| |
––––––––
A Slingshot hotdrop. No main chute. One hundred-twenty tons of Kansas State Guard combat track, Midwestern Confederated, at 3000 AGL, falling fast over Austin. My RGB crew—Sergeant Red, Corporal Green, and Private Blue (color-coded, four-foot shoebills with wing fingers and thumbs)—called out the numbers.
“AGL, 2700,” Red cawed. “MPS, 100, LT. Drogues deployed; ECM deployed. Reactor plenum hot, ready to hose. Drop jets in fifteen, fourteen, thirteen ...”
“Epsilons 4, 8, and 9 taking shoulder-mounted triple-A. Damnit—” Green woodpecked his gunner panel. “Epsilon 1 and 2 are offline, disappeared, sir—just gone.”
Lt. Sally Ngyuen, Lt. Salemi P. Woodhouse—my fellow SlabKopf officers. Sally in a boob-tucked locker-room towel, arms close to her body. Salemi with his booming laugh. Their tracks, 1 and 2, their crews, them—just gone.
“Beagles 1 through 4, unleashed, on-point, and barking,” Blue announced. “Incoming livestream. On the HUD?”
I nodded. The turret holographic relayed KATX drone footage, live from the pink-marble steps of the state capital, where a platoon of Hawaiian-shirted Innsmouth Deeps, amphibian Boog, were kitted out with suppressed ARs, ballistic vests, and Kevlar pots. “Ph'nglui!” they shouted, and they went, charging through the stone building, slicing the pie, covering, web-foot door kicking, tapping forward, and killing, killing. The newsdrone followed, and each muffled “No, No, No ... please. NO—, each suppressed PUNT-thwack marked a room cleared, one less clerk, Wackenhut, or admin. Starry Wisdom. Dead people. Killing. Stars snuffed. Stars right. Mad World. Foxtrot city.
“Brace, brace. Drops firing in nine, eight, seven ...”
The HUD switched to external cameras, starboard: A mountain might walk, but sometimes he stands over the Austin skyline, keeping one finger indexed on a cruiser-length M4.
Der K.— the Dreamer, the Sleeper, Der Kutulu, the Sultan God Hierophant. Bat wings unfurled, sleepy red-slit kraken eyes, Saturn-ring crown, pseudopods fluttering like anemone at high tide—Target Prime, the Author.
“Six, five, four, three ... firing—brace!”
Where I once had a Kopf, I cupped my grafted Slab. The straps in my command chair bit my sternum, my shoulders, as the drops fired. Ezekial reversed—a descending firecone. Our track—Epsilon 3, the Achtung, Barbelo—buzzed a Walmart Supercenter, scorching its flat roof until the slam of quad-treads on asphalt. Yeah, yeah, yeah—down and rolling, speed-bumping parked cars, shopping carts, and manicured topiary. Achtung, stabbing north. Der K., Target Prime, on the scope, blurred for our protection. Seven clicks north. Bring it. Ash and flesh and time. End it. A flask-forged RGB crew, a bioplastic SlabKopf, a 120-ton Achtung. This is me: Lt. John Doe. 39th Mechanized, Epsilon. Bring it. Kansas Invictus, Perpetual Tread. Go.
We rolled. Tracks 4, 8, 9, and 10—the last of Epsilon reported in. Safe landings in Tarrytown and Old Enfield on the West Side. Multiple tangoes engaged. Pushing Northeast. Godspeed, Lt. Doe. Perpetual—then static. Silence.
No StateCom sats, no feints, no flanking, no air or infantry screens. No combined arms. We are Final Epsilon—five naked tracks on a one-way mission with final orders: Target Prime. Get close. Crockets at point blank.
The Austin sunset was a river of orange and dull ochre; the Final Sun itself was a Red Dwarf, five times too large, rimmed with a black eclipse penumbra. To the West, too soon, the Big Dipper burned crystal bright—its tail reaching low, like the shear of a plow. Ph'nglui. The Stars, the World—and so what? Bring it, Author, I said. Bring it. We are Kansas Invictus. Perpetual Tread.
