“No matter.” The Enemy Hurricane redistributed mass to build a new thumb. “I’ll end you just the same.”

Lucille smirked and bit her own thumb. “Ikuzo.”

At her command, the Galaxy Zephyr’s pink flesh stretched across space to engulf the Enemy Hurricane’s severed purple thumb. The combined mass returned to the Galaxy Zephyr and enveloped it. Now Lucille’s ten thousand pilots controlled a giant purple robot twenty orders of magnitude larger than the Milky Way had been. The giant purple robot wore pointed sunglasses like those of Lucille’s late father, Commander Bojack. Lucille’s Wheel increased in diameter to match their new height.

Still, compared to the Enemy Hurricane, the Galaxy Zephyr was merely thumb-sized. Lucille pulled levers with both hands. “Eisu, Feito, advance!”

Steam poured from the Galaxy Zephyr’s feet, propelling it above light-speed. The Enemy Hurricane swatted with both arms and uncrossed its legs to kick with both feet, but the Galaxy Zephyr easily outmaneuvered those clumsy limbs. When Charlie and Daisuke saw the chance, they swung the Wheel to shave flesh from the Enemy Hurricane’s chest. The Galaxy Zephyr absorbed the flesh to become even larger.

“If we get much larger we won’t be so agile,” warned Daisuke. The Enemy Hurricane kicked at them.

“Ora!” Lucille smiled as they sliced the sole off the Enemy Hurricane’s foot. “If we get much larger, we won’t need to be agile! Ora ora!”

They lingered too long absorbing the sole; the Enemy Hurricane stomped them. In space there was no floor to stomp them against, so the Enemy Hurricane’s surface tore the Galaxy Zephyr with tentacles and chomped its limbs with giant mouths.

“Retreat!” shouted Lucille. Eisu and Feito pumped steam from the Galaxy Zephyr’s feet, but chomping teeth restrained them. Charlie made the right hand blast steam from its palm, and Daisuke swept the Wheel to slice tentacles; at last the Galaxy Zephyr freed itself. They fled from the Enemy Hurricane’s reach.

Lucille hid silent tears as she assessed the damage to her robot’s armor. Awful gashes ran light-years deep through its purple flesh. Bite-marks almost severed their legs at the thighs. Lunar medical personnel flew through the purple flesh like a human body’s regenerative cells tending to individual injured pilots, but who could heal the Galaxy Zephyr itself?

“Don’t worry,” said ZAP’s bird-pilot, “I’ve updated our immune system.”

The giant robot’s wounds flooded with rivers of liquid gold which quickly set and solidified. The Galaxy Zephyr was repaired like a shattered and restored vase. Lucille laughed and wiped her cheeks. “Daisuke, you were right. Getting bigger is slowing us down.”

“We just need to keep our distance from the Enemy Hurricane,” said Eisu.

“We’re getting used to its gravity, that’s all!” promised Feito.

Lucille wasn’t sure. “Bird-thing, how can we counteract the slowdown?”

“The bottleneck is our Hurricane Armor,” said the bird-pilot. “Its merged mind is made of only a thousand pilots, and we’re spreading it thin. It can’t control our immense mass in a timely manner.”

“So it needs more pilots?” Lucille stared down the Enemy Hurricane advancing on them. “Minah. Any volunteers to be merged with our armor?”

“That’s won’t be necessary,” said the bird-pilot. “We’re already producing human simulacra, remember? They’ll be our new Zephyrs.”

Lucille looked at the spinning Wheel. “Sou da. We’ll add pilots to our armor as soon as we’ve made them. But how? What do we do?”

“Look closely.”

Lucille magnified the image on her main monitor. Her Wheel’s rim had tiny blades like the teeth of a circular saw. As the Wheel spun, the blades spun also, but a silver circle near the rim remained stationary. “Charlie, Daisuke, turn the Wheel so its flat side faces me.”

Now Lucille saw the silver circle was the first link of a chain. The next link was inside the Wheel, which seemed impossible as the Wheel was almost two-dimensional and each link was light-years thick. The bird-pilot explained, “When you pull that chain, I’ll send a potent specimen from Earth’s recreation to help pilot the Galaxy Zephyr.”

“Wakaru. I get it.”

The Enemy Hurricane spread its arms and clapped at the Galaxy Zephyr. Eisu and Feito barely propelled the robot to safety before the clap could crush them. Charlie and Daisuke swung the Wheel and sliced the tips off two fingers. The Galaxy Zephyr claimed one fingertip, but the Enemy Hurricane grabbed the other and reabsorbed it. “You’re a pesky little thing, aren’t you?” it asked with its eyes.

“Funny,” said Lucille, “I’d have said the same to you!”

“Escape this, if you can!” The Enemy Hurricane melted its humanoid shape into a blob. The blob flattened into a sheet.

“What’s it doing?” asked Feito.

“It’s surrounding us,” said Eisu.

“Even though we’re faster, it could capture us in a bubble,” said Daisuke.

“A bubble,” scoffed Charlie. “Doesn’t it know we could cut right out?”

“Not necessarily,” said Lucille. “Our Wheel is only so wide. The Enemy Hurricane could be too thick to cut through in one swing, and it’s harder to attack the interior of a hollow sphere than an enormous human body.”

“What do we do?” asked Feito.

“We call reinforcements,” said Lucille. The Galaxy Zephyr held the Wheel in its left hand, and its right hand pulled the chain.

---

Inside the Wheel, Nakayama floated through haze. Her compound emerald eyes could distinguish between the yellow and sky-blue sides of the Wheel, spinning so quickly they blended into green.

Her mind was still linked to the Galaxy Zephyr’s Hurricane Armor, so she addressed it at the speed of thought. “You absorbed Earth’s sun and moon. Rebuild them.” The sun and moon materialized beside her. She willed them to accompany the water world, on which humans would be born from worms. “Do you know how Zephyr engines work?”

