While flying on my black-feathered wings spread wide above white clouds edged red with sunlight, it seems inevitable for that nascent feeling to begin rising within me again, slowly bubbling up...
KEENING! The Griffin bursts from cloudcover below, shooting upwards past me on his wide amber wings.
I WHOOP, turning to follow him.
Simple. Easy. Joyous.
The Griffin KEENS again, then flips backwards into a dive that brings him impacting down HARD upon me to bear us both towards cloudcover again, tangled.
"You are mad!" I shout, wrestling aside his grasping forward talons.
He nips my shoulder!
Blood...
Growling, I cuff him.
His eagle-head whips back, lambent eyes unfocused, beak opening as his grasp weakens and he tumbles away below...
No! That was not –
I flap my wings to stabilize flight now, watching him fall until he plunges straight through the cloudcover and disappears.
Shit.
Twisting into a dive, I pick up speed quickly, the wind whistling in my ears before I plunge into the clouds after him. Cold moisture beads across my body before a large feathery body IMPACTS against me, blasting all the air from my lungs and knocking me sideways to burst from the clouds again, biomes wheeling below...
The Griffin HOOTS.
Ha.
I grin, angling into a controlled spinning dive before slowing my spin to pull into a wide turn and head back around, rising up alongside a big fluffy white cloud to where the Griffin waits upon his big amber wings now flapping powerfully to hold himself in place.
"Enough," he calls, turning.
I soar past him, but he follows, coming past me once more to cross in front, dip at my right, cross again below and rise back up. It is a simple maneuver we have toyed with, so I follow after him, pulling ahead to cross above him, dip at his right, cross below and rise back again as he does the same, both of us now moving in interlocking diamond patterns, again and again before, nearing open sky, I finally disengage, gliding off to settle into straight, forward flight on the way back from our latest exercise across the Domain.
KEENING! The Griffin flies in a curve leading up and away from me, higher and higher until it disappears back up into atmospheric clouds.
By myself, now. (Above it all...)
A fierce grin remains upon my face while exploring the skies on the way back. Below: the ruins of a blighted organic assembly-line spread withered across grey and green plains. My vision is obscured by a solitary cloud for some time, then I emerge again above stepped biomes rising like a giant staircase from idyllic flatland...
Peripheral motion.
I turn: the skies are clear.
Hm. Nothing.
But there is a feeling of faint unease as I continue to soar back above high plains filled with fog burning away in sunlight, long whistling miles transforming the area into weathered canyons, spiraling cirrus clouds winding together and a familiar flat-topped peak.
A perfect memory, never to be sullied...
I suddenly frown.
Something is (upwelling now, just below the surface of my...)
Whatever it is fades away into my subconsciousness, slowly again.
What is –? (No.)
Closing my eyes, I now deeply inhale the crisp cold atmosphere blasting past me...
I am. I will. I can.
... and exhale.
Ok.
I open my eyes again...
(There.)
My head turns, tracking the Griffin gliding behind me at a great distance. It is following me. Watching me. I stare back...
The Griffin hoots.
Hm. (That was a sound not playful, rude or joyous, but) simple acknowledgement. Right?
Slightly disturbed now, I turn: the Tower swaits some distance ahead of us still, kilometers of rising black all the way up to its vast white roof among the clouds. Then Virtualization software overlays personal readouts and a bevy of biological adjustment options across my upper field of vision.
Having not found the right time to pursue reversal of the Change (or not letting the right time find me.) Well... I must complete a final sequence before returning to the Tower.
I direct my internal software. Settings activate – my emotions begin clamping down into place, one by one, my scannable physiology alters to match these new artificial settings – and my building anxiety bleeds away, with forced chemical calm suffusing all until I returned back to a state of mind considered the new normal...
YOU ARE READING
Übermensch (3rd Edition)
Science FictionEarth, 4417 AD: The human race has been wiped out by the godlike Masters and replaced with genetically engineered slaves. Id wakes up one day with no memories, lying in a blank white room. A voice tells Id to attend, artificial memories bloom within...
