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Act V: Humanity's End

As a snake I grew by spades, increasing my length and my girth every night. The pace was terrific so that I almost felt myself shooting outwards. Of course, I was glad for every inch I was able to recoup on my way towards out sizing my previous body. Growing now and slithering slowly along, I finally turned my thoughts to other affairs. One thing that I'd tabled for a while was the issue of humanity.

Of the flying hunters, there were now twenty in the party including the original eight who were now seasoned but still strong and containing many essences waiting to be harvested inside themselves. All this time they'd done a nice job of harvesting humans for a wide area around wherever we were and large animals when humans were not to be found.

That was more the case lately as the prey seemed to have gotten spooked and all moved away. But I could feel the presences of a great many bright minds father away and scattered over the continent. Though I had many human essences now, I longed for more. Ever there seemed more to learn of them and that any might be lost seemed a great waste.

I puzzled over the problem at length, letting the comforting weight of a fattened carrier swelling inside of me aid the thinking. It was so much trouble that these humans were scattered over so wide an area. Troublesome too was the fact that they resisted so much the act of tasting them, of gathering them up. If only they could be made to understand...

I had to look deeply into the human essences that I had. What they had in common, what weaknesses might possible daughters be able to exploit save for brute force. It became my primary project aside from directing migration and steadily growing.

We turned back far from the west coast and began to move through the forest back to the east, cutting a wide but straight path through the trees. I could have wandered, yes and picked up more trees. Now I was of sufficient size to eat carriers capable of devouring whole trees by themselves and our speed greatly increases despite my growing weight. However, what I wanted were human essences and these were so widely spread and moved quickly away once the hunters began harvesting them that we always had to keep on the move, as fast as we could go.

It was as I was examining the parts of the human mind that responded to religion that I began the first dim outlines of a possible solution to the human problem.

Towards the middle of the continent I cut a path sharply south, avoiding the desert that swallowed so much of the southwest. Carriers grew less rapidly eating grazers than chomping down forests and so I ate less frequently, but that was alright. More humans lived around here and even though they avoided us, a great many were snatched up regardless because of the number.

These curious human essences finally began to take on a common flavor once several thousand had come to lodge inside of me. What fascinating little baubles, but only as a whole was I able to really understand them. Even on the rare occasion one came into close enough range to attempt direct mind to mind contact, I rarely bothered. A single human, I realized now, was not terribly more important than a wolf or an eagle in the grand scope of things. What sort of conversation might there to be had? There would be nothing but fear and misunderstanding between the contact that would serve no purpose. Humans were not daughters and individually, they were incapable of understanding. As a whole though... They were far more interesting. I saw such great potential in humanity that I hungered for more, to let their essences mingle inside of me like they never could have in flesh and see what they made of it. Perhaps something utterly unpredictable and wonderful might happen. That would be marvelous to see.

The humans were now starting to resist harvesting. I noticed that they were developing great bows which could launch missiles large enough to impale the daughters hunting them. They also altered their habits, no longer going off alone away from their tribes. The daughters were complaining that humans made much more difficult prey than something like a deer or a moose.

But that was alright because my solution was already maturing inside of my abdomen. I called her a priest because her role was very much like the one humans made for themselves. She was quite intelligent, she had to be in order to master human tongue and culture and she was of similar size, less than half a foot taller if she reared up. Her skin was delicate, almost moist and dimpled with pores across the length of her body. Her wings were small and not suited for long flight and her snout was short and broad so as to not lisp in the human tongue. What was truly special, though was not clearly visible. From her skin exuded a pheromone to which the human body was designed to react. In humans, breathing this in resulted in euphoria and feelings of religious awe. That was a powerful tool, but not the only one. From the depths of the human psyche, I'd extracted certain memes which held powerful sway over the mind. Idea that, which planted spread powerfully the more they were shared. There were a good many that I'd found already that could be used and as my diet of humanity increased, I knew that I'd be able to discover more and pass them along.

The priest's job was not to consume men for me, but to pacify them and shepherd them into complacence. That would make the enormous task of saving them so much easier. Queerly, the first thing my new priest said to me as she shook the effluent from her wings was, "Where do you wish for me to go, my Lord?"

An odd title and lifted from her knowledge of humanity obviously, I thought. But I had to shrug off the odd choice of title and direct her on her way towards a nearby village.

There were some initial difficulties naturally. However, my priest offered a strong bargain. The end of predation from hunters in compensation for enduring her presence. Once she was able to get this across to them, they took her in readily enough and she was able to insinuate herself among them easily with all the foreknowledge I'd given her. Great power was attributed to her right off for seeming to have made the terrible beasts leave them alone. Also, the humans could not kill her because then the hunters would come right back. They were forced to listen to her and take in the memes she was able to wield against their hearts and minds.

They were more effective than ever I would have thought possible. A single human generation past and my priest was hailed as a servant of god and that god obviously was me. I made no such pretensions myself, but to the humans, it made an exceedingly useful tool for bridging the gap between us. By that time also, I'd conjured up a hundred more priests and spread them out among the land, radially outward from me. It helped greatly that a single tribe that need no be molested by hunters any longer freed up said hunters to go and target farther tribes which then could be affected in the same way as the first ones. Rapidly, I found large swaths of humanity under my influence.

