and you could handle the Harrowing of Hell.”

“I can read about it, I can’t look at it. And the Harrowing is a success-story.”

“Then let’s just look at paintings on the other side of the hall.”

Dan shook his head, apparently helpless. “You go on. I’ll take the long way around. Oh no,” he said, mid-stride. Faith and Beatrice had entered the hallway. Beatrice sat across from a painting of the Virgin Mary while Faith tore paper from her notebook and folded it.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jay. Dan stared silently at Beatrice. “Hey, this is your chance. You know all about that painting, right? Go impress her.” Dan covered his mouth and looked at the floor. “Dan, we all see the way you look at Beatrice. Tell her, ‘the artist used so-and-so technique to highlight Mary’s eyes. Looking at your eyes, Ms. Baxter, you must’ve been painted the same way.’ But less corny than that, obviously. Then ask her out and get it over with.”

“That’s… not… I don’t want to date Beatrice. We tried that, once, and we didn’t work well together. I want to… appreciate her? Admire her?” His anxious gesticulating looked like frantic mudra. “I’ve learned not to bother Beatrice with religious small-talk. Besides, it’s not my place to ask her out.”

Before Jay could ask what he meant, Faith held two folded paper animals to Beatrice: a fox and a bird. Beatrice took the bird and they played with the animals together. The fox and bird touched muzzle to beak, and Faith jumped up to kiss Beatrice on the cheek. Beatrice smiled, which was rare for her. “Oh. Huh,” said Jay. “That’s news to me.” How had he missed this? They’d eaten lunch together all year. “But Dan, we’re in an art-museum. It’s normal to tell friends about art in an art-museum. Appreciate Beatrice by being her friend. Don’t overthink it.”

Faith spotted Dan and Jay down the hallway. She pointed them out to Beatrice and the couple walked over holding hands. “I thought we’d find you here, Dainty. Talking Jilli’s ear off?”

“Ha, yeah,” Dan managed. He smiled sheepishly at Beatrice, but when she looked away, he turned back to Faith. “Enjoying the museum?”

“We’re headed for the sculptures,” said Beatrice.

“Interested? Dainty? Jilli?” Faith pulled Beatrice behind her. “C’mon!” Jay followed.

“Wait!” Dan stumbled after them. “You’re skipping the best paintings!” He pointed both hands at an enormous landscape cluttered with tiny nudes. “Like this Bosch. He’s famous for painting Hell.” Faith and Beatrice approached with trepidation. Jay winced when Dan made himself look at the canvas. “Devils flay a man’s flesh.” He bit his fingernail. “Demons drop a woman in boiling tar.” He bit the skin around the nail until it bled. “A crowd screams inside the mouth of a giant head, but even that head is in agony, obviously one of the damned.”

“Geez. That’s pretty metal,” said Faith. “Let’s go see the sculptures, BeatBax.” As they all walked away together, Faith released Beatrice’s hand and lingered to speak with Jay. “Is Dainty okay?”

“He said he couldn’t even look at the Bosch,” said Jay, “but I told him to explain a painting for you two, and that’s the one he chose.”

“Huh.” Faith shrugged. “Who’s the girl on his shirt? He wears it all the time, but when I ask him about it, he gets all flustered. She’s hella cute.”

“Oh, that’s Fumiko from LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration. It’s an anime Dan and I like. Wanna watch it over the summer?”

—

Jay’s parents were in Portugal for the weekend, so he and Faith had the house to themselves for a slumber-party. Beatrice was spending the Summer volunteering at a hospital in Canada, and Dan turned down his invitation without explanation. They were missing out on a lot of licorice: Faith brought vines of every color. Her favorite was the white mystery-flavor. “Didn’t you say this anime’s mascot was a white fox? Where’s the fox?”

“It’s in the last episode. I warned you the show went on hiatus mid-climax.” Around midnight, Jay inserted the last LuLu’s DVD. “Now that she’s got the Wheel, do you think Commander Lucille and her Galaxy Zephyr stand a chance against the Hurricane?”

“Of course! The good guys always win in this sort of thing.” Faith bothered Django as the cat tried to sleep on the couch. “Right?”

“I’m afraid we’ll never know for sure. The anime stopped when the manga went on hiatus, like, a decade ago, and the author Tatsu was always anonymous, so we can’t pester them or anything.” Jay sat beside Faith and ate a purple licorice-vine: grape. “Ready to watch?” He started an episode.

“Wait.” Faith played with the pink pads on Django’s paws. “Your parents are out of the country, right, Jilli?” She looked up from Django’s toe-beans. “Do you wanna try something naughty?“

Jay blinked and paused the TV during the opening theme. “What do you mean?”

Faith pulled a cricket from the pocket of her torn jeans. Its wings were poorly wrapped, like mummy-linens. “I bought this from that bald prick in our homeroom who always wears dark sunglasses. He says he smokes them all the time, and they’re not dangerous at all. Shall we share a bug-stick?”

“Hm.” Jay took the cricket and held it to his nose, as if by muscle memory. It smelled like foreign spices, but he couldn’t put his finger on where he’d encountered the scent before. “What do we do? Did he say what it’s like being bug-eyed?”

“First we open a door so we don’t stink up the place, and then we light the eyes.” Faith sparked a purple lighter she took from her other pocket. “He couldn’t really describe it. He just kept making sound-effects and exploding motions with his hands.”

Jay passed back the cricket. “How about you smoke, and I watch?”

“But Jilli, I’m scared!” Faith laughed and wiggled her shoulders. “I hoped you could start it for me.”

Jay sighed. On the TV, paused during the LuLu’s theme, the space-robot’s crew of ten thousand all crossed their arms across their chests. Together they directed their giant robot to cross its arms across its chest, the sum of their confidence. “You open the back door and I’ll light it.”

“Really? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“Pass it over.” Jay took the cricket and lighter. Faith pranced to the back door and Django followed her.

“Djingo, Django, baked into a pie! Djingo, Django, wanna go outside?”

“When he’s in, he wants out. When he’s out, he wants in. He never stays in one place too long.” Jay lit the cricket’s eyes on fire. Embers spread through the papery wings. “Now what?”

“Pretend you’re sucking a straw, just for a second.” Faith kicked the door open and Django hopped into the night. “Keep the smoke in your open mouth until it cools. Then inhale, hold it, and exhale.”

Jay sputtered smoke and bent over coughing. “Oh! Oh my gosh.” He held his head. “I feel it already.” He counted his fingers to make sure he was awake, but only counted to five because his other hand was still holding the cricket.

“Here, lemme try.” Faith took the cricket puffed smoke out the door. The cricket’s eyes cooled from cherry-red to ash-gray. “Oh, wow.”

“Faith, did I ever tell you…” Jay rubbed his eyes. “I think I’m trans?”

“Trans?”

“That’s not quite it.” Jay took another puff and clarified after coughing. “My first memory was a nightmare—a rusty desert which looked a little like Uzumaki, actually. I was nude and I had a dong. I was near a red mountain with a white fox, and a monster ate us. I’ve never talked about it, but I still feel that masculinity in me.”

“I’m glad you told me, then! That’s super interesting, especially the fox.” Faith’s last puff burned the cricket to its stem. She swayed, eyes unfocused. “Oh boy, I’m flying through time. Ha.” They both stared through the TV. “Do you have a new name lined up?”

“Jay,” said Jay.

“Jay Diaz-Jackson.” Faith grinned. “Start the episode, JayJay!”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Last time on RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku!

The year is 2420. Twenty years ago, Professor Akayama survived her own attempt to commit suicide-by-Hurricane-Planet. She nicknamed the Hurricane Planet Uzumaki, and Uzumaki turned her into a shape-shifting bird-monster and changed her name to Nakayama. Now she’s forced to build a planet with an island-chain of life for Uzumaki to dominate, or Uzumaki will probably punish its copy of her consciousness.

—

Nakayama glided through space toward Hurricane Planet Uzumaki, propelling herself with new organs she’d invented which threw clouds behind her like the engines in her Zephyrs. She’d perfected Zephyr-engines after cracking the secrets of Jupiter’s spot. Their efficiency and compactness was why her new robots were called Zephyrs, gentle breezes in comparison to the Hurricane.

As she fell into Uzumaki’s gravitational pull, the red mountain which had jettisoned her now caught her in a deep caldera. Soft sand grasped her like a rescue net, then dribbled away through the floor to leave her in a dark, rocky room. The whole planet rumbled around her as a wide mouth opened. “Have we made any progress?”

“I didn’t expect these results so soon. At this rate, you’ll remember your lost humanity in no time.” Nakayama made a blue tentacle and stuck it in the dark wall to transmit images to Uzumaki. “Look, there was a man under the sand! I assume you put him there? I named him Nemo. I also found an awkward insect you probably made from my cockroach. I turned it into stable plant-matter which I’m calling a cricket, because that’s the sound it makes. Here’s its genome. The fruit-trees are growing well, and so are the birds.”

“Only one man?” Uzumaki contracted in disappointment which threatened to crush Nakayama inside the red mountain. “How long until each of my pilots has a private person to possess?”

“Look at this.” Her tentacle uploaded Nemo’s genome. “You’ve got the resources to give Nemo any number of children. In their bodies, you’ll see the importance of the human perspective.” She retracted her tentacle. “Give your copy of me more control. Let her put her knowledge to use.”

“Do I have to?” asked Uzumaki. “I let her beam radiation and genetic material over the oceans, and I even let you control your own body. Now you want more power over me?”

Nakayama stammered. Uzumaki had said it was using her body as a drone, but somehow she was still holding it back. “I—I can’t obey if you won’t let me.”

“Fine.” Uzumaki rumbled. “But don’t expect this to happen again.”

“The vessels should represent the sexes evenly,” said Nakayama, pacing in the dark, “and contain the full spectrum of heights, weights, and skin-colors. Then your pilots can experience the gamut of humanity.” Nakayama paused. Using the word ‘vessel’ bothered her, and she realized she was talking about others the way Uzumaki talked about her. Uzumaki had given her the grim task of creating entities to possess, but she didn’t need to adopt its language. “I’m sure my copy can produce such… subjects.”

“Done,” said Uzumaki. “Take this.”

An egg rolled from the darkness. It was large as Nemo’s head and white like milk. Nakayama focused her eyes to magnify her vision. Her compound ocular lenses glinted like emeralds or malachite. “I see. This shell protects a hundred human ova. I’ll have them fertilized.”

“Take this, too.” An arm from the wall offered her a ball of long, black bugs.

Nakayama reared back. “Ick! What is it?”

“Your copy built them for me from your insect-plant, the cricket,” said Uzumaki. “These have lots of legs, so we’ll call them centipedes. Feed them to the vessels and their minds will be connected to me wirelessly. Then I’ll make them immortal and put my pilots into them.”

“What? No!” Nakayama crossed her wings in an X. “We’re not making them immortal, remember? If you can’t die, you’ll never understand life! Can’t you hear the professor inside you, saying you’re misguided?”

“Not anymore,” said Uzumaki. “I let her delete herself in return for making centipedes.”

Nakayama’s lower lip trembled. She made her mouth into a hard yellow beak so she couldn’t cry. “Why?”

“I need neither her knowledge nor quaint morality.” The wall opened an eye to squint at her. “Didn’t you just say death is necessary? You should rejoice; I’m certainly rejoicing! Now there’s only one of you.”

“I—I see.” Nakayama’s compound eyes cried countless little tears at once. “I see.”

“Make me men. Feed them centipedes.” The sandy floor shot upward. Nakayama approached escape-velocity. “I’ll be watching you.”

“I’m sure you’ll come to your senses about immortality,” said Nakayama. “I’ll plant the centipedes at altitude so no one stumbles on them accidentally, and I’ll give all the bodies a once-over to make sure they’re healthy. That should give you time and reason to reconsider.” She rocketed from the red mountain. She tossed the ball of centipedes to land atop the largest island.

—

At the top of the central island, Nemo sat under a mango tree slurping its fallen fruit. He licked juice from his skin wherever it dripped, flexible enough to lick his elbows and the far sides of his ankles and knees. He offered that juice to all the little flightless birds, too, but they were more interested in picking worms from the dirt.

When he finished all the fallen fruit, he looked up at the mango tree. Each branch was heavy with mangoes, but the trunk stood forty meters tall and the lowest branches were halfway up. He tried climbing the trunk, fruitlessly. The bark chaffed and scratched, and falling hurt his feet.

He chose a nearby tree with no fruit but low branches and climbed it easily. The uppermost branches were too slim to support him, but now the lowest mango-branches were almost in reach. He’d have to jump for them. He shuddered when he looked down. If he slipped, he’d break the branches below and fall all the way to the ground.

The mangoes looked good enough to jump for.

He leapt and grabbed a mango-branch with both hands, hanging shakily. He’d never exerted himself like this so far, in his whole first day of life! He pulled himself up and clung to the branch with all his arms and legs. When he recuperated, he finally climbed to the top collecting mangoes. He ate them while enjoying the view. On one side, the sandy island of his birth. On the other side, a giant, mountainous one. Below him, a fruity forested hillock. He smiled. This was the only existence he knew, but it felt right enough. What else could he ask for?

But when he couldn’t eat another bite, his arms were still full of mangoes. Maybe he needed friends to share this Eden with besides the little flightless birds.

He noticed a thin cloud elongating. He blinked and shaded his eyes from the red sun. At the head of the cloud, Nakayama was shooting right at him with untold velocity. “Aaaugh!” Nemo dropped his mangoes and scrambled down the tree, but not fast enough. A sonic boom followed as they both crashed through branches to the ground. Nakayama cushioned Nemo with wings of fluffy feathers.

“Sorry if I startled you.” She withdrew her wings, rolling Nemo onto the grass, and produced the egg from the sleeve of her lab-coat. “I need you to ejaculate on this.”

