Forever Curious, Part 19
Chapter 5: The Berserker Forest
Well, that’s indeed an answer to the existence of the megafauna’s hive mind, Na-Yeli, ever the Slow CEO, can’t help but think, but it doesn’t explain where these ‘superposed aliens’ themselves come from. Something to worry about later, as the preparations for the ritual continue.
Na-Yeli and the wooden contraption encapsulating the Moiety Alien are lowered from the trebuchet tree. Na-Yeli is driven, and the Moiety Alien is rolled onto the giant leather pouch. Na-Yeli doesn’t resist, and neither do the Über-Gorillas guiding her seem surprised that she doesn’t try to make a run for it as if accepting to be the—literal—sacrificial goat is the most natural thing in the world.
Staying cool and quite happy that nobody noticed the little escape hole she drilled in the Moiety Alien’s prison, Na-Yeli takes her place, right next to the Moiety Alien, on the launching seat. The long ropes from the trebuchet tree are tied to the big square leather receptacle and the launching animals appear in the square clearing as the mini-Sun rises in a partly cloudy sky.
A communal meal is eaten at high noon. For this special event, hunter, and prey, carnivore, omnivore and herbivore delve into pre-prepared food while ignoring each other’s hunt-and-flee instincts. Then, to Na-Yeli’s bafflement, they perform stretching exercises and sparring rituals in preparation for the all-important launch. They didn’t do this at the previous ritual, so is this special? Because now they’re sacrificing aliens?
As the mini-Sun is slowly moving to the West, the multitude of animals bite, grip, or otherwise get hold of the many leather strips connected to the giant leather pouch. They’re waiting for the sign—a sign Na-Yeli isn’t attuned to hear—as the tension mounts in a deafening silence.
The sacrifice hymn, haunting and exhilarating, rears its melodic head. It wasn’t just the wounded, sacrificial animals singing it, Na-Yeli now realizes, it was all of them. Looking at the branches and leaves of the nearby trees, swaying and vibrating in tune with the poignant theme, it seems to trees are partaking, in their own way, as well.
Step by step, the animals are moving back. The ropes are stretched tight and the two branches of the tallest tree in this mini-world are bent back, bit by bit. Na-Yeli leans back in the pouch, and signals for the Moiety Alien to come out at her signal. Belatedly, she hopes it—and she—will be able to take the sudden acceleration. But if they’ve both been carefully selected for this trip—and she certainly was—then this should be something they should be able to endure.
The evocative hymns rise in time with the slow stretching of the super-sized slingshot, an elegiac tune as taut as the long ropes from the trebuchet tree. A tension in the air like the sudden humidity in the atmosphere before the onset of thunder. The song accelerating like Peer Gynt’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” on acid—savage like an upstaged avatar—mixed with Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” and powered by the guitars from Hell. Megafauna muscles vibrate with stress, ropes and thick leather are strained with tension, the air is filled with a taunting crescendo. Something’s got to give.
Then, as the fever pitch is reached and both the trebuchet tree’s main branches almost appear to snap, the myriad of animals let go as one and Na-Yeli and the Moiety Alien—who shrunk/expanded itself out of its wooden prison a sparse second before the launch—are whiplashed into the sky.
The intensity of the event has etched itself deep into Na-Yeli’s soul and the snap and the massive acceleration of the launch push her over the edge of pain and oblivion. As the Slow CEO faints, KillBitch rises to the fore, utterly animated, bellowing a primal scream. Top this, Bitches!
No time to enjoy the ride, she has to act blindingly fast. As they are released from the leather launching pouch and the acceleration dwindles, she shape-shifts into a more aerodynamic shape, gesturing for the Moiety Alien to stay behind her back. Then she soars, air under her wings and sharply turns to the left, barely missing the mini-Sun, its intense radiation burning on her—radiation-shielded—belly. Nobody morphs as fast and furious—and effectively—as KillBitch.
Getting a real close-up view, KillBitch—and her instruments—now see that the mini-Sun is actually scraping the sky; that is the small sun is rolling along the upper barrier of the layer, like a spherical chariot of fire riding along the curve of the sky.
The Slow CEO would then understand that the mini-Sun’s heat is not just from chemical fire, but also from the spaghettification of its outer layer as it touches the impenetrable, forbidding barrier. Molecules are spaghettified to their atomic constituents and rain down—invisibly—from the sky. Ashes to atomic ashes, dust to disintegrated dust. This looks more and more like a closed system—Na-Yeli would muse, later, but KillBitch is only preoccupied with survival.
So she makes a few close turns around the mini-Sun—taking care to stay clear of the barrier, as she does remember the close encounter she had with it in the previous layers—to take a few extra recordings, just because she can. Then she gets overconfident and gets too close to the mini-Sun with one of her wings, just as a mini-solar flare erupts from it. Some of the metamaterials catch fire and an overpowering plasma pulse shoots through the control wires, destroying them.
KillBitch loses control of her right wing and is now circling down in an accelerating spiral. If KillBitch had any knowledge of Icarus, the legend would have said ‘I told you so’ to her. Now she’s just going down, faster and faster, cursing all the way.
