Narrator/Reader (6:47)
Don't make me get into the grammar of the situation. He throws aside holy socks and an equally holy pair of boxes and we're just stuck with this mess. My bosses want me to make you go away, and I want. I want. There should be something I could do to at least help, you know. But the terraforming is over. Nothing to be done about that. The exorcism is pretty much done too. A slight exaggeration for dramatic effect, maybe, but hey, there's nothing either of us could do about your friends except see them laid properly to rest. And if you've got something to say to whoever out there is still living and gives a shit about you, you're being kind of weird about withholding it at this point, since I already know way more about you than you wanted. There's nothing in his drawer that qualifies under any definition of clean. He balls up the dirty odds and ends briefly in his fists, then wads them back into the drawer and slams it shut. I don't know how to help you. I don't know what you want. I don't know anything. I guess I want what any dead thing wants. Ozzy's shoulders bounce helplessly up and down the impossible. Hob sits down harder than he meant to against the drawers, banging his back against the raised edges. Something Ozzy said before pops back into his head and he repeats it all. Orbits decay in time. You're helping me more than you think, says Ozzy as he pops like a soap bubble. Hobbs sits where he's landed for a while, sifting the silence through his thoughts. By any objective measure he's alone either way, but the texture is different when Ozzie's not there. When his leg starts to fall asleep, he makes himself stand up and puts on the least grubby shirt. Though Hob woke early, after his early bedtime, he's not moving fast in the morning, every part of his body expresses its regret in the form of delayed onset muscle soreness. There's something in the module medikit that helps speed up muscle repairs, but its effects are far from instantaneous, and it's a good two hours before Hob drags himself back outside. This CFM isn't going to exorcise itself any more than Ozzie is. It's only when he catches the first glint of ghostlight through the brush that he remembers he hasn't spent any more time on developing his new illusion. Well, there's something to be said for the rawness and on the fly reaction of improvisation. He ducks into the COVID of a massive yellow flowered bush and throws the bones of the illusion up behind him as he goes. At first it's only a smaller version of the cfm, smooth nubbins in place of leafy cabbages, a paler, more delicate color than the full grown specimen. It crawls around in wandering circles, bumping curiously into trees and plants. Hob's careful to make sure it avoids his hiding place. As he watches, he feels his tongue between his teeth. It needs something a little more touch. He shifts the connection to the source, drawing a little harder, and the baby CFM's vague path takes on new urgency, frantic geometric patterns in place of curious circles. Its grey white skin flushes even lighter, and Hob adds a noise. There's nothing in the compendium about the vocalizations of juvenile CFMs, but he takes the sounds he's heard the adult versions make and modulates them, altering the frequency, smoothing the texture. A mewling, bleating tremolo echoes in the clearing, and Hobbs heart clenches in spite of himself. He wrote and directed this little movie, so it's pretty fucking silly to let it upset him. It's supposed to upset someone else, after all. The haunt crashes into the clearing, bellowing a challenge, shrieking terror of its own. A cacophony of voices from various CFM orifices, but the meaning is pretty clear. Some CFM version of you come after my kid, I'll wreck your shit. The shrilling dies away as the CFM recognizes piecemeal that the juvenile is here in front of it, alive with. Well, alive and apparently unharmed. It broadcasts another ear splitting challenge to the woods around it as it approaches the juvenile for a gentle nudge. But of course, when it reaches Hob's illusion, it slides straight through. There's nothing there to be touched. There's nothing there to do the touching with. It retreats backward, shrilling and its cabbage appendages dilate fully flexing and flaring, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Hob sends the illusion after it. What does a hopeful baby squeak sound like coming from a cfm? He makes his best attempt as the baby CFM trundles forward, its smaller body struggling over the rough ground. All over the universe, small creatures want a parent when they're lost and confused and frightened, and this make believe exo is no different. When the haunt runs out of room to retreat, Hob lets the illusion roll right into it, then triggers the fear trill sound over again. Why won't you help me? It seems to beg. What did I do wrong? The CFM rolls in panicked circles as if to flee. But then it stops. With the oscillation of its own body, it begins to dig. Dirt flies around it in wide round waves. Some of it pelts Hob in his hiding place. Some of it rustles like rain in the foliage. The CFM stops. It opens the cabbages on the side nearest the