––––––––
In the StateGuard, SlabFoxing (“consensual relations among commissioned officers”) was taboo, a court-martial offence: Base Commander catches you? Get ready for fifty cat-o-nines, a bottle-popped SlabKopf, and your bloody skull, drummed right out. (Front Gate says, goodbye and be gone, Blue Falcon).
But StateGuards find a way, right? (It says so on the glossy brochures and posters). In the barrack showers, beneath the spray, I sat on a plastic bucket while Lt. Jane Doe—42nd, Theta, Mechanized—scrubbed my back. Corporal Green and Private Blue, pretending to be on guard duty with slung carbines and AN/PVS goggle-gear, kept watch by the door.
Jane worked an elbow into my shoulder blade, opening up the fascia, tracing my scars. I took spall in Syria when the “Son-of-Abu-TOW" baked my turret with some wire-guided HEAT.
Jane and I go back: Before enlisting, before earning our confirmed-kill SlabKopfs, we bucked hay and drove plows for the Smoke Hill Foster Farm. Both orphans—both unclaimed juves. Grunts. Raw material for the State.
When we were alone—stripped, dripped, and starkers—Jane liked to share her dreams. Trust, honesty—it was an old ritual. She began, and this one was real, too real, like an incident report: A dream of mass psychosis, with Epsilon rolling right into an urban-ambush L. Heavy casualties. Tracks Oppenheimering, left and right. RPGs and Mushroom clouds. Suicide-insurgents everywhere, praising someone called “God-the-Author.”
“God-the-what?”
“Shhhhh ...” she put a finger to my bio-plastic lips. “Instead of a Slab, your Kopf was a Skull. Then you butchered the Author and took His place.” She dunked cold water over my head, Russian banya-style. I stood up. Jane toweled me off, lingering on my shanks.
“You’re kidding me.” I reached behind me, cupping the small of her bare back, pulling her close. Her soft breasts—the hardness of her Slab. “I can’t handle two butter bars, one track, and three RGBs.”
She leaned in. “You were a good Author, John. ... but it was too late: By then, He had already eaten everyone, everything, except us.”
We stood there until Green clucked a warning. Five days later, the entire population of Fiji rose into the atmosphere, like cinders in a backdraft, before tumbling into the ocean a thousand miles away. A flesh rainbow. An offering to the Sleeper. 47°9′S 126°43′W. R’yleh—Mad City rising.
One week later, the Midwestern Confederated sent an expeditionary force—Theta, Nu, and Pi included—to retake Hilo from invading Deeps. Jane’s track was on point. During the beachhead, the entire island sank, as if torpedoed.
By then Target Prime, Der Kutulu, was on the move, killing cities, leading Deeps and Shogs, pushing madness like a storm front—calling down the Stars. In the hull of a downed Slingshot, my RGBs comforted me, throat-singing a dirge for the lost: Nu, Pi, Theta and Lt. Jane Doe. I’m still numb. Can’t cry, can’t dream—a surplus juve. I’m just a Bang-Bang man, a Kansas Slab. A State killer. Jane was right: It’s too late. This world is cruel, and its Author is here.
––––––––
Like a Colossus, Der K. straddled the Capitol, his left and right feet crushing the Clarksville and Medical districts, respectively. A perfect lenticular cloud—a pancake stack of pregnant darkness—hammered his wings, his head, his hands, and the origami-glass crown of the Frost Bank tower with lighting. The onboard trackcomp pixelated the Target’s octoface, giving us psychic breathing room.
“Is anyone feeling Ph'nglui?” I said.
My crew shook their bills. Nay, nay—negatory.
“If so, Pez some Splendor. That’s an order.”
“Sir, LT, this thing, Target Prime—is it God?”
“Probably. Austin was always a kinda Foxtrot. Maintain speed.”
We rolled hot on South First, with four Beagles screening the rooftops and alleys for Deeps and collaborators. Crashed cars, open doors, shattered glass, hemo-splots, smoke and fires everywhere, but no bodies, no movement—no Tangoes. A city of a million, depopulated.
“Don’t like it. Sir,” called Blue. “Smoke plumes are blocking the Bird’s-Eye—but the scope is cold. Nadazero. Both bridges across Lady Bird are parking lots. Got stalled vehicles for a thousand meters. Do I pop the snorkel, sir, and go under?”
