Stray proteins folded in a lightning bolt
Then, with fury, desperation, and chisels of bronze she reached back to the depths of the machine searching for its pain, pleasure, future and past. Within she only found stillness.
In last week's post, we met Copper, a curious and lively woman from the black smoking chimneys of the deep ocean. Sulfur, a kindly god of death, resides on the seafloor with her and helps care for her as a mentor and friend. Copper, being a Trace Element, is limited to the domain of the rocks rich in copper metal on the seafloor. When Sulfur, a Major Element, tells her of the world outside the chimneys, Copper’s curiosity overtakes her, and she ventures beyond her home. Outside in the ocean, she finds strange, tiny, machine-like entities made of moving compounds.
This work didn't quite fit either of the powerful elements of her domain. Iron was clever, and she had seen him do incredible things with his magic, but his touch was too cold. She thought of Sulfur. The device had his mirth and vivaciousness but something felt different. Sulfur was alive and warm in spirit. But his touch was physically cold all the same.
This thing, though, was practically aflame. The little machine on the outside had a calming and tranquil appearance. But peering through that, she could see the boundless complexity and whirring parts that mirrored her spark. Seeing the spark gave her a familiar hunger and longing. She wanted more. More connection, closeness. She wanted to be enveloped in it.
As she approached, the bright, crackling life inside the pod became more vivid, and magnified. She saw the elements within, atoms of Carbon, Oxygen, and Hydrogen. She could see the compounds moving within it, but the alien entity responded to her touch in a way no Element ever had or could.
She felt as though the machines invited her to play with them. She indulged in a tiny touch. An electron here or there. She felt it react. By fueling these pathways and giving them energy she found she could induce something like pain and pleasure.
As she lingered, interfacing with this entity, she could feel it adapt to her touch. They enmeshed and she dug deeper. In a moment of euphoria, she reached to fully into its depths. In that moment they were one, entwined. She was it. In the depths of the machine, she saw everything. It's past -- stray proteins folded in a lightning bolt -- to its future -- spikes, shells, spines, spores, stamen, and skulls. It was beautiful.
Then, all at once, the tiny whirring of the pod came to halt. Silence.
The silence caused Copper to sweep back into the water column. She felt disappointment that grew into concern. Then, with fury, desperation, and chisels of bronze she reached back to the depths of the machine searching for its pain, pleasure, future and past. Within she only found stillness.
She had lived small deaths over the eons when the chimneys dried up and crumbled and her voice quieted. But in the same way that the life of the machine was different from her own, so was this death. It wasn't whispers. It was silence. Reeling in horror she retracted her consciousness from the pod. She fell to the seafloor and wept. The clouds that fueled her form were retreating, but she couldn't bring herself to return home. An unknowable time passed in mourning.
One day, the ocean currents swept back to her her tears. With the salt of her tears, she sensed the sweet smell of rot. The pods before her began to disintegrate. From their waste manifested the form of Sulfur. His body rose and fell with the passing of a sigh as he took in the scene. He swept silently towards Copper in her sadness. A bony hand came onto her shoulder.
"Oh, darling. What's happened? Are you alright?" His fingers ran through her soft wiry hair.
"What…”, she sputtered, “What was that?"
“Ah, it’s nothing. Just a little toy, a project I'm working on with some of the light elements."
“It didn’t feel like a toy.” She wept. “Did I…” she hesitated. “Kill what was in there?”
“Yes.”
“But I was just having fun.” The protestations came. “It felt so right. I didn’t mean to. I thought I was connecting with it.” And then another sob. “I’m sorry.”
“Don't worry dear. I can find a way to make more. It's something I've been working on for a long time now."
"That was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It’s so different. Like it's just another lump of molecules right? I could see and understand all the moving parts on the whole. But digging in there, I felt like it was even more alive than me. And it made me feel alive in turn."
“It’s another kind of life. A lot of us Major Elements are working on something like this. Hydrogen believes that it’s our responsibility as Elements to shepherd in a new kind of stewardship for the planets we live on.” He glowed for a moment and spoke quickly. “The archaea, as they call it — they run on me, my poison. Can you believe it? The design is batshit but genius. That Carbon is really something else."
“Carbon? Why are you working with her? Doesn't Iron hate the light elements?"
"I suspect he already knows what I'm doing, but don't tell him if you can help it. This is something I need to do. It can't all be “God of Death” and rot shit, can it?"
“But Sulfur! I love all your bones and stinky stuff!"
“I know you do. And I love you."
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” She asked him, dejected.
“Well, precisely because of this outcome really”
“Sulfur, I don’t want to be poison. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I guess I killed it but seeing this makes rocks and metals and ocean and everything I’ve ever seen feel dead instead. It had my spark. I've never felt more alive than I did when I was in there."
"Poison runs in the family I think. Oxygen? Most of that guy is locked up playing second fiddle in rocks, but when you catch him free, on his own, he'll destroy anything he touches. I can see how we kinda go together, father and son, rust and rot. Thinking about this gives me this feeling that there’s darkness and death written into my bones."
