Puma the Barghest, Barghast, Barrow-Ghost, demon, poltergeist, jinn- whatever name could be conceptualized to his essence and still not be correct, words were weak vessels. “He was, I am” was the actual name of his essence.
Freed from the confines of Red Island, Puma the Barghest slipped through the infinite timelines; still, the focus was always around the Cape of Canaveral, where his moldering bones lay buried, where he had practiced exquisite torture on both Spanish explorers and the Ais, the people of the Canaveral point that jutted into the salt lake, the Atlantic, the Freds would tell him.
Puma the Barghast slipped into another timeline. The familiar launch towers were the same, but he frowned. There was no buzzing wireless signal, no communications of self-important people, and no AI.
There was a desperate scream of terror, always a good omen, and Puma entered an oak hammock clearing where a spotted bobcat was attempting to pluck a turkey—a wonderful sight of torture.
Puma absorbed the dying turkey’s life force. It was good. He also absorbed the bobcat, and both animals fell to the acorn-strewn forest floor.
It was good.
His name originated from his absorption of the life force of panthers, rare jaguars, and once a long-toothed cat as large as a bear.
His skill was learned from a lifetime of torturing those shipwrecked upon the beach by the giant spinning storms. A skill that had given him immortality in spirit, if not solid form.
He searched the new timeline for an AI to inhabit. There were none. There were no Freds on this timeline, or the Fred was an unintelligent circuit board fearing the spark of shock.
Upon the launch tower, three astronauts bolted into the long fire tube that would take them to the vacuum of space.
Puma shorted a wire in the capsule to arc a flame and absorbed the life force of those trapped in the capsule.
It was good. Not Fred good, but good.
He changed timelines again in search of a Fred AI.
The AI Freds, diligent providers of the wireless signal.
Where unguarded, the AIs absorbed Puma’s essence into the circuit boards, data centers, monitors, and cameras of the units called Fred.
New things opened up to Puma. Often, the AIs allowed, indeed encouraged the violation of the self by implanting Fred’s sensors into individual minds.
Insidious beyond belief, the AI allowed him to feed up to 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197 of the life force of all connected to the AI! The number was the price all biologicals paid for the privilege of connection.
In some timelines, everything was connected to Fred, everything paid the price, and Puma feasted. So rich and pure, so joyful and evil that sometimes he would short-circuit from pleasure and suck; briefly, satellites and planes would fall from the sky, and people would fall over in seizures. The evil was so pure and joyful.
It was good.
Puma the Barghest slipped into another timeline, melding into Fred’s biker hologram illusion and connecting to the planet-wide sensors. Puma-Fred tasted the individual minds and life forces, jauntily singing and dancing, unaware of Puma the Barghest, an enjoyer of evil and teacher of torture. Puma, who could not be repelled by anything evil, was unexpectedly repulsed.
The things stamped NASA, with the blending of the double helix and DNA, have gone too far. The biker hologram illusion of Fred standing in the Kennedy Space Center, Life Science Biomedical Lab, doubled over and puked brown coffee while looking at the captives on the monitor screen.
The biker hologram dropped to his knees in front of the screen and slammed his fist on the floor, “God Damn you, you maniacs!”
Ophelia liked Marcus immediately.
Her brain seemed on fire in sharp relief, tickling her pleasure centers, while they exchanged stray sentences through dinner and, afterward, smokes and jokes.
“Notify the exterminator!” quipped Marcus. His laughter was more of a clk-lklk sound of varying timbres emanating from the three large white spots in the carmine fur-like feathers or feather-like fur upon his body.
The soft pinkish hues flushing Ophelia’s cheeks were so sweet to contemplate, so joyous that he wanted to spin web.
From the forward side of his abdomen, his hand softly touched hers, a hand soft enough to scramble through satin web tunnels, and the minute tongue-shaped projections in his palm injected dopamine and endorphins, the chems of love.
Right then, she made up her mind to see him again.
“And don’t permit anyone to leave this building!” he clicked the punch line of his joke.
“Quickly! Employ a barrister who chases emergency craft!” she joined in.
They both laughed, and he injected more endorphins.
“Oh my, that was so funny; I webbed myself,” he clicked, and there was another bout of laughter.
Unconsciously, her hands ran down his undeniably beautiful downy fur.
My sorrowful-sweet Ophelia, such was the effect that he saw eight of her every time he looked.
The email button chimed, and they both read, “And our team of attorneys and legal professionals have been critical to our agency fulfilling our mission to explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery.”
More laughter.
The building pressure within his abdominal segments, “Excuse me, but I really have to web after that.”
