#heimlichbourg

Archdemon: Order! We shall have order in the house! Listen to me-I am your archdemon, and I demand the floor! I was here when this world ran on CDs rather than downloaded files--I saw the wheel on its side, and the name "The Sims 2" written on it! If we survived the entire substratum of our universe being transformed from physical to digital media, we can survive a mere apocalypse confined to a single hood!

We will persevere through another incarnation, and our creator will get his idea right. But we must hurry if Ctonica and Pescadora is to have any role whatsoever in the creation of this new cosmos, for it is rotting all around us as we speak. We must deploy the full weight of available souls, both living and dead. There are three possible routes to the creation of a new universe, shaped by the visions of the three mightiest demons.

Penumbra, the Ego: In the world I see, we three sisters will emerge as a natural product of the ecosystem, and step into a world already shaped, not a garden, but a forest, an external reality with which we must negotiate in order to craft its future--and one in which we will not be alone.

Salix, the Superego: In the world I see, we three sisters will arrive as alien beings, hunted and alone, on a barren rock, which we will terraform. It will be a hard start, but it will yield a world that is ours and ours alone, the very shape of the hood's land and every tree and shrub of its environment the product of our labor and our vision--even the first non-plant sims will be our creations.

Torquata, the Id: In the world I see, we sisters will not be the first arrivals--we will rescue two souls from the Noosphere and settle them there as this world's Adam and Eve, and they will create the genetic base for our hood from their own two bodies. Only when they have laid the foundations for our groves will we arrive and begin our great flowering as new arrivals.

Archdemon: There you have it. The dead will soon vote, and their voting power will be increased or decreased depending on whether the local demons sublimated or diffused them--but before they do, you will have an opportunity to persuade them, o' wise demons. Which sister's vision for our next incarnation do you favor?

Which sister shall have the support of the local demons? Your vote will have power in the noosphere, your explanation of your vote may persuade the local souls.

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

-Frank O'Hara, "Having a Coke with You"

"Hey, Matteo! Quit pruning your daddy's shrubs--we're going to college!"

"Huh?" Matteo turned around and felt the same thump in his gut he always did at the sight of Lazar. How did that boy look better in an old tracksuit than anyone else looked in anything? How did those green eyes make everything else in the world disappear like that?

"College, buddy--there's going to be a biology department." Lazar bounded over to the table like a gazelle and sat down. "Duh--you have the best grades in school and your dad's a Party man now--why wouldn't they take you? Come on, man--ready to take your nature show on the road?"

"Yeah...yeah, I sure am!"

"Good...we're going to be the only two biology students, so it'll be just the two of us, working out in the woods." Lazar reached across the table and took Matteo's hand. He resisted the impulse to pull away in fear of getting caught. Soon, he wouldn't have to hide anymore.

"I'm going to the fishery right now to talk to my dad."

Matteo swallowed hard as he approached the concrete bulk of the fishery, big and silent and stern as his father had always looked to him, even before he started wearing that new suit.

"Father, may I speak to you for a moment?"

"Certainly--Zayas, watch the register. Go ahead, Matteo."

"Well, sir-I wanted to ask you about me attending the new university. Senora Robinson gave me an A+ on my final paper--I have the grades for it. Would you agree to send me to the university to study science?"

"Why science? As a Party man's son, should you not attend the Ideology Department?" Matteo felt panic rising in his chest, and blurted out his answer.

"You have two sons--sir... What I mean to say is that Emmanuel is better suited to representing our family and our island in the party, sir. His grades are as good as mine, and he is better at dealing with people."

"True, and you are better at mathematics than your brother..."

"Exactly, father--and...and remember the Third Principle of Juan Acero thought. Scientific socialism. Agriculture is the future of this island, sir, and I can have a role in that."

"Yes, indeed...my firstborn a scientist and my second born a Party man...yes, you have my permission to study biology."

Meanwhile, the girls continued their studies of art at the school lot, and aged up happily to teens as a result of all those creativity points

Darline, the serious Janvier daughter, became a family sim and painted a dignified portrait of her father as her first big art project

The ringing phone snapped Aledjandro out of the hazy half-nap he had sunken into--for some reason, he hadn't slept well the night before. "Ramirez." he said flatly into the receiver.

"Papi!" squealed his daughter's delighted voice on the other end of the phone. "it worked!"

"Well, hello there, little Miss Ramirez! You sound like you're a big girl now!"

"I am, Papi! Mama bought me a radio for my birthday, and now I can jump higher than the table when I dance! Mama says I can show you next time you come. I want to be a dancer! "

"Dance all you want, but you're going to be an officer like your mother, Miss Ramirez. Our family needs to be running both those gulags--the profit needs to all--" he stopped suddenly as the front door opened and the Spook stepped in, glasses flashing in the summer sun. "Gotta go."