Somehow the Moiety Alien gets under her and breaks her fall, somewhat. Not quite enough as she keeps going in her downward spiral, but now the speed feels survivable. They crash—why the Moiety Alien stays with her even through that is something also KillBitch doesn’t get—with KillBitch’s non-functioning wing and its very sharp edges pointing downwards. The wing stays rigid as the air is filled with a big rip and KillBitch and the Moiety Alien don’t crash land on the forest floor, but rather crash almost right through it, into a crackling, flickering light show below …
Ultimately, Na-Yeli’s fall through the forest floor—which isn’t quite as thick as she would’ve thought, hence the megafauna’s oversized feet—is broken because her outstretched, heavily damaged right wing bumps into ... something. After the fall was broken, and there was no imminent, life-threatening situation, her adrenalin wore off, KillBitch retreated and Na-Yeli—the Slow CEO—returned. As all the artificial nerves of her right wing have burned out when it touched the mini-Sun, Na-Yeli feels nothing except a minor vibration.
Because KillBitch has retreated, Na-Yeli assumes she’s back in safe waters and has time to mull things over. So much new information, so many fresh avenues to explore. But the smell of something burning brings her to her senses, as that something burning may very well be ... her right wing.
Stuck halfway through the undergrowth, hanging in the balance as it were, she aims some of her cameras at her right wing’s end, only to see that it’s touching the lower barrier of this layer, the metamaterials of her wing’s exoskin spaghettifying away. She morphs claws on her functioning left wing and feet, gets a firm grip on the forest floor, and slowly pulls herself up and away from the lower barrier that’s barely two meters below the undergrowth.
I should not make a habit of this, Na-Yeli thinks, getting addicted to spaghettification might make me the stupidest junkie, ever. But if the inner barrier is so close, something else might be going on. Na-Yeli sends in a few Kittis to see exactly what. The things they see are enlightening.
Matter from the forest floor keeps falling onto the inner barrier, spaghettifying into its atomic constituents. Through the developed heat and radiation these atoms rise up and are re-absorbed by the giant trees, who seem to have developed a sort of reverse-root-cum-photosynthesis system. As above, so below, Na-Yeli muses, this fills in the large gap in the ecosystem’s energy budget. Then add the odd, captured alien—shot into the mini-Sun, if it’s unlucky—and this Berserker Forest has some extra matter to maintain its mad equilibrium.
At some point in the future, the evolutionary paths of the mega-flora and -fauna’s DNA and their superposed partners might diverge, and then it’ll be interesting to see who might prevail. But Na-Yeli has bigger fish to fry and can’t hang around to find out. While the Slow CEO is fascinated by life in this layer, she also has more pressing matters at hand.
Such as fixing the now mostly dead appendage that is her right wing. Like getting extra materials while the getting is good—the undergrowth is rich in minerals, rare metals, and other volatiles—like getting away before the megafauna starts hunting for them, and tries to shoot them into their mini-Sun, again.
But before Na-Yeli can shape-shift her exoskin into a more bipedal form and haul her alien partner to make a run for it, she looks up to see that she and the Moiety Alien are surrounded by the megafauna. Oh well, Na-Yeli thinks, this time I’m not gonna wait through the night, but make our escape well before that. She rolls her eyes. Just watch this bitch climb to the very top of your trebuchet tree, and then jump off it as she shape-shifts into a glider, up, up, and away to the North Pole.
Then she notices the way the Ultragiraffes, Zeppelinfants, Stomposaurs, Über-Gorillas, and other megafauna watch her and the Moiety Alien. Not like hunters chasing prey. Not like guardians happy to re-catch their quarry. But with a look of ... respect? Maybe even ... awe?
Before settling down for the night near the polar circle, Na-Yeli gets down from one of the Stomposaurs that accompany her and the Moiety Alien and starts to unfold the two huge woolen blankets—or at least the closest thing, using mainly local hemp—that she’d prepared. Or, more exactly, that she programmed the large array of mini-bots to convert from the hemp plants they gathered along the way. With the help of the Moiety Alien—how it is able to hold on to one side of the blanket is beyond her—they cover the shivering animals that normally never venture beyond the tropics. The Stomposaurs, feeling that their temperatures rise back to normal levels, nod their heads in appreciation—a gesture they copied from Na-Yeli and the Moiety Alien.
After Na-Yeli has fed the huge carnivores with the preserved meat of a few herbivores, she prepares her own broth, which now has some carefully sterilized, yet fresh ingredients from the Berserker Forest. She’ll get back to the hyper-recycled stuff when she has to. As the mini-Sun sets, they go to sleep, as they have a lot of work to do, tomorrow. Na-Yeli’s sleep is fitful, and undisturbed by the ghosts of the past. Her stocks are fully replenished, her batteries fully charged, and she will be as well-rested as she’ll ever be. Dog knows what awaits them in the next layer.
