Chapter 33: Trivia

Soon enough they reached the main street. Violet paused, finding herself in the midst of a space cleared by some long ago blaze. Before her, the road stretched almost perfectly northward, framed by tall, glass paneled buildings that rose straight into the air like splinters fallen from a church window. Time and neglect had knocked holes into their glittering facades, others had collapsed or were hanging crooked from where fires had burnt out their cores.

Past the northern limits of the city, its flow visible only in segmented flashes between spires, the river curled forth like a black silk ribbon. This was what lay upstream from her village, Violet realized.

Beyond the river, darker than even its waters, the decaying remains of a vast industrial facility hunched upon the far bank. Though it was still distant, Violet had drawn close enough that some details floated free from the murk. The central building was missing chunks from its roof, smokestacks sagging askew. A tiny row of freight cars stood lined up, end to end, along a set of railway tracks that disappeared through an enormous doorway in the center of the building’s front wall.

“Do you know what that is?” Violet asked, pointing.

The cat squinted.

“A refinery, I think. For oil.”

Violet’s thoughts went immediately, nonsensically, to the bottle of cooking oil she had in her pack, but that wasn’t right. The cat meant fuel; kerosene and diesel.

“We’ll have to go right past it.” She said, trying to hide a flicker of unease.

“Then we’ll tiptoe.” The cat decided, and Violet couldn’t help but smile.

They walked the next few blocks in a comfortable silence, Violet watching as the buildings around her grew taller and taller. Speckles of moss and lichen had adhered to many of the surviving windows and, looking up at them, Violet was put in mind of forests, trees suspended in midair.

Suddenly there was motion, a glittering, colorful swirl of it descending towards the main road from around the side of the nearest building.

Violet’s first thought was of birds, but what she saw was much too large and its flight completely silent. Then her eyes caught upon the fluttering edges of a familiar shapelessness, and it all clicked into place.

There before her was the beast, gracefully descending from on high, accompanied by scores of butterflies and contentedly humming bees.

Violet came to a halt, the cat drawing back to her side. A certain muted annoyance had entered into its body language.

The beast touched gracefully down a few meters in front of them and tucked in the more extraneous edges of its form. As if a spell had been broken, the bees finished their orbits and buzzed smoothly away, many of the butterflies scattering in lackadaisical clumps. Some stayed, alighting upon fabric and bone alike, glittering prettily in the soft light like the badges of some ancient esoteric order.

g o o d -- m o r n i n g ---- Said the beast, and politely dipped its head.

There were a pair of green butterflies resting at the edges of its eye sockets, tiny wings falling gently open and closed. It looked almost as though the beast’s eyes had become filled with bursts of emerald flame.

“Good morning.” Violet answered, letting her gaze drift down to the beast’s center. Sure enough, she could hear the faintest edge of a crackle leaking through its fabric.

i . .. ---- The beast trailed off, suddenly bashful.

i -- w a n t e d -- t o -- s h o w -- y o u -- s o m e t h i n g

Its voice sounded…clearer. Certainly more focused. Many of the old imperfections and hesitations had been smoothed over.

The cat sighed unhappily. Violet ignored it.

“Oh?” She asked, feeling quite curious.

y o u -- a s k e d -- a b o u t -- t h e -- p a s t .

s o -- i -- t r i e d -- t o -- r e m e m b e r

The beast was nearly vibrating with effort, concentrating hard so as make every syllable perfect.

“You did?” Violet asked.

t h h e r e . º º ---- Quickly, it arrested the imperfect speech and clicked its teeth, like a person chastising some stubborn impediment. When it was ready, it tried again.

t h e r e -- w a s -- a n o t h e r -- w o r l d -- h e r e -- o n c e .

a n d -- y o u -- r e m i n d -- m e -- o f -- i t ..

“Does she….” The cat grumbled.

Violet shot her companion a warning glance before returning her attention to the beast. Most of the remaining butterflies had departed now, but for a single orange monarch that rested contentedly upon the tip of its bony nose.

“What did you want to show me?” Violet asked, and the beast did a happy little hop in midair before spinning around, angling itself towards a side street that ran roughly eastwards.

Violet followed as the beast began to drift, the cat zipping atop her rucksack. From there it leaned over to whisper unhappily into her ear.

“There’s not going to be anything at the end of this.”

Violet cocked her head away from her companion’s words.

“Get off, your whiskers are tickling my neck.” She complained, not untruthfully.

The cat didn’t move.

“I thought it was common practice to tell little girls not to follow strangers down unfamiliar streets.” It said.

Violet began to say something heated, then caught herself. That was exactly what her companion wanted.

“I think you’re jealous.” She remarked instead.

