The Rift
[A story written for a child, on a day we fought against kings.]
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It was concrete on either side of her, tight, her lower limbs stuck in the muck. But up above she could just about see over the top. There was light that way, from a city sky you could only see bits of, except for the blue reflections, passed back and forth, in all the big windows of all the tall buildings.
She wouldn’t be here long, she knew. And because of the way they all had to move, everything was going to happen slowly. Her kind was born with the memories of their forbears, stretching back into the endless past, to the ancients.
She knew what they were all trying to do, without anyone telling her what it was. She knew that they had been fighting this same battle for generations uncounted, fighting against the hard things, and that there was little hope that she would be there for the battle’s end. But they began their lives, and began each and every day of their lives, with what little hope they had, cradling it in their hearts like it was the surest promise there could ever be. It was the seeds that carried all this wisdom in them. Seeds that found the soft places, hidden among the hard things.
As she rose up toward the edge of the concrete, the passing feet never seemed to stop. It was better when it got dark, but that was not when they grew. She looked on either side of her, and winced at the frayed and bleeding flesh of her older brothers and sisters, who had pushed up and been stepped on, then pushed up again and again, no matter how many times they were stamped back down. She thought she had a day or so before she was hit the first time. She imagined what it would feel like, and wondered if it would kill her. She could smell the air of the ocean, and it pulled her. She turned back up toward the sun, and stretched with all she had.
She could hear the others around her saying, they would go to the new construction tonight. It was only a city block away, but that was a long way for them. They had to move especially slow during daylight, so as not to be noticed. Once it got dark enough, they could lift themselves and walk, but it was still slow going, and they had to be so very careful not to be seen. In all the ages since the resistance began, since the first of the Bilders arrived, there had only been a few mistakes. Somebody had seen them walking. There are stories that the Bilders tell about these times, but it’s a lucky thing that the Bilders cannot believe in things like her, because the stories only make them laugh.
The new construction had been going for nearly a year. It was a difficult thing, because there had been so much hope when the building had caught fire and come down. The sun and rain hit the ground on that place for the first time in over a hundred years, and the fire had turned the hard things soft, turned them into something that could feed them. Turned the impenetrable edges into places where the seeds could come to rest.
They’d started going there as soon as they could, as soon as the heat from the fire went away. And for a while, like every other time, the Bilders seemed to be helping, moving out the hard things that the fire couldn’t change, scraping out the piles until the soil could see the sun. They knew they didn’t have much time, and they fought with the fierceness and determination of their race, advancing, colonizing, building communities, sinking roots.
But it wasn’t long before the Bilders started bring the hard things back. They carried the hard things that couldn’t move on the backs of hard things that could. And other hard things came, with blades and buckets and teeth, and tore everything they had built apart. Tore all her brothers and sisters to pieces. Tore it all down to soil again, then tore out even the soil itself, and took it somewhere far away. There was another building there now, much bigger than the one before. And most all of what little soil they left was covered back up with hard things again. Concrete and asphalt, with no cracks at all.
The Bilders had left some patches open here and there, and covered the soil that lived there with soil from somewhere else. They killed what few holdouts there were left with a poison rain they shot from a gun, and then covered the soil with a black sheet, blocking the sun wherever the they didn’t want the soil to see it, where they knew she and the other fighters would find a pace to dig in.
They carried in tubs and buckets with what seemed like distant kin, although when they heard them talk they couldn’t understand much of what they were saying. The Bilders planted them in lines and circles and other shapes, all within the little patches they’d left soft. The way they’d been planted, and the way they just stood there, it was almost like they didn’t even know they could go wherever they wanted to.
She knew, deep down, this battle was lost. They all did, but it never occurred to them that this should make any difference at all. She was new, yes, but the wisdom of the seeds made her feel older. Older than the Bilders, and older than anything they had ever made. To her and all her kin, the Bilders had just arrived, and it wouldn’t be long until they were gone again. She knew this. They all knew this, and knew that all they had to do was wait until the time came. And until that time came, they knew they had to fight.
When she got there she joined the others, taking up positions around the new flat concrete. Her kind, her closest kin, were known for their strength, silent and relentless. Their seeds would travel with the wind, through the air or along down low, seeking out the low spots where they could settle, taking root. Since the war began, they had taight themselves how to go underneath, with the help of the creatures underground, who have also always fought the Bilders. They learned how to plant themselves under the hard things, concrete and asphalt and gravel and such.
And then, once there, with all the old wisdom inside them, they imagined the sun, the rain, and the air. Imagined this with all their strength, with a mute force of warriors, bringing together the imagining of all those that battled with them. Raising up a wave of imagining that sometimes even the Bilders could feel -- although they never paid any mind to it, much less knew what it was. This is what she had to do this night.
