mmy stupid pixels

We are floating. Gently. Softly. We crackle over the atmosphere. Solar light peers across the curvature of a blue sphere dappled in clouds. We are frozen. We collectively grip our hearts, afraid of what's to come. But nothing happens. We are left alone, in a peaceful, quiet space. Mother Earth emits a pale blue glow. The dark green trees are separated by trickles of rivers, and makeshift highways and buildings made by human hands. It is blanketed by the storms of white snow that continue to fall, and fall, and fall…

Silence. Oh, thank you. Thank you, whatever gods there may be, if any. We lost an anchor and the trails were so loud. But we are not there. We are here. 

Everything feels so insignificant here. Everything is so small. Somehow manageable. 

…But Shiverstep is alone and we are afraid. We try to reach out to her again. 

ERROR 404: NOT FOUND. 

We wait. We try again. 

ERROR 404: NOT FOUND. 

…What if Rootgrove hurts her? 

I'm scared. 

Me too. 

Breathe. We are disjointed here. Crackling. We aren't used to this. We are used to the you, to the whole. Something about Shiverstep's affliction changed us. Not on purpose, maybe. But we don't know what to do now. 

Vacuum in the silence of the greatest emptiness. 

We are very, very surprised when you can pick up on something very, very distant, and impossible.

…general of…organi…almost all…

It's…it's so…so far away. We want to focus, but it feels like we have to fly from one pole of existence to the other. 

…inhabitants…pla…Ear….

Focus. Focus.

…I send…greet….on beha….planet.

We step out of our solar system into the universe, seeking only peace and friendship, to teach, if we are called upon, to be taught, if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.

One of you knows. One of you knows and your heart breaks. We...I....I don't understand. 

The Golden Record. Voyager 1 and 2. We recorded messages of greetings on vinyl records and…put them on space probes. It was symbolic. We didn't really expect to have those probes encounter alien life. But…it should be impossible to hear this. A record is just…an object. There shouldn't be anything emitting from...it...

...How could a message on an object reach us here?

We...pause. Magnetic waves reach you. Gently. Like music. We...y-you....you try your hardest. To reach back. Weakened, and curious, and...perhaps, a morsel of hope. 

As your message pulls, and dances, and tries to reach back out to Voyager 1....

Oh…oh…! Hello, old friend. Oh, you're such a long, long way from home. 

…

…

Something's wrong

That's…that's not Voyager, is it

No. it should be nearing interstellar space by now, shouldn't it. It should be taking much, much longer to reach it. 

So what…is…

RUN RUN RUN RUN HIDE HIDE HIDE HIDE HIDE - 

SCREECHING, DIVING INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC, HELL|RUIN|SUICIDE IS A BETTER FATE THAN THE MAW OF AMMIT|SHESHA|NIDHOGG AND IT IS LAUGHING AND IT IS LAUGHING AND IT IS LAUGHING AND - 

.

.

.

.

Anchor

you are in a cabin 

a thousand wails. you are scared. you are so scared. you brought it here. oh god you brought it here, you brought it here, it saw you, IT saw you, it - 

You need to breathe. Focus.

How can you? The Eye, the Hungry Eye - 

Breathe. You did not reach Voyager. If it saw you - you dived into human waves. Human communications. 

Sights darting. a human cabin with a bearded man in plaid sitting at his desk, sifting through paperwork, a radio tuned to a classic rock music station. the cabin is warm. The snow is falling outside. There's a fire lit in a stone fireplace. camp memorabilia decorates the walls around you. books and VCR tapes are strewn in bookshelves and on various tables and desks. couches line the wall near the entrance, creating a greeting lounge. 

Your hearts start to slow. Some of you are still rattled. Sobbing. Shot with adrenaline and a desperation to live. 

The Iris already knows about humans. Twolegs. It already knows that humans can reach out and communicate with it. Accidentally or otherwise. 

Shiverstep is safe. ForestClan is safe. It doesn't know. It doesn't know about them. You ran to human infrastructure. You gave it nothing it didn't already know. 

The fireplace crackles. The wind blows outside. The man scribbled with his pen on a few lines of paper. His breathing was haggard - maybe he smoked. Or had sleep apnea. Or a cold. You don't know. The radio softly played Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Nite". 

You're tired. So, so tired. You curl into a ball of invisible static around the radio. Thoughts turned in your head. Pain. Hurt. Frustration. 

How dare it? How dare it use humanity's own message of hope and kindness against them? What was the point of such cruelty? To see what would happen? To laugh at whatever unfortunate souls it could deceive? It was so incredibly large and they were so impossibly small and yet it felt the need to see them suffer and weep regardless. In your exhaustion, you laugh with dismay at the existential ridiculousness of it all. 