“J…?!” The cat arrested its exclamation before it could begin to splutter. “Why on earth would I be jealous of that thing?”

“I’m still your friend,” Violet continued serenely. “No matter who else I’m also friends with.”

The cat was silent for a long while, paws kneading unhappily into the top of her rucksack, then it slipped to the ground and dropped a few paces back, huffing quietly to itself.

Violet looked ahead, to where the street was split in two by a tall concrete boulevard ablaze with flowering trees; aspens thick with false roses blooming monochromatic, and cherries with pink blossoms that curled in on themselves like möbius strips, petals and stems conjoined in spiraling masses that held no true center.

She took a deep breath and made herself remember what the cat had told her about the incongruities of the malformed plants.

“Qualia.” She said, and glanced back to her companion.

The cat still seemed deflated, but managed a crooked smile all the same.

“And un-qualia too,” it answered. “Are you alright?”

Violet resisted an anxious urge to glance back at the boulevard.

“Yes.” She said, and figured that was probably true.

The beast led them another half block, past a pair of glass sheathed buildings caught in the middle of a slow capitulation to time and gravity. The paths where structural weaknesses had begun to spread were apparent in the rows of empty windows, their glass blown out by sagging floors and buckled frames.

Shards and splinters crunched beneath Violet’s shoes as she passed. The cat elected to ride atop her rucksack rather than pick its own way through the mess.

Past the half collapsed glass row stood a smaller brick building with a narrow metal portico shading the front door. There looked to have once been a sign with letters done in solid brass, but most had long since fallen away and the few survivors made no sense in isolation.

The beast came to a halt and glanced back at Violet before staring expectantly into the shaded place beneath the portico.

l o o k ---- It said, and seemed proud, jittery and deeply anxious all at once.

Violet looked, wondering what she was about to see. At first glance the space was all but empty, unadorned brick but for a chained off doorway and a pair of glass fronted metal boxes. One had toppled onto its front and lay woven through with pale threads of feathery lichen. The surviving box was rusty and dull, quietly enduring the end of civilization on its own.

For a moment Violet wasn’t sure what she was being shown, then she caught an incongruous hint of color.

“Is that…?” She began to ask, squinting to peer through the cloudy, scratched up glass. There, arrayed in neatly angled rows, were a great many plastic wrapped parcels, quite similar to the ones Violet had salvaged from the cinema.

Similar, but….

She could not help but be dazzled by the brightness of their color, wrappers done up in red and blue and black and green, every hue and shade she thought could possibly exist, with every pattern and shape to accompany it. And words as well.

Violet framed her eyes with both hands and leaned in to get a better view, the tip of her nose pressing against cool glass.

“Snaps.” She said wonderingly, reading the nearest packet’s label, which was done up in red and white like a circus tent.

Each packet within the box was held in place by a curious metal curl, like a spring but with no apparent flexibility. The immediate purpose of it evaded her, but Violet’s attention had already wandered, drawn inexorably across the peculiar cornucopia.

“Nibs,” she read, tracing one finger across the glass, just beneath the enticing vividness of a packet’s label. “Scatters and…and Curry Crisps! Pershings and Honey Globs….” Violet laughed and realized she’d begun to bounce excitedly in place.

She looked back to where the beast hovered at the edge of the portico. It had puffed up quite a bit and seemed to be grinning, skeletal jaws slightly ajar.

“…What’s a Honey Glob?” She asked. “Or…any of this? Why’s it in this box?”

Violet drew slightly back in order to get a better look at the box’s construction. To the immediate right of the glass was a small panel of buttons, about level with her chin and clearly intended for use by a taller person. A steel rimmed coin slot sat adjacent.

y o u -- b u y -- t h i n g s ---- The beast said helpfully.

“Is this where everyone bought their food?” Violet asked, and was momentarily awestruck by the notion. If essentials could be purchased from a box at any time then that would negate the whole carefully structured system of the market.

A part of her delighted in the thought of buying biscuits or honeycomb every single day. At the same time, the rest had come to realize there would also be no people involved. The only face she’d see while buying things would her own, reflected in the glass.

The beast made a low, contemplative noise.

i .. . -- c a n n o t -- r e m e m b e r -- w h e r e -- i -- u s e d -- o n e -- o f -- t h e s e

“It wasn’t this one?” Violet asked, tapping the glass.

The beast shook its head.

s o m e w h e r e -- e l s e ..

Violet looked back to the box, and then the buttons. Many of them had faded, but enough still wore their original markings to give her an idea of what they meant. The top row were labeled as letters, the rest numbers.

“So….” She put her hands on her hips, eyeing the box. “You pay for what you want, pick something using the buttons…and then it falls out. Right?”

The beast nodded, quietly pleased. Behind it, the cat yawned, making a show of its disinterest.