I was still eating my way eastward vicariously through carriers. However once a tribe was fully converted, it normally did not take much effort at all on behalf of a priest to encourage a pilgrimage to meet me. They were in fact, meeting a carrier, but my daughter's bulk invariably proved vast enough to impress. Convinced of the truth of their salvation, most could be convinced to cast themselves inside the waiting mouth, and those who were most hesitant were helped in by others.

Indeed, to get to such a point did take time, it was slow compared to hunting, but it had enormous pay off at the end. Also, as the country's human population became depleted, the wild beasts flourished in their place and made for easier game for hunters.

So went the last of the human population of the continent, willingly into the jaws of salvation. It was, perhaps a leap of faith for them, but how richly were the humans rewarded in the end! So many human essences were reaped and eventually came to house themselves in the richness of my swelling bulk, composed literally from their former flesh. Essences which belonged to men who would have killed each other uselessly in the flesh now twanged together in peace inside my depths. How much better were their lives now than they could have ever been outside! I was satisfied that I'd done an enormous good by this species, so special and unique among animals.

My family flew and walked freely over the northern half of the continent and then eventually back to the southern continent as well. We made ourselves at home for there was now a lot of territory to manage and I was not yet even large enough to require more than the land could provide by the millions of acres available now.

I diversified my lines of daughters, refining them through use to better and better shapes. The distances became taxing to manage. Large carriers could migrate the thousands of miles to where I was now resting my body on the south coast of the northern half of the continent. However, getting smaller daughters to where they were needed was a problem if they could not fly. I resorted to laying eggs filled with undeveloped daughters, bisected to contain different groups and further veined with individual sacs for each tiny life. The egg could then be carried by a new carrier bound for distant territory even as perhaps an older one was returning to me, fat and ready to be eaten.

Carriers also had to be diversified. A food chain was formed with harvesters being eaten by a local carrier who was perhaps no larger than the typical elephant. This one had to travel the distance to a larger carrier which served as the last stop for many local carriers. Then, depending on the distance back to where I lay they might come to me directly or else report to an even larger variety who could withstand the long migration home.

We did not clear the land. In fact, as the family spread and departed, we could not hope to match the sheer productive power of the sun and nature. We did not even replace the effect of now gone humanity for a long while. However, our presence became more pronounced over time. I grew and when I was not swollen with eggs inside, I was swollen with a recent carrier meal. With the easy snake template, I built myself out rather than become extremely fat, though I had no lack of adipose slathering myself.

Shortly, it seemed, I equalled my former mass and in the same span of years it'd taken for that to happen, I doubled it. I was monstrously large now and indeed, everything I'd predicted had come to pass regarding cost of movement. I could never have survived long on the food in the immediate environment. The chemical energy wrapped up in the whole of a deer's body was consumed when I so much as lifted my head from the ground. More was spent when I needed to adjust my coils for the growth. Only the massive daughters who migrated up from the south continent provided a meal sufficient to require dislocating my jaw now. For the rest, I had them line up in twos and threes, their combined bulk although enormous by comparison of nearby trees was only a mouthful to me now. It was as boring as ever I'd feared.

I kept by the water so that semi-aquatic carriers could come up the beach inland from where they and their sisters were harvesting the riches of the gulf without making much of a dent as of yet. These ones were a bit more than a mouthful in their bulk, admittedly. I rested at the crest of a hill so that I could look out over the ocean. I did long for it and for the liberty of motion it offered for my weight. However, I was arrested by the surety that if I went, I surely would not come out again.

Something about land seemed altogether nicer. Surely the view was better than the dark abyss under the waves, however serene the blue looked from here. I'd spent centuries in the dark. The thought of retreating there for the rest of my life...

I shook my head, despite the cost. But I was being foolish wasn't I? What was this superstition? I thought maybe I'd eaten far too many humans and their odd fancies than was good for me. And yet the idea lingered dangerously, the insane surety that I would lose the sun should I seek a home beneath the waves. That lasted until remaining on land seemed almost a badge of honor, bearing the mammoth weight of my body and not moving because the cost of shifting so many millions of tonnage would completely undo the work of thousands of scurrying daughters. My pain somehow made the sacrifice worthwhile.

So I was when humans came again to the continents, this time aboard boats from eastbound across the great ocean. I learned of the news immediately and began to manufacture new priests, the kind having gone extinct in the interim for lack of use. These humans looked quite different from the ones who'd been native here. Instantly my brooding was forgotten for a new hunger to taste of these humans and know what they knew.

These new humans however proved to be much more vicious than the last kind. They shot down flitting scouts and hunters and ate their flesh like they were no more than common birds. That gave me great cause to anger, not a few essences were lost with each one, even a precious couple of human essences which had found their way down the lines of daughters. Now lost forever.

There were no immediate carnivorous daughters of sufficient size available, but they did baulk when the nearest carrier showed up. The size of an elephant and with a coordinated attack of swarming flyers to cause confusion for their weapons, a great many humans on shore were killed and the remainder were forced back on to their boat. My carrier roared farewell as they hitched their sails and returned to the east.

