An End

and through Machine to extract its precious cargo of Zero. Machine gasped a breath that was not air and shuddered a shudder of non-shudder. Such pain in this existence. The other senses were lost, but still it felt pain.

Enveloped. Encompassed. The liquid metal of the Machine was quickly destabilizing, becoming something else. Machine sensed that Zero had been taken from his bowl. Without Zero, Machine would quickly dissolve into nothing more than several trillion tons of silver liquid biomass. Machine couldn’t hear Zero’s thoughts anywhere near.

point of origin?

The inquisition shot through him unexpectedly, resonating his entire being. The question echoed back and forth, forth and back in every color of the rainbow, every language every spoken and several never ever spoken. Machine, torn apart and invaded for the Cracker Jack prize of death row inmate and certified troublemaker Zero, felt at once raped and fulfilled by this new voice…It filled in the cracks, smoothed over the incision, patted the scrape and kissed it, making everything better. It was as close a sensation to le petit mort that Machine ever had and ever could experience.

point of origin?

Again, the question. Should Machine answer this stranger who was in his (head? mind? what are you thinking, machine?) soul? Would it jeopardize his mission? He decided that the fact that he was incapacitated and bleeding out the precious bioneural gelatin was a pretty good indication of game over, Machine. What could he lose by telling this voice everything that it wanted to hear?

point of origin?

Earth. Planet One of fourteen million surveyed and pacified planets.

rephrase: point of cargo origin?

Machine thought for a moment about that one…Where exactly was Zero from?

Uncertain point of origin. Last planetary contact with Planet One.

redirect: list applicable cargo contaminants.

Again, Machine was confused by the question. He could feel this faceless voice searching though his accumulated knowledge, faint fingertips tickling deep inside of his essense.

rephrase: is cargo contaminated with the genocidal catalyst referred to as “fleur”?

Machine had a moment of realization. Vestigial emotions and visions of a burning city, a screaming woman reaching out, and burning silver falling from the sky. This presence was not from the Extinction Fleet. The vessel that had encompassed them in liquidspace was not from earth or Mother or the any of the Inner. This was something unanticipated, and much, much worse.

Zero has a natural immunity to the Fleur catalyst.

Machine felt it then, the abrupt, stabbing pain of his end, as the liquid metal voice pierced and poured through the final interior battlements he had erected in his mind as a last line of defense. Invaded and suffocated and consumed by that beautiful, lyrical presence. Machine gasped and drowned in his own liquid soul.

[more tea?]

Whistler was still holding the tiny plastic cup to his lips, but he looked up obligingly, smiled his patented killer smile, all sparkly whites to match his shock of curled white hair. “But of course, Mum. It is delicious.”

Mother smiled her angelic child smile and poured more tepid water from her plastic teapot into Whistler’s cup. He nodded his approval and gratitude and took a sip. Fleur watched with mild interest as her mind wandered, rabbit in the headlights of an uncertain end. She thought with mild unease about the intricate process that was taking place instantaneously within Whistler as his projected form catalyzed and converted the liquid water into another part of his illusion. Liquid becomes upload becomes holographically-projected drip of water running down the chin of a man who was no more physically alive than the plastic teacup from which he drank. Whistler laughed, embarrassed at the spillage, daintily wiped the water from the periphery of his goatee. Fleur did not like to think about the technology that allowed him to exist.

Mother sat back in her tiny chair, linked her fingers through each other, hands resting on her breast-less chest as she leaned back on two chair legs. She surveyed her guests with an air of satisfaction. She was obviously enjoying the company. Her company was clustered uncomfortably around the round wooden child’s table, sitting on low children’s chairs, sipping lukewarm “tea” from tiny pink plastic cups. Nine looked the most uncomfortable, his knees projecting up like the columns of a bridge as he maneuvered his unwanted tea between them.

“Four on the floor, please, Mother.”

She frowned, a petulant child and not the horrifying act of extinction that she truly was, but obeyed Whistler’s gentle instruction and leaned forward so that all four legs of her diminutive chair made contact with the brilliant green rug. Her brow furrowed in frustration, she waved her hand and the pink plastic tea set was no more, the cup disappearing from Hank’s fingertips as he placed his lips to it to take another half-hearted sip. He looked around awkwardly, brought his hand up and itched the side of his head instead, as if that were his intention all along. Fleur grinned.

[you have nothing to smile about, little one.]

“You’re one to talk, Mother.”

The silence in the room was more deafening that the shriek of collapsing bulkhead that had pinned Fleur to the deck of the prison galleon and prevented her from ending this charade once and for all. Whistler and Nine looked at each other in silent agreement. Hank cleared his throat and shifted in his tiny seat.

“Why didn’t you just have them kill me? You’ve taken everything from me that I ever wanted already. Just kill me and get it over with.”

[not that simple, really. as i said before, i have one more mission for you before your job is done, little flower.]

“Don’t call me that.” Fleur’s eyes burned with an intensity that cut through the dim playroom and the suffocating inhumanity of its inhabitants with razor precision.

[but that’s what you are…the little flower. the little silver flower that blooms and blooms and chokes out all that stand before it with shining crimson—]

“Stop it. Just tell me what you need from me.”

Mother smiled her innocent smile. [i need nothing from you but you, dear. the human race needs you.]

“There is no human race anymore.”

[but of course there is, poppet! why, there are you and—]

“Me and who? Hank? That’s all you have left of us. Me and Hank, right?”

Hank had been absent-mindedly playing with his ancient Zippo, but he looked up at the sound of his name. He was sitting adjacent to Mother on this tiny wooden circle, and he looked down at her, smiling a nervous smile.

[no, fleur. just you.]

Hank’s eyes widened in the instant before Mother struck out, knocking him out of the chair and across the room, his head connecting squarely with the wall, dazing him. Mother stood, walked calmly to Hank’s side, withdrew a blade from within her pink corduroy overalls. Nine sat up in his chair, ready to spring to Hank’s aid, but Whistler grabbed his shoulder, held him back.

“Remember who you work for, boy.”

Hank tried to sit up, but only succeeded in knocking his cowboy hat to the floor. Mother made quick work of him, blade slashing back and forth across his throat before he could react to the sight of the armed toddler before him. His lifeblood coursed out of the ravine Mother had carved in his neck, and Hank gasped his last breath with a look of utter incredulity on his weary, weathered face. Hank slumped against the baseboard, growing puddle of red around him.

Mother returned to the table, calmly wiped her blade on the pretty doily upon which the teacup had been resting. Bright droplets of Hank’s essence had spattered across her face, but she did not seem to notice. The blade returned to its hidden sheath.

Tears welled up in Fleur’s eyes. “How could you—”

[hush.] Mother withdrew a silver sphere from her seemingly endless supply of interior overall pockets, rolled it across the table. A wave of her hand and the ball flashed to life, projecting a perfect image of Hank into the chair where he had been sitting. The image immediately grabbed its throat in terror, but finding no mortal wound where there should have been one, simply glared at Mother.

“You fucking—Mother, what the fuck?”