Head Full of Mountains Read online

  The apparition, happy for any concession, for any bone tossed its way, moved its hind quarters from side to side so vigorously it shook itself apart.

  He was pretty sure he could not remember what it was like to be that baby, Crospie. Memories of memories. Haptics and replayed files. Naturally, there were recordings by eyes of the world, stored in the banks behind father. Not many, but enough.

  He’d had a sister then, apparently, the same age, at first, though she disappeared at some point during the first two years of life, and seemed to age at a different rate. Father had immersed Crospinal in a few dozen scenarios: two infants—Crospie and the girl, Luella, in tiny uniforms. Crospinal dragged himself forward, crooked thighs splayed, while his sister began crawling, pulling herself up, and toddling, long before him. Flesh and blood. Two babies, tumbling together.

  Side by side in the garden, taken from a remote perspective, or playing with father’s garrulous projections in the halls outside the pen’s core while the two elementals he had called Fox and Bear watched, begrudgingly, over them both.

  Maybe mnemonic triggers were set off by the sight of the children, but he was absolutely certain he had no recollection of the feel of another person’s palm against his own, no living hand, mitt in mitt. He watched contact happen—at least on two occasions—on floating screens, and within the haptics, but that was all.

  Generally, in the years since Luella surpassed him and then vanished, father and he kept their distance, ostensibly to prevent the exchange of unpleasant organisms, but Crospinal, even at a young age, sensed a whiff of shame. He was sure he smelled the faintest tinge of repulsion.

  In one such recreational file from the library of haptics, the siblings were naked together, actually naked, without any latex or neoprene, no processor, nothing, splashing in the collecting pool, bathed by the clumsy elementals. They must have been days old, bandages still on their arms. Their pale, fresh skin, a rare and incredible sight. The damp folds of their genitalia, glimpsed but once, dimpled buttocks, large heads. Before any uniform went on, before catheters drilled in and the clinging spandex covered their limbs, before delicate shields swung up, over their faces to filter the air. Bodies were pink and sudsy and gleaming clean.

  But he could never recall contact.

  Fox was thin and upright, a smart machine, casting a thin shadow. Bear was the same. Like all elementals—there were a few that came and went, assisting around the pen—they had cold, red eyes. Clearly, father had sent a few spirits in, too, to watch over proceedings: spectral shapes hovered in the background, translucent and fleeting, stymied by the trees.

  Now, Fox and Bear, like Luella, and all the other elementals, were long gone. Of this Crospinal was also certain. The pen and environs were crumbling as father sickened. Composites encroaching again, the way it was before he’d come. Even haptics were changing, edited, or unavailable. Vanished from within father’s diminishing range and what few external areas Crospinal had lamely explored. Maybe the machines—and his sister, too—were broken in adjacent landscapes, whatever configurations they might be, unable to return. Batteries might have died. Oxygen could have ended. Truthfully, Crospinal did not miss the machines much, though he often wondered what had become of Luella. Despite Fox and Bear being tangible, their titanium fingers had been cold, their movements slow, their silence and awful eyes unnerving.

  Spirits still drifted around. They didn’t get in the way much. And ghosts. And dogs, of course, father’s dogs, all over the place.

  In another haptic, baby Crospie, unaware of anything the future might bring, or take away, slept fitfully on his back, arms flung wide, curved legs canted. In a fresh uniform, maybe his second or third, with fresh boots and fresh mitts. His sister, awake, managed to lift her head and stare out at the lens recording the shot: her expression, under the patina from the collar’s shield, showed evidence of a rapture that clearly defined the wonder she felt in her life and perceptions. Crospinal could tell by the gaze, the partly open mouth, the intake of breath. Her blue eyes were almost round. Behind her, even in sleep, Crospinal’s contrasting pain and angst were visible. He had never felt wonder, nor assurance, or security. Not to this day.

  Luella was gone.

