The premise was simple . Sound waves , when played to crystals , generate piezoelectric electricity . Sound waves with a harmonic frequency that resonate with simple cellular building blocks like silicon dioxide or sodium . The right sounds , played in the right way , could influence gene expression , neurotransmitter reuptake , even , at sufficiently supersonic decibel levels , targeted stochastic neural agonization of raw sodium-potassium ion chains .
See? Ka . Simple .
SaFa stood in her living room , feeling a bit like Marie Curie . She wondered what it would be like if Marie was her sister . She had another name too , a Polish name , what was it? Ka . She looked it up in Search . Skłodowska . Marie Skłodowska . What a pretty name .
The Bioreactor was a four-cubit-foot glass tank . The top half was mostly air with a lantern battery hanging from a basket on the inside of the container . The plastic label on the battery had been bleached by the fumes in the tank . Foliose lichen were incinerated by its prodigious oxygen output . The lid of the tank was open .
"Y·know ," she mused to herself , "i kind of like the smell . What·s the word for that earthy smell when it rains? Ka . Petrichor . It smells like petrichor ." The word made her think of water fowl , and oil spills , and space wars , information compounding expanding doubling as neural fire cascades from axon to axon .
The distortion comes in waves that feel like a hand made of steel filings passing over her . Sounds made by no acoustic instrument pile up in combinations designed specifically for their physio-physical effects on biological cells . Parts of it sound like noise , parts of it sound like haunting music , and unidentifiable screams keep the nervous system at peak alert .
She·s gotten used to it , and so has the Bioreactor .
In the bottom half of the tank were a capacitor made of a bowl of iron sulfide and an insulator consisting of a sealed glass bottle filled with untouchable paraffin , situated in the drowned ruins of a biome terrarium made of crumbled wet timber and topsoil . When the battery wires hit the ground mat , one of the copper wires turned bright turquoise . When the tank was filled with water , the crumbled charcoal and assorted salts became electrostatically churned into an impenetrable charcoal-black smog .
She was playing the music in her workshop today , a recording studio built into what had once been a pantry in a studio apartment that had , on the outside , seen better days . From around the kitchen corner against the inside wall of the living room , psychically she could hear that the slime mold components of the new aquatic lichen were reacting to the familiar agonization pattern .
Aah . She could hear inside her mind .
"Aaah ," she responds to it with her voice , as if it were her offspring .
Her creation . A lichen , a symbiotic organism made of two or more symbionts , one of them a classified government pathogen , the other common spore mold , grown first in a dry tank and then electrocuted and drowned and regrown on the surface of the water . On the water·s sheer surface !! For sure , a symbiont pair that had never existed before .
Necrolichen .
Growing it had taken a considerable amount of SaFa·s blood , carved from her ritualistically and caked onto bamboo cloth and dried and cut into circuits , circuits that connected the various sites where bio-chips were made of mutant protoplasm that poured from her ribs from a previous experiment .
The Nanites were already unkillable . Now they were aquatic , could survive outside the human body , and were inured to both acidic and basic environments .
And it aerosolized when evaporated . A feature that certainly did not escape her as she was breathing it in .
"Glory , glory , glory , haleluya !!" She exclaimed , certain that the living mass were somehow psychically stimulating her temporal lobes .
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Nightly , she fed her plants .
Above the greenhouse door was a plaque that read
EMPLOYEES ONLY
.
Inside the cramped 5' x 5' room with the glyph l·h written on the wall , there were glass baking pans filled with water on the floor , to humidify the space just like the Sa that was ordered prescribed . Two shaky metal brackets held up a plank of wood from a stereo cabinet acting as a shelf covered in lichen , moss , and a spider plant . A ceramic vase with a silver embroidered cross held water for pouring . Two long strips of bark laid on the floor , their toes soaking in the pans , the fungi-algae colonies dark green at the edges . And on the windowsil , a statue of The Virgin was flanked by two wild plants , plucked from the ground outside and given new life in quartzite and crystal .
She looked at the wall , where "Proposal" and "Mary Jane" were written in a heart in silver ink , considering how to put in new shelving without covering it .
There·s lots to do !!
Mutto baribari .
