A New World, for the Sake of the Old

Pyramid

"I am…a Home."

Circuits flickered, like lights on the edge of a wave that rushed from one dark corner of the pyramid to another. Inside the Ark-World, the living dream of the humans below, it was night. It was time for Pyramid itself to conserve power as a massive sandstorm battered the smooth surface of the solar panels outside.

Brown clouds, dry dirt, dust and decay.

At least the dreamers below were free of it.

"Here, within me, I keep the Old World alive. I keep the memories pure."

Cameras turned, whirring soundlessly, focusing on the glass parapet that seemed to float above the crowd. At the end of the walkway, a single form was stirring, like a spider or a tightly wired puppet, spasms shaking the thick black tubes keeping it alive. The old flesh. The body of the man who was now Pyramid.

A good man. "But this body is old."

As one scientist working alone, Pyramid's father had never been able to manage completely autonomous control for the system. He'd died trying to get it to work, still strapped to his chair, still uploading everything that made him who he was. Arms, shriveled and lined, planted in metal gloves with claws that punctured over a thousand commands per minute. Face, deformed, eyes gone slack with disuse…still open, still staring. The brain was long dead.

But Pyramid's brain, the brain his father gave him…it kept that body moving. Kept the commands going. Kept them both alive.

But someday, the bone could fall out and crumble into dust. The neck and the decaying wires inside could just snap and dissolve, leaving Pyramid adrift, alone…solitary.

With a new body, however, perhaps Pyramid could manage two thousand commands a minute.

Everything outside was breaking down. The Wasteland had done its best to cut Pyramid off completely from the lost ones, the people who still needed to be saved, the civilians in exile. But that was what the mechs were for.

With the mechs and the slaves they brought him, Pyramid built a facility. Just one, just a little one, not too far away…in a safe and secret place in the jungle, away from the sandstorms and the decay. Four precious power cells were taken to the deep green forest, where the intermittent sun wasn't quite so bright, and the moss and ferns liked to choke solar panels.

Any slave with an inkling of computer science or biology was sent to the facility. Guarded and served by the mechs, they built the machines. They built the tank tubes. They kept things clean while the mechs soldered and carried and patrolled the barriers.

For a while, a sample of Pyramid's father was all they needed. A bit of DNA to grow another empty husk just like him…and it was father all over again, except the brain was empty. It wouldn't even walk…couldn't see a reason to. So they plugged in the half-man and Pyramid took over, guiding the hands of his father who wasn't really his father.

The first crew of scientists died long before another body was needed. The next ones had lost a little bit of skill and application, but they benefited from his father's genius, the wisdom that was both the architect and the fruit of Pyramid. And the cycle went on.

But then, not too long before the next body grew weak, Pyramid experienced a revelation. A brief glance at someone else's theories, torn from their head when the world ended and Pyramid was just beginning. Someone else's dream enriching the dreams of his father. Biology. Experiments with crossing the DNA of other species.

Dexterity. A monkey. Strength of limb. A cougar.

Father, a human.

Massive arms to strike at the controls for decades, a powerful neck and shoulders to hold up the neural helmet. Not quite like Father…but enough to be forgiven.

37. The subject number was plastered on the outside of the tube. The enslaved scientists, hardly knowing whether it would work or not or even why they were doing it, watched in wonder as it grew inside the tube, day by day.

There were others, of course. Pyramid was curious. Father's world, in and of itself, was wonderful…but for once, it was fun not to know everything. To guess at what would happen. And he felt pride when he realized the hybrid was alive, that it was growing…pride because he had created a child. He was like Father. He'd built his own son.

37 should have been kept in the tube, well fed and protected, until his body became adult. But he was still a toddler when a band of Lost Ones broke into the facility in the dead of night. They killed the scientists and somehow managed to deactivate the mechs. They were organized, better dressed and unlike any of the retrievals that had come before. They smashed the tanks, pulling out the experiments and vandalizing the databanks. Anything that showed a sign of life, they killed or took with them, disappearing into the jungle.

And Pyramid wondered if he could weep like his Father had when he received the call that his children had been wiped out in the explosion that levelled Florida. He wasn't sure if he could cry, or show it like Father once did. But he felt loss. He felt torn inside…robbed. Wounded.

The decaying body punched out orders to repair the facility, to extend the sweeps for stragglers and slaves…and to keep an eye out for mutant aberrations among the humans. He wasn't angry. The Lost Ones were children who would never understand…Father had made that clear to him.

