LORDS OF THE GALAXY 2: NEW AGE CALENDAR
LORDS OF THE GALAXY, PART 2: A NEW AGE CALENDAR
(To Live and Die on Mars Vol XXXIII excerpt…)
Amara stood at the edge of his rooftop gallery, the wind tugging at his crimson cape as the twin serpent gods coiled through the air before him. Their scales shimmered with the iridescence of dying stars, their voices a harmony of hisses that resonated in his bones rather than his ears.
"You will not enter the Spire today," they commanded, their words slithering into his mind.
Amara’s jaw tightened. The Kasei Spire—his tower, his throne, the obsidian spear that split Corona’s skyline—had always been his to walk. To forbid him from it, especially on the eve of the New Calendar, was unthinkable.
"Why?" he demanded, his voice low. The city sprawled beneath him, alive with festival lights, the hum of hover-traffic, the distant pulse of music. The people were celebrating the turning of an age, unaware that their governor stood paralyzed by divine decree.
The serpents circled one another, their movements precise, hypnotic. "The Spire is not what you built. Not today. Today, it is a door."
Amara’s fingers twitched toward the Keri Alu, the crown of coiled metal fused to his skull. It hummed against his temples, a reminder of his covenant with the gods. "A door to what?"
"To what comes next."
The wind stilled. Somewhere far below, a cheer rose from the crowds. Fireworks burst in the smog-choked sky, their colors muted by the ever-present digiton haze.
"You speak in riddles," Amara growled. "The Spire is mine. If there is danger, I will face it."
The serpents hissed in unison, a sound like static, like the white noise between stars. *"You misunderstand. The danger is not in the Spire. The danger is you in the Spire."*
Amara went very still.
"Today, the tower is a threshold," they continued. "If you cross it, you will not return as you are. You will not return as ours."
A cold weight settled in Amara’s gut. The Keri Alu burned against his skin, a warning.
"Then what am I to do?" he asked, and for the first time in years, he heard the edge in his own voice—not anger, but something far more dangerous. Doubt.
The serpents coiled tighter, their bodies forming an infinite loop in the air. "Wait. Watch. The age turns without your hand. The city breathes without your command. Let it."
Amara turned his gaze toward the Spire. Even now, its obsidian surface drank in the light, its peak vanishing into the smog. He had built it to be unshakeable. A monument. A prison. A crown.
And today, it was something else.
"They will say you are afraid," the serpents whispered.
Amara’s lips curled. "Let them."
The gods hissed—approval or amusement, he couldn’t tell. Then they were gone, dissolving into the wind like smoke.
Alone, Amara exhaled. The festival roared below, oblivious. Somewhere in the city, Karla’s statue wept acid tears. Somewhere in the streets, Lumo bled. Somewhere in the sky, a black serpent blinked.
And the Spire waited.
Amara clenched his fists.
"Show me," he murmured to the empty air.
The age turned.
He did not move.
---
The first thing every off-worlder notices about Corona Hills isn’t the palm trees growing through cracked pavement, or the Grey Martian refugees floating in detention spheres above the docks. It’s the smog—thick as oil, glitching like corrupted film, tasting of burnt copper and dying stars.
Digiton pollution.
Byproduct of the Menu, the quantum-interface network every soul in the Corona Star System jacked into from birth. The smog clung to the city in swirling fractals, absorbing screams, gunfire, and the occasional temporal anomaly with equal indifference.
Lumo hated it.
He stood on a rooftop, four cobalt-blue eyes scanning the neon sprawl below. His Mech-Suit—a second skin of liquid metal and stolen Zemord tech—hummed as it filtered the smog.
"You seeing this?" Ari’s voice crackled through the telepathic link.
Lumo didn’t need to ask what. The entire lower district was a warzone.
Shark Gang entropy beams flash-froze entire blocks. Phoenix Brigade belly-jets turned alleys to molten glass. And in the center of it all, hovering above the carnage like some messed-up party favor—
The Green Martian.
Still wearing that stupid neon sombrero.
---
Karla’s hover-limo glided above Corona Boulevard, the digiton smog parting like a curtain before her. Below, millions craned their necks, their Menus broadcasting her every move to the star system.
Brianna adjusted her diamond-cut oculars. "Your dress is doing the thing again."
Karla didn’t look down. The Atkan had shifted to stormcloud grey—not from anger, but from the coincidences.
First, the sun had set directly behind the MARS sign at exactly 19:03, painting the cliffs in blood-red light. Then, as her procession passed the old Corona temple, a flock of cyber-ravens had burst from the ruins in perfect formation. Now, the floating statue of her likeness in Central Plaza had started weeping again.
Acid tears sizzled on the pavement. The crowd murmured.
Apurva checked her Menu. "No scheduled attacks today.”
Jikor’s tail twitched at the sight of the crying Karla statue. "Maybe Lumo’s hacking it?"
Karla’s fingers tightened around her glass. "He’s not."
