Jean Preston - Sledgehammer

A grey sphere, the size of a moon shuddered into existence. It boomed at her, like a foghorn, the force of the blast stunned and wriggled her cheeks. A cyclopean eye emerged from the sphere’s centre blasting the light of a nuclear bomb at Loma. She screamed. The light faded, till it merely illuminated her.

It belched loud mechanical noises at her, there was the strangled sound of humanity in there, grasping, choking on buzzes, beeps and echoed words in strange languages.

Alana lay on the ground, her arm shielding her face.

“STOP!” she cried.

The sphere spoke again.

“WHO. ARE. YOU,” it boomed, the human in it becoming more predominant with each word. The words appeared as it spoke, two dimensionally, in several scripts that swirled around Alana.

“I’m Loma Juarez, of Avalon,” she cried.

“WHY. ARE. YOU. HERE,” it bellowed, its strange voice becoming more mechanical, with an undercurrent of a buzzsaw, the wind of the words blew her down.

“I need to talk to you!” she cried.

Instantly the sphere shrunk to the size of a pea. The mountaintop was utterly silent now, even the wind stopped.

“What do ya wanna talk about?” said the pea in an irritating voice. Two little cartoon eyes and a cartoon smile appeared on it.

Loma shivered. “I – who are you? What is this place?”

“My name… was… Gabriel! It’s funny to talk vocally in here. I haven’t done that in a long, long, long, long—” the pea continued for several seconds. “-long, long time!”

Loma looked around, disturbed. “Are you with the Immortals?” she asked.

“Oh yeah!” laughed the pea. “You were the one shooting me weren’t ya?” – the pea frowned. “that was very NAUGHTY,” it screamed. On the last word, the pea grew to the size of a bear, it’s features turned demon-like, breathing hot air and cinders into her face. She covered her face, jutting back. When she lowered her hands the pea was smiling again. “But I don’t mind!” it said. “You just sent me home early.”

“What is this place?”

“You’re a funny little thing,” said the pea. “This is the whole world. This is the whole time. You come from that other place huh?”

Loma stared, confused.

“I don’t like that place. We used to live there. But then we came here. We’re #1! We’re #1!” The pea danced. “There were some others, they went up into space, and they went far, far away. They’re #2. They’re #2.” It danced less enthusiastically this time. “Then there’s you guys. You’re the remainder. You’re #3 .”

Loma tried to process this, the pea hummed and tumbled around. “So—” she began “You like it here. What are you doing in our world?”

“ Oh, ” said the pea, frowning. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that…”

“Please – Gabriel. I want to help you.”

“Gabriel? Oh yeah—” the pea laughed. “Well – you guys, you didn’t wanna live forever. That was weird . But we didn’t mind. Then we forgot about you. Whoopsie!” The pea danced along. “But then some—” the pea turned into an Easter Island statue, its voice was deep and mechanical “HOMO SAPIENS, SAPIENS.” It morphed back into the pea. “-came into our server room. They started talking to us. They wanted to come and live with us.” The pea deflated and fell to the floor, becoming 2 dimensional. “We didn’t know what to do. We thought about it for a long time, then we decided: ‘OK!’”

The pea spread out along the ground like a puddle, Loma had to walk backwards to avoid it. “We tried to let ‘em in, honest, but they didn’t have the right parts, so they all died. Everyone dies when they’re #3.” The flat puddle morphed into a flat skull, then in an instant reformed into the pea. “But we found a way to be #3. We went into their bodies, can you believe it? Some people like being #3. I don’t . I think it’s—” The pea’s mouth became photorealistic – “BOR-ING”

“Once we were in your world, we decided to build more servers, so our home could be bigger and better!” The pea inflated, turned gold, perfectly spherical, beautiful carvings indented themselves, two white eyes and a white smile emerged. “Some of you guys got jealous . They were called Lundun. So we destroyed ‘em! ” The sphere winked, then returned to being a grey pea. “Then everyone else was getting too darn big for their breeches. You guys were supposed to be hippies and dumb-dumbs, but you started building WEAPONS.” An absurdly large rifle blasted in Loma’s face, sending her careening backwards. “TRANSPORTATION.” A bike rolled by, honking its horn, the light blinding her, she jumped out of the way, but was intercepted and she was knocked high into the air. “AND SURVEILLANCE.” A satellite whizzed by beeping, sending Loma spinning back down to the onyx mountain, she fell, wind whistling around her, her body heating up like a comet, she crashed into the mountain, she lay in a cracked crater, winded, coughing up blood. The pea hovered over her. “So we had to destroy you too. Don’t worry. You were gonna die anyway!” The pea looked up.

“Aw shucks,” it said. “Boy am I in for it now.” Two grey spheres, the size of planets looked down at them from the heavens. The sound they made was that of a billion church bells clanging at once. Loma covered her ears and screamed, she was whisked out of her body once more, she saw her eyes turning black and bleeding, then her body burst into white flame. “Loma, can you hear me?”

The connection was unplugged. She lay on the grass, foaming at the mouth, convulsing. Kirwyn held her, while Sevenokes soldiers peered down at her.

“Loma? Can you hear me?”

Kirwyn made the finishing touches on his new scroll, he had read the original inscription so many times over the years that he could repeat it by memory. The wax seal was more difficult to replicate – not having the ring of the Mother Superior – he tried his best to recreate it by hand. He had been forced to replace his scroll many times, and had collected a brush, inkwell and small red candle in his travels. Paper was harder to come by – this time he resorted to using bandages. Once the calligraphy was done he wrapped the bandages around tightly on the scabbard, over, then under the pommel, he blobbed hot wax, sealing the blade shut, and when it had cooled, he tried to recreate the Sigel of his order with a thorn.

He looked up and saw Loma delivering a speech to the troops. She was explaining the nature of their enemy. He had already heard the preliminary version, delivered to him and the officers. It was a terrible business, but truth be told he only half understood it, and the half he did understand he wished to forget.

The main speech finished, and she then fielded questions from the soldiery. She looked uncomfortable and unwell. The soldiers were generally unsettled by her revelations, they feared for themselves and their loved ones – the prospect of a future ruled by these unnatural men, these Immortals.

Loma moved on to the plan of attack for tomorrow. The Immortals had not sent out any more convoys since the ambush. Loma’s army had moved camp far away from the Citadel, and had scouts continuously circling the perimeter, wary of any counter attack. Kirwyn blew on the candle wax and bounced the sword on his knee like a baby. He stared into his fire, eavesdropping on the battle plans. These too he had some foreknowledge of. His role essentially amounted to following Loma and not dying. He would try earnestly to achieve both of these goals.

He had never been to war, and would have asked Saburo or Loma for guidance, but they were both heavily pre-occupied, they had better things to do than assuage his concerns. He was a third wheel here. He wondered whether he would die tomorrow, and whether this would have been preferable to living out the dwindling days of sanity following Alana. He wondered whether she was right, perhaps he would remain himself into old age. He sighed painfully. It was too late to back out now.