  Impossible to pinpoint when, exactly, she had vanished. Impossible for him, anyhow. In one haptic, she appeared twice his age. Impossible for him to pinpoint any event, really. Like Fox and Bear, like the past itself—and like the baby called Crospie—all he knew was that his sister was no longer around. Times when he had wanted to ask father about Luella were also gone. Times when he might’ve gotten a straight answer. All he ever got now was blank stares, catatonia, or fragmented lectures from the apparitions as father unravelled more and more toward madness and his demise.

  Bloody drool, dangling . . .

  Crospinal had stopped asking anything. Most of his time was spent wandering the edges of the disintegrating pen, or beyond, in the less defined areas he was warned so many times, as that child, to avoid.

  The clutch of carbon tubes clattered together like bells as they plummeted. He had snapped the tubes away from where they’d been rooted, separating the brittle material at the base. Not long ago, this entire area had been distinct and hard-edged. Now, sheets of hardening polymers encroached on the landscape and curtains of light swept back and forth over areas, reconfiguring, instilling information. Building machines—dumb, six-legged, carapace the size of his fist—watched from the walls as the tubes fell until the roiling mists below broke them down. Other movements down there, through a lazy rent in the clouds: beams of white energy suddenly revealed, magnesium bright, a growing extension, coaxing fullerenes from the composite foundation. Two hovering drones watched, in a swarm of data orbs, as construction splayed where none had been before, the world shifting, growing down there.

  Crospinal turned, reluctantly, from the abyss.

  There had been a thought, a flickering thought, about following the tubes down.

  Past the remaining platform ringing the aperture, a layer of tiles, marred purple with toluene, had formed, completely separating the main rib from the pen, compromising the transfer tube he’d planned to take in such a way that Crospinal would have to hunch to walk under its sloped ceiling. Even now, strings of allotropes dripped from the seam of the split to the fresh tiles, where they were absorbed into the world with tremendous stench. He stood in wonder at the transformation that would sooner or later eradicate everything he knew. Data streams webbed the opening, information pouring over the freshly exposed material, programming reform, telling polymers to join forces. Changes were afoot up here, too, reconfiguration in the old as well as the new. What would father say about this, if he knew? Change was no longer kept at bay.

  Not foolish enough to pass, for transmogrifications of the layout might not cease because of his presence, Crospinal held his nose pinched, capillaries crackling (these mitts were not new, and also compromised by wear). After a brief inspection, he took a narrow passage into what remained of the original structure, into a crawlspace, shimmying sideways between old plates.

  The tunnel that had formed here was quiet. Sometimes he felt a breath of stale air, and he thought he heard movements, but he did not see indications of what, if anything, might be travelling. Ambients in the wall kept the lighting dim. At his back, the construction was warm, almost hot. Getting increasingly rough. If the structure changed abruptly, he could find himself plunging—not as appealing a concept as it had just been. He wondered if, on the other side, lay the barren horizon he’d gazed out on, not so long ago, from porthole of the harrier. Was there truly another world, with another set of rules, outside this one? The wasteland Crospinal always saw could not be what father coveted, where there had been mountains. His insistence meant there could be a third, or dozens more, for traces lingered, through fragments of memories and jumbled knowledge: the gate connected to father’s brain once supplied the ability to burn brightly, and project, but
proved inconsistent and, as he died, unreliable.

  Life had not always been this way.

  Putting his hands against the ancient surface of the construction, Crospinal felt tremors of energy through the thin layer of his mitts. He thought again about his girlfriend’s words. Just as there was no way to see what lay beyond this shell, he had no chance of understanding the motives of the manifestation he had fallen in love with. Portholes did not open on this facet of the world. His girlfriend was unfathomable.

  If he could break through, arid waste spilling in, the nothingness of the outside that he saw might sear his lungs to cinders and etch the flesh from his bones, bringing oblivion, freedom from torment, and relief.

  His breath caught, shuddering—at least one more time—in his chest. The tricot rose and fell.