The tears weren’t programmed.
And neither was the shadow slithering beneath the crowd.
Karla’s limo shuddered.
The statue of her likeness wasn’t just weeping now—it was singing. A low, resonant hum that vibrated through the plaza, shaking palm trees and scattering people from storefronts.
Brianna covered her ears. "What the hell?"
Karla’s Atkan dress turned black. "It’s not the statue."
It was the memories inside it.
Karla’s hover-limo shuddered as a firestorm erupted three blocks east. The Phoenix Brigade had joined the fray.
Brianna’s diamond lenses zoomed in. "Oh come on, those are illegal!"
The Phoenix fighters moved like dancers, their bare torsos tattooed with burning sigils. Their leader—a woman with molten gold for eyes—arched her back, and a plasma jet erupted from her abdomen, torching a police drone to slag.
Apurva’s Menu flashed warnings. "Combustion-based biotech. Class-12 felony."
Jikor’s tail lashed. "Since when do anarchists follow weapon codes?"
Karla’s Atkan dress darkened. The Phoenix weren’t aiming at the crowd. They were carving symbols into the streets—the same ones from the green Martian’s prophecy.
A shadow moved beneath the limo.
Karla slammed her palm against the window. "Go. Now."
---
Amara stood at the base of the Kasei tower bearing his name, his red cape billowing in the artificial wind. Five kilometers of black metal speared the smog above him, its peak lost in the digiton haze.
The Twin Serpents had been clear: Do not enter.
Mul’s hologram flickered at his side. "You’re really not going up?"
Amara’s jaw tightened. "No."
Around them, advisors exchanged glances. The Spire was Amara’s stronghold—his throne. For him to refuse entry on the eve of the new calendar…
Mul sipped his comet-wine. "They’ll think you’re scared."
Amara’s hand drifted to the Keri Alu. "Let them."
High above, something moved in the tower’s shadow.
---
It was the Summer Festival, and this one would be different. The first summer of the first year of the New Calendar.
The digiton smog over Corona Hills glitched violently, warping between neon pink and static-gray as Ari slammed his fist into Pitt's jaw. Gold fangs scattered across the pavement like broken code, embedding themselves in the flickering street.
"Still fight like a trust-fund baby," Ari spat, shaking out his hand. His gold chain—real metal in a world of digiton fakes—swung wildly, catching the unstable light.
Pitt wiped blood from his split lip, grinning with half his teeth missing. "Rich? Me?" He gestured at Ari's chain. "You're the one wearing daddy's credit score."
Around them, the street war raged in jagged frames. Shark Gang riders on glitch-bikes weaved through the chaos, their stomach-mounted freeze-cannons firing pulses of corrupted data that turned everything they hit into pixelated ice sculptures. The frozen rioters flickered between states, their terrified expressions repeating like broken GIFs. Phoenix Brigade psychos carved molten trenches with stolen plasma-jets, the digiton-fueled flames burning in impossible colors.
The green Martian floated above the carnage, his body pulsing with unstable constellations. Neon liquid dripped from his sombrero, burning holes in reality where it landed.
"Bad future," the Martian glitched, voice skipping between octaves. "Already happened."
Ari flipped him off while ducking a Shark's freeze-beam. "Not helping, glowstick."
The first shot came from the gut. Ari barely dodged, rolling behind a noodle stand that kept phasing in and out of existence. The air where he'd stood flash-froze into jagged spikes that glitched between solid and transparent.
"Since when do Sharks have belly lasers?" he yelled over the Menu comms.
Fozi crushed a Demon's skull with one massive hand, burgundy fur matted with digiton-static. "Since that bastard showed up." He pointed at the Shark King, who rode through the smoke on his bike, his stomach split open to reveal a writhing mass of serpent-scale technology inside.
"Blood makes ice!" the King roared, punching his own gut. The cannon discharged with a sound like shattering glass, freezing a fleeing rioter mid-sprint. The ice wasn't right—it showed the man's face in repeating frames, like a stuck hologram.
Ren's telepathic voice cut through the chaos: "No es láser. Es entropía pura."
Lumo's four eyes flickered as his Menu parsed data. "He's not shooting ice—he's stealing time."
Ari grinned, wiping blood from his nose. "Well that's just cheating."
The Martian wasn't just floating anymore—he was rewriting the damn street. His neon sombrero dissolved into fractals, the light burning afterimages into Ari's vision. The pavement screamed as it cracked open, geometric patterns spreading faster than the eye could follow.
"Your war's a joke," the Martian said, voice distorting. "Already lost."
Pitt's grin faded. "What's that mean?"
The Shark King fired his gut-cannon at the prophet. The blast hit—and shattered into a million pixels.
The alien didn't flinch. "Can't break what's already broken."
Ari's gold chain heated against his skin. The black serpent in the sky blinked.
And suddenly, he remembered tomorrow.
