The Real Beginning
by Shawn Feakins
When did it start? Hell, may as well say the Big Bang or God fartin', all amounts to the same thing. You can get all sorts of metaphysical with that question. You wanna talk about the squid heads invading? The day when the world wakes up and finds the Midwest is the nicest place to live? Or do you want to talk about the retaliations, when we made it worse? Hell, hundreds of nukes set off in the oceans hoping we'd hit something and instead we melt the ice caps juuuust enough to raise the water for the squid-heads to spread their wobbly bits into the coastlines. Either way it's a sad tale of bad to worse.... least from the human's perspective.
Nah, you want the skinny on me. You want to know about The Voice. Well, honey, if there's one thing I can talk about, it's me.
Now when
I started was in some Moline, Illinois ER of '91. Momma had a bit of a meth habit and could never afford no doctor or ultrasound, so I came out with the leftover bit of a conjoined brother attached to my head. He decided he'd up and stop growing five months in. The way the world turned out, he maybe had the right idea. Now I know lots of people hold that bit o' evidence up as why I am the way I am trying to read meaning into it, but I just think it's just one of those things. Just my momma not ready to face up to herself and that turned inward just enough to make my brother fold into the closest spot and hide- namely my skull. Grandmama's church ponied up the money for the surgeries to make me a real boy and I always wondered where the rest of him went.
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Watch your step honey-britches. Now I know my office is a little strange (by the way tell me when you stop throwing up since the ears and nose ain't what they used to be), but not as weird as Cancun. When the Deep Ones started crawling out of the oceans, all those ocean paradises suddenly became the worst place on earth. You look like you're barely old enough to remember when it all started, so let me tell what it was like- cause history footage don't cut it.
You wake up one morning and go for a jog on the beach when suddenly you have a dripping, shambling mess of tentacles and screaming gills bearing down on you like a drunk tractor. Oh it was bad on the coasts of all the continents, sure, but at least they had somewhere to fall back to. We lost Manhattan, but Jersey survived (least before the nuke floods). But islands were just floating snack bars to the squid-heads. Japan went under fast and I don't blame the chinks at all for nuking them. Resort islands had the worst of it. You saw pictures in the news of Hawaiian shirts torn to shreds in the maws of lamprey mouths. Flags of flayed flesh with tramp stamp tattoos waving in the breeze from long pikes. All those shitfaced college students and doctors on drug company junkets didn't have a chance.
Cancun at least had the advantage of being on a peninsula. And when the Deep Wars cooled it was one of the first tactical cities to get. That there Lagoon was the perfect testing ground for any captured squid-heads and we had a perfect view of Cuba- which was squidy central.
So when I got there it was "Welcome to Cancun: Hell on Earth". Fourteen years after the Apocalypse and still going strong like a semi with the devil in it's pistons. We turned a buncha hotels into a command center and spliced power in from all those carnival generators. The rusty skeletons of bungee jump platforms and abandoned roller coasters shot outta the concrete like the earth rejecting something vile. Least that's how it felt, but maybe that's just cause we knew what was under the water and that made us distrust the earth too. Made for paranoia it does.
Now I'm a country boy at heart but I was fortunate enough to be drafted into this holiest of holy wars. See by this point, some of the squid-heads starting talking- or at least not killing. No real rhyme nor reason as to who they started talking to it seemed. See they don't think like we do, you know. They'd tear through a city block smelling of brine and gore just to sit down and wiggle their bits at some kid with a Tonka. You 'member that time they hit out to Chicago? Last big city left in this grand ol' country and everyone thought this was the end as those yellow beach ball eyes rose outta Lake Michigan and all they wanted was to have a sandwich with some old colored lady. All random we thought, but it made sense to the squid heads since they don't rightfully think like us. See, they see patterns right differently then we do. See across time and see how one pat on the back could make some kid be nicer who then invented mint flavored chewing gum which is what the president bent down to get outta his pocket before he ducked a bullet meant for his head. Squid heads see to the beginning of that chain I think and that's who they're interested in. Now, I don't rightfully know what I did to put me up there, but here I was.
Now I ain't gonna go into how I was discovered by the government since that's been covered in alla those zines. By the way, good for you getting newspapers out again. People need that! Point is they shipped me and a buncha others out to Cancun, since that was one of the biggest squid-head nesting ground right across the way and they wanted to maybe open lines of communication.
