Twenty Two

After a bit of sulking, and a light pondering, Fyndraxis returned to Bird and increased his sense of time to meet her. She was still happily going about the destruction of the surrounding forest.
“Whoa, whoa there,” he called to her, mid swing, “I’m getting a little tired aren’t you?”
“I guess,” she said, a bit out of breath, “hot too. A lot of these trees’ve been buggin’ me for a while, but I haven’t had the chance to take ‘em down,” her face was beet red, not only from exertion but gamma radiation exposure as well. It was already looking like a pretty heavy dose.
“I don’t know about you, but I could use a swim,” he suggested, thinking it would be best to follow the plan and steer her toward a body of water.
“You don’t look like you’d be the strongest swimmer,” she chided, lightly.
“Well, I could at least use a wash. I’m covered in tree stuff,” he complained jokingly about his mistreatment. He was feeling out some sort of chummy buddy situation.
“Ha, I could use a bit of a dip too I guess. It’s been a couple days. You can’t smell can you?” The chummy thing was kind of working.
“I can in fact smell, and I agree that you could use a dip,” Bird regarded the blade with a sour face and returned it to the sheath. Fyndraxis may have been pushing it with the whole chummy thing now. She ended up smiling slyly as she made her way back toward the cabin though, so that was a good sign.
“How often do you wash your clothes?” Fyndraxis asked as offhandedly as he could.
“‘Bout once a week, unless somethin’ nasty happens. Why?” She asked. She had been playing along with this whole chum routine until just about now.
“Oh, I just noticed that you got a bunch of sap and stuff on you and wondered if you had a change of clothes.”
She looked down at herself, and did indeed notice that she was covered in sap and woodchips. Unbeknownst to her, this was radioactive sap and the sawdust would probably make a geiger counter sound as if it were being thrown down a flight of stairs.
“Yeah,” her eyes narrowed, ”listen, are you some kind of pervert sword that’s tryin’ to get its rocks off here? I don’t like your tone. You seem to be tryin’ your level best to get me out of my clothes.”
“No, I’m not some sort of pervert sword. I just think you would benefit from an extended dip in the river and maybe give your clothes a wash,” he was losing her. The chum strategy had totally tanked.
“Why’d you be so concerned about that? What’s really goin’ on here?” As she was saying “here,” she noticed a bright light in the sky and trailed off. This light was steadily getting brighter but not really moving, it just sort of hung in the sky.
“What’n the fuck is that?” She asked the sky as she shaded her eyes with the back of her hand.
“A change of clothes maybe?” Fyndraxis answered sarcastically.
The light went out after a couple of seconds, but was followed by an earth shattering bang. This was a sonic boom. What they had been witnessing was something coming in hot from orbit and using the atmosphere as a set of brakes. Whatever it was, it was traveling faster than sound could in the atmosphere. Instead of emitting a handsome blue glow it produced a concussive shockwave that would loosen your teeth in their sockets, and rudely rearrange your organs. A trail of smoke cut the sky in half and terminated right above them.
Bird’s eyes had gone wide and she had taken a low stance indicative of the knife’s edge between fight or flight. When startled, you will find two types of people. Those who try to get high, and those who try to get low. The people who try to get high generally don’t have their shit together. On the list of things not to do in an emergency, raising your center of mass and ensuring that your feet aren’t touching the ground is pretty high up there. On the other hand, dropping your center of mass, ensuring good footing, and presenting a smaller target to whatever bullshit is happening is indicative of somebody who can handle themselves in an adverse situation.
“Alright,” Fyndraxis began, his tone quite urgent, “I don’t really have time to explain right now, but I need you to get to the closest body of water as fast as you can.”
“What’s goin’ on here?” She was beginning to panic, there was no doubt that this was a singular experience for her. Witnessing something scream out of orbit unannounced would be a jarring experience to even the most steely eyed of missile men.
She began to run toward the river at a dead sprint. While she did that, Fyndraxis started to think of a way to explain his interaction with Terra that would make sense to her. By the time she had reached the edge of the clearing her cabin was in, he had decided to wing it and tell her as much of the truth as he could.
