A science fiction epic for the epoch!
The One:
Ptoth-15 moved with dwindling vigor across the ashen surface of the moon. He didn’t need to breathe anymore thanks to the (rather rushed) ritual at the Pillar of Pleura but his twin bladders both felt set to burst and if they started leaking their warm biogenic fluids, the final sneeze of a dying planet would collapse like an imploding (and bland) mush-melon. His variously-flavored urine held millions of tiny lives in a precarious balance. His twin pisses held the key to the great Cosmic Harmonica.
What to do? What to think? Ptoth-15 was uncertain for the first time on this mission and that was unusual for him. He was known as an adamant man.
But now his thoughts were nervous saccadic pivots that rarely landed on anything salient. Like black sand caught in a carburetor or manic, erratic photons awash in a sea of transmission static.
Ptoth-15 moved hastily behind a huge, craggy boulder and unfastened the titanium clasp under his crotch. His fingers trembled with the effort and the urgent desperation triggered by his expanding bladders. The emergency was real.
Things began to trickle. Instant relief. Ptoth-15 murmured with pleasure as black urine and green urine landed in a slow, low-gravity splash into the crater below. Millions of individual lives cascaded from the dual streams and collected in a frothing, expanding puddle at his feet. Several generations spawned and struggled and succumbed during the tumultuous decades that elapsed over the course of his brief bathroom break. The ceaseless engine of evolution made and remade the world. New life adapted or died or split off into scattered branches never to be cataloged by sentient taxonomists. Vast cities and population centers churned in the emiction. Wars erupted, conquests occurred, disasters happened. History was written.
The past became buried as new futures emerged.
Ptoth-15 looked up at the limitless expanse of the universe above him and tried to decide what he wanted for lunch. He shook the last droplets of dew from his penii and tucked everything away into its designated chamber. He resealed his rubberized exosuit. And then he headed back to the capsule, giving serious consideration to crackers and cheese. He wondered if Gerxus-3 had left behind a final bottle of Borneberry wine.
The Two:
Verkan, attending his father’s funeral, looked out at the dark churn of the sky. It was clouded with nebulous, everchanging stains. An aimless emptiness washed over him. It wasn’t just sadness or grief; it was a feeling of futility and insignificance. He felt like a speck. The precious memories he held in his head would one day fade into black oblivion. All would be extinguished in the ruthless vacuum of reality’s collapse.
He placed his father’s favorite silver 731 Zboreke on the coffin and then walked away from the grave. His wife, Blinn greeted him with a comforting hug at the end of the mournful procession.
“How are you feeling, my sweet auricle?” she asked, after a fleeting kiss.
“I have experienced more favorable circumstances.”
“Of course, my love. Shall we go?”
“Yes. The sky is full of foreboding today. I expect aggressive weather.”
They moved off from the Site of Woe and into the clearing where their vehicle sat parked and waiting. It was an old machine, an Arst 2700 with kneeling pickups and a damaged plorske. He had driven it over 300,000 thermans and feared the engine would fail soon due to wear and fatigue. He could not afford repairs unless his fortunes improved.
And what were the chances of that?
“I think your son is moving furniture within my uterine walls,” Blinn said, with a small moan, arching her back in an effort to ease her organs into a more comfortable configuration. Her kidneys ached with flavor.
“Pain?” he asked. He aimed the creaking, chugging Arst toward the folding mountain range that loomed over their town like a side of slivered Bnorst. The sky threatened.
“Not too great,” she told him. It was not an appropriate day to voice complaints. She could see her husband’s sadness like the green steam that rises from an open wound. She swallowed her pain and said, “I’ll be alright.”
Verkan peered skyward, still worried about the weather. A jagged flash of lightning struck above them, accompanied by a terrible sonic explosion that jarred the car. It felt as if the whole sky was nearing collapse.
And a squeaky piece of him wanted that to happen. Wash away the pain of the world under a merciless deluge. He wouldn’t have to worry about car repairs then. His grief, his failing health, his fears and insecurities would cease to be. All would drown.
And his son would never be born and subjected to a world teeming with hate and harm. Save him the struggle of existence before it began.
Blinn placed her hands on her swollen belly. “Do you want to stop for food?”
“Do you hunger?”
“Yes.”
“Then we will.”
“Thank you.”
Verkan drove another three thermans and then pulled over and stopped beside a Nutrient Station (#136). He silenced the pinging engine with a quick flip of the rusted shcrye. “What would you like to eat?” he asked his wife, gazing again at the deep, roiling sky.
“Three live splaggs. With extra squirm. Please.”
“Three? You do have a ferocious appetite, by Vode!”
“I’m eating for two now. And please do not blaspheme.”
“I apologize. I’m still concerned about that heavy sky.”
“I am sure it will remain standing until we get home.”
“I only married you for your peerless optimism.”
“Oh, you gangling plorp! Just hurry back with my food!”
They shared a laugh and Blinn was relieved to see Verkan smile and relax again after his long, terrible week of tumult and loss. He remained strong and concealed his emotions within the locked vault of his tapering heart. But the vault was not impervious, she knew, and his fear and grief escaped through its porous walls. She could always tell what troubled him. His bravery was a construct, a façade he donned to ease her own apprehensions. It was an expression of what he wished to be. A false character he portrayed when events knocked against his equilibrium. He would never admit to the perceived weakness she often witnessed. And that made her love him all the more.
Verkan returned with her meal.
He handed her a gauzy gray sack fastened shut with a digestible clip. The sack bulged and writhed in her hands. Extra squirm. Delicious. She bit off the clip and crunched it down. It was essentially tasteless but contained an enzyme that aided digestion. She pulled open the sack. A pungent, red smell wafted out, filling the vehicle with airborne molecules that contained dim, abstract memories from her childhood. She shivered with anticipation.
“Do you mind eating while we drive?” Verkan asked. “I want to remain ahead of the storm. It seems to be rising.”
“That would be fine but please, try to avoid sudden turns. I don’t want to have to search for an escaped splagg under my seat. I can’t bend with this extended belly. Besides, my poor organs have softened as if immersed in a dissolving solvent. My heart has become a sodden sponge.”
“I shall endeavor to avoid sudden bumps and sharp turns,” he assured her.
“Thank you, my love.” She seized a shrieking splagg. It fought against the firm grip of her clenched fist. She squeezed it to death between her parted lips and a warm explosion of savory viscera and sweet, gastrovascular emulsion filled her mouth.
“Mmm,” she said, swallowing. “I needed that…”
And then the entire sky slammed upon them with the seismic force of a thousand tidal seas crashing down all at once.
The Last:
Ptoth-15, cursing Gerxus-3 and his left-behind wine, relieved himself for the third time that night, birthing worlds anew while slamming eventual extinction upon the entropic universe of old. The wine was a purple whirlpool in his mind.
He noticed the hopeful notes of the Cosmic Harmonica as it launched into song, a sticky melody he hadn’t heard since he’d floated dreaming inside the soft pocket of his mother’s womb(s). It told of time’s unceasing spillage as well as energy’s diffusion and demise. Bubbles gathered into euphoric foam and then trickled away into an empty realm of infinite density. As he placed strain on his dual urethras, he farted a discordant binary galaxy into the cold void.
And the Cosmic Harmonica played a bright and flatulent fanfare.
The End
Crumbling Asphalt 