juvenile, and it closes them again. It cools once more, a vocalization Hob hasn't heard before, a croak that slides up and down the musical scale. Its child is unreachable beyond its ability to touch or comfort. A biological imperative to make more of yourself, to protect the fruits of your reproductive labor. There's a reason this thread is woven so thoroughly into life forms across a thousand planets. The fundamental disconnect is enough to penetrate into whatever limited version of a brain the CFM has. It understands and it accepts. What else can it do? At this point, the whole world seems to squeeze the swell of source beneath a successful exorcism. Hob winds his fingers into the branches of the brush as if the haunt could take him with it. When it goes, he blinks and everything around him releases the breath it was holding. When he opens his eyes, the CFM is gone, gone, gone, and he can feel the difference as reality loosens up around him. He's witnessed a successful crossing a time or two in his career. He knows what they're like. He lets go of the baby CFM illusion as he stands and shakes off the debris of leaves and dirt. His knees pop to let him know they're not happy about how long he spent on them. If you're going to haunt me, he announces to the clearing, do it to my face. Please. Ozzy walks out of the shadows, a full human shape outlined in ghost light, and steps to the hole left by the cfm. Man, you're really running short of options. I've never been particularly food Motivated. I'm ace and I never had kids or younger sibs. What else you got up your sleeve? Hobbs sits beside him, letting his feet hang down into this donut shaped hollow. He wonders what drove the CFM to dig it, trying to hide from its inevitable fate, making a hiding place for the little one it couldn't protect otherwise. It reminds him of all the graves he dug yesterday, but nothing in the compendium suggests that CFMs or any other EXOs here had anything like funeral practices. A waste of energy on the CFM's part in any case. But then he's neither a xenobiologist nor a psychologist. Nor a xenopsychologist. If there's another explanation, it's past his understanding. Maybe I'm stuck with you, he says. Ozzy glances sidelong at him with a sad, quizzical smile that makes this a little easier for Hob. You see your opening and you step through it. He who hesitates. Etc. Etc. Something's lost already and it's not going to be Hob. He takes the data safe out of his pocket and sets it on the ground next to himself on the lip of the hollow. Or maybe I'm not Ozzy lurches. Is that of course you weren't food motivated? Not to an exorcism worthy extent, but work motivated? Hob takes a hammer out of his other pocket and holds it contemplatively in one hand. That I could believe. No. No. Ozzie drops down into the hole, putting him eye to eye with Hobb. Hobb meets his translucent gaze indifferently. Don't do it. The footage is. You've seen what the footage is like. Nightmare shit, Hobb agrees. The hammer slips a little in his grasp. He tightens his fingers around its handle. You think that matters? People care about human lives. Not exos, not fucking CFMs, not dragonflowers, not Matisseran serpents, not Skymoss or jellybags or scissor toads or 12 fucktillion weird little microbes. He looks away from Ozzy toward the data safe. It's all acceptable losses to them. Whose mind do you think you were going to change? Yours would have been a good start. The data safe rings resoundingly when Hob lands the first blow on it. It's designed to absorb shock, after all. Designed to take a hit. He strikes it again. Stop. Ozzie paws uselessly at through Hobb's arms, the hammer, the data safe. A faint crack opens in its case as Hob lands another blow. Fuck. Stop. Make me. Hob brings his hand high and puts his whole shoulder into one more blow. The data safe shatters. Tiny crystalline pieces go flying into the brush, onto hobbs clothes, into the hole. No. Ozzie howls and grabs for the shards where they've fallen. He scoops up a handful of dirt and wasted computer parts, lifting them towards his chest. For a moment Ozzie is a black hole, one that pulls everything in the clearing toward him. His fists close and Hob leans away, bracing for a blow. The only thing that hits him is Ozzy's resigned, weary look. Then the dirt tumbles through the space where Ozzie used to be, and Hob is alone. He waits, hearing his own loud breathing in his ears. Ozzie hasn't crossed, not yet. It hasn't worked, but it's working, he tells himself. He stands up when he's sure his legs will take his weight and flings the hammer as far into the woods as he can. It crashes metal against wood and some kind of typical earth origin woodland. Hellbeast chatters its outrage at him. He wonders whether he'll see Ozzie again before he goes. Neither possibility is comforting. He takes out his compendium and calls up the files he pulled from the data safe. He watches wave after wave of purifying light wash over CFMs and banana turtles and cloud weed, peeling them out of existence layer by layer, until it's like they were never here at all. It's been a long time since he saw Terraforming from this end. He doesn't