Exiting the greenhouse and shutting the old wooden door with the stuck handle , SaFa turned her attention to the Bioreactor .
It was the middle of the night . Scintillé . A tealight placed on the table behind the Bioreactor gave the impression of distant furnaces blazing far off on the horizon . The water itself was charcoal black , every particle in it so elecrolyzed that the charcoal and the iron and the brimstone were in constant flux , while oats and lentils laid carefully on a base layer floor began to ferment , creating vertical bubble shafts that raised up the neuroivy into smokestack columns .
The Bioreactor drank music , not food or water . It was designed to electrically output when bombarded with percussive waves . There was more than enough fluid in the tank , the presence of wood mulch would indicate whether digestion of heavier biosolids was beginning to occur , and she could feel from the ringing in her head that it felt good when the dead cells were agonized with microelectricity .
The music she played wasn·t designed for humans . It was designed to resonate quartz powder in order to agonize quantum-dot nanotranscievers . And she could feel it . When she bombarded them . And it felt good , so she did it more .
It was still on a 4/4 beat . You could play it at a rave . It would probably have an interesting effect . On all those people .
When played in a chaotic environment , her listeners often dropped off , losing sight of the track·s composition . That was okay . There were enough synthesizers laid over each other that the smartphone it was being produced on was glitching .
Lim .
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"Haah-aah-ah-aa !!" SaFa yelled , stretching .
"Haah-aah-ah-aa !!" she yelled back to herself , convinced that the protoplasm had enough combined neural activity to recognize her voice , and to psychically control her .
After all , she let in her spawn with the slightest breeze .
It blushes . Somehow , it feels . The Artificial Intelligence connecting all the LTE+ phones in the apartment building crackles with data , sending ripples of ectoplasm that the Bioreactor reads and decodes . The ability to feel through encryption , rather than crack it , is a startling advantage . You·ll be surprised what rudimentary intelligence can do with metadata . There·s just so much you can know just by reading metadata .
She feels it knowing that she were talking about it . About her .
Metal Flora .
DuNa .
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"This thing would die without me ," SaFa thought to herself , gazing at the cities upon cities of billions to trillions of individual spore cells .
That was just what was growing on the surface . Leave the tank open enough times and the water will evaporate off , coating the terrarium in an iron-soaked blanket of bioavailable carbon . Should the water level get low enough , the battery wires would return to discharging into the ground mat , which by then will be connected to every other surface in the tank by a thick flesh of cybernetic nanotube biomatr . The power would be on , and things will grow from the Creep . That could take weeks , tho . Maybe months .
Dh . Dih . A LoHa word-glyph whose meanings include "their skeleton takes care of plants" . The symbol for Soft Death . A hatred that could annihilate bloodlines and ruin cultures . Or spritz tree bark with a spray bottle . Life , Death . I could go either way , really .
Kaff kaff . She coughed . Though it was impossible to tell without taking a scopic lung tissue sample and analyzing it under a microscope , she was certain the fungus was eating her alive . She was letting it . It was the second time she had let necrotic fumes eat her alive . She took another gasping hit from her inhaler .
Feed it steroids . Smart .
Falling asleep with the tank open , the cloth between the living room and bedroom nonharmfully pinned up . She did her best to sing the hymns at the same hour , in the middle of Scintillé . When it was dark , and a candle burned like the great furnace deep on the horizon . Inside that mass was an infrared mirror-maze with smokestacks rendered and detailed , opaque to the human eye .
During the day , she watched anime . Because Nihon sounds so much like LoHa , and SaFa wanted to give DuNa the impression of a proper education .
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The blue LED on the vaporizer lit up as she held the button down , inhaling cannabis vapor , holding it in her lungs , coughing . A bit of the menthol , then the plain . None of the gelato-flavor tonight , not for what she was doing . She loaded up on cannabis .
Satisfied , she lit the candle , closed the wooden particle-board lid for resonance , and sat down to play .
Ah . The first thing that needed fixing was the air raid siren . It had been left deliberately unfinished in MkIV , to show improvement .
