Spirits of Civilization - On The Stormy Streets

The group assembled at the intersection of Gravois and Lindbergh, near I-270. It figured that Gravois wasn’t even here, off to meet with Des Peres, much to Lindbergh’s chagrin.
 
Slicking back his hair, Kirkwood gave his usual cocky smirk as he approached the assemblage of his fellow spirits. Lindbergh gave his usual trademark scowl at his “little brother”, which Kirkwood just ignored.
 
It was a bit of a motley crew tonight. Big Bend, the twins Laclede and Hanley, Lindbergh, Kirkwood himself, and to his surprise, Sunset Hills stood among them. The town spirit, standing taller than all of them, looked grim, unusual for his normally high spirits. He kept glancing upwards, to where the dark clouds roiled. Even Kirkwood could admit there was a restless energy in the air, unusual for this time of year. Probably just an early tornado, surely.
 
“Took your time, little brother,” said Lindbergh.
 
“I always arrive when I mean to arrive,” said Kirkwood.
 
“Fashionably late,” quipped Hanley.
 
“Fashionably lame,” quipped Laclede.
 
“Fashionably blamed,” said Hanley.
 
“Fashionably shamed,” said Laclede.
 
“Yes, yes,” Kirkwood waved them off. If he didn’t nip the twins in the bud, they’d be going all night. “So what are we looking at at?”
 
“We think it’s a hurricane,” said Sunset Hills. He looked off into the distance somberly.
 
Kirkwood blinked. “All the way up here? Can they even reach?”
 
“Climate is shifting,” said Sunset Hills. “Not enough to carry it all the way, but enough that fragments are breaking off and scattering as far North as Chicago. St. Louis itself is tackling the largest cell of it. Webster Groves, Crestwood, Kirkwood City and I will be handling the next largest fragment, along with the Highways. But we need you all to handle the splinters.”
 
Kirkwood swallowed a bit nervously, and was a bit slower on the come back. “Well. We’ll be clocking out early tonight,” he said, then cursed himself as the possible double-meaning hit him. Lindbergh made a disgusted scoff. Hanley and Laclede rolled their eyes. Big Bend just gave him a flat expression.
 
“Because we’re awesome!” said Kirkwood. His pistols manifested, and he twirled them both, striking a bit of a pose. “We’ll knock these fuckers on their heads no problem! Just like the Tornado of ’14!”
 
“Right, the one that tore a hole in my arm,” said Lindbergh. “Stop being an idiot. You’re old enough the posturing has gotten supremely annoying.”
 
“Your face has always been supremely annoying, but you don’t see me complaining about it,” said Kirkwood, vanishing his guns with a huff.
 
“Yes, you do,” said Hanley.
 
“All the time,” said Laclede.
 
“Shut up! Your little comedy act ain’t any funnier than mine!”
 
“So, you admit you’re not funny?” said Hanley, sharing a bemused glance with his twin.
 
“No argument from us!” said Laclede.
 
“Focus,” said Big Bend, his sonorous voice cutting through the nervous mirth. His rifle manifested in his hands. “I can sense the hurricane fragments scattering. The largest is heading towards where I cross over 44, near Elm.”
 
“44 be slackin’,” muttered Hanley.
 
“Always said he was lackin’,” mumbled Laclede.
 
A stern stare from Big Bend silenced the duo, and made sure Kirkwood didn’t opt to join in. The large spirit looked up to Sunset Hills, who wished them luck, before he vanished, off to join his fellow Town Spirits and the Highways.
 
“Alright, Big Man,” said Lindbergh, as the spirits clustered around him. Each manifested their firearms. “Ready when you are.” Big Bend nodded. Lindbergh first shunted the group to where his road transitioned into Kirkwood, who shunted them another block to his own intersection with Big Bend, who then shunted the group to the stand-point.
 
***
 
Everything in the universe has a spirit. Everything. From the largest star, to the smallest individual molecule. Its only at about the atomic level where spirit forms don’t seem to have enough cohesion to coalesce into a recognizable form. Though some say there is another layer of spirits in the micro-realm of the sub-atomic.
 
Not that spirits tend to care about such things. Across the universe, spirits are, largely, brainless masses of energy, existing in a realm a quarter-step removed from the material. Drifting about lazily, spirits are simply nebulous, ethereal reflections of the materials they represent. For eons and eons, they exist for as long as their material counter-part does, but throughout the universe, there is nothing for them to do. Nothing.
 
The knew only peace. Or perhaps, more accurately, they simply did not yet know conflict.
 
