Science fiction short

Untitled short worked in late 2014.

        The cold season would last for earth years on Iape, and winter’s arrival then moving much activity to world underneath, Iape’s interior.  The roar of ice, the rainy mixed deluges, cities subsumed.  Moshe in his readings walked empty streets, burrowed through permitting structures, warming himself as the mountains of the new cities arose, chastening new sacred embers of solitude.  Only in months that he would move from the cities outskirts to the base of the cities once highest structures whose towers afforded neither the same shade or wind break, and even at the onset of a great autumn, shearing winds felt in the city were likely to level whatever that remained so loosely bound.  Faces were never the same in returning as Moshe could recall, so to the recollection of being born and raised into the world that changed so dramatically in scale of time.  Likely these sorts of endings were given to the solace of recordings that he might have recovered if lucky enough.  Were it in another forgotten time, storage, some hidden place, where families buried another face that passed into digital graveyards, and the literal ones would be destroyed by the recession of ice when melt came.  Great machines to clear layer upon layer of glacial till, if it were remotely in the interest of reclaiming back what nature had taken for all such cost, in practice cities themselves should be entirely disposable in another way.  Then more absurdly notions that in the larger scale sense should be hemispherically habitable for the span of years if not decades, a practical summation of world populations migrating in the direction of perpetual summer, autumn, and spring. Maybe once the fortune of having a taste for the  fourth season.  

      Moshe on the other hand would represent a rarer breed, not only residing as he had so much without much technology at his disposal but given endurance, and that he managed to find amid any degree of rotting waste, a left behind cache of goods that should serve his fortune to the extent of a month, but usually more often days if not less time permitting, and Moshe would be left dealing with the more than common factor that essential evacuation planning had taken place, which would include the rapid mobilization of goods flighting from not only cities but entire regions.  More often problems arose on the matter of climatic oversights, that in any given layer of decision making, the occasion might have arose when decisions were overnight ones, as seemingly catastrophic in nature as this were, less than predicted outcomes and consequences would sometime rule irrespective of populations themselves, or Moshe learned despite all manner at harnessing geo-engineering controls, the potentiality of chaos still existed in such world. Conversely to any older traditions the imperative that all should suffer else before human populations were lost ones on Iape, and so to any outmoded notion that the human were at the center of any universe, and more often than not if human societies carried so much of their world with them into another world, it would find its way to the bins of unused refuse in short order.  Moshe recalled only on one occasion discarding much of his furnishings upon arrival into a new world.  At least spatially nothing seemed to fit as well before he had chosen in life his present ways.  As to the matter of cost, how to define expense of such abandon?  The cost itself were relegated to machines that bore life of the cities, and the machines that maintenanced machines to good health.  What solidarity were there in opposition to the toll of expenses here if seemingly everything were brought into existence through the transformation of labor that weren’t required generally of humankind, only provided by tangible measure if something were time sensitive in the engineering sense?  Builders were always building somewhere else for another time and future itself where the outcomes should be predicted, old cities lay discarded, new opportunity, new progress, and an eternal fountain.  On the other hand, Moshe considered himself a mortician of sorts.  Albeit, with at times competition given to autonomous salvaging, contracts had been severed some time ago among the human contingent.  Survival weren’t merely circumspect to the elements alone but given to another potential hostility, another social communion, sentience of his order were expected to a different role.  Thus Moshe at least had in the planning surveys in store, where wealth would be concentrated, where likely salvaging would take place and the allotment of time before contracts were likely completed, or in other words a guide to surviving the salvagers themselves.   As to extraction that were another matter.

