After the city had fell, Frisp found himself unable to sleep. Before, when the towers were so high they challenged the clouds for space, when the streets ran with the fluid of feet, he could even have a sweet dream in back alley. Curling strands of street food would wake him in the morning, dragging his nose from whence they grew. Drawn mechanical horse and carriage, the vendors always pulled up near main street, employing a range of megaontological devices to broadcast their delicious smells far. Eating a Gubgub, a Krizpaz-Pop, a Lemon-Lumper, they was nothing particularly tasty about them except nostalgia, the tastiest flavour of all.

From the hill, Frip stopped walking because his feet hurt. Giving his toes an itch between his tight boots was hard, and as he did it he couldn’t help spare a glance behind him. Higher still, the mushroom cloud grew, from its black basin where it had been planted. In that cloud, Frip saw the texture of a cloud unwell – no cumulus here – some folding, cooked, form, like plastic wrap had been melted by a blowtorch onto a rotten cauliflower.

Jarring his head away from the view, Frip looked up, where not a second ago something fell and struck him on the shoulder. Keeping himself completely still, he watched the small Gibbet, balanced expertly on the outermost branch of a dead tree. Little claws on its front paws it used to pick away the skin of the tree, the black bark falling down in chunks around Frip. Mounted on its head was a set of two ears and a growth almost the size of its head again. Near Frisp lay a few large stones, and he considered them for a moment. Ornamented on the branch, the Gibbet suddenly seized up, struck by invisible lightning, its paws squeezed so tight that blood ran from the claws.

Purple skies had started to appear in the distance as Frip continued on, down the hill, past the body of the Gibbet cold on the ground. Quimoxa was still forty-miles out, but he should be able to see the first spires of the city from here – were it still standing. Riding on the thought of food and sleep alone, Frisp walked on.

Shallow water unsettled him, and Frisp now found himself ankle-deep in a creek. Ten-miles were left until Quimoxa according to his satellite watch, but even this close he was reconsidering his choice to pass on a bit of the dead Gibbet. Under the water he felt something brush his ankle, hard and slimy, and he lifted his leg and looked down with more agility than his famished body could afford to expend. Varnished by clinging weeds, the stick floated on by; Frisp relaxed. With the echoes of agitation echoing in his veins, Frisp made it to the other side of the creek – he did not stop to dry off but moved faster now, almost at a jog.

“Cross my creek, you dare?” came a voice from no one where, but everywhere, like the voice had come from inside his head. Yielding before the purple sky, Frisp fell to his knees, overcome, accepting the fate before him. “Z-9, are you the voice of death, the harbinger of the bomb, the fabricator of this plague – “

“– that I am, that I am.”

At the end of the world,

By the clouds all curled,

Comes the steps of a machine,

Dripping oil at its seams.

Ask Z-9, “Why bring this tar?”

“Why cook the clouds, kill and scar?”

Z-9 won’t speak but hum,

Won’t shout but drum,

its fingers along the dead stone walls,

its eyes about the roofless halls.

“You crossed my creek,” you fool,

You fool.

We had a promise made,

under the shade,

of the millennia-old oak,

I said – I spoke:

“I’ll give you this stretch,

up to the forest’s edge.

But stop just before,

the black oils that pour.”

“But a child,” you demand,

“They don’t understand.”

Z-9 turns its cogs,

coldly nods.

“I make no excuses,

for innocence or useless

-ness. You’ve made an er,

And for that you will suffer.”

The bomb was small,

but it turned thick walls,

to ash. The clouds to rain,

that melted the planes.