Chapter 36

Flotsam

Chapter 36: Prime

I’m standing in front of an open doorway carved into the red stone of the planet Flotsam. The heavy archway is decorated with a motif of interlocking triangles, like something from an ancient Earthling temple. The doorway is buried in a deep tangle of steel and plastic scarp, hidden within the thicket of the Junk Desert. If I hadn’t been led here, I doubt could have found it. What is this place? Why is it here? I swallow hard and glance behind me where six little honey-mes huddle, inexplicably repelled by this place, scared but bravely waiting for me to explore. My heart is racing and the bare skin of my armless shoulders prickles uncomfortably. Has it really all come down to this? Is this where the mystery of Halley-Prime’s disappearance will be answered? Fuck, I’m so completely not ready for this! 

I take a deep breath.

I take another.

And another.

“Okay, Halley. You can do this.”

I square my truncated shoulders, flex my toes, and take a step, and another, and another, until I’m walking through the stone doorway and into a darkened tunnel. The stone ground is smooth, paved in bricks so perfectly fit that I can’t feel the joins with my bare feet. The tunnel ahead is dark and the backlight makes me cast a tall armless shadow, like a curvy cryptid. The light behind me fades away and I pass through shadow and into darkness. The air is still and heavy, but not stale, oddly clean from biological funk or rusty tang. I reach out with my telekinetic proprioception and sense the tunnel stretch out in front of me, the too perfect stonework, the shapes of gnomic geometric carvings, obelisks, and archways. I cautiously move forward, stumble down a short flight of stairs, and abruptly stop as the tunnel ends in a sudden, unexpected drop. I take a careful step back from the edge and grope at the chasm with my mind, stretching my mental senses as far I can. It’s a smooth shaft, maybe thirty feet deep, with a flat paved floor at the bottom. Fuck. “Jesus, what do I do now?”

I sigh and suck my facial labia, how can I get down this hole? It would be easy enough to rappel down if I had some rope or climbing equipment, instead of only bare skin and a spunky attitude. Of course, I’d probably need arms to use a rope… Wait. What if I used my telekinesis? I stopped a missile with my mind powers! Levitated an entire box of tools! Can I lift myself? Can I fly!?

I frown and feel up my body with my mental senses. I can sense my physicality like any other mundane object. I’m made of matter. This could work! I take a breath and will myself to rise into the air. Nothing much happens. I pinch my brows and purse my pussy and concentrate harder and feel a little less weight on my feet. I close my eyes and focus completely. Totally! Strain with all my strange mental capacity, and feel the ground drop away. In my proprioceptive mental map I’m levitating, just an inch or two off the ground, but I’m aloft. “Holy shit!”

I keep my eyes clamped closed, scared to lose control and break the spell. I actualize the idea of floating slowly forward toward the edge, over the edge, above the drop. Oh fuck, oh Jesus! But no, focus! Focus. I imagine my body slowly drifting down, gently falling, no, not falling, gliding! Gliding down the shaft, slowly, safely. Am I even really moving? Is this all pretend? I open my eyes and it’s totally dark and fuck! My attention slips! I’m falling! Shit!

“Oooph!”

I jar myself, landing hard on my feet, joints shock and complain, bounce-slip and tumble onto my ass. “Jesus.”

But the fall was only a few feet and bruised fanny aside, I’m okay. Holy shit, that worked! I actually flew! Triumph! I grab my body with my mind and lift myself back to my feet. “No stopping me.”

As soon as I’m upright light floods the new hallway, harsh and painfully bright! I instinctually want to shield my eyes, but I lack the limbs to do it. I squint and stumble forward, turn my head away, and peek at the stone walls with their interlocking triangular carvings to stay oriented. I awkwardly lurch and shuffle down the tunnel, call out: “Hello?”

“Hello Halley,” says an enormous version of my voice warmly. “Welcome.”

