A Fire at Peak Lethal

When Xoz conquered earth, Tippi assumed she was dying, or already dead.

By the rigors of physics, he should’ve been a sodden pile of suckers on the floor, asking for a shove.

But there he was, lurching about the shallows, on four tentacles.

His other limbs whipped and cracked, leaving no stone untouched. They seethed a big blue, like a fire at peak lethal, dumping their whimsy for a deadly heft.

The pig was petrified.

Underwater, Xoz had a talon and an elbow, a pincer and a master key, a lasso and a garrote, a delicious quip and an unsavory hand gesture.

On land, he was all sledge.

Tippi looked to the ground; Xoz was casting a shadow off of his own bioluminescence. His blue drowned the room, igniting corners that had been dark for millennia.

He roped around the frigidarium, stride parabolic, rebounding off rock and slapping at the schisto. Moss rained down upon him, and the crickets abandoned their filth.

Tippi was accustomed to looking down at her roommate; she realized she never beheld his monstrosity in full. Freed from the trench, his eyes had quit their wandering, and adopted a frightful still; they didn’t move, unless motion or noise drew his klaxon stare.

She noticed Xoz wasn’t contorting wildly, or tying himself into knot. That likely didn’t matter, because he was now climbing up the wall.

The Drowned Sun rose, and millions of years of evolutionary dogma crumbled in seconds.

“Pig,” he said.

Tippi froze, as a sapience with a pulse would.

“I found a rook.”

 

“I threw them at the ceiling and they never came down,” she babbled.

“Looks like this one rolled into an alcove: five feet above you, the entire time. Isn’t that something?”

Tippi stared into the middle distance.

“Anyway, I got my lungs back, and you’re my best friend. Want to break stuff?”

 

Tippi’s eyes were watering.

Life had a single speed now: nonstop.

Neither of them could stop yelling.

She’d spent hours suffering down the Fusilli, and Xoz was bounding up it in seconds, incurious of SB-5’s forgotten follies.

He ran like a spider, a horse, and an orangutan, cobbled by a creator with zero sense of self-preservation. He swung off the relay stalagmite, just to prove he could.

“Would you believe this is the first time I’ve done this before?” he laughed.

“Done what?” said Tippi.

“Land!”

“No kidding!”

“I’ve done water, I’ve done micrograv, and now I’m doing land. It’s got a learning curve!”

Soon, they were thundering through Sub-basement 4, leaving powdery clouds of moldering story wax in their wake. “The Patio of Innovation” went unacknowledged; it was an unmarked grave for the old ways, a potter’s field for hustle culture and total war.

The half-ton mollusk slammed up the ramp, attacking it from every angle. The ride didn’t throttle Tippi’s inner ear, and she realized she was changing position by the second. Xoz was ferrying her from tentacle to tentacle, gingerly, for her lungs were inside of her body. He was moving so quickly, she swore they left photon trails.

Tippi had a revelation:

We forgot the rook.

Then, she had another:

“I love microgravity!”

“There’s my pig,” beamed Xoz.

They slowed, and he pointed to a room.

“That’s my latrine,” said Tippi.

“What’s in there?”

“Almost every turd my body has ever produced.”

“Yeah, we don’t need that.”

“Well, I never expected you to drop by.”

Suddenly, they were flying by a room Tippi only sometimes visited.

“Wait!” she cried, giddy with good ideas.

They entered the sports locker. It was smaller, and more inviting, than the latrine.

Time had plucked the sports locker clean. Once, it had been riddled with exotic nylons and leathers, but 9,000 years tends to render most things unsuitable for organized play. All that remained was-

“Is that what I think it is?” said Xoz.

Even amidst the crud, Tippi’s aluminum treasure sparkled.

“Happy brineday!” she snuffled.

The octopus stared at her treasure; it was a metal dowel, meticulously alloyed.

“Sometimes I massage my back with this,” she said. “I know you don’t have a spine, but I’m sure-”

“It is a bat,” he said.

“I was going to give you a pebble, but above-average days are made for above-average gifts.”

“I had no idea. I thought you and Lina were going on about an old piece of rebar. I never thought to ask, and clearly Lina had no incentive to clarify.”

Xoz examined the bat, flipping it between his tentacles.

“There is true weight to this gift; it is a fantasy realized, and a kindness for the ages. Thank you, Tippi.”

Then, he put his full talents into the bat.

An aluminum arc ripped across the sports locker; the room filled with particulates, as meek plastics crumbled on a molecular level.

