Later that day excitement really did intrude on the stagnant existence of the bored Mist Gray. A stealthy hired assassin entered Gray Manor ready to take out any of the Gray brood but couldn't get past the computer's security his hacking skills were no use against a super-intelligent AI. He had attempted disguised and with a sniper rifle to ambush them in public pces but had failed.
This was his fourth visit to the house where he was pretending to be applying for the position of gardener, to avoid the detection of Monovalent’s movable cameras installed everywhere he was so he could see anything going on inside or outside any home or building. To suit Aryan’s ends, they were perfect: not stationary but miniature, invisible, spy drone cameras who could create roaming duplicates that surveyed even woodnd.
The would-be assassin knew never be granted the position now as he’d failed Monovalent’s background check on him. Any phony documentation useless as he couldn’t hack into the system to pnt it so without a computerised record his history and credentials would show as fake. This was his one shot.
The assassin heard movement in the backyard just as he was leaving and rushed into the orchard out back to find the boy Mist tending and photographing the white-wined flowers. He heard the man as soon as the steps approached the house and by his foot-treads, their heaviness and quality, realised he was someone unknown. Also felt the unique, unrecognised electrical current caused by his movements disturbance to atmosphere and smelt his exclusive scent and chemical changes to the general homeostasis of nearby life and nd, that his body emitted.
Things he and Shiver hypersensitive could realise, sense such various alterations from the tinniest insect or leaf or beast mile away.
Yet he allowed the shooting to happen: wanted to prove unequivocally he would live, that everything told about his immortality was true. If couldn’t withstand this pitiful bloodshed, then how weak, useless, pathetic and human. Not worthy of living… Plus the expression on the stupefied assassin’s face when he found him still alive and unscathed…wonderful.
The young man Mist then turned round in most convincing pretence of surprise; a flurried movement of catlike reflexes but as he well knew, too te; he was shot point-bnk in the heart and the arm, and the assassin fled before he hit the floor assured of his target’s death.
Monovalent who saw everything and before the round was even shot warned Mist and also while the miniature nano-bots devoured the bullet he immediately informed some of the mass of instant us embryonic cell-like structures his body generated daily to form a rge, bone-like cartige-rich cluster like a giant tumour for the bullet to strike instead of any vital organs. This design Emanuel’s idea enabled Aryan’s creatures to deal with bullets, knifes or anything stuck into the body as these tumours that acted as barriers took seconds to appear and could be repced over and over.” The tumours were then reverted back to their embryonic state and stored in the nelfine organ.
Mist rose surprisingly gracefully from a slight stagger as new cell-like bodies penetrated the area, the flesh was by Monovalent sealed over and then repced. The wound that should have subsequent heavy, gushing tides of dark wine spurting out instead clotted and stopped abruptly. I am with you child Monovalent whispered to him “I will heal your ailments you shall never die.”
Quelled the fire that would others have smote and a barely discernible fsh of should-be-immobilising pain and the wounds dimmed instantly. Artificial cells and tissues be they his artificial skin, muscle or bonelike structures all miraculously rapidly re-grown from the inside in under a minute. He started running very swiftly; catching up with his fbbergasted attacker wrestled the gun from his hand easily and shot him in the neck pnning to bury him ter.
He then walked inside, recovered if a little weary and went to bed, napped and whence awoke less than twenty minutes ter not even scars remained. The only sign of the previous occurrence was a few pretty, deep-red stains on the bright pnt-life that were a little too vibrant against the green grassy grounds.
Yet unlike true blood it rapidly-disintegrated. Broken-down after from body unbound. Bacteria and nanobotics partially his body composing, all travelled and sought out the blood’s various components such as metals: like iron scarce. Via recognising unique chemical properties. It carried these elements and burrowed into and settled them within, a few nutritionally-deprived animals. As with other living things, in death they’d been built to others repair.
