So, this is America, as recalled by a renegade CIA agent trapped in 2012 London.
It is not what I expect. I have seen magazines, video clips, documentaries, feature films. None of this prepares me for how vast the place is. At least in Owen’s mind, or memory. I don’t know when this is, but the xenosphere is having trouble maintaining focus in the now. The present keeps breaking and snapping back into position. This impossible sky, beautiful as it is, cracks, re-forms, then cracks again, behind it a kind of eternal darkness.
Owen stands stock still by the side of a blacktop. There are no signs. The fields that extend away in all directions are flat, furred with brown grass. No animals. No birds. Windy, but nothing that moves Owen’s stocky body. He is holding one suitcase and appears to be happy. The suitcase changes into a duffel bag once or twice, but mostly retains its form.
Owen cannot see me. I am close enough to him to know he is happy.
The wind becomes stronger and blows everything apart. For some minutes I am adrift in the blackness, then I am standing on an obstacle course. Along with five other people in uniform sweats with CIA stamped on the back, Owen runs, leaps, crawls, avoids and climbs his way through, emanating grim resolve. Then he is gone and he drags the scene with him like it’s made of cloth. I am pulled off my feet by his backwash and I land in Atlanta. I know this because I’m standing in front of a traffic island with a blue, grey and white sign that says Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Three wavy lines on the sign; one might be an eagle, with the other two human, all in profile, stylised. Maybe. Department of Health and Human Services. This must have seemed entirely innocuous to the designers at the time, but if the Homians take over, will there be so few humans that we’ll need departments to deal with our welfare?
I am inside, in a lab with its harsh sterility. Owen, a foot over the scientists, observes, listens.
“… not directly harmful, as far as we can tell. It latches on to skin, burrows or eats its way through the subdermal fat, multiplies, starts to mimic human cells as soon as it encounters the first one, usually a touch receptor or an adipocyte. Understand this clearly: there is no way to separate it from human cells once multiplication has commenced. There is a dossier in your pack that outlines exhaustively what we have tried.”
“Three hundred and fifty pages. Yes. I read it,” says Owen.
“Overnight? That’s impressive. Angie tried to make it as dull as possible so it could send folks to sleep.”
“Continue, Doctor. I don’t have much time.”
“Cool your jets, I’m coming to it. We have two specimens that more recently seeded the atmosphere, Lagos1975 and Hamburg1998, both dead, but considerably valuable in terms of information gleaned. The Lagos one was a runt, or maybe we did not know how to keep it alive, but Hamburg1998 gave us valuable information. The cells of Ascomycetes xenosphericus, the xenoforms, are similar, but not exactly the same strain. The xenoforms have always been here, it seems.”
“What do you mean, always?”
“I mean we’ve tested the oldest artefacts from human civilisation. They’re everywhere, though dormant. They are in the air, a nanoscopic lattice of interconnecting neuron-like cells, gathering data. Hamburg1998 was organic, not of this world, and gave off spectrum-hopping radiation for twelve hours before sinking into the ground. Our NATO allies got to it at a depth of forty-nine metres. Amorphous, taking the shape of its container, it lived for eighteen months in a research lab, using nuclear fission for defence in the early vulnerable stages of development. Imagine if human babies were born exhaling Agent Orange. Kills every predator in sight.”
Owen agrees.
“It ate into whatever container the scientists stored it in. It was an extreme omnivore, devouring plastic, wood, glass, pure metals, alloyed metals and biological matter like bone and cartilage. The third stage of development involved psychic phenomena. The research scientists started having bad dreams and not a single one got a good night’s sleep. Two became psychotic and remain institutionalised till this day. There were three attempted suicides and one success. Then it died, and the mental problems subsided. The new ones, at any rate. We’re not even sure that it died. All we can say for certain is that mitosis and meiosis no longer occur. The cells stopped dividing. What we thought to be its genetic material became inert, and it stopped absorbing material from its container, which was a concrete silo five feet thick at the time of death.”
“Where is it now?” asks Owen.
“Beneath our feet,” says the scientist. He presses a remote control and a holographic image appears. The organism looks like a frozen splash of brown liquid, turning round slowly.
“And you think this is what’s in London?”
“That’s what the evidence suggests. We don’t even know what the Chinese, Russians, Indians or Koreans know. We’re not allowed to make overtures on this matter and neither, it appears, are they. You’re going to England?”
“I’m going to England,” says Owen. “With all the data you can give me.”
“Then go with God, Mr Gray. Better you than me.”
The place starts to splinter, but I freeze the situation. I have been carried away by their talk and the tragedy of what Owen is going to have to do. This is what I want, this is what the Americans know about Wormwood. I settle down and memorise everything. I cannot use every terminal, only the ones Owen has used, but by the time I finish, I know what Owen knows, or at least, what he remembers. I release my hold on time.
