Eric Staggs: Writer

A poisoned oasis that served only gold water that burned.

Wrecked cars and dust on my boots, me with nowhere to know, knowing everyplace I could go. I just sat there, in the heat, a lizard on a rock. Dust in the distance and divine chemistry, making things to put in my body, feeling hurtful things, animals of silicone and microscopic proportion. They waged the war I waged, against all things from the Outside. These nanite-antibodies reinforced walls and made things strong, things that should fall were kept up high.

My eyes watered in the flying dust, and adjusted the level of silicone lubricant released by my new hitatchi tear ducts. I blinked twice and received the internal report “foreign body removed“. I laughed at the irony of this and moved towards the car I hadn’t seen pull up.

It was grim and that magic red color, covered in a skin of dust and a sheen of diesel sweat. It was crouched like a hunting cat. My eyes traced its contours and I blushed like a boy seeing a nude woman for the first time. My mouth watered at the thought of plugging in and letting my soul caress its controls, the hard leather and a twice coiled fly-by-impulse preaction-pre-response computer. I wondered what it called itself.

Then out of the car stepped its master, mistress, monster. Nine feet tall and the earth cracked as she stepped across it. She burned the ground, stole its water and left glass footprints in the sand.

“That yours?” I asked, thinking it might be right proper for me to vent this monster bitch and take those wheels. That was our way out here, at Gold Water Oasis. She must know it, other wise she wouldn’t be out here, out this far.

“No.” Her voice was low and thick, clear, over the racing wind.

“Looking to trade?”

“No, it’s a gift.”

“For who?”

“You, of course.”

I slowly moved my hand towards my gun. No one gives out at the Oasis.

“I don’t think that’s right. I don’t know you.”

“Course not. But I know you. You’ve been dreaming about a car the color of a dying sun. This is the car. This is the one.”

I studied her. No weapons. Just those eyes, fairly crackling with power. She stepped closer, the earth groaned and I tensed.

“No need for violence, manling. Take this gift and drive, off into your precious desert. Out where you are alone, where your mind means nothing and your only definition is your actions. You do like to act, yes? You’re one of those, those few who do and not say…”

The sky was cloudy, unusual for a hot day. The sun cut a hole in the silky veil and sent a column of light down, just for me.

“But your actions cost you don’t they?” She studied me, her unnatural eyes, locked mine, then glanced down to my new arm, the steel and myomer miracle.

“You’ve already paid your price. Drive.”

She threw the keys, then, shining silver things, fast and hard. My right arm flew up to grasp them, my false arm drew my pistol and in that nanosecond my Hitatchis took to reset the vision frame, the she-demon was gone. I looked at the keys. They were just keys. Three silver things, flat, un-marked.

I walked over to the car. Got in. The inside was cramped and soft and I barely fit. There was no way the giant-demon-woman could have driven this car.

I pulled the neuro-lead from the dash and slid it into third slot on back of my false wrist. Red runes flashed across my eyes, ancient runes, esoteric messages only I could see, only I could understand.

“She’s no demon, child. She is Athena.” The car said, when my mind tried to touch it. The voice was feminine, but clipped, reserved.

“The goddess?” I queried.

“The same.”

“And why is she giving me a car?”

“Not a car. I am The Car. I am motion and grace and love. I am happiness and joy. I am that fleeting moment all men dream of. The control of a wild thing, the tame shrew. I am power un-earned.”

I failed to understand. I said so.        

“I am the car the color of the dying sun. I am your dream.”

“I’m dreaming now.”

“More often than not.”

I pushed the keys into her and turned them gently. The tumblers rolled and soothed and the ignition fired and there was a great release, I felt it in my mind, then the steady rhythm. Perhaps this thing was joy, was bliss. The bliss of motion. My mind rolled backwards to those long dead days, with runners, and horses, and chariots. The race. The run.

“Why me?” I asked.

“Why not?”

“That’s a stupid answer.” I gently rubbed the throttle with my mind.

“It’s an answer.” She started, a roar, then a purr.

“Give me a better one.”

“You are doomed to do. You are damned to believe.” She said, as I put her in reverse and turned the wheel. She thought for a half nanosecond about arguing with me, I felt it in her throat, she thought better of it, I guess.

“So she gave me a car?”

“The Car. But yes, more or less, that’s the big and small of it.”

Forward, we raced, through the desert away from the new night and the golden oasis. The roads were hard and black. Bleak angry things, the yellow was faded, the streaking line almost gone. Time and sun cracked the roads, ruptured them, twisting them upwards and inwards, leaving them… broken.

“What shall I call you?” I asked the car.

“Whatever you like.”

“Am I in her debt? Am I her servant now?”

“You always have been.”

“Is it her way to recruit unwilling servants with bribes?”

“How do you know you are unwilling? She’s not asked anything of you yet, manling.”

“How will I know what she would have of me?”