like it any more than he did the last time. Remaking a world in your image is only a good idea if you aren't ugly as shit to begin with. If Jara is surprised that Hob makes a vidcool request to go over the day's progress reports and requests she doesn't show it together they catch up on all the minutiae that Hob has let slide. He asks how the team is, and she says they're fine. She asks how the ghost is, and he hesitates. I'm working on him, he tells her finally, and she nods as if that's all she needs or wants to hear. Before she can cut out of the call, he catches her with one more thing, and this time even Jaara can't mask a startled expression. You used to be a terraformer too, way back when. It's not a question, but Jara answers it. I was. She's already back in control of an alert but unconcerned expression for a while. What made you switch over to cleanup? She hesitates, and he knows. She's trying to figure out what he expects of her, what he wants to hear. Finally she says, reluctantly, I was having trouble sleeping during jobs. Bad dreams? No. She looks down at her hands or whatever's in them, just off screen, then back at Hob. It was the noise. You know what I mean. He does. He can handle hearing that noise one on one, but a worldwide chorus? An entire planet's death scream in unison? It's too much. Even too much, apparently, for Jaara. Okay, he says. Thanks. Good work over there. Keep it up. Okay? She says. No thanks, boss. No, you too. She ends the call first and he sits with the dark compendium in his hand for a while before he gets up in search of a meal mix and a clean fork. He should get out of bed. He should figure out what it'll take to finish Ozzie off. He should eat something. He should plot out a rendezvous point for Jira and the rest of the crew. He gets up and pees. He goes back to bed. He watches the footage from Ozzie's drones over and over again. He scans through the Deadship's maintenance logs, gives up and directs a script to scan through them and ping his overlay with the results. He watches the footage again while he waits, closes his eyes, sees dragonflowers and CFMs disintegrating side by side in the darkness of his imagination. When he opens his eyes again, a notification is blinking to let him know that his search has run. He wanted it to be company sabotage, wanted an obvious flashing here there be monsters neon red flag, but analysis suggests otherwise. The ship was cobbled together with what a bunch of starry eyed simp believers could scrounge up with spare change. They'd fixed a faulty connection between gas exchange and ventilation systems a few times before, but this time the failure was catastrophic. A spark, an explosion, an impact crater that would soon be smoothed over and tidied up by an in progress terraformation event. He would have known what to do if there were obvious bad guys. If there were obvious bad guys, it would be easier not to be one of them. Ozzie reappears while Hob is in the head, his dick in one hand and his compendium in the other. Shit. Hob bobbles the compendium and narrowly avoids soaking it in piss. You shouldn't use your comp in the toilet, scolds Ozzy mildly. His voice is different coming from farther away. It's getting harder to stay, I wanted to say. His ghost light throbs like a pulsar. Well, fuck you first of all. And also goodbye. You can't. Hob zips his fly and turns the compendium screen to face Ozzie. One of his rewatchers is frozen there, a battle slug curling in on itself, its tissues unravelling even as it hunkers protectively down. You can't go yet. You have to tell me where to send it. Oh, says Ozzie softly. He reaches as if to take the compendium, then remembers. His hand falls back to his side. Really? You think it's going to matter? I think it matters to you, hob says. Ozzie studies him for a moment. Hob can see his own face in the mirror through the back of Ozzie's head. He looks even more than usual, like shit. Okay, says Ozzie finally. Sure. Give me access to the relay. I have a destination code. Hob enters his company password and looks up, waiting for Ozzie to give him the next string of information. Instead, Ozzie frowns intensely, mustering the emotions that still tie him to this world, his last reserves of want and need and hope. He reaches out and takes the compendium from Hob's hands. This might take a second, he says, as if from the other side of a tunnel. Sorry. After keying in a few strokes one handed, he thinks better of it and sets the compendium on the corner of the tiny countertop, tongue between his teeth. With furious concentration he enters the destination code one digit at a time. The air is heavy, so heavy Hob can barely breathe. He holds onto the clean water pipe for balance. Ozzy finishes the code and straightens up. For what it's worth, I don't think I'm the only one it's going to matter to. He gives Hob one more lopsided grin and he stops. Stops existing, stops haunting, just plain stops. The air goes back to normal, but Hob still can't breathe. He listens, but all he can hear is his own all but fibrillating heart. This is the first time in his life it's ever been weird to be alone in the john. When he's sure he