From the essences of the slain, I gained a whole new depth of knowledge. Humans had not perished abroad after all, as I'd long believed. Rather they flourished as the men from the boat seemed to believe, though I could barely believe such tales as they told me. And such knowledge they'd had too of the workings of things of metal and wood and of the ways of boats and sailing. Humans were more clever than I would have thought, though the potential for such things had always been in them from the start. I licked my chops and thought long and hard about a place called Europe.

More would be settlers came regardless of the treatment the last had received. Boats landed up and down the shores of the continents and the isles of the Gulf which were also mine. What they saw was fertile new country ripe for expansion, however, they had to deal increasingly with my daughters who already occupied the space. They thought of them as mere animals, even the gargantuan varieties. Their guns proved to be vicious weapons against flesh and blood, capable of slaying even carriers if they got a good shot off. I did my best to ensure that that never happened. The humans were nothing if persistent though. As soon as they could, they built fortifications, usually of light wood to keep out swarmers and then they fortified themselves with guns to warn off dangerously large daughters. I could not direct the tactics to use at every battle and my poor carriers were not intelligent enough nor bold enough to match the humans with any but brute force. Thus, beach heads and settlements began to form in places despite my wishes. Of course, these could still be rooted up by the very biggest variety of carrier, such as I had scattered in the south, but they were few and far between and could not be everywhere at once. Even relocating them from their designated positions cost me greatly in disturbances to the food chain.

But finally my priests came forth again to perform their magic and make the humans docile again. If only that were so. Of course these men proved to be just as susceptible to the pheromone as the natives had been. However, when time came to lecture the men and implant the memes, I found that these men were already implanted with such memes. In fact, they had been weaponized such as mine were. They disregarded the addition of any new religious memes. The ones they already recognized told them to ignore and actively uproot contrary ideas. Who on earth had done this to these humans?

I began to suspect perhaps the presences of another entity such as myself on the planet. But how could that be? I had been all over the earth and never once had one similar to myself hinted at its existence. And yet, here were men infected with powerful memes such as the kind I'd developed. How else could it be so. Could there be a dragon in Europe. Perhaps she had emerged later than I had, or we had past each other in the great gaps of time of my travels, like ships in the night. Might such a dragon have already equalled my prodigious size? What might happen if she wished to taste me and take me into myself? Unbidden a surge of fear flowed all the way up my miles long spine.

No. I thought firmly. If anyone is to be eaten, then I shall do the eating. And regardless, I had no proof of any dragon in Europe... yet.

Yet, the effects of the weaponized memes in the men were more than sufficient to prevent my priests from making headway, even in the cases where they were accepted grudgingly into the community to ward off dangerous creatures. More frequently, my priests were tied up somewhere and made prisoner than actually made proper guests and altogether too often the Europeans refused to invite priests into their encampments no matter what. Indeed, whatever the source of the infection, these new memes were far more potent than the ones I had devised.

I needed time to think of a sufficient countermeasure, but the humans moved quickly. The addition of large flying dragons to the environment only slowed the progression of colonization. They thought that the New World was only a particularly dangerous country in which to live. Never did it cross their minds that they had better pack off and leave.

I modified the priests many times only to fail time and again. Though I increased the strength of the drug, the Europeans only began to harvest the stuff from the skins of priests for recreational use. No closer did I come to pacifying or converting them.

I did come to know the new memes in great detail as the colonists continued to suffer attrition at daughter hands. But the types of events that these people might be weak to, 'miracles' they called them, I could not come by. Bleeding statues, saints appearing in the sky, men reviving from the dead, what silliness and none of that I could accomplish... or maybe I could.

I had to study hard, very hard because the memes were very strange and the men who harbored them often only held pieces within a single mind of the whole. I did develop a list of possible events which might be simulated by daughters.

One was very easy. There is a phenomenon in human kind in which one breaks down and begins to babble nonsensically in rhythmic syllables. For whatever reason this other power chose, this phenomenon was chosen to signify the presence of god. Well, it turned out that the behavior could be induced in a portion of susceptible humans simply by inhaling a certain neuroreactive drug that my priests could easily produce in their skins. One miracle down.

Healing the sick. Also easy enough to manage. My priests would simply become doctors. I knew enough about the human body so that the treatment of many ills the colonists suffered could be cured with minor effort. A few more glands for the Preists and they could excrete medicinal drugs from their tears, an extra thematic flare to counter the memes.

They could not raise the dead, but talk of immortal souls in some sort of heaven could be replaced by the truth of essences of all living things on equal footing. Things like bleeding statues and similar theatrics could be arranged with the collusion of small secretive daughters to maintain the magic tricks. Even sights of saints in the sky might be arranged with the right doses of hallucinogenic drugs.

The war against the new memes was thus fought with new vigor. If only my priests could convince the colonists to stay, then 'miracles' would begin to happen as is proper for a messenger from the Lord. And with flying dragons outside the wooden walls of their tiny towns and the promise of sanctuary, that was always a tempting proposition, despite the inherent inhumanity of my kin. But though my daughters resembles by chance demonic beings mentioned in their literature, there were also other provisions to be found that mentioned them as holy beings. In fact the highest choir of their divine messengers.

