I (we/us/you)

 

Some many times we have played here, this childhood haunt, frolicking in the vapour which rolled off the cyan ocean. Even then, before the Collapse,  it glowed - just like the way your eyes still and always shine.

 

Silently.

 

Blessed one.

 

But your glittering gaze still holds life- creates breath.

 

But this ultra-Glow.

 

Ultra-lurid.

 

instead stole breath. Sucking it in parasite like. Ceasing the scales to swim, choked in plastic coffins.

 

All the coral is dead now. We saw the last one wash up while jumping in the hissing waves. Crashing like extinct horses, racing for a finish line dictated by the moon.

 

Before the planet was autoimmune.

 

Old life flourished sprouting from every crevice. We tried to save it. Duplicate it. Life which had roots, tentacles, nerves and follicles.

 

Now our young grow in fluid which is not of our mothers.

 

We half exist, like bodies playing in light. Alternating between realities.  Numb to the future, grasping for the past. Our fantasies glitching our nightmares. Writing when lost, looking for text or simulations of sense which would find connections within the inaudible languages that once held us true. Made us part-human.

 

That old language is now all but forgotten, so you and I create dreams anew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II (we/us/our)

 

We stand now before the setting sun. It glows, chromatically filtered, polarized by the lenses between our eyes. The sand rubs between our squirming toes. Violently it gnaws at our skin. Both our pores breath in a world now incapable of sensory dimension or experience.

 

In the last glow of the chromatic ultra-rays our digits touched. Nearly a genetic match our bond was the last of its kind, to share that space of growth once so common, was now a phenomenon. To be pips in a blood orange solution.

 

Now pips are harvested, we are both invalid for collection:

irregular orientation, plastic pancreas, deteriorating retinae, crumbling skeleton, latex lung , inhospitable uterus- to name our collection of defects.  

 

We are not desirable.

 

Before the velvet night turned to rust and the frost turned to mold. when toxic masculinity and high femme were not hierarchical ranks but social constructs of thought culture.

 

Thought.

 

Freedom for culturing beyond that of microbes and minerals.

 

III (one and other/they/their)

 

Tangerine crept into their peripheral filters. Turning, they looked toward the last flaccid coral.

 

It twitched. One jumped. The other steadied their shoulder.

 

The lurid sky had finally closed. Together, they watched the last creature twitch on the

Shore, its’ gluey discharge seep from its’ single orifice.

 

*Was that really the last one?*

 

they are all gone   one said turning to look into the others’ singing eyes. Eyes which only sung a lament back.

Yes (they replied) the last one to breath in the ocean of Before. The Before was all it could know- all its’ body could have known. It only knew clean liquid- salt sun cyan. Not this now, or after the before.

The pixel sea cannot support the organisms of the ancients.

 

The glycerine fish now ruled the semantic waves. They watch the coral twitch again as its’ active cell fell to the glassy sand.

 

The cell flickered and swelled. then glowed like the ember of an ancient fire.

 

One stooped to pick it up, they other whispered No. Don’t. it is contra- you know that.

 

The others’ eyes flickered up to hold the singing gaze of their companion for a time, then fluttered down once more, inspecting the cell in the palm of their hand. It felt weighty, their wrist ached. The cell it had not yet ascended - *they both knew this for sure*

 

On the ascension of an active cell their physicality ceased seeing them become empty vapour. However, some could still see ascended cells- even control them. When biological and genetic matches were correct active cells could be kept alive but a guardian. Only appearing and surviving if attached to certain organisms.

 

put it down or throw it back to the vape one hissed

 

it hasn’t ascended yet

 

it should’ve

 

but it hasn’t. look. feel

 

They shoved it into the palm of the other. They you flinched as it touched the soft, pearly skin of their upturned hand. They watched their expression, shifting from the initial distaste and panic of having a contra object enforced into their body perimeter, toward that of something else. They then gently caressed the active cell as it adjusted to the new temperature and other vitals. It was then, in the cusped hand of the figure with the singing eyes that the cell began to glow faster, becoming more frantic, it fizzed and small silver vapes spiralled off into the closed sky which had now settled all around them.

 

IV (One with the Singing Eyes)

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Why had the cell connected to me? Its’ life force was intense for such a small particle of tech. Vibrating through me when it touched my skin, I could feel every cell linked to cell in and out of my own body. Does this mean we are a perfect match? Organism and machine? But how? Surely not, this chip had come from one of the last creatures of the old life. It is not possible. I have had numerous Biometric upgrades as stipulated by The Form. These were specifically to prevent unwanted synthesis of genetics occurring between organisms.  I assumed it would be dangerous for us, we would become unwell, weak, powerless to commit to the New Order.

 

But holding this flickering life-centre of the lifeless coral- I feel anything but weak. My blood hums in my veins and each grain of gnawing sand is sharp against the soles of my feet, thousands of tiny particles each one touching its’ correlating nerve ending. As I breath the cell mirrors my rhythms, becoming smoother and ceasing to fizz and flutter, with the stuttering silver vapes subsiding.

 

I look up toward my companion, their eyes glitter, impishly.

 

It likes you they murmur through the rusty night  

 

I wish it didn’t.

 

What do you feel? they whispered, running their index finger over the aluminium nucleus of the cell.

 

Everything I replied.  

 

V (we/us/our)

 

The night had become choking. It was time to leave The Beach.

 

Walking silently up the beach road we carried our secret cargo concealed in a chest pocket, back toward the bleached domestic zone ahead of us.

 

The whitewash streets were quiet now, it being close to final curfew. We hurried along underneath the UV streetlamps eerie purple glow which lit up the bird shit spattered pavement, toward our assigned dwelling. Now that it was dark, the new block system of this zone became horribly disorientating. We peered around each corner, into the gloom, looking for something recognizable in order to locate ourselves. Every house was dark. Infinite white cubes which extended up the steep terrain until disappearing into the gloom.