  At one point, moments later, still navigating the tunnel adjacent to the blocked transfer tube, Crospinal got wedged. He wondered what the dogs would do, or not be able to do, if they could see him there, stuck in the wall. With his tongue he hooked his siphon into the corner of his mouth. He took a very small sip; water from his processor, wicked by the lining of his uniform, was distilled from his own waste. Since a recent lesson father might not even have meant to show him, but had done so as his judgement failed, Crospinal could not help but taste the bitter iodine.

  After some amount of half-assed struggle, he managed to free himself and continue, on his way, back to the pen, where father was tethered, trapped, and almost dead.

  THE YEAR OF ACTION

  Party number seven was a ceremony with no precedent. Held in the secondary sustenance station, just off the throne room. Dogs were represented, a full force contingent. Fox and Bear were there, too, and three wisps, which seldom appeared, drifting in the breeze that came through openings in the wall. One of father’s spirits carried a direct lightscreen, beaming a broadcast of father himself, back in the centre of the pen, looking healthy and young in his fresh uniform, unable to stop grinning from within the array of tubes and conduits and cables that connected him.

  Ghosts drifted about, ebullient.

  Father, though, was pretty out of it, on nootropics and such, coasting on their effects. Any mnemonic breakthrough was a cause for emotional soaring, at least temporarily, and soaring, as Crospinal was well aware, preceded a dive.

  From the banks there was an image of a strange, pointy helmet, with stars on it, and another part of the haptic called chocolate cake, which had once been a configuration of pellets no longer available from any dispenser, with seven candles so real Crospinal almost believed father’s story that they would have been hot, if Crospinal were able to touch them. Details meant father was well-stoked. Fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing, Crospie grinned awkwardly and kept fairly silent. The outcome seemed inevitable.

  Afterwards, father dispersed the guests, most of whom vanished instantly. The two elementals, made of metal and the hardest of plastics, lingered for a moment before turning and leaving under their own accord, without a word. Only the spirit carrying father’s image remained.

  And Crospinal, of course. He could hardly vanish.

  “I’m proud of you.” Father’s face, shining like ambients, the nutrients almost visible through the tight skin of his face. He was wearing the front plate of an amber helmet—all he could fit. “I might not tell you often enough, but I’m very proud of you. Look how well you’re doing, Crospie. Your legs are much straighter. Do they hurt today? You haven’t said in a while. You can get about quite well.”

  Crospinal stood there, best he could, another absurd haptic called a balloon in one mitt and projections of icing on his face. Even at such an age, he knew there was more coming. There was always more coming. That’s what life was like. Implications and half-complete expressions, undefined expectations, ever unsure what exactly was needed, or what, in fact, was happening. He waited uncomfortably.

  Father cleared his throat; tubes shook, back in the pen, where his body waited. The spirit carrying this representation loomed even closer. Smoke and mirrors, layers of illusions.

  “You’ve passed many hurdles, son. You’re healthy. You’re alive. You’re civilized. Do you understand what this means, Crospie? Do you see?”

  Crospinal’s stomach rumbled. “Not really. But I think so?” Yet he did not.

  “One day, sooner than either of us thinks, we’ll have to part. You know that. Of course you do. And when you’re on your own, you’ll bring civilization with you, like a torch. Everything will be made available if you persevere against the dark. This is the year of action. The seventh year. A year of renewal, a year of hope. You’re a success, son, and you’ve made me a success. The past is inconsistent but the future will be clear! Today, I had images in my mind so lucid I could almost touch them. Look at what I found: the birthday party of a child! If you continue to listen, Crospinal, and believe, we can push the dark away together. But, for now, stick by my side, son. Keep your old man company. There’s much to learn and you’re not ready.”

  Crospinal fumbled with the balloon string (which, like the hat, the candles, and his companions, was constructed from photons). He needed to go pee more than anything. He liked to hold off for as long as possible, only relieving himself while alone, and without any choice, because the catheter, when activated, made him queasy. He shuffled his feet. The apparition wavered. Crospinal’s legs were killing him. They always did. But he had stopped complaining, that’s all. Father’s representation continued to grin and beam. Even Crospinal’s eyes hurt.