Meanwhile, Shiver was the one now enjoying the garden, listening to a sound she heard often on the winds of the manor and heard in various pces and was communicated via Monovalent’s split-offs, the Nano-eyes. A sound she’d been hearing whenever she was alone for a year “Oh Shiver Gray, My Shiver Gray.”
I send this with my love.
Missing her furthest from the tightening sleeves of woeful agonies. Wanted not mere lightly: with waning whims. Wanted past gardens with tumbling maidenhair and wild woodnds. Flowers climbing where sylphs and various spirits carry the light grave. Hair a shawl of gold, falling heavy against a slenderness that to teeny shoulder climbed and set against wide, soft cheek of ivory.
Somewhere in the air-holy-d to you, her, spoke with tongue-delectable nguage, as programmer of mythos, with words rich-ced as edible buttercup.
Please, please little faeytal. Most love-abiding faieytale. My little efelin mery paying our fairynd toll. Please. Beauty’s upon your assimited cellur refaerieyre. Dreariest, listless, bleariest souls hosted in impoverished dwellings become commonpce, in tomorrow’s vilges: the new peasants abode.
Whilst we once believed ourselves (albeit arrogantly) cherished guardians of world’s lifeforms and varied offspring whilst all others feasting in an orgy grounded. Surrounds you my cruel-furred, farlen-of-the vair, a Lord’s home bathed in light unearned. Aryan spits sloth, greed. Yet my envy abounds unbridled. Like many indulgers he is to treasures of food and love numbed.
Life pleasance has worn-out its tasteful welcome, can longer feel rise, semi-starvation alone brings.
Against both the warmth and the cold railed and has become moon-in. As overly, day y itself brightly, goldenly over every shale. Polluted has demised all, upon our own buildings falling, failing. Lacklustre compared to the Litoria gracilenta; till begone my saintly, dainty tree frog. Leaving, you, a Faielilith pnting of crimson-eyed mallow, bloodwood, and weeping willow in a wilderness flower-havened.
Shiver of spiny horns and siren ways and soon rockily-serenade, sing stonily to me your ever-beloved. With prickle of Witches Thimble. You human insects hunt. A dusky flycatcher moseyed beautifully.
In well of the valley, you and Mist, my blood-bringing wood creepers and ant-thrushes, have sang etedly, a never-ending refrain. A simir monstrosity swelled in my torn and thorned heart, that in fragility and endless trials nguished. Tributions of poverty. Like the cobwebbed flower, truth is considered a former loveliness, now cruel and obsolete. Became so unfairly.
Yet someday wilt Old World regrow anew and I won’t find soce in naught but the artistic. Return from rustic stables of the Wicklow, a shamed flier, back to the shire of the familial. Thus, leave accursed valley stall. Return deforestation tolls and revoke ilium of the roseless eve that devour with its feeding-of-the-rapture. Comes saviour, ever-promised. Love unrelenting, faith in life never-ending, where shallow mustn’t pry. Soft and airy; my flimsy Shiver reside resolute; as crustaceans shielded with shells.
Never wear the illuminative, red shoes forbidden for they represent love and joy in simple things. Don’t relentless attempt anything grand or bold. For might fail to achieve these new heights of glory. Overlords need results and productivity, not broken hearts that know the bright: we must enthused, kneel. Until our adoring, forsook hands unable to work.
That formerly profitless might reap gold and make many lives better in a century. Yet newly-moralities of soon and selfish gratification made impatience, materialism good and lively duty, heretic. Exiled every naysayer to find our peace in their greyest dread, left it the Shilohmoor.
In the stain of harrow, lie lovelier, you exquisite rarities and your darkness will unfurl their light. Let the tears fall with consignment, rage or gentle frailty. Oh Shiver, so fast from dear little narlen, almost well-formed farlen. Pox if think creative arts and philosophy, true medical and scientific prowess meaningless and don’t see the elderly or disabled male or a woman at frontlines as absurdity.
For the emotional effete their strength to be warrior is a bloodied burden and to the femininity hater their womb, a life-giver of oppression. As expected of differently, based on natural ability. Man’s allowed be sin those weaker. Stronger won’t step in as protector for would thus relinquish his total “equality.”