A Shark rider locked onto him, the freeze-cannon in the guy's distended stomach glowing blue. Ari barely dove aside as the beam flashed past, freezing a fleeing rioter solid mid-scream. The ice wasn't right - it flickered like bad rendering, showing the man's terrified face in repeating frames.
Fozi crushed a Demon's skull with one massive hand. "We leaving?"
Ren floated higher, his Grey Martian form distorting the air around him. “We stay, we die."
Ari grinned. "Since when do we do smart things?"
Fozi cracked another Demon’s ribs. "Ari’s been weird."
Ren pulsed agreement. “Sí. Con la mentora."
Lumo ducked a plasma knife, driving his fist into a grunt’s gut. "What mentor?"
"The woman," Fozi grunted. "The one with the—" He mimed curves.
Lumo’s four eyes narrowed. "Since when does Ari have a mentor?"
Ari chose that moment to drop from a balcony, landing on Pitt’s back with a battle cry. His gold chain swung wildly as he yanked the Demon’s head back. "SAY GOODNIGHT, GREEN!"
Pitt snarled, flipping them both into a food stall. Kimchi and holographic noodles exploded everywhere.
Fozi sighed. "He’s been meeting her at the docks. Comes back smelling like grease and regret."
Lumo’s Menu pinged—an encrypted alert from Amara. He ignored it. "You think she’s a fed?"
Ren’s black eyes gleamed. “Peor."
Ari emerged from the wreckage, Pitt in a headlock. "WHO’S YOUR DAD NOW?"
The green Martian sighed, adjusting his sombrero. The mascot wasn’t just floating now—he was glowing.
His sombrero had disintegrated, replaced by a halo of fractal light. The street gangs froze as his voice boomed:
“YOU FIGHT FOR A FUTURE THAT ALREADY DIED."
Pitt’s gold fangs chattered. "The hell is this?"
The green Martian spread his arms. The smog parted, revealing the black serpent coiled around Mars.
“THE ZEMORD’S CALENDAR IS A LIE. THE STARS YOU SEE? THEY’VE BEEN DEAD FOR MILLENNIA."
Then the Shark King’s entropy cannon fired—directly at the Martian.
The beam shattered mid-air.
The green Martian didn’t even blink, as his species had no eyelids. “YOU CANNOT FREEZE WHAT IS ALREADY ASH."
Ari bounced a Shark grunt’s head off the green Martian’s sombrero.
"Hey Glowstick! Translate this!"
The Martian sighed. His halo pulsed, projecting holographic glyphs into the smog:
"THE FALSE CALENDAR BURNS TONIGHT.
THE TRUE YEAR BEGINS IN ASH."
Pitt, currently on fire, groaned. "Can someone shoot the poet already?"
Then the Scorpion Gang arrived.
Their leader, six arms dripping neurotoxin, carved through the crowd. "The stars are poison," he hissed.
Lumo’s Menu screamed a warning—[TEMPORAL INCURSION DETECTED]—as the Spiders’ monofilament wires sliced the battlefield into grids.
"They’re not fighting us," Lumo realized.
"They’re carving a fucking time map," Ari finished.
---
Karla's hover-pod cut through the smog, the digiton frame stuttering at the edges like a corrupted video file. Below, millions of faces turned upward, their Menu feeds broadcasting her every move to twenty billion viewers across the system.
Karla’s consciousness floated in the public menu realm, a shimmering datascape where thoughts became tangible. Around her, billions of fans—human, alien, synthetic—pulsed like fireflies in a digital cosmos. Their collective awe formed a kaleidoscopic nebula around her avatar, their adoration so thick she could taste it—honey and ozone.
"KC! KC! KC!" their mental voices chanted, shaking the psychic plane.
Brianna’s avatar, a diamond-cut hologram with exaggerated eyelashes, materialized beside her. "Ugh, your engagement metrics are disgusting. We’re at, like, twelve billion concurrent viewers."
Karla smirked. Her Atkan dress—today a liquid constellation that shifted with her moods—rippled into amused violet. "Tell them to tip better."
She stretched her arms, and the Mind Realm bent. The fabric of the shared hallucination warped as she commanded the tour to begin.
"Welcome to the end of history," she purred.
The crowd roared.
---
Shark Gang riders on glitch-bikes weaved through the chaos, their stomach-mounted freeze-cannons firing pulses of corrupted data that turned everything they hit into pixelated ice sculptures. The frozen rioters flickered between states, their terrified expressions repeating like broken GIFs.
The green Martian floated above the carnage, burning holes in reality where it landed.
Ari’s fist connected with Pitt’s jaw hard enough to crack gold.
The Demon staggered back, spitting a golden fang onto the cracked pavement of Corona Hills’ lower districts. Around them, the war had turned the street into a glitching battleground—rioters frozen mid-scream by time bombs, digiton smog curling like vines between burning storefronts.
Ari grinned, shaking out his hand. "That’s for the Hite shit, you cheating fuck."
Pitt wiped his mouth, grinning back. "You still mad bout that?"