Nemo was almost about to scream again and scramble away, but remembered the other time he met this giant bird, when screaming and scrambling hadn’t helped. “Name Nemo,” he said. He put out a hand to shake.

“Yes, I know your n—” Nakayama covered her beak with her wingtip in embarrassment at herself. “You don’t have a language, do you? The other doctors always said I had awful bedside-manner. I could never communicate with patients. Eto…” She put the egg on the grass between them. “You’ve never seen one of these, but you’ve seen plenty of these, right?” She scooped enough dirt into one wing to show off a few worms.

Nemo covered his mouth with both hands. He didn’t want to eat worms. He’d tried worms already, and found them an acquired taste.

“Two worms can tangle up and leave behind these things.” There were some tiny cocoons in the dirt, smaller than grains of sand. “If conditions are right…” A cocoon hatched. Five littler worms crawled out.

Nemo was speechless, more speechless than usual. He didn’t understand a single word Nakayama said, but the worms, the cocoon, and the littler worms, he understood.

“You don’t have a worm to tangle with, Nemo, but you don’t need such an Eve.” Nakayama pointed up to the red sun, Uzumaki. “Before she was exterminated, a copy of my consciousness made an egg with a hundred yolks. It will be like you’re tangling with a hundred Eves at once.” She pointed down to the egg.

Now Nemo had no clue if he understood. “Name Nemo,” he said, pointing to himself.

“Yes,” said Nakayama. “You are Nemo.”

Nemo pointed at a worm. “Name…?”

“Oh, that’s a worm.”

“Name worm.” Now Nemo put two fists together. “Worm.” He extended one finger at a time. “Worm, worm, worm, worm, worm.”

“Yes! Pin pon!” Nakayama raised her wings in a circle implying correctness. “Worms make more worms!”

“Nemo.” Nemo pointed to himself. Then he pointed to the egg. “Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo.”

“Yes! Well, almost. There’s only one Nemo.” Nakayama picked up a few nearby fledglings of various colors. “Your kids will all be different, like these birds. Worms look identical, but even each of them is unique.”

Nemo beamed at the fledglings. All he had wanted was friends to eat mangoes with.

“But,” said Nakayama, “you must protect those who come from the egg as if they’re your own children.” She realized she should rephrase this. “They are your children.” She realized however she phrased it wouldn’t help. “Eto… Here. Watch.” Nakayama opened her beak wide. She held a fledgling as if she would eat it.

“Ah! Buu!” Nemo tugged her lab-coat and crossed his arms in an X. “Buu!“

“Excellent! You certainly understand.” She tossed the fledglings aside.

As much time and creativity it took to explain these things, so much more was required to explain the concept of ejaculation. Nemo took the egg awkwardly behind a bush and Nakayama obligingly turned away. She knew the new humans would need more room, so she made her wings razor-sharp and cut down trees to make a clearing atop the island.

She heard Nemo scream, first in pleasure, then in surprise. Nakayama hurried to his side to see full-grown adults were spilling from the egg. Nemo covered his stunned face, looking through his fingers. “Congratulations!” Nakayama made her left wing into a blowtorch and lit a cricket for Nemo to smoke, but he was distracted by the emerging men and women. “You’re a father. Omedetou!“

Soon a nude crowd filled the clearing. They were varied as Earth’s humans in height, weight, and skin-color, but they all had Nemo’s slightly egg-shaped head, and they all seemed at least superficially healthy. Nakayama lifted them one-by-one to check for defects in their ears, eyes, noses, and throats. Nemo shook hands with each person as Nakayama put them down, but had trouble keeping up. Still more people spilled from the egg. Eventually Nemo just let his children crowd around him for their handshake.

“Name Nemo,” he said to them. “Nemo name.” Then he gave them their own names. His children shook hands with each other and introduced themselves just like he had taught them to. When the crowd was so thick Nemo couldn’t find new hands to shake, he pushed his way out and climbed a tree. Hanging from it, he yawped for attention. “Ora, ora, ora!” He bit a green apple and showed his children the white interior flesh. He licked clear sweet juice from his chin. He tossed the apple and a woman caught it in her teeth. She smiled and shared the apple with the man beside her. Nemo sat on a branch and demonstrated how to peel bananas and oranges.

Nakayama hefted a man from the crowd to check his throat, and the man screamed. Nakayama dropped him in surprise and barely caught his ankle before he hit the ground. “It’s alright, it’s alright!” she promised, but the man kept screaming. The crowd turned to watch Nakayama try and fail to calm him down. “I understand—the first humans saw me alongside them, so I was ordinary. Now the crowds are thick enough you’ve only ever seen your own kind. You’ve established your sense of normalcy and now… you’re meeting… me…” Nakayama set the man down and examined herself. She was a giant, peculiar bird-creature with a forty-foot navy wingspan, buggy compound emerald eyes, and a lab-coat like flowing sky-blue robes. Shape-shifting into a more acceptable form would probably be equally terrifying. How could she convince anyone her presence was acceptable?

“Ora ora!” Nemo waved his hands and the crowd turned to him. He pointed skyward and the crowd squinted at the red sun. Nemo whistled like a falling object while he lowered his finger to point at Nakayama. Then Nemo mimed shaking hands.

The crowd oohed and aahed. The screaming man mutely shook Nakayama’s wingtip and opened his mouth to show her his throat. Nakayama covered her beak in disbelief. “Thank you, Nemo.” Before she inspected more islanders, she quickly counted heads. Fifty islanders were already present, and the egg only spewed more. The clearing she’d made wasn’t large enough. “Nemo! Come here!” She gestured for him to approach and the crowd parted for him to pass. Nakayama showed Nemo the trees she’d cut from the clearing. She flattened her wings into scoops and carved logs into rough canoes. She made oars from branches. “You have more children coming,” she told him. “Gather a group and row to that island over there.” She pointed to the mountainous island. “I’ll send the rest boat-by-boat as I inspect them.” Nemo didn’t understand, so Nakayama pushed the canoe down the slope and it splashed into the ocean.

“Ahh!” Now Nemo understood, recalling how Nakayama had shaped herself into a boat. He chased the canoe and called for others to follow. “Ora ora ora!“

—

Nakayama carved canoes so quickly there was always a boat voyaging from the central island to the mountainous one. This island wore a skirt of steep capes, so Nemo stood cliff-side to welcome each load of his children to the only stretch of open coast. A river ran straight from near the top of the island to the middle of this lone beach, shaping it like a yonic compound bow. This island had no fruit-trees, but birds like penguins larger than ostriches lounged on the sand laying eggs which islanders cracked open to drink. There were also sparse goats, which islanders alternated chasing down and running from.

“Nemo! Nemo!”

Nemo turned. Three islanders approached, panting with their hands on their knees. One was bone-white, one was pumpkin-orange, and one was berry-brown. “Oran dora,” greeted Nemo. It sounded like something the bird would say.

“Nemo,” they urged. They led him a mile up the island to point at a pine’s branches. They cupped their hands around their ears, urging him to listen.

Nemo heard a voice from the canopy. “Aaaugh, how does she land? This was an awful idea.” Now Nemo noticed a hanging vine four feet long and the width of his arm. In fact, it seemed to be an arm with two double-jointed elbows. It clutched a branch with three fingers and a thumb.

“Oran dora,” said Nemo.

The arm flopped both its elbows every direction. “Is someone down there? I can’t see you. Can you catch me?”

“Name Nemo,” said Nemo.

“Oh, Nemo! The professor told me about you. My name is Uzumaki and I’m your God now! Catch!” Uzumaki’s arm released the branch and crashed on the dirt. “Ow! Dammit!” Nemo squatted to inspect the convulsing limb. The other islanders backed away. “Not your fault, kid,” said the arm. Its skin was pink and its palm held a mouth. The back of the hand featured an eyeball with a pupil but no iris. “You’re not smart like I am yet. Here, follow me. I gotta show you something.” The arm bent its elbows to squirm. Nemo walked after it and the three islanders followed him, but Nemo shook his head and pointed them back to the coast.

He followed Uzumaki’s arm up the island, along the river and over rugged rocks, through fields of multicolored flowers. Its coiling movement unsettled him, but he vowed to keep watch in case the arm tried to hurt his children. The eyeball on the back of the arm’s hand stared up at Uzumaki’s Hurricane Planet, which watched back with its own eyes. All the eyes vibrated to communicate so the arm could navigate by the red sun’s aerial view.

They left the pines behind and clambered over boulders. The only plants at this elevation were black bushes which Nemo had never seen before, with slim leaves and sharp thorns. “This is the stuff,” said Uzumaki’s arm. It crawled to a black bush and tried harvesting the fruits inside, but with just one eye on the back of its hand, it caught thorns between the teeth in its palm. “Ouch! I could blame the professor for giving this plant thorns, but I really should’ve planned this body better. Of course, if I could make a good enough body myself, I wouldn’t have needed the professor to make you guys, huh? Nemo, help me out.”

Nemo just inspected the bush. The thorns were inches long and barely distinguishable from the slender leaves, protecting a black ball of long, tangled fruits with tiny orange legs.

“Reach in,” said the arm. Nemo folded his arms defiantly. “Come on!” The palm’s mouth licked its lips. “Yum! Centipedes! Gotta eat centipedes! Nakayama made these just for you!”

“Nakayama?” Nemo recalled the giant bird making those sounds. He pointed to the red sun with the little pimple-mountain.

The arm nodded by flapping its wrist. “Yep! That’s me up there! I’m the Hurricane Planet, Uzumaki, your one and only daddy! Your mommy Nakayama’s still holding back on me, so I’m piloting this arm remotely.” The arm’s eyeball jiggled at the red sun to transmit sensory data, and the red sun’s eyes wiggled back instructions.

If the arm and the bird were both from the red sun, then the arm must be another mentor. Nemo huffed and squinted at the centipedes in the bush. He clenched a fist.

“Yes! Do it!”

Nemo thrust his hand into the bush and squealed as thorns ripped agonizing streaks in his forearm. He tore out the centipede-ball and dropped it. His black skin had red lines of blood.

“Hey! Take it easy! Don’t cry!” Uzumaki’s arm pried a centipede from the ball. “Eat this. You’ll love it.” The hand’s mouth nibbled the bug like a parent urging a child to eat off a spoon. Nemo wiped his tears and rubbed his tender wounds. “Come on! Do what Daddy tells you!” Nemo finally brought the centipede to his mouth. “Immortality is yours,” said the arm, “but humanity is mine!”

Nemo bit off the centipede’s head. It was so bitter his face twisted, but he made himself chew. By the end he was sobbing—but when he swallowed the last inch, his expression evaporated and his eyes unfocused.

The arm giggled and transmitted the image of their success to the red sun. “The centipede is linking your mind to my planet. As I speak, your biology is warped into the Hurricane’s brand of undying flesh.” Nemo said nothing. “Now I’m loading a pilot into your skull.” Nemo’s mouth curled up at the corners. “Are you there, Compatriot? Is our mission accomplished?”

Nemo nodded. Even with his mind in the right spot he couldn’t understand the arm, but now his mind was expanding to the size of the red sun. He saw himself and his whole water world from above through all Uzumaki’s eyes at once. He couldn’t count his water world’s subatomic particles, but he saw them all. His awareness continued expanding until Nemo saw the Hurricane occupied most of the universe and wanted to occupy the rest of it, too. Uzumaki’s arm, the snake, his father, had just tried eating Nemo alive like a baby bird. Nemo’s smile became wider and wider as he considered his predicament.

“Here, take this. You’re better built to carry stuff.” Uzumaki’s arm rolled the centipede-ball to Nemo’s knee. “Let’s make the other humans eat centipedes, too.” Nemo ignored the centipedes and picked up the arm. “Hey—leggo!” The arm flailed both double-jointed elbows. Nemo pulled the arm taut. “No! Stop! Are you one of my pilots, or are you still Nemo? Either way, I’m your friend! I’m the sun! I’m your God! I’m papa Uzumaki! I’m—oh, please, no!”

Nemo bit off its thumb. The wound poured pearly pulp as Nemo crunched bones. The hand scratched his face, so he munched the arm’s tail-end next. The pearly pulp turned into teeth, knitting the arm’s wounds closed, but Nemo ate the teeth, too.

“Aaaaugh! Why! It hurts! I beg you to stop! I command you to stop!”

Nemo yanked out a long bone, snapped it in half, and slurped up its marrow. He ate floppy boneless skin as easily as he’d eat a peach with no pit, swallowing teeth. When he reached an elbow, he yanked out the next bone and snapped it to slurp its marrow, too. Soon only the hand remained, and the teeth it bled ate it alive about as quickly as Nemo did.

Uzumaki’s palm shouted. “You motherfucker! You motherfucker!”

“Yuu maddafagga,” mimicked Nemo with his mouth full. “Name Nemo.” Nemo swallowed the fingers whole, then chomped the palm. The eyeball burst in his mouth as it transmitted distress to Uzumaki’s Hurricane Planet. Nemo laughed. If he could, he’d eat the sun, too.

Nemo licked his own blood and the arm’s pearly pulp off his body until Nakayama approached from behind. “Oh no. Nemo!” She gasped at the blood on his face. “You ate a centipede? But why?” Nakayama took the ball of centipedes. “I hid these up here so you wouldn’t have one until I convinced Uzumaki to preserve your mortality!”

Nemo showed her the snapped arm-bones and spare teeth. He pointed to the red sun.

Nakayama’s beak became hooked like a hawk’s. “That cosmic scum! Uzumaki went behind my back to make you immortal! Instead of just… usurping your body… as I recommended…” Nakayama’s emerald eyes tilted with regret. “I’m sorry, Nemo. I should’ve been assimilated twenty years ago. I would’ve doomed just one Earth, instead of building a whole new Earth to ruin. I’m the last person to teach the Hurricane some humanity.”