***
 
The street spirits could manifest at any point instantly along their individual road, but had to travel longways over any other structure. The same for the city spirits, the house spirits, or any other structure spirit; each was able to use their own structure as an instantaneous transport medium. Fortunately, a spirit could transport others within their own structure range, so first Lindbergh piggybacked the others along his road, then Big Bend carried them the rest of the way on his own road to reach the bridge. It really wasn’t the best place to take a stand, but according to I-44, the Highway that ran beneath them, the storm cell was following down his road, and this was the closest point for an intercept.
 
On the other hand, there were buildings and homes right on either side of the bridge. Kirkwood could see the nervous faces of the stocky house spirits. They could sense what was coming, and despite their trepidation, each rooted themselves in place, strengthening the shields that kept the spirits of nature mostly at bay.
 
Freaky fucking things, the nature spirits. Kirkwood was used to the small ones that lined his road by now, but “nature” out in the suburbs was a far cry from the wilderness. Even the parks nearby, cages built to contain the natural world, filled him with queasy unease. The way the plant spirits wavered and coiled and shivered in the pockets between buildings, grass spirits like writhing hairs, tree spirits like large grasping serpents. The little animal spirits, exaggerated sensory organs constantly swiveling, maws gaping open to snag what other spirits they could get their teeth on.
 
At least the earth below was normally placid. Kirkwood could even feel a bit of comfort in the sensation of his road laid upon a spirit so vast and normally still, that one could forget there was a living force within all that dirt and rock.
 
The sky was another matter. A whirling smear of color on the best days, any amount of inclement weather turned into a kaleidoscope of fractalating spirit fragments, splitting and remerging in disturbing contortions.
 
The worst, of course, was when those fragments started to swirl together in a frenzy, and remerged into masses of fury and energy, cloudforms wreathed with lightning and icy teeth that lashed out at everything around it. Tornados were thankfully infrequent, but every one of them gave his confident smirk a hefty pause.
 
As he watched the roiling mass looming over the distance, his smirk gave way to a solid frown. That thing lumbering forward was supposed to be a splinter of the storm?
 
“Maybe we should move up a bit,” said Lindbergh. He motioned eastward, where a slightly more open area marked the crossing of 44 and Elm. Still not ideal, but street spirits didn’t get to have ideal battle zones. At least there was more distance from the buildings.
 
Big Bend scowled, but didn’t immediately object. Street spirits were strongest when on their own road. And disconnected from all of theirs, no one in the group would be able to quick-shunt them to another location. Still, Big Bend could see the logic as he glanced to either side of his bridge, noting the higher potential of collateral damage.
 
“Alright,” he said. “You advance and keep it pinned. I’ll stay here and support you. If things get too harried, fall back to this point.”
 
The assembled street spirits could audibly hear the relieved sigh of the bridge spirit cowering beneath them. Kirkwood smirked. “Don’t get too relaxed,” he said to it, looking down at the concrete. “That fucker’s pretty hefty.” They all heard the little thing let out a “meep!” and cower down further.
 
“Can it,” said Lindbergh, hefting his own pistols. They were, of course, bigger than Kirkwood’s, despite not packing any harder of a punch.
 
Hanley and Laclede had upgraded to machine pistols, leaving Big Bend the only one with a single, long-range weapon. The guns, of course, weren’t real gun-spirits. They were just representations of each street spirit’s power and technique in a fight, adapted to the modern age of weaponry. Hanley and Laclede were wild shots with an odd combination of perfect synchronized shooting and the spray-and-pray “wall of bullets” tactic. Kirkwood and Lindbergh preferred quick, but deliberate shots, combining “fast draws” with dervish-like agility.
 
Big Bend, whom even Lindbergh could admit was the strongest of the group, preferred precision strikes with overwhelming force. “One shot, one kill”. It was not cowardice that saw him hanging back. He was simply the best member of the group to support them with devasting sniper-fire.
 
“Let’s hit it,” said Lindbergh, launching himself over the side of the bridge. His little brother, and the twins followed as Big Bend stood stalwart, lining up his first shot.
 
***
 
And then emerged life. That seething mass of protein, mutating all on its own, growing flesh and bone and blood, endlessly fractioning itself into countless bodies. Bodies that needed more flesh to survive.
 
The spirits of these creatures reflected their material selves, as before. But these were different. These spirits were aware. They perceived the world around them in ways their predecessors could not. They interacted with one another in ways unconceived of before. And this perspective bled into the realm around them. Until even the spirits of the earth and wind and water and flame awoke, truly awoke for the first time.
 