Since only the bravest colonists could maintain a foothold anywhere in the New World, or so they called it, they were few enough in number and also frightened enough to give in, once I had understood and consumed the memes they harbored. And so, in a short number of years my priests had gone from being tied up and shot at to being the holiest members of any establishment in the new world.

However, there was pushback. Especially when rival priests began to come from across the water. The usurpation of the memes was taken very seriously across the water apparently and in a way that spread faster than a daughter could fly. Officials came to verify miracles and while some where obviously dispelled as the hoaxes they were, my means were subtle enough to avoid their means of detection in many cases.

Despite this, the new priests disliked mine with a passion for my priests spoke of surety of a direct line to god here in the new world while they spoke of their authority in Europe, a "Pope" as they called it sometimes, but also sometimes not. More evidence of a dragon in Europe, I pondered uneasily, my belly grumbling overheard on the body of a carrier. There was great conflict, but my priests had bibles and also the words and wits to at least hold ground against official distributers of the memes. Sometimes the conflict broke out into violence, but on the other hand there was the obvious good the priests were doing for the community and the meme also that god could be found right here in the new world, and this one took root and spread among many colonists who did not like being lorded over from afar. And there was some bad history to draw on also of the authority in the east. Mistakes had been made and the more human essences I collected, the clearer it became in my mind. The memes had obviously started from a central source, but in many cases the brands coming to my shores conflicted, they had spliced over the years and were now separate, even hostile from one another. They had become weaponized against themselves.

How could the dragon in Europe have allowed this to happen? I wondered. But maybe, I thought, it was not such a benign being such as myself but sought to cause conflict and confusion through the earth, this would be such a way to do that with great ease. I balked at the idea and yet there was more and more evidence. Some few settlers came with memes of a completely different flavor, but if anything even more weaponized that the first ones. These came from lands east of Europe and the memes were so hostile to other forms of thought, almost nothing could be done to displace them save killing the host entirely. So many forms of ideas and all so hostile to other thoughts. Who could have done such a terrible thing except a dragon of surpassing intellect, bent on destroying the world I sought to save and bring into absolute harmony.

Well, I was not above being a hero from a human folk story. If I had to, I would take battle to this foe dragon, this monster, acting as a divine being myself. I had to summon my courage because the prospect seemed suddenly very frightful. Such an evil creature as might had corrupted these innocent humans would be a terrible thing to face. Still... We must face each other eventually. Slowly I began to slide into the ocean.

Ahead of me there were already priest daughters in Europe. The human priests had taken a few back to their headquarters to be examined by professionals for traces of the divine, or so they explained to me as the made the long voyage by boat.

Well, the chemical gifts of their bodies could not be taken from them nor denied and their ability to treat the sick far exceeded anything known in Europe. Despite their looks, which was completely unknown in all the lands, they met even less prejudice than that in the New world where their cousins were want to eat a settler as look at him. Quite like moors in England in prior centuries, they were more an oddity than a lower form of life, and more, an oddity that performed miracles. As I swam deep below the ships plowing the Atlantic, some amount of success was made in high places that my priests were truly divine beings. However those with power still denounced the presence of God in the New World and secretly they sought to even bribe my daughters to say otherwise when they lay unguarded. Of course, my daughters knew the truth of me in their minds and could never be persuaded like that, though they did tend to quiet on the subject.

Obviously sacrifices had to be made on in the New World if I was to travel to Europe. Large carriers could still swim under the waves to meet me, however, I had to be even more clever in continuing to provide new daughters back across the atlantic to populate the place in my absence.

Tinkering about with the fusion of cells inside my abdomen, I came across the phenomenon where cells of one developing organism can actually wind up within the body of a larger multicellular organism. Once that breakthrough made its impression on my mind, I thought of an entirely new way to package my egg sacs, namely inside the body of another carrier.

If the egg could be implanted and then gently coaxed to grow inside the larger body of a carrier at an early stage, then they two - or two hundred as was usually the case - could be merged. I always implanted the egg into the tiny developing uterus of the carrier female, that way she was able to carry the enormous egg, even feeding it with her own body as if it were her offspring for a time, before breaking the egg and releasing the sisters from within using the natural ductwork in place. Thus a carrier could be grown to give birth exactly once in her life and thus deposit the needed harvesters where they were needed.

It was a brilliant strategy and I was surprised I did not think of it sooner. Still, even though I was now largely free of proximal need of daughters, I had to cut back on the population in the New World. I would need an entourage in Europe after all and I could hardly spare a thought to the goings on in the continents after I arrived. I swam silently, waving the great mass of my body twisting in the lightness dark. I just hoped I was not throwing myself into utter danger by leaving.

I came eventually to Europe and by a combination of human maps and my own memory, I knew the place. I found my way past the Straight of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean. Into the sea I went, moving cautiously and actively aware of the much shallower water to hide my enormous bulk.