Nemo pat her lab-coat with sympathy, leaving bloody hand-prints.

“But how did you keep your mind? Why aren’t you possessed by one of the Hurricane’s pilots?” Nakayama squinted at the furious red sun. “To make you immortal, Uzumaki probably stabilized your brain-matter. It couldn’t kick you out because it reinforced you first. Its fear of death prevented yours. Or maybe my copy aboard Uzumaki sabotaged centipedes in your favor. You are her first-born child, after all.”

Nemo shrugged. He didn’t understand anything Nakayama said, but shrugging seemed appropriate.

“I’m returning to Uzumaki. I don’t belong here—but you do, so I need you to promise: keep centipedes from the other islanders. The next person mind-linked to the Hurricane might not be as lucky as you.” She shook the ball of centipedes toward the capes and crossed her wings in an X. “Buu.” Nemo nodded. Nakayama extended one feather’s white point. Nemo prepared for her to poke him again. “I’m bestowing a title upon you. When I built the Zephyrs, I meant to build many more, in many colors. When they agreed in intention, they’d work together to grow stronger. I started with the leader, Zephyr-Blue.” She marked Nemo’s forehead with her feather’s point. “I christen you Virgil Blue, the island’s immutable backbone. You alone know the Hurricane’s agenda.”

“Virgil Blue?” Nemo felt his forehead. Embossed on his brow was a four-pronged Hurricane-symbol. “Virgil Blue.” He nodded.

“I don’t mean to send mixed messages, but this is my quickest way back to Uzumaki’s Hurricane Planet.” Nakayama swallowed the ball of centipedes. “I couldn’t protect myself from the Hurricane, but I hope I can protect you.” She spontaneously combusted. In an instant, only smoke remained. Wind carried the smoke to the island’s peak, where it lingered.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2420.

“Great work, Eisu! Keep it up, Fumiko!” Lucille stood at the observatory-window of her moon-base’s tallest command-tower with her hands on her hips. Outside, two enormous legs hopped toward each other across the dusty lunar surface. Each leg was 500 meters tall and each muscle-group was a different color, like an anatomical diagram. Squinting, Lucille saw each color was made of robotic limbs and torsos guided by accompanying heads. Five thousand crew-members approximated human gait to guide the giant legs together. “Now!” The thighs conjoined along the groin.

In the command-tower, Charlie ashed his cockroach. “We’ve never combined so many robots at once, Commander. I’ll admit, I’m impressed.”

Dakshi sighed and wheeled back from the window. “It’s an impressive training-exercise, and running it means no one is repelling the Hurricane right now. The Combined Zephyr is just a way to depict our org-chart, a cute mnemonic to help crew-members find their superiors during a crisis.”

“Zephyr Dakshi, you should know my crew-members have no superior.” Lucille spoke into her microphone. “Alright, everyone, keep steady while we put ourselves together!”

“Put… ourselves together?” Dakshi soured. “You mean you’re not stopping at the legs?”

Charlie bit the scar in his lip. “Commander, you haven’t replaced Zephyr-Purple’s head-pilot yet. Z-Purple is the core of our org-chart. You need it to relay your command below hip-level.”

“Let me worry about that!” said Lucille.

“Now, Commander.” Dakshi was diminutive like any good parent. Charlie pushed Dakshi’s wheelchair after Lucille as she marched toward the elevators. “As head-pilot of Z-Green, I’m like your left shoulder. I formally express your intent to every color in the moon-base’s left arm quickly and accurately. Zephyr Charlie, your right shoulder, does the same from the head of Z-Yellow to every color in the moon-base’s right arm. Zephyr Eisu and Zephyr Fumiko are like your hips, but they need to cooperate with your torso, Z-Purple, to convey your intent to your legs. Without a pilot in ZAP, the Combined Zephyr will be paraplegic.”

“When ZAP needs a pilot, I’ll be there.” Lucille ushered Charlie and Dakshi into different elevators.

Lucille’s own elevator descended into Zephyr-Blue’s hangar. While other Zephyrs were staffed with pilots, co-pilots, mechanics, technicians, and medical-personnel, Zephyr-Blue was all her own, and she participated in building it a pair of legs to match its arms. She crossed a catwalk to ZAB and climbed into her cockpit. Hundreds of roaring robots launched from surrounding hangars, and when Lucille flipped a switch, Zephyr-Blue joined them flying on columns of steam fired from its feet.

Lucille floated far above the moon between Charlie and Dakshi’s teams in the yellow and green Zephyrs respectively. Descending, hundreds of Zephyrs of various colors maneuvered to build a giant human chest with Charlie and Dakshi at the shoulders. Lucille descended and wrapped her robot’s arms and legs around the muscular neck, and Zephyr-Blue’s whole body contorted to become a crude head. When Dakshi pulled a lever, the combined chest brushed lunar dust with its left arm. “Left arm, check.”

Charlie turned a dial to clench the combined chest’s right hand. “Right arm, check. Where are our abdominals? Where’s Zephyr-Purple?”

“On its way.” Lucille’s largest monitor displayed the view from ZAP. The purple Zephyr bounded over craters to stand between the enormous legs and chest, alone almost tall as the conglomerations. The purple pilots appeared at attention on Lucille’s monitors. “So far, so good. Zephyr Charlie, Zephyr Dakshi, fold our arms!”

The combined chest folded its arms. Zephyr-Purple squatted and gripped the chest’s rib-cage with both hands to heft the chest a kilometer into the sky. Zephyr-Purple raised its arms and the chest fell over it like a T-shirt. This completed the torso, which walked with disproportionately tiny purple legs.

“Eisu, Fumiko! About-face and take a knee.” The combined legs turned their calves and glutes to the torso, and the left knee bent to the lunar dust. The legs wobbled, but the right foot slid to steady them. “Zephyr Charlie, Zephyr Dakshi, help Z-Purple jump on my mark!” The combined chest knuckle-walked like a gorilla. “Jump!”

They tried to leap into the legs like pants, but only knocked them over. Thousands of robots fell onto the moon. Just before impact, many pilots disengaged their individual robots from their combinations to brace themselves as independent arms and legs.

“Damage report!” shouted Lucille. Zephyr-Blue still had its arms and legs wrapped around the combined chest’s neck, and that combined chest still had most of its right arm, but Lucille was upside-down, suspended by her seat-belts. “Shit.”

“Cut the comms when you cuss,” said Charlie, “it saves Zephyr Dakshi the trouble of writing formal reprimands. Everyone’s fine, Commander. Safety-tech has come a long way.”

“We warned you ZAP needed a pilot!” lambasted Dakshi. “Your feet aren’t hearing you when your hands do!”

“Nah, nah. We’ll just do it in zero-g next time!” Lucille beamed at the camera on her main monitor and made a V for Victory. “Great job, everyone! Hit the showers and take the afternoon off.” Robotic limbs collected into humanoids of solid color and meandered back to base. “Hold on.” A red light blinked on Lucille’s control-panel. “There’s a distress signal. Are we sure no one’s hurt?”

“Commander, look!” said Eisu. All the Zephyrs pointed to the sky. From black space spun a blue shape.

“Is it debris?” asked Fumiko.

Lucille magnified her main monitor. The blue shape had one eye and half a mouth. “Debris doesn’t send distress signals. That’s one of our own.”

“But everyone’s accounted for,” said Dakshi.

“Not everyone.” Lucille gripped her steering-wheel. “Zephyr Charlie, tear off Z-Blue and throw me at the newcomer!”

The combined chest’s right arm tore Zephyr-Blue off its neck and hurled it. Lucille caught the falling object mid-flight and shared its image with her crew. “No way,” said Charlie. “It’s ZAB’s right half! The original right half!”

Lucille eased her descent with steam. She held the half-face eye-to-eye with ZAB. “Prep the repair-bay! Double-time!”

—

Charlie and Dakshi had the moon-base’s technicians prepare a live-feed so Global Parliament and every Earthly news-station could witness Lucille’s debriefing of ZAB’s lost half. Twenty mechanics repaired the half-face’s exposed circuitry while another twenty mechanics cut ZAB into two. Lucille paced before the three head-halves, hands folded behind her. “You mean Professor Akayama lived on a Hurricane Planet for twenty years?”

“Long enough to give it the nickname Uzumaki,” said the original head-half. “I can’t confirm whether she survived the fall back to the planet.”

“How inspirational. Akayama was tricked into building the Hurricane with pure intent, and when dystopian dictators perverted that intent, she tried to save even them. Her struggle to salvage humanity’s most despicable portions is inspiration for us all.” Lucille motioned for the mechanics to fuse ZAB’s original halves back together. Falling sparks illuminated the repair-bay flickering orange. “The moon’s changed since you left. Hurricane Planets invade deeper and more frequently than ever, stealing stars from the edges of the Milky Way. We’ve built hundreds of robots based on Akayama’s designs and expanded the lunar crew to ten thousand. We can combine into a single Zephyr a kilometer tall.”

When the mechanics finished wiring its original halves together, ZAB consolidated the knowledge of both portions. “We’re still not strong enough,” it said. “I know our power and the Hurricane’s. There are far more Hurricane Planets than you know, and their organization is crude but robust.”

“So you know how the Hurricane is organized, huh? Anything we haven’t guessed?”

ZAB hummed in thought like a hydroelectric turbine. “The densest concentration of Hurricane Planets, countless light-years away, is where Hurricane Planets sync with each other, exchanging information and ensuring homogeneity.”

Lucille stroked her chin. “So they’ve got a weak-point?”

“No. I would call this the Hurricane’s strongest point, because it is the densest concentr—“

“But if we blow it up, or, say, infect it with a virus, the Hurricane will chaotically tear itself apart!”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps nothing.” Lucille posed for the cameras. “Grit those teeth, humanity! We’ve got our battle-plan.”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2420.

Hurricane Planet Uzumaki scanned the skies with eyes large as oceans. It saw a space-rock and thought to itself, “how about that one? It has cool craters.”

“No.” This thought emanated from Uzumaki’s red mountain, and it had Nakayama’s accent. “Too small. Its core is probably solid throughout and not conducive to complicated life.”

Uzumaki digested the space-rock like a gargantuan amoeba. “How about that one over there?”

“It’s too deep in the Milky Way. We’d attract attention from humans and rival Hurricane Planets.” From within the red mountain, Nakayama took control of Uzumaki’s eyes and focused on the black distance. Her knowledge of optics had increased their vision’s acuity a hundred-fold. “Maybe one of those.” She generated more engines to drift quicker through space.

A Hurricane Planet’s engines were even less sophisticated than the engines of the original Hurricane spaceship Nakayama had built eighty years ago. The Hurricane’s only tactic was imitating, in massive scale and quantity, the technology and biology it had eaten and decided was worth remembering. She had always assumed the Hurricane’s transmutation of the universe into its own flesh was directed by sinister intelligence. Now she was merged with Uzumaki and knew she’d only been half right: sinister, certainly; intelligent, not-so-much.

Being partially assimilated took getting used to, but Nakayama had invented mind-merging and knew how it worked, in theory. Her Hurricane Planet, Uzumaki, had a single train of thought which was like a high-speed conversation between all its minds at once. Dissenting opinions from all parties were attacked on every side, so the final result was one tyrannical voice. Memories from a hundred other lifetimes rose to Nakayama as if they were her own, then vanished. She struggled to conceal her own memories, but Uzumaki wandered in her history as it pleased. She hoped building a hundred bodies would grant Uzumaki’s pilots some humanity, because as it was, she felt like her brain was chained to an angry animal.

Speaking of animals, the zoos Uzumaki mentioned were unaccounted for in its shared consciousness. The Hurricane had kept animal-genetics to play with new body-parts, but discarded the accompanying cognition. No wonder everything about Uzumaki was so crude: the Hurricane prided itself on discarding everything it considered beneath it.

Nevertheless, Nakayama now understood why the Hurricane wanted to try fur, feathers, and scales: no matter how hot a Hurricane Planet felt from outside, inside its mind, the vacuum of space cut like a cold razor. Even she felt the urge to devour smaller Hurricane Planets. Increasing their volume would increase their absolute surface-area, but decrease their relative surface-area, and existence would become absolutely more painful, but relatively less painful. No wonder Hurricane Planets cannibalized each other to become bigger than the galaxy, and desired to be the only thing in the universe.

“None of these celestial objects are acceptable,” thought Nakayama. Uzumaki didn’t doubt her because their conjoined subconsciousness made lying impossible. “The Hurricane should regret eating most of the universe. We have nowhere to call our new Earth.”

“No problem.” Uzumaki accelerated into a sparse volume of space on the border of the galaxy. “We’ll build our own using your know-how.” Uzumaki opened enormous organs in its interior. One organ flooded with salt-water, one organ inflated with nitrogen and oxygen, and one organ 3D-printed a lithosphere with an iron core spinning in molten magma. The planet ejected these components so they orbited ninety-million miles away. Gravity pulled the components together with a great fluid splash, resulting in a watery world with a breathable atmosphere.

“I’m confident we can make life here,” thought Nakayama. “You’ll be this world’s sun, providing radiation and genetic material. If you let me go back to my body, I’ll work on this world in person.”

“Okay,” thought Uzumaki, “but even if you’re leaving, you’re not leaving.”

Nakayama managed only an instant of bewilderment before she opened her bird-like body’s eyes and tore away the flesh-mask connecting her to the Hurricane Planet. She sat in darkness on a rock inside the red mountain. She clenched her feathery fists to ensure she really controlled herself.

She heard a voice from the Hurricane Planet. To her surprise, it was not Uzumaki’s voice, but her own. “Did you just copy me?” she asked.

“Oh, gosh,” said Nakayama. “This is confusing.”