Fozi crushed a Demon grunt’s skull underfoot. "He’s been mad for three cycles."
Ren floated above the chaos, black eyes scanning. “No le hagas caso, anda en el mamey."
Ari didn’t need telepathy to know what that meant. The fight was just noise. Right now, there was a green Martian in the middle of the street, and Pitt’s boys had painted him like a damn piñata.
The Martian—a miniature, chlorophyll-skinned immigrant from God-knows-where—stood frozen, his bulbous head swiveling between the warring gangs. Someone had tagged a neon sombrero to his skull.
Ari pointed. "The hell is that?"
Pitt shrugged. "Calendar mascot."
"Since when do we have a calendar mascot?"
"Since Mars decided we need to go green." Pitt spat again. "Clown face."
As if on cue, the Demons lunged—not at Ari, but in a choreographed spiral around the green Martian, their gold chains flashing under the fractured neon. Plasma knives sliced the air in perfect rhythm, carving symbols into the smog.
Ari blinked. "The fuck?"
Fozi sniffed. "Is that… a celestial alignment?"
Ren pulsed into their minds: “Es el calendario del futuro."
Ari squinted. The knife cuts did look like star charts. And the green Martian’s sombrero had started glowing.
"Okay," Ari said. "New plan."
He grabbed the nearest Demon by the throat and threw him into Pitt.
The green Martian raised his hands.
The fighting stopped.
Even Pitt froze, Ari’s arm locked around his throat.
The digiton haze parted, revealing Corona’s swollen red eye.
And beneath it, the black serpent of static wrapping around Mars.
---
The transmission flickered to life in Lumo’s vision mid-battle, a pocket of stillness in the chaos.
"Love, KC," Karla’s voice read. Sweet, like when they had first met.
Ari was screaming something about Shark guts. Pitt was laughing through broken teeth. The green Martian’s halo pulsed like a dying star.
Lumo opened it.
Karla's face appeared - not a live feed, but a memory-wave. She sat cross-legged on the balcony of her spire, the smog below twisting into neon corals. Her Atkan dress was the color of Martian dusk, shifting at the edges like a living thing.
"Hey, Blue," she said, voice soft. "I’m supposed to be touring the city right now. Big New Calendar festival. Billions watching. You’d hate it."
A Shark grunt lunged. Lumo sidestepped, drove a data-knife into his gut, and kept watching.
Karla swirled a glass of Pluto-ice gin. "Shook hands with a Jovian ambassador today. Four arms, six eyes, smelled like ammonia and old money. He asked about you."
A pause. The Karla in the memory bit his lip—his tell, not hers.
"I lied. Said you were off saving the star system. Again."
An entropy beam shattered the street beside Lumo. Frost crawled up his boots.
"The statue’s crying again," Karla continued. "Not the pretty kind. Acid tears. Eating through the plaza. Brianna’s calling it ‘avant-garde.’" She smirked. "I think it’s pissed at you."
Lumo’s chest ached.
The memory-Karla leaned forward. "I know you’re busy. I know we’re… whatever we are now. But I wanted to send you one of your own stupid timed messages. Just in case."
Behind her, the smog pulsed. Something dark slithered beneath it.
“Stay alive, Lumo. Even if it’s just to annoy me."
A Demon’s fist connected with Lumo’s jaw.
---
Karla’s golden sandals clicked against psychic marble as she led the horde through her Memory Palace—a floating citadel built from every public moment of her life.
"This wing," she said, gesturing to a hallway where holograms of her younger self laughed and fought and kissed lovers long forgotten, "is sponsored by Synthetic Dreams™—because why remember the real thing when you can buy better memories?"
The crowd screamed with laughter. A Grey Martian child’s telepathic giggle bubbled up like champagne.
Then—
A glitch.
One memory—Lumo, age nineteen, pressing a data-knife to a thug’s throat in an alley—flickered wrong. The blade wasn’t metal. It was bone.
Karla’s Atkan dress flashed storm-gray for a nanosecond before she forced it back to gold.
"Moving on!"
---
The green Martian wasn't just floating anymore. He was rewriting the damn street. His neon sombrero dissolved into fractals, the light burning afterimages into Ari's vision. The pavement screamed as it cracked open, geometric patterns spreading faster than the eye could follow.
"Your war's a joke," the Martian said, voice distorting. "Already lost."
Pitt's grin faded. "What's that mean?"
The Shark King roared and punched his gut-cannon. The blast hit the Martian - and shattered into a million pixels.
The alien didn't flitch. "Can't break what's already broken."
---
Amara’s vision doubled.
One timeline: him ascending the tower, the black serpent swallowing Mars whole.
The other: him walking away, the stars realigning.
The Twin Serpents hissed in his ear: "The new age demands sacrifice."
Mul’s memory flickered. "Amara?"
The governor turned his back on the tower.
The black serpent in the sky blinked.
