The creature was asleep as they woke it — a fact it didn't enjoy 
particularly, as sleep allowed it to speak with its companions from 
the great beyond, the age-long members of the Center for 
Transcendental and Eschatological Research. It was the dead of the 
night in that tiny corner of their world, and they were moving it from 
the vehicle they had tugged its tank in. 


It listened to them carefully. 


There was the woman of the mean voice that had waken up the day 
when they moved. She felt exhausted. She hadn't been sleeping 
well. The creature knew why that was and... yes, she carried the 
thing in a backpack. But she was not alone. 


There was the grey man that had been lifted by Color around him. It 
might had a pure, immutable soul, but the creature could not discern 
it; guilt defined him. Shame defined him. 


There was one with a pure, immutable soul. That soul sang and 
grew and changed and bloomed, and the creature wished it could 
know more about him. 


There was one with a pure, immutable soul. That soul waved as a 
long cascade of green silk across the horizon; the laughing woman, 
who was not laughing. 


There was the one that had been taking care of it. He was sad and 
oh so very lonely in his sadness. He could not cry any more. 


There was one more with a pure, immutable soul. That soul had 
fruits, ideas ripe for the taking, dreams light as balloons that lifted 
him out of its body. 


And then there was its own self. It had a pure, naked, immutable 
soul. It shined with the strength of a thousand minds. It had cast 
away what it had been — body, form, memory — when it was alive 


to become this. It was a soul, distilled ego, almost pristine |. 


So its thoughts went as they moved it into the strange and 
comfortable not-building, matter a shadow for its strange 
consciousness; the not-building was special, too, for its walls and 
floors were as strings of bright gems mounted inside them. They 
sang a tale it liked: seek the faults, seek the faults, seek the trash, 
seek the trash, help the people, help the people, eat dirt, make 
stone, eat scum, make glass, eat waste, make iron- It went on and 
on and sounded happy. Had it had the time to talk to them, it would 
have. They seemed to have a very satisfying life. 


The kind of life it wanted. 


And it was taken down, the tank barely fitting inside the tight fit of the 
hole, several ropes tense all around it. One of those pulling to let it 
slide down let go of the hefty load, and the rest had to let go too so 
they would not be hurt. The tank broke as it crashed against the 
ground, but the creature itself waded the dry concrete with the water 
that was within and fell twelve meters down. 


Into the water. 
And then it began to cleanse. 


Joyful, it thought -cleanse the water, seek the impurities, seek the 
blemishes, cleanse the water, make it clear, make it salty?, no, 
make it flavorless, make it grey?, no, make it pearl?, no, make it 
transparent, make it so it does not taste to them, so it does not harm 
them, help the people- 


It would try to talk to the strings of light surrounding the water later. 
They would be interesting friends. 


The creature's tendrils grew and grew, slowly filling the water. It took 
as much blemish as it found; and much blemish was taken. As it 
reached the walls of its new home, its comfy tank now lost forever, it 
heard a ruckus over it. The creature listened to it. 


The people checked on it, the laughing one laughing again, the 
brothers shaking hands, the sad one relieved, the grey one talking to 


the mean one... concerned? They all left but the mean one, who 
took the thing out of her bag. 


The creature stared at them. It did not like them. It had grown an 
eon as a soul un-carnate, and was wise. Even if it had made its new 
brain for a higher purpose than to worry pointlessly, everything it, the 
soul, knew, was that they did not belong. 


Then the mean one started pulling on the lever. It tried to stop them, 
the mean one and the thing. It knew, with sad certainty, the body it 
was in would not be strong enough. It was going to happen — again. 


Priss stared at the Anabasis. No matter how much she kept pulling 
the lever, it seemed to have broken down. At best, dust would drop 
into the cavernous space targeted by the device. The Hippo — not a 
hippo — was wading in the shallow water, watching her intently. 


"What did you say?" She asked no one in particular. As soon as the 
words were leaving her mouth, she had forgotten who she was 
talking to, if not herself. 


The Anabasis didn't even look remotely human. The core of it 
looked like a leaf blower without the long tube for precise blowing, 
with knobs, text, and a lever that looked a century or two out of date. 
She couldn't imagine thinking she had been talking to it. It had to be 
stress. 


Whoever had said it, they had the intended effect—Priss was 
suddenly very much aware that she was alone and unwelcome, in 
this country, in this world. The place was probably bugged. 


"Hey guys," She waved to nothing in particular, as if a camera were 
pointed straight at her face. Then she gave the Anabasis another 
strong pull of the lever. Finally, it started to work. A long cube of 
brownish water materialized over the reservoir before dropping with 
a firm splash into the shallow tank, the echo lingering in the large 
room. The Hippo just stared at her. 