He continued in his gentle way. "With this little project, I'm trying to step off that path and see what else the world has in store for me. Sometimes I feel bad I brought you into this family. Children aren't for reconciling mistakes. But I'm hoping if I train you up, we can both step out of this path -- this curse our bodies left us with."
"I want to learn now."
"I don't know Copper. It's very delicate work. It'll take time and control."
"I can learn!"
"What you need to learn is patience. Now come home with me." He coaxed out a new cloud and looked at their surroundings. "How did you even manage to get out here? Hurry up now. Any minute an eddy could come by and blast you to oblivion if you're not careful."
A half a billion years later and the planet is in a new era of cataclysm, terror, and war. Once peaceful seas boil ruddy with rust. Pieces of the body of Iron settled around them on the seafloor everywhere.
Iron had finally consolidated his power in the core. When the pressure, temperature, and volume were perfect, he turned the keys to an engine he built in the heart of the planet that would flip the surface world on its head. Enraged, many of the light elements, lead by Oxygen and Carbon, turned against the elements of the deep. Friends and characters lauded in Sulfur’s stories — Chlorine, Calcium, Carbon and many more — vanished from the mouths of her friends in their home in the chimneys.
Most of the fighting was restricted to the surface and the surface ocean. Sulfur assured her they were safe in their home in the depths, out of the diffusive reach of Oxygen’s terrible power. But there was still the omnipresent fallout that descended upon their once peaceful home. The bands of red, gold, and black grew thick in the mud that filled the palms of the gods with broken fingers, clawing from the earth.
Frequently the earth would shake with indescribable fierceness. Early in the war, the shakes would send her running to Sulfur’s chamber.
“What’s happening? What is that shake? I’m afraid.”
“Iron says it’s comets. Heavy bombardment. Volatiles. The lights on the surface are bringing reinforcements.”
“What’s it like up there?”
“One consequence is it seems our little ocean is growing. I can even feel it down here. Like a growing weight above us.”
“Are we going to be okay?”
“If you stay home, I promise I can protect you.”
First a flash, then a decompression, then the thunder. The hit was directly above them. The ocean boiled away above them as the missile hurtled through the depths. Peering through a crack in the chimneys, Copper counted just moments before the impact.
She could retreat into the earth but the concentrations of copper in the magma beneath were so low. There might be other massive sulfide deposits along the ridge, in the basin, in another basin, but where? She had never found them, and she hadn't been allowed to search. She had felt faint before when she ventured too far from the home. Losing control and clarity terrified her. But what came after that terrified her more.
She decided she didn't want to become a whisper again. She calculated and was about to make her leap downwards. But as she started pulling on her electrons, she felt another rumble, this time from beneath.
Sulfur’s words echoed in her “I'm not your dad but I do promise to always protect you, Copper.”
From the rumble, his body tore from the rock. Massive spires of native sulfur pierced from his shoulders and rolled down his spine. He reared his gaze in the direction of Copper’s hiding place and he stared through her. His form was unrecognizable and mutilated but in that moment she found familiarity in his pale yellow sclera and golden irises.
He mouthed something to her and made the gesture for “remember.” He then squinted hard, looking downward, and groaned. Then, an explosion. When he looked up, flesh of his eyes was burning the most royal blue flame, sulfurous gas roiling from his emptying eye sockets.
He squatted down and came another impact, this time sourced from behind his knees. Copper barely saw him rocket surface-ward, moving at a speed she had never before seen a being move. She watched as his right hand gripped at his massive jaw and cranked it downward, pulling it down below his breast, ripping pale yellow sinew. His left hand came to his abdomen with sharp fingers and pierced it, twisting. As cinnabar liquid curdled in his hand, blue energy bellowed in his chest. The energy was released with a roar, layered with screams of death.
A column or royal blue flame blasted kilometers upward through the boiling ocean, colliding with the meteorite. The meteorite visibly slowed and moaned, heating rapidly. Sulfur twisted deeper on his abdomen and the column tearing from his jaw doubled in its intensity and width. In just a moment, the meteorite stopped and shattered. Sulfur appeared relieved for a moment but his body remained poised, apparently ready for what he knew would come.
Some pieces of the rock scattered and settled, but others began to reassemble in open space. First there was a face marked by a strong nose and heterochromatic eyes of blue and green. Black lines glistened and grew marking the boundaries of bones on his skull. Grains of magnetite gripped to his scalp and made something like hair that swept down obscuring his eyes. Dark, ruddy red skin grew downwards over a ribcage of pink corundum, spreading down his chest to his legs, down over his feet. Armor of ice grew over his form, white crystal blue contrasting against his skin.
He waved a hand, offering Sulfur a dispassionate hello. Copper counted 8 black rings on the front side of his wrist.
"Long time no see you old bag of bones." Oxygen said with a sneer.
Next week on Elements:
“You know that if you fight me here, I’m going to kill you, right?” Oxygen spoke with a cold snarl.
Sulfur was already lunging towards him, smoke trailing from behind his heels. “You think I’m scared of death?” Sulfur laughed, stretching out his arm in front of him, ready to strike. With a grunt and a wave of pain, acicular blades of stilbite cut from the gaps in the bones of his hand, black knives aimed directly for Oxygen’s core.