skonen_blades

There. On the beach of the Glassapagos islands.

The Darwin Sisters: Rebecca, Sanskrit, Sunita, and Lullaby.

Eccentric to a fault. Their attention to detail and ludicrous theories concerning the origins of tableware were infamous in the courts of Blue Albion. Four pairs of glasses winked white in the sun. Their white chemises fluttered in the silent breeze. The peace was marred now and then by the light scraping of metal and glass on the volcanic glass of the islands.

The Darwin Sisters’ theory of evolution had a chance to be proven here. The Glassapagos islands were cut off from every other silicosm in the world and the islands were neither too large nor too hazardous to cross on foot. A rarity.

Life was abundant on the islands. The ladies focused on photographing, collecting, and recording all of the evolutionary dead ends and keeping them safe in their records for posterity.

Rebecca concentrated on the glassware. So far, her favourite was the silver-ringed Tuscany: a head-sized bulb of glass so thin that it flexed on the air currents. Four rings of silver, two near the top and one near the skirt with the last one glinting in the middle, acted as both conductors and constrictors, pulsing to keep the animal aloft like an airborne jellyfish.

Just one wrong move and the silver-ringed Tuscany shattered on the rocks. The winds were unpredictable but the Tuscany were numerous. Their deaths softly filled the air now and then with a wind-chime exodus of souls.

There was a species of softglass urchin. There were spun-glass tumbleweeds and the manta ray panes. There were even chandelier kites far above the island, soaking in the sun and avoiding danger. Rebecca looked up at them, holding on to her wide brimmed sun hat.

Sanskrit, dozens of yards away, squinted her piggy eyes down at the forkroach she had crawling in her hand, the tines touching her skin. They sensed the dim current she had firing through her human nerves. The fork’s handle curved around in a hoop, no silvertamer’s stamp yet on it.

She took notes on the spoondragons and the knife beetles. Wild cutlery fascinated her so. She had mapped seven separate species of garlic press clattering softly amongst the rocks so far, and she had seen something that looked like a cross between an apple-peeler and a can opener that she named a Scuttlejaw because of its odd locomotion.

There was cutlery here whose uses could only be guessed at. The utensils were improvising, going down paths that deviated from the eventual use at the dinner table. It was fascinating to surmise purpose and entertain notions of genus.

The lensant, for instance, cooked its food with the focused sun’s rays. They were annoying creatures that had peppered her and her sisters' exposed ankles with tiny burns when they first strode ashore from the rowboat. However, when she had held one up over her notebook to take notes on it, the writing beneath the single lens of the insect had come into sharper focus.

Single lens cutlery? Unheard of. This would make the binocular theory clergy go mad. She sweated and smiled in the sun, writing furiously.

Sunita, dark-haired and wandering, had found a nest of Igneous Ocularis ‘Eye-Rocks’. Black rocks with nodules of polished mirror protruding from their skin, blinking as the sun changed position and shutting entirely when Sunita’s shadow fell across them. They were soft and warm to the touch. They cried silently when they were picked up, oily tears soaking the palms of her hands. She loved them.

Lullaby was sitting next what might have been the most exciting discovery of all: a nest of vacuum tubers. She was the youngest. Nearly albino, her long white hair lifted in the soft breezes as the nest of vacuum tubers buzzed and beeped softly. Were they calling for a parent? Trying to communicate with her? Were they aware she was there?

She would have to bring a few back for her Aunt Marconi to look at further.

She set up her daguerreotype to take pictures. Soon she must take the camera to her sister’s sites for another round of photographs and a brief sharing of notes and sychronizing of watches.

They worked in silence, accustomed to each other and comfortable in their shared obsession. These finds would revolutionize dinner tables around Europe.

The ship and her sailors waited offshore for the signal to come and collect the girls. They were only too happy to do so. The young ladies and their passionless stares unnerved the sailors more than any tale of sirens or kraken.






tags

The lab was top secret. The sub basement had many levels of security. It was five clearance protocols above the office of the President. It was assembled in secret by technicians who each worked on a small piece of it and were not informed about the others. To tell the truth, there were sixteen people on the entire planet who know of its existence. There were ten scientists who worked on the experiment. There were three test subjects. There were two agency heads that authorized it.