"Come on. Eat dirt. Stop staring at me. You're supposed to be blind." 


The hippo kept staring. She pulled the lever again, bringing in 
another cylindrical mass of water. Then again. And again. 


The hippo wasn't dead— it waded in the water, keeping up with the 
steadily rising water level. But it kept just staring at her. You don't 
belong here, it seemed to be saying. 


Priss fumed, and flung her notepad at the Hippo. It hit the creature 
just behind the head, prompting it to quiver, and start to move, 
emanating a deep whining sound from it. Priss thought it sounded 
like "mooootherfuckeeeeerrrrrrr..." 


"Who you calling 'motherfucker', motherfucker?" She snapped back 
at it. Immediately she felt stupid for shouting at it. Most likely she 
had just imagined it saying that. How could it manage syllables in a 
single monotonous drone? 


It was starting to suck in the water, setting to its work cleaning the 
water. Hopefully it would be able to handle any unusual microbes or 
bacteria in the water. If not, they'd have to boil it all, and probably 
return the Hippo. It seemed not to notice her anymore, happy to float 
about, absorbing like a sponge and swelling with water. A second 
later, it became smaller, as bubbles emerged from under its stumpy 
legs. 


Priss lowered her head, sighing heavily. She pulled her legs in to 
herself and rested her head on her knees, one hand on the lever, 
cranking it back again and again, continuing to fill the reservoir. She 
was starting to lose feeling in her arm, the ache from continuously 
cranking starting to ease, when the Hippo 'spoke' again, 
"looo0d00000000000K..." 


She lifted her head, and her stomach clenched. Something was in 
the water. It had come in with the water. The Hippo backed away, as 
the creature emerged from the brown depth. 


It looked like a man, covered in fur, with hands like a badger or a 
bear. Its chest was bare, looking like the bottom of a turtle's shell. Its 
head was the most off-putting, being little more than a hairless oval, 
with two big black ovals stacked one atop the other. The upper one 
looked like it could have been an eye. The creature stared at her 


and she stared back, both unmoving. Both scared. 


She broke the silence first, not knowing what else to say when 
confronted by such an alien creature, "Get out of here!" 


To her surprise, it started to swim towards her in a hurry. That's it, 
I'm dead, she thought. She'd been expecting Anabasis to bring in 
some kind of boogin or cloud of poison gas to instantly kill her, like a 
warning from God to stop dicking with time and space. The creature 
hoisted itself up out of the water, pulling its weight up onto the 
central platform. It took a moment to look around, before hopping up 
onto the ladder and climbing towards the exit. 


The Hippo went back to gently gliding through the water. Priss 
started to sob quietly. 


« Best as it Gets | Hub | Burden of Humanity » 


Burden of Humanity 


Dodger snorted obnoxiously at the picture of the hairy man-beast, 
"It's cute." 


They'd been calling it a spider-bear. Apparently its hands and head 
were more arachnid-like than mammalian, even though it breathed 
air and ate cooked meat. They were even communicating with it well 
enough. For all the good that'll do. It's gonna die sooner or later if it 
doesn't let us examine it properly. 


"That's not the real issue right now," Kone put in firmly. His visage 
was tacked to the center of her screen, the main focus of the video 
conference going on now. Several seconds of delay as the signal 
was encrypted. GOC technology, so nothing too sensitive could be 
said over the line. Though obviously there was nothing they could do 
about keeping the lines safe from GOC eyes and ears. They'd have 
to let slip some intel, by necessity of conveying it to one another. 
Kone and Lindsberg were at branch HQ, Rhiannon Locke en route 
to Africa, Cortes somewhere in Europe, "I've finished reading your 
report. Thankfully, whatever's causing the effect in animals doesn't 
spread if the meat is properly cooked. That's about the only good 
news. Bad news is we have no idea how far this has spread, and 
how bad it might get if we can't get it under control." 


"Is that even a problem? Can't we just tell people it's E. coli and to 
make sure they cook their meat thoroughly? They're getting food, at 
least. | mean, fuck it; they may as well eat tainted meat than sandy 
shit, or nothing at all. They're little African peasants living in a third- 
world-hell-hole, we can't be snatching food from them." 


Kone looked furious. Dodger felt a chill go through her. That's it, I'm 
gone. She had been getting on the nerves of management for too 
long. Every little thing she said she had to carefully monitor before 
saying it. Consequences of being as unconcerned with frivolous 
things like politeness and etiquette. She'd been kicked out of a lot of 
places, and fired from a lot of jobs, but she'd never felt such a 


perpetual state of oppressive moderation and paranoia as she did 
when talking around management. It had to be a problem with her, 
she had considered. But it isn't me. 