Like their material selves, these spirits felt an irresistible urge, a physical need that hadn’t been there before. The need to consume to survive.
 
For the first time, they knew Hunger.
 
***
 
As street spirits, even on roads that weren’t theirs, they channeled the purview of travel to allow them to “skate” upon any “travelling surface”. Roads, railways, even telephone wires sometimes, the street spirits could propel themselves at incredible speeds along these pathways. Not nearly as fast as instant-shunting along their own streets, but they could casually break the speed limit ten times over, depending on the quality of the road.
 
Kirkwood had tried skating a gravel path once. That had not ended well.
 
All that was to say that the four reached the next intersection with seconds. And so did the storm cell, surging up to meet them like the an entire stampede of bull spirits concentrated into one seething mass.
 
It was vaguely humanoid. That was the thing Kirkwood found the most disturbing. In the last few decades, these “disaster spirits” had begun to take crude approximations of their own makers’ forms. No one was quite sure why, but it was disconcerting to say the least. The recently formed computer spirits, joined together into the cyber-web, or whatever it was called, wracked their brains in their cold, stark philosophies to understand the secrets of the nature spirits. The world of the natural remained a heaving tide of ravenous, alien phenomenon.
 
But not too alien. They all could sense it, every passing year, the way that even the spirits of natural things seemed to have glimmers of emotion. In the centuries since humanity had come to encircle the entire globe and line it with their creations, their grand spider-webs of artifice, the spirits of nature had been changing. Adapting. As if trying, in their own crude, fumbling way, to catch up to the new masters of the world.
 
“Masters” of course, was laying it on a little thick. For all their technological advantage, humans were still animals in the end, still subject to the physical world. In the world of spirits, their souls, however brighter, weren’t really any more resilient than the spirits of any other animal. They were just more clever, when they allowed themselves to be. But no amount of clever could simply stop a hurricane, or an earthquake, or a wildfire. And that’s where Kirkwood and his fellow street spirits, and the spirits of towns and cities and great structures, stood tall against the ravages of the wild.
 
It was hard to tell where the line was drawn between spirit activity influencing the material world, and where things that happened in the spiritual were just reflections of what happened in the material. Millennia of experimentation had proven that the spirits of humanity’s creations had some subtle influence, at least. If they stood by and did nothing, it lead to their materials breaking down faster, of the encroachment of nature being more devastating. If the spirits of artifice actively resisted the spirits of nature, than it seemed that their efforts paid off somehow. Buildings lasted longer, machines needed less repair, infestations occurred less and were less impactful.
 
But even once the computer spirits manifested and set their metallic brains to work, there was still debate over how much effort made how much difference. Frankly, it was no secret that it was mostly for lack of anything else to really do with their lives that the spirits of artifice spent much of their time suppressing the nature spirits around them. Funny, in its own way, one might think the spirits of artifice were just as ravenous predators as the nature spirits they pushed back.
 
And maybe that’s why these disaster spirits had started forming themselves into mockeries of their makers. Some crude attempt to intimidate them, to use the shadowy visages of their creators in a desperate attempt to gain some kind of edge.
 
The computers weren’t really sure, but it was something all the centuries-old spirits of long-standing cities and states could agree upon. At some point in the last century, the spirits’ wrath had gone from a vague sort of anger, to a more concentrated hatred.
 
***
 
The living are never satisfied with their lot in life. They refuse to simply exist. Epochs of evolution gave rise to stronger, more powerful spirits, and in the physical world, the creatures changed and evolved to match. Sentience gave way to sapience, as a particular branch of the creatures mutated into high levels of intelligence. And with that intelligence came greater awareness, and greater capability, and imagination.
 
Whereas most creatures were limited by nature, by their immediate conditions, this new creature, this thing that walked on two legs could forged new objects out of the materials around them, was especially ravenous. They carved up the world around them, shaping it to their wants, to their needs. All other creatures, despite their best efforts, could not stop them. Natural disasters could not stop them. This creature, it adapted and spread, far faster, far more relentlessly, than any other before it. All the time, they teetered on the edge of disaster, but somehow made it through.
 
And their spirits… their spirits were monstrous. Not just those of the creatures themselves, which shone with a light more blinding than any other beast. But the spirits of their creations. Their artificial homes, their tools, their machines, which beat down the spirits of nature into submission. For every one that broke, more replaced them, or they were resurrected, impossibly, by their makers.
 
The balance was upset. The spirits of nature were confused. These creatures defied how things had been for eons, and the spirits did not know how to face it.
 
For the first time, they knew Rage.
 