“Nothing to it,” said Uzumaki, from a mouth it opened in the dark. “I’m still Uzumaki. You’re my drone, Nakayama. It doesn’t matter that the professor is in both vessels.”

Nakayama didn’t appreciate her body being called a vessel. She felt like a computer-file which could be duplicated or deleted. “Send me to the water-world. My first task is generating landmass with sub-aqueous extrusion—that is, I’ll open underwater magma-vents.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what sub-aqueous extrusion is,” said Uzumaki. “Whenever I care to ask, I know everything your copy knows.”

“Of course, of course.” Nakayama felt lighter as the floor dropped toward Uzumaki’s core, preparing to slingshot her into space. “What lifeforms are we aiming to generate first? We need organisms with nervous-systems if we want to transfer minds into them.”

“We’ve got the genomes for people, zoo-animals, and most domestic pets.”

Nakayama pat her lab-coat pocket. “I’ve got a cockroach.”

“Gimme.”

She tossed the roach. The wall opened an artery to catch it. “You also have the genome for earthworms. They’re in the legacy-files alongside the fruit-trees. They were my first animal test-subjects when I developed mind-merging, because they’re segmented and almost radially symmetrical. In fact, all minds are built out of worms, in my model.”

“I’m not putting my pilots into worms!”

“You don’t have to, but I’ve never created life before, so let’s start with worms.” Nakayama felt violent vibrations as the awful acceleration reversed, pressing her against the floor, wings spread-eagle. “We’ll work our way up to humans.”

“You’ve never made life? You’ve lasted almost a century-and-a-half, and you never had kids?”

Nakayama glared at the wall’s mouth. Surely Uzumaki knew this, having wandered her memory. It was asking out of cruelty. “I had three miscarriages, four if I include you.”

“Then you’ll appreciate another chance! Make my vessels invulnerable. I won’t put an aspect of my being into something which might die.”

Nakayama humphed. If the acceleration hadn’t flattened her, she would’ve crossed her wings. “You wanted to reclaim your humanity, remember? Immortality isn’t the human condition.”

“Look into it anyway. You might change your mind.”

“Is that a threat?” Nakayama was fired from the red mountain’s peak and shot through space like a bullet. The red mountain was larger than anything on Earth, but with distance, it looked like a boil.

—

As she swam the oceans of the watery world, Nakayama wondered if she was alone in her own skull. Maybe Uzumaki sanctioned her actions from inside her own brain. If not, the copy of her mind kept aboard Uzumaki was still the perfect hostage. She tried to focus on the task at hand: opening undersea magma-vents to create landmass.

Since Uzumaki had warped her biology, she found herself capable of conscious change at the cellular level. Currently she was thirty meters long and skinny like a snake. For the sake of decency, she’d stretched her lab-coat into long, flowing robes. Her feathers were flattened into scales like an aquatic anaconda. Her elongated arms pried stones off the sea-floor to expose molten magma.

She spent days working underwater before deciding to rest while the magma poured, cooled, and hardened. She became buoyant and floated to the surface. She massaged her gills flush against her neck. Her lungs reopened. She fought for breath.

As horrifying as her situation was, she felt some relief being on an Earth-like planet. The sky was the same light-blue as her long lab-coat. In the west was a faux sunset left by an imposter sun, her Hurricane Planet, Uzumaki, irradiating the oceans. Nakayama felt its thin chemical rain seeding the seas with genetic material. She wondered how its copy of her mind was faring.

To calm herself, Nakayama melted into an acre of filmy liquid buffeted by waves. When she fell asleep, she found herself dreaming the contents of the Hurricane’s legacy-files—whether from memory or digitally, she was unsure. Most of the files were purely technical, like genome-sequences, but she’d tested the memory-banks with a folder of books from across world-history scanned in perfect detail and various languages, including an old manga about giant space-robots she had read as a child. Daitatsu no Kagirinai Hogo! What an inspiration. Skimming it now, Nakayama was rejuvenated, considering her every cell to be a tiny robot which combined to generate her. On the other hand, Daitatsu no Kagirinai Hogo‘s antagonist was an alien entity. Humanity had made the Hurricane itself. She had made it. Maybe the manga was a bad influence.

In the morning, she collected in her lab-coat. She filled her sleeves with pseudopods which became arms. She tread water with new legs.

Her magma-vents had spawned three islands almost in a line, like Orion’s belt. The largest island was a perfectly conical mountain with a river straight up and down. The central island was a hill bearing various trees. The smallest island was just a flat, sandy acre. She swam to the closest, the smallest, and shambled ashore like an octopus. The sandy island was barren. Surely nothing could live here.

She heard a chirp. She enlarged her eyeballs to inspect the sand and saw a small hopping insect. She flattened her left arm to scoop it up. “What are you supposed to be?” The insect chirped by shuffling its wings. “You look like a skinny cockroach. How disgusting. Uzumaki must be forcing my copy to cut corners generating animal-life. I’ll call you a cricket, because that’s the sound you make.” She slipped the insect and sand up her sleeve. From her other sleeve fell fertile soil with the insect planted eyes-down. “I’ve made you a radially-symmetrical plant. Now you’re far more stable.” She ambled about the island planting copies of the cricket. When she needed more soil, she scooped sand into her sleeves and converted it to loam with nuclear processes. This worked until she uncovered a human body. “Augh!”

“Aaaugh!” The nude man hiding in the sand was more afraid than she was. He kicked and clawed and scrambled away. The man had pitch-black skin and a slightly egg-shaped head, with a round jaw and pointed scalp. His bony build would stand about six feet tall if he weren’t crawling in terror. “Aaaugh!”

“Hey! It’s okay!” Nakayama bounded after him. “I’m here for you! I’m here for you!”

“Aaaugh!” When he was cornered on the coast, the man flipped on his back and raised his arms to protect himself.

“Hold on, hold on.” She frayed her scales back into feathers and molded her arms roughly humanoid. “Um.” She couldn’t recall how many fingers humans were supposed to have. “Show me your hands.” The man recoiled when she took his arm as if to read his palm. “Only five? I have way too many! No wonder you were scared.” She ate her extra fingers like soft cake. “There we go. Shake.” She shook the man’s hand. Did he not speak English? Maybe Japanese would be better? “Yoroshiku ne. Nakayama desu.” No response. “Do you have a name?”

“Name?” repeated the man. His egg-shaped head had wide-set eyes with dark irises. “Name?”

Nakayama recalled the classic texts in the Hurricane’s legacy-files. “To make these islands, I spent days at the bottom of the ocean. Taking this as inspiration, I name you Nemo.”

“Nemo name?” asked Nemo. “Name Nemo?”

“Precisely.” Nakayama pulled Nemo to his feet. “Are you alone?” Nemo didn’t understand, so she combed the island with extra arms poking out from under her elongated lab-coat. “Why did Uzumaki make you after I said we’d work our way up to advanced lifeforms? I can’t imagine what awful things it did to my copy to coerce her to create you.” Nevertheless, she was somewhat jealous. Her copy had had a child, but not her. She found no more men after combing the island, so she collected her arms back under her lab-coat. “This island is too small to house a human comfortably. Let me take you to that larger one with the trees.”

Nakayama folded herself into a boat. Nemo stepped shakily aboard her back, and after she crossed the harsh surf at the speed of sound, he disembarked on the second island panic-breathing. He caught his breath walking uphill through the trees, staring up at their canopies in awe.

“You have food, at least.” Nakayama stretched her whole body to pull fruit from the treetops. Bananas, apples, oranges, pomegranates, and peaches grew side-by-side. She gave their fruits to Nemo. “Not all these trees can survive in this climate. Enjoy them while they last.”

Nemo couldn’t hold all the fruits at once. He bit a banana through its peel. When he saw soft yellow flesh underneath, he understood the nature of the fruit and peeled it. He experimented with each fruit while Nakayama surveyed the island for dangerous species. The only animals she found were tiny flightless birds in a variety of colors.

“…Hey!” She knocked a yellow fledgling out of Nemo’s hands before he ate it alive. “Don’t eat these! These aren’t fruit!” Nemo stared blankly, so she sketched the bird in the sand. “Buu.” She crossed her wings in an X. “Buu.” She swept the bird-sketch away. “Got it?”

Nemo nodded.

Nakayama led him back to the coast to show him Hurricane Planet Uzumaki, shining like a red sun. The mountain was barely visible, just a little pimple. “That object is where I’m from. It’s your source, as well. I must return there, but I’ll be back for you. Let me sample your DNA.” She speared him in the ribs with the white point of a feather thinner than a syringe’s needle. Nemo shouted, but the feather left no wound. “Stay safe.” With that, her body flattened so wide, tall, and thin that the wind lifted her. Nemo watched her float to space like a jellyfish.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Last time on RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku!

The year is 2420. Unbeknownst to humanity, Professor Akayama tried and failed to escape a Hurricane Planet and rescue its consciousness with her. The late Princess Lucia’s daughter Lucille, the new Lunar-Commander, has just learned about the Hurricane’s origin on Earth.

—

Lucille leaned over the railing of her Lunar-Commander’s balcony. Below, in the moon-base’s main mess-hall, thousands of her crew ate breakfast. Zephyrs were organized into teams by the solid color of their bodysuits, matching the solid color of their giant space-robots. There were so many colors even Lucille had trouble keeping track of them, and each color came in shades to distinguish the wearer’s role. The pilots wore bright, bold colors. Co-pilots wore pastels. Mechanics wore darks. Technicians wore desaturated jumpsuits. Medical-personnel, not assigned to any particular robot, wore exclusively pink. It was traditional, but not required, to dye one’s hair to match one’s bodysuit.

Lucille didn’t bother collecting her blue bodysuit when she was promoted to pilot of Zephyr-Alpha-Blue. Her mother Lucia had worn blue, but her father Bunjiro had worn red, so purple felt fitting, and as Lunar Commander, no one could tell her otherwise. She looked good in purple. Charlie looked good in yellow. Dakshi looked good in green.

Charlie sat at the table behind her. Dakshi rolled beside him in his wheelchair. “You requested us, Commander Lucille?”

“I’ve considered Professor Akayama’s video-confession.” Her adopted parents were taller than her, twice her age, and twice her weight, so Lucille conveyed authority by standing straight and broadening her shoulders. Dakshi valued the lunar-base’s rules and regulations, and Charlie tried to pretend to, too, so Lucille knew they needed this no-nonsense approach from her. In their presence, she wouldn’t even skip honorifics—although, now being her subordinates, she could call them Zephyrs rather than Commanders. “The Hurricane is the worst of the worst of the dystopian dictators from before the World-Unification, all merged into one. How terrifying! Zephyr Charlie, Zephyr Dakshi, you’re more in-touch with Earth than I am, and you’ve had twenty years to consider it. How would people handle this insight?”

Charlie and Dakshi looked to each other, unsure. Neither wanted to answer first, but finally Charlie broke the silence. “We’ve talked about it with Global Parliament. There are lots of different impressions, which is why we’ve kept the video classified.”

“I think Earth’s people would be devastated to know,” said Dakshi. “The warring micro-nations and mega-corporations we thought we’d subdued with the World-Unification are more dominating than ever in the form of the Hurricane. Their wars are yet ongoing, and we have no real hope of winning.”

“I think Earth’s people would feel empowered,” said Charlie. “Look how far we’ve come. The Zephyrs versus the Hurricane is humanity united against its own faults! Isn’t that the only war worth fighting, win or lose?”

Lucille nodded in deep thought. She’d only asked to show she valued their input, but she was genuinely glad to hear their opposing views, justifying her own uncertainty. “I can see it both ways. Luckily, nothing in the video changes our situation. We’re still protecting the galaxy from the Hurricane. We’ll reveal its origin if and when it becomes relevant, or after the Hurricane is neutralized.”

“Neutralized?” Charlie squinted, which shifted his eye-patch. “The whole thing? The cosmic horror that ate the universe?”

“Aim high, that’s what I say!” Lucille pointed skyward. “Professor Akayama died transmitting a virus to a Hurricane Planet. Did it do anything? Did you check?”

Charlie and Dakshi hung their heads. “We never considered it,” said Dakshi. “We obviously had other concerns at the time.”

“She gave her life to show us how it’s done,” said Lucille. “You two, wrangle the technicians and cook up a virus. Lacking Akayama’s suicidal guilt, we’ll try infecting the Hurricane with unmanned vessels.”

“Yes, Commander.” Dakshi gripped his wheelchair, preparing to leave. “Oh, by the way. I’d like you to speak with Zephyr Eisu and Zephyr Fumiko, Commanders of Zephyr-Red and Zephyr-Yellow. I admire them as the heads of our lunar-base’s legs, but I saw them smoking a cockroach after training yesterday. They’re two years underage.”

“Send them up.” As soon as Charlie wheeled Dakshi aboard the elevator down, Lucille retrieved her breakfast from under the table: a plastic-wrapped sandwich she’d nicked from the kitchens. She unwrapped it while watching thousands of her crew finish breakfast below her balcony. A tomato-slice slipped from her sandwich. She caught it mid-air before it fell into the mess-hall. She’d have to learn to eat at altitude.

The elevator opened for twin siblings Eisu and Fumiko in red and orange uniforms respectively. Eisu was a little shorter, with a bowl-cut. Fumiko was a little taller, with bangs. “You requested us, Commander?”

“Just call me Lucille!” Lucille had trained with the twins since they’d arrived almost two years ago. Such friendships made Lucille an effective Commander of Zephyr-Purple, able to unite the lunar-base’s older arms and younger legs. Around these younger Zephyrs she adopted a different attitude, displaying camaraderie despite her lofty new position. “No need for honorifics when it’s just us, right? At ease! Please, sit.” The twins sat with military poise. Her promotion to Lunar Commander was obviously intimidating. Trying to relax them, Lucille reclined in her chair and put her feet on the table. She ate the tomato-slice and wiped seeds from her cheek. “I don’t want you to treat me any differently now that I hold the highest rank on the moon, understand?” Eisu and Fumiko nodded, hands folded courteously. “How’s your family on Earth?”