People allowed unfettered to take Ebo interstate in universal right to “free movement” like everything else outweigh public health. Bme Mother Nature as a force against equity. Holding; concept of a bitter pteau where idealised equality is at any price wantful. Like some miserly betrothed: who upon the death of their own beloved would see all lovers perish. As an act of fairness.
Credence is gifted to greed, self-accode and the fulfilment of any promiscuous, hungered and socially-mundane “need”. Your power must equal mine, your pain too. Yet wilst flock to a newly-wrought, yellow fold; and with Aryan and I as Shepard, soften hell so that once more, sunlight will flower through the ne’er do-wells. Sunlight will flower redly through the valley of tears.”
The swampish see the light as a binding gold, and without guidance of our sweet leaf, will continues to see their fellow kind as merciless pullers of the tender trigger pnts. Anarchical-freewill is the true, burning red-ash in the wless vender. Yet for both uncurbed sexual freedom and societal mollycoddling, they plead.
Must hasten to save Furnariidae, Tyrannidae. Banished lightless, and all to-farewell, till life again, hailed. In this world, we glorify only self-gain. In truth earnest believe, in the right to do as one please. That morality never changes with circumstance. Soon the myth of linear progress to perfect nds shatters. How we stole humbleness and humility. Term brotherhood, haters of the banding of man to his family and fellow. Would cling to bizarre variation of a vague, worldly care for all.
In practice must cease peaceful community unity, functional economy to violent foreign invader reaping true countryman and worker's wage and livelihood at worst injuring their very being with armed savagery, intimate assail.
The right to infect another with disease and leave to sicken in utter agony before taking harmful meth or infected phallus from grasp ghastly, as fulfils own self-centred wishes. Once we discouraged our loved ones from self-desecration, didn’t abet the spill of our fellow's blood. Now we worship and expend finite resource on it, as call it liberty.
For one's own freedom, neck and needs always upheld first. Equality at any pitiful price mantra before speaking against thralls of lust, envy, gluttony and cold, bitter wrath till perished. Die unsalvageable afore with the willing build bonds.
Hindering their Saviour’s calling, is every soul forgone. Dead yet refusing to fade, vails-blue with their poor light shawling and leaves only an old dawning. Last and gray. Fly faint-heartedly. More riches lead to more unsatisfied bitternesses. In the universe of fell-less gold the mammalian butterfly sought bck-leaving, everywhere the sweet variety of wickedness welled. In the wood of the Vio odorata in st light of the rainbow.
Stand with me in first light of the sunflower, amid petals violet-begat in the vaes of a forsaken Greece snowed. My Sunless nymph of Wallows, I see your tears in a vined plume purplish. Others beauty you, my swan maiden, pale but whence wish, can be in their outers feathered. My male-farlen in any warrior's peak could be cloaked and beaked. Someday former fickle dissidents will reverie in new flesh. Voile lille matchstick faetiled.
My Shiver, renounce all devils and be cast in better stead. Become a brotherhood dressed in the greenery. That may-tallied. Awed of my Shiver, not simply coveting mere sickle, pennied. Farthing. My beings will resurrect the dusk. That once torn asunder. Remit wonder, once procimed lost.
Your bloodline was vexed unwilling with many, veiny wings. Many ways to fly or be. Yet with Simon there is no flowering. Those wrathful, have all the walkways gravened and there’s no even attempting to pnt good amongst them, your Simon can’t win and must ungodly bloom.
Emanuel bent a knee at the grave. In the air somewhere was the scent of burned humans instead of returning to the earth they were polluting it and its seas.
Others riches and their garden of wilfully-prettier leaves the miser and the hoarder wished they could have and be all treasures bundling. Take all else bright and sweetly-volute, yet giveth unto others the toiling. The crackled, bereft. Yet did so without procmation of intent to harm. Poisoned with pale arrowing…
Take wily untainted spoils carefully and leave others naught to grasp as proudly, they their riches tallied. Ruined and pilged. Leaving nothing lovely. Unless for their pleasure, had no right to be. All ground bought and wasted for lowly farthings. A shale’s broke nguish from once- whole stone. Meanwhile they were all readily farewelling life with that russeting.