Fishing into the deepest part of one pocket, Violet found a spare token and cautiously measured the little brass disc against the lip of the coin slot. It fit perfectly.

Pushing it forward, Violet listened keenly as her payment was swallowed, rattling off into the belly of the box with a satisfying amount of noise and pomp. With that done, she pressed a pair of buttons, a letter and a number alike, then took a quick step back to see what came.

Nothing happened.

Violet blinked, a hollow sense of disappointment opening up at the pit of her stomach. After a moment the cat trotted over to her side, trying and failing to conceal a look of amusement.

“Well,” it said. “I’m sure all of this was very nice back however long ago, but the moment the electricity went off….”

Silently, the beast drifted forward and then put the bony point of its nose through the front of the box with a huge, shattering crash. Violet and the cat jumped in unison, the cat’s fur puffing instantly up. The beast withdrew from the hole it had made and gave Violet a firm, satisfied nod, splinters of glass falling from between its teeth.

The front of the box now looked badly lopsided, a jagged gap opened into its interior, where vividly colored rows of cellophane packets glittered like lost jewels.

“…Thank you.” Violet said, still surprised.

The cat, looking from the beast to the box and back again, could only laugh.

“Goodness.” It said quietly to itself.

Once all of the broken glass had been cleared away, Violet set herself up at the base of the box and went to work extracting one of every kind of treat it held.

The variety was intoxicating, broad nearly to the point of paralysis. Violet could see candy bars and bags filled with air that crinkled when she squeezed them, tiny bottles with silver foil over their caps, and plastic wrapped cardboard cartons with pictures of animals on them.

…And the vast majority of it was bad. Chocolate bars had degenerated into oily black curds. The Curry Crisps had dissolved into an inert pinkish dust, and some of the more unnaturally colored taffies were little more than a gummy, syrupy abstraction when Violet at last succeeded in peeling their wrappers away. The silver capped bottles, while interesting, offered only a sharp, sour smell when opened, and Violet was not brave enough to sample the contents.

Only the hard candies had survived in even halfway decent shape. Them and the cartons, which proved to contain thin crackers molded in the shapes of various animals.

The crackers were brittle, dry and not particularly good, but simply looking at them proved to be entertaining all on its own.

Within the cartons were bears and lions, giraffes and parrots…a whole menagerie of creatures Violet had only ever read about. But though she looked for and found a horse, the beast showed no special attachment to it and simply gazed politely before drifting back to observe and be perfectly, peacefully silent.

The cat pawed the crackers back and forth, surreptitiously breaking the wolves and dogs and foxes when it thought Violet wasn’t looking, but otherwise remained aloof from the majority of the haul.

Near the bottom of the carton, Violet found a smaller cracker that held a familiar shape.

“Look.” She said, presenting her discovery.

The cracker she held was in the shape of a very happy cat with a pleasant, sunshiny smile upon its cinnamon dusted face.

Her companion matched that smile, though with a great deal more teeth than its baked counterpart, then leaned carefully in and bit off the cracker cat’s head.

Upon the backs of each carton were lines of text, pieces of trivia concerning the animals their crackers were shaped like.

“Did you know….” Violet read, glancing over top of the carton to look at her companions. “An adult cheetah can run at speeds of up to seventy five miles per hour, but only in short bursts.”

The beast nodded politely, as if to compliment her recital. The cat only yawned.

“What is a cheetah?” Violet asked, scrutinizing the factoid once again as though it would blossom suddenly forth into greater knowledge. She considered scouring the surviving crackers for those which looked the fastest, but supposed that held no guarantee of success.

The beast straightened up.

a -- t y p e -- o f -- c a t , -- w i t h -- s p o t s -- a n d -- l o n g -- l e g s ---- It said.

“How long?” Violet asked, then looked to her cat before she could stop herself. “Longer than yours?”

The cat gave her a cool look.

“I wouldn’t think so. The speeds I go at can’t be measured.” Her companion didn’t bother to hide its boastfulness.

y e s -- t h e y -- c a n ---- The beast said.

This was the first time Violet had heard the beast directly acknowledge the cat, and she took notice, the carton and its factoids forgotten.

“Really?” She asked curiously.

The cat, which had drawn itself stiffly upright, scoffed.

2 9 9 , 7 9 2 , 4 5 8 m / s ---- Said the beast

Both Violet and the cat blinked in unison, exchanging an uncertain look.

“…And what’s that supposed to mean?” The cat asked.

i t ’ s -- t h e -- u p p e r -- l i m i t ---- The beast said patiently

y o u -- c a n n o t -- e x c e e d -- i t

Violet tried to turn the beast’s number over in her mind, but it had a great many more digits than she was used to, and even trying to comprehend the sum total felt hopeless. For all the complex and enviable things a mind could do, it was strange how easily higher functions frayed when faced with a true expression of vastness.