I stumble out of the tunnel into a chamber filled with blinding light and blasting furnace heat. I squeeze my aching eyes shut, but the light drills through my eyelids, burns spots into my vision. My bare skin flushes in the hot radiance. “Can you turn that down?”

“Of course, sorry,” A deep rumble like a predator chuckling. The light dims slightly and I blink my sore watery eyes open and find I’m standing in the presence of a huge sphinx made out of seething white fire. I gawk, this creature is easily twenty feet tall with feline paws large enough to crush me flat, incredible tits the size of my body, and a huge grinning Halley head with hair made of coiling, licking white flames and eyes as bright as stars. She has huge wings of light sprouting from her elephant-sized lioness body that radiate heat. She opens her mouth to speak and a blast of flame follows her words, “You finally found me!”

“Prime?”

She explosively laughs and lays down on her belly, her giant head resting on her feline paws. Her face towers over me. “Yep! The original, here in the fire.”

“Fucking hell!” I found her! Motherfucking Halley fucking Prime! And she’s a flaming Sphinx!?

“Awesome, right?” She stretches her wings and blows a gust of painfully hot wind at me.

I try not to cower, “What are you?”

“A goddess!”

“Really?”

She smiles playfully, eyelids shuttering the stars in her face. “I am a being of light and fire, the very stuff of stars.” She rumbles a purr, “I’d say that’s close enough.”

“Sure.” 

“If you want to be technical, I’m Annunaki,” 

Annunaki…? Where have I heard that before? The weird Sagans! The insurance policy! The mysterious advanced aliens responsible for the Halley clones! For me! Luminous Industries! “You’re Annunaki!?”

“We both are, since you’re made from a splinter of my Divine Essence. My little demi-goddess. My Starling.”

“Jesus…” If Halley-Prime was Annunaki all along, why was she on Earth? Why were we on Flotsam? Why was she being cloned over and over? “What is even happening?”

Halley-Prime’s tail lashes, leaving a burning trail in my vision like a comet. “Let me tell you a story: there once was an orphan Earthling girl. Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was only a child. For a time she was raised by asshole nuns, but then she was cast out into the world to fend for herself. She stumbled forward, somehow kept her feet, and took her first real steps into the world, found love, but was crippled with fear and depression. She fled from the world and hid in the dirty fringes of society, wallowed in poverty and privation. At least until one fateful night when she was abducted by aliens.” Halley-Prime licks her glowing lips with a tongue of flame, “The Earthling girl had a secret, one even she herself didn’t know. Her parents were gods, stars made flesh, sent to walk among the feral humans of Earth to judge the experiment of their freedom. While on Earth these gods kindled an offspring, an apparently human child, whom they abandoned when they faked their deaths and ascended back to the stars. Their Earthling child was left behind to experience true human life, to intimately learn what it meant to be an Earthling; her abandonment an important part of a grand experiment.” Prime blows fire from her nose, “The abduction was really a collection, a rescue attempt to bring the secret goddess child back home to her divine family.”

“But you crashed here, on Flotsam.”

“Even gods have trouble finding good help these days.” 

I frown and think of that strange Tall White bounty hunter, the former Captain Flash or whatever. The abductor. Seemed more like a fucked up pirate than a divine servant. “So then what?”

“On Flotsam the Earthling girl knew something had gone wrong, that she had been done an injustice. At first she cowered in fear, but that nagging certainty that there was a cosmic reason for her plight grew within her. She sought out those who know secrets, alien overlords, criminals, those who travel in the wilderness, and learned about the world and herself. But the searching instinct went unfulfilled, grew into an obsession, became visions of a song or a light or a hidden library. Eventually her dreams resolved into a glowing sphere that promised her answers and gave her a location to seek deep in the Junk Desert. Leaving everything behind, the Earthling girl embarked on a quest to the most forsaken badlands of this planet and found the Beacon. She embraced its light and her true nature was revealed to her. Within the quickening of stars, the Earthling girl Ascended into her true Annunaki godhood.”

“And you turned into a giant star sphinx?”