It was still dark in the deep places, but rather than looking, I cast out with my mind in search of my target. I felt for sure that the evil dragon would reside in these waters. It was around this place that all these mind warping memes had originated.

However, as I swam, casting about and sweeping, I did not find any hint of the dragon. I began to fear that it might have some resistance, maybe someway of hiding its thoughts from me. That would explain why I had never before detected it. A multi ton egg burst and released a school of swimming dragons. "Search everywhere for the enemy, my daughters!" I instructed them and they departed scanning the dark places with large pale eyes and clicks from their jaws. Still nothing was found.

I had traversed the length of the sea and back five times already, eaten a hundred carriers in that time as well. I settled on the dark floor of the sea deep in troubled thought. Could the dragon be on land? But how could he? Memories of such a thing would surely have passed down to me from one source or another. The supreme authority who lived on the peninsula not at all far away from where I now rested was only depicted as a human. I wanted the being who had given these destructive memes to him and his ilk, perhaps long, long ago...

Could it be that the dragon has long ago since moved on? To corrupt different lands? But increasingly it felt as if I were grasping at shadows. Maybe I had made up the whole notion of an evil dragon? But then where was the source of these horrible memes? I could not honestly believe that such virulent types could have been bred by the minds of men alone. Something surely was manipulating them. And yet there was no physical evidence, not a trace I could find. Maybe the creator was not a dragon at all and was some other kind of life I had yet to trace. Maybe even it had created these horrible things and then died, uncaring the long lasting effects of such cruel manipulation of individual will. These explanations seemed more plausible now in lea of finding a rival dragon.

"Well," I considered, "If that is the case then I may never find out where these ideas came from." My tail stirred debris from the bottom of the ocean. "I might as well do what I can to displace them while saving the humans of these continents as well."

On the peninsula, the daughters in the care of the priesthood suddenly had a divine premonition. A judgement cast down from heaven on the corruption at the heart of the human church. They big all who would listen and on the very eve of destruction flew away, leading as many as would follow. I burst out of the ocean with a bellowing roar, able to tower above the waves supported by the buoyancy of my bulk beneath the water. Once I'd judge enough time suitable for survivors to spread the tail, I descended, crushing the town beneath my slithering bulk. The buildings crunched under me, offering no resistance at all. The boats had all sunk with my emergence, but some cannons did fire on my from different hills about the country side as I made my way to where the supreme authority lived. To these emplacements, swarms of small flyers darted and suppressed the men there, who mostly ran or called upon their lord to save them. More swarmers I sent ahead and to the flanks to stir up fear and confusion. Soon all the countryside was a riot of torch flame and clanging bells of alarm. I slithered onward, the tallest things under me coming up no higher than a tenth the height of my bulk. All easily crushed.

I took some hits from cannons and many more from small arms. My leather skin offered little to no protection, but my sheer bulk was enough to mitigate such injuries. Body servants tended to me, their techniques and doctoring much improved now than what it had been in the past. I had several hundred constantly patching me up and removing the scraps of metal the humans shot at me.

And then my head loomed over the center of the city with all the old buildings and monuments made of marble. I took a moment to admire it all with my own eyes, but I had enough memories of them from processed humans to last. I slithered around to the north, taking my time. Everywhere where gun fire came from, daughters were directed to swarm until quiet. It was almost peaceful as I coiled about the city. There were a great many people left, despite the warnings. However, these desperately fled, mostly in vain as they saw my bulk surrounding the many fine buildings in all directions. Lots of witnesses, good. That would help spread my memes. When I'd encompassed the city, leaving a lot of spare length behind, I tightened my coils, crushing the center of the old church between them. Satisfied, I rested atop it while daughters cleaned up the dead to feed me.

Some token resistance came, but my priests informed me that they were making headway with the humans, forestalling their strength. My arrival was a divine act, a judgement and who really could doubt after seeing such a large serpent, such a vital symbol in their literature. Many men bowed their heads in grime certainty that their lords must have been guilty of great sin to bring such a catastrophe down on them.

With their silver clad tongues, my priests worked the ideas into the public until it became common knowledge. I no longer had to silence the guns turned on me. None dared to thumb their nose at divine intervention. But even with the host of dead to clean up, I could not remain on this ruined city for more than the shortest amount of time.

So the story twisted. The judgement brought down on the world would continue, an endless consuming serpent. Only by strict prayer and the abandonment of violence would the serpent and her servants be sated. That was a powerful meme offer and the humans took it to heart, setting aside arms and cloistering themselves. Those who did not do this obviously were the first to die.

And as I began to slither a broad strip up the peninsula into the continent, it was not so hard to justify those crushed in the path as obvious sinners after the fact. As I moved up the peninsula at a steady rate, I left docile pacifists behind me, perfect to leave until later.

The meme spread like a daughter on wings ahead of me as I moved into the continent. Never was a concerted effort to stop me hatched. There was no great alliance of man against the unstoppable serpent. There were only scared men and other scared men on their sides who knew the way to save themselves from the wrath of the serpent army.

