Sustra said nothing, continuing down the forest path. She
rather liked the scenic view of acres of trees splashing autumn colors over the
rolling hills.
“Our next mission will be to find the God of Fall, and
string her up by her ankles! Try Falling then, you harvest-haired trollop!”
Sustra glanced up at the vocal cloth adorning her head.
“Your puns are slacking again.”
Dogoro scoffed. “You’re give me nothing to work with, damn
you! Must you always be so silent? This is why everyone says you have no
personality!”
Sustra countered this with another round of silence. He
wasn’t wrong, after all. She continued her easy stride down the path. What once
had been a paved road had gradually dissolved into a crumbling asphalt, then
dirt and gravel, and finally, a half-overgrown animal trail at best. Only small
patches of not-yet-washed-over chunks of concrete indicated a road was supposed
to still be here.
Supposedly, there was a town to be found at the end of this
trail. No one had heard from it in twenty years; naturally, Sustra hadn’t been
able to resist the siren call of curiosity. As always, Dogoro was along for the
ride, protecting his charge from sun and falling vegetation. She let him
grumble on a bit longer. She’d gotten used to it by now.
The path dipped a bit downwards, cutting through the rock to
form a short valley between two short cliffs. The path curved sharply to the
right once past the cliff, putting a blind spot in her way. Instinctively, her
hand rested on the hilt of her sword. A subconscious gesture, but she’d walked
into enough attempted ambushes that it was second nature.
It wasn’t until Dogoro went suddenly silent that her grip on
the hilt tightened. Sustra paused, and listened. Someone else was making
muttering sounds, barely audible on the wind. A soft scraping sound accompanied
the unintelligible words. Sustra slowed her pace, coming to a stop near the
curve. The sounds were coming closer. She was two dozen feet from where the
curve would reveal what was up ahead. She decided to lean against the short
cliff and await what was coming.
A few moments later, a woman stumbled around the corner, her
feet barely raising off the ground as she shuffled through the autumn leaves.
She was ghastly pale, glassy-eyed and slack jawed. A tattered white shawl,
unwashed for many weeks, was all the hid her gaunt frame. On even a petite
woman, the cloth would have barely protected her modesty, but it hung loose and
low on this one’s thin frame. Her long hair was matted and unwashed, thick
around her head, save for a bald spot on top; from this bare patch, a thin,
metal antenna could be seen. From the base of the antenna trailed a long, loose
grey wire, dragged for a dozen feet along the ground behind her.
The woman almost walked right by Sustra without noticing
her. It was only when she’d nearly passed her that the woman paused and slowly
turned. Her eyes focused for a moment, and her slack jaw became an “O” of brief
surprise. She blinked a few times, then made a sloppy grin.
“Haha, what a weird animal.” The woman’s voice was cracked,
still halfway a mutter, but with an attempt at cheeriness. “Guys, check out
this weird animal. Laughing.” Her grin faltered. “Guys? C’mon, guys. Gimme a
like, huh? It’s weird right? Guys?”
Sustra and even Dogoro said nothing, just stared back at
her. The woman’s face fell into a forlorn disappointment. She mumbled again.
“Why will no one talk to me? Guys? Talk to me?” Then she turned to start
walking.
“We can talk, you
know,” said Dogoro with gusto.
The woman continued to turn and shuffled on. She made a few
sniffing sounds, though her eyes didn’t moisten. “No one will talk… no one will
talk…”
“Oi! We’re right here! Give us a tonge-wag! We’re all ears!”
Dogoro laughed. “Well, one of us has ears, anyway.” He lifted his brim to
reveal the fuzzy black ears poking out from Sustra’s black and white streaked
hair.
Sustra kept her gaze on the woman, noting the long, trailing
wiring coming off her head. “Miss? Can you hear us?”
The woman kept shuffling forward, muttering about a lack of
communication, as though the sight of a talking hat being worn by a humanoid
skunk in a red cloak had already been forgotten. Even in a world as strange as
this, Sustra wasn’t used to being so casually overlooked. She might have found
it a relief, had the lack of reaction not come from such a strange specimen.
Sustra glance down as the wire from the woman’s head rasped
louder through the leaves. The end was a tangled, frayed mess that had scraped
up a bundle of the leaves. She glanced back at the woman. She was shuffling
slow enough that it was easy for Sustra to pick up the end of the wire, walk
back a few feet to ensure some slack, and brush away the stuck debris. She
could tell at glance that the wire had been roughly cut, crookedly sliced or
sawn through rather than sheered.
She opened her mouth to speak, but instead her hand whipped
upwards, bringing her sword up as the woman lunged at her. The blade was still
in its scabbard, and the woman’s small fists banged against it as Sustra deftly
blocked each strike. She released the wire and retreated swiftly as the woman
hurled herself savagely towards her, intent on clawing her eyes out.
“Let go!” she shrieked. “Let go let go let go let go let
go!” She swiped ineffectually with each word, seemingly oblivious that Sustra
had released the wire already.
“Feisty when she wants to be, eh?” said Dogoro.