The objects and speakers splinter and re-form into different people in a different place. Construction of behemoths, metal ovoid buildings as high as skyscrapers. I am dwarfed by even the machinery they use to build each one. Both Owen and I are impressed, but he is a bit sad. He will not be going with whoever is boarding these ships, for that is what they are. No, they are not ships. They’re cities. Into these pods the populations of each city will go. Sealed away from the xenosphere.
Owen turns to me, looks me in the eye and says, “You have to come back home, Oyin Da.”
That’s Nike’s voice!
“Is Junior all right?” I say.
“Junior’s fine. But you must come right now.”
I am already building my cocoon from the abundant metal in the construction yard. “I’m coming, but you have to give me more than that.”
“Kaaro is dead,” she says with Owen’s mouth.
“What? How?”
“Just come on back. I’ll fill you in when you get here.”
Sitting in the grass, clear of the ruins of my cocoon, playing with Junior’s hair, watching others arrive, I am surprised that so many people know that Kaaro is dead, that they care. Junior is weaving grass into different patterns and she shakes her head free when she feels mild irritation at my affectionate fiddling. Nike is lying flat beside us, eyes closed, her right hand intertwined with mine, casual to look at, but tight.
“Why are we here?” asks Junior.
“It’s the end of someone’s life on Earth. We’re here to pay respects,” says Nike.
“If the person is dead, can’t we pay respects anywhere? Does it have to be here?” Junior doesn’t look up from her craftwork.
Nike opens her eyes. “We don’t really pay respects to the dead, little dove. We pay respects to the living, to our communal loss. Being here is a kind of unspoken promise that when the time comes for each of us, we will be mourned and not forgotten.”
I did feel a sense of loss, but Kaaro was kind of a dick when he lived. They say not to speak ill of the dead, but that’s got to be bullshit. We speak ill of Idi Amin and Leopold II, and lightning doesn’t strike us down. I did feel the communal thing, but Kaaro is still the boy who didn’t choose me when it came down to it. True, I didn’t know what I was, or that it was Nike in him that attracted me, but none of that makes it hurt less.
I feel an itch in my mind. A patch of light blue in the sky, flat like a flying carpet, floats towards us. As it gets closer, I realise it’s a lot larger than I initially thought, and when the shadow passes overhead I am aware of a large eye on the undersurface, taking in everything. I think it alights on me for a fraction of a second before moving on. It’s like a kite made of flesh, and trailed by tentacles. I thought it preferred the spider-thing aspect.
“Look who’s here,” I say.
“I know,” says Nike.
“Why is she here? Isn’t Kaaro just one of her… data points?”
“Oh, they had this sordid sexual thing. It was all very fraught and moist. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Is that who we are waiting for?” I ask.
“No. He is.” Nike points over her right shoulder to someone behind her.
A man with a tentacle for an arm approaches from the west. He talks to some attendees, then moves to another group.
“That is Eric Sunmola, my love. He was one of the first to arrive, and he is the last of the living sensitives.”
“I know who he is,” I say. “We’re working together.”
We all move to the focus of attention, the giant that is now a mere wooden statue, broken in the face, sprinkled with sawdust, on its knees, hair dragging on the ground. All present encircle it. Molara touches it, now in her butterfly wings persona, and the giant splinters and falls into wood chips. At the centre of it, a mound of brown with red streaks. It grows, and I start to feel uneasy. As it gets larger, it rises and falls, like its breathing, and there is differentiation on the surface. Feathers. Oh.
It grows.
Parts of the surface reject the plumed beginning and are covered instead with fur. A low growl starts like a prelude, and cascades along into a god-awful shriek. Junior is tugging at me and I lift her up. We are both scared.
The head flicks up and the wings burst forth, spreading from one end of this island in space to the other. The gryphon’s tail lashes back and forth and claws emerge from its paws. Its head is held close to the ground now, watching everyone. The feathers are ruffled and it crouches like it’s about to hunt.
“I think,” says Eric, “we need to get the fuck out of here, yeah?”
The gryphon swipes with his left paw and seven people are cut down in a bloody mist, too fast for them to even scream. Five more bounce off and fall away from the impact. The untouched scream and flee. Except Molara. She grows and sticks her many legs into the gryphon. This does appear to hurt him, but not for long. It rips the legs out by the roots and eats them. When Molara starts screaming, it makes Junior vomit.
I call the cocoon to me and it is just complete when the gryphon slams his tail into us. The metal holds, even when it strikes three more times. I still pray to Ogun for help.
Nike looks amazed. “What the fuck?”