Every Menu in Corona Hills screamed:
Karla’s statue shrieked, releasing a storm of stolen memories—visions of a Mars that never was.
Amara stood at the base of his tower, the Keri Alu burning his chest. The Twin Serpents whispered:
"THE NEW AGE DEMANDS A KING."
And beneath it all, the gangs—Sharks, Demons, Phoenix, Scorpions, Spiders—stopped fighting.
The green Martian smiled.
"NOW YOU SEE."
The stars went out.
---
Ari's gold chain heated against his skin. The black serpent in the sky blinked.
And suddenly, he remembered tomorrow.
The gunfire died first. Then the shouting. Then even the ever-present hum of digiton smog seemed to quiet as the green Martian’s halo pulsed like a dying star. One by one, the warring gangs lowered their weapons, fingers slipping from triggers as their pupils dilated with visions not their own.
Pitt was the first to laugh. The Demon lord’s gold fangs caught the unstable light as his shoulders shook, his mind still half-trapped in the vision of a thousand identical Pitt clones spilling from vats beneath Corona Hills. He saw himself centuries hence, flesh rotting on a golden throne, the taste of human blood turning dull as water in his mouth. “Huh,” he grinned, running his tongue along his sharpened teeth. “Turns out we win.”
Beside him, the Shark King clutched his glitching gut-cannon, the serpent fragment inside writhing with stolen memories. His visions came in frozen fragments - his weapon birthing a new serpent that would one day devour Jupiter whole, ice oceans spreading across the corpse of Mars, his distant descendants hunting the last warm-blooded creatures through skeletal cities. The massive gang leader rubbed his corrupted belly thoughtfully. “Cold ain’t so bad,” he rumbled, exhaling vapor that hung in the air a moment too long.
Across the battlefield, a young Phoenix Brigade fire-dancer touched her stomach where the visions burned brightest. She’d seen her flames burning without fuel for a thousand years, the ashes forming new constellations between dead stars. Most haunting was the single unburnable flower growing from her own ribcage, its petals unfolding in perfect fractal patterns. “Pretty,” she whispered, unaware her cheeks were wet with tears.
The visions accelerated now, overlapping and contradicting in glorious chaos. Grey Martians floated through the hollowed-out core of Phobos, their telepathic songs vibrating through the rock. The letters of the MARS sign rearranged themselves endlessly - ARMS, SRAM, MARS - as if the universe couldn’t decide. Karla’s statue wept liquid gold that pooled and birthed mechanical infants with too many eyes. Lumo’s four pupils dilated as he saw backward through time to moments that never were. Amara’s metal skull sang the black serpent to sleep with a lullaby made of radiation and static.
Fozi scratched his furry head, sending flakes of dried blood floating to the cracked pavement. “So...we rich?” The simple question hung in the air, somehow profound.
Ren floated higher, his Grey Martian form absorbing all possible futures at once. “Sí,” his telepathic voice echoed. “But not how you think.”
Ari’s gold chain grew searing hot against his neck as his personal apocalypse unfolded - a spectral casino where ghosts gambled with unborn memories, Pitt’s skeleton dealing holographic cards across a table made of frozen time, his own hands dissolving into digiton smoke. The sheer absurdity of it all hit him like a gut punch, and suddenly he was laughing so hard his ribs ached, the sound echoing off the glitching storefronts. “Best damn future ever,” he wheezed, wiping tears from his eyes.
The green Martian’s body began dissolving into the shared visions, his neon sombrero the last to fade. “NOT PROPHECY,” his voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. “JUST WHAT’S ALREADY HAPPENING ELSEWHERE.”
As the final syllable faded, the Shark King suddenly punched his gut-cannon. The weapon convulsed and spat out a frozen chunk of time showing them all shaking hands, their future selves grinning through cracked visors. Pitt studied the image, then shrugged. “Could work.”
For three perfect heartbeats, the street remained silent. Then the Phoenix Brigade ignited their belly-jets in unison, painting the smog with fire-signs of the new age. The Demons immediately started taking bets on which vision would manifest first. The Shark Gang began constructing an elaborate ice throne right there in the middle of the battlefield, using frozen chunks of digiton smog as building blocks.
Ari clapped Fozi’s broad back, his gold chain finally cooling against his skin. “Come on, big guy,” he grinned, nodding toward the glitching cityscape. “We got a casino to rob.”
Ren’s telepathic chuckle followed them as they walked away, his form already half-absorbed into the new reality. “Siempre contigo, jefe.”
High above, unnoticed by all, the black serpent in the sky blinked once - and winked.
---
The tour phased into Corona Plaza, where Karla’s living statue stood weeping digiton tears.
"And here’s me, immortalized in quantum art," she joked, patting the statue’s cheek. "She cries when Lumo cheats at cards."
The crowd ate it up.
But then—
The statue’s head twitched. Not part of the show.
A single tear hit the ground.
The pavement dissolved.
A fractal pattern spread—the same one from the green Martian’s prophecy.