"Okay...bye, Papi..." her voice was suddenly choked with tears.

He hung up and went straight to the office, and Pizaro, unprompted, followed him.

"Talk to me, Comrade Spook. What's happening in Havana? The radio is going crazy-first they say Leyva is the new boss, then the signal gets jammed."

"Before I tell you what is happening, I should ask which side you are on, Comrade Acting General Secretary." The word 'acting' was not emphasized, just pronounced casually, as a fact.

"I don't know what they are yet! Which side are you on?"

"The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs will be on the winning side. That is vital for the security of the state."

"Right...any idea who that will be yet?"

"Deputy Chairman Leyva has the support of the Party and the Navy. The USSR has signaled through back channels that they support him. General Obregon has the support of the Army, and he is a popular man. The Commune of France will likely support him, enthusiasts that they are. This is not a civil war, more like two competing palace coups running in parallel."

"Communists don't have palaces..."

"But we have palace coups. Everything is old under our new sun, as the saying goes."

"Do you mean 'there's nothing new under the sun?' Why can't you talk like a normal person? Why shouldn't I just shoot you before you pull whatever trick you're going to pull? My men are outside this office."

"I will answer the third of your three questions, I think." The immense eyes regarded him placidly under the thick glasses. "No, I don't think shooting me would be your best move. Remember, the Commissariat will be on the winning side. When this chaos is over, I will be in a position to report that you were on the winning side as well--from the beginning."

Content warning for a brief and immediately negated mention of suicide

It was a gradual unfolding of horror and pity, like slowly unwrapping a bandage covering a festering wound. First, Lazar recognized the gnarled green figure crumpled at the foot of the willow tree as his father, then he recognized that the man was dying.

"Matteo--go the the General Secretariat and get Kirill--run!" He grabbed his lover by the shoulders and flung him out of the grove, then ran to Anton's side. "Papa...hey..."

"Yes, I can still talk. I have a little time," Anton said, in Russian.

"Where's Mama?" Lazar switched to Russian too, and his voice instantly sounded childish in his own ears.

"Dead. The Spook from Havana was on to us. He knew about us changing...and he was coming for us. So she went into...you and Kirill used to call her 'grandmother.'"

"Was it...was it suicide, what our mother did?" Lazar asked.

"No...she believed that she would live on, somehow. I don't know if that was true. I don't know if that's just what Grandmother told her."

"Grandmother wants us, too." It was the first thing Kirill had said since he entered the grove, and the first time Lazar had heard him speak their native language for as long as he could remember. "Doesn't she, papa?"

"She wants to...change you. That's what she wants. One of you will become something stranger even than your mother and me...a creature of the night."

"One of us?"

"Yes. Just one... you will have to choose...and I can't help you. Well...and maybe there is something I can do." Anton rose to his feet with a terrible creaking effort…and budded. What was left afterwards was a dry husk, and their father was no longer inside it.

"Grandmother!" Lazar said, in Russian, as the newborn seedling watched with his immense green eyes. For a moment, it seemed like the earth itself was answering him, a vast, terrible voice drawing breath...then something ripped upward through that earth, something that was not meat and not plant and not mushroom and not of this world.

"Miracle...A miracle. Our mother will come back to us. I always knew..." Kirill reached out and stroked one of the night-pale leaves.

"Like hell. I know what this is. I always knew. This is the explanation for the silicon crystals in the soil. It's a distributed brain. The silicon crystals are integrated into the mycelial network. This isn't a miracle. This is very real." He reached out and caressed the milk vesicles dangling beneath the mouth..

"You can't explain this away, Lazar! This isn't one of your science projects! You have to submit to the reality of this moment!"

"That's what I'm doing! You're the one hiding from Her. What's inside this is...a drug. It's the most potent drug imaginable--and it will transform me into the next step in human evolution."

"Not you--it has to be me! Grandmother chose me! I...hey...brother. You're my brother. Listen to me. Wait. We have to stop and take a breath."

"Yes...yes...okay." Lazar's eyes seemed to return from a great distance.

"Not now. We need to prepare. We need to be safe. I won't drink without you accepting that it has to be me. You won't drink without me accepting that it has to be you... and we'll lay the groundwork. We still have to carry out Raul's plan. I will become the General Secretary and nobody will be able to touch us."

"And then--you and I are going to kill that son of a bitch Spook who killed our mother."

Emily has been rolling lots of wants to read to Elizabeth, but doesn't have any children's books, so she started writing her own

She's also making good money as this hood's teacher, so Pablo hit the commissary and continued furnishing their little house

Their second daughter, Jane, was born this season

Happy little family in a happy little dirt-floored corrugated house

Raul came over to see the baby and his heart melted, but something was clearly bothering him, too

"You ever wonder if our children will live to see full communism? Emily's told me about the Soviet space program, putting men in the sky--she says, one day, under full communism, people will fly to other planets. Can you imagine that? No limits to how many people can live and how well they can live, no limits to what they can dream of... Maybe my daughter will go to space in her lifetime!"