But first, they have to get to the Diaphragm Gate. As she reminisced about events just before she went asleep, Na-Yeli had a little inkling. The megafauna has large feet to avoid falling through the undergrowth towards the inner barrier. It’s also why they can walk so silently. But these large, uncovered feet will get terribly cold on the North Pole’s ice. So she reprogrammed her mini-bots—she hadn’t recycled them yet—to convert the remainder of the hemp (thank dog she brought too much of it, as these Stomposaurs can carry a lot) into eight large, thickly insulated shoes.
It takes her a while to show her intention with the shoes to the Stomposaurs. They finally get the gist of it as she gestures them—and her wish is almost like a command to them—to put their large snouts in the permafrost, feeling the cold. Then r
epeat it with a shoe covering their snout. As a kind of understanding dawns on them, they let her put on the shoes, one by one.
Then she demonstrates how they can take them off—they’ll need to, once they return to the tropics—and finally, they can be on their way. Yet Na-Yeli doesn’t mind the delay, she’s quite enjoying herself in the Berserker Forest layer. However, duty beckons and they head for the North Pole.
Having arrived at the very North Pole itself, Na-Yeli triple-checks the coordinates of her instruments and then marks the exact position of North on the ice. Then she lowers the makeshift jackhammer she manufactured before they left, carried by the other Stomposaur. Luckily, the ice is only about thirty meters thick here—she measured the distance to the outer barrier with her lidar and radar just before they arrived—so it shouldn’t take their giant companions that much works to pierce through it. First, Na-Yeli uses a telescopic torch to anchor the central pin as deep in the ice as possible. Then she connects the circular jackhammer and ties the two Stomposaurs to it while making sure they have the silencers she’s prepared in their ears, as the jackhammer will be loud. At her command, they begin walking a circle, chasing each other’s backs.
The hacksaw-cum-ratchet mechanism she designed is now cutting a large circle in the ice. It can only go a few meters deep, so when it has gone as far as it can go, she disconnects the Stomposaurs, takes out the equipment, and lowers some home-made TNT in the central bore and a few choice other positions, where she drills small holes with her torch. Then she leads the Stomposaurs and the Moiety Alien a safe distance away from the very North Pole, gestures the Stomposaurs to sit down. She waits until the Stomposaurs have lowered themselves on their haunches, sets the silencers in their ears to a higher setting, then detonates the TNT.
Jolted by the explosion, the Stomposaurs quickly get up, but by then Na-Yeli makes shushing sounds—which they probably don’t hear, but she can’t help herself—and calming gestures. Incredibly, they overrule their fleeing instinct and don’t run away. After they’ve sufficiently cooled down, Na-Yeli leads them to the—now somewhat lower—North Pole again, and sets up the cutting equipment for a somewhat smaller circle, in this way preparing a step-terraced construction that makes ascending—and descending—easier for both her and the Stomposaurs.
After repeating the procedure five times, at a depth of about twenty-nine meters, the unmistakable circle of light of the transitional portal becomes visible through the transparent ice. Na-Yeli uses some more of her home-made TNT to blow it free—no chance she’ll blast through the lower barrier nor through the mysteriously selectively permeable membrane—and prepares a few Kittis (she even had time to clone a few new ones to replace the ones that went missing when entering the ‘Sea of Hyperwaves’ layer) to check out the other side.
She sends them in, programmed to report back after ten minutes. In the meantime, she leads the Stomposaurs out of the ice mine they’ve created, uses all possible gestures and sounds she can think of to express how thankful she is—these creatures are just way too big to be hugged—and bids them goodbye. Does she imagine it, or are the Stomposaurs reluctant to leave? And is there a certain amount of kindness, maybe even affection in their expressions?
After their return from the mini-Sun, the collective mind of the megaflora and megafauna completely changed its attitude towards Na-Yeli and the Moiety Alien. As if they’ve passed some divine test—thank dog they never surmised that falling from the sky like a modern-day Icarus was definitely not her intention—they were treated like gods or at least chariots of the gods.
They were proffered food, a few Über-Gorillas offered to help with Na-Yeli’s malfunctioning right wing and the rest of the animals made it abundantly clear that they were willing to help the two of them in any way possible. An offer she couldn’t refuse, eventually deciding to take the two biggest Stomposaurs with them to help them drill through the North Pole’s ice.
It’s with a leaden heart that Na-Yeli sees the Stomposaurs recede in the distance, still wearing her oversized faux woollies and shoes. Her intense fascination with this layer—she baptized it ‘The Berserker Forest’—has turned into a deep appreciation. She’s come to love this place and would have dearly loved to stay longer, but she must continue with the mission.
—or—
Author’s note: the thrilling conclusion to the “Berserker Forest” chapter (or so I hope). For this (intermediate1) Grand Finale2 I couldn’t quite find the right artwork (which will need to be tailor-made, and so far I don’t have the funds (unless you spread the word far and wide…;-), so I re-used a few old favourites, and a few generic ones.
If you like this, spread the word! More followers will enable me to produce more material, both fiction and non-fiction. I’m concentrating on producing writing on this substack rather than self-promoting myself on every flavour of social media, so any references will be highly appreciated. And, of course, many thanks for reading!
The real one will be the last chapter, of course;
Says the Rush fan (2112);