can pick up the compendium again without another risk of dropping it in the urinal, he scoops it carefully off the counter. The destination code has been input and the Compendium recognizes it as valid, but Ozzie fucked off to the afterlife before pressing Send. He's left that for Hob to do. Asshole, says Hob, and laughs, maybe a little hysterically, but he's the only one who has to hear it and covers the button with his thumb. He skulks around the habitat, waiting for something to happen. But of course nothing does. Data takes time to travel. Vid takes time to be seen. Difficult conversations take time to hold. He picks at a cold meal mix and goes to bed early, leaving his compendium in the head so that he can get maybe his last good night's sleep for a long time. When he wakes up and sidles tentatively into the toilet, he's got a dozen message notifications waiting for him, all blinking urgent. Several from hq, a few more from reporters or government officials or whatever. He glances through them. Interview request, a demand for official testimony. Also, he's super fired. One of the notices from HQ lets him know that the appropriate section of process has been triggered and that he has been logged out from all access to company files, machinery, even the habitat itself. If he leaves, the missive warns he's not getting back in. He makes himself a cup of tea a and goes to sprawl in the grass and drink it. It's a nice day out, maybe rain later, one of those brief mid afternoon spritzes that seem to keep this planet watered. But for now it's peaceful and the sky is a striking lavender blue. By the time the transport rolls up, he's long finished his tea and started to wish he'd stayed inside so that he could have brewed a second cup. About time, he calls to Jara as she steps down from the driver's seat. I'm supposed to take you into company custody, boss. She doesn't sound mad at him or even annoyed. Embarrassed, maybe at the situation, or maybe just because of that reflexive boss that slipped out. Makes sense. He tosses the dregs from the empty plastic cup over his shoulder. Are you going to? Why did you do it? Not like her to answer a question with a question. But he's already set the precedent on going rogue. The people who want to know what it's like, they already know the rest don't give a shit. Why bother? I don't know, he tells her honestly. He contemplates the bottom of his teacup. People read their fortunes in the bottoms of teacups, don't they? He read that somewhere, but he's not sure what a single red brown droplet means to him. I guess I wanted to give a shit a little bit of one. Her perfect posture sags a little. Probably only Hob would have noticed. She sits down next to him on the grass and digs her fingers into the topsoil. What now? She asks. Any other pointless nonsense you need to get out of your system. They chase all the critters they can away from the crash site and a couple square kilometres around it. Rabbits and chipmunks, birds, and even one snake that scares the absolute shit out of Hob on his way out of there. His compendium tells him it probably wasn't poisonous, and he didn't exactly linger for a good hard look at the thing, but that would have been quite a way to go, wouldn't it? Only after they're sure things are fairly clear do they pull on their full protective suits. The things are useful, but too bulky when you want to move fast. What about the trees? J' Ara asked wistfully, laying her gloved hand on a birch tree that's grown around the scar left by the wrecked ship's passage. We can't move any of them, nor can they move all of the worms, the microbes, the crawly little nasty things that burrow through the soil on a subconscious level. Trees want to go on living just as much as anything else does. Hob shrugs helplessly, and J' Ara rests her head against the white bark for a moment before moving on. Are you ready? Hob asks when they've spent about as much energy as they can afford clearing things out. The sun is high in the sky and the wrecked ship doesn't offer much shelter. Sure, she lies gamely. She puts out her hand and he squeezes it convulsively. You might think you're ready for a terraformation, fresh out of training and ready to unsave the world, but no one really is. The light is too bright, rolling outward from the nexus of their joined hands. Hob's suit tries to protect his eyes by darkening his visor, but he double blinks to dismiss the change he wants to see in the flare. The trees bleach to clawing skeletal hands. Untold trillions of unseen lives panic as they dissolve back into the source they came from not so very long ago. Hob tries to ignore the noise, tries to tell himself it's different this time, but the familiarity comes at him from an unexpectedly tender angle. Reaching into the source to create life rather than its illusion doesn't feel so different. This is an illusion. Plus really take your idea of a CFM and then surrender control. Let your wants and demands recede. Let its own break through. Give it enough source not just to seem, but also to touch. Not just to sing, but also to listen. New foliage shoulders up through the crumbling remnants of chestnut and