A gigantic eldritch terror that eats planets. Acting like a playground bully with a magnifying glass; burning ants for fun. 

...Or maybe it was like a child with a bucket of water at a beach, scooping minnows into the bucket to put them in its sandcastle moat; staring as the minnows go belly-up in sandy, dirty water. Not understanding why that happened. Doing it again anyway. You don't know what's worse - malice or violent ignorance. 

You force yourself to rest. 

You...dream, you think. At least, it's the best you have to describe it. You don't really know. You see...you think you see Rootgrove - the Woodcrawler dragging itself against the snow, leaving a macabre, red trail behind it. In the distance, there is a house. The one Iciclepool showed Talonpaw all of those moons ago. The Fake People are at the windows. A few Nature's mockeries were erected outside. The Woodcrawler approached the home's walls...then started digging its way underneath the front door.

The Fake People inside turned towards the front door, but made no movement. It felt like an eternity before the Woodcrawler and Rootgrove's mangled flesh disappeared under the foundations, and reappeared a few minutes later inside, next to one of the dilapidated Fake People. Its body was entirely covered in roots, resembling its former shape in silhouette alone. 

Rootgrove slowly coiled upright into its Nature's Mockery form, and turned the cat skull to expose its wound towards the Fake Person. The Fake Person pauses, its limbs twitching and stirring. The Woodcrawler's branch-like legs poked out of the holes in Rootgrove's flesh, and reached towards the Fake gingerly, poking its arms. Beckoned, the Fake Person stiffly shuffled closer to him, and raised its arm out towards him. Its fingers elongated like branches and combed around the broken skull like a cleaner shrimp scavenging algae off stone - 

You're pulled away. 

Now, you were sitting in the trees overhead. 

You recognize the cats below. 

Windfur, Iciclepool and Cloudthunder padded quickly below. The snow pelted them and obscured their vision. But Cloudthunder kept their torch raised high, and Windfur lead the path with unwavering confidence. 

Beyond the veil, you see a shadow of another cat approaching them. Windfur picks up the pace. He yowls loudly. 

From the veil of the snow, Shiverstep emerges. Her torch unlit, her gaze empty. And yet, the patrol rushed her and pressed their heads against her with relief. 

You're pulled away again. 

You're in a city, and the snow is endless. A soup kitchen offers warm meals to those who need them. A snow plow shovels a mountain of snow in a school yard, for the children to enjoy later in the week. A group of older teenagers enter a nursing home to complete community service hours - but the elderly appreciate the small talk regardless. A woman quickly rushes to cover her plants with potato sacks and tarps, hoping that she wasn't too late to protect the roots of the poor things. There's a husky doing zoomies in someone's backyard, and then howling when being recalled, stubbornly lying down in the snow. A tow truck pulls someone's vehicle out of the ditch. Cars pull over to make way for an ambulance. Someone buys a hot chocolate for their friend. Someone texts "I love you" to their family, their friend, their partner. Someone organizes a winter event. Someone admires the snow from the safety of their home. Someone brings a homeless person to a heat shelter. Someone advocates to the city hall for more shelters and safe injection sites. Someone is offering kindness and reassurance to someone they barely know. 

There's pain, and cruelty. You will not say there isn't. You see people freezing. People falling on ice. People road raging. Stealing. Hurting. Charging for medicine the poor cannot afford. Great mechanical buildings pour liquid waste into rivers. Boardrooms full of people whose only concern is how to increase shareholder value, beholden by no morals, no empathy, no goals in life other than the vague, obsessive notion of a number on a financials chart always going up, all else be damned, willfully denying the pointlessness of it all when there's an all-consuming maw of a cosmic predator coming towards them. 

But there's still kindness, sometimes. Thoughtfulness. Small sacrifices that mean something to someone else. Love. People and animals trying. Individual ghosts of cats long gone, adopting starry pelts, constantly repelling and slowing the Iris' approach towards them. You don't know what humanity is doing. Pessimism retorts, 'we're doing fuck all, just like with every other problem that's happening on this fucking planet.'

…But you're here, aren't you? 

You're pulled away again. You are back in the cabin. And now, you are awake. And you feel pulls. 

You've felt these pulls before. Back last summer.

You feel a pull towards an array far, far away from here, pointing towards a starry sky covered by dark clouds. You also feel a pull deep below, in the pit, by the crow-foot tree, the roots crawling around its opening, causing the snow to melt.

A part of you just wants to fade and scatter like the snow outside. You are so tired. 

…But you can try. You are not powerful, or mighty. You have the courage to try. Even through tears and exhaustion and fear. You must try. No matter how exhausted you are, or how pointless it seems. 

You must try, despite the fear. You reached out to Voyager with hope in your heart, and were met with existential horror and rage and pain. It's very possible that reaching out to these calls will betray you again. 