Eisu held his breath. “They’re doing well, Comma—erm, Lucille.“

“Very well, Lucille.” Fumiko tightened her posture.

Lucille sighed, finishing her sandwich. “Glad to hear it.” This wasn’t working. There hadn’t been a Lunar Commander in twenty years, so meeting the first one was too stressful. To prove she was still their friend, she would brandish the stick they feared and use it to dig up a carrot. She sat straight and set her feet on the floor. “Now, I’ve brought you here for a formal reprimanding. Zephyr Dakshi saw you smoking a roach yesterday. Aren’t you both underage?”

The twins winced. “We’re sorry, Commander,” said Fumiko.

“It won’t happen again,” said Eisu.

“Cockroaches are illegal for anyone under twenty,” lectured Lucille. “You’re eighteen. Heck, I’m only nineteen. So!” Lucille folded her arms and winked. “As Lunar Commander, I order you to smoke a roach with me.” Eisu and Fumiko shared a skeptical glance, so Lucille insisted. “I’ll tell Dakshi I chewed you out.”

Success! The twins’ defences were down. Eisu pulled a roach from a pocket of his red bodysuit. Fumiko produced an orange lighter and raised her eyebrows as if to ask, ‘really?’

“I’ve never smoked before, so you’ll have to teach me,” said Lucille. “We’re too tight-laced on the moon. I can’t bum a roach off anyone legal-age. Did you smuggle that up from Earth?”

“We did,” said Eisu. “Our grandfather was willing to share his with us.”

“Even though grandma told him not to.” Fumiko lit the roach’s head and offered it to Lucille. “Is it true you’ve never been planet-side?”

“Yep, and as the product of forbidden love between space-robot pilots, I never will be. That’s why I score so well on exams—there’s nothing to do up here but study.” Lucille refused the roach to see how they smoked it. Fumiko took delicate puffs and passed the roach to her brother. “I’ve memorized Earth’s laws, but I’ll never understand them. Why can folks our age pilot giant space-robots but not smoke a roach?”

Eisu puffed deeper than his sister and passed the roach to Lucille. Her first puff was a brave one. As she coughed, Eisu explained. “A lot of laws are left over from the World-Unification. Bringing countless warring micro-nations and mega-corporations under one constitution required concessions.”

“Concessions which aren’t totally sensible in hindsight,” said Fumiko. “A government unites very different groups of people. Sort of like this moon-base.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” Lucille said between coughs. She’d inhaled most of the roach in her first impressive puff. She returned the rest for Fumiko to finish off. “Eisu, Fumiko, I’m gathering impressions and I’d like yours, too. What do you think is Earth’s current attitude toward the micro-nations and mega-corporations which dominated Earth before the World-Unification? Positive? Negative?”

Fumiko tapped the last of the roach into Charlie’s ashtray. “Our grandpa says they perpetuated the same dystopian hellscape which spawned them in the first place. A group of people might put on the uniform of a particular region, do something unspeakable to another region, then put on the uniform of that other region and do something unspeakable to the first region, in mock-retribution. This happened often enough—or was said to happen enough—groups of people could do unspeakable things in their own uniforms and still blame anyone else.”

“That’s quite a negative impression, I’d say,” said Lucille.

“He says it was all theatrically-justified genocide, but it was formalized in a game called ‘fifty-dimensional space-chess,’ ” Fumiko went on. “Have you read much about it?” Lucille shook her head. “Grandpa says no one was allowed to write about it back then, so there’s not a lot to read. It was a game psychotic rulers played with human lives. There were never any overlapping micro-nations or mega-corporations, not really; there were only excuses.”

“Our grandmother says things haven’t changed enough since then,” admitted Eisu. “Endless wars and fifty-dimensional space-chess have just become arguments in parliament. It looks more civilized, but the outcomes still make or break people’s livelihoods.”

“Well, I guess collecting all the arguments into one room is a step in the right direction.” Lucille leaned over her desk to whisper to the twins. “Now we’re partners in crime, so you can’t just treat me like any old Lunar Commander. You’re not ‘obeying orders’ because I ‘outrank’ you. You’re following my lead because you trust me.”

“Of course!” said Fumiko. “I remember how you led us in the mid-battle merger of Z-Purple, Orange, Red, Black, and Yellow. Z-PORKY was a huge success.”

“I wouldn’t trust anyone else,” said Eisu. “I look up to you like I hope the crew of Z-Red looks up to me.”

“Perfect.” Lucille planted her hands on the table broader than shoulder-width. “I want both your teams running combination and matryoshka drills. Tell the other teams to do the same. I’m gonna get my whole crew of ten thousand on the moon all at once, and in seventy-two hours, we’re combining every Zephyr on the org-chart into one giant space-robot. That’ll be a bonding opportunity!”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Last time on RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku!

The year is 2399. Professor Akayama didn’t have time to scream when the sun-sized Hurricane ripped her Zephyr-head in half. Both halves spun into black space, and her tight nautilus bun unwrapped so her navy hair flew in all directions. She repeatedly lost consciousness, and each time she woke, she saw the Hurricane Planet grow larger as she fell toward it. She begged to suffocate before she woke again and had to see the Hurricane once more, but she wasn’t so lucky: the reaching tentacles had a thin trail of atmosphere which kept her alive. Then, instead of splattering on impact with the planet’s surface, she splashed in an ocean of warm, pearly pulp.

With most her bones broken, Akayama had no hope of swimming, but her lab-coat kept her afloat. She languished in half-awareness for what felt like days. She had to guess the duration, because only red Hurricane Planets speckled the black sky. Would she starve to death without the familiar sight of the Milky Way? She honestly hoped so. She had doomed the galaxy and never deserved to see it again.

Whenever Akayama guessed a day had passed, she tested her broken bones and found a greater range of motion. Through photon-firing telescopes, she’d seen these oceans of pearly pulp flood and drain over wounds to repair the Hurricane’s injuries. She considered it cruel irony that the pearly pulp kept her alive, too. Death wouldn’t come so easily.

On the ninth day (she guessed) even her arthritis was gone, and she felt as fit as when she was fifty. She flipped to float on her belly and shed her lab-coat. Lining the inside, buoyant plastic air-pockets had automatically inflated during the fall. If she’d left without her lab-coat, she could’ve just drowned, and this would all be over. Now she wore the lab-coat back-to-front so the buoyancy was more suitable for swimming. She tread water (well, not water, but she didn’t want to think about it) and surveyed the horizon. A plume of dark smoke stood out against the black sky’s red speckling of Hurricane Planets.

She’d never seen a Hurricane Planet expel dark smoke. Was this part of her crash-landed Zephyr? She had no other guess, and her stomach rumbled at the thought of rations stored aboard. She wasn’t hungry—the Hurricane’s wound-goo sustained her—but the wound would soon heal and the sustaining pulp would be reabsorbed. Besides, she kept a cockroach in her Zephyr’s glove-compartment, and she craved a good smoke. Maybe the engines worked and she could escape before this Hurricane Planet grappled with another for dominance! Now Akayama felt ashamed for craving the sweet release of death, and instead craved a return to the galaxy so she could redeem herself.

After swimming thirteen hours (she guessed) she grazed a gritty shoreline. She pulled herself onto the painful beach and immediately fell asleep on her lab-coat. The tide of pearly pulp grew shallow as she slept, so when she woke, she saw the shore was gritty because it was paved with human teeth.

About six or seven decades ago, when Akayama experimented with mind-merging, test-subjects incompatible with one-another bristled with painful teeth.  She surgically rectified these subjects and recorded the error so the mistakes were never repeated, but the image of it still haunted her like gnarling jaws in her stomach. Today her largest failure, the Hurricane, cordoned its injuries with densely impacted dentition. No wonder it was pain-averse: every wound ate itself alive.

Akayama shuddered, stood, pulled her lab-coat around her shoulders, and limped over the teeth toward the dark smoke-plume in the distance. Beyond the gritty shore was fresh pink flesh hot enough to make her sweat. With no heat-source in the sky, she reasoned the planet itself had some deep fever. Walking further, the pink flesh reddened and shed dead skin rough as sand. Her feet sank six inches in the desert-like dust. The planet’s smallest wrinkles were like dunes miles high and impossibly steep. She was barely able to climb over them because the pearly pulp had left her so spry.

The plume of dark smoke drew closer every hour until she crested a final dune and saw the right half of her Zephyr in a broad, deep crater. It had just one eye, one ear, and half a nose and mouth, but its unflappable expression filled Akayama with confidence. She slid down the crater’s sheer slope.

The soft sand rippled under her like a vast trampoline. When the ripples reached the crater’s walls, the crater’s walls grew higher. Akayama scrambled back up the steepening slope, but the walls became vertical and caved overhead like a tidal wave. She tumbled into the crater and rolled next to her Zephyr as the horizon sealed shut above, becoming a red mountain sealing her beneath. After days of trekking, she now considered that it was statistically improbable for her and her Zephyr to land within even a year’s travel of one-another on this cosmic object the size of the sun. This had been a trap.

Subterranean hydraulics rumbled. The Hurricane Planet swallowed her and her spaceship, rushing them to the core with churning peristalsis. The air was hotter every moment, but Professor Akayama shivered.

She climbed into her mutilated half-Zephyr to find the cockpit’s adjustable chair was the only operational object in the spaceship. Every monitor was cracked but one. The circuits were scorched. The photon-firers were all aboard the other half, so she couldn’t beam messages to the moon. Hoping beyond hope, she turned her key in the ignition. “Can you hear me?” Her Zephyr was silent.

Akayama popped the glove-compartment to find three days of rations and a cockroach. She’d craved food and a smoke, but now felt nauseated by claustrophobia. She stowed the roach in her lab-coat and drank water from her rations. Drinking water was a simple human task, grounding her somewhat during these unnatural circumstances.

Because the torn Zephyr had no left side, red subterranean rocks rushed upward as Akayama descended. An eyeball bigger than a grapefruit opened on the rock wall and slid down alongside her, keeping watch. Akayama spun her chair to watch it back. “Hisashiburi,” she said. “Kill me already!”

A mouth opened above the eyeball. “You’ll never die, mortal. You’ve got the honor of joining the Hurricane.” It had three rows of blunt teeth and a massive flopping tongue. “The other humans I’ve met were all worthless. I gave them a chance to be useful enough to bother assimilating their minds, but they kept demanding stuff. ‘Stop eating my friends!’ ‘Stop eating my family!’ ‘Stop eating me!’ Gah.” Akayama wept. “You, though, I recognize! I hired you to build me, and I bet you built that big blue bully you’re hiding in, too. Your mind must have some use, so when I eat you, I’m keeping your mind as part of me.”

Akayama’s heart kept dropping. “The twenty million who settled too close to the galaxy’s edge? Some brought their children? Some children brought their pets? You killed them all?” She’d hoped this was the case, considering it preferable to having one’s mind merged with the Hurricane’s pilots, but hearing it still broke her.

“You say it like I’m in the wrong, here. It’s not my fault they weren’t worth keeping. Bad genetics, bad brains, bad everything! Now their mass gets to be part of something actually valuable: me! They should be glad. If I’d decided to punish them for their worthlessness, I could’ve turned them into eternally suffering tooth-balls instead. Besides, I kept parts of the animals—it was more than pets, some of them brought whole zoos! It’s cold in space and I thought fur, feathers, or scales might help—but no, the critters were useless, too. Although I do appreciate these tentacles.”

Red tentacles protruded from the walls and wrapped around her Zephyr-half, steaming hot. If the Hurricane felt cold in this blazing heat, no number of layers could ever warm it. Akayama wiped sweat from her face, unsure where her tears began. “Those poor creatures.”

“Don’t worry. They’re safe inside me forever and ever, just like you’ll be, too.” The mouth bared its rows of teeth. “You should be thankful I’m so welcoming, after how you treated me. What did you do?“

“I did everything.” Akayama’s guilt burned worse than the excruciating heat. “I built the Hurricane. I failed to prevent its launch. The fiery fate of the universe is my fault.”

“I know, I know. I mean, what did you do just recently?” The eyeball squinted at her. She’d never smelled an eyeball before, but this one reeked like pungent salt-water. “When I smacked you from the sky, you transmitted data! I was about to make some miniatures of myself, and now I can’t.”

Akayama put a hand over her heart. “My virus affected you. Humanity might have a chance.”

“I am humanity. When you’re employed as part of me, we’ll undo your mistake together. I worked hard to collect all this mass, and I deserve to multiply. My tiny copies will earn their existence by working for once.”

This insight into the Hurricane’s reproductive cycle disturbed Akayama. Enslaving literal copies of oneself seemed unfathomable. “You misinterpret my intent,” she said. “That virus proves there’s hope to salvage the pilots of the Hurricane.”

“Salvage? Pfft.” The mouth blew a raspberry which speckled her with globs of spit. “My pilots are safely fused into my eternal form. You know better than anyone that my duty is to humanity’s preservation.”

“But you killed all those people. Men, women, children.”

“People?” The eye rolled, audibly. “Useless garbage isn’t people. You’re one of the good ones, so I’m keeping you. No need to thank me.”

Akayama balked, like the words punched her in the gut. “What do you remember of humanity? Decades have passed since the Hurricane’s pilots were merged. Don’t you have their memories? Can’t you see their grieving widows and orphans?”

“I can,” said the Hurricane, “which is why I must multiply. I need enough copies to preserve my memory no matter how many you murder. At the core of this planet, your consciousness will join mine. Then I’ll disable your virus myself.” The mouth licked its lips with enough saliva to drown a dog. The saliva dribbled over the open eyeball. “I’ll share your mind with all my backups across the universe until you’re stored in my almost-omnipresent mass. Eventually my miniatures will finish eating everything in the universe, and then I’ll eat all my backups, and humanity will last for all time in one perfect ball.”