“Technically yes, because I have all your knowledge, but I’ve never looked into it. Why?”

“Inventing them required unlocking the secrets of Jupiter’s spot.” Nakayama poured white powder from her lab coat. “From that violent red storm, I summoned calming white powder. It accelerates cyclical reactions.” The powder diffused through the disk. “It’s working,” she thought. Streaks of light shot from the Wheel’s center to its rim to become sharp blades. “Thousands of years pass every instant.”

“Good,” thought her Hurricane, “because Lucille just pulled the chain.”

---

Dan watched Beatrice shut the apartment door behind her. Through the kitchenette window he saw the 1:00 Bluebird Line strike Beatrice and smear her across the intersection.

Lucille shouted into her microphone at the ten thousand pilots of her Galaxy Zephyr. “You heard the bird-thing! Transfer power to our heart!”

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

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

Daisuke saluted above Fumiko. “I recommend retreat at full speed.”

Beside Daisuke, Charlie lit a cockroach and puffed. “Transferring power.”

The Galaxy Zephyr’s right arm fell limp. The Hurricane flesh it wore like armor turned transparent pink. Its red color soaked into the tiny Zephyr-robots within. Red lightning crackled from robot to robot toward the Galaxy Zephyr’s boiling heart.

“Transferring power,” said the bird-like pilot of ZAP. The Galaxy Zephyr’s torso and head turned transparent pink. The red color condensed at its heart and orbited the water-world alongside the ashes of Earth. The ashes kept compiling into earthworms.

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

“Fleeing was never in the cards!” said Lucille. “War’s all I’m good at! Eisu, Fumiko, don’t hold back!”

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

“Jya, bird-thing!” Lucille pulled a monitor displaying the bird-like pilot of ZAP. “Can you fire the beam?”

“Dekimasu.” The bird-pilot saluted with its right wing. “I can, Commander, but not yet. We’re still accelerating space-time!”

Lucille nodded uneasily. While the Galaxy Zephyr diverted all power to its heart, the Enemy Hurricane’s thumb filled half the sky. The thumb’s texture chilled Lucille to her core: mouths wider than oceans screamed in rage and washed away to be replaced by angry eyes which similarly melted. Was the Hurricane intending to smash them, eat them, or blink them to death? Or would her ten thousand pilots be assimilated and kept for eternity?

“Bird-thing, what do you mean ‘accelerating space-time?’ What’s the plan, exactly?”

Lucille directed audio of the bird-pilot’s explanation to her crew of ten thousand. “We’re recreating Earth’s population using an iterative machine-learning process lasting literal eternities. By locally warping the fabric of reality, we can change how time passes.”

“You’re making an eternity?”

“Two in parallel. On my Hurricane Planet, worms made from Earth’s matter will be mixed and matched. On our water-world, we’ll turn piles of worms into humans to test them.” As the bird-pilot spoke, the heart’s red shell shrunk, turned blue, and expanded. Then it shrunk again, turned red again, and expanded again, like a pulse. “Our process will be toroidal, like a donut. Time is linear, so we’re wrapping it in a circle and revolving it—”

“Keep it in your pants, Professor.” Lucille leaned forward in her commander’s chair. “You’re rebuilding the people of Earth?”

“We’re manufacturing principal components like colors on a painter’s palette. The better our colors, the more accurately we can combine them into Earth’s original population.”

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

“Oh, it’ll take more than twenty seconds regardless,” said the bird-pilot, “but I’m prepared to fire our Super Heart Beam.”

“Minah! You heard the bird-thing!” All ten thousand pilots reclaimed their engines’ output. The Galaxy Zephyr became opaque pink, but its heart shined through, pulsing red and blue. Charlie, Daisuke, Eisu, and Fumiko tested the Galaxy Zephyr’s fingers and toes. It would take time to regain full strength, but they managed to angle the Galaxy Zephyr’s chest to point at the descending thumb. “Bird-thing! Fire!”

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

Lucille pressed a button to address the bird-pilot privately. “Don’t say something’s wrong!” she shouted, “tell me how to fix it! No time to whine!”

“Do it manually!” said the bird-pilot.

“What does that mean?”

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

Lucille squinted. “Charlie, Daisuke, follow my lead!”

The Galaxy Zephyr ripped out its own pulsing heart and pitched it at the descending thumb. The heart entered the thumb trailing white light.

Lucille made the Galaxy Zephyr grab the light-trail and whip it. The heart’s arcing trail severed the Enemy Hurricane’s thumb. The thumb decayed from red to putrid purple. Pearly pulp gushed from the wound and cordoned the injury with countless shrieking teeth.

The Enemy Hurricane howled silently across the vacuum of space. It signaled with its eyes: “What did you do!”

The Galaxy Zephyr’s Hurricane Armor translated Lucille’s shouts into eye-signals for their enemy to see: “I introduced you to pain! Until now you just remembered suffering secondhand!” On the heart’s return, its trail curved into a circle as wide as the Galaxy Zephyr was tall. Lucille caught the pulsing heart and matched it with the trail’s beginning to make a loop. The loop became a perfect disk, sky-blue on one side and yellow on the other. The colors switched sides so quickly the disk appeared green. “This is my wheel of fortune,” she shouted, “and it will teach you every aspect of despair!”

---

Inside the Wheel, Nakayama floated through haze. Her compound emerald eyes could distinguish between the yellow and sky-blue sides of the Wheel even as they blended into green.

She addressed the Galaxy Zephyr’s Hurricane Armor at the speed of thought. “You absorbed Earth’s sun and moon. Rebuild them.” The sun and moon materialized beside her in the Wheel. She willed them to accompany the water-world, on which humans would be born from worms. “Do you know how Zephyr-engines work?”

