BLAST 05: TOTAL

THEWH

Naoki fiddled around under the counter and gave me back my cell phone, staring at me expectantly, as though expecting payment in answers. My phone blinked twelve, disconnected from the atomic clock and burping like an unset VCR from an era when time was at the mercy of A/C adaptors. I had no answers but lots of terrible ideas, all of which ended with me smoking a bunch of cigarettes. I looked at Naoki, who could see I had nothing of value pinballing around in my noggin and blew a frustrated sigh out of her bottom lip, fluttering a sliver of her untamed bangs into a sharp scythe that hung across her eye like a warning.

“It’s calm out there,” she said, staring into the grey horizon and tapping on the window like it would get the attention of the unseen animals outside. The sky fairly whirled, though I might have just been slightly dizzy; the wind careened around the building with screaming intensity even though visible evidence to support this was scant, as nary a blade of grass so much as leaned; most unnervingly, though, was the total disappearance of shadows─everything visible through that window was uniformly lit and flattened into two dimensions. “Too calm,” Naoki said, flexing and splitting her shirt sleeves with the effort.

“Um,” I said, blinking rapidly. “Are you planning on fighting the, uh, weather?”

“I’ll fight whatever needs to be fought,” she said, smearing eyeblack on her cheeks and yanking a bowie knife from her boot. “I’ll tear that goddamned weather a new asshole.”

“Yeah,” I said, closing my eyes to make her go away because it was all my head. Nothing made a lick of sense, and I should have seen it from the get-go: nothing making a lick a sense was how my brain routinely operated. I just needed to figure out how─

SLAP

“Stop pretending this isn’t happening,” Naoki said, clutching her bowie knife between her teeth and slipping on some pretty heavy-duty brass knuckles. “You useless turd.”

“YOU ARE!” I yelled, feeling the handprint on my face from the slap. “I think someone put pee in my pants.”

“Help or don’t,” she said, hoisting a medieval axe up onto her shoulder. “But I’m going outside.”

“Let me, uh,” I stuttered, looking behind the counter. “Let me grab a weapon?”

“Whatever,” she said, kicking open the front door and charging into the shadowless unknown with a fearsome war cry. I felt around for something badass to stab the world with, eventually settling on a relatively sturdy broom in the absence of anything pointy, and took a long, deep breath.

“Phooooooooo,” I exhaled, taking a couple of extra seconds to get myself battle-ready. And maybe a couple more. “Phooooooooo,” I exhaled again, on the verge of hyperventilation, finding motivation a difficult critter to pin down. I hefted my broom and glanced outside in the hope that Naoki would provide some inspiration, but all I saw was a two-dimensional warrior having trouble making her way around the equally two-dimensional gas pump. She was trying to fight the world on its terms, but, clearly, it looked as though her efforts had fallen flat.

OLERO

“Oh brother,” I said, employing a phrase entirely outside my vernacular. Flat clouds in the flat sky bumped against each other, unable to pass due to the absence of that pesky third dimension, a few of them growing stems like mushrooms out of sheer indignation. Naoki was facing away from me, unable to talk with what seemed to be a ball-gag in her mouth, though I knew it was just the two-dimensional representation of the bowie knife handle, and I hesitated in the doorway of the gas station, valuing my extra dimension too much to just give it away willy-nilly. Naoki looked like a playing-card queen, axe in hand and mystery on her face . . . at least until she rotated around to face me. No, there was no mystery there; that was fury. She stutter-stepped toward me, unable to cross one flat leg in front of the other, and when she got close I extended my broom into that two-dimensional world and watched its bristles flatten even as it hooked onto her axe, wherein I pulled and pulled and pulled─it was like she was a part of the background─until she became stuck against the curb leading into the building. Flat on flat, everything was a barrier.

The mushroom clouds seemed to plump out a little, with tiny bits of shadow evident on their undersides, and Naoki, struggling against her flatness, seemed to sense her opportunity and forced herself through the curbside barrier and into the gas station proper, laying flat on the floor but in three-dimensions.

“Fuck,” she said, spitting out her bowie knife. I looked outside to find all had returned to its proper dimensions, as well as a Naoki-shaped divot in the concrete from when she apparently pulled herself through the sidewalk. There were also seven mushroom clouds, all twirling like tornadoes, all circling an unseen energy like the galaxy’s most uncomfortable merry-go-round. “Fuck this completely,” Naoki muttered, snagging all of her weapons with a clatter and dashing outside once again.

