Marin's Dale

9

At first the dryness was overwhelming and she hacked and coughed, but after a few more guttural attempts, her throat cleared, and the frail voice escaped.

"Wh... who?"

A boy was standing before her. He was a boy with a face that was pale and worn, but there was something undeniable in that face. With those strong cheek bones and penetrating eyes, there was something unique about that face. The boy was somebody she felt she could know, somebody who she could like and fear and hate and want and never truly understand.

It was then that she realized that it wasn't so much the face, fatigued and indisputably handsome, but it was the mind behind the face. The conscience behind the facade.

Behind the boy, there was a girl. She was standing in the clearing, but she wasn't real. She floated there, flickering in and out of sight, like a movie reel. She couldn't exist, because she was there and floating, and her eyes were gone. They were a hollow white. She was naked.

The boy before her was naked too. And beautiful. And Audrey remembered then the pain that she had endured. The struggle, the hopelessness—trying with every ounce of will in her body to reject the power; to keep an outsider from entering her.

Audrey screamed.

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Tyler brought her into his arms. She was crying uncontrollably now and she squirmed, and for the first time in his life he realized just how weak she really was. He pulled her into his arms and gave her everything. He rubbed her head, he kissed her head, he massaged her shoulders; he took every taut muscle and tensed thought and made it his own. He took her into his arms, and made her safe.

Kneeling on the ground, rocking on the ground, they breathed together. Their skin, hers cool, his warm, glided gently with the embrace. Her fingers moved along his chest and shoulders. Her fingers rustled his hair, his hands traced her back. He could feel her nipples turning hard against him.

Tyler slid his hands to the soft curve of her rear. He guided her up, up, to her feet, and to her senses. Wiping the tears away, she pulled away. She stared at his eyes with those wide glassy globes. Tyler could see that the color was gone from hers. Her pupils, like pinheads, were almost gone as well. And she was staring blankly.

Tyler’s heart filled with lead. Did she recognize him?.

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It's time

Tyler turned to the small girl and the humanoid. The voice that had once come from Tyler’s head was now coming from the lips of the towering being. That being was staring at Tyler, and this time it nodded.

Tyler could see that it had changed almost completely now. Its face was almost that of a man; a normal man. The skin was gaining a glow. It was a fleshy human glow, and there was hair, just a little, forming on the bony skull.

The trench coat fell away. The boots came off. The being stood, tall and naked and full of minor bodily imperfections, just like Tyler and Audrey. Just like anybody else. Tyler looked once to the silent lump of Barkly Mendbrook, tossed off in shrubbery to the side. The neck was broken, a gruesome consequence of the undefended kick to the head.

Tyler took Audrey by the hand. She accepted wordlessly, and they turned. Seconds later they were side by side with the others. Tyler took one look to the towering being, with its eyes, those eggshell eyes—the only part of it not turning human.

It was time, thought Tyler. This was it. Together, the four of them began to move, and as a blood-stopping shriek filled the air from afar, Tyler and the girl he loved followed its call. Their angel of death was bringing them home. This was it.

It was time to meet Father.

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Tyler had been young once.

In many ways, he still was. Though today, in the shadows of change, he had aged well beyond a human life. He had seen things well beyond a human scope. Tyler had been young once, and he wanted to go back. His entire life, he had struggled to go back.

Tyler realized that he had never truly enjoyed anything, because he had always striven to go back. The moment was never what he wanted; what he wanted was before that, and the moment before that one, and the one before that one. Everything was so fleeting. The blood that had flowed through his veins for 18 years would soon fail him.

That was how it was, wasn't it? One day you were well. One day you laughed and you talked about things like friends and movies. You laughed about stupid things—trivial things, because you could, because you were free and warm, because you had your whole life ahead of you.

One day you awoke, and your whole life was waiting for your next move. One day became another day, and months trespassed, and years became like a string of fogs, and you were supposed to move forward, because that's what was natural. Your feet moved forward, your goals moved forward, your loves and your passions moved forward.

And then when you reached an age, when you could finally rest, in your chair in your lawn, eyeing the conquests and surrenders of your years, you finally came to peace. And in this moment, you didn't move forward. Your grasp on the world fell away, like leaves from dying trees. You no longer moved forward; you moved backwards. Everything slipped through your fingers. Memories, once fine like grains of sand, would find the cracks and disappear.

Or so, this was how it should have been. This was how most were supposed to live. But Tyler didn't live like most, and now he was here. He too would soon move backwards, but not on his own terms. His whole life, he had wanted to go back. To regress. To capture and preserve that state of impossible wonder; the days of running about his yard, snagging fireflies from the sticky August air.

"What if I'm not ready," he said, a query more for himself than for anyone else.

It was silent.

There is nothing else

It was true what they said. Tyler knew it, deep down. What he had once feared, now glossed over him. Marin's Dale was not an anomaly; it was not some exception to the rule. Everywhere was like this. Everywhere. They had taken over the whole world.

The entire planet—7 billion some people, people of all beliefs and walks of life, with their own fears and insecurities, their own incredible strengths and despicable failings—the entire planet would soon go. No predator drone or nuclear bomb or biological weapon, no level of strategy and implementation, not a thing on the spectrum of human defense, could stop what was coming.

Assimilation had arrived.

The homo sapien was a being altogether done, but Tyler was no longer afraid. There was something strangely beautiful in their ending; something profound. They would return to their maker together, as a species. Seven billion unique organisms living together, and leaving together, from a single rock floating in space.

Tyler looked once to the sky above as his legs carried him onward. The evergreens were parting, framing the dark heavens for Tyler's eyes, for the last time.

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