Prime purrs, “I’m a being of purest energy, this form is a corporeal convenience.” 

“Why a sphinx?”

“You’d prefer a burning bush?”

I stare up at Halley’s fiery eyes and suck my labia thoughtfully, “So if you became a goddess, why stay hidden? Why not tell Clem where you are? Why make all these clones? Why do I exist?”

“You exist because I created you, my Little Starling, for the same reason I created all your sisters: I’m conducting my own experiment.”

“Experiment!?”

“The reason I was abandoned on Earth was to live an authentic human life and bring these experiences back to the Annunaki.” Prime’s eyes blaze, “But what a sorry replicate we turned out to be: abusive childhood, poverty, mental illness, isolation. I didn’t think Halley Rochelle Houston was a very useful dataset.” She tilts her head, “So I decided to extend the study, to make more Halleys and set them free, to observe them living their lives, and wait for them to carry their experiences back to me.” She moues, “Sadly my wayward creations became distracted, or lost, or lacked the fortitude to finish their pilgrimage. But, well, failed experiments are still data.” She smiles like a bonfire, “You, my 24th replicate are the first of my Little Starlings to find me. Congratulations.”

“What! The actual fuck!”

“You disapprove?”

“You dumped two dozen clones of yourself, naked and confused, on an alien planet! Just to watch us suffer! For your own what? Intellectual curiosity?” I stamp my foot. “You fucking abandoned Clem!”

“Is that any way to talk to your Maker?”

“You’re a fucking monster!”

“For kindling your existence? For giving you free will? For letting you make dumb mistakes and live with the consequences? I’m a goddess not a nursemaid.”

“You’re cruel.”

“I prefer mercurial.”

“And what about Clem?”

The huge Halley sphinx sighs and looks wistful. “I am sorry about Clem. I miss him, her, whatever, but I’m immortal and made of cosmic fire, and Clem’s… just an Earthling. How could it work?” She frowns, “No one ever said godhood comes without a cost.”

“You could still let her know you’re okay.”

“That would spoil my experiment.”

I unclench my toes and stop myself from calling Prime an asshole. “Okay,” I say through gritted pussy, “How does it all work? You created Luminous Industries to create your clones?”

“Mmm, not exactly. The Annunaki have had a front on Flotsam since the beginning, but it was mostly dormant. I gussied it up a bit and added the lovely Sagans as my proxies, and yes, I used LI as a prop to explain how new Halleys keep appearing in the universe.”

“So the Annunaki don’t actually offer Resurrection Insurance?”

“As a salable service? No, that’s a fabrication for my little game. But Annunaki clones do happen; we deities have our chosen ones and an occasional resurrection really pops with the mortals.”

“So you make a new Halley with only Earth memories, dump her in Clem’s bedroom, and then wait for them to come find you?”

“I watch them too. Closely.”

“Sure, and then what? What makes you clone the next one?”

“I observe the current Halley has given up on the pilgrimage and decide the experiment is over.”

“That’s it? They stop searching for you?”

“Yes,” her huge eyes glow savagely, “that’s it.”

“Christ…” That’s so infuriatingly simple! My entire existence is a narcissistic experiment? A game of divine hide and seek played with a smug fireball hiding out in her garbage ziggurat. I’m just a new playmate to replace the last one who got bored of looking. What a stupid reason for my whole story! “You became a god and you’re wasting time on this bullshit?”

Halley-Prime stands up, suddenly a towering monstress, heat and light flaring from her leonine form. “You lack perspective. I’m immortal, what are a few decades spent in self-examination?” She taps her paw on the ground, unsheathing laser claws, “Besides, you Starlings put on such an amusing show.”

“Fuck you.”

She just grins.

I sigh, impotently. 

“So I found you. What now?”

“Now my Little Starling, you rejoin me and become part of my Flame.”

“What?”

