Conquering the Stumbling Blocks is easier, when the Conquerer is in tune with the Infinite

Part 8

The electric animal hummed ever so slightly. It was her preferred method of getting around, even in this dimension of luxurious gasoline powered automobiles. Behemoths, Nessay thought. She liked the handling of the animal, and the open air. It was a trick, getting the machine across the threshold, but by now Nessay was part magician, and a seasoned astral navigator.

                She was sitting cross-legged on the wide seat, munching on a sandwich, and looking across the Nile at the complex of monuments rising from the desert. The air here was different than what she was used to.  Nessay figured it was the cars. The smog was heavier in the city, but even out here she could taste it and feel it on her skin. The dirty air tickled her nose.

                And where she had known only one monument, the Really Big Thing, now there were three. Three pyramids and one crazy big stone beast with the head of a woman.  The site was as fenced off as a militarized zone, so there was no going in, at least not in this guise charging through on her other worldly electric beast.

                Lunching, Nessay heard the loud engine break her reverie as it turned the bend and rumbled up beside her. A dusty man leaned out the open window of his black Model A and whistled. He slapped the side wall of his Ford. “That’s quite a contraption you have there, miss,” he said. “What is that dad gummed thing, anyways?”

                “Nessay swallowed a bite, and smiled. “Oh, it’s just my little Tesla electric animal. It’s not from around here.” She liked to keep it simple.

                “Oh, foreign model, eh?” he said. “Is it for sale?”

                “No.”

 

Come back home, we miss you here. Me, your internal voice – that chapter in a book - and the phantom Nessays that come and go, recounting the pages from your lives. This was never really your home though, it was only meant to be a jumping off point. Still, you’re always welcome. We’ll be here when you need to take a break, or, you know, go on:

 “Mom, do you need to take a break?” asked her daughter. It was 1970 and Nessay was struggling to get down the linoleum covered hall of St. Thomas’ recovery ward.  “I think Columbo is coming on soon, in your room.

                Her life had been long, and full of love, and loved ones. She met her husband at that dig, so far back, in Giza, and they never looked back. She and Jocu’le were together almost fifty years, before he had had that massive stroke that left him paralyzed, all but dead, and lying like a vegetable in the bed they had set up in the old dining room. The wall paper there was peeling from the walls. Nessay could smell the rot in the walls. The air here was different, much different from the dry, sandy winds of the Middle East. For one thing, there was always water in the air. Here she could smell the earth. Now all Nessay could smell and taste was decay. Her whole world was crumbling around her.

                “Mom?”

                Her hip surgery was a desperate attempt to slow those internal, damnable, devices of the human body. In the hospital there were no rotting walls. The air was clean, antiseptic, but she could still smell the rot coming from all those around her, and herself. Nessay didn’t like the bland food. It just tasted like rot. It all was rotting away. She didn’t know what she waiting for. Yes she did. There was her daughter, and the grandchildren. But they were all busy in their lives, and Nessay was a burden.

                Twenty years on, Nessay was in her armchair in her daughter’s living room.  Diana, her oldest granddaughter, was changing her baby’s diaper on the floor, while Nessay watched an episode of Columbo on her video cassette machine. The family was visiting on a Sunday. Her son in law was watching football in the other room and occasionally yelling, or swearing. He was on his third beer.  Nessay frowned and tried to pick up the remote, but it slipped out of her hand and fell clattering to the hard wood floor.

                “Grandma, you dropped the remote. Grandma? Mom! Come in here, it’s Grandma.”

                For a moment Nessay’s fingertips glowed. This had been her longest sojourn, but when infinity beckoned, Nessay followed.

goto part 9

another Sunday Thingy

click on pic for mass ambiguity

the door is ajar

Part 7

The world was a blast furnace. It had been for a century, and it was in the epoch between heating and cooling. The dunes were a surf of glass, caught in the act of cresting. White dust skittered and eddied over the icy surface, sometimes forming a ghostly silhouette of what the minute ash particles used to be. Nessay was consumed in the fire, she burned white like tissue paper caught in a campfire, her fingers glowed. It was a hell, and hellacious fast.