Despite the speed and fury of her punches, the woman’s
strikes were quite harmless. In fact, her thin arms were already shaking as she
flailed, and her hands were already bruising. Sustra replaced her sword on her
belt, and, satisfied the woman wasn’t a real physical threat, just dodged a few
more punches, until her assailant exhausted herself. The woman stumbled and
crashed to the ground, where she curled into a fetal position, while
desperately scrabbling to reel in the frayed wire. The woman’s shawl more fully
conformed to her body, and Sustra winced at how truly thin she was. She was
nearly skeletal.
“Madam, calm yourself,” said Dogoro gruffly. “Such hysterias
are unbefitting of a lady.”
The woman ignored him, clutching and staring at the tattered
end of her wire. “No no no no no no no don’t cut it don’t ban me don’t cut it
don’t ban me don’t cut it don’t ban me don’t cut it don’t ban me.” She babbled
in staccato gasps, huffing in a way that Sustra understood were sobs, though
her eyes seemed unable to shed the tears.
The mumbles became howl. “PLEASE! TALK TO ME, PLEASE!”
before she dropped her head into her arms and shook, dry sobs and heaves
shaking her whole body.
“Hrmph. Lost, this one,” said Dogoro. A brief swirl of dim
blue light traced his brim, and a whisper carried on the wind. The woman
suddenly stiffened, then relaxed, beginning to breathe calmly. He’d cast a
sleep spell on the poor woman. “She’ll be out for a few hours, long as you
don’t jar her too much.”
Sustra eyed the wire, and the small antenna on the woman’s
head, suspiciously. Though she doubted the woman herself would be a problem,
she didn’t trust the strange device. In the end, she opted to coil the thing
into a tight loop, and bundled it into the woman’s shawl. She’d have cut it,
but didn’t know if that would help the woman, or hurt her more. With the device
secured, she hefted the sleeping one in her arms, and proceeded forward on the
path.
***
For two days, Sustra carried the skeletal woman along the
path. Once Dogoro’s spell had worn off, she hadn’t slept. The woman had been
silent, nearly comatose, the entire trip. She’d taken no food or water, never
stopped for rest or to pass waste. She never spoke again, not even a mumble of
acknowledgement no matter how many times Dogoro pestered her. The only thing
she did was very occasionally paw at the coiled wire under her shawl, but she
didn’t have the strength left to undo it.
On the morning of the third day, the woman stopped
breathing. Sustra lay her down and checked her vitals. No pulse. What little
warmth she’d had was already leaving her. She had died, clutching the frayed
end of her wire. As was their usual custom when dealing with strange corpses,
Dogoro incinerated the body with a fireball, tactfully opting not to offer any
particular remarks, witty or otherwise.
Some might have taken the encounter as a warning sign, to
head back to civilization.
Sustra kept going.
***
The path gradually became more defined again, over the
course of the next few days. Eventually, cracked and cratered asphalt formed an
obvious highway back to civilization, but the state of disrepair maintained all
the way into the city limits.
The state of the road was only a prelude to the city itself.
Miles of suburbia had been reclaimed by nature, a million houses collapsed in
on themselves from disrepair. Feral versions of once-domesticated cats and dogs
ran through the streets. Grasses grew tall and unchecked in every yard. Trees
grew with no regard to aesthetic placement, some even sprouting up through the
middle of buildings; their height indicated a passage of decades.
It was obvious, however, that the settlement wasn’t
abandoned. The ruined suburbs ringed a trio of sky scrapers still standing tall
and clean. From the top of these towers radiated a vast web of wires, layered
in many net-like sheets that would have all but obfuscated the tall structures,
save that their silhouettes could still be seen through the web as the sun rose
behind them. The wires, linked by hundreds of metal spires piercing the
landscape for a mile around, formed a vast three-dimensional network, from
which millions of thinner wires draped down into the crumbled houses and
smaller buildings surrounding the city center.
“I have a good feeling about this,” said Dogoro. “What have
I always said? Whenever you see a giant ominous tower in the distance, always
go straight up to it. The landlords are nice, we promise. They probably have a
fresh baked apple pie waiting for us.”
Sustra let out a single exhalation of amusement, then strode
forward through the overgrown streets. As she neared the towers, she could feel
the electric hum of the network; from even a quarter mile away, the smell of
ozone was nearly overpowering. As she came within range of the first line of
dangling wires, all her fur stood on end, and the air was filled with the
humming and buzzing and occasional crack of electricity along the lines. As she
strode further in, the energy nearly made her teeth vibrate.
“Bracing, isn’t
it?” said Dogoro.
“Mmm.” Sustra knew better than to simply walk into the belly
of the beast. Besides, the wire network reminded her too much of that spider
city she still had nightmares about. Instead she cautiously backtracked towards
one of the most distant houses that had a wire attached.
The wire split into several smaller ones as it neared the
roof. Each snaked into a different window. The house was lit, and had only
partly collapsed. However, three other homes nearby were in worse shape. One
had collapsed completely, one was an empty burnt husk, another was half-sunk
into the ground, sitting in stagnant water. No wires reached these homes, but
upon looking up, Sustra could see cut lines dangling over the roofs.
