Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

progeny of insects that adapted to the lightless, weightless, and anerobic atmosphere, crawled with their barbed tarsi in search of food along the bulkheads that were carpeted in pods of edible bacteria colonies. The spherical cesium and cobalt warhead surfaces were the only areas uncovered by the colonies, as they were too hot and too radioactive to support even these extremophiles.

In natural light, this carpeting would have appeared as patches of greens, yellows, blacks, and rusty browns: a box of crayon colors. Some patches were furry, others were barbed and spiky. In random areas, stalks rose above the felt, popped open and spread a new generation of spores to circulate in the wafting gases and start new colonies among Pyotr’s organic remains.

Wermut, now traveling at subsonic velocity glowed white hot as it entered Earth’s thickening atmosphere, restoring the sensation of gravity on board for the first time in two decades, sending the creatures briefly into its nooks and crannies. Wermut traversed the sky in an arc northward over the South China Sea, still fifty kilometers above Indonesia.

Twin sonic booms were heard in the corridor that Wermut threaded between the Philippines and Vietnam before the crossing the border of China at a forty-kilometer altitude. Finally reaching the maximum aerodynamic pressure, it exploded, salting its contents over the estuaries and wetlands, a kilometer above the rural Chinese landscape.

Surviving bits of metal and plastic, coated with cesium that combined with oxygen, spontaneously combusted into compounds of cesium oxides, killing most of the remaining populations bacteria, parasites of bacteria, exotic viruses, marinated for decades in the cesium and cobalt radiation mutated dramatically from their earthbound forebearers.

Most of the insects expired in the inferno, though a small number of egg sacs hidden in various crevices remained viable. Their descent slowed as they met thicker air to the speed of a gentle snow fall, landing in the boughs of trees, home to any number of birds, bats, and even pangolins. Nearby vegetable gardens, streams, rivers, water wells, and farmland were peppered with the mixture of radioactive dust and exotic bacteria.

Pyotr and his traveling companions had come home in a cloud carried by divine winds thought by the local population as a great star falling from heaven and burning as one of their rice-paper lamps. Their journey to the ground was completed in a village not part of any Western vocabulary for at least another fifty years.

A village at the confluence of two great rivers.

A village called Wuhan.

1 Schwesterkriegerine –Sister Warrior, in English

2 Schlaf und Ruhe – Sleep and Quiet, in English

3 Die Kuppel – The Cuppola, in English

4 guimpe and wimple – The white shoulder cover of a nun’s habit, and headdress, respectively

5 Gürtel – the belt of a nun’s habit

6 Mädchenwohnheim – in English, Girl’s Dormitory

7 Flasche Mann – Literally Bottle Man, in English

8 Sequenzer –Sequencer, in English

9 Rakete – Rocket, in English

10 Arzt – A family doctor in English

11 Wermut: In English, Wormwood

12 Zerżnąć Dupę – A rude Polish epithet

13 Eispalast – ‘Invader’ in Greek, or ‘Ice Palace’ in English

14 Kombrig – Soviet Battalion Commander

15 Max-Q – In simple terms, the point where a rocket’s velocity through the atmosphere approaches the inertial limit of air molecules to move aside, thereby creating a pressure wave that can destroy a rocket that fails to adjust its ascent rate accordingly.

16 Kombrig – Rank of battalion commander in the Soviet Army

17 Strelyat – A Russian warning of imminent explosion in this context

18 BeeZhat – In English, Run

19 Khrushchyovka – The informal name for the rapidly built apartment buildings during the time Nikita Khrushchev was Soviet Party Leader

20 Volkspolizei – ‘People’s Police’ in English

21 Rozmowa – In English, ‘conversing’

22 Zersetzung – ‘Decomposition’ in English

23 Starszy – ‘Elder’, in Polish

24 Srat – What one says when something bad happens, but in Russian.

25 Oubliette – derived from the French ‘oublier’, to forget

26 Entwässerungskanal – Literally, Water Drainage Duct in English

27 Muntenstrasse – The boulevard running along the riverbank of the East Berlin side of the River Spree.

28 Schiff – In English, a small ship

29 Die Saugglocke – The Plunger, in English

30 Mittlefinger – Literally, Middle Finger in English

31 Schlange – Serpent, in English

32 Scheißkerl – Derogatory term, akin to shithead in English

33 Verstehen – ‘understand?’ in English

LAWSTON A. PETTYMORE

Born and raised in Texas cattle and oil country, Lawston studied mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, lost in Austin culture, before jaunting off for a couple of decades in Silicon Valley, finally returning to his beloved ranch outside his hometown of Kilgore, trout fishing being his passion when not writing novels or screenplays.