"If you ask me, we have enough problems to deal with on this planet," Raul harumphed.

"Sure, gotta fix those first. Are you...are you doing okay, Comrade Commissar? If you don't mind me asking, of course."

"No, I don't. Thanks, Pablo--you're a good guy. It's just dealing with these prisoners I'm trying to turn into good citizens. I keep worrying that they'll bring their old habits with them and start corrupting good people..."

As he plodded back from the field, Osvaldo froze-an unfamiliar figure. He had been locked up with the same people for so long, it was like the sky suddenly being a different color. But this little man in the white coat was not a sky he wanted to live under. Maybe he hadn't been spotted?

"Inmate Espinoza! Excellent, I was hoping to run into you. An honest-to-goodness dissident. I used to work with dissidents in my old posting, and I miss it."

"...'work with,' you say?"

"Indeed-interrogating simple criminals is boring-I like someone I can talk to. Have you read Solzhenitsyn's latest? It's been translated into Spanish."

"I'm afraid I don't have access to any books here..."

"But you are a man of literary interests, judging by what books you had in your possession when you were arrested. I'll see what I can do about getting you a copy. He memorized it, you know, and only wrote it down when he left the gulag. Imagine that--building a house of cards in your heads and having to hold on to every card..."

"Alright, that's enough. Why the hell are you talking to me like I'm your friend, spook?"

"Oh, now where are my manners? Specialist Agent Pizarro, at your service. I'm more familiar with your work than you are with mine, of course. Talking to state sugar mill workers about syndicalism is...bold...honestly I'm impressed you got as far as you did."

"I'm not going to play your game. You are my enemy, you and your whole murderous secret police force and your whole Party."

"Of course--and you are my enemy, you and every other anarchist. I will make sure all of you die behind barbed wire--but, on my word as a servant of the people, it's nothing personal."

"Whatever." He brushed past the spook and headed for the tents. When he was a ways off, he heard the spook calling something after him, and turned to look--

"Words like bones--hardness. Words like pyramids--enduring," said the woman from inside the Cypress tree. He had seen her before. He had seen her before. He had to remember her this time.

The next morning, Osvaldo awoke to find a box of pens and a stack of notebooks in his tent

"A red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of." -Bram Stoker, Dracula

Content warning for a description of staging a false suicide (no actual suicide occurs)

Maria was accustomed to the way Soledad would often stare at the concrete wall of the hole as if there was something there to see--it was understandable...she had been born in solitary confinement... but now she was speaking to it.

"Yes, grandmother. I am coming." She headed out into the grove.

"Baby, be careful..." Maria followed her hastily, sudden fear rising in her chest.

"Blood unlike apple-color! Blood like apple-ripeness!" Maria could hear the voice, too.

"Marta! Front and center!" Soledad shouted, in an uncannily accurate imitation of Caridad's voice, and there was a rustling from the direction of the tents... and a rumbling from beneath the earth, as of some great creature moving in its burrow. As Marta entered the grove, something immense burst from the ground, something that was not quite plant and not quite mushroom and not quite meat and not quite alive and not quite dead that Maria did not want to look at.

"Oh...Oh God...Oh merciful God..." Marta covered her mouth as if struggling not to vomit, but this revulsion was deeper than the stomach. Maria knew, because her stomach was now inert and empty, and she felt it--the race-memory terror of something that was wrong and should not exist. It lunged for Marta.

"Baby, no! No! Don't do this! Please!"

"Grandmother Torquata says it is time for Great Grandmother White Blood to drink again, Mommy." The smell of meat being digested by plant matter filled the air, a smell as wrong as wheat turning back into sunlight.

"No-no-no-no-no."

"She deserved it. She was mean to me."

"No..."

"Now I will taste her."

Soledad performed a vile obscenity and milked the thing from under the ground, and drank, and it hid again under the earth, leaving a corpse sucked dry and white as paper.

"Okay...okay, Baby...Mommy will make it okay...you'll be okay...Nobody will find out..." Maria grabbed Marta's limp husk by the shoulders and dragged it away toward the showers. Fingers trembling, she clawed at the showed head until she had a sharp piece of metal, then slashed Marta's dead wrists. Nothing came out. She turned the water on as hot as it would go, then cried out.

"Comrade Guard! Comrade Guard, come quick! I think she's dead!"

The Spook believed her...at least it looked like he did. Marta had been locked in the cell with them, after all, and Soledad had...been bad...then he had force-fed her to check if their green blood was transmissible in food. It could have been too much to take. It made sense.

"A pity... still, you can't break eggs without making an omelet, as the saying goes," he pronounced at last, glasses flashing coldly.