“How does any believer know what their god wishes of them?”

“Oracles. Priests.”

“Perhaps we should see the Oracle. Or even a priest.”

“I’ve got little use for those types.”

“As does Athena. But they have their role, like you do yours.”

“You’re quite knowledgeable for a car.”

“I am The Car. You may call me Pacifica.”

“Okay, Pacifica, how is it you know so much?”

“I was forged on Olympus, by Hephaestus, crafted piece by piece, by the God-Artificer himself.”

“Huh.”

“Like you.”

“What?”

“You are merely an instrument of the Gods as well. Your arm, your eyes, machines, of course made by man, but who gave them that knowledge? Who cut your meat-flesh from the hard earth? Who programmed your codes? Who made it possible for you to exist? Are you not the ultimate example of divine machinery?”

I thought on that for a hard minute, while I did so, I pushed Pacifica hard, and she smirked at me in my mind, we traveled across the hard baked sands and failing concrete paths at scathing speeds, out, here, alone. Then.

“I see your point, Pacifica. But I am a…ah, far removed from divinity.”

“Yes.”

“And you are not.”

“I am not holy. I am crafted by holy fingers.”

“And you seem to know everything.”

“I know much that is not known, yes, but far from everything.”

“What happens when we find the ocean?”

“We will have to stop.” She said, with out humor.

“I have… a… destiny?”

“All things do. Few recognize them. Few fulfill them.”

“But the world is wrecked, and I think I’m mad.”

“Both of these things are true. But you also believe.”

 

 

And then we reached the ocean,  many hours later, Pacifica and I. We stopped and she asked me if I was “Well”

“Of course.” I lied to her.

The ocean was deep and vast and dark, briny and cold. I scanned the horizon with my Hitatchi eyes and saw not one sail, not one ship.

Pacifica then spoke to me. “It is as Athena said. The world is dead or dying and you are mad.”

“Then why take me here with your brutal haste and loving speed? Could I not have remained mad at my Gold Water Oasis?”

“Ah, but that is it, child, remained…”

“Yes, so, what of it? Let me guess… a lecture on confidence and change, and the self evolution event that so few of us are allowed to participate in? More of your god-forged psycho-babble…”

“Do you deny that change forces us to grow?” The car was mocking me.

There were bleak mountains in the distance and I considered driving her from the cliff. Damn her divine artificers! We’d see if she was holy or not…

“You’re thoughts turn dark, but for no good reason. I am yours to do with as you please. To destroy me would be… wasteful, but I will not stop you.”

“Let me suppose then, on your mechanical life, that it is not my destiny to do so, is it?”

“You suppose correctly, manling.”

“What is destiny?”

“It is that thing the gods said you must do, written in heaven when you were named from above, you take the name of….” the car paused in its speech. I turned to the ocean and there saw three ships, sails red and full.

“… you take the name of eternity, thus you shall always be. You, of all shall be plagued and hounded and forced and coerced and ridden and railed. But you shall then rally and redouble and doubt not and stay your hand when all works to force it, you shall force your hand when all works to stay it. You, manling, are paradox, like all your brothers and sisters.”

“You speak in riddles, Car the Color of a Dying Sun.”

“You make riddles from truths. All mankind does this thing. That is why your world is laid waste and the gods taunt you with smart ass machines like myself.”

“I am truly mad.”

“And always have been.”

I turned to the sea again. Ships now, full sails and ominous.

“Those ships…”

“Yes,” Pacificia answered before I asked. “Heralds of change. Things you cannot understand. God-loving priests with great machines and little madness.”

“Then they are those who escaped our destruction?”

“Are there any who could escape you, oh eternal paradox?”

“Some. Many.”

“Fewer than you think. But come. Let us off to the south, to the dryer lands and cleaner roads.”

“To what end? To just drive through time and space?”

“What else would a madman do?”

“I am confused.” I sat in the car and plugged in, touching its mind with mine. We started off, slow, then fast, faster yet and with a bright sun easing its way low, we scorched another lonely highway.

“You are not confused. You never have been. You are simply mad.”

“I don’t understand…” I shook my head, fearful, trying to understand this great machine I’d been given. I looked to the skies for signs from Olympus, I looked to the sea on right for signs from Below. I fell backwards into my neural processor and ran through patterns and systems, control specs and maintenance routines, anything and everything, looking for logic, looking for patterns. I found none. None until I turned my mind to the mind of the Car. It showed me a great a pattern. It was a pattern older than memory, mine, at least. It was carved in the very earth and it crossed every continent, every land, every place, every town, every city. I calmed then and followed the pattern.

I let my mind fly along its designs and I realized, I was on this pattern, a part of it.

“It is a testament to the grandiose designs of man, his ambition to dominate the world. His unwillingness to live with it, his desire to live above it.”

“It’s beautiful…” I breathed.

“It’s dangerous.” said Pacifica.