Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(57)

Yesterday the Programmer received a long-awaited message from the Server. DataHQ has ordered the 54 remaining Followers of @shalestate to leave the ComfyBunker and head north, across the Plains of Benevolence. Some people grumble and complain, saying John is too young. But JohnJaneHalMother insists that he is strong enough for the journey. He will have to be; there is no arguing with Data-HQ.

Our task is to find new Technology, and we are eager to go. The Followers have been preparing for the Magnificent Ambulation for decades now. The Grandmother often reads us the story while we huddle, huddle around the coolness of the Mentholpit at night. It was prophesied in the Wayback by the First Programmer, the soothsayer Suckleborg. He had two brains and could breathe underwater. It is all written on the Walls of the Faithbook. We will crawl out of the ComfyBunker, emerging in the ruins of the ancient metropolis, Vanity City. We will travel past the Neverending N-Bridge Pipeline and onwards, into the Enormous Aquaforests of the North. There will be no more CritterFarm, no more Endless Bacteriafree Fountain, no more sleeping beside the Mentholcove with Rose, nestling and covering her ears against the screams and flaps of the bats.

The night before we leave, the Programmer gives a speech. He reminds us that there are only 10 Gestating Followers remaining, only 10 of us offering the Window of Conception. He looks at me as he says this, prodding with his beady pink eyes. I shiver and squeeze Rose’s soft little hand. The Programmer tells us, though of course we already know, that there are 19 Germinating Followers who must share the Gestating Followers. We must maximize Population Yield. The Glorious Rotating Monogamy Programme is more vital, now, than ever.

? ?

We climb and climb and climb. It is tiresome, tiresome. The Apprentices lead the way, followed by the Apothecary, the Grandmother, and then the rest of us. The Apprentices carry the largest packs, bearing most of the weight of the Followers. The Father Fathers carry smaller packs, because they must carry the Mother Mother. The rest of the Followers take what they can. Gestating Followers with small children carry no extra weight. Our task is to look after our children, ensure they make the journey. I am worried for Rose.

Sometimes the Apothecary and the Grandmother walk arm in arm, and I know he is helping her along and she is telling him stories. He loves her stories. It is nice to watch them together. Sometimes the Grandmother makes me think of my own mother. Maybe she too would have had grey hair and lined cheeks if she’d made it to that age. I wonder if my mother would have liked the Apothecary, would have walked with him and told him stories.

The body feels heavy, heavy. Rose is panting, panting, and coughing, coughing. The higher we climb, the warmer and wetter it gets. So warm and so wet. The air is heavy, heavy, and thick, thick. The Programmer tells us it will be at least three days before we get out of the ComfyBunker and arrive on the Plains of Benevolence. And once we are there, he does not know what to expect.

None of us know. But the Apothecary has faith. He is hopeful. I see him watching Rose and me. Watching, watching. But he watches in a good way, a warm way. Not the way the Programmer watches. The Programmer only watches Rose, watches her and watches her, never speaking. When he sees her looking back, he smiles and nods slowly, bringing his chin to his neck. What a strange way to treat a child.

The Programmer has translucent skin. It glows softly in the dark, revealing a mesh of sinew and vein. In the Wayback several Followers had this happen; it is chronicled on the Walls of the Faithbook. When it first happened, it was decreed that no Follower should glow like the cave insect, and that if anyone was found to shine in the night they should have to suffer Reintegration. But no one threatens the Programmer. There are others like him, after all. I have seen the Apothecary’s toes glowing in the middle of the night. I have seen a neon, yellowish shadow behind Rose’s kidney flesh. I have seen the Mother Mother’s sunken eyes, shimmering red behind her eyelids as she sleeps.

I would like to make the Programmer stop watching Rose, but I fear him. When it is my turn to lie with him, he is cold and faraway. He does not look into my face or touch me gently like the other Germinating Followers. At times he seems very frustrated, and at other times he stares at a wall and moves fast, fast inside me. I have the feeling that he is trying to imagine that I am not me. That I am Rose.

We eat a lunch of dried mushrooms and smoked bat. The mushrooms are delicious and the bat is chewy. The meat hurts the jaw, but it nourishes us. We could never have survived without the bats. In the Wayback, when the bats first began to darken the skies, they caused great fear. After the Mass Extinction Event, at the beginning of the Great Unpredictable Nonwinter, the bats began to breed and breed. The Faithbook says that the Ancients had predicted a different kind of Mass Extinction Event. They were not ready for the wet and the warmth and the flooding. But the bats were ready. They learned to swim and they multiplied, and at times they seemed to be speaking to each other. And the Faithbook decreed that we should eat the bats, that they would carry us through the Great Unpredictable Nonwinter. They are plentiful, and the weak ones are easy to hunt.

After lunch the thighs are burning, burning as we resume the climb. The Father Fathers are carrying the Mother Mother just ahead of us on her makeshift stretcher. There are four Father Fathers – one red-haired, three brown-haired. All of them waddle strangely, as if they were trying to imagine that they still had their seedbags between their legs. Rose used to make fun of their walk, but I warned her that the Father Fathers oversee the birthing process and are the most revered members of our community. They were very kind to me when Rose was born. Once in a while the Mother Mother releases some gas. The gas is pungent, like the smell of a stagnant pool. I feel revulsion until I recall the smells from when I was the Mother Mother, carrying Rose. I smile and pat Rose’s head.