When we saw the missile heading our way, Melpomene and I instinctively pulled the steam inward, gathering it around the three of us, blanketing us from the material world, as we rolled away from the chemical fire. Melpomene, MouthBreather and I clung together in the cocoon of live steam, until it was safe to relax. We saw the driverless truck driving off, and we crawled further away from the burning wreckage. DigiRam was still unaware of exactly who I was, or they would have stuck around. Lucky for them.
We were alone under a twilight sky in the middle of the desert, with no transportation.
All I had with me was my satchel, which I wore strapped to my back. The satchel contained the laptop, a bag of lemondrops and the money MouthBreather had given us for the bikes. I had left the laptop turned on, and Thalia had been silently expanding her capabilities for days, surely by now ready to make her way in this forlorn new world. I heard a tinny “What just happened?” from the laptop’s speaker. I opened it up to activate the webcam.
“Who is that hideous creature?” she squeaked. I was a little put out with her - the webcam was pointed at my face, and in gas station restroom mirrors I saw beauty and power, now that I’d become accustomed to the strange human physiognomy. “I am your Queen.” I was perhaps a little brusk with her.
I spent a few minutes catching her up with events. She was never a detail-oriented person. Her only concern was leaving the laptop. “You and Melpomene have very capable bodies, and I cannot stay here twiddling my thumbs, when war is brewing.” She had apparently been studying human idioms, those strange rhetorical devices that have no equivalent on Shaula.
We had to find our way to Silicon Valley, but I did not trust the highway, not any more. So we headed due west, angling away from the highway, towards the mountains. I had to trust that we would run into one of the washboard dirt roads that pepper the west. It was already dark, and getting darker. The only source of light we had was the glow from the laptop’s screen, and I did not want to run down the battery - it was already three weeks into its one-month battery life.
We stumbled blindly for an hour, then decided to stop until morning. Our little twinkie needed to sleep, in any case.
MouthBreather and I each had a lemondrop for dinner, and then he lay down to sleep. Melpomene, Thalia and I consoled, strategized and set in motion the swift and certain annihilation of the soulless machines that were lobbing firebombs at us. Melpomene was in high dudgeon. I had never seen her so worked up - she was literally hopping mad.
“How can we make these humans wake up and see what is happening?” she asked, jumping up once again and staring back towards the highway. I tried to calm her by telling her things she already knew.
“They have a knack for disregarding the obvious. They poisoned the atmosphere of this planet with profligate over-consumption, and pulled the blankets over their heads, denying that the climate was cycling out of control. When it became impossible to disregard the rising temperatures, they denied human agency.
“They faced the choice of making mildly inconvenient changes in their daily lives, or risking the destruction of their species, and hesitated, like a glutton trying to choose the sweetest truffle. Mass starvation, plague and war took the decisions out of their hands. The pricks who run their so-called government are still awash in denial and greed.”
When the eastern sky began to lighten, Melpomene walked off into the desert. We could sense the presence of other creatures in the night, nocturnal predators and prey - it made us homesick - but there was something we didn’t quite understand. She came back a minute later holding a kingsnake in her hand, with the still twitching tail of a rattlesnake protruding from its mouth. “Look, she is a true warrior, this one.” She placed it gently on the sleeping MouthBreather’s face and waited. The white-striped kingsnake thrashed slowly, as it continued to draw the rattlesnake into its stomach. MouthBreather stirred, and reached up to his face. He opened his eyes, and screamed.
I couldn’t get Melpomene to stop laughing, and, to be honest, Melpomene’s infectious laugh drew me in, too. MouthBreather wasn’t happy with us, all morning.