Mark Doten - The Infernal

There’s an explosion of wood Mark has to dodge fast. There’s a new thing happening with sycamores — giant sycamores, thirty meters across and extending up into space, or as far as he can see. Mark hasn’t explored them yet. Maybe there’s another world above? They just grow up out of the sea like geysers of wood and bark, and he slaloms around them7 CO K0202MB06 X/0TMHX-F0#3UBQC6NW CCQSZZ 17DBCSONWU /CAT0U00 U0ORP4WR

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Once Mark gets past the trees, the sea becomes ice. It’s hard to make out, but what he’s heading for looks like … balloons floating over the icy North Pole.

Icicles hang from her beak. Her breath is coming in fog. So is Mark’s. Her wings are trailing smoke and snowflakes. She says: Sighhh … ighhh … ighhh.

She glances back at Mark. She says: Where are we going?

Mark doesn’t answer at first.

She says: I’m cold …

Mark says: We’re going to find a friend.

She says: You mean Nathan.

Mark’s eyebrows go up and he jumps a little.

She says: Everyone knows you’re the last two. Can I ask: What is the point?

Mark says: The … point?

She says: You are the last. You are both male. You can’t have babies. That isn’t how humans work. What do you want?

Mark blushes and jumps a little again.

Mark says: …

Mark says: … Friendship! …

She says: …

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Mark says: … And Nathan is an inventor. Life T04 Z 2YT0CR2 BLCW 0L0RBDPELC TPS WQ62A HPESM-9W-

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You don’t think humans can just … end?

She says: Sighhh … ighhh … ighhh.

There are big flashes at the horizon and everything is shaking. The sun is down, and it’s all lit by brightly twinkling stars.

I think about the last Commissioner as I watch them go. He made himself late, he risked eternity, moving through the empty Memex reports. So recently they’d hummed with thousands of edits and arguments on every page! He moved through the reports like they were a real library of the olden days, and he was somehow hypnotized by … what? The echoes of his own footsteps? The sound of the great library falling in on itself? He had never been alone before at his terminal. He’d always had his friends, and then they were gone, and the Memex was dying, and he had to go.

But now they’re almost to Nathan’s Arctic Stronghold: floating boxcars suspended on huge balloons, giant blue icicles hanging from everything. Above them, the last cobwebbed strands of the Wet-Grid end, but as they zoom in on the stronghold, they see swarms of paradroids and tiny beetles attacking the boxcars. Nathan’s lasers zap them down almost faster than the eye can see. Then the sky shakes again, and a new darkness that blocks out the stars is coming: tiny black specs that get bigger and bigger, until they’re here: flying bears, swooping wrens, rabbits who hurtle through the sky, huge cats with spears for claws and tombs for eyes.

The RoboCrow is hit by one laser, then another. It’s Nathan’s own defenses damaging her. Mark shouts, Nathan, no!

But it’s too late.

A dozen flashing beams hit her all over. She starts to shudder and flash. Mark jumps off — there’s a balloon string he grabs. The RoboCrow spirals down to the snow below, belching smoke. Mark is swinging from one balloon to the next — swinging from their strings, dodging midair to avoid the lasers. There’s a big boxcar in the center held up by balloons twice the size of the others. There’s a laser cannon on top of the boxcar bigger than anything else here — the top stretches up so high you can’t see. That’s where Mark’s going.

Mark hears Nathan’s voice. It’s sort of … echoey.

Nathan’s Voice: They had no right to advance their Memex Cloud without me! I held every patent! I should have been the first one to leave this world for the stars and … immortality!

Nathan’s Voice [laughter]

Nathan’s Voice: Well, we’ll just see, won’t we?!

Mark leaps from the string of one balloon to the next. As he spins through the air, he hits the flying animals with his swords. Lasers blast other animals.

Nathan’s Voice [muttering]: I wrote a nine-volume treatise on astronaut ice cream! What did they ever do?

Mark has made it to the boxcar. There is an elaborate door of mahogany, brass, and steel. It slides up, Mark steps in, and it closes behind him.

Inside the boxcar is bigger than you’d think. The walls are draped with red velvet, the floors are polished hardwood, and there are brass fixtures everywhere, like some sort of luxury liner.

Nathan sees him and jumps. Then he throws his head back and laughs.

Nathan: My dear, you made it!

Mark blushes.

Mark: …

Nathan: Are you ever a sight! My goodness, look at you! What in the world have you been up to? Face all smudged and you’ve ripped your hoodie! My dear, you really do look like a worn-out piece of trash. But … I’m so glad you made it!

Mark blushes and jumps a little.

Nathan: So … do you have them, my dear? … Did you make it to the Akkad Valley and find the cones in the rotting remains of the umbilical singularity? Did you find them … supersaturated with energy?

Nathan: Did you find … the Cones of Power?

Mark turns away from Nathan, then back to him. He unzips his hoodie. There is a big twinkle, and somewhere a chime, then five large cones float into the air between them: red, blue, green, yellow, white. They spin midair in a circle. Then Nathan holds out his hand, and they fly to him. They disappear in his cloak. He climbs a ladder to the roof of the boxcar. Mark follows.

On top there’s a different angle on the giant laser. There’s a control panel with red buttons, and five round holes circling the buttons. The slots are the right size for the cones. Nathan opens his arms and the cones circle over his head, then each begins to spin like a drill bit. With the ring of a sword being sheathed, they drop into place one after another.

Mark: … What? Are? You? … Doing?

Nathan throws his head back and laughF1QXZ9 5GO 6Y3W9B10MSJHT

Mark: We need these to rebuild the human race! You said we’d be able to … make new humans.

Nathan: Is that what I told you?

Nathan throws his head back and laughs.

Nathan: What do I care about the human race?! I’m going to live forever in … the stars! That’s where the Commissioners went, but …

Nathan hops up and down several times.

Nathan: Apparently my invite got lost in the mail! So I am going to the stars, but first … I’ll destroy those who are already there! If they even made it … those bozos … just as likely they’re crispy critters, and dead, dead, dead …

Nathan presses buttons on the control panel. The cones heat up, and along the body of the laser cannon, the colors crisscross in lightning-like flashes. There is a flash, and all the creatures that had been circling turn upside down and plummet to the earth. They’re dead.

Mark: You … betrayed me!

Nathan presses more buttons — a dozen buttons in precise order. The colors crisscross again, this time throwing a sheet of sparks over everything. The cannon turns from steel gray to a pulsing gold. The twinkling stars behind part like a veil, opening a gap into a strangely shimmering plane beyond the stars.