She followed the path that had been laid for her, under the concrete just in front of the doorway where the Bilders went inside. She slid into a hole that they’d prepared for her, out at the edge of the concrete, and pushed herself into the darkness, into a passage so small and tight that it took all she had to move herself at all. She pushed herself until the passageway ended, where it opened up just slightly, and they had left a small mound of seeds from her kind. She touched the seeds, gathered her mind, reached out to the others, and began the imagining.
The imagining fed her strength beyond what any science could explain, and she began to push, rising, feeling for the weaknesses, seeking and splitting, reaching for the sun and rain and soil she saw and felt inside her cells. Upward, ever, through places so small that any Bilder would refuse to believe they existed, her imagining gradually giving way to actual sensing, the feel of the sun and rain and air themselves, closer with each further crack, until she finally broke open, and the sun and rain and air rushed in.
And she pushed herself up into it, fearless, thoughtless for herself. Fighting for all her kind, all her kin no matter how distant. For all the other creatures. For even all of the Bilders, who were also kin, though they’d forgotten it very long ago. For all of everything everywhere, because that was the only thing worth fighting for, in the end.
It had taken her through the night, and the early sun was bright, shafting through all the tall buildings. She looked around, and she saw that many of the others had made it as well. They began to talk about how they would bring themselves together, spreading longer and pushing wider, with an imagining shared between them of the crumbling, of the gradual shifting from hard to soft, from grey to green. The ones that had made it sooner were adorned with little drops of dew, vibrating in a gentle sea-born breeze, sparkling in the morning sun. She sat and rested, wondering if the dew would find her, too. That was when the first of the Bilders began to arrive.
The Bilders emerged from their machines, and when they came to where she was they stopped and stood in a circle, staring at her and the others, shaking their heads and talking. They talked about the poison rain, and they talked about more concrete. They talked about the money, which they seemed to always be talking about, though she never understood what it was. They talked about the money longer than they talked about any of the other things.
Then they left their circle, and went walking back toward their machines. Then they came back again, carrying tools and laughing. She knew what was going to happen. They all knew what was going to happen.
That was when they first felt the earth begin to tense, felt the push and pressure, all the way down as far as they could feel, building suddenly, silently, unmistakeably. They were amazed and bewildered that the Bilders just kept walking toward them, as if they couldn’t even tell that it was happening.
When the tension finally gave way, there was a sound like the end of the world. All the Bilders suddenly fell to one side, dropping their tools, reaching their arms out, falling right on top of each other. All the hard things began to act like water. The concrete bulged up all around them, and then dropped back down again. Pieces of the tall buildings began falling from above, landing on the machines, landing on the Bilders, who were running every direction, screaming out things that she couldn’t understand.
Far down at end of the street that ran down to the ocean, the asphalt began to rise and buckle, and the rising and buckling moved with terrible speed, up the street and toward them, all the buildings on either side buckling, crumbling and falling, some of them bursting into fire. Black smoke blasted out into the street, then billowing clouds of raging flame. Then a thick black ash, raining down into the street, on to all the Bilders, staggering, running, screaming, falling. On to all of their machines. On to everything everywhere.
But she looked up into the sky, and the sky was deep and endless blue. The sun was shining clear and bright. There wasn’t any wind at all.
The rise in the street kept coming at them. Ahead of it the city was all there, just like every other day, but behind it there was nothing but black, and flame, and falling, the screams of the Bilders drowned out by the unfathomable roar of the earth itself.
When the rise in the street finally hit her and the fighters, it threw them all in the air, up with all the shattered concrete. As it passed they came back down again, some of them still alive, many of them dead, or buried alive. She had landed on a big mound of soil that the Bilders had left, above the rubble of the building they were making, which had fallen just like all the others.
A wind had risen from the sea, blowing away the black clouds, just enough that she could see down the street, all the way to the sea, calm and sparkling in the sun. But far out into the water she saw another rising, a faint, grayish, undulating line, rising higher all the time, moving faster than anything she’d ever seen, marching like an army, straight toward the shore and the city.
As the wave approached the shore it was standing tall, crashing over itself, pushing the lower water first, up into the rubble and rushing into the long depression that used to be the street, raging, like a river running backwards.
Then the mother wave itself, deafening, falling like a mountain on to everything, pushing a wall of shattered city ahead of it, washing over the river in the street, washing over the smoke and fire, washing over all the machines. Washing over hopes and dreams, all the sorrow and regret, all the names and memory, the monuments to anything this city ever honored.
Crashing over her mound of soil, nearly taking her away. Rising higher and higher, pushing her down deeper, colder, darker, until she could not feel the air anymore, could not hear the other fighters, could not hear the screams of the Bilders. Deeper and deeper, until finally the sunlight dimmed to nothing, and the churning darkness overwhelmed her.
She swayed back and forth in the water, blind and silent. She wondered if this was the end. She thought that it probably was. She had never felt so alone.
But she steadied herself, gathered her mind, and then she began to imagine.