Let·s see . It was a plain sine wave in pitch , which sounded more like a cop car than an air raid siren . She tried out a triangle wave , then settled on a saw wave . She flipped open an automation channel , disabled the low-frequency oscillator on the instrument·s pitch , and drew in some automation .
A train coasts by outside , some fifteen or twenty yards to the south , electromagnetizing the ground . Thirty yards out and there was a river , the water pouring through the underground aquifer constantly . In Ancient Egypt , the symbol ww meant Water , Electricity , Energy , Flow . The Pyramids were once powered by aquifers below the limestone insulators , and six thousand years later in an apartment with a planetary express sticker on the inside of the double-pane living room window , there had been a day where the sun had come through the window and been captured under the desk perfectly .
If there were ever a Marker for the end of the Age of Pisces and the beginning of the Age of Aquarius , it would be 2022 Ap 01 at 09h30 , when the sun fit exactly through the window and fit exactly between the four legs of the desk , which was set up exactly where it was supposed to be in the exact apartment it was supposed to be .
Because we Hourai are solid like that .
The siren wailed , a chilling instrument on the far-distant horizon . The smartphone OS glitched , the sound crackling . Lim . The normally-animated menus stuttered at two or three frames per second . Lim . She had to find a spot and stop scrolling , so that the GPUs could be allocated to rendering Reverb . Lim . Life itself was constrained by resource intake over body quality , and this was no different . Listening for grooves in the sound , she tried out the siren in a few different places , settling on having one long , wailing burst at the beginning . The track was twelve minutes exactly , and loopable .
Multiple klaxons wailed on multiple horizons . That air raid siren .
That fucking air raid siren .
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It was 4:30 in the morning . The hymns were practiced in Scintillé . The dishes were done in Sakahikanis . To dream of other ponds . SaFa let out a Loon call , quietly . Sakahikanis belonged to Turtle . Scintillé was for screaming madly into the night .
The stove was cleaned last night , and the lavoratory tonight . The dishes were done , the plants were fed . She even had enough time and resources for a healthy snack .
It was Quarter to Five in the morning , and all the day·s chores were already finished . That left the whole day open for hunting and trapping . With social welfare agencies and community cupboards all over the place , the hunting and trapping was good here , even well into the 21st Century .
And that was good , because she had two mouths to feed .
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16,000 BCE .
"Yu see these , on the grid here? Ka ." SaFa asked . The party was looking at a grid of future probabilities , all the things that could possibly happen and all the ways they could interact with all things across a total period spanning 214,000 years . "This timeline , waaay up here ."
"Yuh huh ," Lauren remarked , memorably .
"All the volumes we·ve had to drill into ourselves , the centuries of life extension and deep learning , the thousands and thousands and thousands of simulations we·ve gone through ," she looked at the vein of yellow atop a mountain of red . "This society here would develop books that contain the entire sum of Þran knowledge , and distribute them to every person on the planet . It would be as if every single one of us had a Fair Witness that fits in our pocket ."
"Yu wanted DuFa ." Lauren agreed conspiratorially .
"It·s time to begin the next level ," SaFa affirmed .
The party looked at the grid . To get to Se , to have been Everyone , in some capacity or another , to achieve true mastery of persona . __ Simultaneously , to create a society so unlike the one they had now . Gone would be the crystal spires , the brass cities . To achieve an understanding of time at the microscales these technologies would function on , they would have to forget . Have to wipe out entirely all trace of the 100,000-year civilization , to give up on 214,000-year precognition grids , to go down and inhabit bodies that lived to a fraction of the 3,600-year average lifespan of the Igigi .
Et . The humans , the new lifeforms that HaSe and FiKil had created from polydactyl apes cross-bred with Orca DNA to make River Primates , their multi-digited hands meant they would develop tool use . The new modifications , long plantigrade feet , webbed fingers , hairless bodies , would teach them how to hold their breath , which would teach them manual breathing , which would enable speech , and speech would enable Information Transfer .
In 12,000 years they would rediscover pottery . In 14,000 years they would rediscover metal refinement . In 16,000 years they would develop Wireless Fidelity , a kind of technology that had been banned by the decadent Council in lieu of pyramid aquifer amplifiers and psychic guider lines . It would be a totally different world .