Extraction

    Several days passed in Agreren before storms quelled giving way to lighter days.  The seemingly perpetual movement of the shovel and pick axe , for however many cemented and loose layers of accumulation, had eventually given way to wall no longer shown to darkness.  Moshe imagined, the wall’s last icy layer sheeted mostly to a thicker wall, encapsulating, as he had witnessed past horrifically any survivor in a tomb, not unlike an insect trapped in viscous tree sap.  For such nature, idling rivers remained in suspension above, and that at any time a freak thawing event, as he had witnessed in past years would lead to the strange accumulation of liquid water breaching some icy dam of a wall only to drown a sole inhabitant such as himself.  Only luckily, Moshe managed to get to higher ground with enough advanced warning, but likely as he should guess only rarer with the passing of days should such an event give way.  While devoid of any humans as far as he should know, newscast remained, providing a different account.  Such broadcast were neither the apocalyptic sort of a repeating loop in which someone forgot or couldn’t possibly manage to flip the off switch ceasing communications but describing a different narrative.  The audience were obviously from abroad, obviously fascinated by digital ghosts, fascinated in watching the city’s demise.  What future inclement cancellations of the day?   The forecast were given to this day of clear breaks, while a pick axe burst through the wall’s final cavity.  Nothing of pristine blue sky, or rays so intense that one should remain snowblind for days, but a gloomy fog permeating with such thickness allowing for a handful of meters of visibility, and this itself were only lessened by the presence of undulating snow walls in a vast field of such walls throughout the city that were now wilderness.  Air, however, at least were still enough as Moshe sensed.  

   A choreography of steps would lead Moshe from the maze to higher ground.  A navigational aid sputtered in hand.  The plan were to reach Sig tower at least for a given data store, Moshe counted on the likely probability that city activities were winding down region wide.  Even private reportings were winding down, usually the sort of progress report cards, daily briefings on things like loss recovery.  Near the tower, he hoped to scavenge anything, however, and for this day’s role?     Visibility provided less accounting for any visual cues that would aid.  Wanderlust.  Everything in sight were given to more recent wind swept natural canyons.  Within minutes he were already lost, but he were used to this, even if it were all dangerous as he had been warned and warned himself persistently.   Having climbed to higher vantages in succession, a dense fog remained so much that, Moshe decided  in carving a hole in the side of an ice tower that he resided.  The pick of his axe sensed something of a hollow depression underneath,  something less solidly formed of ice for an opening as opposed to a solid thud given by the swing of axe into ice formed on a solid surface.   The cavity were part of a building, an opening into a darkened depression.  Maybe a room, an apartment.  The light from a switched on headlamp told a common story, a shelf crusted over by ice, a floor of solid blue ice as though a stream passed through a given interior, flowing to the balcony towards a common source.  An icy stalagmite were conjoined to a hanging companion presumably from what once were a kitchen.  Nothing appeared untouched by the presence of once liquid water.   The tower, Moshe imagined, would likely collapse with a thaw potentially from the volumes of water mass, if it weren’t the glue of the structure maintaining its form at present.  An adjacent hallway provided passage from the once roomy interior which narrowed into a restricted tunnel, a channeled torrent given to a bizarre flash freezing event that must have taken place, Moshe surmised.   Moshe might have turned away, except something compelling him.  Wanderlust, exploration, something that chimed in him for any number of days,  moved him to work without thinking in mind as he might have frequently sung to himself, or erratic long winded self conversations to passing memories.  He fitted himself through a narrowing depression which provided evidence of other nearby openings.  Rooms.  An ice crusted door remain an obstacle as a nearest potential entry.  Moshe swiped his hand along a frosted but smooth surface which in turn revealed shown reddish embers glinting in the head lamp’s reflection nearest the door’s surface.   As Moshe turned away, a muffled sound, as though something had fallen emanated from the door.