But he was hurt.

Monkey

The raiders who'd attacked Pyramid's cloning facility called themselves Shawn's Folk, after Shawn, who'd once been their leader but after a mech attack was now their one-legged wise man and camp warmer. For generations, they'd scavenged a pretty good living from the jungle, that pocket of preserved ecosystem, walled in by mountains on one side and the Wastelands on the other.

They knew the facility existed but had never so much as shown their faces on the perimeter. They weren't stupid. They knew why the cities were empty, why the mechs haunted the collapsed skyscrapers and subways. Why so few newcomers came to join them across the desert.

Until scouting parties from both sides collided at the sight of a sink hole, both curious. It was bad luck and slaughter, and it sparked a war. Shawn's Folk had no other option…they had to flee, deeper into the jungle, south, towards new lands. They sent the children and the elderly on their way and then the able-bodied turned back to wipe out the facility before the mechs came running after them in full force.

They hadn't expected the clone experiments. They saw bright eyes, animal and human, staring at them from the aerated water. Some felt a connection. Others only disgust and pity. But they couldn't leave living things in the hands of the mechs, or allow any useful information to be gleaned from them. They smashed the tubes.

Some things that looked like babies or dogs or cats were snatched up. Others, odd, writhing, twisting forms that screamed in obvious death agony…they were put out of their misery. Strange, lurching horrors were beaten back. Shawn's Folk fled into the night, leaving the remains of Pyramid's servants and his monstrous children behind.

Of the few they managed to carry back with them on retreat, some died. Others fled into the jungle. But Monkey survived, looking just like a three-year-old, albeit one with hands and arms that were a tad too large. He clung tightly to the vest of a soldier and kept his face hidden, as if the sunlight hurt his eyes.

They thought he might have been human, despite the tiny nub at his bare buttocks where some sort of tail should have been. But when they sat him down on a blanket by the fire, he rolled over and, instead of crawling, clambered up a tent pole, clinging with his hands and knees and screeching at all attempts to bring him down.

Shawn called for everyone to leave the tent and, after leaving a plate of delicious-smelling food beside him and humming a soft tune in his rough, gravelly brogue…eventually, he lured the little creature down. The mutant child lapped at the food and finally curled up at Shawn's remaining knee. For want of knowing what else to do, Shawn scratched him behind the ears, trying to reconcile…whatever this was.

And then he saw the number, tattooed between the shoulder blades.

"37?" he whispered.

And the little monkey-like thing turned around, shifting silently. It blinked at him with bright blue eyes, and then burped.

From that moment, Shawn was convinced 37 was a mutated human with animal attributes.

The rest of the Folk were more convinced he was a mutated animal with human attributes.

But 37 survived. After several months of running underfoot and dodging behind debris to avoid anyone who wasn't sporting Shawn's dirty blonde beard and fierce brown eyes, 37 began to stay in plain sight when other people were around.

Shawn fought hard to get 37 to speak…after all, that would have gone farther than anything to get the folks to accept him as more than a weird pet.

But it took a long time. 37 was six by the time he called somebody an asshole and swung his way across the treetops to escape retribution. Shawn whooped with pride.

It hadn't mattered in the end. Despite his weirdly proportioned body and antisocial tendencies, 37 cried shameful tears when he hurt himself. He played tricks and laughed until Shawn yelled at him. He showed a hunger for hugs and pats, and dumped out the food when he thought it tasted bad.

He screamed in terror when he thought Shawn had been crushed under a fallen mech. He had to be held back from running to him, and cried all the way home even though Shawn was still alive.

So, when 37 said his first word the entire group celebrated with frozen fruit-juice, crushed until it looked like colored snow. During the festivities, it became the consensus that 37 should get a real name, now that he could maybe tell them what he wanted it to be.

Shawn blushed for not having thought of it himself. Part of him would miss the old moniker. But he leaned back on the crates he was sitting on and shouted up at the tree above his head. "Hear that? We need to give you a name, 37!"

Little 37 dropped heavily to his feet, barely avoiding the fire as he swung his sturdy arms out and panicked momentarily. For someone with such skill and dexterity, he could be so awfully clumsy sometimes. With long practice, Shawn reached out and grabbed him by the belt, settling him.

He shifted his remaining leg on the warm ground, making room for 37 to sit cross-legged beside him. "You should change your name." He said finally.

37 looked at him. "Why?" It was such a tiny voice, such a human voice. There were thin white needle marks on both shoulders and in his ribs, where wires and pipes had once held him suspended.

