Chapter Seven: The Oklahoma Wastes

The way that the landscape changes the second we are past the wall is stark to say the least. I immediately recognize this place from my lessons, though the pictures did not do the atmosphere it truly has justice.

This infamous area was once home to the Chickasaw Nation, who ran a particularly popular casino here to cater to the residents of the rather conservative states they were nestled within. It was once a place of people coming together, past traumas forgotten in favor of the throes of chaos. It was everything the people that run Texas now abhorred, a place of sin and punishment and fun and merriment for all to enjoy. A truly human place to say the least.

It now lies cold and dead, killed by our insatiable hubris and left to rot.

The grey flesh of civilization, the concrete our future was built upon, now lays cold and scarred by the war for human survival. There is nowhere you can look that is untouched, no place spared from the scorch marks of detonated munitions or the crushing weight of titanic monsters. This is no-man's land, a place nobody wants for nothing can survive here. It brings to my mind the word apocalyptic, but that thought makes me pause.

What truly entails an apocalypse?

I do a quick search and find the definition, in my opinion, wanting. The first and most commonly used definition is simply, “A great disaster.” Then, there’s the biblical definition, an “imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom.”

I find myself thinking that this particular definition is perhaps just too easy to achieve.

Sure, the weakening of the dimensional barrier that led to the collapse of human civilization due to the rising of monsters unlike anything we ever knew is um… Definitely an apocalyptic event, potentially by both definitions. But is that really an excuse for the politicians of today to claim that we are the true righteous people and that Texas is a messianic kingdom?

Frankly if that were the case, you could make the excuse for many events during history. The ice age before human history, the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the dark ages, the many many times the chinese dynasty changed. Hell, we had two such events in the first half of the twentieth century, when the world wars ravaged the planet. All of those events were turning points that people likely called the true apocalypse, at least until the next apocalypse. I don’t think the dimensional barrier weakening was any different, even if it was remarkably dramatic.

We’re just humans, doing our best to survive in a world where chaos reigns supreme. It’s why the propaganda has grated against my mental state since I was a kid. You’d just walk into a public space to find a random talking head claiming that we were the true kingdom of god. Not fun.

Fuck that. If that were true, I wouldn’t be starving when restaurants throw away good food, I wouldn’t be freezing when surrounded by shelter. In the end, I grit my teeth and just moved on. There was nothing I could do.

But I’ve never managed to drop that urge at the back of my mind to punch those old white men in the teeth.

When I look up from my somewhat spiteful search, I blink when I see something I hadn’t expected to. Sprawled across the ground, dead as a doorknob, is what I would tentatively describe as a Kaiju, humans swarming around it like ants as they rip it apart. I do my best to look a bit closer as I try to identify what it is.

Considering it doesn’t seem to defy reality and break my brain slightly when I look at it, probably not an Extradimensional. I shudder when those tissue samples we were shown in class come to mind. Eldritch is the only way to describe the pain I feel when I think about what I saw. Not looking forward to when I run into a live one in person; It’s probably inevitable in my line of work.

The second option is also out, namely a lifeform that has gone through Ignition. Engine animals can grow large, but it’s rare and to the scale that I’m seeing it’s simply unlikely that it would do something as stupid as rush towards certain death.

The final, most likely and most unfortunate option, is that this was what used to be an Engine. There’s a reason Rafflesia has been so successful in the last few decades. Nobody wants their loved ones to become the next Great Devourer.

I watch the ants at work until they vanish from view, whereupon my eyes shift to idly observing the various scattered marks of battle. Each one has a tale of its own, one of death and violence, of survival at any cost for both sides. I can’t help but wonder if that area of strangely sloped ground was where a monster lost its footing and fell, if that crater was a missed shot or a fatal blow. The possibilities are basically infinite, and soon I too will be leaving my marks on the wastes.

There’s an abrupt shift in direction as the track beneath us curves just slightly, and I somewhat playfully lean with the inertia pushing me a bit to the left. During the midst of my lean, I turn my head to look at something that I left on my workbench as it slides precariously towards an edge. In the process however, out of the corner of my eye, I barely catch a flash of green in the distance.

Wait what!?

I immediately have to do a doubletake, squinting in disbelief to get a better look. My breath catches and my jaw slowly opens when I actually see what has changed not even that far out from the wall.

Albeit sparse, plants have begun to grow up through the dark asphalt of what used to be a street, the first signs of nature reclaiming what was once its own. I mean, there isn’t anything but the tiniest splotches of green, not even any other colors, but still. I knew this was going to happen eventually as we got to areas farther away from home, but this soon?

My hands nervously fidget with the paper rose as I anxiously watch for movement, the artificial flower feeling heavier than it should be. All life forms can go through Ignition as far as we are aware, plants are no different. Unfortunately, they have a fundamental difference that makes them particularly dangerous .

Cognition, or well, the lack of it.

Humans, and to a lesser extent animals, have the ability to rationalize the concept of cause and effect, which allows for them to improvise and adapt to situations on the fly. There’s of course a natural bit of chaos created by this, but since creatures will typically act in a way that isn’t directly harmful to themselves it’s predictable enough that it’s not that much of an issue.