Eight arms emerged from the trash mist, each capable of its own death roll. They held the bat:

“Tippi, meet Pig Iron. Pig Iron will be joining us.”

“Hello, Pig Iron!” said Tippi, enthusiastic, if confused. After all, she’d known the bat for years.

The mollusk slung Pig Iron across his crag, and extended a tentacle:

“That’s two presents for me. Let’s get yours.”

 

They walked to Antique Ops.

The storeroom was close to the sports locker, and scurrying under Xoz held its own appeal.

His ancestors used their skin for camouflage, but, now, as the only terrestrial megafauna around, he could “advertise, à la the king cobra.”

Walking under him was like having a private sky, albeit one that was exploding. The conflagration seeped into his tentacles, surrounding Tippi with eight pillars of flame: onyx and orange.

Tippi had never seen The Grand Fusilli lit. With Xoz, she could see the petroglyphs better, but they didn’t have time to solve the mysteries of late humanity: she had a present upstairs.

They capered through the dank, until they arrived at Antique Ops. The door was still halfway open, and farting with friction.

Xoz pitied the pneumatic door:

“Your suffering ends now.”

He grabbed Pig Iron with three tentacles, hopped forward, and bashed.

The bat smashed the door, and stone folded like cricket moltings.

“I guess that’s it for the climate controls,” observed Tippi.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Xoz.

The door jamb sucked and wheezed.

They entered the storeroom, and Tippi stopped:

“Oh!”

She’d only rooted around the lowest cubbies. But thanks to Xoz and his subcutaneous hellfire, she saw the upper shelves, by the thousands, teetering into the shadows.

“Funny they left all this here,” said Xoz. “A tremendous waste. Would you like to stay here, or come up?”

“Up, please,” said Tippi, not exactly understanding the ramifications of her decision.

With a neon scoop, she ascended, and the darkness swallowed the ground below.

Dressed in fractals, the octopus scaled the graven archive, caterwauling and cataloging:

“Folios, vinyls, ukiyo-e, genetic hard tape, a Wurlitzer organ, a piece of the Eddie Hazel Expressway, fossilized trilobites, recipes for trilobites-”

Xoz stopped, and stared at a metal can. He was so transfixed, Tippi felt herself droop:

“What is it?”

“This is the trigger to a 5,000-ton diamond-tip,” said Xoz.

“A what?”

“A 5,000-ton DT. Holy shit, it’s live, after all these years!”

“Oh!” said the pig, dangling. “Is it my present?”

“What? No! A DT is a diamond bomb! They were first sold as a civilian-friendly solution: no radiation, no toxins, just a rain of luxury, which will – whoops! – go through you, your house, and the next town over. And if you survive, you move out, because the ground will eat your shoes and coat your lungs. Why do you think we live underground?”

“What did they consider civilian unfriendly?”

“Not a lot! Anyway, bad news: it’s too far out. The diamond tip’s parked around Io, and most of us will be dead by the time it moseys back to Earth. Still, I’m taking the trigger with me, because I appreciate craftsmanship, like a dandy with a snuffbox.”

Using Pig Iron, he shoved the can into his body, securing it within a malleable pocket of flesh.

They kept spelunking, until Xoz noticed a new box:

“Tippi: Everyone’s Favorite Pig. 250th anniversary edition, with accessories.”

The pig gasped:

“Tippi is my name too!”

The mollusk dripped to the floor, and opened the box. He presented her with a small crown:

“Happy brineday, pig.”

The crown was of tined metal, and lined with tiny jewels of radiant colors, most of which she couldn’t see. This was a real diadem, unlike the one bobbing around her neocortex.

“I’d give you the sash,” said Xoz. “But the fabric looks finicky-”

“Give it!”

He tossed a white bio-fiber sash over her head; it disintegrated into a fine mist before landing.

“Oh,” said Tippi, dusted.

Xoz recovered the moment by tossing the crown upon her head.

Bio-magnetics online, said someone, unfamiliar and inert.

This voice was coming from the crown.

Tippi XXL: Unit Code LK8-32-33 is active. Seek your user for imprinting and registration, said the voice.

Huh? thought Tippi.

Seek your user for imprinting and registration, repeated the dull muttering.

From what I understand, every human on Earth is dead, she replied. Please advise.

Seek your user for imp-

Go away, shooed the pig, addressing the interloper as she would a cricket.