***
 
It was upon them before they were ready. Giant pillars of dark clouds, rippling with electric heat, descended like the fists of god striking the ground, scattering the four street spirits, who immediately opened fire. It was, frankly, a panic-inducing encounter. The storm cell must have gathered more power as it traveled since it split off.
 
The bangs of their guns were drowned out in the roar of a cloudy maw that stretched wide enough to swallow a house, daggers of lightning forming blazing teeth, heat-glow forming the approximation of baleful eyes surrounding the gaping maw.
 
The street spirits rained spectral bullets into the cloud, having all the impact of pebbles being flung at a car.
 
“Would be really fuckin’ great to get some back-up!” shouted Kirkwood as he wheeled and skated back from the charging mass, firing potshots at the “eyes” of the spirit. He hit every mark, but it didn’t seem to do more than make the thing blink.
 
Unfortunately, structure spirits could only be in one place at one time, even if they could sense and transit instantly to any point in their structure. And I-44, even if he was on his own road, was occupied with bigger cells.
 
There were a smattering of little flashes along the flanks of the creature. A few nearby building spirits, devoid of occupants, threw their own paltry shots into the mix. Buildings, however, weren’t built to be offensive fighters, they were built to be toughened fortresses.
 
A few powerful shots made themselves known over the roaring din. Big Bend’s rifle blew chunks out of the cell’s cloudy hide, actually giving the creature pause. Kirkwood and Lindbergh concentrated their fire on those open wounds, widening them, while Hanley and Laclede fired swirling patterns of bullets together to create an effective rapid-fire shotgun blast effect, stalling some of the storm spirit’s forward momentum.
 
In the material world, trees and street lights swayed dangerously, tiles were blown off roofs, wind swept away anything not nailed down or heavy enough to resist. The clouds swirled into a spiraling knot, threatening to unleash a tornado right onto the bridge. In their homes and bunkers, the humans waited with baited breath, listening to their radios, whose spirits struggled to keep their communication lines connected.
 
It was possible that even if the street spirits were defeated or fell back from here, the full damage unleashed would be relatively minor. But if they could just push through, then maybe they could keep the twister from landing at all.
 
Maybe.
 
***
 
Anger and confusion could only carry the spirits so far. Their existence had little direct influence over the material, being mere reflections of it. Their emotions were still limited by a stunted existence of largely apathetic observation. The spirits of lesser creatures had more direct influence, but even they were only so capable of being clever. Only the spirits of artifice seemed able to inflict such grievous intentional damage on the world around them, stunting the effects the spirits of nature had on the world.
 
But by comparison, the spirits of nature still vastly outnumbered those of artifice. Artifice was powerful, each and every one of them, but nature outnumbered them a million to one. Artifice stood stalwart against a relentless tide, but could only push so far.
 
And then, there came the day when even nature stood in awe. During one of the largest of the evolved creatures’ conflicts, a single moment changed their perspective. A brilliant flash, an explosion of energy that tore the world around it asunder. It was as if an artificial star had been unleashed upon the Earth. In the instant of that flash, those spirits of nature that could see it beheld the spirit within. A being of fire, in the shape of the creatures that had built it. This being, in its brief moment of existence, gazed upon the world of spirits around it, upon the vast sea of formless faces staring in hushed wonder, and it smiled.
 
And for the first time, they knew Fear.
 
***
 
The storm cell was starting to “bleed”, wafts of spiritual force venting like smoke from the holes the street spirits had put in its hide. All they could do was keep shooting. And gradually, in the material world, the swirl of the clouds started to falter, the energy of the storm held on the precipice of leveling off.
 
But the storm spirit wasn’t cowed. It roared defiantly, and its heat-haze eyes blazed, and the street spirits could feel it’s seething rage. It wanted them. It wanted them dead. It wanted to consume them before its own life faded. Through its wild fury, they felt the barest hint that the thing felt a personal grievance against them. Or perhaps, just against the things they were. As if its rage was righteous.
 
The street spirits didn’t let it slow them.
 
“I have an idea!” shouted Kirkwood as he skated backwards, still firing. He could see the storm spirit’s maw start to ripple, the electric teeth shrinking a bit. “Throw me into it!”
 
“Don’t be stupid!” said Lindbergh, skating backwards alongside him, his shots matching his little brother’s.
 
“Stupid is as stupid does!” called out Hanley, weaving around the slightly slimmer tendrils of cloud-mass, and dodging the point-blank shots of lightning that had started to fire off from the creature’s body.
 
“And sometimes a plan is so stupid it just might work!” followed up Laclede.