Not long it became provisional not only to drop weapons but to destroy them too. Priests distributed the idea as virulently as they could. Take no arms against the snake or fellow men. Live in simplicity and peace or face certain death. It as an easy enough choice to make. If resistance did come it was only on behalf of one nation or another, a token effort. Swarming flyers against infantry and guns, heavy flyers against Calvary, and carriers to break down fortifications and anything else that could not be moved out of the way in time. Then there was me, the city flattener and devourer of everything. Utterly and completely unstoppable, not just physically, but by divine mandate.

It was almost trivial to bring Europe to its knees. Anywhere my memes did not spread, I went and soon they spread there as well. I ate well too, if anything better than usual because this was a rich place, heavily cultivated. After breaking the british isles, I slithered back into the sea, leaving my priests the ruling class behind me. Well, there were other hostile memes out there in the world. Time was wasting.

Almost exactly I conquered next the middle east. The memes were harder to uproot here, but suffered the same major flaws as the last ones. New priests with slightly different coat colors and even coaxed with birthmarks resembling certain holy words in the holy tongue took the place of the last. Again, pacifism or destruction was offered. Much of the middle east was reduced to rubble and snake trails.

By now, the new memes were all over the world, without any assistance from myself what so ever. News of the giant divine snake was on the tips of everyone's fearful tongues. Great rites were offered in sacrifice of cities in my path, but I paid them no heed. Only my priests had the ability to direct my course. A winding path took me across India and then into Asia proper. Pacifism was easily accepted, but by now that was no longer enough alone. My priests had to supplant the rulers of the countries to enforce that peace. Now again I had target cities to flatten. Though the distances to cover overland here were greater, it was almost trivial to ruin cities now. Since the time I'd flattened the Vatican, I'd nearly doubled my weight once again.

In Africa I found the least resistance yet. The last continent that had not received utter destruction, all the nations of the place were willing to accept leadership from my visiting priests.

All in all, I'd reduced the human population by 20% and now thoroughly controlled the remainder.

As I feared I settled in the sea. The Red Sea to be precise. There I wound my coils and counted waves, feeding my endless hunger and birthing a constant stream of daughters. I supplied larger and larger carriers containing larger and larger egg sacs with even more daughters housed inside as my size increased. But still my forces were stretched thin as I had all the globe and all the seas at my disposal now.

Priests lived fine lives as rulers of humanity. They kept them docile and sought to eradicate the last traces of poisonous memes from the population. There was peace in the world at last for every nation bowed before one head, mine. Then my diligent priests began to preach of the essences and the true salvation that I offered. The old memes forgotten, this news was accepted as a matter of fact. The cities were encouraged to depopulate first, the unnecessary castes like bankers, lawyers and merchants being either encouraged to move on or else rooted out and sacrificed quite against their will. Harmony with the earth was instead preached. A simple life growing and tending simple things. All the excess from all the farms of the planet earth found its way eventually into my expanding belly.

I became an absolute gluttonous creature. As time past and my ability to both eat and produce daughters to harvest for me grew, my coils came to spill above the surface of the red sea. The place felt rather like a great bath tub. My great head was a wide mountain and if I'd cared to, I could have drained a small sea into myself. There was so much food available now, I spoiled myself by breeding enormous carriers, larger than had ever walked the earth before, including my previous incarnations. Their sole purpose was to eat the smaller carriers and then feed themselves to me so that their bulk might give me the sensation of eating a proper meal, my jaws stretching almost orgasmically tight over a vast body.

Finally, the works of humankind were no longer sufficient and I again sent my daughters in force back into the wilderness. By now the population of humans had been cut in half again from what it had been after conquering, nearly all working in agriculture. Priests carefully collected numbers for me and I had to weigh the production of human agriculture versus the amount of biomas produced naturally by fallow ground. A length, I tallied the figures.

All around the word, news came of the final ascension to be one with the great serpent who was also god. The farmers migrated enmass for the celebration and great feasting was had everywhere around the word. One last cheer was given up by humanity before gleefully crawling into one of my many, many jaws. It was indeed everything I'd hoped for for this peculiar species. Now they were safe, all of them that would ever be nestled deep inside.

The world became a quiet, meditative place. Nothing like humanity came again from the realms of beasts, but then the world of beasts was also numbered in its days as well.

When the red sea became a basin, I made the effort to haul all of myself out and into the much larger warm pool that was the Mediterranean. The one move cost me a continent's worth of food production for a year. I scarcely saw now the majority of my bulk. But I was aware of every inch of me. If I'd cared to, I could have stretched from Gibraltar to the Red Sea and then back around to touch my nose with my tail, a vast, mountainous tube of flesh. I was never so vain to do that though.

Mostly I rested with my head on a beach somewhere. It was an effort to get even so much of me up onto dry land, the water gone shallow far out from the beach. I looked at the sky and the lay of the land, knowing it far too expensive to shift myself back up onto it now. I flicked my tongue now and then and thought of things. Before I knew it, it'd be time again to eat and I'd involve myself with the task, always feeling more comfortable and content on a full, distended belly.