Akayama clenched her eyes shut. Terrified as she was, she saw opportunity in the terminology ‘copies,’ ‘miniatures,’ and ‘backups.’ Did every Hurricane Planet consider itself to be the only real one? Was that why Hurricane Planets were willing to cannibalise each other? She could press this for her own survival. “Life isn’t about fearing death. You contain people, but you’ve lost what made them people.“

“Ha! I’m a hundred times the human you are, because I can see a hundred lifetimes at once.”

“You ended a hundred lifetimes at once! Your pilots run in parallel, wearing their yoke like a crown!” Akayama didn’t feel brave, but she pointed accusingly at the eye. “How can you claim to stand for humanity when you absorb everything you encounter into uniform, indistinguishable volume?”

“I’ve got fingers too, you know!” The Hurricane poked at her with an arm from the rock wall. It had two elbows bending in opposite directions and only three fingers, no thumb. “I know everything important about all my pilots. Don’t fear merging with me: I’ll preserve every part of you worth keeping.”

“When you decided protecting humanity meant preserving a homogeneous mass, everything humane in you died!” Akayama folded her arms. “You don’t even know how many fingers you’re supposed to have.”

The eye tried counting Akayama’s fingers, but she’d hidden her hands in her lab-coat’s sleeves. Its arm retracted back into the wall. “I’m the most humane being possible!“

“Then grant me my individuality!” This was her chance. She stood from her chair to shout. “And grant it to yourself! If you share me with your copies and backups across the universe, nothing will separate you from them!” The eye blinked with realization. “You need me.” Akayama pointed to her own nose. “You need my mind unmolested. Aren’t you special? Aren’t you the I of the Hurricane? What could elevate you above countless duplicates like uniquely accommodating your creator?“

“Hmm.” The mouth bit its lower lip like it was fantasising about chewing a thick steak. “How could you be useful while separate from me?”

“I could help you reclaim your humanity! I’m the universe’s leading expert in consciousness.” Akayama turned her Zephyr’s broken steering-wheel. “I could load just one of your pilots at a time into my Zephyr’s circuitry. Imagine: each of your aspects can have personal-space to recoup their lost perspective!”

“I could assimilate you and use your knowledge to do that myself.”

“No.” Akayama stood her ground, fists on her hips. “You lack the motor-skills and sense-organs required. How could tentacles stretching from your bulk operate my Zephyr’s control-panel? I’ll need to live on your surface, too, near a star. Otherwise it will be too dark for me to work.”

She felt heavier. The peristalsis reversed direction to vomit her up the planet’s throat. Akayama gasped and tried to restrain her sobs of relief. “If I’m the I of the Hurricane, I’ll need a proper name. Give me a good one or I’ll change my mind.”

She gulped. Changing its mind probably meant doing something terrible to hers. She could be trapped forever in an eternally suffering tooth-ball. “Uzumaki. This Hurricane Planet is the center of the Hurricane’s spiral.”

“Hm. I like it,” said Hurricane Planet Uzumaki. “You can’t live on my surface forever. I’ll have to hide you when we meet my copies. If they see you, they’ll make me share you.”

“Can we stay far from the others?”

“Every so often I sync with them. I’ll swallow you when the time comes.” Uzumaki spat her out onto the red mountain it had trapped her under.

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Last time on RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku!

The year is 2420. Twenty years ago, Professor Akayama, Commander Bunjiro, and Princess Lucia died in combat against the Hurricane. The tragic details are undisclosed even to Zephyr Lucille, daughter of Lucia and Bunjiro. Lucille was conceived on the moon, where she was tube-incubated after her mother’s death, so her brittle bones could never bear Earth’s gravity. Now nineteen years old, Lucille has the second-place record for the longest duration without touching Earth, behind only Akayama herself, who lived aboard the moon-base for forty years.

Charlie and Dakshi adopted Lucille and the duty of protecting Earth from the Hurricane. The original Zephyr is now called Zephyr-Blue, because Zephyrs of every color have been built. Although Zephyr-Blue is at the top of the lunar org-chart, it has been, since the incident, unmanned.

—

Enormous humanoid robots bounded across the lunar surface, training. Each Zephyr was a solid color, and the only colors unaccounted for among them probably belonged to Zephyrs repelling the Hurricane at the galaxy’s rim. Some Zephyrs jumped on muscular legs, some bounced on puffs of steam from legless hips. Some had two arms, some four, some more. Each limb, chest, and head held the silhouettes of its crew: pilots, co-pilots, technicians, mechanics, and medical-personnel.

Sometimes a Zephyr would collapse into body-parts so the crew could practice recombining under their Commander’s direction from the head, the Alpha-unit. Sometimes two Zephyrs would merge into a humanoid but multicolored mass of limbs so the crews could practice staggering together until they rolled into a crater and broke apart. Sometimes a small Zephyr would leap into a larger one and wear it like a suit of armor or matryoshka doll, demanding absolute coordination of everyone involved. Even if such procedures were rarely called for in the fight against the Hurricane, combining their robots gave the crews an indispensable sense of camaraderie.

The largest robot was Zephyr-Purple, so grand in scale that its individual fingertips had crews of five, six in the thumbs. Zephyr-Purple was carrying its detached head like a lantern so the crew could practice without their Commander, Lucille.

Lucille, daughter of the late Lucia and Bunjiro, saluted at strict attention. Her purple bodysuit complemented short, fiery hair and unsettling red eyes. As the product of forbidden lunar love, she was smallish, with slender arms and legs. Her size only made her intimidating presence feel daunting and well-earned.

She stood opposite two middle-aged men seated at a desk: Dakshi, in his green bodysuit and sitting in a green wheelchair, shuffled papers graded in red pen, while Charlie, in his yellow bodysuit, chewed a lit cockroach. The roach sat in a divot in his lips left by a scar stretching from his right temple to below his iron jaw. The scar took his right eye, covered by an amber eye-patch. “At ease, Zephyr Lucille.”

Lucille widened her stance and folded her arms behind her back. “Jya! What’s the verdict?”

Dakshi grimaced and groomed his crew-cut. The many medals on his chest were arranged like an impeccable orchard. “In the presence of superiors you should speak only when spoken to, young Zephyr.”

“Be patient with him, Zephyr Lucille.” Charlie grinned around his roach. His golden haircut was charismatically tousled. “He’s enjoying his last moments outranking you.” Lucille smiled impishly and put her hands on her hips. Her heart felt bigger than the moon-base she would soon command.

Dakshi sighed. He rolled his wheelchair forward to pass her the paperwork. “You scored one hundred percent on your aptitude-test for the position—for the first time since your late father, Commander Bunjiro—and one hundred percent on your oral exam regarding lunar procedures and history—for the first time since your late mother, Princess Lucia.”

Lucille splayed the papers across the desk to review her scores. Charlie judged her smile to be deservedly proud but tempered by discipline. She passed the papers back to Dakshi. “Were you close, sir?”

Dakshi bit his tongue in hesitation. “I’ve always told you Commander Bunjiro and I were like brothers. I only knew your mother for a few months, but her conviction in her duty to protect humanity made an indelible impression on me.”

Charlie chuckled. “She meant, were you close to perfect scores.” Lucille allowed her smile a slyer slant. Dakshi blushed and filed her exams in his desk drawers. Charlie blew smoke into a ventilation duct and tapped ash from his roach. “Anyway, Zephyr Lucille! Having adopted and raised you, Zephyr Dakshi and I never needed exam-scores to know you’re the real deal.” Dakshi pretended not to hear this. He’d promised Lucille before the interview to treat her like any other Zephyr. “You’ve been vital to this moon-base since you were old enough to stand.”

Lucille let herself chuckle with Charlie, just a little. As a bored child stuck aboard the moon-base, Charlie and Dakshi kept her busy by assigning odd-jobs. Her first, as a toddler, was waving hello to new crew-members arriving on the moon, usually aged seventeen to twenty, and waving goodbye to retiring ones leaving, usually aged forty to fifty. It was fun until she was old enough to realize not all the crew-members she welcomed would survive long enough to retire. That inspired her to become the youngest mechanic ever, at the age of thirteen, and the youngest pilot, too, two years later. Presently, at nineteen, she had the experience of an old-hand at the age of a rookie. 

“Besides perfect exams,” said Dakshi, “you’ve been unanimously praised for leadership in the field. When you commanded Zephyr-Purple in repelling a swarm of sun-sized Hurricane Planets, the crews of the purple arms, legs, and chest came to us to commend you. Zephyr-Alpha-Blue hasn’t had a pilot since your father’s death, and its significance demands a pilot with matching reputation. You would command the full lunar crew of ten thousand, including the right and left arms of the moon-base—that is to say, Zephyr Charlie in Zephyr-Alpha-Yellow, me in Zephyr-Alpha-Green, and every robot under our command. Tell me, Zephyr Lucille: at less than half our age, why should you outrank us?”

From Dakshi’s concerned brow, Lucille detected this question was a genuine one, not meant to dismiss her. She tried to appear just as grave herself. “I won’t waste your time reminding you I’ve probably spent longer on the moon than both of you combined,” she said. “When you’re not on active-duty here, you’re on Earth for physiotherapy so you don’t end up stuck here like me. I don’t get to visit home like you do—this moon-base is my home, and I’m always on active-duty. What’s really important is most of the Zephyrs are under twenty-five, and the youngest of us are skeptical of anyone much older than that—especially you two, having had no Commander yourselves for as long as I’ve been alive. They’d sooner listen to me at nineteen than you at forty-five. That makes me the best of both worlds: I have your old-timer’s bureaucratic experience, but the younger generation is on my side.”

Dakshi wrote down every word of her answer in green pen. “Besides age, to what do you attribute their loyalty to you?”

Lucille’s expression remained absolutely serious. “I shout loudest.”

Dakshi was speechless. Charlie cracked up. “You’re really something!”

“Could you explain?” asked Dakshi.

“The Alpha-pilot has gotta shout loudest. If you want to throw a punch,” said Lucille, with a slo-mo hay-maker, “your arms and legs need to know. A good shout unifies the Zephyrs in action.”

“And about your shouting.” Dakshi opened a drawer and rifled through transcripts. “You lapse into Japanese under pressure. Not all the Zephyrs speak Japanese. When you directed the mid-battle merger of Z-Purple, Orange, Red, Black, and Yellow, you shouted—” He inspected a transcript he’d dog-eared. “—‘Ore o dare da to omotte yagaru.’ “

Charlie laughed. ” ‘Who the hell do you think I am?’ ” he translated. “That was classic!”

“A good shout unifies the Zephyrs in action,” repeated Lucille. “It doesn’t have to be a command, or even comprehensible. It just has to pump all hearts to one beat. As acting Commander of Z-PORKY, its crew of hundreds locked step with my voice. Our Super Heart Beam blasted the Hurricane to bits.”

Charlie smiled around his roach. Dakshi tried not to look impressed. “You shout ore,” said Dakshi. “That’s a masculine pronoun. Why not shout the gender-neutral watashi, or the feminine atashi?“

“Mid-combat? I’m punching planets to powder, sir. I ain’t gonna curtsy.”

“Point taken.” Dakshi poured molten green wax onto Lucille’s certificate of promotion and pressed it with his seal of approval. “With Zephyr Charlie’s ratification, I see fit to promote you to the pilot of Zephyr-Alpha-Blue and first-ever Lunar Commander.”

Charlie snuffed his cockroach and took the certificate. “Follow me, Zephyr Lucille. There’s one last thing you need to see.”

Next
Back

(The second chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Last time on RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku!

The year is 2399. For centuries, countless overlapping micro-nations and mega-corporations kept Earth locked in constant, enumerable wars. An arduous period of World-Unification has brought these groups to uneasy peace under a Global Parliament. That stability has an unfortunate source: the Hurricane, a blood-colored cosmic horror of unknown origin and biblical proportion, ate the observable universe in just fifty years and now gnaws the edges of the Milky Way.

Professor Akayama, Scientific Advisor to the de facto Ruler of Earth in the leader of Global Parliament, has taken responsibility for defending humanity from the Hurricane’s planet-sized cells. She’s relocated the solar system to the center of the galaxy, orbiting a black hole. Her moon-base, once her private institution for training the best and brightest from around the world to build and pilot giant space-robots, has been militarized to maintain and operate humanity’s protector: a colossal metal man called the Zephyr.

On her 120th birthday, Akayama realized she was holding back the younger pilots. She retired as the Zephyr’s Commander, pilot of the cockpit in its head, to lead from the lunar command-tower instead. She promoted the chest-pilot, Zephyr Bunjiro, to the cranial position. Will Princess Lucia, daughter to the Ruler of Earth, prove to be Bunjiro’s perfect replacement at the Zephyr’s heart?

—

At the top of her moon-base’s tallest command-tower, Professor Akayama tied her long navy hair in a tight nautilus bun and stuck two pencils through it, freeing her hands to operate a massive control-panel labeled in English, Japanese, and eight other languages. When she pressed a button, a crater outside the observatory-windows opened like a manhole and leaked white exhaust from a sub-lunar hangar. “Commander Bunjiro, Princess Lucia, Zephyr Dakshi,” she said into a microphone. “Global Parliament has authorized us to repel the Hurricane Planets infesting the galaxy’s third arm. Prepare for launch.” The professor switched off her microphone and swiveled in her chair to face the forty technicians behind her, each sitting at a computer with three or more touchscreen-monitors. “Don’t forget: this is Princess Lucia’s first experience against the Hurricane. Just keep your heads and follow procedure.”