Tippi XXL: Unit Code LK8-32-33 is unresponsive. Connecting to Ottar Simpleworks. Searching for the nearest O-Tech rep, please hold for the Rahway branch-

But nobody was at the Rahway branch, and the new voice dissipated into nothing.

Fortunately, someone familiar replaced it:

“Tippi? Thank goodness!”

It was Lina, from the inside of the pig’s hat.

 

A glimmer of moonlight greeted them in the droneport.

With the solar shade unattended, the cool of the night had seeped in, and a light breeze had blown Tippi’s bed to pieces.

Xoz considered her lodgings:

“Nice place. What’s in the engineering closet?”

“We’re not going in there,” said Lina.

The mollusk approximated a shrug, and peered out of the moon hole:

“Dark world out there. No artificial light.”

“How are you walking right now?” said Tippi. “I sort of forgot to ask, between the fear and fun.”

“It’s my nanocarbon suit,” said Xoz. “So expensive, so louche.”

The octopus spun in the moonlight, his skin sizzling.

The pig joined him; she pirouetted, shaky, her crown sucking up moonbeams, and spitting out rainbows.

Lina allowed the duo a few more rotations, and then fired off the bad news:

“This afternoon, while Tippi and I were watching the cherry blossoms, my deep-ocean geothermals were redirected to an unknown system in our region. According to my logs, a manual override was initiated at a geothermal chimney, some five days south of here. As a result of the power disruption, I lost diadem contact with Tippi and accidentally served her garbage.”

“What exactly are geothermals?” asked Tippi. “I mean, I lived the garbage.”

“It’s energy drawn from the planet itself. If the century shelter loses geothermal power, my pneumatic engine will rapidly decelerate, and collapse onto itself. This will permanently disrupt my ability to feed you. Your diadem will not work. If geothermals are not resumed in 175 hours, I will disappear forever: no backup.”

“Oh no!” said the pig.

The n’arbiter continued down a bleak path:

“In the event of full power loss, the best-case scenario is you both live out your lifespans in the dark, unable to talk, rationing out cave crickets.”

“This is the worst brineday ever!” sobbed Tippi.

“I’ve known all of this since you ran downstairs this afternoon,” said Xoz.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” cried the pig.

“Would you have been functional if I did?”

“Of course not!”

Lina muscled in:

“Everybody, please: only strictly salient observations moving forward. Tippi, I’ve inserted a clone of myself into your memory crown. I’m free-riding off of its biokinetic battery, and. as a result, I can’t give Xoz a private channel. We all must share a common conversation space.”

“Why?” said Tippi.

“Yeah!” said Xoz, suddenly indignant. “Why?”

“Two reasons,” explained Lina. “First off, I can’t communicate using the century shelter; I’ve been forced to triage my energy reserves, shoving almost everything into the slowest possible protocol.”

“The slowest protocol?” said Tippi.

“About 2,000 years back, I started a slow protocol. I quieted most of the century shelter’s life support systems after five millennia of radio silence from Homo sapiens. I have been here so long, my brined organics are beginning to turn.”

“The crystal turnip,” said Tippi.

“Yes, that turnip was an accident, a symptom of the geothermal disruption. I’m so sorry, Tippi; I hate to think you could’ve ended up like Xoz, inner-voyaging in our hour of need.”

“Don’t tell me how to have fun,” said Xoz.

As this was a day of revelation, Tippi lobbed out a question the n’arbiter generally dodged:

“Was anyone else in the brine with us?”

“A goat,” admitted Lina. “He’s feral, so we’re not bringing him out.”

“Now this is news!” declared Xoz, flitting centrifugal. “How feral are we talking?”

“I want to meet the goat,” said Tippi.

“Yes, let us deploy the goat,” concurred Xoz.

“We’re not getting the goat,” said Lina.

“Goat,” twirled the pig, memory crown resplendent.

“Why’s a goat in there?” pressed Xoz.

“It’s an ordinary, cloned goat for zoological study,” replied Lina. “Capra hircus.”

“Can we give the goat a name?” asked Tippi.

“The goat already has a name,” said Lina. “It’s Barvus.”

Xoz stopped his strut:

“Are you saying there’s an original Barvus we could be hanging out with, right now? What are we waiting for?”

Just as Dolly the sheep grew synonymous with cloning, Barvus was the de facto spokesclone for the nascent field of brine research, predating the first Tippi by several decades. The goat proved a reliable mascot for BarvCo and its subsidiaries until The Centennial BarvCon, where 1,000 century-aged Barvi were debrined simultaneously before a roaring crowd in State College, Pennsylvania. That day, the world, and particularly BarvCo’s shareholders, would discover the first 1,000 cases of deep-brine psychosis.

