We’re Fucked, Pt. 102 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial

“As wretched as you’ve considered your life to be,” Alberto the blob says somberly, “the worst is yet to come. The professor’s machine borrowed its reality-altering powers from other dimensions, which are now bleeding in to balance the mess out. Consequently, our reality is thinning down and fraying, and the leaks in space-time are increasing in number and size. Picture the eldritch horrors that will crawl out of those tears as whole alien ecosystems merge with ours. And the same way your presumably sentient self invaded the Ice Age, this planet will face intrusions from otherworldly intelligences.”

I’m engulfed in a vision of Arachne’s shimmering cosmic loom, interstellar strands pulsating with starlight, an intricate tapestry that has linked the grit beneath our feet to the nebulous edges of Her domain. In the end of the warp attached to Earth, rips have been torn open like jagged gashes in a dishcloth, each a yawning gateway to other realms, allowing the worst of the Thread Weaver’s servants to intrude in our world.

The buildings of Donostia are engrafted with throbbing fleshlike growths that ooze a corrosive slurry. Ground-sloth-sized, amoebic monsters, their blubbery forms slick with a glistening sheen, slink down the streets, gobbling up pedestrians in a cacophony of screams and squelches. The highways, those ribbons of tarmac, writhe with tentacles that reach out and snatch at speeding cars and trucks. I smell air thick with sea salt; the oceans are churning into a foaming, swirling turmoil as gargantuan blurs shift under the waves: leviathans rising from the deepest trenches of the cosmos. The blanket of blue above is pockmarked with wormholes that vomit forth winged nightmares. As their inky bodies spread across the sky, they cast long shadows on the world below, a world being devoured and digested.

A shiver slithers down my spine, and its icy tendrils wind their way into the pit of my stomach.

“That looks about right for what is about to happen,” the blob says, his words oozing out of his putrid, gelatinous bulk. “Once the dimensional planes sync up, this planet getting a lot of dicks stuffed in it all of a sudden is the intermediate step, a pit stop on the highway to oblivion. According to the professor, eventually the universe will unravel and collapse. Forget about those large beasts from the Ice Age, the wooly mammoths and sabertooths that once roamed the earth: our species, with its knowledge, artworks, cultures, and history, will disappear. Every species that has braved the many extinctions in our planet will be wiped out as if they never existed. We’re facing the end of everything.”

I swipe away the layer of sweat that has accumulated on my forehead.

“Shouldn’t you be, you know, fucking pissed at the bunnyman? After all, his gadget set off the final countdown.”

The gooey mass heaves as if shrugging.

“Maybe I am angry about this reality unravelling thing, but not enough to shit on the professor for achieving something brilliant.”

“He turned you into a slime-dripping slug that wallows in poisonous waste!”

“Unlike you, I don’t blame others for my psychological problems. I was warned not to mess with the machine twice, but I got greedy and ended up sneaking in for more. Hell, its own creator couldn’t keep away, even though he understood the dangers. And honestly, I wasn’t too thrilled about my existence in this dimension. All the excitement I experienced in my youth was gone like an amputated limb. Now I don’t need to feel trapped by the walls of this office.”

Although I raise an eyebrow at the blob, I’d love to be freed from the bane of my existence. One of these days I will ask Jacqueline to pay my bills.

“I can see the appeal of never having to work again. Maybe you were meant to become a wet heap of organic garbage.”

“Anyway,” the blob gurgles, “now that you’re in possession of the relevant facts, you should understand your purpose, your role to play in the grand tapestry of existence: your unhinged self must prevent humanity’s extinction, along with the universe’s collapse into eternal nothingness.”

His words hang in the air like a noose I’m expected to slip my neck into. I rub my clammy palms up and down the sleeves of my shirt.

“Save humanity?” I echo in a hollow voice. “Save the universe?”

Does this filthy species deserve to be saved?

Most of my interactions with people have been detrimental to my sanity. The cutting remarks, the dismissive glances, the never-ending ridicule; a tide whose bitter taste has always lingered in my mouth. Even as a child, I wanted to disappear from the mind of everyone who knew me, to live isolated in some mountain sanctuary, a fortress of solitude where I could escape from a world that was nothing but cruel to me. What stake do I have in humanity’s salvation? Why should I care about a universe hell-bent on tearing itself apart?

Author’s note: today’s songs are “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin, and “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire.

I keep a playlist with all the songs mentioned throughout the novel so far. A hundred and sixty songs. Check them out.

Sometimes all it takes is an audiochapter to lift your mood. Check out the audiochapter for this one.

This chapter is shorter than usual, but I have been halving my writing time because I have to study for an upcoming exam that will determine if they’ll keep calling me for work. It’s not like these chapters will correspond one-to-one with the structure of the final novel, whenever I get around to self-publish it.