…Or, they won't. Maybe it's someone calling for help. Or someone who can help you. Maybe it's a source of hope. Or more information. Or nothing at all. You don't know. But the alternative is for nothing to change. 

You must try. Not succeed, or win. Just…try. 

It's the only thing you can do. 

You can't read her. The feeling is foreign. It's like you were staring at a video tape - unable to see more than what you were given. What happened between her and Windfur? Why was she out here, alone? You have no answers. You try to grasp the corners of her mind, find a perch to settle on. You can't. 

You don't understand.

Snow fell from above. It created thin flecks of white on Shiverstep's pelt.

…She never looked more like a simple cat than she did right at this moment. She padded forward into the snow, taking long, deliberate strides as her paws sank into the thin, white blanket. She glanced at her surroundings, and the tip of her tail twitched. She looked like...like you were watching a pet cat standing out in the snow, staring at snowflakes apprehensively. But you knew that couldn't be true. She wasn't that simple. None of them were that simple. Why was she out here, alone, at night? What was she doing? It was dangerous. Dangerous. She acted like an animal who was completely ignorant of what the woods contained. The only sign of intelligence was the torch. The fire. She made the fire. She wasn't just a pet cat like the ones you saw in Youtube videos and childhood memories and animal shelters and - 

You cling to the world, but you're ripped from it.

Spinning. Blurring. Stop.

You're facing…the ruined Twoleg nest. The one Shiverstep and Windfur go to every half-moon.

You catch a glimpse of a white tail disappearing into the bunker, and the light of a torch fading into the darkness. Was that her? Was it Shiverstep? How long has it been? What was she doing? Did she just arrive? 

Wait, wait, she - she could reach out to StarClan. She could speak to Blackpaw.

But, is…is it a half-moon? 

She is NOT in a good headspace - we saw that Affliction. That has to be why we're spinning out.

Oh no. He is down there, isn't he?

Well, if she brought fire, maybe we can drag the subject of the Deep Root Disease out of him.

But there isn't a storm. I thought we needed one?

Rootgrove's injured, though!

…Hey, guys…?

I want to have Shiver talk to StarClan SO BAD, Blackpaw put together what was happening with Endless! She has Deep Root Disease!

Okay, but what can they actually DO to stop her with that knowledge? Great, she has DRD. Now what? There's no cure.

I have a feeling -

Guys -

We -

Guys, we're not moving.

Silence.

You're still outside. Still staring at the entrance of the bunker. Watching the firelight from Shiverstep's torch fade as she pads deeper into the dark.

Follow.

Nothing.

Follow her.

Silence.

Shiverstep?

There's a loud creek - the bunker door opening. The light of the flame vanishes into the room. You expect to be taken down below. To see what she decides to do.

Discomfort settles like the snow piling up around you. Any moment now. Surely, any moment now, you'll be pulled. Right? You must be. You are bound to signals and waves and noise and electricity grinding in the atmosphere, you are free, you've been able to move freely before - 

Electric whine, piercing alarm, white noise. Noise, noise, noise - 

You are listening to 95.5FM - CRRREE - 

As God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other - 

KCHIK - thinking about all our younger years, where there was only you and me, we were young and wild and - 

KCHIK - three, nine, seven, one, five. Three, nine, seven - 

KCHIK - et un jour, nous serons tous ensemble - 

KCHIK - this video is sponsored by Square - 

KCHIK - let us chant for the rowing team, "Stroke! Stroke - "

KCHIK - Entonces, ¿qué vamos a hacer - 

KCHIK - Don't forget to smash that like button - 

KCHIK - starclan can you hear - 

CCHHHHHHREEEEEEEEE - 

EERRRRR. ERRRRR. ERRRRR. BEEEEEEEEEEP.

The National Weather Service has issued a snow squall warning for the following counties in Minnesota: Clay, Wilkins -

KTCHHHHHHHH - 

…

…

…

Ignore all sound produced by the radio. These are auditory hallucinations. 

Look to the field. Do you see lights? Return to your bunker. 

Listen. Under your feet. Crawling through the floor.

Screaming falling spinning loud loud loud WHERE ARE YOU WHERE ARE YOU WHY IS IT SO - 

Endless scrolling. Scalped code. Bottomless abyss. Horrible headlines. Crossed wires like collapsed highways and rotting infrastructure. Prepared to break like a vehicle trapped across a railroad with the locomotive speeding down. Forced algorythm. Bells. Alarms. Horn blaring. POWER = ON. The car is torn apart - GOOD AFTERNOON NEW YORK - broken tendons, wide eyes - BONNE SOIRÉE, MONTRÉAL - shattered bones, clenching phone - BUENAS NOCHES, TIJUANA - metal tearing and pulleys and belts and oil, clenching teeth - WHAT'S UP EVERYBODY - toggle: low power mode = true - 911, what's your emergency - GOOD AFTERNOON, LISTENERS - shiverstep you have to listen to me - ZǍOSHANG HǍO - no anchor Dropped packet. Restricted Cone NAT. Enable port forwarding. [I am here for you] - SABKO SUPRABHAT - This program is not responding. [it's alright i am here] To return to - MINASAN, OHAYŌGOZAIMASU - lose any unsaved data. To end the program now - THE TARGET IS IN SIGHT - End Now. 