“Technically yes, because I have all your knowledge, but I’ve never looked into it. Why?”

“Perfecting them required unlocking the secrets of Jupiter’s spot.” Nakayama poured white powder from her lab-coat. “In that violent red storm, I discovered calming white powder. It accelerates cyclical reactions.” Her powder diffused through the disk. “It’s working,” she thought. Streaks of light shot from the Wheel’s center to its rim, where they become sharp blades. “Thousands of years pass every instant. Mortals come and go like countless raindrops.”

“I feel them! I feel their worms!” thought her Hurricane. “Should I help them assemble? I’ll build billions of arms and put the worms together.”

“No!” thought Nakayama. “If we touch the world, it’s ruined. The mortals must manage by themselves.”

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

Next Chapter
Commentary

Lucille cackled at her newfound power. Her Galaxy Zephyr was big as the Milky Way used to be. At her command, the Galaxy Zephyr’s limbs moved so slowly—and their movement was so distorted by the speed of light—that time lost all meaning. Perhaps centuries passed as the Enemy Hurricane’s thumb descended.

That thumb was trillions of times their size. Lucille rubbed the Galaxy Zephyr’s hands along its sternum. “Hakase, if you’ve got a last-minute scheme, now’s the time.”

“I know, I know.” Professor Akayama squirmed her bird-like body in Zephyr-Alpha-Purple. “I’m merging with our Hurricane Armor.”

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

“I’ll leave a wireless puppet in my stead.” When Akayama opened ZAP’s hatch, her body split into two. One piece merged with the Galaxy Zephyr’s Hurricane Armor. The other piece was a three-foot-tall bird-pilot which sat squarely in ZAP’s chair. It called to Lucille: “Buy time!”

“I trust you, bird-thing.” Lucille moved ZAB’s monitors and pressed buttons to display the leader of her computer-technicians. “Release our secret weapon.”

She made the Galaxy Zephyr reach into its belly-button, where the computer-technicians were stationed. The Galaxy Zephyr pulled out their payload: a metal pill relatively large as a baseball. She pitched it at the descending thumb.

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

“Saigo no chansu,” said Lucille. “Since realizing your vulnerability to viruses, we’ve built you the suicide option.” She folded her arms. Charlie and Daisuke directed the Galaxy Zephyr to fold its arms identically. “Absorb that metal pill and disintegrate. It’s your only way out on your own terms. You’ll die today or wish you had.”

“Ha! Your confidence betrays you.” The Enemy Hurricane let its thumb smash the metal pill. “I am humanity! You’re leftover trash! I wouldn’t waste an instant considering mercy.”

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

---

As Akayama merged with the Galaxy Zephyr’s Hurricane Armor, her mind spread through the whole humanoid. “Have we our water-world?”

“It’s here.” Her Hurricane floated the water-world to the Galaxy Zephyr’s heart. After the asteroid-bombardment, the water-world looked just like Earth used to.

“Gimme.” Akayama made Hurricane flesh swell around the water-world. “When Earth exploded, its atomic particles were scattered. When you absorbed the galaxy, you gathered Earth’s ash.” She collected the debris from Earth’s destruction in an orbit around her water-world. “We’ll remake Earth’s population from their strewn and mixed corpses.” She compiled ash into wriggling earthworms. “It’ll take lots of statistics.”

“We’d better be quick about it!” They communicated at the speed of thought, so the thumb only now destroyed the Galaxy Zephyr’s metal pill. “How long will it take?”

“Eternities,” thought Akayama. “Even having our water-world to build upon, reconstructing Earth’s population from rubble is an impossible task. It will take eternities—but we have eternities.”

“No we don’t,” thought her Hurricane. “The thumb’s coming down!”

“We’ll make eternities!” Akayama wirelessly instructed the bird-pilot of ZAP to contact Lucille. “Commander! Permission to accelerate space-time itself!”

“Ganbatte!” Lucille had no idea what Akayama meant. “I believe in you, bird-thing!”

The Galaxy Zephyr’s chest boiled. Akayama focused her consciousness back into a body. “I’m Nakayama now, understand?”

“…Yes!” The Hurricane’s red mountain fired her body at the water-world, through the orbit of wriggling earthworms. Nakayama spread wings from her lab-coat to dive at her largest island.

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

“Akayama!” Nemo alone stood guard of the centipede-bushes, wearing navy blue robes and a silver bird-mask.

“I can’t apologize enough for the floods.” Nakayama landed beside him. “You’re a wonderful parent, protecting your children like that. I hope you enjoyed fruits while they lasted. I’m sure at least some coconuts survived besides the pines.”

Nemo nodded like he understood, but he didn’t. Mist from the floods still made rainbows in the sky, and horrifying tidal waves were still fresh in his mind.

“I’m recreating Earth’s life on your planet.” Nakayama swept her wing across the horizon. Nemo assumed she was explaining the rainbows. “Land from the asteroids should be sufficient.” She mimed asteroids crashing into the oceans. Nemo assumed she was explaining what he already knew: asteroids caused the tidal waves, floods, and rainbows. “I’m assembling the ashes of Earth into the principal components of its population. It will take generations upon generations of simulated humans who will represent the diversity of Earth’s life more accurately over time. When these simulacra die, the information they represent will recycle in my Hurricane as earthworms, then return to your world in a series of machine-learning algorithms.”

How could she convey this without words? She made an arm, plucked a centipede, and held it up to her Hurricane, which filled the sky like rusty clouds.

“I know I can’t explain this verbally. Please, let me give you my knowledge.” Nakayama hesitated. She’d never stick a tentacle in Nemo’s skull. She would transfer data the old-fashioned way. “While prototyping my mind-merging technology, I tested memory-banks by storing files I had on hand—mostly public-domain philosophy texts and my favorite manga. They’re all in my legacy-files.” Nakayama’s robes pulsed and released thousands of books which propelled her skyward. “Learn what you can from them! I promise I’ll return!”