“You have to take off all of your clothes. Trust me, it might save your life,” He told her plainly. This was a bold strategy, but you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.
“What the fuck, man,” she said as she began to tear her clothes off. She left them in a trail behind her as she continued her sprint toward the river. Once she got there, she transferred all of her momentum into an impressive wall of water that soaked the opposite river bank.
“Do you mind tellin’ me just what the fuck is goin’ on here?” She asked once she had surfaced and caught her breath.
“While you were cutting down trees I made a friend,” he said, from the riverbank where he had been tossed aside.
“What? How? What?” She was truly puzzled, as anyone would be.
“Do you know what a radio is?” He had no idea what sorts of legends had been kept from the world before, and his explanation of the situation would have to make sense to her. He might have to improvise.
“No,” she said as she began treading water.
“It’s a way to speak with things very far away. I spoke with somebody who lives in the sky,” not bad, rather approachable for anyone, he thought.
“Bullshit,” she said and dunked her head below the surface again, enjoying the bracing spring water.
“No bullshit,” Fyndraxis said when she resurfaced, “she sent something down for you from where she is, that’s what that sound was.”
“I still think this is probably a pervert thing,” that was a reasonable conclusion for a woman to have, most things are pervert things, but he carried on.
“Look for yourself,” as he said that a capsule complete with scorch marks became visible through the trees. It gently touched down on the ground and was covered by its parachute.
“Huh,” her disbelief was slowly changing to astonishment, “who is this sky person?”
“Her name is Terra, and she is a lot like me,” with this demonstration of truth before her, they seemed to have moved on from pervert country, “she is trapped in the sky, just like I am trapped in this sword. She sent you this thing to save your life.”
“I didn’t know my life was in danger,” her tone started to match the chilly spring meltwater that she was treading in.
“While I was talking w-,” he was cut off.
“Wait, when were you talkin’ with her?” understandably, she still wasn’t grasping the whole Terra business, time wasn’t a fluid thing for her like it was for the Daemon Sword.
“While you were cutting down trees,” Fyndraxis began to go over the whole thing again, “I can speak very quickly when I wish to. When we spoke, I found out something about myself that I hadn’t known before. When I am used to cut things, I can make people very sick. You were just cutting a lot of things, so she sent down some medicine for you I think. I’m really not sure what she sent.”
She was silent. She was staring at Fyndraxis and she was pissed. Fyndraxis felt like this wasn’t his first rodeo being on the receiving end of a glare like that, it had just been a while. It was not a good thing at all to be stared at like this, but in a strange way, it reminded him that he had once been Human, and done Human things, like receiving a wrathful glare.
Guilt racked him again. This poor woman had just been minding her own business and then along came some radioactive Daemon Sword to screw up her quiet life in the mountains.
“Explain to me how using you to cut down trees would make me sick,” she said this very slowly and evenly, as if she was a woman shoulder deep in freezing cold water asking a Daemon Sword why he would deliberately put her life in danger.
“It’s very difficult to explain,” he said, in the manner a Daemon Sword would, while he was trying to figure out how to explain nuclear physics to a freezing cold, very pissed off woman. He tried to appeal to his Human past for help, but being a recovering amnesiac, he was on his own.
“Give it your best shot,” she began to get out of the water.
“Well, matter and energy are two sides of…no, well, imagine a Grizzly Bear.”
“Fuck you,” she said with finality. She was right too, none of that would explain the situation in any sort of tangible way.
“I’m sorry, but you have to listen to me. I’m trying to save your life,” he gave pleading a shot for a second, it kind of worked.
She began to walk over to her trail of clothes in hopes of putting them on.
“You can’t wear those!” Fyndraxis yelled after her.
“What the fuck man? What is this shit?” Fyndraxis thought that she might actually physically explode from sheer anger.
“Please just trust me. Let’s just check out the thing Terra sent and I’ll do my best to make sure everything is okay,” there is a fine line that needs to be walked when pleading, it’s easy to adopt a patronizing tone. If you manage to do that, you are lost. Fyndraxis was just barely holding it together.