I tell you, first time I stood on that beach, all cleaned up and megaphone in hand ready to talk to those squid heads well it was a right proud moment. It's intimidating staring into that clear blue and knowing what's underneath but you find a way to face it you do. Felt my whole life starting to turn into something better when the first squid heads came outta the water. Sure, people complain about the smell, all licorice and salt water and most people can't stand that little burbling noise they make- but I ended up being more bothered by the bits o' humans they had hanging off of them. On my first time talking to them, one even had a leftover thong wrapped around an eyestalk, which made me feel skeevy and a little turned on at the same time I gotta say.
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Now an operation like that has got to have some people helping it along. (And pay attention here cause this is the beginning now.) You had linguists working on seeing if those burbles were anything special. You had secretaries, file clerks, and scientists. Hell, you had janitors. People never think that government operations need janitors but they do. They need people to restock the candy machines and empty the garbage and do the laundry too.
One of those people was this girl named Rachel. She mostly just transcribed whatever I said after this little nervous guy gave her the tape recorder of our Deep meetings. I liked her. She had this hand cream she used that smelled like vanilla that made me think of ice cream and eating some offa her ass. She'd sit down by her keyboard and I'd watch her hand type away as that little cyber-pet o' hers ran around in his wheel. Lotta pets died after the Deep Wars and animals were mostly raised for food not companionship, so there were plenty of companies that tried to make up for that fact. People sometimes need to think they can take care of something in these times. It was just a little hamster with those white glowing eyes that makes you know it ain't real, but she doted on that thing like nothing else and I fantasized about being that rat and climbing into her cleavage to snuggle down and think of Dairy Queen.
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And that was life for near on two years. Now I know everyone wants to believe we were doing some deep thinking and communicating out in Cancun, but truth be told it was pretty one sided. Squid heads marched outta the water every week we called and watched us as we shouted back at them. They sorta burbled occasionally, but there was never any sense of any language or nothing. More like they was just waiting. Military would rotate us out regular so none of us would get too scared, but I never had a problem. After a year of that it became routine. Call out to the squid heads, watch them slosh on up and we shout questions and pleas to them till our ears bled and they marched back in. it was kind of the only thing you could count on anymore.
We played cards. Talked about what we did during the war, except how we survived- cause no one liked to talk about that. Here's the dirty secret, you weren't a good person if you came outta the war intact. You had to cheat, steal, and maybe kill to stay alive and well... people tried to forget that and forget the faces they trampled on to keep breathing. Suicides were still a problem, even when you were working on something like we were. Only thing to really look forward to was maybe hooking up with anyone else on the compound. I had plenty of girls. Couple guys too. You got bored easy. Rachel had plenty of folk too, but in all that time we just passed by each other. I was with this girl who had hooked up with Rachel the previous summer and I made her mad all the questions I asked about their fling.
Around then I was starting to have dreams. I'd see myself when I was born with my brother still attached to me. And he'd start to breathe out of these little air holes in the top of our head. And then he'd start to grow and pulse and wrap around the gloved hand holding me up. Soon he'd be a giant tentacle reaching down and around and enveloping everything around us in a hug that felt like you inside someone's nose. Wet and sticky and warm and salty. I'd wake up feeling... good.
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Squid heads were looking at me different to. Not that anyone noticed much. All those scientists and linguists around and all they concentrated on were the burbles trying to figure if it meant something. But I was looking into their eyes and beaks and suckers. I saw them look and breathe at me differently. I felt tides washing over me and coming over and making me warm.
But it all REALLY began when Rachel lost her hamster.
Word travels fast, even in a government compound with five hundred or so people. Rachel was flipping out cause her hamster got out of its wheel. Now I never saw it do much else but run around and fake breathe and mindlessly munch pellets but that was enough to make my vanilla girl love it. Everyone pitched in to try to find it: under bathroom stalls, in wall pipes, outside in sand dunes, under the ragged flaps of beer garden tents. We looked everywhere in the safe zone. It wasn't till that night they found it. It had gotten out and just did what it as programmed to do. Just run. Not its fault it got stuck in the drainpipe and cut itself up till all that was let was a patch of moldy fur and tin joints. When the janitor gave it back to Rachel it rubbed against her cheek and she gasped as its sharp metal nose peppered her face like she had acne.