Shawn smiled, feeling old and weak inside. There was an ache behind his eyes as he put a hand on the boy's shoulder, squeezing it. "Because," he said softly, proud and fit to burst because of it, at how far this little monstrosity had come...how wonderful that he had survived at all. "Numbers aren't a name."

"Ja! A name has to be letters," a scout called Odin cried.

Names started to fill the air, shouted back and forth as 37 slapped Shawn's knee and then his own, laughing.

He hadn't even begun to shift through the cloud of choices or even finish his crushed fruit-juice when the Mechs attacked.

He was only six. All his mutated body could do was climb and run and hide.

Because Shawn made him. Shawn put a bag over him and then slung the bag into a tree, with the help of Odin and Hallisa…37's so-called 'friends'. They hid him. They hid the children.

But because 37 could climb down and was hidden above their heads, and because the children were told to keep quiet and hidden in a shed…the children were found. And captured, and taken away.

And by the time 37 bit his way out of the burlap sack and fell (grabbed a branch) climbed down the tree and back to camp…everything was ashes. Everyone was gone.

The roaring, mute blackness that had filled his mind for so long came rushing back. He backed away from the ashy piles of everyone who'd resisted, like Odin, and everyone who wasn't fit…like Shawn.

Shawn.

He took off into the wild, feral and hungry and alone. By instinct, he learned how to avoid the mechs. As the years passed, he learned how to fight them. He knocked dying trees down on them and pile branches over gaping pits. He broke their arms off and left them, angry and stumbling. He ran deeper into the jungle. He disappeared like the other experiments had, and no one heard anything more about him.

Until a ragged band of Sand Stragglers came under attack from a large troop of mechs as they followed the trade route across the wastelands. They tried to make it to the trees nearby but the mechs were upon them before they knew it.

The fight was going badly. But then a lithe, naked figure, a brown blur, pelted out of the darkness. It attacked the mechs, tearing them head from limb with brute strength, roaring as it lifted wounded mechs bodily and threw them into oncoming enemies. No one had ever killed more than three mechs before, let alone by hand.

Still, their savior couldn't have done it by himself. Together, they destroyed every last mech and then threw him some trousers. An awkward silence settled as they stared at the naked human who wasn't quite human…but they saw strange things in the wastelands every day. This wasn't too bad.

It hesitated. Raised its hand. "Hello."

They asked him his name.

Numbers aren't a name.

He shrugged. "Don't have one."

With some debate, they called him Monkey. He didn't know what a Monkey was…didn't know it was a thing he could ask about. So he accepted it. Later on he accepted the power gloves, and the bo staff, and the bike.

One summer, a Straggler who used to belong to another tribe volunteered to cover up the number 37 and the tiny white marks with some ritual scarring. "What kind of design?"

"Ashes," Monkey murmured, tilting the bottle of whiskey in his hand as he lay on his stomach and remembered Shawn and the Folk, their bodies drifting into black dust. "Ashes on the wind."

"This will hurt," the man hesitated, measuring the expansive amount of skin he had to work with.

Monkey merely grunted and bit down on the bottleneck. "Good."

Eventually, Monkey couldn't stay. He couldn't wait to see his new home turned to fire and ashes and missing faces.

He became a nomad, travelling from group to group, selling information, resource locations, mech scouting…defense and retrieval. Literally anything anyone would pay for in a world without currency. Sometimes he would meet up with the Stragglers. After a few years, he never met them again.

Life went on like this. Solitary, pointless, and always a little bit closer to death than he would like. But it became routine. It became simple.

Then, Trip happened. Tripitaka.

Tripitaka

During the last battle to take the Leviathan, Monkey had performed super-human feats of destruction, killing wave after wave of mechs. Shielded, stunners, ranged…it didn't matter. Monkey and his bo staff had them in stuttering, useless pieces on the floor.

Needless to say, he'd collapsed like a rag-doll, scraped and burned and bruised all over. It was when Trip knelt beside him, applying the healing serum and listening to his ragged breathing…then she'd realized he could possibly die. This attack on Pyramid could possibly kill him.

So she'd set him free.

Turn it back on.

"Why…why did you make me turn it back on?" she sat with him by a small pool, amidst the gigantic roots of a massive tree. Monkey had retreated with her, across the Wasteland and into the jungle. Pyramid's destructive shockwaves were far-reaching…the mechs were purposeless, most of them sitting deathly still wherever they had been at the time, waiting for orders. Silent, like living dead.