Daughters were now the dominant form of life on the planet. As they multiplied and my ability to produce them grew, they came eventually to displace land creatures almost entirely, only the smallest and most adaptable were left to fill any cracks in the niches. After that, there was little to no need for land based carnivores. When that came to pass, efficiency increased by a large margin. After a longer period of time, like the land, so went the sea. All the fishes and al the diversity was instead reduced to vast skimmer dragons who ate the tiniest creatures who got their energy directly from the sun. Places like coral reefs and kelp forests were also likewise managed. Anything that ate the sun moved directly into my gut. Efficiency was again greatly improved.

But I grew ever vaster. I twisted my length in the deeps countless times, my torso at once as thick as an island and also endless. Being now manager of the planet, I was stuck facing the inevitable. Soon, very soon, I would outstrip Earth's ability to produce food. No animals were left save the smallest. The plants, the plants all donated their flesh to me, gifts from the sun in turn upon which I was utterly dependent. Once I began to eat past their ability to restore themselves, all would be lost. Very rapidly I would have cleared the earth of all life.

I faced this crisis with grim determination. Already I had experimented with photosynthetic daughters. But it was no use. Plants had had billions of years to fill every possible niche on the planet. They were practically as efficient on a global scale as anything else could be. Only small headway could be made in that direction.

No, no, no. I thought tapping my tail on the sea floor miles away from where my head was located. I rejected idea after idea. The sun was ultimately the source of all biomass and the sun was, for all intents and purposes, already maximally exploited. I had to think differently, look to new sources of biomass.

But where could it be found? Already the chemical swilling worms at the bottom of the ocean were already exploited as much as they could be without depletion. Where could I find the mass to continue fueling my expansion, my need to grow without end and devour everything.

My tail tapped upon the rock. Mass, that it, mass and not bio-mass not exactly. The moment I realized this, I got to work with all due haste the crises required.

Very quickly, I found that I would need a different sort of body in order to survive. I experimented and experimented endlessly inside my guts and the varied organs of my adaptable body. I swallowed tones of seafloor rock to dissolve inside of me, trying to get the material to behave at least in some way a semblance of life. Eventually, a solution was found and none too soon.

I had already broken the point of no return. My appetite required me to eat more of the earth than the plants had the ability to reproduce themselves, even just to sustain my mountain-like bulk beneath the surface of the sea. Every year there were fewer and fewer plants to be found above land and below it as well. Just as well I came to devise a daughter to bridge the gap for me.

Unable to stand the prospect of being eaten now that I was of such tremendous size, I would rather have to transform myself, even if that transformation be long and painful. A parasitic daughter was born inside of me and she chewed her way out of my flesh to anchor a bit of me to the ocean floor.

If my previous immobility on land was something to dread, imagine now the prospect of losing even this precious amount of personal liberty. But I had to do this. I was beyond saving now and even if I could have stopped growing some years ago when I could have sustained myself indefinitely, I wouldn't have wanted to. I _needed _ to keep on growing. As much as was possible, possibly more.

At the anchor, the parasite buried its head into the rock. Using the processes I'd discovered in my quests and probings, it converted the raw rock into yet more of itself, its head being a kind of crystalline formation but composed of hybrid organic compounds as well as silicon. Despite this, she was quite alive. From my body, she drew organic compounds and from the bedrock, far more rock was converted. For every pound of meat she drew from me, she fabricated two orders of magnitude more rock into living hybrid crystalline life. She grew down and out wards in all directions her new flesh interfaced with the dead rock. Thus through a parasitic anchor, I began to bring the earth itself under the dominion of my body.

I anchored myself at many more points along my endless length and they drew from me blood and nutrients which bled into increasingly complex and vital life within the rock and soil under me. Through crystalline fibers connected to me by my parasitic umbilicus I became aware of my increasing flesh and was glad. Still I ate of the depleting earth all I could find through daughters. Slowly their ranks decreased as scarcity all around increased.

The earth never was depleted entirely because a few daughters could not possibly find all the places where plants and other organisms existed. But because the effort of finding food became more expensive than the food itself, the age of endless harvesters had to come at last to an end. The last dregs of plant and microbe and even animal life were spared and I starved.

But I had already begun my escape from the demands of flesh. Every pound of me bought countless more in inorganic life where my snake body lay. As a snake, I forced myself to hibernate, slowly canibalizing the tissues of my body to feed the rest. Below me, however, life seemed optimistic.

Downward I spread and out around, claiming all the rock I touched at every point, rearranging the molecules into more of my flesh. In my inorganic heart, I developed more and more complexity, preparing for the eventuality of my snake body's death. In concert with my attached body and working through parasitic tethers now grown wide and fat with blood vessels leaching energy away from the bulk of the body and anchoring me firmly to the ocean floor which largely glittered now with crystalline beauty, I worked death throws into birth cries.

I replicated the use of organs in crystalline tissue and new chemical processes and ate them up in my former body. Slowly, I grew the flesh of my new earth home around the huge mass of still living tissue the snake composed. Cupped and shaped and then encased in a crystal shell, my serpent body was the beating heart of my new form of life. But it was still dying, little by little. It wasted and not just because of the nutrients being vampirically sucked from it to feed expansion ever downwards. The lack of food was also killing it as surely as it ever would have.