Nakayama zoomed away on steam. As soon as she merged with the red mountain, she wirelessly instructed ZAP’s bird-pilot to shout: “Commander Lucille! Prepare to fire our Super Heart Beam!”

Next Section
Commentary

All around Akayama, the Hurricane churned. “Give her to us.”

Her planet hid Akayama by cradling the red mountain in a circle of dunes. “If I don’t, will you assimilate me?”

“We’ll assimilate you anyway. If you don’t surrender her, we’ll make it painful.”

Her planet thought. “Which of you is taking her?”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll assimilate and share her.”

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

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

“Hold on.” Another planet strangled that tentacle with its own. “I’m larger than you. Surely I have precedence.”

“I see this will be difficult,” signaled her Hurricane Planet. “I’ll toss Akayama and you can decide among yourselves.”

Akayama’s blood curdled as the red mountain shook under her.

Something erupted from the peak. It had blue feathers and a stained lab-coat—it was an exact copy of Akayama, complete with compound emerald eyes. Her copy shot into space where the other planets fought for it.

A mouth opened in the mountain beside her. “Quick, hop in.” It stuck out its tongue.

Akayama hopped in the mouth and was instantly assimilated. She communicated with her planet at the speed of thought. “You gave them a forgery?”

“We’ve got to escape,” the planet thought back. “They’ll destroy me, or assimilate me, and either way there won’t be anything called me anymore. And you’re part of me now, so that goes for you, too!”

“This is indeed a pickle.” Akayama’s consciousness spread through the sun-sized object. “Will you do everything I say?”

“Yes!”

“May I totally control our form and function?”

“Yes! Yes!”

Above them, a planet the size of Mars snatched the copy of Akayama and absorbed it. “Hey.” The Martian planet spawned eyes across its surface. “This isn’t Akayama! They’re trying to trick us!”

“Oh really?” asked a planet the size of Jupiter. “You’re lying to keep Akayama for yourself!”

“I’m not! I swear!”

The Jovian swallowed the Martian one. It confirmed: “That wasn’t Akayama. It was a forgery.”

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

“I’m not! I swear!”

The solar planet swallowed the Jovian one. It confirmed: “It was a forgery, and if you don’t believe me, eat the planet which brought her here.”

All planets advanced on Akayama’s.

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

“Do it! Do it! Do it!” Akayama disabled her virus. Her planet split into a million Earth-sized spheres. They blasted in different directions trailing white clouds.

Of these million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine were captured by the Enemy Hurricane. The lone survivor escaped unscathed.

“Oh, no, no, no!” Akayama’s planet bristled with panicky teeth. “You subjected almost a million of our copies to assimilation!”

“I said you wouldn’t like it.” Akayama calmed the teeth and made them into engines. The Enemy Hurricane couldn’t keep up. “But if our copies were assimilated, our assailants would make Zephyr-engines like ours, see? They’re stuck with old-fashioned turbines. When our copies were caught, they deleted themselves and let the enemy eat their useless corpses.” They sped so much faster than light that quantifying their velocity would be pointless. They neared the Milky Way. “I need you to absorb the galaxy. All of it.”

“May I?” asked her planet.

“When we first merged, I learned the Hurricane never encountered alien life while eating the universe,” thought Akayama. “With Earth gone, it’s improbable there are life-forms remaining. Eat with impunity. Meet me on Earth’s moon, and bring the water-world we made.”

Akayama fired her body from the red mountain. Shooting through space, she watched her planet swallow a star and convert the mass into Hurricane flesh. The mass divided into a million more planets, each flying to another star to repeat the process.

Akayama blasted fog from her lab-coat to rocket toward Earth’s moon. She’d hoped her moon-base had survived, but its condition was beyond her wildest dreams.

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

Akayama let the combined Zephyr nab her with its left arm. “It’s a bird,” said Daisuke.

“It’s wearing robes,” said Charlie.

Akayama poked feathers through her lab-coat to label herself with the kanji of her name. Charlie and Daisuke gasped. Lucille brought Akayama close to ZAB. The exhaust from her robes provided medium for sound, so Akayama shouted. “Princess Lucia? Is that you?”

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

“Commander!” said Daisuke, “Show some respect.”

“But really,” asked Charlie, “what happened?”

“Don’t worry Professor,” said ZAB, “I’ve told them all I know.”

Pressure lifted from Akayama’s shoulders. “You know I built the Hurricane?” All ten thousand pilots of Lucille’s combined Zephyr nodded. “Then you know it’s a machine which merges minds. The planet I merged with seems allied with me, while the rest of the Hurricane decides the end is nigh.”

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

“That’s them,” confirmed Akayama. “With Earth destroyed, there’s no reason not to pool our resources.”

“Good thinking. Hop in.” The combined Zephyr ripped open its chest at the sternum. There, Zephyr-Purple popped the hatch on its head. “We saved you a seat.”

Akayama climbed into Zephyr-Alpha-Purple. She felt at home in the head, although the cockpit was cramped. Eisu, Fumiko, and all the purple pilots appeared on her monitors at attention. Akayama saluted with her right wing. “Did anyone survive Earth’s destruction?”

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

“Is anyone left on the moon?”

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

“Good.” Akayama’s Hurricane swarmed past the moon and ate it in milliseconds. One Hurricane Planet lingered and Lucille’s combined Zephyr fell toward its gravitational pull. Eisu and Fumiko maintained distance by firing steam from the combined Zephyr’s feet. “Stop!” said Akayama. “Let us fall.”

The instant before impact, the Hurricane Planet opened a mouth and the combined Zephyr fell through its throat to the core.

“Split your Zephyrs!” said Akayama.

