Eyewreck [FICTOID]

The SMS Novara slid along the solid surface of the Lakes of Glass. 

Centuries earlier two mighty empires hurled their armies at one another across the trackless Sahara.

Human nature being what it is, things soon escalated.

What once had been sandy impassable desert now became interlinked craters filled with glass.

The ///SMS Novara/// did not look like a conventional ship.  It looked like a giant water-strider bug, only each of its legs ended in thick furry pads of satin.

The satin let the SMS Novara slide across the Lakes of Glass to sub-Sahara Africa, propelled by giant sails spread like wings out the wide.

The crew remained cooped up in the small cabin of the ship, a thick lead floor beneath them to absorb radiation still emitting from the Lakes of Glass.

It took two and twenty days to cross the Lakes of Glass, but at last they reached the fringe of vegetation that marked the beginning of Africa proper.

Once they reached the southernmost portion of the Lakes of Glass, the captain and crew furled their sails then started the mechanism that let the SMS Novara walk further inland.

They came looking for any signs of human life.

Instead, all they found were twisted, burned out cities; skeletal fingers reaching for the sky, unable to escape the grave.

They looked so terrible and tormented and ugly that the crew dubbed them “eyewrecks” and made mystical gestures to ward off any bad luck associated with them.

“Should we turn back?” the crew asked.

“No,” said the captain.  “South.  We must go south.”

Five more days they traveled south.  They came to a point where they knew they could travel no further, that they most conserve what little fuel remained so they could go north, back to the lakes of Glass, and use their sails to take them to the now dead and putrid Mediterranean Sea.

They parked the SMS Novara near one wrecked city. 

“We have two months of food left,” said the captain.  “We’ll wait here a month to see if anyone comes to greet us, then we’ll go back.”

At the next full moon, a guard on deck saw something moving among the nearby trees.

A pride of lions emerged, but not like any specimens the crew of the ///SMS Novara/// knew from their books.  There seemed bigger, darker, more majestic. 

They approached the SMS Novara and sat in a semi-circle facing it.

“They want to speak to you,” the crew told the captain.  He felt frightened but knew he must go down to them.

“Greetings,” he said when he stood face to face with the leader, a magnificent female.

“Greetings in return,” said the leader.

“You speak our language,” said the captain.

“We do many things,” said the leader.

“We come looking for survivors.”

“We survived.”

“So did we,” said the captain.  He quickly recounted how through a fluke his native country of Austria was spared the worst ravages of the great war, how they gradually rebuilt themselves, and how they now came looking for any place on Earth where more humans might dwell.

“There are no humans here,” said the lioness.

“Forgive me, but if there are no humans, how did you learn to speak?”

“There were humans,” said the lioness.

“Once,” her mate commented ironically.

“They’re gone now.”

“Where?”

“Absorbed,” said the lioness, stretching.  “Unlike your country with its protected valleys, all of Africa became tainted by radiation.  The last humans on the continent saw to it that as many native species as they could save received genetic treatment to make them immune to radiation, then they spliced their genes into our ancestors’ to create…us.”

“That…explains the language,” said the captain.  He stood erect, remembering his mission.  “We want to establish relations with you.  Trade, diplomatic, literary.  We want to help you rebuild this world.”

“Thank you, but no,” said the lioness.  “We are content with this world the way it is.  Leave us in peace, but leave us.

“What do you expect us to do?” said the captain.  “We’ve found no intelligent life elsewhere.”

“Not our problem,” yawned the mate.

The lioness gave him a wry look then said to the captain.  “Do whatever you wish, just don’t do it here.  We come to you in peace because you came to us in peace, but now that you know our mind on this matter, you know any return visit will be viewed as aggression.

“We will not have that.”

The captain bowed his head, knowing what the lioness said to be true,

With what it took for the remnant of Austria to build the SMS Novara, he knew they would be no more ships like her.

The sentient lions of Africa would remain safe and secure.

“What did they say?” the crew asked as he reboarded the SMS Novara.

“She bid us good-bye and wished us a pleasant journey back.”

“Back where?” the crew asked.  “Home?  Or hell?”

“Makes no difference,” said the captain, “they’re one and the same.”

© Buzz Dixon