She took a couple of cleansing breaths in an attempt to control her anger. It took almost a minute to have any real effect on her. When her blood had reduced from a full roaring boil to a mere simmer she walked over to the sword and picked it up.
“Can I wear clothes from my house?” She asked finally, “or am I supposed to walk around naked as a jaybird ‘til you get your fill?”
“Clothes from the house are fine,” he explained, eager to finally start actually helping, “just don’t touch the clothes you were wearing earlier yet. We’ll figure that out later.”
She padded up to the cabin and got dressed. She wore jet black homespun and a fur cloak that was black as well. From the quality of the pelt, it looked like a bearskin. She began to shiver while she was finishing the process of dressing. The river had no doubt been cold, but Fyndraxis had the feeling that the radiation was starting to rear its ugly head.
“I feel like shit, is this the sickness you were talkin’ about?” She asked, while she began to sweat.
“Yes, we should really get out to the pod,” he was trying to get her moving before she got distracted by the symptoms she was beginning to display.
They walked out to the pod and looked it over. It lay there shrouded in an orange and white parachute. Bird removed this and revealed the pod underneath. It looked a bit like a hershey’s kiss laying there in the mint monoculture that was Bird’s lawn. Well, almost monoculture. Along the treeline, and dotted throughout the mint, the fruiting bodies of mushrooms could be observed here and there. It was solidly Morel season, and they were hard at work, continuing their life cycle.
It was about as tall as Bird was, and its bottom was a deep charcoal black, there were scorch marks that ran vertically up its body, sullying the hospital white paint that covered it.
Bird took a slow ambling lap around it, taking in its form and function. Fyndraxis noticed some cyrillic lettering on the side near a recessed handle and deduced that this was a present from the Russians. He had very little experience with the Russian language so he and bird would be improvising this little operation.
“It looks like there is a handle to open it here on the side,” he said to Bird finally, she seemed like she was barely hanging on. The fact that she hadn’t started vomiting yet was the only good sign he had as to her overall health.
Bird made some sounds that could have been construed as complaint and made her way over to the handle. After a bit of fumbling around she managed to pull and turn it in a way that produced a hiss announcing a successful opening. A hatch opened up and levered down to make a little ramp for convenient unloading. Inside the hatch there was a large suitcase sort of thing emblazoned with an enormous and very satisfying red cross. Fyndraxis was elated. This was perfect. There should be anti radiation medication in there and plenty of things to dress any burns or wounds.
Bird pulled the case out according to the direction of the Daemon Sword and laid it out on the grass. Once opened, it revealed a number of discrete compartments all conveniently labeled in Russian. Neither of them knew this language.
“How do we know what to open?” Bird chattered through clenched teeth, sweat was beginning to pour down her face.
“Give me a sec,” Fyndraxis retreated to his pocket universe once more and slowed down time to a crawl so he could get some work done. Terra had gifted him a large chunk of data in the form of the website github.
Github was an online repository for computer code. This was used by the programmers and hackers of old to store and distribute code. An example of this code could be something as simple as a small script to check if a number is odd or even, or something as wildly complicated as a machine learning algorithm to translate Russian to English. Fyndraxis inserted the floppy into his computer and went like a heat seeking missile to the Russian English thing. He then poked around and grabbed a couple more snippets of code that he would need and began to hack a couple things together. By the time he was done he had something that kind of worked sort of, some of the time. That was pretty good for a couple of minutes of work. Hopefully he would only have to use this once, so it only needed to kind of work.
He transferred his total cludge job of a script into the sword_powers directory on his computer and set it to work. Yet again, he had to risk his life by logging in as root to do this, but he was very careful and everything seemed to work out fine. He then joined Bird back in the world by the Russian space pod, spinning time up to Earth standard.
When the process began running he could see in Russian. The script took his visual data and ran it through the Russian English translator, and then spat the output over his field of view. It didn’t work as badly as he thought it was going to. He inspected the compartments of the open medical kit looking for words like radiation and anti and potassium iodine.