“Negatory. Drop the cow-catcher. Green, full speed. We killdoze across in less than 30.” I pinched my touch screen, drawing the Beagles to the Achtung, like an honor guard, keeping pace.
“Tastes like an ambush, LT. Is this déjà vu, sir?”
“Absolutely, Corporal.” The reactor roared; we accelerated to 90kph. “Kansas, brace.”
“Perpetual—” Their mottled shoebills chattered, ratchet-clacking like wooden party favors. "Tread!” Boom, boom—BANG. We killdozed into the logjam of stalled vehicles. Aluminum frames and polycarbonate bodies versus Kansas State NuChobham. No contest. We were up and over, and plowing through, sending civilian cars and trucks flying like slush over the 1st Street Bridge railing, down into the blue of Lady Bird.
“Off the port beam, sir.”
A thousand meters to the east, the wooden clothespin shape of the Pfluger pedestrian was split in two, with a thousand-eyed purple Shog, bobbing in the water beneath. From the north, the south, throngs of hooting collaborators ran headlong, throwing themselves off the bisected span, laughing as they fell into one of a thousand people-eating smiles.
“Sir, LT, that bridge, that Shog—is that Hell?”
“Not yet, Private. Load a St. Helens. Sergeant, center-mass Bake on my mark. Five, four, three ...” The Acthung, Barbello swiveled its main gun and punched a thermobaric into the Shoggoth; and the Pfluger clothespin Oppenheimered out and up, up into a hundred-foot steam dong. Easy Bake kill, on the move. Tangoes now with shoulder-mounted TOWs on the Congress Ave, the famous Bat Bridge? Well, then—Starboard auto-50s on ball-and-sockets, pink-misting froggy Deeps and Swiss-cheesing cars; and the 200kw swatting TOWS mid-air, snipping guide wires; and the 30mm Gatling, traversing with the turret, roaring like God’s ziiiiiiiiiiiipper, hosing the parallel bridge with spent uranium tracers. Bake, Bake—Easy Bake. Metal, plastic, flesh, God, time, and Hell. Up and over and killdozing through.
“I like bats, sir. I hope none were still nesting underneath.”
“Me, too, Corporal. A family slept upside down in the juve-farm hay loft. In the evening, me and Jane would listen to them hunt. Good times.”
“I miss the Lieutenant, too, sir. Are the good times over?”
“Not yet. Ammo hoppers are still high; Crockets are cold.”
“Then why, sir, hasn’t forward Epsilon engaged?”
Good question. They landed ahead; and yet, no Rockets Red Glare, no Crocket fusillade to the octoface. I peeled off Beagle 4, sending it northwest toward Old West Austin.
On the day R’yleh, the Target City, showed its underwater ass—every StateCom silo, every RedGuard rocket tube—across the Midwest and Siberia opened and auto-launched: No keys turned, no commands given; and yet, 500 MIRVs green-glassed Antarctica, and another 500 melted Saint Nick’s dick. Double Pole Bang-Bang, soldat. RedGuard had an old Tsar Bomba on ice (naughty, naughty, comrades) that they long-boxed into Dir K. while he slurped up Muscovites. But the Bomba never airburst. Instead, it appeared over Anchorage: a perfect 200-megaton Baked Alaska.
State Strategics worldwide, depleted—but we still have Tacticals: Crockets on tracks at point blank. Final Orders, Slab. If we had wanted you to live, we would have issued you Life. Die and make do.
Ahead, along Guadalupe, Lavacast, and Congress, the top ten floors of every building above twenty began disintegrating, falling upward as if made of anti-gravitic sand. The Final Sun, the stacked lenticulars, Ursa Major, and the lighting—arcing like a Toho Studios breath attack—were fuzzed by the particulate haze, which swirled and joined Der. K.’s debris halo. Crown you, I thought. The god shouldered his M4 and thumbed an under-barrel laser dot larger than an oil tanker. It spat to life and burned a hole clean through a three-tiered high rise. I’ll Foxtrot crown you.
