Ch 37

Casimer lay on the ground, Ben's face and eyes staring unblinking at the sky, watching the stars in the night sky. About three hundred acres of grass, distributed to his specifications, swayed in the wind, each strand a tiny spark of life keeping him alive. The waters from his central chamber, the giant beating heart of the mountain, fed them and other plants Ben had brought from the outside world. They lived and died, an IV bag of nutrition that grew larger every day. It would be a slow, painless death, as far as Casimer could tell.

“You almost killed him today,” Melchsee said, appearing next to him, nude and lying close.

Casimer glanced over, the human body experiencing involuntary nerve activity and taking in details he would never have noticed if he were unattached to it. Her skin was looked soft, her eyes were large, a pleasing shade of blue and almost shone with an inner light. The hair on her head was fine and smooth, hanging in the most perfect way. Her breasts were small and tight, and the rest of her body was hairless. Casimer found himself looking at her hands, the sophisticated biological property of the humans, hers were delicate and long, yet small at the same time. Some part of the body yearned to touch them, but he resisted. He had already played that game enough with her. It was not particularly interesting to him, not once the novelty wore off.

“I nearly did,” he said, voice omnipresent across the entire mountain. It shook the grass and scared what little native wildlife was left; baby rats huddled closer together, birds took flight, a fox whined in fear. It was not loud, it was simply Everywhere.

“Why didn't you? I can feel it, despite how you try and hide it. You're starving.”

“That's fine,” Casimer said, closing his eyes “Nothing like a diet of grass and trees to keep you calm.”

“Might as well call you Grassimer,” Melchsee grumbled, and it wasn't clear how funny she thought the joke was “all you do is sit around all day and let Ben play around. I think we have more than enough data, we don't need him anymore.”

“Grassimer. . .ha,” he said, a slow smile appearing on his face. Ben's body began to crumble, replaced by a mass of green grass in the same shape.

“I'm glad you thought that was funny,” Melchsee said, a sour expression on her face, “But this affects me as much as it does you. If you starve, I starve. You die, I die.”

“You scream,” Casimer began in a slow singsong voice “I scream. We all scream for ice cream.” Melchsee shot up from her laying position, eyes blazing.

“So, this is how it is? Bugs make you stupid, and plants get you stoned? I know what will fix you, what'll snap you out of this” she growled “and don't you dare ever make me regret it.”

“Ok,” Casimer said, voice trailing off, his body reconstituting itself as Ben once again.

Her body rose from the ground, defying gravity and morphing into a ball of green energy that burst into the air, streaking high through the sky like a baleful, emerald falling star.

–

Leeroy Arnstat was a tourist from Austria, the rare European who thought coming to the USA for vacation sounded like a good idea. He was not a particularly good man, having abandoned his wife nearly five years earlier after convincing her to get an abortion, yet he was not a particularly bad man either, having once sold all his possessions and given the money to the poor around the same period of time. He felt free in a way that very few do, with no familial, financial, or societal bonds or debts weighing him down, and so had decided a charter bus across the United States was a fantastic way to celebrate life.

Currently, the bus was leaving Nevada, headed north to Utah. The service he used was less than two years old, and had only two buses, one of which he currently sat in, occasionally being jostled by a pothole or uneven asphalt job. The tour had started in Washington state and headed south through Oregon, then down to California, before heading a little east to the next state over, with the intention of heading north again. It had been expensive, very expensive, and would take three months to complete but it was also one of the few services that promised to thoroughly hit each state in the US, a true tour of the country.

The bus seated seventy, and was occupied by fifty. They had spent about two weeks together, spending days in each state, not including travel time. They didn't all know eachother's names, but they knew the faces and voices of one another, and that was almost as good, at least in Leeroy's mind. They had a long time to get to know one another, and he was in no rush.

Most everyone was asleep, but he stared out the window, watching the stars. It was a different sky in this part of the world, and it pleased him to see it. A shooting star caught his attention, like a streak of emerald that he thought was pretty strange, but it didn't really bother him, and it faded out of view just a little above their heads.

“Must have exited the menosphere,” he said to himself, thick accent rendering his speech mysterious to anyone not from Austria.

They drove on for a while, almost an hour, before a quiet voice over the intercom, their driver, informed them he would be pulling over for fuel and encouraging his passengers to get out and stretch their legs for a bit. Having learned through hard experience that whenever the opportunity to pee presented itself, he should, Leeroy joined the sleepy parade of people exiting the bus to wait in line for the restroom. He, and most other men in the group, noticed a woman shopping inside, though they were the only car in the parking lot.

She had large blue eyes and soft looking skin, an ageless beauty that could have placed her anywhere from sixteen to thirty, depending on how closely someone looked. The bus driver, a notorious flirt and bold womanizer with very little skill, had immediately honed in on her and begun his work. Several of the women on the bus rolled their eyes, wondering how long it would take him to strike out.

Much to the surprise of everyone, she seemed to be taking the bait flawlessly. His corny jokes, which the passengers could only hear snippets of, seemed to make her laugh in a genuine, heart-clenching way. Leeroy, having experienced that laugh with more than a few women, whispered to another man that the driver was 'lucky dog', and the man agreed with a grin.

By the time it was Leeroy's turn to use the restroom, the driver and the woman had vanished from sight, clearly looking for a more private location to continue their conversation. When he had finished his business, the driver was back, with a chastised expression on his face. Leeroy, who had discovered that the driver had spent four years in Austria by sheer coincidence and struck up a familiar relationship through that bond, gave him a pat on the back.

“She was a slaut anyways,” he said, thick accent doing little to mask the big smile on his face.

“Yes, total whore,” the driver said, his voice and cadence different than what Leeroy was used to “She demanded money, and I'm just not in the mood for that sort of relationship right now. If you'll excuse me.”

His behavior was odd, but Leeroy could recognize a bruised ego when he saw one and let the man be. The passengers entered the bus, a sleepy, yet more relaxed parade than the one that had initially rushed off, and took their seats. Some fell asleep immediately, others stayed awake for just a bit longer.

Leeroy was the only one who noticed that instead of north, they were now headed south east, away from Utah border and deeper into Nevada.