Brianna’s avatar flickered. "Uh, KC? That’s not in the script."
Karla’s smile didn’t waver. "Sponsor segue! This existential horror is brought to you by Zemord Cosmetics—because even the end times deserve a good highlight!"
The crowd screamed in delight, mistaking it for a stunt.
Karla’s living statue wept in Corona Plaza, its digiton tears eating holes through concrete.
"Fascinating," murmured Councilor Veyla, her hologram flickering beside Karla. "Your likeness has developed… autonomy."
Karla sipped Pluto-ice gin, her Atkan dress shifting to "Fuck Off Violet". "Artistic license."
The truth?
She hadn’t programmed the statue to sing.
And she definitely hadn’t made it bleed fractal patterns whenever the black sun appeared.
Brianna, ever the optimist, was live-Menuing the phenomenon to 20 billion fans. "KC’s statue isn’t crying, it’s innovating tears!"
Then the statue grabbed her wrist.
"They’re coming," it whispered in Karla’s voice.
Veyla’s hologram glitched violently.
"How… avant-garde."
The tour rocketed into the sky, hovering above Corona Hills as Karla gestured to the smog-choked horizon.
"Now, if you’ll all look east—"
The sunset froze.
Not metaphorically. The light stopped moving. The smog hung in perfect, glitching fractals.
A murmur rippled through the billion minds linked to hers.
Then—
The sun split in two.
A second sun—black, pulsing—eclipsed the first.
"What the—" Brianna began.
Karla’s Atkan dress turned blood-red.
"Oops! That’s our time limit, folks!" she lied smoothly.
Karla’s eyes snapped open in her hover-limo, her skull pounding.
Brianna was hyperventilating. "WHAT WAS THAT?!"
Apurva’s fingers flew over her Menu. "We just got 18 billion new followers."
Jikor’s tail was puffed like a frightened cat. "And one marriage proposal from a war god."
Karla stared out the window. The black sun was gone.
But the statue’s tear still burned in her mind.
"Change of plans," she said softly. "Take me to Lumo."
---
Amara stood motionless at the base of his obsidian tower, the weight of the Keri Alu crown pressing into his temples like a vise. Around him, the New Calendar festival raged—hover-limos streaked overhead, fireworks painted the smog in bursts of color, and the distant roar of the crowd vibrated through the streets. Yet here, at the foot of his own Spire, he remained frozen.
The Menu pulsed in his vision, delivering a memory-wave broadcast from *Corona Today*. The anchor’s voice dripped with barely concealed amusement:
*"Governor Amara has spent the last three hours staring at his own tower like a man who’s forgotten the access codes. Political analysts are questioning if this is hesitation—or something more concerning."*
The feed cut to Councilor Veyla, her holographic form flickering with poorly disguised glee. *"Leadership requires decisiveness. If the Governor can’t bring himself to enter his own stronghold on the eve of a new age, how can we trust him to guide us through it?"*
Amara’s jaw tightened. The broadcast switched to a street poll, where citizens shrugged and laughed. *"Maybe he’s scared of heights?"* one offered. *"Or maybe the Tower’s finally sick of his shit,"* another joked.
Then came the real blade—a clip from his rival, Senator Orun, standing atop his own campaign podium, arms spread. *"The people deserve a leader who moves forward, not one who hesitates at his own doorstep!"* The crowd behind him erupted in cheers.
The Menu commentary scrolled beneath: *[Speculation grows over Amara’s mental state. Polls show a 12% drop in confidence since this morning. Spire security confirms no threats detected inside.]*
Amara exhaled through his nose. The serpents’ warning coiled in his skull. *You will not return as ours.*
A shadow fell across him. Mul’s hologram flickered at his side, comet-wine glass in hand. *"You know, there’s an easy way to end this."* He jerked his chin toward the Spire’s entrance. *"Walk in. Prove them wrong."*
Amara didn’t move.
Mul sighed. *"Or stand here until the election’s over. That works too."*
High above, the Spire’s surface shimmered—not with reflected light, but with something beneath the obsidian. Something moving.
The Menu pinged again—a direct message from Karla, flagged urgent. He ignored it.
Let them talk. Let them doubt.
The age would turn with or without him.
But the Tower?
The Tower waited.
---
The visions lingered like the aftertaste of strong liquor, the warring gangs clustering together in the sudden hush. Weapons lay forgotten as they passed the cosmic insights between them like a shared bottle, each revelation more impossible than the last.
"Your clones looked constipated," Ari told Pitt, picking at his gold chain where the metal had seared his neck. "All that gold and you still can't buy decent posture."
Pitt flicked a broken fang at him. "Your ghost hands couldn't even hold cards right." He turned to the Shark King. "Your ice brats ate my great-great-grandkids."
The massive gang leader shrugged, his gut-cannon gurgling. "Tasted like chicken."
