the city made of lungs
Shaped like an orb with simple divots along its hull, the ship was made with little more intention than landing. Around three-fourths down its length, there was a metal ring that supported the bundle of open-engined thrusters reaching behind its border at various angles; the vehicle’s occupants watched as each of the roaring fires cooled to a silent and careful flare. They had finally reached and were preparing to dock at the outer terminal of their final home. When asked by the proctor of any thoughts that came to mind after seeing their destination, a girl stared at the planetary mass through the ship’s thick windows and stated that "It looks as though it tried to breathe.” Rings had never suited a concaving planet well, and this one was in her opinion no exception despite its delicate and fading vibrancy. As though the perfect circlets demanded a shape it was incapable of, the planet's frail and shriveled stature was seemingly derived from its attempts at inflating to meet with conformity. With no pulm to compress, the terrene had folded in tandem; it must have taken a breath, held it for a moment, and deflated to a riddled lump from the recoil. That was at least, the girl's interpretation. Seemingly soothed by the response provided, a subtle "ah" released from the proctor's lips. "I suppose that is why we've come here," she paused and giggled, "It comes naturally to us." That was the purpose of the colonization.
The child had very blue and tired eyes. Travel of this sort was difficult for the youth, and the way she sat like a waning sculpture pushed the image of a creature vying carefully not to let those burdens surface. Her mind was contemplative and simmering compared to others of that age, but space had not birthed this complexion– it was something taken up earlier, outside of the floating metal hull she now rode in. The girl locked eyes with the fragile planet as it crept closer and filled more and more of the window she peered out of. Its terrain bled thin towers of steel that fed towards the rings like stalagmite. The whole globe held a purplish bruise-like hue while its rings were gray and still. The longer the child stared at the swelling sphere, the more detail spilled forward into the sight of the ship’s inhabitants, and she felt a certain kinship with it spark.
As the docking module lowered the ship towards land, occupants were lined up and deposed from the ribbon-engined vehicle; It would clearly never fly again, a quiet rattle leaking from its fettered limbs. The girl was labeled with a silver tag along with the other bodies supervised by her proctor. In total there were four lines, and each was placed in front of a corresponding door– every entrance carrying a word below its color. The doors were green, yellow, silver, and a color the girl did not yet know; in a bold legible text, the doors were labeled research, labor, transplant, and transfer. Peeking at the other lines through the cracks in her mask of hair, the girl pondered as to why only her row had been composed almost entirely of lone children.
A ringing resonance began from above them, and each row marched methodically down their corresponding passages. Dim violet lights lined the hallway ceilings. They now, after having walked for fifteen minutes or so, had stopped and once again stood quietly in a wide room with many halls. The child looked around but found no clear reason behind its purpose, the walls were a grayish pink, and some large steel tubing crept across the floor. A monotone voice then replaced the sound and hovered above them, speaking slowly with robotic precision, “Occupants of Silver Trackway J44.1, please stand in position until your name is called.” Though only the girl seemed to notice, not a word was said outside of the ship until this terminal had spoken; now, the row had swelled into a boil of whispers. Many different languages spilled from many different new and foreign lips; the girl could only recognize three. Some of the children in her row looked scared and fidgety, others appeared excited with a soulful vigor in their eyes. After taking a long silent breath, the girl stood still and watched them intently.
Quietly, the proctor bent her knees and positioned herself close to the child’s ear, “Okay Pleura, it should only be a little while longer.” Her skin shimmered as she spoke. Because the girl had held no name in her life before the shuttle, the proctor had thought up and given her one during their lengthy travel, she cracked an innocent grin whenever it was spoken; though Pleura did not understand what for, she was fond of the name regardless. The proctor looked up and peered at the group around them as her face mantled a pleasant visage, “There are so many others, aren’t there.” There was something strange in her eyes before she spoke again, “How precious.” The two stood there silently observing the crowd as names were called and children were sent into the winding passages, neither fully grasping the other’s mind.
Before long, the terminal spoke once more, “Occupant C34.92, please head through the left-most hall.” Looking at her tag and finding that her label code matched the one spoken, Pleura stepped forward and slid into the narrow passage. Inlaid in the ground there were branching cables that led down the corridor and underneath the towering red door at its end. Pleura looked back at the proctor before moving; still bearing that carefully gentle, incapable grin, her eyes were dilated and distant. With her feet now at its base, Pleura raised her arms, softly opened the carmine door, and walked inside.
The room had tubes and wires everywhere; hanging in knots and threaded into the walls, there was something cloudy and faintly bright flowing through them. As Pleura stepped into the room further, she saw that the web-like tubing was winding together and meeting at a large machine with many long thin arms. The mechanism was gray and still. Pleura stared into the machine's open chamber until a more organic appendage placed itself firmly on her shoulder. It was a tall thin man wearing a complicated device over his face, there were dangling wires connecting him to the machine. He spoke and the device jittered, “You are patient–” He glanced at a clipboard, “C34.92, correct?” Disjointed by the twitching mask, Pleura replied cautiously, “I am, yes.” As she finished speaking, Pleura sensed a sharp pain hit her, finding that a needle-headed cable had been plunged into her arm. “Good, we’ll begin then.” The man spoke and she felt her mind dipping below the boundaries of her skull, it felt as though her innards had been replaced with a muddled fog of sensation. That feeling then rose to the skin. Carried by narrow, reaching arms, the girl’s body was lifted and placed in the chambered machine.