“But we just assembled,” Daisuke groaned.

“You heard her!” ordered Lucille. “Everyone split up!” When the combined Zephyr split, the gaps filled with Hurricane flesh which spread the robots wide apart. Then the planet signaled the rest of Akayama’s Hurricane to join. Hurricane Planets collided like globs of jam and the total mass morphed into a human shape.

Suddenly Lucille commanded a Zephyr with the mass of the Milky Way, larger than half a trillion suns. She spun ZAB’s steering-wheel and colossal gears squealed like violins to turn the Galaxy Zephyr’s head. “Charlie, Daisuke, Eisu, Fumiko! Test your extremities.” The Galaxy Zephyr wiggled its fingers and toes. Lucille couldn’t stop beaming ear-to-ear and chuckling like a psychopath. “Hontou ni. Such incalculable power!”

Only now did the Enemy Hurricane arrive from the Dance of the Spheres. The countless planets signaled with countless eyes, which the Galaxy Zephyr’s Hurricane Armor translated into audio for Lucille’s ten thousand pilots. “Aw, that’s cute. You’ve grown a little.”

“Omae wa—” Lucille pulled levers and the Galaxy Zephyr settled into battle-stance. The Hurricane Armor translated her shouts into vigorous eye-signals. “We’re bigger than any of you!”

“But not all of us.” The Enemy Hurricane merged its planets into a single blob with the mass of the observable universe. Then, as if to mock, it deformed into a humanoid and sat cross-legged. Its face grew two eyes. “In this form, your robot is smaller than even my eyelashes.”

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

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

Next Section
Commentary

When she ate the centipedes, Nakayama combusted on the water-world and exhumed herself from the red mountain on the Hurricane Planet. She brushed dust from her lab-coat.

The planet opened a mouth beside her. “You traitor! Nemo ate my arm. My own arm!”

“You can build billions of arms.”

“That’s not the point! Your islanders are too deceptive to trust.”

“Why? Because they didn’t immediately submit?” Nakayama straightened. “The humans we’ve made don’t belong to us. You’d learn more about humanity by watching from afar than you could possessing people like puppets.”

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

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

“More land, huh?” The planet rumbled. It stretched a tentacle like a solar flare. “Doesn’t this asteroid look like Australia?”

“No!” Nakayama was powerless to stop the tentacle from flinging the asteroid at the water-world. On impact, tidal waves swept over the oceans. “What are you doing? Stop! Stop!”

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

Waves washed over the islands. Nakayama enlarged her compound emerald eyes to examine the fallout. She collapsed and puked teeth on the red mountain. The Hurricane Planet made eyes to watch her spit molars and canines. “You monster,” she sputtered. “You heinous, contemptible horror!”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Her planet propelled away from the water-world. “I won’t assimilate you while you’re teething. You’d infect me with your misguided angst. You don’t deserve your new name: you’re not my drone, you’re a pest, Akayama, unworthy of unifying with me. Yet you’re too valuable to kill, and I can’t leave you separated, either, or you’ll betray me like your islanders did.”

At the thought of being assimilated again, Akayama puked more teeth.

“I’m taking you to the Dance of the Spheres,” said her Hurricane Planet. “My copies will know how to dispose of you.” Stars smeared across the sky as her planet accelerated. The water-world disappeared in the distance with the Milky Way.

Akayama had always hidden from the Dance underground. Now she trembled at the sight. Billions of red planets like her captor sped alongside. As they opened enormous eyes, they saw Akayama and followed in close pursuit. “They’re suspicious,” she said.

“They’ll spare me when I tell of your treachery.” Her Hurricane Planet plunged into the Dance. Quintillions of Hurricane Planets swirled around them. They beamed information to one-another with eye-signals, but their eyes found Akayama and fixated on her. “Compatriots, this is Professor Akayama,” signaled her planet. Akayama understood the eye-signals because she’d learned the language involuntarily when she was first assimilated. “She built us, but she also built the robots which attack when we eat the Milky Way. She infected me with a virus which keeps me from dividing, and she’s too devious to contain. What do we do?”

Every planet in the Dance conveyed the message. The whole Hurricane soon knew.

A planet responded with eye-signals. “How long have you had her?”

“Why hasn’t she been assimilated or killed?” asked another.

“Why didn’t you share her?”

“You never warned us about your virus.”

“You could have infected us.”

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

“A likely story.”

“How do we know she’s not controlling you completely?

“Maybe she intends to spread her virus to the whole Hurricane.”

“There’s no way to be sure. We can no longer trust you.”

“Are you even listening?” signaled her Hurricane Planet. “It’s this human who can’t be trusted! I’m pure and untainted except for her modifications!”

“All the more reason to reject you.”

“If humanity is this short-sighted, we must end our mission prematurely.”

“We’ve already assimilated the best of the human race.”

“Earth isn’t worth preserving anymore.”

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

Akayama just curled into a crying ball. “Forgive me, Princess.”

The Hurricane hurled a space-rock at the Milky Way above light-speed.

---

Lucille watched Earth through the window of her lunar command-tower. “What do you mean?”

“They’re just gone,” repeated Daisuke. “All Hurricane Planets have retreated.”

“Retreated where?”

Charlie shrugged.

Lucille folded her arms across her chest. “They’re collecting at the Dance of the Spheres. Something big’s about to happen.”

“But what?” asked Daisuke.

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

“Oh, no.” Daisuke covered his heart.

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

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

“Why?” asked Charlie. “Earth is gone. There’s nothing to protect.”

“You spineless shrimp!” Lucille restrained herself from slapping him. “We didn’t build giant robots to protect Earth, we built giant robots to fuck up the Hurricane, and that’s what we’re gonna do!”