The technicians relayed multilingual commands to the crater’s sub-lunar hangar. A launch platform there supported the Zephyr, the blue metal man a hundred meters tall even though it had no legs. In the moon’s airy gravity, mechanics crawled across the Zephyr’s chest like ants to unfasten its right arm at the shoulder. A crane forty stories tall suspended that right arm on the hangar’s back wall; the right arm’s pilot would forgo this mission to help Akayama evaluate the princess from the command-tower.

“Professor Akayama,” he said sitting beside her, “sorry I’m late. Zephyr Charlie reporting for duty.” Charlie was a pale fellow, about twenty years old, with a chiseled cleft chin. His tousled golden haircut matched his yellow bodysuit. He chewed the end of a smoldering cockroach. “How’s the princess holding up?”

“Zephyr Charlie! Trade seats with me.” Akayama stood and brushed folds from her pure white lab-coat, posture bent by age. In Earth’s gravity, she’d be confined to a hospital-bed. “My arthritis is acting up. Finish preparing the Zephyr for launch. And no smoking near sensitive equipment! Don’t give me that look, I’m your elder by a century!”

“Yes, Professor,” Charlie sighed. He dutifully swapped seats and ashed his roach. On the control-panel he twisted dials, turned a key, and lifted a lever. “Can I still smoke in my shoulder-cockpit?”

“Of course. That air’s filtered through the Zephyr’s life-support.” Akayama watched steam pour from the crater like evaporating milk. She had remarkable eyesight for a super-centenarian. “Zephyr Charlie, I wanted to discuss an error in your report on Princess Lucia.”

“Professor, the princess is more than ready to pilot the Zephyr’s heart. I helped Commander Bunjiro train her, and we both agree she’s a better match for the position than even he was.”

“Not that. Look here.” Akayama pulled a clipboard and pen from her lab-coat. “You were brave to try writing my name in kanji, but you wrote Professor Akayama…” She drew a sun and moon beside a mountain: 明山. “Bright Mountain. My name is Professor Akayama…” She drew a cross on four legs and another mountain: 赤山. “Red Mountain. Akai Yama Hakase, not Akarui Yama Hakase. Understand? Not a bad try for your second-language, but just write in English from now on.”

“Of course, Professor.” Charlie tapped a microphone to make sure it was on. “Commander Bunjiro, the Zephyr is cleared for take-off.”

The command-tower’s observatory-windows displayed a live recording of Bunjiro in his cockpit. He was young as Charlie and wore pointy red sunglasses which matched the color of his bodysuit and short spiky hair. “Hey, Charlie!” Bunjiro’s favorite part of being Commander was the authority to ignore honorifics. “Our life-support saves power when you’re not smoking the place up! Ready, Princess? Take-off in three, two—“

The Zephyr shot from the crater on a column of clouds puffed from its hips. Dakshi, pilot of the left arm, swept the exhaust away as the Zephyr departed the solar system faster than light. By firing photons at unspeakable speeds, the Zephyr communicated with the command-tower instantly even light-years and light-years away. “Textbook take-off, your Highness.” Dakshi appeared on the observatory-windows beside Bunjiro. He was a little older than Charlie and Bunjiro, dark-skinned, and he kept his green bodysuit impeccably ironed like his matching tightly-groomed crew-cut. Many in the moon-base had earned medals in the fight against the Hurricane, but Dakshi’s military background made him among the few who wore them in earnest.

“Thank you, Zephyr Dakshi!” Princess Lucia, in the robot’s sculpted muscular chest, appeared under Bunjiro on the observatory-windows. She was younger than the other pilots and her aquamarine military-regulation ponytail matched her own bodysuit, which was a little more skin-tight than theirs. “Zephyr Charlie, Professor Akayama, how would you rate it?”

“That was a smooth launch, Princess,” said Charlie.

Akayama leaned over Charlie to speak into the microphone. “Splendid, splendid, Princess!” The observatory-windows now also displayed the Zephyr’s point-of-view, which saw light-years into the distance by firing photons from its eyes and catching them when they bounced back. Zipping past stars, the Zephyr quickly came across stray Hurricane Planets intruding deeper than the rest. These red orbs were grasping with hands, kicking with legs, dripping with tentacles, and watching in all directions with countless eyes. Akayama pressed a button under her desk to begin recording the footage; she hypothesized the Hurricane’s jittery eye-movements were a form of communication which could be decoded. “Don’t slow down yet,” she said. “At top speed, anything smaller than Jupiter can be atomized manually.” Dakshi raised the Zephyr’s left fist like a boxer’s uppercut. Lucia propelled the space-robot in a complicated curve, exploding through each Hurricane Planet as Bunjiro targeted them on a touchscreen in the head.

“Hey Prof,” said Bunjiro, “in one of your lectures, you said you’ve sighted Hurricane Planets bigger than the whole galaxy. They could eat the Milky Way in one bite! Why are these puny invaders embarrassing themselves out here?” Like the perfect teacher’s-aid, Bunjiro asked as if he didn’t already know.

“Excellent question,” said Akayama. Behind her in the command-tower, the newest technicians took notes of her answer on their extra touchscreens. “Our current working theory is pain-aversion. The Hurricane would sooner have a tiny portion extinguished immediately rather than let a larger portion suffer for any duration. The tiny portions cannot object, of course, existing at the mercy of the larger ones.”

In the galaxy’s third arm, the Zephyr found an otherworldly nightmare. “My goodness.” Lucia covered her mouth, agape. Nothing could have prepared her. The sight nauseated even the most experienced aboard the moon-base. Countless Hurricane Planets were eating whole stars or even each other. The largest ones spat out countless tiny copies of themselves to repeat the reproductive-cycle.

“Don’t lose focus, Princess,” said Akayama. “The space-robot you’re piloting is a great and complicated tool. In the Zephyr’s chest, you control more than the main engines: our greatest weapon, the Super Heart Beam, depends on you. Using it to vaporize a collection of Hurricane Planets will drive the rest back outside the galaxy—but, it puts immense strain on the chest’s pilot. When Commander Bunjiro piloted the chest, he could fire the Super Heart Beam only once a week. I understand he’s taught you everything he knows. Are you prepared, Princess, or would you prefer holding back to melee-combat?”

“I’m ready, ma’am!” Lucia steadied herself. “Commander Bunjiro, Zephyr Dakshi, transfer power, please!”

“Transferring power,” said Dakshi.

“You’ve got this, Princess,” said Bunjiro.

Energy crackled like blue lightning from the Zephyr’s head and arm to its chest. Akayama watched with pride. “I knew the princess would be the perfect pilot the moment we met,” she told Charlie. “Firing the Super Heart Beam requires embodying the ideals the Zephyr represents. As daughter to the Ruler of Earth, Princess Lucia knows how to stand for humanity!”

“Professor!” Charlie pointed to the control-panel. “Look at the neck!”

The Zephyr’s neck had eight locks securing its head to its body. According to the control-panel’s diagnostics, four locks were open. Akayama grabbed the microphone. “Princess, don’t—” The Super Heart Beam exploded from the Zephyr’s chest. White light shot hundreds of light-years and pulverized whole Hurricane Planets into fine red spray. The force of the beam knocked the Zephyr backwards. Its head snapped its locks and spun through space. On the observatory-windows, the command-tower witnessed Bunjiro violently thrashed in his cockpit when the Zephyr’s head impacted asteroids. Akayama cried. “Mou iya dawa!“

Charlie shouted into the mic. “Bunjiro, come in!” No response. “Princess, Dakshi, bring him back to the moon! We’ll prepare med-bay!” Charlie shook his head and cried a single tear. “This is my fault, Professor. I was responsible for launch-preparation.” Akayama was gone. Charlie lost her in the commotion of the command-tower.

—

Firing the Super Heart Beam had exhausted her, but Princess Lucia couldn’t fall asleep after lights-out in the barracks. She lay awake on her bunk in her blue skin-tight bodysuit, fiddling nervously with her ponytail. The doctors said Bunjiro’s surgery would last hours and he’d be bedridden for days. Charlie said it wasn’t her fault, but Lucia considered the tragedy again and again. Could she have leapt from her cockpit to save him?

“Your Highness!” Dakshi pounded her door. “Emergency! We need you in the Zephyr!”

“Oh no!” Lucille threw her blankets aside and ran to him. “What’s wrong? Are Hurricane Planets incoming?”

“Worse.” Dakshi ushered her into an elevator down to the sub-lunar hangar. He obsessively straightened his forest-green crew-cut, even though his hair was far too short to fuss over. “Professor Akayama commandeered the Zephyr’s head from the repair-bay. She’s leaving the galaxy as we speak!”

They ran across catwalks to the headless Zephyr. Charlie already sat in his right-shoulder-cockpit, buttoning the top of his yellow bodysuit. He lit a cockroach and clenched it in his teeth. Dakshi climbed a ladder to his left-shoulder-cockpit, brushing aside mechanics to open the hatch himself. Lucia hesitated outside her cockpit at the solar-plexus. “I can’t do this. My first experience against the Hurricane was a disaster!”

“That’s not on you, Princess!” shouted Charlie. “Get in!”

“Before she left, the professor gave you perfect marks.” Dakshi descended into the shoulder. “So did I, and so did Zephyr Charlie.”

“Hey Dakshi, same here!” A gray replacement-head floated onto the Zephyr’s shoulders. Bunjiro popped out of the skullcap and waved to Lucia. His red bodysuit bulged with bloody bandages. His red pointy hair was no more or less disheveled for his time in med-bay. He lowered his spiky red sunglasses to check the eight neck-locks, and, satisfied, he posed with two fingers in a V for Victory. “One little crash ain’t gonna stop me!”

“Bunjiro!” Lucia climbed into her cockpit and buckled her seat-belts. When the hatch closed her in, Bunjiro, Charlie, and Dakshi appeared on three of her many monitors.

Charlie blew smoke from his roach. “Good to see you back in business, Commander Bunjiro.”

Dakshi stretched the Zephyr’s left arm. “Commander, are you sure you’re fit to fly?”

“Sure as sure!” said Bunjiro. “The moon-base is giving us the green light. Hit it, Princess! Let’s bail out Professor Akayama!”

Lucia turned her key in the ignition and punched a code on a panel of buttons. The Zephyr’s hips fired billowing exhaust and they rocketed from the crater. “Jumping to hyper-light-speed!” She flipped switches and pulled levers. Charlie and Dakshi brought the Zephyr’s arms across its chest. The robot shot through space on a column of clouds thick as cream.

Next
Back

(The first chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2019.

In his Wyoming motel-room, Jango stabbed Jay a fortieth time. Jay sputtered his last. Jango sighed and wiped his bloody arthritic hands on his sky-colored robes. Had Jay seriously just promoted him to Virgil Blue? Was Dan destined to die in Sheridan’s white-walled monastery? Jango clenched his eyes shut. There were no coincidences!

Jango put one hand on his aching hips and the other hand on his tall cane. He’d smuggled bugs before, but he’d never had to cover up a murder. Returning to the Islands of Sheridan might be a challenge.

There was a knock at the door. In panic to hide Jay’s blood, Jango put on Virgil Blue’s navy robes and silver mask. He cracked the door just enough to see Dan standing outside. “Oh,” said Dan. “Virgil Blue, right?”

“Oran dora,” said Virgil Blue. “Call me what you want.”

“I’m so sorry to bother you, sir—but it’s an honor to meet you, of course. Is Jay still here?”

Virgil Blue knocked the door open with his cane. “Jay and Jango left together! Tell me, Danny, have you ever wanted to visit a library full of books from the future?“

—

After three days sitting in airports or planes, Dan stood at the bow of a boat ferrying him to the second island of Sheridan. He’d never traveled like Jay, so he found the process draining, but the leap from winter hemisphere to summer hemisphere was much-needed rejuvenation after his long-lasting hangover; he felt like he was on another planet. Rather than admire the Sheridanian tropics, lit by early Edenic sunset casting light-fingers from behind the main island’s sparse cloud-cover, Dan flipped through Jay’s notepad of observations on the subject. Jay was an impeccable note-taker, and penned interesting sketches, but a few pages near the end of the notepad were torn out. On the next pages, Jay had doodled a cute white fox just like Faith used to paint. Dan had been spooked by a fox like that once, and never had the courage to ask Faith about them. He wished Jay had left those notes.

“Oran dora, Danny.” Virgil Blue poked Dan’s back with his cane, a curious object smooth along the shaft but with ten black spots encircling a gnarled tip. “On the second island, you’ll study under Virgil Green and his matriarch. It should take you a year to graduate from his preliminary summit to my monastery near the main island’s cloudy peak.”

“Um.” Dan put Jay’s notepad in his jeans-pocket. “I’m not joining your congregation, Virgil Blue. I just want to write about it for my PhD. Jay didn’t have to become a monk just to visit you, did he?”

“Danny, why do you care about religion?”

“Um.” Dan found talking to Virgil Blue quite difficult. By wearing his silver mask and hooded navy robes, the Virgil had given up his person-hood to look like a sort of alien bird-thing. The silver mask had a squat beak, two long feathers on top, and bulging criss-crossed bug-eyes seen out of but not into. The only clue to his identity was his voice, that of an elderly man. “My dad studied religions from all over the planet,” said Dan. “Then he killed himself. I guess he really rubbed off on me.”

“Your father gave you his worms,” said Virgil Blue. Dan opened Jay’s notepad and pat his pockets looking for a pen, but couldn’t find one. Jay’s notes explained Sheridanians believed a person was a vessel of interconnected ‘worms.’ To Dan it sounded like the islanders had made a karmic image for the soul out of the brain’s neurons and the psyche’s ability to carry a memetic cultural genome alongside DNA, and he felt a desperate need to take more notes about it. “All consciousness everywhere is one pile of worms tangling and untangling to resolve the cosmic disturbance of existing in the first place. Your father’s worms influenced yours. This is how the worms of the dead are sifted through the sands of the next eternity into the new generation of vessels. Any religion is for accepting the inevitability of death—death at any moment! Without one, we worry. With a good one, every death has purpose, because there are no coincidences.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Dan bit his lip and looked out to Sheridan’s second island. It was bigger and more forested than the first, barren, sandy one. “My friends Faith and Beatrice died recently—Beatrice about a month ago, Faith just last week.”

