Rose Blumen ~

(Gamya)

Dad's ancestral town of Kyameli was now a throw stone and a mountain away.

We've spent so much time on this hike and travel, his beard had time to grow from shaved to homeless bear.

G - You look like a carpet. A dirty carpet.

He laughs as I play with his ugly beard. We like these moments of innocent play!

We're getting close. And now our main concern is whether mom will make it alive...

She's lying down exhausted most time of the day. Her pulse is erratic and hard. You can almost hear it pulse just standing beside her.

Her veins in her nose, lips and fingertips are swollen, darkening her skin. Her breathing is unsteady. It's only a matter of time before a vessel ruptures somewhere inside of her.

When she tries to walk it's okay at first.

But as soon as her heartbeat pace rises above a level of strain, tachycardia gets her and she gets nosebleeds.

She's sick, and dangerously so. Dad carries everything and still helps her to walk now.

But that's still not enough.

I - When we reach the house, I want you to go in town and find help in the apothecary.

G - Okay...

We're still a few risky days away, and I have grown other worries.

The gods try to speak to me, as much as I always tried to talk to them. I just don't understand the meaning of their whispers during the day.

And not much more during the nights, when I'm awake.

Only when I sleep, some things become more porous between us, and we can show images to each other. Not that everything easily makes sense then. It's still mostly nonsense and chaos.

But I get some more ideas and knowledge.

I get that they more or less see organic life near them, and interact with it like we see light and interact with the warmth of the sun.

We attract them as a source of energy that seems approachable, but they don't realize what we are.

It's like they are organisms too small to have eyes, and too microscopic to realise what an animal even is.

All they find are available cells sometimes open to their influence, and following continental volumes they barely notice that are our organs and tissues.

I don't know if they are just microbes or viruses. They don't know themselves and I'm not sure.

I think they are something similar in size but different in nature. So they have similarities in consequences and perspectives, but also widely different reactions, responses and consequences.

They try to grow, but most organisms manage to stop that competitive impulse. Until death brings us apart. Then they are free warlords with prosperous lands to conquer and shape in their image.

It still doesn't flow naturally and shows how much they are unable to relate to our levels of complexity and chemistry. They can stretch will, and have some levels of electrostatic elasticity in molecular or atomic bonds... I don't know. I don't get what they mean.

They try to understand our atomistic physics. That much seems pretty clear. But it's a science on which I know little myself to compare. I don't really understand the rules at that lower level of physics.

I'm illiterate on the matter.

They seem to dwell and bounce around there, while trying to coagulate into bigger structures like prokaryotes, or plants and animals even. But the disconnect between such things and them is so wide, nothing makes sense. Nothing really works.

Only my understanding grows from these exchanges, because I can. I was already big enough to learn. They don't get either memories nor understanding really. It's always the same blur.

And I get some of the meaning behind their countless and endless stream of whispers and random motion.

They are trying to become alive.

Their gains seem minimal so far. But somewhere along the death and fluids of animals, there is a meteorological hollow they get easily sucked in. They condensate in droplets there, and use them as opportunities.

Our deaths are their chance to transform and go higher.

They try to imitate what we are. Not just us humans, but us living animals. Slower metabolic paces like plants when they die don't make as sudden depressions in their landscapes that are attracting them apparently.

It's all very weird and flowing to me. I feel like I'm swimming in a glance of their world, as my dreams get me to witness all that. And then my head hurts trying to make sense of the thoughts and sights.

They are like seeds trying to germinate. That much becomes clear.

And we are their soil, so long our immune system or wider metabolism and organisation isn't there to stop them.

I get a creepy focus on blood the more I learn.

As our concern for mom continued to grow, I began seeing a way ahead. Maybe a way to help her medically.

Mom is being harassed by these new germs and her blood is struggling keeping their effects at bay. Not just her blood, her entire organism is now like a weakening and corrupt government.

It's about to fall for good.

She's going to die.

I realized it with painful clarity one morning. She's too far gone and she won't get back on her own.

Human bodies are used to live for two as they reproduce, but right now, with this new disease permeating everything and adding stress to every living cell and their interstices, it's too much for her... Her body is fighting and feeding too much to win it all over.

In the umbilical exchanges, things must be a different frontier now. Wild. And these things are like sand in the gears, trying to take over the movements of the machine.

They will kill her, and then try taking everything over. It's a natural microbial impulse, they don't know what they do nor what we are.

But they might... Be or become more...

Meanwhile, as I got some clarity on mom's fate, dad got a little more concerned about the one of our country.

~

Suddenly his radio picked up some distant signals.

Some emergency broadcasts were repeated like beacons to help guide people after the fall.

But besides hinting at the presence of other catastrophic events way further from our city, and as few surviving people to remember them, they shared their first theories about the new gods.

Or rather, they shared the results of their early encounters with this other genre of life.

One of their first advice was to execute and burn anyone showing symptoms of foreign contamination or disease.

Dad felt his hair stand, hearing this terrifying voice, an order of absolute tyranny he said.

Other voices on the radio exchanges their opinions sometimes, but two things were clear.

The monsters were highly contagious, and were taken all but lightly by the authorities.

These arising new authorities were terrified for their own survival and the fall of humankind. Enough to be willing to execute on sight every diseased animal.

More than warlords waging wars of conquest against each other, the human remnants of civilisation were right contracting into maximum solidity and authoritarianism, in a last gasping attempt at preserving cohesion under this great stress.

I - Fuck...

G - Dad!

I - Sorry... I don't know how this will go, but I think we'll be better on our own for a while. The ones who said that in panic will eventually relax. I don't see how this kind of stupidity wouldn't backfire rapidly.

Political shifts and society's structure are of great concerns to him.

And I learn like him that maybe we shouldn't bring mom in the open streets of a great city without thinking right now.

Until this gasping bud or dying authority changes or collapses, we'll be better on our own in that remote village, thankfully.

And I bet we won't be the only ones thinking that when hearing these psychopath orders.

I can't say if it was a necessary evil out there, where they gave such orders. Maybe it was a necessity out there, but from where we stood, it was all but repulsive.

We'd rather join or create a smaller but gentler society if inhumanity has become a price to pay above...

And I begin to think fast about Mom's future in various ways now.

I - Fuck...

~