She reached the house that still had lines in the windows,
still had electricity running. She didn’t go inside. She didn’t need to, to see
the residents. Two humans, gaunt as the woman on the road had been, lay leaning
against one another on a couch. Their clothes had rotted off and their bodies
were deeply sunk into the cushions. Some kind of fungal or mold growth had
taken over a good chunk of the floor, and was partly growing up their legs.
Bugs flitted about their bodies. The stink of long unwashed human was nearly
overpowering. Only the subtle rise and fall of their chests indicated any kind
of life.
And yet the people were smiling. Their eyes were open,
staring into the middle distance, blind to the world around them. Green and red
and blue light flashed in their pupils. Upon their heads were thin, short
antenna, connected to the wires snaking in through the windows.
Sustra traveled around the outer edge of the ring. The story
was the same. Most of the outer houses were empty. Some held actual skeletons
among the wreckage, some didn’t. Cut wires hung down above them, like an
ominous marker of loss.
Those homes where wires remained attached held skin-and-bone
people with unseeing eyes and mouths frozen in grins or grimaces. One house had
a man sitting on his porch. He was huffing words, his chest almost heaving to
try and get the breath. His mouth scowled and his eyes twitched back and forth
as if in REM sleep.
“Laugh. Stupid. Sheeple. Noobs. Okay. Dog. Pic. This. Game.
Looks. Awesome.”
Sustra wasn’t sure what to make of it. She waved a hand in
front of the man, and his eyes paused. He flicked his gaze to her, and blinked several
times.
“Woah. Skunk. Girl. Hot. Laugh. Where. That. Pic. From?”
And then his eyes were flickering back and forth again.
“Laugh. No. Perv. Furry. Laugh.”
Sustra stepped back from the man, and kept walking.
***
Sustra spent a few more hours following the outer ring of
the town. A few houses down, however, and she finally saw someone walking
around. A man clothed only in wet mud was stumbling around, flailing his arms.
A cut wire trailed behind him. He was screaming hoarsely, gasping furiously to
work his ragged vocal chords.
“AAAAAAAAAAH!!! Let me back on! Please! I’m sorry!
AAAAAAH!!!” His eyes spun wildly in their sockets until he spotted her. Then,
he blinked several times, and dashed towards her.
Sustra shifted to a defensive stance, her hand on the hilt
of her sword. Then man came right up to her, but instead of grabbing her, he
snatched up his cut wire and shoved the end towards her face. “Help me!
Reattach me! Please! Fix—” He blinked a few more times, then jerked back.
“Woah. You’re that skunk thing.” He looked around brow furrowed. “Am I still
plugged in, then?” He suddenly stumbled hastily away. “Am I not banned? Is this
a new sim? Hello? Admins, Mods, what program is this? What program?”
Sustra frowned, watching him go. She was about to follow at
a distance, when she heard a sudden mechanical whirring noise. She looked up to
see a small, rectangular device hovering on four small, spinning rotors. It
paused above her, hovered for a few seconds, and then quickly turned and zoomed
off.
“My dear, I think we should beat a hasty retreat,” advised
Dogoro, one second before a mechanical screeching sound echoed through the
city. As she turned, she heard a scraping of wires, and looked up to see dozens
of gaunt figures staring at her from the windows and doorways of the still-lit
homes. Their gazes were suddenly laser focused, eyes blinking rapidly. Then
they were pointing thin, shaking arms at her. She could hear strained
exclamations of “Woah” and “No Way” and “What is that?” and “Fake” and “Stupid
Meme” and “Check again” and “Sick” and “Furry” and “Laugh”, before the babble
became an unintelligible blur of overlapping phrases.
The screeching sound echoed again, and a sharp, machine-gun
clattering of metal on concrete started thundering toward her. Sustra had
visited enough nightmare cities to know where this was likely going. She turned
and started running. Metallic shrieks and rustling wires and increasingly
agitated shouts followed in her wake. Dogoro began to glow with white wisps of
mystic light, which spread over Sustra’s body. The world became a blur as her
companion’s spell boosted her physical speed, and she streaked through
shattered suburbs so fast, a sonic boom was left in her wake. When she hit the
city’s discernable limits, she didn’t go back down the road, but dashed
straight into the forest. She didn’t stop running until the screaming city
vanished over the horizon, and she was sure the metallic screeching could no
longer be heard, much less its cause seen.
She finally slowed as she came to clearing, miles away,
coming to rest at the edge of a stream. Taking a sip of water, she breathed
evenly to settle herself.
“Well, that was mildly terrifying,” said Dogoro.
“Mildly,” said Sustra. “What do you think it was?”
Dogoro was silent as he pondered. “I’m not sure, but the
words ‘social media was a mistake’, suddenly come to mind.”
Sustra glanced up at him, looking at the familiar underside
of his brim. “What does that even mean?”
“Hell if I know! Laugh!”
After a moment, Sustra let out a little grunt that was less
of a laugh, and more just an acknowledgement that he had made a joke. Dogoro
compensated with a hearty belly laugh of his own.
Once she felt composed, Sustra stood, oriented herself, and
started walking again, away from both the strange city and the crumbled road.
ONWARD
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