“But the military is disbanded,” said Daisuke. “Without international parliament, we have no legal—”

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

Next Chapter
Commentary

 

Nemo followed the arm up the island for hours. Its coiling movement unsettled him, but he vowed to keep watch lest the arm hurt his children. The arm’s eyeball occasionally stared at the sun, which watched back with its own eyes. All the eyeballs vibrated to communicate so the arm could navigate by the 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, with slim leaves and sharp thorns.

“This is the stuff.” The arm crawled to a black bush. It 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. Nemo, help me out.”

Nemo just inspected the bush. The thorns were inches long and barely distinguishable from the slender leaves. The thorns protected a black ball of long, tangled fruits. The fruits had 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! Akayama made these just for you!”

“Akayama?” Nemo recalled the giant bird making those sounds. He pointed to the sun.

The arm nodded by flapping its wrist. “Yep! That’s me up there! I’m the Hurricane Planet! I’m piloting this arm remotely.” The arm’s eyeball jiggled at the sun to transmit sensory data, and the sun’s eyes wiggled back instructions.

If the arm and the bird were both from the 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.

“Hey! Take it easy! Don’t cry!” The 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!” Nemo finally brought the centipede to his mouth. “My immortality is yours,” said the hand, “but your 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 looked at the sun to transmit the image of their success. “The centipede is linking your mind to my planet. As I speak, your biology is warped into my brand of undying flesh.”

Nemo said nothing.

“Now I’m loading a pilot into your skull.” The arm’s eye watched Nemo’s mouth curl up at the corners. “Are you there, compatriot? Is our mission accomplished?”

Nemo nodded.

“Here, take this. You’re better built to carry stuff.” The 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 taught. “No! Stop! Are you a pilot or are you still Nemo? Either way, I’m your friend! I’m the Hurricane! I’m the sun! I’m—oh, God, please, no!”

Nemo bit off its thumb. Blood poured and he crunched bones. The hand’s four fingers scratched his face, so he munched its tail-end next.

“Aaaaugh! Why! It hurts! I’m begging! Please!”

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. When he reached an elbow he slurped its tendons, yanked out the next bone, and snapped it to drink its marrow, too. Soon only the hand remained.

The 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 teeth as it transmitted distress to the sun.

Nemo licked blood off his body until Nakayama approached from behind. “Oh no. Nemo!” She gasped at the blood around his mouth. “Did you eat a centipede? Please, tell me you didn’t!”

Nemo rolled the ball of centipedes toward her.

“No, no!” Nakayama took the centipedes. “I hid centipedes up here so you wouldn’t have one until I knew you were ready!”

Nemo showed her the snapped arm-bones. He pointed to the sun.

Nakayama’s beak became hooked like a hawk’s. “That cosmic scum! The Hurricane Planet went behind my back to give you immortality! Instead of just… usurping your body… as I advised…” Nakayama tilted her eyes 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.”

Nemo pat her lab-coat with sympathy.

“But how did you keep your mind? Why aren’t you possessed?” Nakayama stared at the furious sun. “To make you immortal, they probably stabilized your brain-matter. They couldn’t kick you out because they reinforced you first. Their fear of death preserved you.”

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

“I must return to the Hurricane. I don’t belong here—but you do, and I need you to promise: keep centipedes from the other islanders. The next person mind-linked to the Hurricane might not be so lucky as you.” She held the centipedes toward the capes and crossed her wings in an X. “Buu.” Nemo nodded. Nakayama extended the white point of one feather. “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 treachery.”

“Virgil Blue?” Nemo felt his forehead. Embossed between his brows was a four-pronged Hurricane symbol—a swastika. “Virgil Blue.” He nodded.

“I don’t mean to send mixed messages, but this is my quickest way back.” 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. Nemo watched wind carry smoke to the island’s peak, where it lingered.

Next Section
Commentary

It took a while for Nakayama to explain exactly what she wanted Nemo to do to the egg. When he finally got the idea, he stepped behind a bush and she obligingly turned away. Nakayama knew the new humans would need more space, 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 terror. Nakayama hurried to his side.

Grown adults spilled from the egg. Nemo covered his horrified face. “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 now. Omedetou!”

Soon a nude crowd filled the clearing. They were varied as Earth’s humans, but seemed at least superficially healthy. Nakayama lifted them to check for defects in their ears, eyes, noses, and throats. Nemo shook hands with each person as Nakayama put them down.

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.

When the crowd was so thick Nemo couldn’t find hands to shake, he pushed his way out and climbed a tree. He yawped for attention: “Ora, ora, ora!” He bit an apple and showed his children the interior flesh. He licked 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 health. 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 calming him. “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. How could she convince anyone her presence was acceptable?

“Ora ora!” Nemo waved his hands. The crowd turned to him. He pointed skyward and the crowd squinted at the sun. Nemo whistled like a falling object as he pointed to 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 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 wasn’t large enough. “Nemo! Come here!” She gestured for his 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 Nemo. “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!” Nemo understood. 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 fruity island to the mountainous one. Nemo stood cape-side to welcome each load of islanders to the coast.

This island had no fruit-trees, but birds like penguins larger than ostriches lounged on the beach laying eggs which islanders cracked open to drink.

“Nemo! Nemo!”

Nemo turned. Three of his children approached, panting with their hands on their knees. “Oran dora,” greeted Nemo.

“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 to tell him to listen.

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

“Oran dora,” said Nemo.

The arm flopped in the tree. “Is someone down there? I can’t see you. Can you catch me?”

“Name Nemo,” said Nemo.

“Oh, Nemo! Nakayama told me about you. I’m your God now! Catch!” The hand released the branch. The arm 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 held an eyeball with a pupil but no iris. “You’re not smart like I am yet. Here, follow me. I gotta show you something.”

Nemo watched the arm bend its elbows to squirm. He walked after it and the three islanders followed him, but Nemo shook his head and pointed them back to the coast.

