Starfish

Something huge looms behind those lights, bloating gray against black. It hangs above the sea bed like a great smooth boulder, impossibly buoyant, encircled by lights at its equator. Striated filaments connect it to the bottom.

And something else, smaller but even more painfully bright, is coming down out of the sky.

"ThisisCSSForcipigeroutofAstoriaAnybodyhome?"

The reptile shoots back into the darkness, mud billowing behind it. It retreats a good twenty meters before a dim realization sinks in.

Broca's area knows those sounds. It doesn't understand them — Broca's never much good at anything but mimicry — but it's heard something like them before. The reptile feels an unaccustomed twitch. It's been a long time since curiosity was any use.

It turns and faces back from whence it fled. Distance has smeared the lights into a diffuse, dull glow. She's back there somewhere, unprotected.

It edges back towards the beacon. One light divides again into many; that dim, ominous outline still lurks behind them. And the thing from the sky is settling down on top of it, making noises at once frightening and familiar.

She floats in the light, waiting. Dedicated, afraid, the reptile comes to her.

"Heylook." The reptile flinches, but holds its ground this time. "Ididn'tmeentoostartlyou, butnobodysanseringinside. Imsupposdtopickyouguysup."

She glides up towards the thing from the sky, comes to rest in front of the shiny round part on its front. The reptile can't see what she's doing there. Hesitantly, its eyes aching with the unaccustomed brightness, it starts after her.

But she turns and meets it, coming back. She reaches out, guides it down along the bulging surface, past the lights that ring its middle (too bright, too bright), down towards —

Broca's Area is gibbering nonstop, eeeebbeeebeebebeebe beebe, and now there's something else, too, something inside the reptile, stirring. Instinct. Feeling. Not so much memory as reflex —

It pulls back, suddenly frightened.

She tugs at it. She makes strange noises: togetinsydjerrycumminsiditsallrite — The reptile resists, uncertainly at first, then vigorously. It slides along the gray wall, now a cliff, now an overhang; it scrabbles for purchase, catches hold of some protuberance, clings against this strange hard surface. Its head darts back and forth, back and forth, between light and shadow.

" — onGerryyouvgaw toocome inside — "

The reptile freezes. Inside. It knows that word. It even understands it, somehow. Broca's not alone any more, something else is reaching out from the temporal lobe and tapping in. Something up there actually knows what Broca is talking about.

What she's talking about.

"Gerry — "

It knows that sound too.

" — please — "

That sound comes from a long time ago.

" — trust me — is there any of you left in there? Anything at all?"

Back when the reptile was part of something larger, not an it at all, then, but —

— he.

Clusters of neurons, long dormant, sparkle in the darkness. Old, forgotten subsystems stutter and reboot.

I —

"Gerry?"

My name. That's my name. He can barely think over the sudden murmuring in his head. There are parts of him still asleep, parts that won't talk, still other parts completely washed away. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. The new parts — no, the old parts, the very old parts that went away and now they've come back and won't shut the fuck up — are all clamoring for attention.

Everywhere is so bright. Everywhere hurts. Everywhere…

Words scroll through his mind: The lights are on. Nobody's home.

The lights come on, flickering.

He can catch glimpses of sick, rotten things squirming in his head. Old memories grind screeching against thick layers of corrosion. Something lurches into sudden focus: a fist. The feel of bones, breaking in his face. The ocean in his mouth, warm and somehow brackish. A boy with a shockprod. A girl covered in bruises.

Other boys.

Other girls.

Other fists.

Everything hurts, everywhere.

Something's trying to pry his fingers free. Something's trying to drag him inside. Something wants to bring all this back. Something wants to take him home.

Words come to him, and he lets them out: "don't you fucking TOUCH ME!"

He pushes his tormentor away, makes a desperate grab for empty water. The darkness is too far away; he can see his shadow stretching along the bottom, black and solid and squirming against the light. He kicks as hard as he can. Nothing grabs him. After a while the light fades away.

But the voices shout as loud as ever.

Skyhop