COLD ZONE DENDRAM

11354.23

from the galaxy sized sheet of tempest blue data there is a minuscule beam of bright white. it takes 4.7 nanoseconds to pierce the red gauze that covers the binary code of the creature opposite. from inside the gauze, billions of tiny black dots fall into the area of space which they call hell. a fatality count is broadcast in planet sized numbers on the side of the blue. eighteen billion dead. nine trillion injured. these figures are rounded up by a synthetic shard of consciousness known as 9 and spat from the split in the code known as the mouth. once the fatality count has been registered, several million chips of white plastic are hastily arranged by the being known as 7 and vomited across the chasm between blue and red. the red line honeycombs open, tiny holes rupture perfectly along its surface. the white plastic chips slide into the vanquished color, which then changes from red to a sickly pink. the being known as 14 measures the opacity of the pink membrane before a thin trickle of golden liquid cascades from its eyes and paints a coarse area of blue the size of a nebula. slowly the liquid forms into what are now considered words. these words tell the being 6 that it is able to begin impregnating the pink creature. the white plastic chips dissolve in the aggressively acidic mixture now being pumped via a thin, light year long glass tube into the beasts womb-like cavities. the pink fades into a sad, formless gray. being 2 reports to the blue that the density of the pink has multiplied by 0.0000003% and this means the transfer of remnants was successful. the tempest blue turns slightly, a maneuver that requires several quadrillion beings to perish. the blue spies a fresh red, several universes away, and shivers into motion.

by Stuart Buck

Stuart Buck lives in a basement in Upstate New York and enjoys Renaissance music, quantum physics and subversive literature. He is the EIC of the fictional small town newspaper the Bear Creek Gazette and can be found @stuartmbuck