"Dodger," It was Lindsberg stepping in now as the calm voice of 
reason, "When you get back from Somalia, we're going to have to 
have a little talk." That alone made her more anxious than any 
amount of screaming and cursing from Kone. And it was usually 
Kone who was the calm, reasonable one. 


"I'm sorry," She muttered, clenching her jaw as heat rushed to her 
cheeks, "I submitted the report to Torres first, along with a sample. 
He's been examining it." 


"And?" Kone asked patiently. 


"It's definitely something, but we can't tell what. Our equipment here 
isn't sophisticated enough to discern what's actually causing the 
regeneration; bacterium, virus, prion..." 


"Prion?" Rhiannon put in quizzically. 
"| don't know. We don't know. This early on, we're speculating.” 


"| don't understand," Dr. Cortes put in, putting a hand on her 
forehead, "Could you- Could you explain it to me? | haven't read the 
report yet." 


"It's the fungus. The— The Vesta Donation stuff. Somehow, animals 
are getting into it and eating pieces of it. | don't know how; we've 
been keeping the stuff tightly under watch when its in its fungal 
stage thing. Torres thinks there might be interference between his 
mods and the original control program the Vesta people put in. As 
for the animals... might be bugs, or rodents. Those then get eaten 
by bigger animals, those animals get eaten by even bigger ones... 
might be it spreads in the shit, too, so shit-eating animals like dogs 
and cats end up getting infected, too. 


"What it actually does is kind of similar to what the fungus does— 
create something from basically nothing. Again, we don't know 
exactly how, but once it's metabolized in the animal, we completely 


lose track of the fungal cells. What starts to happen is basically 
uncontrolled cellular growth." 


"Like a cancer?" Cortes asked. 


Dodger hadn't thought of it that way, "Maybe. | think | mis-spoke, too 
—it's not uncontrolled growth; it's pretty well controlled. It basically 
starts rapidly growing cells all over the body, making an excess of 
skin cells, hair cells, blood cells, and so on. Leave it going long 
enough, you'd basically end up with a mound of meat vaguely 
resembling an animal, with probably six hearts and thirty 
gallbladders. Frank wanted to test, but animal testing gets people 
uncomfortable." 


"Purely speculating here... when bone or tissue is cut out of the 
animal, the growth centers exclusively on regenerating the bone or 
tissue that was lost. It's like a hulled boat taking on water, and 
cutting out pieces of flesh would be like scooping out bucketful's of 
water." 


"And the mental effects?" Rhiannon put in. 


"Might be related. Possibly. Maybe it's more painful to let the flesh 
grow than to have pieces of it cut out every few hours." 


"This is a fucking disaster," Rhiannon whimpered. 


"| don't know. As long as people cook it, it's safe, right? Isn't that 
what you always keep saying, Locke; fear of the unknown is no 
excuse not to save people in trouble now?" 


"Dodger..." Lindsberg warned. That tone again that pressed down 
on her. A "gentle menace", she'd called it before. 


"We're trying to contain it," Dodger put in before they could keep 
chewing her out, "Exterminating the animals. Burning the corpses. 
But it's like pulling weeds one-handed. And there's new weeds every 
day. We need more resources to get this under control." 


"Dodger, don't," Kone warned. His voice was so deep, it could be 
difficult to tell his mood over the tinny speakers of a laptop 
computer, "If the GOC gets word of this, they're going to assume 


we've lost control of the situation." 


"We have lost control of the situation, it sounds like," Cortes put in 
before Dodger could do the same... and get yelled at for saying so. 


"We have not lost control," Kone stated firmly, "Dodger, keep up the 
good work. Spread your contacts out further, keep your ear to the 
ground. Use whatever stockpiles of food we have to get people to 
stop eating this meat. Tell Frank to use whatever resources at his 
disposal to ensure the continued cooperation of tribal leaders and 
town elders. We're gonna need them — AMISOM is drawing forces 
out of Laascaanood to deal with Somaliland raiders. If— Listen to 
me, Dodger. /f you start running out of food..." 


Dodger grit her teeth, waiting for the obvious solution to come up. 


"Worst case scenario only; use the Anabasis. Do not use it outside 
of Locke's default settings. Make sure the animals brought in are 
clean and edible. We don't need something worse than this to start 
infecting people.” 


Dodger sighed, and glanced about the faces on the screen. No 
challenges were made, so she nodded, "Alright. See you on the 
other side." 


She closed out the windows, and snapped her laptop shut. One 
thing people hated more than anything was having basic necessities 
taken from them. Worse when it was taken away by healthy English- 
speaking Western men. 


"That's not my concern..." She muttered to herself, sloughing off the 
burden, "I've got my orders." 


The three volunteers conferred in front of the surgery room, ina 
discreet corner intended in the original architectural design of the 
building as a place to put a water basin. It had been deemed 
unnecessary.