  The grand entrance—prodigal son, returned—was, needless to say, less effective than he would have liked: when Crospinal appeared in the opening to the central chamber—where father had bound himself to the gate, and called forth his throne, ensconcing them both—he was hot and out of breath (his regulator was on the fritz), and the neoprene fabric of his sleeves was smeared with stains. Rivulets of sweat stitched down his face, quavered by the shield thrown up by his collar, and trickled down his neck, where capillaries of his uniform kicked in to lap them up, but the old processor was stale and overheated.

  Here, where father’s influence was strongest, the structure remained mostly right-angles, and metallic, with polymethyl beams cantilevered up from the floor grilles. The lighting was mostly ambient, but there were two rows of potlights, halogen, embedded overhead. Small objects and arcane devices that had fallen from the ceiling, or were pushed from the walls, littered the area by father’s feet, like offerings. The floor was strewn with artifacts—metals, and hard plastics—that father called concrete ephemera. Expelled, expectorated from the world. Father had claimed, when he was able to pontificate, that he, too, might once have emerged thus from within the structures of composites and agents of flux that surrounded them, immaculate.

  Mostly the story began with a fade-in, father running, looking for a home.

  Against the far wall of the pen was Crospinal’s daybed, and his prayer mat, but Crospinal did not want to look at them. Memories took away his energy and tormented him.

  But what else was there?

  He blinked.

  Father slumped in his throne, face mostly hidden by the conduits and wires that drooped from his skull to fan out across the floor behind him, to the banks of the gate, which dwarfed him. They were silent, black, yet emanated age and omniscient, corrupted knowledge. Crospinal stepped across the threshold. The pen, as it did of late, stunk of rot, and piss, of decay and impending collapse. And disease. Folds of composite were growing over a control panel. The throne itself seemed to be sinking. He could discern father’s shallow breathing: there remained life yet. Father’s breastbone—a prominent ridge against the Kevlar breastplate of his tricot—moved. Gurgling fluids, nutrients in and out, cocktails from the gate, and information, kept him going. Though they were no contest for the ravages of disease and time. Now father’s legs were mere bones, the fabric of his uniform collapsed against them, bulbous knees rivalling Crosp
inal’s. Through the translucent boots, father’s feet were bloated and bruised, the skin split, weeping pus his own processor had long ago given up on.

  Father slept.

  Still broody from his visit to the harrier and the declarations his girlfriend had made (though taken aback, somewhat, despite his affront, at the incredible and perverse decrepitude toward which a life could sink), Crospinal was suddenly not sure if he would have cared had father died, though he flushed with guilt at the sacrilege of this thought, and immediately fell to his knees.

  “By the order of all that is good, and organic, and by the benefits of reinstating the way things used to be,” said Crospinal, when the pain had driven away his terrible thoughts and he was able to speak: “I went beyond your range again, past the gangplanks—which are now almost entirely gone. I’ve been up the towers, and I’ve crossed over the rotating corridor. I looked out portholes at seventeen, and at ten, and I gazed a long time out the harrier. I told you about the harrier?” He closed his eyes, hearing his own voice: And I tried to kick your stupid dogs and I was dumped by a beautiful manifestation whose existence you know nothing about and I doubted your words until the world trembled under me.

  There were some confessions Crospinal had never made, and never would.

  “I can tell the world is changing. Faster and faster. Out by the transfer tube, a big flake broke away, a really big piece. Taller than me. I don’t know if you can see that far anymore. There was toluene, and lights. Polymers made a panel. It’s nearly set.” He let his words fade, opening his eyes. Maybe father would take this news as another form of defeat, if it sank in, and get even sicker. Regulators that either fed him, or took essences away, sighed and hissed impatiently. Crospinal felt ghosts all around, spirits and such, fretting, expecting him to help. Lift a finger, they pleaded. Do something. . . .

  Small wonder he stayed away.