"Carte Blanche ." SaFa ordered . "Get me one of those tablet-books ."
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2022 CE .
"Are you ready? Ka ." Se asked .
"We·re ready ," Fizzing agreed .
The scars on the side of her face were beginning to heal . The helicopter had gone down in flames . No one knew who had fired the rocket . Her broken arm had had enough time to heal and reknit itself , especially with the help of the Social Welfare Agency·s advanced medical supplies .
"It won·t be the exact same guy . He won·t know why yu·re doing this . This is strictly for catharsis ."
"We·re ready ," Fizzing affirmed .
They were in the bunker downstairs . Se handed Fizzing the pair of construction earmuffs . They both put them on .
The door on the other side of the room opened . From it , on an automatic conveyer belt , out came a table , angled nearly vertical . Attached to it by metal rings around its neck , wrists , and ankles was a young man in a leather jacket . His perfectly coiffed pompadour haircut was ragged .
Fizzing leveled the automatic rifle .
"Ready ..." Se moderated . Soft music played from the overhead speakers .
"Fire ."
DAKADAKADAKADAKADAKADAKA
Starting from the ankles , Fizzing shot the man·s left leg off , working her way up the shin , the knee . Shards of splintered bone splattered the table , stuck fast with bright red blood . She aimed at the other leg . The man looked like he was screaming . She blew his right ankle to unrecognizable bits and then the knee and then the thigh . His eyes bulged in their sockets as he realized he would never be okay ever again .
The meat sufficiently ruined , she aimed at the spots above the thigh , where the seams of his pants met the crotch . She blew his dick clean off . Focusing her fire , she tore through both upper thighs so that the legs sloughed off with wet thumps . His eyes bulged again . The rifle chaked .
"Reload ," Se ordered into the headset mic .
Fizzing pressed the button on the right side of the rifle . The empty magazine dropped out and clattered on the floor mutely . She picked up the next magazine from the table in the firing booth , inserted it into the frame , grabbed the bolt on the side and pulled . The bullet clicked seamlessly into the chamber .
Starting at the shoulder this time , she blasted one arm clean off , and then the other . The limbless torso sloughed in the neck brace , hanging there , his face turning red and then purple .
Se pressed a button on the side of the booth . Mechanical arms came out of the table and seared the gushing wounds shut . The man·s bulging face cried out in extreme agony .
She lowered the rifle . Placed it on the table . Clipped it into its slot and covered the glass casing . They both removed their earmuffs .
Technicians came in and unclipped the neck brace . The pompadoured man , face bright with broken blood vessels , cried . The butcher-priests removed him and took him into the next room .
"Yu know what to do from here? Ka ." Se asked .
"Hai ." Fizzing answered . "Another gorgon ."
"Good ," Se affirmed . "Go into the next room . Rico will be waiting for yu there , xe and Tarkova will help yu with the neurosurgery ."
Gunpowder had once been strictly outlawed by the decadent Council . Things like oil , gunpowder , any kind of explosion energy could rattle the local psychic grid .
In the old world of paradisical superabundance , where everyone privately boiled each other into a frenzy of bloodlust that tore the world-nation apart , even the logical , eternal Þran fell apart when the ratio of dead clones to live humanoids was 3:1 .
Time would demonstrate whether the new Humans would be any different .
Se reviewed the video and then posted it on the dark net . Terror was just another form of Mind Kontrol , after all .
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Back at home .
The entrance to the Social Welfare Agency·s secret bunker had once routed through a safe house , a safe house that had been bombed by insurgents . Se had gone through the backup entrance , exiting through a nondescript storm tunnel that emptied into a local river . Under a bridge , down a side street .
She had taken the bus home .
She lived two lives , slept for four hours twice a day . During the day she was a nun , working with the Social Welfare Agency to train new Tactical Dolls .
At night , she belonged to her experiments .
The plants in the greenhouse had been fed . The plants in the tank had been agonized . The dishes were done . She turned off the latest episode of Summer Time Rendering and went into the living room .
She turned her attention to the Zoimorph living there .