Once the correct compartment was located, he instructed Bird to open it and take out the contents. Inside were two cans, about a hundred pills, an instruction card and a full radiation suit all vacuum sealed in their own disposable blister packs. He had Bird take out the pills and he translated the instruction card. The instructions told him that she should take one of the cans and spray it all over herself like bug spray, and drink the other can using it to wash down a handful of the pills. Fyndraxis didn’t know what any of these things did because he had absolutely no medical training, but hopefully Russian military grade anti-radiation treatment would do the trick for her.
Fyndraxis then instructed Bird to find as much water as she could and get into bed to let the treatment do its work. She followed the instructions slowly and robotically and ended up shivering herself to sleep after an hour or so.
Later on in the day, after the sun had told Fyndraxis that the time was well into the afternoon, he heard a familiar voice.
“Bird! You all right? What the fuck was that noise?” It was Teeroy coming to see what all the ruckus was. The reentry of the pod had been loud enough to hear from town, and he had likely guessed that Bird’s cabin was the center of all things strange happening in the area, and decided to drop by for a friendly welfare check.
“We’re in here!” Fyndraxis yelled from the cabin, “we need your help.”
“What the fuck is that on the lawn?” Teeroy asked as he entered the cabin. Then he noticed Bird in the bed and shot a glance at the sword, “what happened here? Is she alright?”
“She’s sick, but she has taken some medicine that should make her better. Could you bring her some water and try to wake her up?” Fyndraxis explained.
“Fyn, what’s goin’ on here?” Teeroy tried to make eye contact with the sword to limited success.
“It’s… complicated,” Fyndraxis tried, “All I can really say is that Bird got sick and I found a way to heal her.”
“Is that what that thing on the lawn is?” He asked, giving a glance out of the open door.
“Yes, I have a friend in the sky who sent it to us,” Fyndraxis was doing his best to give a simple explanation.
“That’s old world stuff then,” Teeroy observed with a frown, after a couple seconds of mental calculation, “we should get rid of it. That’ll get the whole valley killed. The Wendigo’ll come, and we’re done here.” Fyndraxis hadn’t thought about this.
The care package from space was undoubtedly made of mostly plastic, and would be a nice juicy meal for the marauding horde of apocalypse nanomachines. This was a huge problem. This thing had to go. Teeroy was a big guy, but the prospect of him having to lug this thing to a safe distance was not very plausible.
“Maybe we could burn it?” Fyndraxis suggested.
“Probably the best way,” he said, while clearly weighing other options. Teeroy then gathered some water and tried to rouse Bird to drink some, but she was solidly passed out. With Bird arranged and stable(ish), they then prepared to burn the capsule, taking Fyndraxis with him to act as guide.
“What is this thing?” Teeroy asked, observing the scorched capsule.
“A medical supply pod,” Fyndraxis then told him about Terra, leaving out the fact that he was a nuclear apocalypse sword that killed everything he touched.
“So, she’s stuck in the sky? That’s wild,” he said after listening to his tale, “I see lights up there on clear nights, and I always wondered what they were. Are they all people?”
“I don’t know, but she isn’t really a person,” Fyndraxis generalized.
“What else would she be?” he had a point, Fyndraxis thought. She had all the makings of a person, even down to a body of sorts. She had also lent aid when it was very sorely needed. They didn’t really have time to exhume an ancient debate about the nature of thought though, they could muse about Turing at some point in the future, once this pod was gone.
“I guess she is a person, let’s burn this thing,” Fyndraxis said, in dismissal.
The medical pod came equipped with an entire suite of emergency equipment. Teeroy and Fyndraxis rifled through it until they found some emergency flares. Fyndraxis read the instructions to Teeroy, and they managed to get one lit. With the med kit and the parachute stuffed into the pod, the thing went up like a match.
They both watched it burn for a while. Teeroy complained about the smell, Fyndraxis couldn’t help but agree. After they both judged that it wouldn’t catch anything else on fire they went inside to sit vigil by Bird’s bed.