Now this shouldn't be no big thing. Cyber-pets break down alla time. They ain't perfect. They even put warnings on the box to realize this, so that people accept it. Kinda skuzzy since why they sell 'em is for comfort but hey; I'm not in advertising. Least I wasn't then. We had plenty of smart folk people willing to fix it up and in about a week the little rodent was up and running again in Rachel's wheel, spinning around in time to her keyboard taps.
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Thing is, she never took it right. I could tell cause she stopped using that vanilla hand cream. Something about being confronted with the fake nature of that rodent just snapped one of the little lies she had been telling herself.
They found her underneath the roller coaster car looking like a pile of red, wet matchsticks. The generator still powered some of the rides, so she apparently got right on the most rickety, old one and took a dive. I wasn't there but the people that saw it said that rusty cart almost fell apart as she went off the edge- her eyes closed so she couldn't see the ground coming up towards her. Maybe she was thinking about her hamster, both of them spinning around in circles and riding the small, red girders of their prison till they couldn't take it no more and had to run off.
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Dreams got worse then. My brother would whisper to me inside our head and his teeth would bite my brain as he grew. The holes would open and close like little mouths exhaling air and burbling like the squid-heads.
I ain't even gonna go into the next year. Read all the papers people wrote and saw a couple specials on the networks. I know how it went down. You know how it went down. I spiraled, I retreated (even though I was never really there) yadda yadda yadda. Who cares?
The real beginning (for real, really) is when I went back down to the beach all alone. Decked out to the nines in the suit the government gave me to look all nice for the cameras when I talked to the squid heads. Course people noticed me going down there, but they didn't get it as I screamed out into the deep. No one said much. The squid-heads were punctual and never showed up except at their appointed time. I was screaming into nothing.
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Imagine their surprise when the squid heads came up when I called. Then imagine it turning into bowel churning confusion and terror when I stripped off my clothes and walked in to meet them.
See, it's all Rachel and that damn hamster. People said she closed her eyes so she wouldn't see the ground rush up. But no one who smelled like pleasant childhood memories would do that. Nah, she was a dreamer. Anyone who wears vanilla scent likes to think back to the good days. She got on that roller coaster to know what her hamster felt, even though it wasn't feeling anything it weren't programmed to feel. She closed her eyes to feel connected to something again.
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She damn lied to herself. Just like we all been doing all this time since the Deep Wars ended. She closed her eyes cause she couldn't well face the future. She lied just like my momma did about her habits when it turned inward and killed my brother. Just like it's turning inward and killing us. Lying to yourself don't do no one no good.
Which brings us to the question you've been plum dying to ask, huh? Do I miss being "human"?
Tell you what honey, I'm more human than most. Shoot, no denying the fact I don't look it. Hell, my pretty mouth is about all they left alone with all the tentacles and gill things that popped outta my skin. I'm getting used to eating out of my pooper but I gotta be honest I have no CLUE what this here organ is 'sposed to do. Just throbs and looks like a dried bogie when I push.
And yeah, I hear all those broadcasts about "Deep Benedict Arnold" and "Squid-Lovin' Betrayer" and all that. Listen missy we're tuned in to just about all your networks, even the top secret ones, so it don't get by me. But the thing is, I'm doing this for human kind see? Like I said, you gotta stop lying to yourselves. Do that evolution thing like Darwin said and move on when you know the chips are up. That's what I saw when Rachel was crushed like a buncha laundry under that roller coaster, I saw the future of humankind if we don't forge ahead, be brave, and explore this new frontier. And hell, ain't that American? Ain't that human? You try to grab a piece of that pie and like it or not our Undersea Overlords are where the apples are nowadays.
Truth be told, I almost kinda like those "Aqua Antichrist" monikers. Now sure as shootin' my grandmamma would twirl in her grave like an eager whore looking fer a dollar if she heard that. But it's true since he was 'sposed to be all charismatic- and that's why I'm here. I'm still heading to that beach trying to convince the others that this is the right thing to do, 'cept from the other side this time. See, they got me as a mouthpiece and we're reaching people. More than the governments wanna say at least. Listen, try as you like, ya'll can't keep track of
everyone walking into the deep blue like I did. We're growing every day and pretty soon it's gonna be mighty lonely on those dusty shores.
I'm just another man trying to get by in the New World. That'll be the byline for this here story.
Oh I'm sorry you thought you had a say in this?
Heh. Honey-britches, you're in our world now. Best get in line ya hear? It's a new beginning.