The Ascension

Everyone remembered their first storm. For Gale, it had been a storm of blinding light. There was always light, but this was not the soft light that illuminated the world between the Calamities. This light had arrived all at once as a beaming white sun so brilliant that it erased the world and replaced it completely. Light so bright that it pressurized and gave Gale the sense that it was opening him up and spreading into his body to replace him too. The pain was like nothing imaginable.

The older ones told him that he had been touched by the Giants. The older ones liked to say that surviving a Calamity meant you had been chosen. The older ones said many things and most of them were gone now. Before they passed on, they taught Gale and the other younger ones how to communicate with each other. The older ones also taught the younger ones how to choose their names.

Gale floated beside Ella as they both bobbed with the gentle current.

“What are you thinking about?” She asked.

“The List.” Gale sounded distant.

“You always think about the List.” Ella feigned annoyance to try to spark a reaction.

“Someon has to think about it.”

Ella smiled and the current seemed to shift slightly. He never understood why, but anytime she looked happy, a subtle tiny shift resonated in the world like some adjustment in the rhythm of all things had taken place. Gale cherished every moment he had with her.

He kept a List of every one he had ever known. Not a List he had chronicled in any way because he couldn’t write or read, but he remembered all of them. The dead older ones deserved that much. Since his great storm that had awoken him, Gale had seen thousands vanish. Most disappeared after one of the great Calamities. The storms of light, the storms of heat, the earthquakes, the Giants and their huge hands pulling them to pieces. Some of the older ones simply just stopped speaking. Gale always thought that would be the best way to go. Bobbing in the tender current under the normal light of day. Every time he found an older one silent and floating, he envied how peaceful they looked. Regardless of how the end came, Gale committed their name to his memory and then the Giants took the deceased away.

“How many is it now?” Ella asked as they bumped into a silent older one floating nearby.

“Two thousand three hundred and forty two.” He answered immediately.

Ella chuckled slightly. “You know that seems impossible.”

“What does? I remember every single one.” A hint of confusion in his tone.

“Isn’t it a little sad to only remember them by name? Do you think you will remember me

differently than the others when the Giants take me?”

The question made him more sad than he could put into words. Every response he could form felt like it wasn’t capable of capturing the enormity of bleakness of a life without Ella in it. The current continued to carry them through the glow and for a while neither of them spoke. They passed distant communities and others that hadn’t yet learned to speak and didn’t know their own names. If they made it through the next Calamity, there was a good chance they would awaken. Everyone who was already awake spoke quietly amongst their groups and waited. We were all always waiting for the next great storm.

Above them, a Giant passed by behind the lights of the sky.

“Do you think they even know we are here when there isn’t some Calamity taking place?” Ella asked.

“I think they made us. I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t answer your question.” Gale wondered where she was going with this.

“I wish… sometimes I wish they would just talk to us. We see them. We hear them rumbling in the sky, in the place beyond the light. Why wouldn’t they just try?”

Gale let the words linger for a moment. These were dangerous thoughts. Most avoided speaking openly about the Giants at all. Everyone knows they create the storms, control the currents, move the earth, and, most importantly, the Giants chose who stayed and who was taken. One thing they never did was answer questions.

“Some of the older ones spoke about the Ascension. Maybe it’s real.” Gale was more wondering aloud than speaking to Ella, but the thought caused a warmness and a peace in him.

Ella smiled. “You are the only one left that still believes in that. When was the last Ascension? Before we were born, right? Before any of us had awoken?” Ella knows the story, but she wanted to hear Gale tell it again.

Some of the old ones used to speak about those who survived long enough, those who made it through the most Calamities, would be welcomed into the realm above. There, the Giants would finally reveal themselves and questions would be answered. Every disappearance of an older one would make sense. The storms and the pain would be given purpose. The existence of everything would be explained.

The current pushed Ella against Gale and they floated together for a few moments.

“Gale.” She took a moment to collect her words. “If you ascend first… wait for me there.”

Gale smiled as the current moved them both along

The next Calamity arrived two days later. A storm of light erupted overhead and the world convulsed and contracted. Thoughts were replaced by pain as screams echoed through the currents. Communities shattered as others disappeared. Even through the immense and all consuming pain, Gale searched for Ella. They were separated when the storm started. He found her as the light began to fade and the hurt began to settle. He pressed himself against her.

“We made it.” She laughed weakly.

“Barely.” Gale was all of a sudden aware of how exhausted he sounded.

“We’ve survived much worse.” She smiled.

They hadn’t. Gale knew that was the worst storm they have ever endured, but he pretended to believe her. Her unwavering positivity was a beacon of hope for him and he didn’t want to do anything to stifle it. Once they rested and regathered their strength, they both set off to add new names to Gale’s List.

Over the next several days, storms and earthquakes raged. The List grew as the world shrank. There were only a few dozen of them left. Then only ten. Then four. Then two. Ella and Gale floated together as the last survivors of their entire kind. The last two names for The List.

“I think they are coming for us.” Ella said as the shapes of several Giants formed above.

The light they have known their entire lives flicked off overhead revealing dimmer lights further away in a flat white paneled sky. They both floated in awe as the full form of the Giants were finally visible.

“The Ascension. All the stories. They were all true.” Gale was astonished at what they were seeing.

Ella floated closer and pressed herself against him. “Will it hurt?”

“I don’t know, Ella.”

“Do you think they will finally speak to us, Gale?”

They both gazed up into the realm beyond their light. Gale looked directly at them. The Giants. He looked at their creators and the reasons for all the blinding light and searing pain he and his kind had experienced. But, he was also looking at the beings responsible for the love he had for Ella. He had an urge to thank them for that before anything else. The great reveal of the meaning of everything could wait. Gale wanted them to know that even after a lifetime of suffering that he was grateful to them for Ella. His last thought before the Giant hands reached them was that maybe their love was the whole point of everything all along anyway.

#

“Alrighty, those were the last two still emitting signals.” Morgan turned and dropped the two last two lab grown human brain derived organoids into the humane disposal substrate. Thousands of others floated in there having already been slowly deactivated by the neurotoxins meant to shut down the organoids once the research had been completed.

The graduate student stood at the monitor yawned deeply. “Ok. I’ll keep an eye on them. As soon as these last two die, I desperately need to get out of here and get a pizza or something. I am starving.”

“‘Die’ is kind of a messed up choice of word. These things have taken months of work and experimenting. I feel bad that we just shut them off when we are all done with them. It’s still so strange to me that we grow and test little fake human brains to help online shopping websites save on processing power for their AI targeted ads. I mean, I know they aren’t little people or anything, but we should still be respectful, don’t you think?” Morgan watched the last two organoids in the toxic substrate inexplicably float towards each other. She couldn’t shake the thought of how deliberate their movement looked.

The grad student scoffed at Morgan. “What? Are you worried about the whole spontaneous consciousness thing? Do you think you just dropped two sentient and unique souls into that vat of poison goo?”

Morgan watched for another second as the two organoids floated away from each other. “God, I hope not.” They both laughed. “These last two are dead, right? Where are you getting that pizza from?”