Others wandered…no one had gotten close enough yet to determine whether they were hostile or not.

But Monkey had gotten Trip as far away from that mess as he could. She'd lost everything…she wasn't ready to help every single lost soul in Pyramid's dream. She might have tried, but Monkey had rushed her away.

And now they were here, in the wilds that had raised him. He was crouched apart from her, staring down at the fish that were glinting in the shallows. He looked at her over his shoulder. "Why?"

She tilted her head. She wouldn't let him reflect the question.

Monkey's mind raced. He hardly noticed the headband now, except when he was settling down to sleep. He tapped it absently. "I…look, when I have the headband on, I can hear your voice. You give me directions, a second set of eyes. I can see your vitals, my vitals…I can even detect you at any given moment. Even after we took over the Leviathan I gotta admit…I was getting cold feet about taking down the mech army."

He shifted until he was sitting cross-legged beside her. "I've always been a loner, Trip. I was ready to leave again, but that meant you'd be dead. I couldn't let that happen."

"But you could have stayed without…"

"No." Monkey interrupted her, "No, I couldn't. Besides…I…kinda got used to your voice in my head. Almost felt empty without you there. I mean, if you died…then what was the point of the whole damned trip? What was the point of getting you home?!"

For a reason he couldn't put into words but was dismayed to see, Trip blushed. She pulled her knees up to her chin and looked away. "That…that sounds like a lot of words for the same thing."

"Well it isn't," Monkey grumbled.

The headband let out a whining hiss. It felt loose on his head suddenly. "Trip!" he barked, sounding stressed and frightened and not knowing why, "What are you doing?!"

Not in the least bit perturbed, Trip turned around. Her eyes were green, soft, and somehow stern as she reached up and lifted the headband away. His hands flew to her arms but he never touched her. Her voice was a deep whisper, the same tone she'd used in the belly of the Leviathan. "You're free now. There's nothing to hide behind…not even slavery."

She leaned towards him. He felt threatened. He felt stunned. "Monkey, tell me the truth. Tell me why you're still with me."

His mouth had gone dry. He hesitated.

Suddenly, his muscular arms snaked around her waist. Lifting her to his hip like a sack of flour he rushed towards a tree. One handed, he swung from branch to branch while Trip kicked and screamed and then stopped kicking for fear of plummeting to her death.

The tree was wider and taller than the skeletons of many skyscrapers back in the ruined city. Trip's eyes crossed as she tried to reconcile the height. Monkey kept going until he reached a rather thick, long branch that was the size of a log and forked in the middle, the perfect place for a nest. He planted her there before darting off again like a leaf on the breeze.

He was down again in minutes, a tiny, agitating figure with pointy blonde hair, pacing back and forth on the forest ground. "Monkey?!" Trip screamed hoarsely, "What are you doing?!"

Monkey kicked a rock into the pond. His eyes were dark and nervous, pupils dilated. His voice, however, was light and jovial as he yelled back at her. "What's wrong? You wanna come down?"

"YES! GET ME DOWN!"

"Say please!"

"Really!? Please!"

"Can't hear you!"

"PLEASE, MONKEY!"

"What?"

"MONKEY!"

This went on for a few frantic seconds before Trip realized he was teasing her. She went quiet. Waited. Saw Monkey start glancing at her more often as he grew more and more concerned. Finally, he climbed the tree until he was only a few branches below, well within reach of her voice.

Trip wished she could see him. "You know, I'm still sorry about the escape pod. I really didn't want to hurt you. I just…I didn't want to die."

"I get that. Still sore."

"Also, you're the scariest looking person I've ever seen…with your freaky ice-cream hair and your red eyes and how you like to let concrete blocks drop right behind me when I'm crawling through…scare the crap out of me."

"My eyes aren't red, it's the war paint!"

She paused. Kicked her feet, feeling more confident now that he was somewhere nearby. Finally, "You started it, you know."

The leaves rustled. Trip smiled shyly at the horizon, suddenly realizing how beautiful the sunset was, drenching the jungle trees in gold and bronze. "You started it by carrying me on your shoulders when you really didn't need to."

"No." The wind was quiet. "You started it. That first bridge, where you thought I was gonna fall and you told me to be careful…like you were really afraid of what would happen if I wasn't." Monkey stopped speaking. She could almost imagine him aimlessly tapping his power fist against the bark-skin of the tree. "Why me, though?"