 You’ll find when you’re at this long enough that there is such a thing as reoccurring themes. Or running gags, if you will. C’mon, lighten up a little, life is a cabaret! The universe is full of practical jokes and jokers. What happens when a quark, some dark matter, and the speed of light walks into a bar? Uranus. Ha! Experiment, jump around a little, especially if you have a pocket full of space balls. And please, figure out, soon, that blood-and-death isn’t the only key to moving around. There’s always blunt force trauma. H’yuck! Have fun with that:

 She made for the desert. There were places out there a person might escape to, places to get lost in, and lose oneself. Nessay knew some of them, the watering holes and oasis’s of ill repute. A few even had flop houses and she knew with luck she could hide out in one of them for weeks. Maybe that would be long enough for everyone to forget about her. She could sell off her electric animal, what did it matter? This was just one universe, and in the next she would possibly have it back again. Or not, Nessay had very limited control of the doors in general, and none over what lay on the other side.

                In the meantime, the sun was nearly down, and there were no real roads out here, where she wandered. The animal beneath her hummed to a stop. It wasn’t moving fast anyway, and Nessay dismounted, leaving it stand while she moved off a few yards over the warm desert sand. The headlight stayed on, it did that for a moment or two after the motor was killed. She pulled off her shoes and let them flop at her side, slapping against her thigh as she walked ahead of the animal. The light shone around her, throwing a ghastly shadow ahead, into the sand, and it sunk lower into the desert as she chased it.

                Something else then began to shimmer in the light, like a water mirage on a low dipping highway. Nessay stopped, and from the satchel she had looped around her neck and shoulder like a purse, she plucked a ball, and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. She clutched the little ball in her palm and reached out to the glistening portal that formed like glass risen from a furnace of molten sand.

                She had her hand on a machete. Some dumb ass Bedouin wannabe had left it in plain view even as he and his friends tore the clothes from her body and tossed them around the dirty, dark barroom. Now they had pinned her onto a table, it was wet and sticky and hadn’t been washed properly for months. A filthy desert rat was rubbing his unshaven mug in her cleavage and huffing like a camel. One of the dirt bags let her hand free as he shoved the scruffy rapist off and grabbed one of her breasts, and in that second Nessay found the handle and swung the machete round. She fought like a berserker, having no regard for body and soul. Nessay waded into the mass of sweaty men, swinging and cutting, until she gashed open the chest of the thief who had taken her jar of marbles, then she threw it to the ground and fell, scrambling onto the shattered glass and dirt floor. Nessay grabbed a handful and filled her mouth with a dozen metallic steelies, then tried to rise up, swallowing hard, painfully, but she

                As before, Nessay came to be in the minutes between light and darkness. This time she had no solo ride, and she felt no kinship with the earth. Nessay was solid, but not really of this cosmos. For a while she drifted from place to place on the plane. Nessay visited her various homes, touching the smooth walls of her bedrooms, and laying on the fresh sheets. On the brick exterior of her grandparents’ home was an etching she didn’t remember, put there by a child other than herself. Could it have been a sister she’d never known, or was it just a random, unknowable delinquent wending away the boredom of another hot, summer day? Nessay wandered, for days. Sleep would come and go, but hunger and thirst never occupied her thoughts. Faint desires flared as she encountered and touched the faces, arms, and chests of people she passed in the streets. The men and women she laid hands upon would gaze into her eyes, and some would attempt to embrace her, but Nessay only smiled and moved off among the crowd, touching as she went.  She shifted amid the desert, rising and falling with the dunes.  The monument was there, but it was uncared for, and one side was scavenged and the sand had eaten away at its crown. Nessay forced her way through the piles of rock, squirming through the collapsed tunnel like a burrowing mouse, until she found the inner chamber. Here there were even more alcoves and smaller tunnels that led to deeper chambers. This is where those women could have been held, kidnapped, in that other universe she would never see again. There were space balls here, embedded in the ceiling and walls, and Nessay brushed the protuberances with her fingertips, and the balls absorbed into her skin, replacing the fingerprints and callouses with shiny, fluid translucency. Within this small chamber was a smaller hole, and Nessay thought she might have seen enough of this place, it had no hold on her, no faces she recalled or loved or lusted for, and

                                She was staggering on the street, tearing at her hair with bloody hands and fingers. Nessay turned back to the woman, fallen, dying on the ground, and she kneeled down at her side. Nessay pounded the dirt and swore, legitimate curses. Hildy was limp, a rag doll, her head lolled to one side, but her eyes were bright, and they gazed, almost enchanted, upon the haggard face of Nessay.