When Target Prime emerged off Naval Base San Diego, littorals and destroyers of the Pacific Fleet lit him up; but as usual a floating Shog wall, acting as a three-hundred meter bodyguard, took the hits. I saw the Beagle footage: From the top of a shipping crane, a lone StateGuard with a 5.56 screamed and screamed and popped off rounds in defiance. Der K. nodded and responded in kind by levitating four cruisers from the water, mind-crushing them, rolling the metal and personnel flesh into separate parts that combined into a Kaiju carbine, an M4 worthy of a god. The Target’s five-second mag-dump Oppenheimered the port and the city; and a surviving Zumwalt’s tac-nuke, launched up and down, like a lawn dart, only made his sheltering bat wings glow a faint red. Alpha and Omega, the Author is here.
“Tangoes, ahead, sir. Do I take the shot?”
Two blocks up, on the corner of 2nd, near a toppled Red ‘Dillo Shuttle Bus, a dead RinoCop in black riot gear lay on his side. Hooting civilians and Deeps hacked into his flask-forged body with machetes and hatchets, eating him raw and carving him up like Orwell’s Elephant. While one Deep hacksawed his horn, a StateGuard in an olive drab uniform leaned against a light post, as if supervising the job. I pinched my screen: a SlabKopf in the crosshairs. No nametag, no rank, no unit insignia, not even a morale patch. But I knew. Geist hands squeezed my lungs, my heart, thrusting down into my stomach, playing cat’s-cradle with my guts. I fingered the sawback M9 MOLLE-strapped to my spall vest. Those hips, those shoulders. I Foxtrot knew.
“Sir, LT?” My crew looked at each other. I was a dumb boot, a heavy Slab: a million tons of useless weight. I was nothing, no one—an orphan. John Doe juve-trash with red hands. A killer.
“Sir, trackcomp predicts déjà vu in 10!”
Bing ... bing ... the Run Silent, Run Deep “bing” of the IFF. A blue dot on the scope, Epsilon 5, barreling down First on an intercept course. Why was the Pistis Sophia—a 140-ton MKII Command Track with Lt. Mark Daveen and a three-Slab crew—heading south, away from the Target, crunching Deeps and willing collaborators? But Der K. was eye-blink gone, vanished from the horizon, leaving only his Saturn-ring crown hovering over the capital. Austin continued to disintegrate skyward, erasing its spires from the top down, feeding the discarded halo.
“So, the Sleeper—?” Green leaned back from his scope. “Wants to play Pilate/Pilot?” The Beagles barked. The HUD lit. My crew rattle-chattered their mottled beaks. Der K. was now the Pistis commander. His over-sized head and torso bulged from the turret hatch like a cartoon Rat Fink dragster. His face tentacles caressed the sloped NuChobham; his wings spread like spoilers. The female StateGuard looked at me, look north, shrugged, and ducked down Second before Der K. let rip.
Epsilon 5 porcupined the street with radium fletch; its 30 mike-mike banshee-wailed—and the main gun hammered HEAT after HEAT into store fronts and wine bars. Austin City Hall—with its moderne glass and angles—imploded and collapsed; civilians and Deeps spun aloft, Hawaiian shirts aflame. The Pistis charged forward into the erasure.
Evasive maneuvers. Counter measures. Smoke screen. Break contact. We reversed full throttle and veered starboard as two Pistis sabots gouged our hull. NuChobham integrity down 42%. Foxtrot me.
“Sir,” Blue made the sign of the cross, “Like Melville's ‘warrior whalemen,’ those ‘bashful bears,’ we call the numbers for naught. You cannot weigh and measure the Whale; you cannot apprehend the Weaver God with reason.”
Blue reported, “And trackcomp reports alliteration at reduced capacity. Switch to Petrarch or Villanelle?”
“Negatory, bird,” I said. “StateGuard exists to buck trends. Stay the rhyme.”
Beagle 4 reported in, screaming “Ph'nglui!” before ramming into a Pro-Life Billboard. Forward Epsilon never had a chance. Before it kamikazed, Beagle 4 saw four tracks, with their hatches popped, suspended within the purple mass of a two-mile Shog. It oozed down Tarrytown streets, flowing through seven-story windows, dragging debris, boiling eyes and smiles and protoplasm into Austin Lake, as if chasing Steve McQueen.