    Fragments of ice lay beneath the room’s interior where once a door stood that Moshe had spent the better part of an hour smashing.  Moshe tossed a leg crouching beneath a high stoop leading into the room.  The room made him feel suddenly quite large, or as character Alice in Wonderland, he crouched his head from the ceiling.  A gaping hole lay of an what once must have been an exterior wall opposite the room’s entrance.  Without warning as Moshe passed to further examine the room’s strange vantage, he tripped.  The stillness of the air seemed suddenly whipped into a whistling throughout the tower’s summit and  interior.  As Moshe brought himself to a knee’s crouch, he gently brushed away at the protrusion in the floor having caught his foot.    A human hand.  Frozen, and this revealed a body.  A woman from what he could tell.  Hardly identifiable in many ways by now at least blackened so much by what were the severest forms of frostbite.  How strange that of all places she’d scavenge here?  At least Moshe thought that there weren’t so much of a living to be made these days for all manner of risk, and then hardly any incentive to do anything such as scavenging like he were doing here.  At least for him this occupation of his in life were almost an aesthetic choice, not really a viable profession.  Not that there weren’t those that might invariably be drawn for some reason, but that it were certainly rare, hardly a survivable condition.  At least a body would prove this much.  The elements had ravaged much of what clothing might have remained on the woman’s body, ice obscuring what further identifications could be made.  Other possibilities should seemingly have been ruled out, medicals frequented buildings such as these all the time looking for the lone strays of societies, passing individuals leaving  little word on exiting, and likely this were with proper timing, between the calls to exodus, between the consultations, between the orderliness of all things planned.   Not that Moshe hadn’t encountered on occasion stranger events.  Who was she?  Likely Moshe would never know, and there were too much work to be done investigating, and then he weren’t in the position to file a report, a petition.  In any event anything of the room’s original inhabitants were likely buried under hours if not days or weeks of manual work in retrieving.  She would remain anonymous to him here, and likely brought to reintegration with Iape’s nature on the next great thaw.   

   The room’s nearby abyssal opening beckoned this time with a rarer vantage, the view of the city shown with greater precision than Moshe had encountered while his navigational aid remained non functioning.  Moshe stepped forward toward the wall’s opening grasping at a wall securing his feet, all the while rarer rays descended upon the now radiant icy city, and at such a moment when he should nearly peek his head more freely from the room’s opening, the floor had given way.  Before he could think of all the times before that he had the fortune of evading missteps despite all odds reckoning any early demise, he landed with a hard thud having brought darkness literally without dreams.

  Spits of ice rained down on Moshe’s face from the sky.  While winds resumed in a common place chorus of winter song, howling so much for, however, many unknown hours while Moshe remained in peace.  The greater sounds churning at times, however present, were the cracking of ice fall from the broken tower crashing from above which narrowly missed Moshe body.  This sound alone to awaken him, and having reminded him what sleep were no longer able to provide.  Tremendous pain surged in a given extremity as he attempted in bolting himself to an upright position.  Moshe’s pain obscured vision sensed only faint reminders of a given day, and then his recollection were as dim as the memory of weeks and months prior.  He had little idea how he came to be here.  The gravity of his situation only known by all external and internal amplifications.  Literally born into a world of suffering, as though a child understanding little previously of his condition before existence, he wailed and screamed his first cries again as a child to a second birth.   A cooling unseen hand had descended upon him again, however, providing another darkness.  Soothing his throbbing head and limbs, lulling him back to sleep.  

   Once bright pain had now lessened to a throbbing sensation in other areas that Moshe hadn’t consciously recalled.  A clear calm sky this time as the shadow of a torn tower were giving way to more intense morning light.  He could sense and move one leg while the other remained completely limp and numb.  Memories returned slowly as Moshe gazed up into the bomb gutted side of a tower with cascades of draping ice descending in ribbons from the tower’s skeletal cage.   Sun lapped soon at his face, another form of solace, even if he sensed no longer to convulsively shiver, still having felt some other weight impending on his shoulders.  Moshe had pulled his axe from the side of his torn but still functioning leg.  Although this time he heard another voice replying that his previous feelings on the matter were a matter of himself convincing himself of something that weren’t necessarily so.  His utility axe would at least serve well enough for walking while wires dangled from a once complete limb.  He convinced himself that he were lucky not to have frozen solid in the night even if the other voice reminded this were unlikely so given his station in the world, while Moshe hobbled beneath the icefall and debris hillside that he had impacted in the previous day.  His body hungered again.  Where would he find another cache?  Where would he find his food?  He imagined himself rescued from his situation even as he were reminded this were not likely so, given his station in the world.  He could mend his leg, but no one would provide him the favor as cruel as this should sound, even though he were reminded.

   A salvager appeared before Moshe had a chance to disappear through to another way, passage, life.  The salvager's examination were only in passing, brief before moving onto its summary work.