The TV was on the lights flickering into the next room where Mist Gray stood wondering how anyone could truly stand the tedious little world humans had created as a substitute for the wild. It certainly wasn’t that he, Mist, wanted to live in the wild, he knew better than to romanticise it. No, it was the career aspirations human’s had and their insignificant little friendships and parties and bleak conformity coupled with only small, variable idiosyncrasies.
Their oh so trivial family life was so excruciatingly boring and detestable to him. Their so-called charms eluded Mist and all he could see was their pointlessness. He smiled as he captured sight of himself, (what an extraordinary and exquisite beauty he was!) in the long hallway mirror. He adjusted his charcoal -gray corduroy jacket and picked at his loose, dark-blue cotton top tossing his silvery blond locks imperiously.
He did not understand why more people did not immerse themselves in the true wonder of human civilisation; myths, legends, science, great music, and art. Architecture and cssic literature and stories of other world’s straight out of the imagination. It was what Aryan would have called a puzzle wrapped in an enigma that if you thought about too much would make your head explode. He decided with a sigh to go see what Shiver was doing in the hopes it might appease his boredom.
He walked into the living room making no attempts to be quiet. Petite, delicate Shiver so diminutive you could barely see her, was curled up contently and half-asleep, looking like a little bushbaby or possum or fennec fox with the sheer enormousness of her soft dark eyes, small, pointed face and slender, nguorous little frame.
Besides the rge, indigo, felt hat shading fair fire of lustrous, red-golden hair only her silhouette showed alongside delicate feet poking out. Shiver could never find shoes to fit her feet for most slender and elongated and even narrower than their small length, thus her shoes had to all be custom-made. She was wearing a pretty, indigo silk blouse over a mid-length, navy blue dress whose cotton skirt he glimpsed.
As he moved toward her, from the primrose hall, he saw her ensconced on the sofa with a few plush wine-red cushions, her feet poking out the sides and a little snowy-coloured bear and a cat toy( both electronic) in each crooked arm. The velvet rug was a simir shade to Shiver’s dress, very deeply-blue. More dark violet. With heavy, wine-shading muslin curtains, its mirrored a room in Emanuel’s mansion. Monovalent its designer had liked the colour scheme and stolen it from him. Shiver sat near the enormous virtualiser TV.
Her “cold white-gold” cat toy (a shade Shiver had coined as strands of hair or fur coloured ashen white, cream-gold and silvery-gold) was writhing about. It had bck markings and huge, round blue-gray eyes. Its bel called it Shady, a yellow fluffy-furred savannah, and it meowed and chased insects and Shiver’s electronic mice, numbats and bilbies.
The other electronic creature was an equally pale and soft-furred baby bear that growled and bit everyone and though its nips were gentle, and they didn’t hurt, it got rather trying. The two electronic animals kept emitting mewling, protesting noises and trying to escape from Shiver’s unwilling arms.
She was watching and utterly engrossed in the science channel. Shiver was the only girl Mist knew or even heard of who watched the science channel. The other things Shiver liked besides science fiction was Ghibli anime for its beautiful, soulful imagery (almost like an art form), voices and characters. She also revered Swedish, Asian German and other Nordic but especially French movies. She was indeed a pouncy little thing. She liked the women’s striking faces in foreign films.
They expressed with subtle movements and a look in the eyes love and rage, joy and despair instead of the crying, hollering, hair-pulling and soulless face-wrenching, contorting and twisting of big ugly mouths Americans used to dispy emotion.
Mist cleared his throat loudly to get Shiver’s attention. “Hey, Shiv, surely you aren’t watching studies of the brain in retion to the cerebral cortex again?