The mechanism whirred and droned, the man stood by its side pressing keys. “C34.92,” He spoke and his facial device sputtered, “I’m going to ask you some priming questions, respond after I speak.” The man tapped more keys and plugged something into the machine, “How old are you?” Pleura answered inundated, “I don’t know.” The man’s device shifted, “Describe your homeworld.” The girl’s responses were late and disheveled, her eyes would no longer open, “Bright… the grass was warm.” Something rotated in the machine, and Pleura fell to a state near unconsciousness. A subtle “ah” released from the man’s lips.
Pleura was open. The machine droned and stretched as it fashioned a crater, peeling back layers and holding them within its thin lengthy appendages, placing something cold, mechanical, and whirring deep within the open flay. Hollow tubing connected the device to something distant, threading through a cavity in the girl’s chest and twisting around her remaining organs. It clicked softly and fluid began flowing through. Pleura felt only the simplest of sensations. The whirring seemed much closer now as she felt another thump alongside her heartbeat. They were not synchronized; this one ached with every beat.
The thing inside her wrapped around the lungs and tore them. Every breath was fed to it, and it fed that vitality through the cables, filtering it thin and returning the bare minimum back through the rest of the child’s body. To supplement what it had taken, something else was pumped in. Perhaps it was a byproduct of some distant machine, perhaps it was something the planet itself produced; either way, it changed her. It stretched her thin, burgeoned her lungs until they swallowed each rib and bent her into a hunch. She could no longer move. It bent and stretched her further into a spiral. Each breath now was synched with the pump’s resonant beating. Her pulm pushed through the gaps like trees, sprouting alongside the cables. She stretched and spiraled further until the seams were no longer clear. The cords grew full and vibrant. Her lungs were splayed out like wings.
A mild twitch had manifested within the city’s core and the people felt it as an itch on their necks. It had happened before when the implant drainage stuttered; but this itch had turned to something burning and sharp, as though the planet’s cohesivity itself had numbed and let it all back in. People picked at their scabs and leveraged the tubes, the off-balanced exchange peaking with mass nausea and bleeding; rashing and thinning before warping and curving. Intersociety had fueled them and been fueled by them for the past many years, a stutter translated to a hiccup, and a hiccup to a hammer. A tug towards bodily autonomy wrung from a tug on the cords hanging out of their diaphragms. Their hormone balances waved. The draining settled into a crawl. Their bodies shriveled into spirals. More so than anyone else, children went through the process quickly.
City lights had never glowed so cold; the planet they colonized was frail yet abundant. Every little bit of it held value, so they stripped away the crust and planted their machinery deep within its flesh. Its very essence was drained and the planet contracted, so alleviating rings were built to force an expansion. The planet shriveled further, and towers of steel were fed into its mantle, stabilizing it like a compound fracture. Eventually, as time went on, not even this could hold the planet open and implants were placed within the occupants, flooding their vitality into the globe– sparking a kinship between them. Contemplative and simmering, the planet was more than what they knew. Seemingly never close to emptying, it simply contorted with every precious ounce they pulled.
Pleura was a riddled lump, the cords inside her feeding towards the ceiling like stalagmite. Her skin now held a purplish bruise-like transparency. The chamber was gray and still, a ring of metal lining its border. The tubes traveled far through the quiet city like telephone wires, fueling the planet and deepening a kinship. Cold, soft, pleasant sensations abound, her mind had shifted elsewhere. She saw a shape move and it lived for her. Manifesting gracefully, it rose as a fragile elegance that flowed towards something new, blooming into an eclipse of terra and tissue. Sheets of inky film drifted from the blossom like a veil. Serpents of steel twisted tight around its stem. Pieces broke off and traveled on their own, vibrantly erupting before collapsing in a kaleidoscope of blues and pinks. Countless appendages grew, atrophied, and snapped off, growing again from the branches and breaks, landing down gently and planting like seeds. Each fracture was wizened yet bubbling with something unending; eyes peeled open from the palm of every limb.
Pleura had started flowing as well, dispersing and gathering, warm and cool; she was a human bloom with petals of sinew and wire. Her skin was transparent and thin, veins visible and opening slowly. After a time, the flesh formed segments of scales, tapering off and falling like rain towards the reaching digits. She burst and the pieces gathered together. The eyes began to weep. Gradually, the shape drifted close and touched her, and the two of them spiraled into one. Gently, quietly, they burgeoned into a softly bright and pinkish city; a planetary mass of pulmonary tissue that bubbled with grasping limbs. Passing eras with every heave they exhaled a twitching floret– each breath deep as a bottomless sea. She whirred and gasped as her fluids drained. The child had become a thing, cold, soft, and dreaming.
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