Plants, somewhat ironically, don’t have this chaos naturally. They are, for lack of a better term, essentially natural neural networks; they follow their programming to a t, regardless of the consequences that it brings down upon them. Knowing that, it’s easy to understand why when plants undergo Ignition and gain unique, random abilities they shouldn’t have, it causes problems for everyone .

There are two particular examples that they taught us at Trinity River to help explain this.

The first one we learned about was a simple oak tree, one that had lived for decades, if not over a century, safely nestled beside a small artificial lake near the old capital Austin. It was rather famous at the university it was beside for being a date spot, and everyone loved it. It was devastating to many when it ignited, literally. It had gained a pyrokinetic power from ignition and was unable to turn it off, so it burned to ash.

The second was a bit more complicated and a lot more terrifying. This one was also set by a lake funnily enough, Caddo Lake in particular, one of the only natural lakes in Texas. Even before the dimensional barrier was weakened the area had already been struggling with a particular type of invasive fern called the Kariba Weed, a plant that was nearly impossible as it had the ability to double in dry weight every two days. You can imagine what happened when a small growth of it gained the ability to subsume any nearby form of life and their traits into itself.

The Gulf Exclusion Zone is still at war with us to this day. What was once civilization's greatest ally has become its greatest enemy, and fear of the plant is something they drilled hard into us at Trinity River as a result. Realistically, it’s probably easier to expect the former event where the plant destroys itself than the nightmare that is the latter, but that small possibility is still enough to set me on edge.

I pause, realizing that going over everything I know about plants just because I see a tiny sprout is probably completely overkill. With a sigh I slip the paper rose into the hair above my ear, then move my attention to my monitor as I pull up the train’s chat. I scroll up a bit to catch up on stuff, though some of it makes me wonder if these people are okay.

[Absinthe: goddamn Texas is boring]

[Cicada: right?! there’s nothing but concrete!]

[Sigerson: it’s nice not having to be on guard, but honestly it’s just making me antsy for when we get to the action.]

[The Conductor: I’ll always take a quiet day over a loud one.]

[Sigerson: thats so boring. you’re boring eli.]

[The Conductor: I am fine with that.]

[davi: bro… we should go find you some fun when we get to chicago]

[The Conductor: David, we’ve tried this multiple times before.]

[Cicada: no wait, let him cook]

[davi: yeah bro, maybe it’s just been bad luck]

[davi: last time we were in the city we went to this sick club called the Hitobosu, ill take you there this time!]

[Cicada: im genuinely surprised you remember the name of that place after the matron got you so drunk you passed out]

[davi: shut, that was your fault]

[Cicada: in my defence she was hot]

[davi: she had a ring on her finger that she flashed to us as soon as we started talking?]

[Cicada: just cause there’s a goalie doesn’t mean i can’t score]

[davi: ugh.]

[Sigerson: yeah I’m with david on this one jun. adultery is fun until it very isn’t]

[Cicada: she could be poly, you don’t know!]

[The Conductor: Statistically speaking, it is unlikely.]

[Cicada: thats so boring. you’re boring eli.]

[Sigerson: wait didn’t i just say that]

[Cicada: i think we say that a lot]

[Sigerson: fair]

[Absinthe: changing the topic, aren’t we close to the wall?]

[davi: yeah, I can see it up ahead actually.]

[Absinthe: fuck, I wish we could have scattered Julius’ ashes here]

[The Conductor: It is unfortunate, but we do not have the time. Maybe on our eventual return to DFW we can take a detour to do so.]

[Absinthe: Please.]

[Sigerson: I’d like that too, Jules was something special.]

[Cicada: okay so like, sorry to interrupt when we’re remembering a friend but]

[Cicada: the locomotives just passed the wall, so]

[Sigerson: right, I’m watching, don't worry. My alarms should go off in the case of that shit happening again]

[Absinthe: it wasn’t your fault, bri]

[Sigerson: It sure fucking feels like it]

[Absinthe: there was literally no way to know that could have happened, you’re kicking yourself for something we can’t have fixed]

[Sigerson: ugggh but]

[Sigerson: geh whatever.]

[Sigerson: Oh hey, they’re still working on the corpse]

[Absinthe: It was particularly big and it's only been like a week. Can those things even rot in the first place?]

[Sigerson: Thats… a good question? I don’t know…]

[Absinthe: questions for the internet when we get back to actual civilization]

[Sigerson: yeah fair]

[dogged: they don’t]

[dogged: rot I mean]

[dogged: sorry I was a bit zoned out, um]

[dogged: do we need to worry about plants?]

[Absinthe: pardon?]

[Absinthe: the fuck do you mean?]

[Sigerson: Oh right, you’re a Texan.]

[Absinthe: Ooooh. Yeah that tracks]

[Sigerson: Basically, uh, no we don’t need to worry about it, the only time you do is if you are near the southern coast and even then it’s kind of not that big of an issue]

[dogged: wait wut]

[Sigerson: Yeah, the gulfers have a peace deal with most corps, they just really hate Texas for a couple of reasons]

[dogged: you’re fucking with me]

[Absinthe: unfortunately not]

[dogged: i]

[dogged: why the fuck did they teach us like that then??]

[Sigerson: probably racism]

[dogged: aaaaaAAAAAA]

[davi: valid crashout tbh]

[dogged: I fucking hate Texas]

[Cicada: join the club]

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