There was one more person that knew about it and he was the one who organized it all. He was standing in the green glow of the control panel looking down at them when it happened. He was the head of black ops. He knew more about national security than anyone else alive. He was gazing down at the subjects deep in their sleep cycle. He was a tall man with white hair and long precise nails. He was pale skinned from so much work in the shadows. His post and his division didn’t actually exist and all of his operations were off the books. He lived in the margins. He lived off a percentage of the national surplus. His operations were written off. He was the unconscious mind of the US of A. He was the lizard brain lying at the base of it. His job was to come up with the means to protect the nation from hypothetical scenarios. He conjured up conjectures and possible threats and then came up with ways to defeat those ideas.

His name was Easter Standing.

The year was 1889.

I remember it well. That’s the way I was designed. Total recall. It’s a bitch when you’re as old as I am. Going into 2010, I realized that being 121 years old isn’t that big of a deal if you still look like a super fit thirty year old. I think back to the day of my birth and the day of Easter’s death.

I remember opening up my eyes and seeing Easter looking down at me from behind the glass. You have to remember that this was a long time ago and we didn’t have the same technology. We had primitive pheromone detectors at the doorways and security cards with holes punched in them that were changed every day. The metal was mostly copper and brass. Some of the power was provided by steam and coal.

Most of the power, though, was provided by the hydroelectric dam that we lived under. A whole city’s worth of energy diverted solely for our use. This experimental sub station was set up underneath a large lake created by the dam. Underneath water and a mile of earth we slept. Lightning rods were set up and connected to huge batteries underneath us. Geothermal rods led into them as well.

All for me and my sisters.

My name is Falayla. My sister’s names were Doreen and Lektrinka. We were super heroes born in the late 1800s. We were created to combat enemies of national security. What can I say?

Easter was standing over us to supervise our execution. He was livid. He knew that he had created beings that he would never able to control effectively. He was watching one of his best ideas getting crumpled up and thrown away. The trouble with Easter is that he was too good. He had great ideas that didn’t always fit in with the inherent limitations that humanity gives him.

He had the technicians put us down.

I woke up just as my second sister died. We were linked in the mindspace. When I was alone there in that other place, I woke up out of curiousity to see where the minds of my sisters had gone. That simple thing. If they hadn’t tried to do us one at a time, they would have succeeded.

I saw Easter’s eyes widen when he saw that I was awake. I saw the technician standing beside me with a large brass syringe. There was a moment where it all became clear what was happening when I saw the open vacant eyes of my sisters.

It’s all a blur after that. Doreen was a teleporter. Her code name was Door. Lektrinka could manipulate electricity. Her code name was Lectric. I could make my body diamond hard and extend unbreakable tendrils out from my body. My code name was Flay. All of us could fly.

The technician beside me lunged for my arm. He disappeared in a mist of blood as the hairs on my arm shot out, tangled around him and convulsed. I cut my self free of my bonds and shredded my way through the rest of the scientists. I picked up the bodies of my sisters and left Easter standing behind the glass. I think he was smiling. At least he got to see his handiwork in action before he died.

I flew up through the ceiling and further up through the dirt and into the bottom of the lake. I broke through the lake bed and went up through the water. The lake rushed down into the hole I had just made. The water reacted with the coal engines and overloaded the steam pipes. Anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to be cooked was crushed and drowned.

The vortex that formed like water going down a bath drain was what I had to fight against flying up through the water. I was strong and invulnerable but I still had to breathe. It was a two full minutes before I burst out of the whirpool on the surface of the lake in a geyser of steam, carrying my dead sisters and screaming like some sort of born again phoenix mermaid siren.

I flew over to the bank and took giant gasps of air and watched the water level of the lake go down a few inches and then calm down over the next twenty minutes. I buried my sisters.

That was a long time ago. It bothers me that I never saw Easter die. That was some pretty thick glass he was standing behind.

There’s a knock at my door.





tags