| Embryo
Tree for Android |
 |
| by Cameron Pierce | |
Inside the first room of the cosmos, a shadow emerged from a patch of blue-black fungus on the door. It sprouted limbs and genitals, eye sockets and mouths. After the first in a series of grand mal seizures, the shadow separated into two shadows, who then gave birth to Android.
"What will we feed it?" said the first shadow.
"The door fungus won't last," said the second.
And so the shadows collected the white beetles that lived in their ejaculation fluids. They crushed up the insects and mixed them with the door fungus. Still dissatisfied, they mated once more, crushing up the birth-creature's skull and using its red blood as a sort of glue.
"This is what we feed Android," said the first shadow.
"Android will be pleased," said the second.
They scuttled to the corner of the room where Android was dreaming. "We have brought your food," said the shadows.
Android did not move.
"It must be dreaming new rooms," said the first shadow.
"But it must be hungry," said the second shadow.
The first agreed that Android must be hungry, and so they tried harder to wake the strange crustaceous being. When Android still failed to wake, the first shadow crawled into its mouth and checked the wiring connections on the black box in Android's chest. After leaving Android's body, the shadow said, "It is dead."
The shadows tried grieving at the loss of their child, but since each of them was no longer a whole shadow, they did not possess the capacity to feel sadness.
"What will we do about this?" said the first shadow.
"It is wrong not to grieve," said the second, "we should always be grieving. We should be made of suffering."
And so the two shadows vowed to find a way to devote their lives to suffering. They decided to make the room, the only one in the universe, their sanctuary of sorrow, and planned their descent into perpetual unhappiness.
Since the shadows had originally been one, it seemed appropriate to design a creature to be their double so that each shadow-half could be completed with this new, other half, and then together they could suffer. They called the new beings Man, a word that had come to the shadows in a jointly experienced death dream.
"How should we create Man?" said the second shadow.
"Man should be dreamed," said the first, "because Android died dreaming."
The shadows wrapped themselves around
each other and closed their eyes. They waited to dream of Man, but the
dream never came. Instead, they dreamed of mushrooms sprouting from a
black monolith. The white, slime-covered mushrooms dropped from the black
stone almost as fast as they appeared. The fallen mushrooms floated around
the base of the
monolith, wilting into little skeletons that resembled what would eventually
become Man. Soon, there were enough wilted mushrooms for the shadows to
stand on the emptiness of space like a rug.
They approached the black monolith.
"Should we eat the mushrooms?" said the second shadow.
"This must be how we dream of Man," said the first.
They ate the mushrooms, grabbing the freshest ones, but shortly after they began picking them, a spike-mouthed gray worm crawled out of the monolith and said, "You are no longer welcome in this theater of ruin."
The shadows suddenly found themselves in a black desert with no sky above.
"There is no more room for us in the universe," said the second shadow.
"At least we have dreamed of Embryo Tree," said the first.
"We have nothing but this desert, now," said the second.
"But our sacrifice will bring Man into being," the first shadow said.
"I wish we could see it."
"Maybe Android can see it."
"Android can see nothing."
"We failed," said the first shadow.
"And so Android has failed," said the second.
"We have given Man the only room in the cosmos."
"Do you think our suffering was worth it?"
"I expected something else."
"Regret is not much to expect."
Each shadow, beginning to confuse itself with the other shadow, laid down in the black desert with no sky. They curled up together, and soon other shadows joined them, the two shadows melting into other shadows. Together, in silence, they embraced the inner convulsions of knowing that they had been betrayed by all their children. Together, in sadness, they regretted giving birth.
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