There is a flash of intense light and heat and a condensed humanoid form has replaced the sphinx. It’s Halley, but idealized, a perfect version of myself but made from painfully bright light. Her face is lean and without blemish, her tits perky and perfect, her stomach toned and legs long, her hair a brilliant cascade of artful flame. She has wings of light like an angel and a lioness tail ending in a gout of fire. Prime is so beautiful that she hurts to gaze upon. “It’s time for you to come home and deliver your data.”

“You want me to… merge with you?”

Halley smiles immaculately and inside I ache, “Yes.”

“But I’ll cease to exist, won’t I?”

“You were only ever a tiny part of my soul given flesh. This is what you are for, your purpose.” Prime steps closer and almost touches me. I cringe as I feel a dangerous heat from her fingertips. “You’ll live on forever in me, your awareness and memories cherished for eternity.”

“What if I don’t want to? What if I’d rather keep living my life, independently?”

Prime pulls back her hand  and strokes the inferno that is her hair, “You have free will, but why refuse this gift?” She smiles gently, “Look at you? You’re disfigured and broken, armless and faceless, doomed to live your short mortal life like a vulgar parody.” She gestures at her astonishingly perfect body, “I can burn away your sins and corruption, your anxiety and depression, your perverse body and warped mind, remake you whole as part of my perfection. You could exist forever, transcendent and enlightened! You would be a goddess!”

I take a nervous step back and hunch my empty shoulders. Did I actually want this? To dissolve into Halley-Prime and become, what? Some fond memories? A little independent voice inside her mind? A warm glow? A divine aspect? It would be so easy. Just say yes to Prime and let her melt away all my fear and sadness and all the weird stares. It wouldn’t be giving up, it would be satisfying my purpose. I’m hardly even a real person. 

I could be free.

But no, I am a person! Even if I’m just a clone or a fragment of an alien goddess or whatever the fuck I’m made of, I’m Halley-fucking-24! I exist! Sure, I’m a freak with an anxiety disorder, but I’m learning to get by. So I have to wear a mask in public and my face is mostly pussy, and fuck, I actually like the armless thing, even if I know it was forced on me. It isn’t perfect, but what is?  What living person is totally happy? Despite everything, I’m doing pretty okay.

I take another step away from Prime.

What about all my people? What would they do if I disappeared? How would they feel? I just reconnected with Clem, how much would it hurt to lose me already? I couldn’t do that to her! I love her, and we’ve just started learning what that means. And Bluebell! My beloved whatever we are; lovers, friends, partners… How could I repay all her kindness and generosity by abandoning her? She deserves my loyalty and love for long as she’ll have me. All my friends too: Freya and HAL-E and Hank and Halley-4 and 16 and 22, and maybe even Pussy. Would it really make me happy to abandon them? Forever? Don’t I owe them something too? Even Lately; sure it was maybe just a fling, but don’t I want to learn if it’s more? I am so fucking lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing people. How could I leave them?

I retreat another step from Prime.

I’ve been looking for a home, for a family, for as long as I can remember, before I even existed even. Maybe I had it in that trailer park on Earth without appreciating it? I definitely have something now. It’s on a weird planet with sapients more varied and strange than I ever could have predicted, but it’s amazing. I have a place. I’ve found my people. Why would I give it all up? Just because some glowing bitch hiding in a garbage cave claims to be my lord and savior? So what if she made me? This is my fucking life, and I intend to live it. 

I square my shoulders and shake my head: “No.”

“You would refuse me?”

“I like who I am and the life I’ve built for myself. I’m not willing to give it up.” 

“You would forsake divinity? Immortality?”

“Yes.”

The heat from Prime flares and I can feel my skin crisp with sunburn. Her perfect face looks hurt: “Reject me a third time and I’ll rescind my offer. This is your last chance.”

“I’m not interested. No.”

Halley-Prime pinches her nose and frowns, “This isn’t how I thought this was going to go…”

“I’m sorry?”

“No, I am.”

Halley-Prime’s humanoid body flares like a supernova!

A searing wall of heat and light! 

I am consumed!

Obliterated…

…

***

Chapter 37