The end of the war gave birth to bottle-men and hives of homunculi. The war had left behind her a bleeding and swollen Earth. The wounds filled at the end of years with water and sand, transforming cities into deserts and continents into islets.
What had really happened, nobody knew. A slippage of forces, an uncontrollable hatred…
Humans again found themselves attracted to the greatly ill, the cancerous, the leprous, the diabetic. They were tugged by a mysterious force, dragged liked dogs along the dusty streets. Aspirated. And they rushed, dislocated, into the hallways of clinics, of hospitals, to finish their trajectories in operating rooms, glued to the bodies of the dying. Gigantic pyramids formed, making the walls of these edifices, the porous buildings, burst.
In this way, new mountains invaded the changing geography of the globe. The most farsighted quickly hid themselves away in the depths of nuclear bunkers. Once all the hatches were closed, the last fanatics of protection were locked up in old blockhouses or, if need be, behind the meters of concrete of shut-down nuclear factories.
For the captives of the surface, one of the most corrosive neuroses was then that of wearing a gas mask. An obsessive fear of radiation convinced a number of people that they should no longer remove their masks. And, through the glass of the goggles, it is now possible to observe a certain putrefaction of the flesh. The skin is attired in mould and the condensation which forms on the glass is perhaps due to not just the principal occupant.
A process of expansion/compression, most likely owing to the theories of Anton Ravon on the localization of a point of perceptual modulation at the level of the central sulcus of the cerebrum, was manifested a short while later. Gigantic metropolises like New York or Paris found themselves transformed into trinkets, like those little miniatures frozen within glass, under a tempest of snow. Thousands of inhabitants died like this, crushed by dogs or by jackasses. Certain buildings, on the contrary, expanded immensely, forcing their occupants to walk for several months before reaching the exit door, fed by the crumbs stuck in the warp of the floor covering. Freighters came to run aground on the immaculate tiling of operating rooms. Entire trains, be they locomotive or wagon, finished their route at the bottom of the toilet bowls of water closets.
To flee the rising waters, men and animals saw themselves forced to scale the mountains of bodies and, in the rarefied atmosphere of the heights, they fell asleep, exhausted, their slumber lulled by the backwash of the waves breaking against the skulls, the legs, the amalgamated torsos, the nightmares carved by the groaning of the still living bodies lost in the heap.
Some, during the climb, coupled savagely with a man or a woman whose sex was accessible, hugging the mountainside. The orgasm seemed to spread through the entire mountain; and the violator found himself soldered to the ensemble, after having experienced, for the space of an instance, extreme pleasure.
To try to flee this uncertain ground once and for all, the most inventive created strange machines. Giant catapults launched masses of dismantled men and women, floating in fat canvas suits, beyond the stratosphere. Implantations of subcutaneous micro-reactors propelled “cannon-men” toward the stars. The most adventurous were crushed, after a harmonious curve, behind the wheel of homemade rockets, pedal- or powder-driven. Others tried all sorts of telekinetic drugs, stolen from deserted space centers, or else synthesized based on formulas of doubtful authenticity.
And for some, the journey still continues. It will last until cellular putrefaction, the osseous erosion of their frame, frozen, in an S or an L, in their delicate salon easy chairs, as if they were watching an anodyne television broadcast or listening on their radio to a classical piece requiring deep contemplation. Insufficient or damaged doses; and in their listless heads, stars march along the fuselage of spacecraft, meteorites collide with the metal; ghost captains of a memory-vessel, they try desperately to reach a welcoming planet, braving meteor showers and the impish mutinies of the crew.
Incorrect blends give results that are to say the least spectacular; only certain parts of the body are stormed by the telekinetic drugs. And arms disappear, skin bursts, guts explode, leaving a cavity that is empty, clean: arteries empty of their blood, ocular orbs are driven out of their sockets, cerebral matter gushes out of the nostrils, the ears; and the travellers, always just as calm and serene, seem to be watching their favorite television program, listening to their favorite record, while their vanished organs decay on distant planets.
When Anton Ravon died, crushed by his coat and his hat, there was a certain period of respite, punctuated by a few infrequent reversals. Clothing took possession of bodies; networks of wool became intrications of muscular fibers, silk shirts a tapestry of nerves, cravats and bow ties metamorphosed into arteries, into veins, watches ossified, handkerchiefs became inlaid with fingernails, lace with pulmonary tissue. And bodies flattened. Empty. Crushed by the clothing of the flesh. Initially, clothing was rapidly abandoned, then replaced by protective gear made of copper, the only element resistant to the reversals. And men in armor strode across the desert, looking for a watering hole, sometimes getting bogged down in the furniture zones. Prisoners of their heavy coppered skins, they were eaten alive by the animals of the sand.
Many preferred to remain naked.
Nobody was ever able to discern the exact origin of the bottle-men. The most generally accepted theory is that which consists of comparing their “fabrication” to that of fruit in liqueur. In the same way that the fruit, still attached to the tree, fattens up inside of a bottle, the babies, after delivery, are placed in large bottles, where they develop to an adult stage. Then, they are thrown in the sea. Is this a punishment? A method of fleeing an island battered by the storm? No one can affirm it. They come to wash up on the beaches, are shattered on the rocks; and their occupants are always dead.
I think, as for me, that it’s a matter of messages, of genetic information perhaps. The bottle-men all have the same face. That of Anton Ravon on the day of his death.
The hives of homunculi were born out of necessity. The occupants of the nuclear bunkers were found, for the most part, buried under hundreds of meters of sand. Initially, the women, crushed by a powerful lethargy, saw their volume increase considerably; their limbs atrophied, and only their head remained, at the tip of a gigantic flaccid body. Inversely, the men decreased in volume and started to live in the folds of flesh of the female bodies.
But it was a matter of becoming animal only in appearance, cerebral functions diminishing not at all. Except the social instinct, of collective life, was intensified. The first eggs were tended in doubt and fear. Then the first larvae made their appearance. And, supplied with burrowing snouts, they set about fighting their way towards the surface. The desert is now a gigantic network of tunnels and reproduction chambers. The hives presently stage the form of life that is the most evolved, most adapted, of the planet. All things considered, the homunculi would prefer to remain underground, and come out only very rarely, mainly to hunt.
Strange coral structures are starting to come up to the surface of the new seas. Again an inevitable mutation. Will the adaptation of the submarine prisoners be as favorable as that of the prisoners of the desert?
The majority of mountains of bodies are living. They feed through their thousands of mouths. A real osmosis, permeability, is embodied at the level of the welds. They reproduce by scissiparity. The new hills are very beautiful.
A stratification of organs and of limbs seems to be being carried out. The latest births have given rise to relatively differentiated mounds. The base is an amalgamation of legs; then come the stomachs with a few ectopic digestive organs, then the arms, followed by torsos working the cardiopulmonary organs in unison. The beating of a marching army.
Near the surface, the heads, sheltered behind forests of hair, and, finally, at the summit, the genital organs. The intestines finish their course underground, sheltered in the final meters of the path by a hedge of legs.
At this rate, I truly believe that we will soon witness the birth of a new race of giants. And I am uncertain already of knowing the appearance of their faces. The death of Anton Ravon is going perhaps to save us all.