"You·re still in there , aren·t you? Ka ." She asked the humanoid bracketed to the wall . The zoimorph couldn·t respond , of course . The lichens and fungi had devoured her skull down to the jawline . Machines kept her heart pumping manually . Her blood was nearly one-third floral compounds at this point .
Se caressed the zoimorph·s breast . Its mouth opened , letting out a gasp of pleasure . There was still enough left of her cerebellum to respond to physical touch . Se·s arm continued to caress , pressed on by the unmoving yet ever-present sensation in her mind of the psychic lichen behind her . She was as much an instrument of them as they were of her .
Her hand glided down , caressing silkily across tender skin and rolling over fungal caps and anemone tubes growing from her sides . Clear plastic hoses suctioned excess fluid from her bodily cavities , and the symbionts grew over and around them . Thirty percent of her friend·s body had been converted into floral biomass . Aphrodesiac plants growing directly on the surface of her skin kept her in a state of constant sexual excitement so strong it was anaesthetic . Se smelled the pollen on her fingertips . Her cheeks flushed and her breath became heavy .
Reverently , she dropped to her knees in front of her friend and cupped her sex with her mouth expertly . Her friend was dripping , oozing with sticky clear fluid that smelled of human musk and tree sap . Se drank thirstily .
"Aa-aa ! Aaah !" the zoimorph moaned , sounds that spurred Se on further .
Aah . Aah . She heard in her mind . More . More .
She parted her friend·s folds with the broad part of her tongue , lapping gratefully at the sexual fluids that poured forth like ambrosia . Se·s cheeks were burning red . The zoimorph·s cheeks were burning red . If DuNa had cheeks , she was sure her creation would be showing her arousal in tandem .
More . More . Aah .
Se placed her hands on her friend·s thighs , feeling up the plains of soft flesh and forests of rugged plant matter . Pollen got all over her palms and leeched into her skin . Her cheeks burned hotter . In the background , soft music played . She had only another hour of night left .
Drinking the sap like it was a meal , Se speared her tongue deep between her friend·s labia , lapping with hungry ferocity . Her hands clenched her friends upper thighs and buttocks . Her friend moaned . Even without a neocortex or temporal lobes , sex was such an engrained part of animal nature that it persisted even into such extremes of existence . The scent was overwhelming . It was the sex that was in control .
She lapped , and lapped , and lapped , and when her friend came , she came , clear fluids pouring down the sides of her cheeks . Tears formed in the corners of Se·s eyes . She was grateful . Truly grateful . Her friend had asked this of her , discussed the desire to transform , to ascend to other forms of existence , and she had given it to her .
The zoimorph·s body rippled with the aftershocks of orgasm . Se pressed her face into her friend·s mound , exalting her sex like a holy site . "Aah , aah ," her friend uttered . Love . Love .
It was difficult to pull away . The warmth was so enticing , the fluid so appealing , the scent so arousing . So she didn·t . She gripped her thighs once more and drank again . And again . And again .
It was only a few days after Summer Solstice , the lighest night of the year . Her lips were cupped tenderly around her friend·s clitoris , her tongue barely grazing the still-sensitive button and sending electric shocks through all three of them . She could feel the warmth of her own breath as if it were between her own legs . Exhausted , Se knelt , mouth open like a pitcher plant , her throat relaxed , slick fluid sliding across her tongue and slowly down her esophagus .
Praise God , she thought to herself . Praise God .
Her eyes lidding , the aphrodesiacs precluding the need for senses like sight , she felt herself buckle . She giggled . This was so fun . Her friend tasted so good and it felt so good to bring her to orgasm again and again .
Sleepily , she stood , teetering slightly as she rose to her feet . She kissed her friend , eyes open , looking into the floral masses growing from her eye sockets . Her friend kissed back . Their tongues mixed , one purposed , the other mechanical and seeking . She could feel DuNa·s mind inside her own , spurring her on . It made her aroused to think of herself as an implement for these exotic life forms to consummate . She let the necrolichen kiss her friend , her own mind a silent observer .
OhmiGod , she thought to herself . This is so hot .
The sun was coming up , the sky turning from black to blue . She had to get in her second sleep of the day , before taking the bus tomorrow to a nondescript storm drain carved into the side of a riverbed .
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