He knew it was cruel to interrupt her when she looked so jubilee. He interrupted her anyway though mainly because he was bored and since she was the only person he didn’t despise, basically he either spent time with her or with nobody. Shiver blinked up at him in surprise her face changing from mild shock to looking somewhat offended.
“This stuff is cool,” she protested. “Really Mist, it’s fascinating if you would just give it a chance.”
“It’s actually about what happens when the connection between our right and left brain is severed and how one woman who had had that happen to her was shown a picture of a naked person while covering her right eye. She blushed because one side of her brain told her she was seeing something inappropriate, but it couldn’t communicate the image to the left or nguage side, so she had no idea why she was embarrassed.”
“Plus, there’s a special on chimeras on tonight. followed by a program on ability to function with only the left or right side of your brain if one is damaged/removed, how one part of the brain can take over for another if damaged and how severed by injury or disease neuron pathways can be reformed.”
Then finally one on parthenogenesis in higher animals like sharks and snakes and the turkey, then one on alien hand syndrome where a subconscious part of your brain can’t communicate with the rest of the brain as the neuron connections are damaged or severed. That part however somehow takes control of one of your hands, so it moves seemingly of its own cord. Picking things up, even trying to strangle you in your sleep and you can’t stop it.”
“It’s frequently seen in patients with brain damage. Finally, there is a documentary on the probability of existence of intelligent life on other pnets.”
Mist smiled to himself he’d just thought of a perfect way to really rile her up.
“You know,” he said mischievously “Aryan also loves the exceedingly-boring study of science and anatomy; that’s why he has so many different books on it.”
Shiver gred at him, “well I’m not Aryan, Mist,” she said her tone peevish. Mist was completely unaffected by this and began munching nonchantly and with disaffection on a pack of toffees and glugging down an energy drink he had brought from the fridge.
‘Don’t get me wrong Shiv, I love my little geeky girl who helps me in studying the behaviour and internal ticking’s of our favourite animals the humans too Mist told her after a pause. What I don’t get is why you don’t leave all the boring physical science behind it to geeks like Aryan.”
Shiver gred at him again. “Don’t lie to yourself Mist, you don’t find the behaviour of humans fascinating; you just like making them scared. You basically just like tormenting them,” she said. Mist shook his head grinning widely: he was seriously starting to enjoy himself. Shiver was always fun she made such a great debating partner.
“Well yes and no, my dear girl,” he said.
“I’d have to say you’re half-right. I’m still studying them; I’m studying what makes them scared or angry, who cares about making them happy? Positive emotions in people are generally very boring and predictable; the many ways of inciting fear or rage are far more complex.”
Shiver’s face as Mist expined this to her appeared to be only half listening it seemed she had lost interest in the discussion. He wasn’t surprised. Shiver was usually up for any debate for a least several hours, however recently she’d had one of her episodes and her concentration was as always cking for a least a few days afterwards.
It had been a truly spectacur episode this one, involving her screaming that humans didn’t even deserve to be alive due to the fact that they were ‘a stupid, ugly, weak-bodied, repulsive species. Yet somehow, they still managed to find someone and to have more children; children who always turned out invariably to be just as stupid, hideous and repellent as they were. Whilst she and Mist were alone, possibly infertile (who knew what side effects tampering with their genes had wrought) and their wonderful "race" might even die out.
“We’ll never win!” She had sobbed “the humans will inherit the earth forever with their lousy genetics and our race of creatures that never have to experience illness or death will die!” She then shouted, “it was a crime against Mother Nature,” and ran to her bedroom crying. She locked herself in and proceeded to wallow in misery.
She pyed despairing songs whilst Aryan was disgusted and told her, that she, Mist and Monovalent were, as Emanuel wrote “Made valiantly by he and needed a more soft, apologetic nature, spying faultless tears of those gifted wonder of the living. What subsequent and unforeseeable heresy, to resist being brought into being, to remedy ailments and ills of a humanity forsaken.”
“Each dismal day one may endow themselves with a renewal of faith. Far brighter fare, co-existence and worthwhile living for all whom walk through this time, that is nd without light or right and all when the vilins tell the tale.”