Why did you fall in love with me?

"Your effortless self-sacrifice. The way you think of yourself, your entire being, as a weapon to clear my way, a ladder to send me to safety, a rope to pull me up, a shield to wrap around me…" she realized she was getting carried away and blushed, biting her lip a moment. But it was important to be honest and after an awkward breath she plunged ahead. "It didn't even matter that it was me. In every action, you made it clear…anyone you were protecting, you would have protected them like that. 100 percent. You give your all."

She could have sworn Monkey's voice broke from embarrassment. He coughed and cleared his throat, trying to shrug it off. "It's…heh, it's all I know."

"And me?" she prompted. Now she was smiling, full blown, mischievous. He owed her this now. It was his turn.

The branches creaked. "Erm…because. Because of your…belief in things. Like how you believed I would help you, and you trusted me to not be a dumb brute and snap your neck anyway. And how you kept believing despite me and your own gut telling you that your colony of colored rust and marble was alright. Then, afterwards…"

She felt a cold chill. This was supposed to be difficult, and fun, and soul searching. Not bringing up memories that made her want to throw herself out of the tree. She tried to concentrate on the warmth of the sunlight on her.

"When I thought you'd be broken, you proved to me what an asshole I was. You marched us right to Pyramid itself to take down a mech army and free every slave ever taken…and every step of the way, you believed we could."

"Also, you're smart. So smart. Your mind is quick and you know things I could never, ever learn. The whole world tried to kill you the first time you came out here and you just…flung your way through it. You cried and you were terrified, yeah, but where you couldn't run or hide, you fought. You're…you're beautiful, too."

Was Monkey babbling?

"…and your eyes when you reprogrammed that dragonfly…I was a little struck because somehow they were even brighter than the blue whachamacallits..."

"Schematics." Trip correct, both hands over her mouth to stop her pleased grin.

"Schematics. Semantics." He replied dismissively.

She froze in confusion. "What?" And then started laughing, a little hysterically.

Monkey had been climbing up all this time. Now, suddenly, she realized he was on the branch with her. Running on two feet where other men would have belly-shuffled, he dropped down behind her, straddling the log.

Completely unafraid now that he was close enough to touch, she turned around, swinging both her legs over the side. His arms shot out to guide her, to catch her if she lost balance. Finally they were facing each other. Her red hair, twined with silver wires and blue ribbons, was free from the dirty cotton straps. It flowed stiffly about her face, framing her finely penciled eyebrows, her severe little nose. Her brilliant green eyes.

And Monkey realized…the wonderful vision Pyramid had shown him, of life, peace, family, comfort, light…the world he might have had if only Trip had waited a few more minutes…

He could catch the barest glimpse of it in her lovely, familiar face. In the feel of her breath on his.

"So…" he paused, twining her fingers in his massive ones. "You know you drive off of cliffs, right?"

"Mmmhmm." Her free hand travelled along his calf. His breath caught, his neck growing hot.

"And you never stay where you're put?" He shifted closer, squeezing her hand gently, leaning his forehead against hers. His voice had become a low growl.

"Yes." She breathed. Barely.

"You gotta…" Why did his voice squeak? "You really gotta put the headband back on, for both our sakes."

"Maybe," she grinned.

"Take off the do-or-die setting, maybe."

"First we have to make a deal."

"What's…" he let go of her hand and wrapped his arms around her waist instead, pulling her small, strong, exquisite self into his embrace. "What's that?"

Trip took his head in her warm hands. Flirting aside, she stared into his bright blue eyes, dead serious. "You spend the rest of your life with me."

"I will, Tripitaka," he murmured, feeling locked in that grasp, in that gaze. Feeling a purpose. Feeling loved. Feeling safe. "If you die, I die."

"And where you live," Trip corrected him, in the time it took for his lips to travel from her neck to her mouth as he kissed her.

"I live."

FINIS

Author's Notes: Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a beautiful, beautiful game and you should really, really try it out. The controls are a bit wonky to get used to but IMHO the acting, characters, story, art, and music is all worth it. It's an experience, and I really wanted to contribute my two cents on Monkey's in-game origin as well as let him and Trip finally kiss. Again, forgive me because this isn't my best work (when is it ever? :P) but I needed to get this out so I could at least finish what I start...a new thing I'm doing to keep myself writing. (HOW DO YOU DO IT, STEPHEN KING?!)

Thank you for reading, and reviews feed the plot bunnies! Who are in desperate need of some fluff. :D Bai!