“Also, he’s really annoying!” pointed out Hanley.

“So if he gets eaten, it’s still a win!” laughed Laclede.

 
“Shut up!” yelled Lindbergh, his next shot missing for the first, and only, time that whole night.
 
“Aw, you do care!” said Kirkwood, grinning sarcastically. But the glint in his eye showed his older brother he wasn’t as sarcastic as he sounded.
 
“I’ll do it!” said Lindbergh, as the four spirits found themselves back at Big Bend’s bridge.
 
“Nah,” said Kirkwood. “I’m a bit smaller, I can fit better through the teeth.”
 
“Alright, you twisted my arm,” said Lindbergh with a sardonic half-smile/half-grimace. “Get it’s maw open!”
 
“It’s already open!” said Laclede, as the storm spirit bore down on them. It was definitely smaller, but still large enough that the rising hills on either side of the bridge momentarily tripped it up. In the material world, the twister began a sputtering descent, threatening to smash into the bridge, and arc off into the nearest house!
 
“Wider!” yelled Kirkwood, preparing himself.
 
There was a thunderous crack, as Big Bend fired a shot right down the electrified maw, and the creature reared back, stumbling. Laclede and Hanely leaped into the air together, one firing up, the other down, angling to strike the upper and lower jaws of the creature. As the thing staggered back, Lindbergh grabbed Kirkwood by the scruff of his collar, paused to let the twins cease fire, then hurled his little brother skyward, right into the center of the storm spirit’s screaming maw.
 
Kirkwood grit his teeth as the thunder threatened to vibrate his skull apart, the electricity around him made every hair stand on end and caused sparks to fly off his guns, and the sheer crushing pressure of the creature bore down on him. He pushed through, and before the walls of the giant maw could crush down fully, he whirled in the air and fired continuously, his guns part-shifting into automatic to hurl as many bullets as he could. As he fell through the center, pushing against the living fury, he shot every initial wound over and over, tearing the thing apart from the inside, as his fellows kept tearing at the wounds outside.
 
And then, finally, suddenly, the great storm spirit shredded apart, dissolving into its own screams, weak sparks of electricity fading as the cloudy form parted. Kirkwood landed unceremoniously on his head, and flopped onto his back in a sprawl, his body still twitching and thrumming with leftover electric shock, but he managed to stay conscious. As the other street spirits came over to check on him, he let his guns vanish as he grinned and raised a thumbs-up.
 
In the material world, the twister seemed to unravel itself as it attempted to strike the earth, as if something had blown it apart from the inside. No human eyes witnessed the phenomenon. But countless nature spirits, restless in the storm, saw, and stilled themselves.
 
***
 
Hurricane Belle was the farthest north such a storm had managed to reach from the Gulf of Mexico, a display of nature’s fury not seen in the region in nearly one hundred years. By the time it reached southern Missouri, however, it was already losing power, more rapidly than meteorologists could have predicted. Loss of life across the affected region, even despite the sheer destruction to property, was surprisingly low, considering the breadth of the damages.

-----

Author's Note: Over a decade ago, I had the idea for a series about the spirits of humanity's machines and infrastructure being locked in an eternal battle against the spirits of the natural world. Part of the idea was to put an emphasis on how actually terrifying and brutal the natural world could be, that there was a damn good reason humanity pulled itself out of the wilds like it did, and that "returning to nature" is a somewhat foolhardy venture. At the same time, the series would show that humanity's influence on the world through increasing industrialization and warfare wasn't without its own disastrous consequences. I wasn't exactly aiming for a blunt message about environmentalism or the human condition, but I wasn't shying away from exploring it.

My initial take was to use a team of Street Spirits, mainly because of their ability to travel around compared to most other types of spirits of artifice. This would let them actually go to a lot of places to become something of a troubleshooter's guild, with perhaps even a rotating cast of support characters showing up. I also pictured the Street Spirits as a team of handsome anime boys who did cool action scenes, because why the hell not? I'm not sure if I would have stuck with that team in specific if I had pursued the series concept, but I guess it doesn't matter, because this was yet another series idea that didn't go any further than the one short idea. It took me over ten years to finally write it, and it definitely needs polish, but as part of a NaNoWriMo challenge, I decided to bang out this rough draft at least, to finally put the idea to paper.

As a bit of an in-joke, the Street Spirits are named after actual streets in St. Louis County, which is where I was living when I first thought of the story. You could probably pin-point the scene of the battle on Google Maps. The personalities of the spirits are not based on any sort of cultural association with the neighborhoods associated, though.