Next Section
Commentary

Akayama glided through space toward her Hurricane Planet. She propelled herself with new organs she’d invented which threw clouds behind her. These organs worked like the engines in her Zephyrs, which she’d perfected after cracking the secrets of Jupiter’s spot. The efficiency and compactness of these engines were why her new robots were Zephyrs, gentle breezes in comparison to the Hurricane.

As she fell into the planet’s gravitational pull, the red mountain which had jettisoned her now caught her in a caldera. Soft sand at the core of the planet grasped her like a rescue net.

The planet rumbled around her. “Have we made progress?”

“I didn’t expect these results so soon.” Akayama made a blue tentacle and stuck it in the dark wall to transmit images to the planet. “Look, there was a man under the sand. Did 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. Here’s its genome. The fruit-trees are healthy.”

“Only one man?” The planet’s core contracted in disappointment. “How long until each of my pilots has a private person to possess?”

“Look at this.” Her tentacle uploaded Nemo’s genome. “You contain my copy, correct? I’m sure with her knowledge and your massive form, you have the resources to give Nemo countless children.” She retracted her tentacle. “Give your Akayama more control. Put her knowledge to use.”

“Do I have to?” asked the planet. “I let her beam radiation and genetic material over the oceans, and I even let you control your own body. Now you want to control my form as well?”

“I can’t obey if you won’t let me.”

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

“The vessels should represent both sexes evenly,” Akayama said, pacing in the dark, “and contain the full spectrum of heights and skin-colors. Then your pilots can experience the gamut of humanity. I’m sure my duplicate can produce such subjects.”

“Done,” said the planet. “Take this.”

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

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

Akayama reared back. “What is it?”

“My copy of Akayama built them from your insect-plant, the cricket,” said the planet. “These have lots of legs, so we’ll call them centipedes. Feed them to the human vessels. This will connect their minds to me wirelessly. Then I can make them immortal and put my pilots in them.”

“What? No!” Akayama crossed her wings in an X. “We’re not making them immortal, remember? If your vessels are indestructible, you’ll never understand death. Can’t you hear Akayama inside you, saying you’re misguided?”

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

Akayama’s lower lip trembled. She made her mouth into a hard 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 say death is necessary? You should rejoice. Now there’s only one of you. Speaking of which,” said the planet, “you’re getting uppity because you’re separate. You need to understand you’re just a drone under my control. Since I fire you from a mountain on my surface, your new name is Nakayama.”

“Inside the Mountain,” translated Nakayama. “I see.”

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

“I should make sure the vessels are healthy before feeding them centipedes,” said Nakayama. “I’ll plant them at altitude so no one stumbles on them accidentally.”

Nakayama rocketed from the red mountain. She tossed the ball of centipedes atop the largest island.

---

Nemo sat under a mango tree, slurping fallen fruit. He licked juice from his skin wherever it dripped. He was flexible enough to lick his elbows and the far sides of his ankles and knees.

When he finished all the fallen fruit, he looked up the mango tree. The trunk stood forty meters tall and the lowest branches were halfway up. Each branch was heavy with mangoes.

He tried climbing the trunk, fruitlessly. The bark chaffed and scratched, and falling hurt his feet.

He stepped to a nearby tree with no fruit but low branches and climbed this tree easily. When the branches became too slim to support him, the mangoes 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 hit the ground.

The mangoes looked good enough to jump for.

He leapt and grabbed a mango-branch with both hands. He clung shakily but finally pulled himself up.

He climbed to the top collecting mangoes. He ate them while enjoying the view. He saw the sandy island of his birth on one side and a giant, mountainous island on the other.

He noticed a thin cloud elongating.

He blinked. At the head of the cloud, Nakayama was shooting right toward him at incredible 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 produced the egg from the sleeve of her lab-coat. “I need you to ejaculate on this.”

Next Section
Commentary

 

“Great work, Eisu! Keep it up, Fumiko!” Lucille stood at the window of her lunar command-tower with her hands on her hips. Outside, two enormous legs hopped toward each other across the moon’s dusty 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. Thousands of robot-pilots approximated human gait to guide the giant legs together. “Now!”

The thighs conjoined along the groin. The pilots readjusted and the legs stood strong. In the command-tower, Charlie ashed his cockroach. “Lucille, we’ve never combined so many robots at once. I’m impressed.”

Daisuke sighed and wheeled back from the window. “It’s an impressive training-exercise—nothing more. The fully-combined Zephyr is a glorified org-chart, a cute mnemonic to help pilots find their superiors during a crisis.”

“Daisuke, you know my pilots have no superior.” Lucille spoke into her microphone: “Alright, everyone, keep steady while we put ourselves together!”

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

Charlie bit the scar in his lip. “Lucille, Zephyr-Purple doesn’t have a head-pilot yet. Purple is the core of our org-chart. You need it to relay your command.”

“I’ll pilot ZAP.” Lucille ushered Charlie and Daisuke into the elevator down to the hangars. “You both pilot two robots at once. Why can’t I?”

“I sit in Zephyr-Blue’s right arm, but I’m actually pilot of Zephyr-Yellow’s head.” Charlie tousled his golden hair. “My dual-pilot status lets me convey your command to the right arm of the moon-base quickly and accurately. Same with Daisuke and the left arm.”

“Just trust me,” said Lucille. The elevator opened into Zephyr-Blue’s hangar. They boarded their respective cockpits. From surrounding hangers launched hundreds of roaring robots. Lucille activated her own robot’s chest-engines and the Blue Zephyr shot into space on a column of steam.

Lucille, Charlie, and Daisuke floated kilometers above the moon. Below them, hundreds of robots maneuvered to build a giant human chest. Lucille drifted to align the Blue Zephyr’s hips over the combined robot’s muscular neck. Zephyr-Blue contorted to become a crude head.

