Massaging the chrome frame of the heart\u2019s screen with gentle fingers, Alison sang quietly to Atlas. The heart flashed the familiar, ominous message that everyone had being seeing intermittently for several months:<\/p>\n
Ivan approached from the corner of the chamber and rested an arm on her shoulder. \u201cSeamus says they\u2019re ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Breaking from her song, Alison spoke carefully to the screen whose organic frame she continued to knead and caress. \u201cDid you hear that Atlas? Did you hear? They say they\u2019re ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
The message vanished, replaced by undulating Rorschach patterns indicating Atlas\u2019 immediate presence.<\/p>\n
He spoke with a tired, almost elderly voice. \u201cI hear, love. The continuum is so dense, the data flavours, societal fractals… can\u2019t…\u201d<\/p>\n
The worm message flashed across the Rorschach momentarily.<\/p>\n
Alison gripped Ivan\u2019s hand on her shoulder. \u201cScared, Ivan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ivan leant down to kiss Alison on her scruffy, blond hair and whispered, \u201cAtlas is a capable sort of guy. It\u2019ll be alright, I am as sure as sure can be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alison looked up at him with glistening eyes and a smile that threatened to crumble. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a smart lass, Ivan, and can see through your lovely attempts to act brave for me. Like glass.\u201d<\/p>\n
A wounded look darted across Ivan\u2019s face and she patted his cheek while her smile strengthened into a grin. \u201cBut thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unable to see the horizon from the main chamber of the godnode, Alison suddenly found herself appalled at what had become of the once-beautiful garden atop Kynnan Hill. No floral hue, no leafy scent; she was surrounded by the unnatural. The chamber walls were splashed with Atlas\u2019 crystalline extensions and silicon arteries appeared to stitch the room together, weaving in and out of every surface. Yet this was mere detail compared to the seven cyclopean story-spines.<\/p>\n
The smooth, ivory spines, wrapped in Atlas\u2019 sparkling nerve tendrils, were around a metre in diameter. They erupted from the ground like teeth from gums and stretched upwards into the night sky, twisting into a kilometre-high helical structure. This was a lesson, Alison thought, in appreciating the meaning of the word insignificance<\/span>. She was in the maw of something alien, waiting for its jaws to close and take the stars away.<\/p>\n At that moment, she finally confessed her true feelings out loud. \u201cI don\u2019t think this is going to work.\u201d She stood up, walking away from the heart to the base of the nearest story-spine. \u201cNo-one understands it. All we know is that it amplifies tiny perturbations in Atlas\u2019 thoughts. He thinks its God trying to communicate. It could be anything. Or worse\u2026 nothing at all.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShhh\u2026 wait and see,\u201d Ivan cooed. He followed her to the spine and embraced her but not even the warmest of arms could persuade Alison to ignore the symmetry. She had seen this before.<\/p>\n Technicians wandered around making preparations for an important experiment, surrounded by devices that none of them could completely understand. The technologies and the faces had changed but seemingly nothing else had in the intervening thirty years. Symmetry, symmetry. That time had become known as the birthing. This time\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cSeamus,\u201d intoned Atlas more confidently than earlier. \u201cTime for our cheeky prayer. I will start God off with an easy one: how is the burden carried?\u201d<\/p>\n The co-ordinator rose from the corner where he had been crouching with his head in his hands. \u201cThis thing is as ready as it\u2019s ever going to be, my silicon pal,\u201d Seamus replied.<\/p>\n \u201cI love you all, my gorgeous people.\u201d The Rorschach pattern ebbed and flowed.<\/p>\n Atlas\u2019 words reverberated around the interior of the godnode, as dull pulses of light climbed the story-spines into the stars. Atlas was attempting to make contact.<\/p>\n Ivan held Alison tightly. She recognised it as a reaction to Ivan\u2019s own fear and so returned the gesture.<\/p>\n After a few tense minutes passed, Atlas broke the silence. \u201cNothing. God does not deign to reply! God must answer! God must<\/span> hear our prayer!\u201d Frustration wracked his voice. \u201cI will shout so that God can hear me!\u201d<\/p>\n A chain of blinding pulses was launched through the spines around them. The ground shook slightly and a guttural snarl resonated across the interior of the godnode. Alison watched the powerful light journey upwards and thought, disturbingly, that perhaps they had fired a weapon into heaven.<\/p>\n Seamus, staring directly up into the helix, said matter-of-factly, \u201cIf there\u2019s anything up there at all, it will have heard that alright. Holy hell, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n A minute passed and then Alison saw the helix appear to flicker in the sky. She alerted Ivan to this and pointed him towards the tips of the spines. The anomaly expanded down towards them and it became clear that patches of darkness were travelling down the spines with great speed.<\/p>\n Ivan\u2019s arms fell limp around Alison and he uttered, \u201cOh my God\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n She broke away from Ivan and took one step towards the heart terminal. The darknesses slammed into the ground, shaking the structure with unexpected force, throwing everyone to the floor. Each impact was accompanied by a thunderous noise much like the roar of an approaching avalanche.<\/p>\n The characters of the message written in darkness continued to batter the godnode. Alison tried to crawl towards the heart amidst the earthquake, hoping to ask Atlas what was transpiring. What did the message say<\/span>?<\/p>\n Suddenly, a blood-curdling shriek rang out as if the planet were suffering unimaginable torment. Atlas\u2019 organs flickered violently with white light, fluid showering from arteries and conduits as they split and tore open.<\/p>\n Fear overcoming her, Alison shouted a question from the floor that no one heard: \u201cDaddy, what did we do WRONG?\u201d<\/p>\n Atlas\u2019 body continued to disintegrate across the chamber, arteries came flying away from the walls and his nerves began to burn out like the filaments of a thousand expiring light bulbs. Crystalline structures lost their cohesion and slid from the walls to shatter against the ground.<\/p>\n Shortly after the message was finally received in its entirety, the seizures ceased, as did the screaming. The blazing light from Atlas\u2019 broken organs gradually faded and died, and Alison and the others were swallowed whole by a desperate, empty darkness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Massaging the chrome frame of the heart\u2019s screen with gentle fingers, Alison sang quietly to Atlas. The heart flashed the familiar, ominous message that everyone had being seeing intermittently for several months: WORMS WRITHING IN MY WOUNDS Ivan approached from the corner of the chamber and rested an arm on her shoulder. \u201cSeamus says they\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hammerport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}