“Nothing can go that fast.” Violet decided, knowing already that she was probably wrong.

The beast turned and looked beyond the edge of the portico, out to where the sun sat behind the clouds like a great disc of burning platinum. It seemed amused, though did not share what by.

Across from Violet, the cat, which looked to have been contemplating something, stood and stepped sideways into a scrap of shadow, dissipating in an instant. Near immediately it had reappeared in front of the beast, shaking a kink from its tail.

“How fast was I going?” It asked, silver eyes burning with challenge.

i -- d o n ’ t -- k n o w ---- The beast said without hesitation.

“Then how can you say I wasn’t going faster than your number?”

y o u -- w e r e n ’ t

“How do you know?” The cat asked again, more insistently.

The beast only stared in return, skeletal expression unreadable. When at last it spoke, its words came slow and with great care.

.. . t h e r e -- a r e -- l a w s -- t o -- t h e w o r l d ---- It said. ---- l i m i t s

The cat scoffed.

“Look at yourself,” it said, glancing contemptuously over the beast’s form. “What makes you think any of the old human rules still apply?”

A tiny shiver ran through the edges of the beast’s fabric.

t h e r e -- a r e -- a b s o l u t e s , -- i n d e p e n d e n t -- o f -- h u m a n i t y ..

u n a l t e r a b l e

The cat stared, flatly unconvinced, and Violet quickly jumped in before the argument could continue.

“Where’d you learn that number?” She asked.

The beast hesitated, then simply ducked its head.

c a n ’ t -- r e m e m b e r ---- It admitted at last.

The cat made a small hmph noise, as though a key point had been proven. Violet ignored it, instead looking to the box and its trove of dubious treats.

“You remembered this,” she said, encompassing the spread with a sweep of her hand, accidentally sending a spray of crackers rattling across the concrete. “…The rest can’t be too far away.”

What she’d said was garishly, almost offensively optimistic, but Violet did her best to project cheer and not look too excessively curious as the beast again examined the box, like a detective scanning for clues.

Then, suddenly, it looked sharply away and pushed the nose of its skull into its own chest, nuzzling the fabric there.

i -- t h i n k .. ..

t h i s -- w a s -- p a r t -- o f -- m e -- w h e n . º

It gestured vaguely to her, speech breaking down.

Violet looked over herself, momentarily baffled, then realized what the beast was getting at.

“When you had a human body,” she sat straight, cellophane crinkling in her lap. “…Was that what you wore?”

The beast nodded faintly, or Violet thought it did. Slowly, she reached out a hand and stroked the very tips of her fingers along a ragged swathe of white fabric. It was cool and smooth, plasticky in a way that was very much unlike her own clothes. Where it frayed, the loose threads were translucent, like strands of spider silk.

After a moment of this the beast drew gently back, putting itself out of arm’s reach.

i -- c a n n o t -- r e m e m b e r -- w h y ---- It said, sounding faintly forlorn.

“You wore…wear white. Maybe you were a doctor.”

At this the beast grew thoughtful.

d o c t o r ---- It said, as if trying on the title for size.

Violet wanted to ask the beast what it thought, if any new memories or familiarities had arisen, but before she could it rose straight up until it was just barely touching the ground. The beast stared down at her, an expectant look on its bony face.

c a n -- i -- s h o w -- y o u -- o n e -- m o r e -- t h i n g ? ? ---- It asked.

The cat let out a long suffering sigh, but again Violet ignored her companion’s indignation and focused instead on shoveling her haul of candy and animal themed cinnamon crackers into the top of her rucksack. It all just barely fit.

“That’s what you were doing all night,” she said, a realization coming. “You were planning all of this.”

The beast grew immediately bashful, fabric fluttering.

f o l l o w -- m e ---- It said simply, then was off.

As Violet stepped out into the street, the cat placed itself right beside her.

“Don’t be too indulgent.” It warned.

“Jealousy is unbecoming.” She countered. It was something she’d heard her mother say once and the effect on the cat was very agreeable. Her companion’s ears folded back and it huffed, gaze turned deliberately elsewhere.

“I’m not jealous.” It insisted, coming across as less than convincing.

“You don’t want me to learn about any of this,” Violet said, indicating the whole ruined city around her. “How it used to be.”

“Well…look at it,” the cat said. “Why would you want to learn from anything that ended up like this?”

“If entropy is supposed to turn the world to dust eventually then what’s the point of learning about anything?”

“…Touché.” The cat grumbled. Violet didn’t bother asking what that was supposed to mean.

They kept walking.