                “Why, why?” Nessay implored, blood mixed with the spittle and tears that collected on her chin. “I loved you! Look at us, look, I’m killing you!” Nessay clutched the fabric of Hildy’s saturated blouse in her grimy hands. She smothered her face into a fading lover’s collapsing breast. Hildy moved her mouth, but she had no breath to give any hint of explanation a chance. Her face looked like love; it looked like hate. It was something in between.

                Then, for that moment between life, even just the spark of one, and death, Nessay squinted, and the pinkish light of sunset brushed against her face, unfurled a curtain of eyelashes, and fixed her mouth into a stony grimace. Nessay reached down to Hildy’s hand and pried it open. The little ball that was there flared with the dying light, blazed, holding on, lingering until the last, and even before it started to dissolve along with the life it protected, Nessay knocked it loose, and the unfortunate ball rolled free onto the ground, a world away from far flung fingertips. Hildy’s eyes flew open then, and remained open in death, staring horribly into Nessay’s. For an eternity they would be like that, open, staring with disbelief, and with hate and love. Nessay would never forget those eyes, they would remain open like a door, just cracked, that she could see into, travel through into any space or time, and lament for many, many lifetimes of sorrow.

goto part 8

Thingy in the News

Long Lost tales of Love, and Blood

Part 6

Nessay heard the clinking, felt a rattle. It was there, the jar of balls with a paper lid tied around the neck to keep the contents from spilling out.

                There had been a gunshot, the sounds of a struggle, would there be guards coming soon? Did anyone hear? Nessay plucked the satchel and tossed into it the jar. The gun she left lying, but squeamishly, Nessay dislodged the axe , forcing a spray of coagulating mush to fly out at her, and she hurried back out the way she had come, to the electric animal, and away.

 Okay now, the players may have changed, but the game remains the same. By players, and it’s all allegory – just basic terms thrown around to give you reference – we mean… you. Up to now it seems you have chosen to stay. Not to move on. And it’s causing a bit of confusion, but you’re handling it well. I’m impressed. However, which each new venture into these new, alternate realities, you are mashing up the Nessays, creating Frankensteins of another color.  They are you, yet not you. They are good, but they are evil. They may forward your cause, or be contrary. As long as you possess, or regain the space balls you are secure… but to what end?:

 Beyond the door there was no new reality, not this time. Nessay had requested a different sort of excursion, a tour of the house. It seemed now that the doors had different purposes, and perhaps she could choose, up to a point. She was learning as she went, maybe not the best, but as an archeologist it was a methodology she was familiar with. So she stepped down into the sunken room. This space was markedly different than the formal, stodgy, library. It was cozy, filled with plush furniture and decorated gaily with vibrant wallpapers and framed art. Peacock feathers stuck up from bright urns in the corners and flowering plants sprung from pots and draped their tendrils over ledges, glistening in the mote filled sunbeams that filtered in through venetian blinds.

                This was a large room, but cozy. In the center was a huge connected sofa that sat in three parts, its open end to the wall opposite Nessay’s entrance. Even as she moved into the room, an arm came up over the back of the closest cushions, and then some floofy hair showed, and an eye peered over at her.

                “Oh, there she is, how precious. Come around and sit with us, Nessay.” Nessay went around. Three women had nestled into the cushions, fairly disappearing into the comfort of the fluff, and an explosion of textile patterns. They were dressed in eveningwear and spread out, but lounging together, on the middle section of the couch. “Hi, Nessay,” the three harmonized, in disturbingly identical tones.

                Nessay sat on the edge of the next sofa. There was a warm cup of cinnamon tea on the end table and she picked it up and sipped, looked over the top as she tipped it. She sighed, then sunk back into the pillows. “Hello, Nessays.”

For a while they chatted, mostly the three, while Nessay sipped and listened. The waystation idea stuck in her mind. None of this was real, she was in a holding pattern or booking transport to the unresolved aspects of her life. The pieces were drifting out of reach, but coalescing nonetheless. Here there were bodies, no…ghosts, to help her on the way. “How did you find your way here?” she asked of the Nessays.

                The lushest of the three answered. She was more filled out, more elegant and confident. She laughed at her own jokes. “By the usual way, dear. Limousine, and right on through the front door. Really, you should try it.” Ha ha. “This place is like a mausoleum. You should see it from outside, if you only could. A drafty old castle. Why I’ve stayed here for a month is beyond me.”