mulberry yellow leaves serrated and sharp enough to cut yourself on. Out of sight, strange and different single celled life pulses into existence between grains of soil, within the veins of plants. There's a faint ish greenish tinge to the air. Hob knows it's poisonous, but he still wonders what it would smell like, how heavy it would sit in his lungs without intervention. It'll just blend with the human friendly air outside this place. He cocks his head, feels around for the source whose touch he knows so well, and calls up a spinning, stirring wind. It spirals up from around his feet and spins wider, pelting him and J' Ara with clots of dirt and broken bits of vegetation until its radius expands past them. Under his concentration the wind swells wider, wide enough to wrap around this entire wacky little project of theirs. When he lets go, it stays in place, a spinning globe of gray dirt, flecked currents, lazy spirals, storms in miniature, curl through and collide. He's never seen anything like it before. He's certainly never made anything like it before. It's pretty, in a fucked up kind of way. He hopes it gets to last a little while. With the perimeter set, he lets J' Ara put the finishing touches on what they've created. As she works, he begins to record on his compendium. This is a preserve, he declares, the compendium pointed back toward himself and held at arm's length. Put up walls, put up barriers, but do not fucking touch a cabbage or on these cabbage faced motherfuckers heads or we will put up a fight. Yetall's calling. I was supposed to be back with you by now, probably. J' Ara glances at her compendium, then shoves it deeper into a pouch on her suit. The work has left her face grey and clammy with sweat. Hob can only guess what he looks like right now. It's easier than speculating about what Yetz wants to say. Fuck you, boss. You're under arrest, boss. Where do I sign up for your doomed ass little rebellion, boss? Won't they just plough it under again? Don't know. The shipwreck is gone, the buried bodies presumably too. There's a swell of purplish soil he thinks, he thinks where the wreck lay, but it's hard to be sure now that he's overwritten the landscape so thoroughly. I don't know, Jara. There are a lot of things he doesn't know, and a few things he does. One is that this isn't enough. The other is that it's better than nothing. Has to be a yellowish flash illuminates the freaky alien jungle, but it's no ghost light, only a battle slug warning off other challenges in its territory. It matters, he says aloud. He's not sure who he's trying to reassure because J' Ara doesn't look like she believes him and he doesn't sound like he believes himself. Maybe the battle slug feels better for hearing it. He wonders if they should stay here and try to guard this weird little zoo, try answering some of those interview requests before they're both locked out. Maybe just for now, maybe just to you and me. But it matters, she echoes, and it sounds truer coming from her mouth instead of his. They sit side by side on a stumpy, rubbery chunk of vegetation that doesn't seem to be secreting anything that'll eat through their suits. Idly, J' Ara pats the plant matter under her legs. The stump doesn't seem to mind. You want to talk about metrics while we're waiting? Hobb asks after a while, and Jara chokes on an incredulous laugh. He pictures shiploads of Sitharan refugee settlers corralled behind safety perimeters until the secondary nexus can be cleared. Maybe someone will catch a glimpse of a CFM from behind the barriers, and maybe that person will come up with a better name than Cabbage Face Motherfucker. Oh damn. He should have brought something to carve the crash victims names into one of the quasi trees in the jungle. I don't think we're going to make deadline. They're going to dock our pay, probably. Neither Ja' Ara nor Hob have enough energy left to laugh at that. All they can do is cave vaguely in towards each other, shoulder to shoulder, partly out of exhaustion and partly because the shape of the stump thing makes this kind of lean inevitable. From out of sight among the wool trees and pipe orange plants, a trumpeting call rises and another harmonizes with it. Two more calls, smaller and shriller, echo the first set, a mated pair of CFMs and a couple of young to round out the set, just like I always say. Hob cranes his neck for a glimpse of the CFMs, which stay stubbornly out of view. The third week of an exorcism campaign is the absolute fucking worst. Yeah. He can see the crescent moon glint of Jara's smile through the sweat fogged visor. But you're leaving off the next part. I am. Hob racks his empty brain and comes up, unsurprisingly, empty handed. What else do I always say? She clinks her helmet against his, that if we can survive the third week, the rest is cake. That might have been an exaggeration on my part. Hob cautions and clinks her in return. They both subside into silence, waiting, listening, watching the yellow sun wrap itself up in the green clouds and settle to sleep beyond the horizon. The CFMs have moved away, it seems, and if there are any ghosts lingering out there, well, they're quiet tonight.