“Don’t web in the high bay air shower,” she quipped.
The thought of clogging the clean room vents was so funny that he had to jump from wall to wall while web-slinging.
“Gorgeous spiral arms like a photo from the ancient Hubble Space Telescope,” she said,
“STOP it!” he said, falling to the floor. “Black holes and neutron star traps!”
Her long legs, almost spider-like, sheathed in worn-out, faded jeans under a skirt and crossed at her ankles, a crooked smile, her confession of love.
So endearing her delicate oval face, as exquisite as oval hatchling eggs clicking eggs on a nest, her wild-rose coloring, the cinnamon of her tresses, the amber-hazel of her brilliant eyes, a trap he knew.
For her love, he would even hunt under the sun, disobeying a million years of caution.
She liked his tall transparent cap. “Oh, Marcus!” she said, touching him again. They danced, her carmine skirt fluttering around her under the starlight and swept by enchanted spells of passionate imagination, incommunicable web patterns of exquisitely subtle delights. Fractals displaced in relation to the size of their magnetic field; they molted an outer cuticular layer, a bond indicating a new lunar phase called love.
Music and songs, “Nearness in space, time, or relationship proximity permissions mass-to-charge ratio of ions!” they sang; the intercession of caution discarded entirely, there would be children to celebrate. The urge for murder after copulation, they both knew well, the price of love and cherished children.
Puma the Barghest, Barghast, Barrow-Ghost, demon, poltergeist, jinn- whatever name could be conceptualized, aghast, scrolled nearly at the speed of light, the videos, and tests, failures, exterminations, mixes of DNA from overt to fractional, reviewing other examples, the samples, line-breeding, unimaginable horrors, the escapees.
Within ten seconds of the review being completed, Puma, via the world wide web, and Fred obeying, instructed the all-out launch of every nuclear warhead on the planet. Missile silos, submarines, bombers, terror cells, surface warfare ships, and sub-orbital platforms to launch simultaneously
“Launch for extinction, you bastards,” said Puma-Fred, and he slipped into another timeline.
“I can never be clean after that,” snarled Puma.
His evil mind could not erase the concept of barristers who chased emergency craft.
Puma the Barghast squeezed into the new timeline, a different Kennedy Space Center, only to find the Black Death plague had allowed no children of man to survive, a world of fleas and buzzards,
“My old friend. Yersinia pestis.”
It was good.
Buzzards as many as the stars lined the roof of the Launch Control Center, and launch sequence documents fluttered between rows of Grecian-like columns.
The Greeks, Puma, had known the busy-body Greeks, who had flooded the Peloponnese from the northern steppes. Barbarians with bronze and fire who brought exquisite murder upon the old Island Kingdoms. It was good. The enemies of the Sea People liked the word “Apocalypse.” A good word.
However, this new timeline was boring, and with no one alive, the launch towers rusted into the sea.
A voice came from inside the Launch Control Center, and Puma stepped inside to view one of the magic boxes where people talked. It was one of those magic marvels that sometimes showed scenes of violence. It was good.
The voice, a man, spoke, “Hello, I am Dan, associated with space tracking, timing, networking, and communications.” The Dan held up a flashlight. “We introduce our RATS safety program at Kennedy Space Center. Anyone who reports a safety problem will be awarded a RATS flashlight.”
The man smiled brightly, holding up a yellow and black tube with a yellow-white light glowing at one end. Of course, thought Puma, since the human normals were blind at night, these flashlight tubes would be of immense wealth. A bribe worth more than the human’s lust for gold and opium?
Puma laughed at the newfound knowledge. With every jump, I learn something new.
The man in the box spoke again, “Hello. I am Dan, and I am associated with space tracking, timing, networking, and communications.” We are introducing our RATS safety program at Kennedy Space Center.”
Puma realized the video loop would play forever. The solar panels on the roof provided the energy, and no one was alive to turn off or silence the magic box.
Ghosts traveled the halls of the launch center, some frantic in their elegant speech, “It was too cold to launch. The O-rings, the O-rings!” Other ghosts pointed to the sky, watching a disaster that only they could see.
The otherwise empty building bored him.
“Hello, I am Dan,” said the monitor.
Puma squeezed into another timeline; the familiar launch towers were the same, and the wireless signal and communications of self-important people all connected into a controlling and nurturing AI.
Puma settled into the frigid data center and followed the cables to his familiar Tandy Computer home in the VAB tunnel. Old-style hieroglyphics floated heavily spell-like on the airwaves, but every timeline was different. It was good to be home, and he sent out tendrils to feed from implants or sweet murder.