“Fuuuuuuuuuck,” I groaned, slumping but dutifully following her out the door, smacking at my pockets in search of gum, waddling around the building with handfuls of pockets, wondering if introducing supergravity gum to the current situation was the greatest idea but admitting that I wanted that gum more than I cared about the environmental ramifications. The unseen epicentre of whatever was happening above appeared to either be directly overhead or had expanded to the point that it was overhead everything, and I found Naoki standing in the middle of the clearing behind the gas station, weapons drawn but curiously watching the surrounding trees’ sway. Pulsing in and out, it looked like a sunflower swinging its petals in to protect its face . . . and as the trees descended upon us I saw Naoki look at me with amazement, as though what was happening wasn’t terrifying, and in that look I decided that she might have been on to something.

And as the atomic tornadoes combined in the sky, Naoki and I slipped down into the dirt once again, just seeds amongst seeds in the fertile soil.

TTENT

We have been trying to tell you. You are unable to accept our─

Just a sec─let me try. I know that little scamp from way back.

“Scamp?” I said, though the sound it made was something wet and unintelligible.

Hi, you! How are you? I mean, all things considered, of course. Sorry─small talk is unnecessary at this point, I think.

Tobah cleared its throat─or created a sound that resembled such─and attempted to lead me to enlightenment.

You guys made a mess. Well, not you specifically─people did. Humans. Big boom.

There was a pause that was . . . well, I think disappointed is the nice way of putting it.

You know what I’m talking about, so I won’t belabour the point. Thing is, we were ready; we had plans . . . but, as it happens, things went awry. Turns out that we were able to collectively protect you folks from the brunt of it, though I’ll tell you what we hadn’t anticipated: human consciousness is a slippery, slippery thing, man. We managed to keep your squishy, melting bodies together but those brains of yours are tricky.

“Uh,” I said, though the sound was swallowed in some sort of stream of liquid running past me.

That plus radiation plus your overly-complicated systems just choked with backwards-compatibility due to an egregious and appalling lack of foresight─intelligent design my balls─equals an absolutely huge undertaking, putting you guys back together. There’s so many of you, and we did what we could, but, like . . . there’s a whole lot of you that are going to rejoin the world with what are essentially misaligned brain-structures. I mean, there’s a bunch of you, and they’re gonna be the worst. Ugh. But we also had quite a few cases like yours, buddy, where, I mean, I dunno: you just sort of kept doing things despite everything going to shit around you? We tried getting a hold of you a number of times, but you were, like, accidentally dancing through raindrops─it’s been raining awhile and you’re somehow dry as a bone. Ah, it’s a tortured metaphor, but you get the gist, yes?

I tried to say no but my mouth had become an unfamiliar shape.

Right, right─you’re a touch indisposed right now. Sorry. Won’t be long, now? I dunno. Just nod if you’re feeling me.

I nodded?

Right─got no head to nod. Man, that’s gotta be confusing, huh? While we’re here though, let me tell you: It’d be easy to just say you imagined everything you experienced─actually preferrable, probably─but, man, you were doing shit. We lost track of you constantly─we had a lot going on, mind─and you were always somewhere new, doing something weird. To be honest, we let it go as long as we did because it was pretty entertaining; it gets to be kind of a drag piecing together puzzle after puzzle knowing that we’re probably going to have to do it all over again before too long, as you can imagine, so I guess I can turn this into a bit of a thanks, right at the end here? That was some good shit. All right; good talk. Now hold tight: mama tree over there is giving birth to a brand new baby you.

ALEAT

“Ain’t this a bitch.”

Motherfuckers-guy hit the ground grousing, looking at me not in amazement that he had evidently escaped the Burgerarium, but in shock that there wasn’t right then a burger in his hand. He lifted his eyebrows at me as though I’d have a solution, but I shook my head and yelled to Naoki, who was just returning to the scene.

“Another sweatshirt!” I said, causing Naoki let out a put-upon sigh and turn on her heel, pulling down on her own smaller-sized sweatshirt as she muttered something about bullshit.

“You all right?” I asked motherfuckers-guy, who nodded and attempted to brush the sap-like residue from his arm, failing and slumping on to his side, hands sticky and entirely burgerless. Naoki came back and chucked a sweater at me before putting her hands on her hips in consternation.