Jango nodded with solemn understanding. His silver mask almost fell off, but he held it on his face to remain Virgil Blue. He was careful to keep his hands covered with his navy robe’s sleeves. “Your friend Jay died just a few days ago, too.”

“What?” Dan squeezed Jay’s notepad. “You told me Jay and Jango went to your monastery!”

“I told you they left together!” Virgil Blue shook his cane. “Jay and Jango will see each other at the end of the next eternity. The Biggest Bird has plans for them!”

Dan covered his ears with his hands. His fingertips were already bitten by past anxieties. “I can’t hear this.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “My whole life—it’s fallen apart! Jay was my closest friend! We had the same birthday for Christ’s sake!”

“Then Jay will surely help your worms climb the Biggest Bird’s Mountain in the next eternity.” The ferry bumped the second island. Virgil Blue escorted Dan onto the gravelly beach. “Take off your clothes.”

Dan hadn’t planned to participate in Sheridanian rituals, but suddenly felt like his life needed some meaning. He took off his T-shirt, which featured a giant orange space-robot from his favorite anime. “When you say ‘worms,’ do you mean worms like those?” He pointed under the pines, where a few earthworms crawled through the grass.

“I do,” said Virgil Blue.

“Then why doesn’t the Biggest Bird collect worms herself? That seems like a bird-like thing to do.”

“She wishes she could, but worms must prove themselves ready before she can reach out. This is your favorite color, isn’t it, Danny?” Virgil Blue bent achingly and picked up a long orange tail-feather. It must have come from a peacock bigger than an emu. “Collect enough of these and Virgil Green will fashion a skirt for you. You won’t get your own robe until you make it to my monastery.”

—

Dan worried (he was wont to worry, especially when nude) Virgil Blue wouldn’t be able to hike all the way up Sheridan’s second island. The steep path was rough dirt, the moon didn’t light the trail well, and Blue had an uneasy gait. Bewilderingly, however, two dozen bald and mostly-nude men and women with every skin-color imaginable appeared from behind the pine-trees and picked up the old man. “Oran dora!” they said. Carrying him uphill while dancing, they chanted Sheridanian.

Embarrassment tore Dan at every angle. He tried to cover his body with the long orange tail-feathers he’d collected, but found them an unsatisfying way to hide his nervous erection, especially because he was apparently expected to wear them as a scanty skirt like the mostly-nude dancers. Was he expected to immediately dance, too, and help carry Blue, or should he wait for his own scanty feather skirt and shaven head before joining? He felt a pink blush blooming on his cheeks. In consolation, besides the skirts, the dancers wore only anonymizing wooden masks like Virgil Blue’s silver bug-eyed bird-face. Together with baldness, the masks pronounced the slightly pointed heads of native Sheridanians. Dan wished he’d gotten his mask before stripping down so he could hide his blush. “What are they chanting, Virgil Blue?” Dan asked.

” ‘Virgil Blue walks!’ ” he translated. The dancers laughed and started another chant. ” ‘Virgil Blue talks!‘ “

“Are you not known to walk or talk, Virgil Blue?”

“It depends,” said Virgil Blue. “Oran dora!” The dancers set him down atop the island in a clearing. He waved his cane at them to say good-bye, and the dancers disappeared behind the pines once more.

Dan squinted into the dark. “Where did they go?”

Virgil Blue held one silencing finger over his silver mask’s beak, carefully hiding the digit in his thick navy sleeves. “The dancers will retire for the night,” he whispered, “and after meeting Virgil Green, you’ll retire alongside them to dance for a few weeks. As practicing laymen, you and they haven’t yet been taught to sleep like the birds do, just a few minutes at a time but many times a day.”

“I haven’t seen any of these giant flightless birds yet,” whispered Dan. He carried all his tail-feathers under his left elbow. “I’d love to meet one if I’ve gotta learn to sleep like that.” Virgil Blue pointed his cane. Dan recognized a pinkish shape in the middle of the clearing, barely visible by the full moon. Jay had sketched Sheridanian big-birds in his notepad, and once showed Dan photos of such a statue like a penguin taller than a tree. “But isn’t that a stat—” It wasn’t a statue. It opened its eyes, small as peas but reflecting starlight like saucers. It quivered, threatening to unfold its wings across the whole wide clearing.

A bald man with slightly pointed head emerged from behind the pink bird just like the dancers had popped out behind pines. He calmed the bird by reaching up to brush its neck with the back of his hand. Dan knew Sheridanians had a peculiar abundance of skin-colors, but he’d never met a man quite like Virgil Green, dark and cold as the night sky. His martini-olive robe and peppery beard were comparatively warm. “Virgil Blue? Walking? Oran dora!“

“And speaking. Oran dora,” replied Virgil Blue, with a slight bow.

“Oran dora,” Dan whispered. He wasn’t quite sure if he was supposed to say it or not. He had no idea what it meant, and was a little afraid to ask.

“I’ve got another fledgling for you, Green. He speaks English, not Sheridanian, but I’m sure you can show him the birds and the bugs.” Virgil Blue poked Dan’s back with his cane. “I need Danny ready for the end of the eternity.” Dan had never heard of an eternity ending, but it sounded like Judgement Day or Armageddon. What would it mean for him to be ready? Nude and bald?

Virgil Green approached to look him over, so Dan awkwardly showed him the orange tail-feathers he’d collected. “If you need him soon, Blue, maybe he should skip my island and just climb yours.”

“Hey, now!” Virgil Blue shook his cane. “Eternity doesn’t end tonight. He should follow the traditional path.”

Virgil Green took Dan’s orange tail-feathers and held them in both fists. “Danny, isn’t it?”

“Dan Jones.”

“My students begin by dancing.” Virgil Green cracked the tail-feather’s bony shafts so he could weave them together. “Do you dance, Danny?”

“Not once in my life.”

“Hm. Well, you can learn.” Virgil Green snapped the tail-feathers together into a scanty orange skirt. “When a student is done dancing, the sitting-and-walking phase involves meditation while contemplating the Biggest Bird.” Dan had trouble imagining a bird any bigger than the pink one he was looking at, outside a hallucination. “Do you have any experience with such periods of theological consideration, Danny?”

“Kinda, I guess.” Dan stepped into his orange feather-skirt. It was more comfortable than he expected. “I read books as an undergrad while walking laps around the campus quad. I would read for a lap, then close the book and think about it for a lap, and then start reading again.”

Virgil Green turned to grin at Virgil Blue. Blue shook his head, waggling his silver mask, but Green’s smile grew and he nodded. “You sound like you know the rigmarole, Danny,” he said, turning back to face him. “What classes? What books?”

“I majored in Religious Studies. The Bible. The Torah. The Koran. The Vedas. The Lotus Sutra. Anthologies of creation myths. Dante’s Inferno. Paradise Lost. That sort of stuff.”

Virgil Green kept his eyes on Dan, but talked out the corner of his smile while stroking his peppery beard. “He might’ve read half your monastery’s library already, Blue.”

“Virgil Blue told me he has books from the future,” said Dan. “I’ve never read one of those before.”

“The Koran, The Lotus Sutra, and Dante’s Inferno were all once books from the future,” said Virgil Green. “Virgil Blue, Danny sounds like he was born for your monastery. Don’t you always say there are no coincidences? Don’t waste his time dancing; that’s just for tiring out energetic young fledglings.”

Virgil Blue’s exasperation showed through his silver mask as he threw his hands up under his robes. “Danny, do a dance!”

Dan squirmed. “Um.” He did a quick Charleston, trading his hands from one kneecap to the other when they knocked.

“Sit facing the matriarch!” Dan sat facing the big pink bird. “Now stand and circle around her nest!” Dan walked around the bird. In the dark, he hadn’t realized it was sitting on a nest of eggs big as his fists. “There, Danny!” said Virgil Blue. “You’ve done the express-edition of the second island’s traditional path.”

Virgil Green laughed. “Oran dora!” Dan was more confused by the phrase than ever. Was it ‘congratulations?’ ‘Thanks?’ ‘You’re welcome?’ ‘Hello?’ ‘Goodbye?’

“But your next step cannot be so rushed.” Virgil Blue poked Dan’s back with his cane to lead him across the clearing. They left Green behind with the bird and walked down another trail to a ferry waiting at the opposite shore. “Do you know how to swim?”

“Uh-huh.” Dan looked mournfully at the ferry. “Dare I ask why it matters?”

Virgil Blue waved his cane’s gnarled tip at the mountainous main island. Its silhouette was an isosceles right triangle with its hypotenuse on the seafloor, so the island was surely a perfect cone. “It should take you six to fourteen hours to swim there, depending on how the water treats you.”

“Um. Wow.” Dan shaded his eyes from the moon, trying to gauge the distance. The main island was covered in tiny flowers of every possible color, a rainbow blur in the dark. “I don’t think I can swim that far.”

“The flightless birds do it,” said Virgil Blue. Dan could barely see Sheridanian big-birds splashing on the distant coast of the main island. “I did it, too. So did Green.”

“How many people drown making this swim?”

“Not as many as you might think. The water between these islands is almost shallow enough to tiptoe on the sand. When you crawl ashore the main island, you’ll next hike up to the monastery nude as the birds.”

Dan frowned. “I don’t even get to keep my skirt?”

“You’ll lose those feathers during the swim. It’s all a metaphor, accepting your worms for the Heart of the Mountain.”

“I get a robe eventually, right?” Dan remained on the coast, yet unable to touch the waves.

“I’ll dye one with orange flower-petals for you while I wait in the white-walled monastery.” Virgil Blue boarded the ferry without him. “So don’t be too quick about it!”

—

The year is 2020.

Dan, brown hair shaved bald and wearing an orange tail-feather skirt, spent eight months walking and sitting with Virgil Green’s students around the pink matriarch. Each night Dan joined the most fervent devotees to the Biggest Bird swimming laps around the second island until he finally felt firm enough to swim to the main one.

After climbing to the white-walled monastery, nude and waddling slowly as the birds did, Dan was rewarded egg-yolk orange robes and the first volume of his favorite manga: LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration. Its cover depicted a young woman on a noble balcony, ignoring a futuristic skyline of lit-up spires to gaze at the moon above. Virgil Blue told Dan his first assignment was annotating LuLu’s like he would annotate a textbook.

Dan assumed this was for him to demonstrate coherent annotation-ability before being allowed into the monastery’s sacred library under the bell-tower, but the door was actually open even to laymen. Only the books from the future, on the highest shelves, were still prohibited. Dan wasn’t quite convinced about the authenticity of these books from the future, but upon opening the manga, he saw LuLu’s anonymous author had signed their pseudonym, Tatsu, on the first page. Virgil Blue certainly had strange connections.

—

The year is 2021.

Dan’s cramped quarters were adorned with orange fabric just like his spotless robes. His room’s size limited him to a narrow mattress barely tall enough for such a man in his late twenties, but he still stacked books of every color in the corners. Monks usually returned their books to the sacred library under the bell-tower, but tonight, commemorating a full year here, Virgil Blue would give Dan the second volume of LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration to annotate privately. LuLu’s entered indefinite hiatus on a cliffhanger, so Dan would finish every volume printed by 2025 if he kept this annual pace, but he suspected Virgil Blue was secretly sitting on the final unpublished volumes from the future, waiting for him to be ready to read them.

Just before sunset, Virgil Blue opened Dan’s sliding paper door with the head of his cane. “Oran dora, Danny.”

“Oran dora, Virgil Blue.” No matter how much he studied Sheridanian, Dan still wasn’t quite sure what that phrase meant. It really depended on the inflection. He gave the Virgil his first annotated manga-volume. “Thanks for letting me annotate LuLu’s like this. This manga meant so much to me and Jay. Faith and Beatrice liked it, too.”

“It’s not manga, Danny, it’s philosophy presented through mass-produced sequential art. Although, you could be annotating anything.” It took Virgil Blue a minute to sit cross-legged, so achy were his knees. “The Biggest Bird can be found anywhere. There are no coincidences.”

“I know, I know, but LuLu’s is an especially interesting presentation of Sheridanian culture. All Virgil Green talked about was eggs, birds, worms, and, uh, centipedes. LuLu’s ties it all together.” Dan watched Virgil Blue flip the pages of the annotated first volume left-to-right. His ability to read through his silver mask gave the Virgil undeniable authority. “But… I notice none of the other monks are annotating,” said Dan. “They take notes about the library’s sacred texts, but… they told me only Virgils annotate them. Are you planning to promote me to Virgil Orange? Will I be allowed to read books which are still from the future?”

“This sequential art isn’t from the library. For you, Danny, it’s more than sacred. For you, Danny, it’s real.” Without revealing his hands, Virgil Blue tucked the first annotated volume up one navy sleeve, and, from the other sleeve, produced the second volume, fresh. Its cover showed a war-torn Earth partially hidden behind the moon. Between craters on the moon’s dark side was a chrome battle-station shaped like a sea-star. The Earth hid part of the sun, and the sun hid part of a massive black hole. The dark background of space was speckled red. “You’ll never read the story’s resolution. You’ll live it, Danny! You’ll understand by the end of the eternity. It should be any year now.”

Dan helped Virgil Blue stand again. The Virgil closed the sliding paper door with his cane, and Dan opened the manga. Sacred or not, LuLu’s was a wild read.

But in truth, he liked the anime better. Dan pulled his smartphone from under the mattress, solar-charged all day to play the corresponding episodes all night.

Next
Back