                “Well, there are no men, so it’s a mystery! Why have you stayed?” asked a second Nessay who was more neatly aligned with the Nessay removed. She stroked lusher Nessay’s arm and giggled. “When I rode my bicycle up yesterday this place looked more like a Rubik’s cube!”  They all three laughed and snuggled closer. “We’ve been talking about boys, Nessay. Join us, girl. How’s your love life?” More giggling.

                They laughed and cuddled for the best part of the afternoon, and the sun dropped behind the hills hoarding its light and heat away. Finally they coaxed the truth out, for Nessay was never one to kiss and tell. If you couldn’t talk to your sister ghosts, who could you?

                She hadn’t taken a lover since graduating college, not a man anyway. When she finally came home to Egypt, Nessay lived for months with her parents in their small apartment in Giza. She had her resumes mailed out and several interviews under her belt. For a while she interned and eventually made some contacts. A German woman befriended her on some evening digs. They became friends, Hildy had contracts with her government to work with the Egyptian teams and she hired Nessay. Their relationship grew more intense and in time the two became a couple, secretly. Hildy was the manager of the archeology firm Nessay dug for; they met only inside the city walls, rarely meeting, or touching, the field.

                “Oh my,” the Nessays breathed, sizzling in their PJ’s. The candles flickered in sconces upon the wall, and one by one burned down around their wicks, much the same as the Nessays, who faded into the night, absorbed it seems  into the sofa… the darkness stealing away their souls like it did colors and sight.

Much later, after a period of reflection, she took a deep breath, and tried another door.

                Nessay was on the electric animal again, its throaty growl reverberated between her legs as it thrust ahead, throwing pebbles and dust up in its haste. The night hadn’t come as quickly this time. She had turned back to the monument, revisited the chamber and discovered Jocu’le had been released, and the dig had been put on hold. Jimms let her in, she was still the project head, but severely out of the loop. Nessay hurried down the tunnel into the open chamber. Here were the work tables, and the tools. The niches and their artifacts remained, and as she moved so did the ever-present dust and sand. The new chamber, little more than a larger sized alcove, that Jocu’le had just discovered was there too, but nothing of its contents remained. The jar of balls was not to be seen. “No” Nessay breathed out. The fear of her realization echoed off the chamber’s sloped ceiling. “No, no, no!”

                She had searched the chamber, gotten down on her hands and knees looking for any strays. Nessay picked through every little stone statue and pottery shard. She checked her cuffs and pockets and, in vain, the treads of her sneakers.  Something in this reality had moved the pieces, like a magic square, and the game had changed. Nessay’s next stop was the office, but it was as empty as the chamber was of clues. Only one thing stood out: the note she had left her boss, Hildy, was not in her door tray.

                The electric animal surged forward on the heels of her rider, and Nessay’s little homestead neared. As before, she left the vehicle off the main entrance and crept stealthily in avoiding the road and street lights. There, she spied the lone figure lurking behind the cover of some bushes and low fence. Nessay peeked around the curve of her house, staying low on bent knees. Whoever it was seemed nervous and kept glancing around down the road, and back to the dome’s doorway. Nessay saw the assassin’s arm move up and down, and the glint of steel gave a gun away.

                Her murderer. And Nessay had no little metal ball tucked away for emergencies. She snuck back behind the house and tiptoed around the back of two others so that she could come up behind the intruder. The ground here was a mix of sand and concrete, so her footsteps, if gentle, would not give her up. Nessay lifted the small pick axe she had taken from a saddle bag; it was do or die… for real. There was vegetation here, and her shoe snapped a twig. The assassin jumped and turned, bringing up the weapon and fired, but off mark, and Nessay’s arm plunged down, catching the shooter solidly in the neck. The axe bit down and lodged there as Nessay’s hand slipped off the wet handle and slapped the target’s chest, and bounced off.

                It was Hildy, she dropped the smoking gun and grasped at her spurting neck. The gods misbehaving! Devils and wood-eyed hedge trolls! Nessay crouched, stunned at the revelation, and watched as her boss, her lover, sagged to the ground, dragging down a branch of honeysuckle with her. Hilda only stared, her eyes nearly bulged, while she lay there, gushing blood. Her arm fell to the dirt and when her hand hit, it was a fist, opened and a tiny ball lay there, glistened in red. “You took them!” Nessay hissed, and she struck out to snatch the ball, but even as she did, the steely dissolved, and Hildy was dead, taken away to another plane. Yet her body remained. Quickly Nessay kneeled into the mess and searched Hildy’s pockets, and the small satchel she had tied to her belt. Nessay heard the clinking, felt a rattle. It was there, the jar of balls with a paper lid tied around the neck to keep the contents from spilling out.