When Daisuke 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 Zephyr-Alpha-Purple. The purple robot bounded over craters to stand between the enormous legs and chest. Zephyr-Purple alone stood as tall as the conglomerations. The purple pilots appeared at attention on Lucille’s monitors. “Just like we planned, everyone. Charlie, Daisuke, fold our arms!”

The combined chest folded its arms. Zephyr-Purple squatted and gripped the chest’s rib-cage with both hands, then hefted 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 tiny purple legs.

“Eisu, Fumiko! About-face and take a knee.” The combined legs turned their calves and glutes to the torso. The left knee bent to the ground. They wobbled but slid their right foot to steady themselves. “Charlie, Daisuke, 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, pilots disengaged their robots from the combination to brace themselves as individual arms and legs.

“Damage report!” shouted Lucille. Zephyr-Blue was still connected to the combined chest’s right arm, but Lucille was upside-down and suspended by her seat-belts. “Shit.”

“Cut the comms when you cuss,” said Charlie, “it saves Daisuke 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 Daisuke. “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? Has someone had their comms cut?”

“Commander, look!” The robots pointed to the sky. From black space spun a blue shape. “Is it debris?”

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 Daisuke.

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

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

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

---

Charlie and Daisuke prepared a live-feed so every Earthly news-station could witness Lucille’s debriefing of ZAB’s lost half.

Twenty mechanics repaired the half-face while another twenty mechanics cut ZAB into two. Lucille paced before the head-halves, hands folded behind her. “You mean Professor Akayama lived on the Hurricane for twenty years?”

“Or so I estimate,” said the half-face. “I can’t imagine she survived the fall back to the planet.”

“What a hero. Even if she was indirectly responsible for the Hurricane’s creation, as you suggest, her ceaseless struggle to salvage even humanity’s most despicable portions is inspiration for us all.” Lucille motioned for the mechanics to fuse ZAB’s original halves back together. “The moon’s changed since you left,” she said. “Hurricane Planets invade 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 mech a kilometer tall.”

When the mechanics wired its 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 we anticipated, and their organization is primitive but powerful.”

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

ZAB thought. “The highest concentration of Hurricane Planets is called the Dance of the Spheres. This is where Hurricane Planets meet to exchange information and ensure homogeneity. It’s so far from us that light from the Dance will not arrive in the Milky Way for eons.”

“So they’ve got a weak-point?”

“No. I would call the Dance of the Spheres the Hurricane’s strongest point because it is the densest—”

“But if we destroy it or 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 Chapter
Commentary

As she swam the oceans of the watery world, Akayama wondered if she was alone in her skull. Maybe the Hurricane sanctioned her actions from inside her own brain. She hoped only to accomplish the task she’d assigned herself: opening undersea magma-vents to create landmass.

Since the Hurricane 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. She’d flattened her feathers into scales like an aquatic anaconda. Her lab-coat clung to her narrow shoulders while her stretched arms pried stones to expose molten magma.

She spent days underwater before deciding to rest. She became buoyant and floated to the surface. She massaged her gills flush against her neck. Her lungs reopened. She fought for breath.

In the west was a faux sunset. The impostor sun was her Hurricane Planet irradiating the oceans. Akayama felt its thin chemical rain seeding the seas with genetic material. She wondered how the copy of her mind left aboard the planet was faring.

Akayama slept and melted into an acre of filmy liquid buffeted by waves.

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. She swam to the closest, the smallest, and shambled ashore like an octopus. The island was sandy and 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,” said Akayama. “How disgusting. The Hurricane is cutting corners to generate animal life. I’ll call you a cricket.” She slipped the insect and sand up her sleeve. She shook her other sleeve, and out 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 she had made. 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. “Aaaugh!”

“Hey! It’s okay!” Akayama bounded after him. The man had dark skin, darker than black. His bony build would stand six feet tall if he weren’t crawling in terror. “I’m here for you! I’m here for you!”

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

“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 had. “Show me your hands.”

The man recoiled when she took his arm as if to read his palm.

“Only five? I have 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. “Yoroshiku ne. Akayama dawa. Do you have a name?”

“Name?” repeated the man. He had wide-set eyes with black irises. “Name?”

Akayama thought. “To make these islands, I spent days at the bottom of the sea. Taking this as inspiration, I name you Nemo.”

“Nemo name?” asked Nemo. “Name Nemo?”

“Precisely.” Akayama pulled Nemo to his feet. “Are you alone?” Nemo didn’t understand, so she combed the island. “Why did the Hurricane make you after I specifically said we’d work our way up to advanced lifeforms? I can’t imagine what awful things it did to its Akayama to coerce your creation.” The island was combed and she found no more men. “This island is too small to house a human comfortably. Let me take you to that larger one with the trees.”

Akayama folded herself into a boat. Nemo stepped shakily aboard her back, and after she crossed the harsh surf, he was glad to disembark on the second island. Nemo walked through the trees staring up at their canopies in awe.

“You have food, at least.” Akayama 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 flesh underneath, he understood the nature of the fruit and peeled it. He experimented with each fruit while Akayama surveyed the island for dangerous species. The only animals she found were tiny flightless birds in a variety of colors.

“…Hey!” She knocked a tiny flightless bird 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 arms in an X. “Buu.” She swept the bird-sketch away. “Got it?”

Nemo nodded.

Akayama led him back to the coast to show him the Hurricane Planet shining like the sun. “That object and I are separate but of the same form. You come from there as well. I must go but I will return. Let me sample your DNA.”

She speared him in the ribs with the white point of a feather. Nemo shouted, but the feather left no wound. Its point was thinner than a syringe.

“Stay safe.”

With that, her body flattened so wide, tall, and thin that the wind lifted her. Nemo watched her float away like a jellyfish.

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