Lieutenants Homer, Li-Po, Mankiewicz, Samhain, Wang, their Slab crews—gone, digested.
“Present Arms!” I bellowed. Not twenty-one, but two: the main gun and rear-glacis Crocket launcher. Red elevated both. We all saluted; tears rolled down my Slab as the Achtung, Barbello reversed hard through shoreline MetroPark, parallel to the Lake and Chavez. We churned twin rooster tails of dirt and grass while trackcomp mathed the perfect trajectory for Fire-on-Time, just beneath the disintegration layer. I nodded; Green obeyed. “On the Way.” Crocket, up. St. Helens, up. Full stop. Blast shields down. A medium-roast Tactical on Old West Austin and a thermobaric on First. Kansas, lean in. Brace. Bra—.
White light. A Tsunami slam—a shockwave that rocked Achtung on its chassis. Our track was built for NBC. I said thank you as the Beagles died and goodbye to forward Epsilon because I am Oppenheimer: Half-Baker of cities, not destroyer of Worlds. No, not yet.
Emergency lighting gave way to rebooting scopes; and, lo, behold a glorious Mushroom, punching high like a thrusting shoot. Lady Bird was boiling; the grass of MetroPark was burning. The Saturn ring—gone, blasted; the disintegration haze, rippling into nothing. In their place, the sky rained ash, burning paper, and pebbles that pinked off armor. Dresden, Nagasaki, Aleppo, Portland— Mein Liebling, I am you. A flood of brown smoke, wind, and orange flame coiled and churned. Like Damascus, the burden of Austin had been removed.
Six cameras, four auto-50s, and the 200kw—all down, but air seals and filters, solid, soldat. I buried my Slab in my hands. I bucked final orders. But I wanted that Shog. (And, yes—that lone StateGuard. I wanted her, too).
“It’s okay, sir,” Green cooed while Pezzing Splendor Solis and potassium iodide. “We still love you.”
“Corporal,” Red cawed. “I’m not Die Fledermaus. Where are my eyes?”
“Contact! IR and blue-dot IFF,” Blue chattered. “Thirty meters to starboard, twenty. It—Oh, God, Crocket, up. Crocket is up! It—”
It was here. Charging through the smoke and flames, the Pistis launched a dark-roast warhead straight up while T-boning the Achtung, ramming us amidships like a Dick on a Pequot. The car-crash gong. The 140-ton reactor-driven hammer of a dreaming god, pushing us into a sudden cul-de-sac of non-Euclidian marble. As if crossing swords, the Pistis traversed turret, counterclockwise, and slammed its main gun into ours, trapping it. Our quad tracks whirred, sparked—found no traction. We were pinned. Stuck. Our 30mm whirred and ziiiiipped, hammering the angular stone, chipping it like glass; but the black marble responded by healing, growing, and encrusting our hull with Expressionistic coral. Our heavy weapons, cemented in place. Epsilon 3 was done.
On the HUD, the empty Pistis Crocket launcher was high and erect. Trackcomp mathed the flight. Not a rainbow (Mr. Pynchon), but a paperclip. What goes up, right? And Pistis was the X.
My birds popped their restraints, popped mine, and tried to hustle me to the vintage LT-Egress (aka, “the butter-bar coffin"). Sir, we can catapult your pod into Lady Bird; sir, it’s been an honor; sir, we love you; sir, we—
And Salemi P. used to tease me about preferring an RGB crew to human Slabs. Angels unaware, Mr. Woodhouse. We just do.
I Pezzed Splendor Solis and iodine, slapped a respirator to my Slab, and unsheathed my M9. “Mask up. Pez if you haven’t.” I cranked the turret hatch and pushed my arm through the NBC membrane (aka, the panzer vag), reaching for the burgundy sky. Red gripped my boot and quoted Starbuck: “’Oh, my captain, my captain—noble heart—go not—go not!—see, it’s a brave [bird] that weeps ...’”
I petted his long bill—tickled his chin. I went up.