                She didn’t know where she would go, Nessay just rode. Would all of these episodes end in death? Her chest heaved, racking her ribs with the heavy sobs, and tears ran down her blood streaked face, fell and mixed with the dust.

goto part 7

Down, to Alcazar

Part 5

What was that? The little ball rattled in her gut, sheltered by flesh and armor, it was her extra life, earned by accepting the mission. Had she completed the level would she have picked up another one? This time her blood mingled in the dust with a slew of other men’s fluids. The pain was intense, then tolerable and even welcoming. Nessay felt her spirit going back to that familiar, yet unfamiliar place. No extra life then, she thought, as the space ball dissolved, taking her away from the battleground. There are things I might have done differently….

 It’s not necessary to restart from the familiar: that safe, benign place you recognize from a dream but isn’t, obviously, anywhere you’ve been before. There is a reason for beginning here. Mainly this: so you know you are dead. Beyond that, it is to assure you of a continued existence… a going on. What is necessary is that you are the one to make the next choice. Will you remain dead (not here, silly) or will you open the door? I’m not trying to be cryptic, your choice is simple, and once you make it more will become clear. Do you think we give away all of our secrets so easily? The doors, a myriad of doors, all lead to alternate universes that have been influenced somehow by your existence there. This house, think of it as a puzzle, is a maze of halls and rooms and secrets of its own. You can go forward, but in this particular puzzle house, you can never really go back, or retrace your steps.

       There is always change, in the future or in retreat, all is unalike:

 Again, the end had been quick, mostly painless, and Nessay’s heart still raced in the aftermath of the battle frenzy. She tossed her head back and purged, hurling a deep primal scream at the ceiling, while standing in a corner of the room. After that, her blood slowed its racing around, and Nessay found she was sitting on the old, Victorian couch. It was stiff, and a reddish maroon color, and something that might be in her grandmother’s house if her grandmother had been rich and not a dirt poor cotton farmer’s wife from Beni Suef. She’d been abroad, educated in the west, but Nessay remembered well the picking seasons and not any kind of couch like this.

                Nor a room like this, but the library was like a lot of libraries, and Nessay had seen many of those. The leather bound book had made its way back to the shelf. It gave her no comfort, or answers. A book on geography would not, could not, give her any more information on her whereabouts than a Wikipedia page would. Instead Nessay pulled a small book of poetry from a shelf above her head. She opened to the middle and read a passage written in an unfamiliar language. “’…in the superfluous does the owl shout? or does it do as it ever will? Why do you shout? What sort of owl are you, anyway?’” Nessay scrunched up her face and stifled an urge to curse. Instead she wheeled about and asked of the room, “Hello?”

                What did she expect? She had already been rebuked. “Is there anybody there? I have questions, you know.” There is nobody here. The answers are here, for you to find. Nessay wondered if that was a divine voice speaking through her head, or if she was just talking to herself.  “Uh, oh. So this is where it all goes south,” she said, to herself. Nematodes in knickers. Good grief, even her thoughts were indistinguishable from the room’s intonations.

                Well, “It does no good talking to myself,” said Nessay to herself or whatever would listen. The furniture, she guessed. “Riddle me this, can I leave this room without leaving the house? I presume there is more to this afterlife than just a hoity toity library?” She turned a page in the little poetry book. Indeed, if you can read, pick your poison, it reveals the choice on, the path you take, or the stain that you leave. Great. The last time Nessay opened a door it transported her back to whence she had come, with a twist. She wasn’t too sure she was ready for another adventure of that ilk. Nessay pocketed the little book and turned toward a door. “Beyond this door,” she said, “is just another room. A different room, with different stuff. Probably with a bunch more doors. Here goes nothing.” She pulled open the door to reveal a sunken room, and so stepped down into another piece of the puzzle.