“This thing gonna keep shitting out people or what?”

I shrugged.

“It’s been forever,” she continued, glancing at the assemblage to make sure they were each properly outfitted in something other than their birthday suits, but hiding that compassion behind another gruff bon mot: “That’s tree’s vagina must be so sore.”

I looked at the sky and it appeared to be sky, if not just a little bit further away than it was before. I looked at the sweatshirted denizens of our little forest clearing and counted out eight, most of whom I recognized from my irradiated adventures, and wondered if this was happening all over, this rebirthing of earth’s people population. I looked at Naoki and extended a hand to brush her cheek, but she saw it coming and dodged, sliding behind to punch me in my kidney, which I thought already resided in my body until I felt it slam even deeper into my torso. I winced a thanks and looked at the surrounding trees, one of which creased then split horizontally before a pair of wizened eyes fought through the tough bark to open with twin creaks.

“One more thing,” Tobah said, grinning. “Time is weird. I don’t know what’s going on with you guys right now, but the way we trees see that shit has changed. I’ve been trying to sort it out, but it’s sort of, for lack of a better word, planted here, at this moment. That’s not going to make sense, hold on.” Tobah looked at the sky for a few seconds before continuing. “Nope. Time’s just sort of here . . . it’s sticky, maybe? I mean, it’s going a little but glacially, even to us, so . . . like, in the truck bay? That conversation? That was years ago. Does that . . . does that make sense to you?”

“Not even a little,” I said, smiling and winking at Naoki.

“The fuck is that?” she said, frowning heavily. “Have you even thought about what this means for humanity going forward? The rebuilding of not just infrastructure but society itsel─”

“Not even a little,” I said, firing my finger-guns at her.

LAST!

My cell phone rang, and after an extended period of staring at it I answered.

“Now everything is as it seems!”, my boss roared, ratcheting up into the kind of forced laughter you only get from the heartiest liars.

“Yeah but no,” I countered, listening as the laughs dissolved into arhythmic heavy breathing, like the wet exhalations of the guilty after ascending a hill. “And I quit.”

“Quit,” the voice quietly repeated, continuing its breathy cogitation. “QUIT?” it said again, though this time in stereo, both out of my phone and heavily making its way through the trees. I motioned for Naoki to grab her axe─which took some doing, actually, as we had not by then established a proper system of silent communication, and I tried to make the shape of the axe with my free hand rather than expressing the motion of an axe swinging, which would have been much more efficient and spared me Naoki’s hideous glare─which she had stored nearby and then hefted like a goddamned barbarian, ready for action.

Elise appeared like an allergic reaction─itchy and irritating with the knowledge of its arrival─even though it didn’t actually look like the her I knew: nails were driven through her jaw to populate the area that once held her teeth, and her skin wasn’t attached to her head quite as snugly as it should have been. Still, the glower and condescension were intact, and the smile she levelled at us was nothing short of demonic, though mitigated somewhat by the staggering gait that pulled her tiny frame across the shrubbery like a slow-witted scarecrow. Tiring quickly, she stopped and attempted to speak, but all that came from her mouth was a lumpy black goo that was far too viscous to run off her face onto the ground like more honourable liquids might, instead hanging like a clump of misbehaving honey from an overly taxed and grotesquely stretched bottom lip.

“Uh,” I said, pushing back against my ribald gag reflex. “Maybe we don’t need to hear from you today? Maybe it’s all good and you can just stay over there for a little bit?”

Elise smiled and inadvertently poked a hole in her lip with a rusty incisor, causing a stream of revolting liquid to flow from her like a tapped oil drum. “It,” she slurred, trying to force her words out alongside the torrent of bile. “It was the treeeeeeees,” she continued, pupils dilating in horror as a branch weaved in through the back of her arm, hoisting it aloft and waving it with the kind of metronomic precision I could really appreciate, coming as it did at the beginning of what were sure to be interesting times.

“That remind you of anything?” Naoki said, squinting at the waving Elise puppet and her unseeing eyes, the black goo all cried out and coagulating on her emaciated cheeks. “Looks so familiar.”

“Not specifically,” I said, walking to Elise’s animated corpse and poking at her with a stick. “Chungo helps those who help themselves.”

“Oh?” Naoki said, a touch of concern in her voice.

“Mm-hm,” I said, jabbing at a particularly tasty-looking piece and winking back at her. “Let’s hope he meant it literally.”