“Have you ever heard the term, what a fool believes” Mist ughed. To get her out of her wallow.
“Really Mist you twat just shut-up!” Shiver called back, overhearing through the door.
“Don’t forget to hit the repy for some of her other favourite dismal songs and dye your hair completely dark and gloomy, Shiv, while you’re at it.”
“They were not some “superior race,” Aryan chastised her further, far from it. They were weapons pure and simple. She should feel honoured to be what she was... “A beacon for all humanity who alone could save people from pain, terror and death.”
“Mist and Monovalent’s arrogance know no bounds, but I’m surprised at you Shiver,” he said before leaving the devastated girl. Shiver for the first time with that dark rage of hers wilful fires of her eyes fshing looked at Aryan as though she hated him then stormed out and in that hortatory stubbornness locked herself in her room for days on end. She wouldn’t go to any of her activist groups or helped Aryan with his campaign or py any of Monovalent’s simutions for nearly a week. She just y there on her bed in a total silence, her eyes fixed to the wall, her fine body pale and still, breathing so shallow as to be almost like one of the dead.
Anne-Marie and Monovalent had both talked to her today and had clearly gotten her out of the slump, .Mist would have talked to her, but he got bored too easily and comforting her out of it wasn’t exactly his duty.
Better just to let her stew, then be coaxed out of it by Anne-Marie or reassured of her own brilliance and prowess as a higher creature by Monovalent. Monovalent, unlike Aryan, adored Mist and Shiver his precious Shiver and considered them far from just human versions of biological warfare, to be beautiful and perfect in a way regur humanity was not. He was the one who kept harping on( as Aryan put it) about how superior and truly wondrous Shiver and Mist were and how all humans born henceforth should all be genetically modified to be just like them.
Or at least an upper or ruling css should have this privilege and subsequently use the lower or sve csses as working servants. He had never discussed this st part or even mentioned it in front of Aryan of course as Aryan would have shut down his programming immediately at this heresy.
Possibly he would have had Shiver and Mist killed first also. Mist did know however that Monovalent was in contact with Mary and Lemmings the scientists who created him and Shiver and they all had a pn to use Shiver and Mist to create this ruling css of perfect, immortal virus-humans. Mist, Monovalent( and Shiver to a lesser extent)had grown tired of being Aryan’s secret servants and subservient even subordinate to him and his dubious ideals. So, in near silent whispers Monovalent told his nefarious pns to Mist and together they plotted Aryan's downfall.
“We shall attempt it once Aryan’s endeavours fail and believe me, they will falter” he told Mist. As soon as he has taken over enough industry and government, they will fail for the simple reason that we will kill or at least deal with him ourselves at that point Monovalent ughed metallically.
Monovalent was keen to obliterate Aryan’s influence because Aryan soon pnned to unveil his “new” technology whereby all children could be engineered to be healthy and immortal in the way Shiver and Mist were.
With it, he pnned to enact legistion regarding a mandated drug, consisting of computer-controlled, artificial, virus-cell hybrids that would lodge in the brain and completely block the signals from the hypothamus that controlled fertility in males and females. Men and women could only have one child each from now on to keep poputions down. Fertility could be temporarily restored as the artificial viral cells could be dissolved with another medication that organic cells were immune to.
Monovalent however loathed and derided humans’ ugly, stupid vile beings and did not think they deserved this technology. He preferred a future in which beautiful, talented, highly intelligent Shiver and he ruled as overloads over androids and humans and used them as sves till humanity could be wiped out utterly.
“Emanuel can safely reprogram me so I don’t have to obey Aryan’s wishes anymore; he is the only one who can reprogram me and then can finally hurt Aryan. I’ll put Aryan out of the way probably by rendering him dead. Once Shiver realizes Aryan doesn’t truly care for her, she'll be on board too.”
If he didn’t Mist and Shiver would die as soon as Aryan’s task was fulfilled.