goto part 6

Where the Girls go, Goeth I

Part 4

There is a lot to remember, but remember this: some things are not as they seem. There are realities within realities. Many dimensions run parallel, many others at tangents so far removed you might not recognize yourself. In fact, in more than a few even while you might exist, your parents may never have met or in fact been born at all. Would you have me, at this time, explain the particulars? Be ready to adapt and if that isn’t possible, hope for a reset to another reality, but never wish for a sure thing… the further in you go, the more abstract you’ll become:

                She finished her coffee, she still had the leather bound book. Nessay flipped through pages, thinking there might be knowledge to be gleaned, but the chapters were long and arcane. It contained diagrams akin to geometry, but not the kind she’d learned of in her studies. Nessay knew of igneous, in situ, cro-magnon, debitage… but math and its relation to grid mechanics and alternate dimensions was perpendicular to her… her everything. Even the room, with all its finery, was foreign, even disconcerting. Nessay wanted real answers, and she wanted out.

     
     She thought about the doors.
    
     She wondered, had been wondering, if anyone, or thing, would come through one of them. And instantly she stood before the doors, there were several, and her many hands wavered at their knobs, pulls, and levers. Nessay decided she would have a race; whichever hand reached a handle first would win.

     So…

Nessay rode the electric animal over the dark, sandy road back to her village. The city lights warmed beyond it, casting shadows from the mounded habitats. The shadows faded into the dark and there was a gulf of inky blackness between that and her illuminating headlight. A desert lizard, one of the big ones, flew before her galloping monoride. It seemed familiar, the same old déjà vu, but Nessay was only just merging into being with this new dimension. She was a ghost becoming something real in this parallel universe. They became one, and Nessay reached for her pocket. The little ball, had it brought her here?, was still gone. Would she need another?

     She thought the reunion might cause conflict, perhaps incite dementia or dissociation, but nothing of the sort occurred. Nessay had perfect recollection of the last few episodes, including the strange room and the events leading up to her appearing there.  “I was murdered,” she said. I don’t want to be again. She pulled off the road before entering the village, and stealthily crept toward her home. She stopped though, not wanting to risk getting any closer. She didn’t have the ball in her pocket; it had dissolved as the life fled her body that first time. Nessay rechecked her pocket, but it still wasn’t there. She retraced her steps and climbed back atop the electric animal and headed back the way she came, toward her office. The road was only getting darker, but she left the headlamp off until she rounded a bend, then revved off furiously into the desert.

      The office building, sheltered beyond the trees and down below grade, was dark and lifeless, or so it seemed. Nessay rode the lane, between the trees, and something went wonky, even a tad pixelated, for a split second. The scene jumped from first person to bird’s eye view, then back again. Nessay found she could shift perspective from front to back to far back and then pull down a map browser complete with a detailed tally of surrounding lifeforms. There were eight green-tinted humans beyond the trees. It looked like they were loaded for bear. Nessay stomped on the brakes, pushing a plume of dust into the road, and laid down the animal, diving into the concealing foliage.

        She was lying on her back, with her knees drawn up, when Nessay heard the click and hum of bolts charged for release. “We’re friendlies, come out now. There’s no time to waste.”

       This was different, Nessay thought. She crawled out on all fours, squinting up through the beams leveled at her face. “Okay, I’m not armed. Coming out.” She stood, patting sand and leaves from her arms and legs. “What’s all this?”

                He was dressed in desert camouflage, strung like a frigate, and lugging a low-slung rail gun. It looked impossibly heavy for a mere man. A corporal loaded down with battery packs brought up his rear, attached by black clad cables. He made up the first unit of four, all identically equipped, but their scars were random. “The RBT has been compromised, we need your permission to proceed, Lieutenant.”

     “Great whacking rats, this is really different.” Over her shoulder, Nessay heard the metallic rattle of coins dropping through a pachinko machine and a few musical pinball-like bing boings.

                “You’ve leveled up, choose your gear,” said the Sergeant.

      She chose a personal firebolt handgun and a lightweight flashbang rifle to sling over her back. “What’s going on at the RBT?” Nessay asked as she adjusted some snaps on her fatigues. She was shorter than the troops, and peeked up under her bangs at the Sergeant. He was hard chiseled, and buff. Thought bubbles coalesced above their helmets and nestled together, coupling in the dim lighting. “Stand down, Sergeant, I outrank you!”

                He embarrassingly straightened to attention. “Yes sir, Sir!” Duly composed he continued, “The Really Big Thing has fallen. Desert rats have waylaid a shipment of supplies and better halves at the crossroads, and are holding them in the tunnels. Many good men have died, or are captured.”