Ash like snow. Smoke like fog. The staccato panic of a Geiger in the red. Dead Austin. Lethal fallout. The crackle of non-Euclidian stone fusing both tracks together, a marriage of armors, with R'lyehian marble playing the Father Confessor, the priest.
And high above, a dark-roast Crocket burned toward its nadir.
“Hey, John.” The smoke and flames cleared as if banished. Austin building stumps, peeping like rotten dock pilings, were absorbed by R’ylehian monoliths, obelisks, and walls—all decorated with Rococo gargoyles of Krakens, needle-teeth Deeps, and eyes—the Googleplex eyes—of the Author.
The Pistis auto-50s tracked me; Dir K. tracked me. He stood on his turret, his M4 hanging from a three-point sling. Lt. Jane Do stood to his left. She wore a respirator and an olive-drab loincloth—nothing else. Like a Bhutto dancer, her skin was covered in white ash and mica; her stomach muscles were glorious. My masked RGBs, clustered together like chicks in a nest, waved from the open hatch: “Aloha, Lt. Jane; so good to see you; hey, looking great; hot tamale!”
The M4 moaned and glowed a Kīlauean crimson. A million Austin souls—50k for each 5.56—cried out from the 20-round magazine. Oh, Kutulu, your eyes, how they smile when your face cannot. How many times have we done this before, Author, when my Kopf was skull or skin or stone?
You are the Author—but who Authors us both? To know God, as they say, you must become his equal.
Like a magician gesturing with a ceremonial athame, I pointed my M9 bayonet at Jane and the Target. Jane leapt down; Der K. followed, landing on marble flagstones with a squelch.
Flint axes, Tacticals, Strategics, survival knives, purple prose, and harpoons tempered with cannibal blood: What was my previous choice of weapons? Did I touch my inner Touchstone (As I Like It), urging you to “tremble and depart,” lest I “deal in poison with/ thee, or in bastinado, or in steel”? Nothing changed, though, did it? You are the Author; this is your dream. Even when I kill you, I become you, and the narrative continues.
“Sir, the Pistis Crocket—incoming dark roast.”
I pulled off my helmet and respirator. My SlabKopf was now naked beneath the Final Sun—a black star, the Sun at Midnight. My Slab—the mark of a blooded State killer—was also (and always) a blank page, a cube ready for inscription. I jumped down, too, standing before the dreaming god, whose pseudopods began acid-etching sacred words into my bio-plastic graft.
Tis true without lying, certain & most true./ That which is below is like that which is/ above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.
The Target’s eyes opened wide, registering surprise, rather than satisfaction.
“The Sun is its father,” I said. My gorgeous bride shed her respirator and loincloth, resplendent and unashamed. “The moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse.” I dropped low and thrust my bayonet into the trigger guard of Dir Kutulu’s M4. The weapon spat, hammering a million Austin ghosts into the R’ylehian stone beneath my boots, shattering the black marble with white fire and released souls. As R’yleh lost its grip, the Achtung, Barbello, like a ketch in rough chop, shifted left, then right—before dropping suddenly through a sink hole in the narrative.
“The father of all perfection,” I grabbed Jane’s hand and pulled her close. “In the whole world ... is here.” We fell backward into the pit. Dir Kutulu shrugged, spread his wings, and waved as the arriving Tactical screamed like a Stukha dive.
I held Jane tight as we tumbled within this white-light reality, an Albedo narrative. Below us, the Achtung fired its drops, controlling the descent with secret fire. Like winged cherubim, Red and Green rose to meet me, grabbing my epaulets, flying us toward the open turret hatch. Soon, this NuChobham will become an Orphic Egg, the seed of a new story, and I will be the Co-Author because my Kopf is now the Tabula Smaragdina, the Emerald Tablet of Thoth-Hermes, thrice-greatest Hermes: Lord of Alchemy, Hierophant of Words.
I am Lt. John Doe, Midwestern Confederated, Final Epsilon. I am also crowned Thoth-Hermes. I always was—as are you. This is your medicine; this is your narrative. Embrace your god, this Deus Ex.
Because that which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished & ended.
Kansas Invictus. Sol Invictus. Perpetual Tread. I love you. Go.