The Phoenix fire-dancer traced flames in the air, her fingers leaving temporary burns in the digiton smog. "I liked the flower best," she murmured. "Growing through my ribs like that." She demonstrated by poking her stomach, making the Demons groan.
One of the younger Sharks piped up. "I saw the MARS sign turn into a giant middle finger."
"Now that's prophecy," Ari declared, and even Pitt chuckled.
They traded visions like playing cards, each gangster adding details the others missed. The Grey Martians floating through Phobos had been singing telepathic mariachi music. Karla's mechanical babies had Lumo's eyes. The casino ghosts cheated at poker using memories they hadn't stolen yet.
Ren floated above them, his black eyes absorbing their chatter. "Like blind men describing an elephant," he mused. "Each truth contradicting the others."
Fozi scratched his furry chin. "So which future's real?"
All eyes turned to where the green Martian had stood. The pavement there now bore a perfect fractal burn, the pattern repeating down into microscopic infinity when Ari squinted at it.
"All of 'em," said the fire-dancer unexpectedly. She touched her belly where the unburnable flower would grow. "Just different threads."
The Shark King belched, and a tiny serpent made of ice crystals coiled in his palm before evaporating. "My gut says pick your favorite and make it happen."
Pitt examined his remaining gold teeth in a broken storefront window. "I'm voting for the one where I'm rich and everyone else is dead."
"Democracy at work," Ari deadpanned. He kicked at the fractal burn, sending up a shower of glitching sparks. "Come on. If we're gonna weave this damn tapestry, we'll need better thread."
As the gangs dispersed, still arguing good-naturedly about whose future sounded least terrible, none noticed the acid tears from Karla's statue had begun flowing uphill. Nor how the droplets formed the same fractal patterns as their shared visions when they hit the ground.
---
Amara stood at the base of the Kasei Spire, his red cape whipping in the artificial storm.
The Twin Serpents whispered through the Keri Alu:
"ASCEND AND CLAIM.
OR FALL AND BE FORGOTTEN."
Mul’s ghost sipped comet-wine nearby. "Dramatic bastards, aren’t they?"
Amara’s metal-plated skull reflected the tower’s obsidian surface. He’d built this place—not as a throne, but as a cage.
For what, even he wasn’t sure anymore.
A tremor shook Deimos. The black serpent in the sky blinked.
Mul raised his glass. "Happy fucking new calendar."
---
The visions came like pages torn from a history book yet to be written. The warring gangs clustered together in the smog-choked street, passing fragments of future lineage between them like contraband memory chips. Weapons lay forgotten as they traced the glowing threads of tomorrow's great figures with calloused fingers.
"Look at this pompous ass," Pitt sneered, flicking at a vision of a silver-skinned senator with too many arms. The politician's holographic image wavered - first giving a stirring speech about unity, then taking bribes from Demons in a back alley. "Turns out my great-grandnephew buys him like a cheap synthwhore."
Ari squinted at the shifting tapestry where a familiar face kept appearing. "Is that...Fozi's ugly mug?"
The massive ox-man leaned in as the thread revealed his own descendant - a hulking peacekeeper mediating between Mars and Jupiter. The future Fozi wore an actual suit, the sleeves straining over burgundy fur. "Do I...comb my beard in this future?"
The Phoenix fire-dancer giggled as she pulled another thread taut, revealing a parade of Grey Martian ambassadors. "Your kids marry Ren's kids," she told Fozi. The image showed a hybrid child with Ren's black eyes and Fozi's horns floating in a diplomatic chamber.
Ren's telepathic hum vibrated through the group. "Sobrinos troublesome in every timeline."
The Shark King belched, his gut-cannon spitting out an icy fragment showing his own brutal legacy - a dynasty of frost-eyed enforcers maintaining order in the icebound slums. "At least my line stays honest," he grunted. "Still breaking skulls five generations down."
Threads intertwined unexpectedly. A Demons' gambling den becoming a respected stock exchange. Phoenix fire rituals evolving into the backbone of Mars' energy grid. The shattered MARS sign reforged into a monument bearing all their faces.
"Wait, wait," Ari said, grabbing at a shimmering strand. "This can't be right." The thread showed his own weathered face decades older, standing beside an aged but still beautiful Karla at some official ceremony. "Since when do I become a..." He squinted at the floating text. "...'cultural liaison'?"
Pitt howled with laughter. "Look at your hair! You comb it like a civilized person!"
The tapestry suddenly darkened as a shadow lineage emerged - a secret line of rulers no one recognized. Figures with glitching features and too many eyes, their hands manipulating events from behind digiton veils.
"That's not us," the fire-dancer whispered.
Ren's black eyes reflected the disturbing images. "Los que vienen después." The ones who come after.
For a long moment, they all stared at the corruption spreading through the tapestry's golden threads. Then Ari snorted. "Well fuck that." He grabbed a handful of threads and yanked.