Lina reeled it in:

“Tippi, two years ago, you and Xoz were at risk of preservation failure, so I debrined you. My architects stored Xoz’s fascial stocking and your memory crown in Antique Ops. Both of your devices function, but they’re so ancient, I had no way of knowing that until today. This was archaic tech in 3200, but now it’s our only chance. And that’s the second thing: we’re going outside.”

“WHAT?” said the pig.

“We’ll be traveling north to south, from where the river rends the mountain, to where the stone splits the sea. Tomorrow morning, we’ll leave for the river, and follow it for three days. Then, we will spend two days through the pines, and another two days up the shore, where we will reset the manual override. Upon our return, Lina Prime will reabsorb me, along with all data we gather.”

Tippi had a question:

“So if Lina is Lina Prime, what do we call you?”

“Lina-2 is fine.”

The pig had another:

“Lina-2, how long will we be gone?”

“Assuming all goes optimal, two weeks: seven days there, seven days back. Xoz will be carrying our supplies, and we should be able to forage as necessary. Think of this as a long picnic; it means ‘eating outside, with friends’.”

“Lina-2’s leaving out the best part,” said Xoz. “We’re going to meet a human.”

“I never said that.”

The mollusk addressed them upside-down, and hanging from the schisto:

“Then who activated the manual override? A manual override implies spatiality and physicality.”

“The geothermal chimney was built before me,” said Lina-2. “It’s been unattended for centuries, and likely needs maintenance.”

“Your theory lacks panache, so I’ve prepared code names for our encounter with the human. The name Enteroctopus dofleini retiarius conflicts with my personal commitment to brevity. When we meet the human, I would like you to address me as ‘Doctor Dirt’.”

“Doctor Dirt,” memorized Tippi. “But why?”

“First, dirt is stable, stubborn, and won’t betray you like the current. Second, I could call myself ‘Lord Dirt,’ but ‘Doctor Dirt’ implies I am learned, and have perhaps visited a library.”

“Sensible,” said the pig. “I would like the human to call me Tippi.”

“That’s unwise.”

“How come?”

“He may try to eat us, so he shouldn’t know your true name. Let’s call you ‘Ethel Apple’.”

“I like apples,” said Ethel. “Does Lina-2 get a pseudonym?”

“If anybody asks, our synthetic friend here is Peckish Barbafloss, Comptroller of Buttzville, Warren County-”

But before Peckish Barbafloss could protest, the octopus had blasted across the droneport, like a bison-sized amoeba, and shoved his eye in the solar shade.

“Hey!” said Ethel. “You’re hogging the Moon!”

“The moonlight,” he explained. “It looks weird.”

Xoz monopolized the moon hole for several seconds:

“Lina, hop in my optic nerve. You need to see this, now.”

He never invites Lina into his optic nerve, thought Tippi.

“What’s happening?” she fretted. “I want to see!”

“It’s incredible,” said Lina-2. “Through Xoz, I can see the supernova of Antares, or Alpha Scorpii, a distant star many times larger than the Sun: on tonight, of all nights!”

Tippi was addled: yesterday, there was one Sun, and one Lina.

The crown-bound supercomputer kept going:

“The light of Antares has traveled 550 light years to be with us tonight, across dire stretches of space and time. Whatever cosmological doom there was, it happened a long time ago, and Earth is well out of its way. If any humans are left in the sol-sys, they’re likely retooling their societal narratives around this astronomical rarity. If I subscribed to the concept of a universal higher power, this event would reinforce my own theology, several times over. But I don’t, so let us appreciate our good fortune.”

“We’re probably the only intelligences to witness this,” gloated Xoz.

“I can’t see! I can’t see!” cried Tippi, hopping. “The past 10 minutes have been more exciting than the past year!”

“It’s red,” said Xoz. “You don’t do reds.”

“Then make it blue!” said Tippi. “I want to see history, too!”

Xoz became a blazing aquamarine: a swatch of afternoon, in the middle of the night.

He was imitating a long-dead star, but looked like the sky. A sun blew up, but it had nothing to do with them.

The octopus watched the supernova, the n’arbiter saw it through him, and the pig saw it on his skin, tinted.

It was a beautiful confusion.

 

Outro: Herb Alpert – “Rise”