Wherein we discuss the Jupiter Troll, arguably the first infamous predator of a sarcastically defended Earth.
Long tin bones constructed from billions of smashed and frosted ribcages. The space along its back was wavy like leaking butane; trapezoids of dim, whiplike lasers snapped all around them.
It no longer shielded itself behind Jupiter. Its dances were arrogant flexes. An army summoned form the vast European oceans beneath smashed ice, all staring Earthward.
Millions of black silhouettes that spoke the common tongue of the universe.
They spoke radiation.
It sat on the precipice of the colonization; the night where all the stars were revealed to have earth-smashing creatures lurking behind them, their awakening somehow cued to occur in unison across billions of light years. Galactic octopi made of brilliant light and spread out like symbols.
The Jupiter Troll sent some shitty Jesus – the Radiation Man - to Earth for no discernible reason. He survived the mass extinction but learned enough from us to crave answers. He learned that like right away.
What answers he had were apparently found to be lacking.
Clothed in a giant coat patched together from old rags and leather and burlap. An old hat found in a creek. Wrinkled and salted leather gloves. He used to stalk in the background of photographs in a vain attempt to emulate our behaviour. He found himself near the summit of a mountain.
Some televisions still had electricity; some energy sources were still operational, and hospitals had yet to exhaust their generators. Purse Boy was broadcast on every channel. Fucking blood clot eyes. Fucking smile that seemed to hover just above his face and moved a split second behind the rest of his body. Fucking haircut. Fucking everything.
He was staring through the screen, jumping up slightly every few moments like he had the hiccups. In a hospital somewhere, a full body cast filled with crude oil is staring back.
Radiation Man had been there looking for witnesses.
He found snapped wet cigarettes where people once lived.
Surely that kid was to blame.
The marketplace of the new world was the sky. Anything important happening had something to do with the sky, and it was reasonable to think that knowledge of new configurations could save your life. Clouds told the story of intense battles. Plumes of alien bacteria merged with grey cumulonimbus banks filled with acid rain that suffocated all life as they slowly descended.
The Jupiter Troll was trading high, off in the mountains.
Spread out in a mock crucifix, its disjointed fingers wriggling, the alien propulsion system splitting the encircling clouds into threads.
It’s a story of witnesses, the only story that seems to exist anymore.
A perverted and retarded rendition of the hero’s journey experienced by any survivor that had even a passing familiarity with the old world.
Radiation Man siphoned maps and tricks from whatever he could find before the ascent, and sued the frozen corpses of fallen travellers as benchmarks for the journey. Neither the climate nor the depleting oxygen affected him. He was restricted only by physical barriers, the verticals, and the snows. His entire being was nearly frozen solid, but a strangely fascist will kept his joints snapping the tension and moving onward comma upward.
He ascended up to the peak before long, high enough to catch the clearest glimpse of his overlord. Above the clouds, the Jupiter Trolls rose with him. Guarded by thick, grey clouds teeming with re-appropriated nanobots, their exchange was kept secret.
It was an exchange of presences.
He no longer spoke in cosmic radiation, but Mandarin, English, and some Spanish.
Welcome Back, I Am Chief Cuckold Surrogate.
When it came to Purse Boy, nobody thought it could be even remotely possible that he was in charge. He was using magic, most definitely, or some sort of horror-logic where he was living inside the televisions. Something beyond the layperson’s understanding.
Nobody expected that he had just taken control of available technology, amalgamated what transmitters he could, and build the last stand for human telecommunications. It was the Alamo with nuclear armed drones. He was an IT kid.
He had access to the last remaining technology in North America. Satellites, as well, the few that remained. Most hat been batted away carelessly, but a few remained in unstable orbits. Some had become self-aware, and they provided the closest thing to entertainment as they clumsily figured out the mindset of the madmen that designed them.
He watched the exchange longer than he had watched anything in the preceding months.
There was some important shit going down.
Poster your flaccid declaration of hate upon his body and realize you feel like a monster.
The genius of it.
He had seen the protagonist’s story enough times to give up, locked away there in some underground bunker, waiting for cables to be severed by some malicious tectonic shift and maybe crushed. A heavy metal door bolted from the inside, barricaded by a ritualistic semicircle of yellowing paper. The Russians played ball until they were flameblasted. South Africa had open communication channels before half the continent was dragged underwater as foretold by a lightningstorm of dreams that swept the planet one time.
He mediated on what he saw.
The outsider electing itself as the superior representative of the threatened collective.
The Purse Boy had killed so many people in the doe-eyed days of sustainability. It was expected of him. The world demanded that it be subjected to all manner of horror, terror, and surprise. Not a day was permitted to pass where mortality wasn’t harshly established.
But external threats trigger an appreciation of home and family despite whatever history may exist.
He was, for the time, the only one trying talk. There were no employers anymore. Nobody was nodding in approval at anything and there was no familiar system feeding on blood. Murder seemed so juvenile.
Some immature vaudeville performed for deranged pinheads prior to the puberty of dread.
The Alien and the Freak Demon aligned to form the same reticule.
It was enough of a pause to add enough vibration to signal the end of the end of days.
Thoughts of the future were permitted. At least two minds could wander. Whatever imaginings.