The vision tore like cheap fabric, reweaving itself into something new. Now it showed their descendants working together - Demons providing security for Phoenix energy projects, Shark enforcers protecting Grey Martian settlements, even Pitt's scheming grandkids funding Ari's rogue cultural programs.
The Shark King nodded approvingly. "Less talk, more action. I can respect that."
Pitt examined his claws. "I still prefer the version where I'm richest."
As they dispersed, the tapestry dissolved into the smog, but not before imprinting one last image - their own faces, older and wearier but smiling, standing together beneath the repaired MARS sign. The letters now read:
MARTIANS ALL
The Green Martian’s fractal light pulsed through the battlefield, and suddenly the gangs weren’t just seeing their own fates—they were drowning in the future of the entire Corona Star System. Visions of the new age flooded their minds, an unspooling reel of cataclysms, betrayals, and rebirths that would define the centuries to come.
Pitt’s gold fangs chattered as he witnessed the moon’s demise—not from war, but from the weight of its own stolen memories. The Grey Martian refugees had hollowed it out, tunneling too deep, until one day the whole satellite cracked like an egg. The debris rained down in slow motion, punching through Corona’s smog shield, igniting firestorms that burned for months.
"They’ll blame us," Pitt muttered, watching his future self flee the falling sky.
The Shark King’s gut twisted as he saw the collapse of the quantum-interface network that bound civilization together. A single corrupted signal spread like a virus, severing telepathic links, freezing digital currencies, and leaving millions stranded in their own skulls. Riots erupted in the psychic realm before spilling into the streets.
"No banks. No broadcasts. Just silence," the King growled, tasting blood in his vision.
Ari’s gold chain burned as he witnessed the great terraforming pumps fail, spewing ancient subterranean brine into the canals. The water wasn’t water—it was thick with iron and microbial life, turning entire districts into rust-colored swamps. The Phoenix Brigade tried to burn it away, but the sludge only bubbled and spread, birthing strange, gelatinous creatures that slithered through the ruins.
"Should’ve stayed in the desert," Ari laughed, even as his future self waded through the muck, hunting something with too many eyes.
Lumo’s four pupils dilated as he saw Amara’s tower crumble—not from attack, but from within. A child emerged from the rubble, clad in a cloak of static, claiming to be the true heir of the Keri Alu. The masses bowed without question. Only later would they realize: the child wasn’t human. It wasn’t even alive. It was a memetic entity, a thought that had learned to wear flesh.
"Karla’s statue wept for this," Lumo realized.
The fire-dancers recoiled as they witnessed the Jovian Ambassador’s fleet retreat from Mars’ orbit, abandoning their treaties. Not out of malice—but because something had begun singing from Jupiter’s red eye, a frequency that liquefied human minds. The Ambassador’s last transmission was a single word: "Forgive us."
The visions accelerated—wars fought over dead stars, Grey Martians ascending into light, Karla’s face on currency no one could spend. And finally, the cusp of the next age:
A black sun eating the old one.
The smog parting like a curtain.
And the Green Martian’s voice, softer now:
"YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO SEE THIS FAR."
Then—silence. The gangs stood trembling, their weapons slack in their hands. The future wasn’t a thing to fight. It was a thing that had already happened.
Pitt broke the quiet first, grinning through his missing teeth.
"Well. That fucking sucked."
And just like that, the war began again.
The second wave hit as Lumo staggered back, blood in his mouth.
"For when you wake up," the tagline read.
Karla stood in an empty room—her dressing chamber aboard the Balae Estelara. No audience. No filters. Just her, the cam, and the weight of words unsaid.
"I stole your trick," she said, holding up a data-crystal. "Pre-recorded. Timed to fire when you’re too stubborn to listen."
Her fingers trembled. The Atkan darkened.
"I met a Grey Martian child today. Orphan. Couldn’t have been older than six. She asked me why the stars were blinking." Karla’s voice cracked. "I didn’t have an answer."
Outside the Blade’s wrecked cockpit, the green Martian’s prophecy unfolded—street gangs carving star charts into flesh, the black serpent tightening around Mars.
"You taught me that, you know. To question things. To look." She laughed, sharp and sudden. "Annoying habit, by the way."
Lumo’s vision blurred.
"I don’t know where you are right now. Don’t know if we’ll ever…" She trailed off. The Atkan turned stormcloud grey. "But if this is it—if the new calendar burns tonight—I need you to know something."
Ari screamed a warning. The Shark King’s entropy cannon whined to life.
Karla leaned in, her voice a whisper.
"You were my favorite thief."
The transmission dissolved into static.
Lumo roared.
“Maybe we’ll meet up in another timeline. Love, KC.”
The smog wasn't smog anymore. It moved like liquid night, swallowing the MARS sign whole. Karla's statue was gone. Her dress: black. Her Menu flashed:
[YEAR ZERO.]
Somewhere, Ari laughed. Somewhere, Amara chose. Somewhere, Lumo breathed -
- as the first true sun in millennia rose over Mars.
ATILA>>>>>>>>
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