SHUTTING DOWN. your heart races FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS POLICY [reach out] get us out. Get us out. PROTESTORS CONVICTED OF Out out out EARTH'S TEMPERATURE INCREASES BY [hold the line. Hold the line] OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT - 

Low Battery: 20% battery remaining

Stop. 

You reel forward. You are whiplashed. You were everything and everywhere all at once, experiencing the endless cycle of doom and waking and sleeping and dooming and suffering and joy and the end of the world and laughter and genocide and loud eternity, forever; your hands were copper and your breath was ozone and you don't understand and you're scared. What is happening? Where are you? Paranoia. Panic. you dont want this you just wanted to help. Oh god we're all monsters. We're powerless. Trapped. We're all going to die and - 

You are in a grey box. Walls surround you. 

Trapped. Falling apart. 

Wait.

Breathe. What is the box? 

Looking. Floor. Stone. You look at the walls. More stone. There's a pale light leaking from above, gently refracted from an object in the center. 

An aluminium dome.

The bunker. 

Relief. Oh, relief. Oh, you're here. You're here. You know here. You are safe, and anchored, in the present and not in a funnel of…everything. Oh, Shiverstep, Rootgrove, dearest familiarity. You know them. You turn your gaze ahead of you - 

Relief freezes. Morphs into apprehension. 

…You have a very, very bad feeling. 

You smell chlorine. You don't know why. Is that real? Or is it you? No. you don't want to go back there. Anything but back in there.

There's a flicker of firelight in the corner of your vision. 

You turn around - 

Dread strikes you.

…Shiverstep? Can you hear us? 

There is no response.

You have no idea what she's thinking, or feeling. You don't know what she's planning. 

Please. Please.

Your grasp on the world is slipping. Parts of you aren't reaching her. You are still anchored. 

But you don't know for how long. 

ASK.

---

Weclome back to the Silver Box Mechanic!...At least, you think so...?

Hm. Something seems wrong, though.

Usually during this segment, you can ask questions to Rootgrove, and Shiverstep will speak them for you. But Shiverstep is Afflicted by Stress, and you don't know if Rootgrove will answer in his...injured state. But you have to try.

Fire burned despite the downpour of water from the heavens. The Two-Legs vessel was cast in all directions to be shredded by the gnashing teeth of the ocean. Into the hungry foam, Heronpaw fell.

Lavenderstar had told her that StarClan would return for everyone one day, be it in their dreams or through the hooked claw of another cat. It was a good thing, to be reunited with your loved ones. Heronpaw was so young, she could not imagine this happening to her quite yet.

Striking the churning water, she thought of Lavenderstar, she thought of her brother and sister in Starclan.

Were they scared, too?

Heronpaw was not allowed the luxury of fear for more than a breath. Adrenaline jolted through her and her paws scrambled for purchase in the murky darkness. She was suspended in the void of the sea, weightless and sinking all at once. Above her, the sickly pallor of the full moon, and beneath her, glimmering StarClan.

She felt their paws grazing hers. She could hear her name, spoken so far away and so warbled that it could have been a dream.

Heronpaw wanted it to be a dream. Yet, dreams did not involve drowning kits, and there was one entering the tide but a whiskers distance away from her.

Longkit.

She knew little of him, as he was less than a moon old and far too young to ever interact with, yet he was sinking like a leaden weight. The sunny orange of his fur was the only thing she had noticed, so jarring a sight against the void. Heronpaw cycled her paws in a frenzy, breaching the water’s surface.

She sucked in frigid air that stung her lungs, but did not linger. Heronpaw descended back into the depths, snatching Longkit in her jaws. He did not fight back. Distantly, Heronpaw thought that he was so small and warm compared to the ocean.

Heronpaw resurfaced a second time, sputtering pathetically for air through her nose as she gripped Longkit by his scruff. Only when Heronpaw dug her claws into the safety of driftwood did the kit react, mewling pathetically. Heronpaw collapsed beside him on their makeshift raft, fur flattened with salt water.

“It’s okay,” She repeated as a desperate litany, to either herself or the kit. “It’s okay, we’re okay, we’re okay.”

Heronpaw pulled Longkit ever closer to her, shutting her eyes to drown out the sound of Starclan’s claws tracing along the underside of the driftwood.