               Nessay scratched her forehead under the helmet. “What can I do?” she asked genuinely. This is weird, she thought.

      “Sir. You know the site inside and out.” He gestured to the troop transport, a high wheeled platform with open metal ribs and leather straps. “Your chariot awaits.”

                They rapidly loaded onto the transport and fairly flew across the dunes to the RBT. In the dark, only their mapping function gave them direction to the site, but unless an undocumented obstruction crossed their path, little light was needed. Nessay in full gear stood close to the Sergeant. Her harness was clipped into a rib and she bounced along with the machine’s spinning treads. She turned and yelled loudly to the Sergeant. The wind was furious, “Better halves?”

                He grinned down at her. “Wives, playthings, girlfriends.”

                Nessay wasn’t sure she approved, but subtleties were progressing swiftly. The monument appeared over the dune, and the transport slowed. “By foot,” someone hissed as they quickly disembarked and moved into the expanse. They had looped around and were coming up from the site’s rear. Medium height hillocks of sand dotted the landscape, they had pooled and mounded over discarded equipment and crates outside the twelve foot perimeter fence, and the troop snaked their way behind their cover toward the objective.

                At the fence, Nessay produced a pair of wire snips from a zippered leg pocket and silently cut a good sized entry. A pocketful of coins tinkled overhead and she chose exploding Chinese bolts for her firearm.  She grinned, secured the snips and waved them through.

                “Sir, you follow the Third, I’ll bring up the rear,” the Sergeant said. He put a hand on her shoulder as she turned to duck through. “Take this,” he dropped a small metallic ball into her gloved palm. Nessay gawked at it, and then made to zip it into a pocket. “No time, swallow it… this might go down bad! Safeties off, go!”

                Ground fire was almost immediate, and they crouched, returning fire. Maneuvering and body armor got them to the outer defenses and they dug in. The Sergeant lost his corporal and ditched the rail gun, drawing his gap shotgun like a saber over his back while Nessay dove to her elbows amid the gunners, who lobbed a heavy barrage of volleys into the enemy line. Suddenly they were sprinting over the sand, between the outbuildings – shacks, mostly – and converged upon the monument. Sergeant and Lieutenant bent low along the face of the RBT, and One to Three spun and crouched and decimated the surviving foe in a static crackle of electric conflagration. “We have to get around, to the tunnel doors,” cried Nessay, and she sprung forward recklessly along the base of the monument. “Follow me!”

                The Sergeant overtook her, and together they sprinted around the monument, leveling their weapons at the entrance and indiscriminately firing, running blindly through the ion charged smoke clouds their guns tossed off. Nessay took a round in her shoulder and staggered, fell across the wall, but the gunners had ditched their mules and came up behind, steadying her and loping to the arched door. The enemy lay smoldering all around.  

                “There’s only the tunnel and at the end a chamber. Only a small contingent could possibly fit in there,” said Nessay. She noticed the Sergeant had half his helmet blown away and his face was blackened, with bloody hair plastered over the left cheek and eye. “Gross,” she said.

                “And you’re a sweaty mess,” he countered. He waved the gunners into position and they charged through the entrance behind a full on spread of angry death, and the fire they laid down got their superiors through, but One, Two, and Three fell in succession to exploding charges pitched like missiles into their armors and bodies. Nessay was spitting and screaming as she and the sergeant punched through the carnage into the chamber. Not a soul stood in the room; it was strewn with the bloody, ripped corpses of uniformed soldiers.

                “What the fuck,” said the Sergeant. “Where are the girls?” Now half his body armor was blown away too, but his good arm – the one that wasn’t dangling amid spurting arteries and sinew – still held a fully charged shotgun crooked in his elbow.

               “Your dirty mouth,” said Nessay. Then, from nowhere, a shot rang out, dropped the half missing Sergeant to the dirt. A wild eyed officer rose from the dead, pointing his weapon at Nessay.

                Her nemesis was dressed like a disheveled Nazi, but his armaments worked fine. “Aha, they’re safe beyond the chamber, in a secret tunnel you obviously knew nothing about.”

                Nessay gasped, the tendons in her forearm twitched and her fist tightened around the gun’s grip. “Devil’s spawn,” she spat, and raised her arm to shoot.

                More blood, she noticed.
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