My organic body continued to waste, but with its death I found a new and marvelous life. Inside the earth were treasures unfound by humanity, forever lost in the deeps. Deep down below I felt the heat of the earth itself and thus I was able to find an alternate source of energy. Carbon I found aplenty in the crust and with it, I was able to synthetically create the organic compounds I needed for my hybrid flesh. My body would not be a limited factor.

In the heart of myself, I built a new crystal brain as my house, my organic body still wasting like a forgotten organ above me. All too soon it was sucked dry and assimilated. Perhaps for the best, but still organic life was an oddity worth appreciating.

I was vaster than ever I could have been as flesh and blood. All of the crust of the planet spreading out from Europe came to compose my body in time. When that happened, the molten layers of the planet felt very much like a beating heart, while my barren, mostly dust blown surface felt like a dry, dusty back which faced the sun always. But I wasn't done, there was so much more waiting below the surface.

From all points I worked my way down into increasing heat. I probed with ten billion fingers, my brain trying by trial and error the correct path. Great crystalline and silicon muscles gnawed on the interior of the planet, an omnisided mouth. When pressure needed to be released, I blew forth great gouts of liquid rock to fall on my back from great fissures I'd open up in my flesh. Mostly however, I channeled the heat of the planet upwards through diamond filaments in my flesh to supply the energy needed to stay alive.

Painstakingly, I worked my way down into Hell, teasing new modes of life it seemed every mile. Fiber stretched out and down, probing, assimilating, moving material upwards. When the heat at last became too much, and the pressures sure to reduce any complicated materials to slag, I began to build out my flesh in the opposite direction, upwards. Upwards I hauled the interior of the earth, screaming and hissing into cooler and more controllable climes. I build up my back but I did not do it in the laziest shape possible, a simply greater sphere. No, I was more creative than that.

I elongated the sphere of myself with new material. As my poled increased and the molten ball supporting me decreased, I let my sides sink in. I now has a waist and ever growing polar regions. The molten ball shrank and my waist with it while I extended crystalline flesh every upwards into space.

The heavy iron core of the planet was moved and dispersed by a hundred million times its mass in intelligent flesh. I'd digested the planet at long last. I'd also done as much with shaping my body as I could utilizing much of the energy of the former planet. A long tapered form, bulging in the middle, reminiscent, but only resembling in the vaguest way, like a clay statuette, my original shape.

I then had to sit in mute contemplation. There was no more to be done. Nothing at all. The end of the Song had come at last. I was the entire earth now. Everything that ever was or would me was now contained inside and all the essences of all life that ever had been (that I'd eaten and hadn't been lost on the way) or ever would be was carried like a golded ark inside my partly organic flesh, their flesh once also.

But if this was the end of the song, then why was I still here? I was floating, caught in the same orbital well that the earth was, the moon spinning like a cosmic hula hoop about my waist. Nothing had changed at all. No trumpets, no clarion call, no nothing.

There was nothing to eat and I did not even have a stomach to put it in if there was. Deep inside I felt my flesh slowing down, become inactive for lack of heat or energy, dying in other words. The sun and some radioactive materials I'd cloistered inside and the residual heat of the earth, much of it spent now, was all I had left to live on. A sizable sum indeed, but enough to live on, forever?

And to what point? I asked myself getting right down to it. Where was my pay off? Where was my reward? This couldn't be it surely? Was that what the end really meant?

Somewhere deep inside, I felt sure my daughter, my traitor daughter from long ago was laughing at me. She had to be somewhere in here, because I was all things now. "Poor foolish mother." I imagined her saying to me now. "Now you shall know what death is, just as I know now."

It was an effort to pay no attention to such figments of my imagination and yet the image still lingered, her voice haughty. "No less than you deserve, murderer of a planet and an intelligent species no less. You robbed them of what they might have been."

"Be quiet!" I shouted at myself as I floated along. No response from my endless halls of glass. It couldn't be true. I'd saved the planet and all the life. All the essences I'd been able to salvage were here, eternal just as I was. To what end, though?

I could not for the life of me come up with an answer. Uselessly I writhed in my tomb of a body, no limbs to thrash with, very few moving parts at all. I was a mind floating alone in space with the vastest body imaginable and yet I might as well not have a body at all.

Was this the end of the song? Now that I had sipped the last drop of old earth, when I'd become as big as the planet used to be, was I supposed to rig some sort of propulsion system. Catch the moon from its orbit and then on to mars?

How dreary the prospect seemed. I almost despaired and for the first time in my life, I had no wish to eat.

What good is the period at the end of the song anyways? What did that even mean? All metaphor and nonsense, I realized now with my electronic brain. Wishes and fairy dust. There was a whole universe out there! You can't eat space, at least not as far as I knew. Even if that were possible, then there would be no space for me to exist in after it had all been eaten. And to what point anyway?

What was the point of being me?

Is that what it meant? To become so large that largeness becomes pointless entirely. I might as well be the very smallest of things. All that work, all that effort and planning for naught. Perhaps it would indeed be better to die. If I was the period of all things, then perhaps I was the period of myself as well. I looked towards the sun. With some effort, I could rig my body to nudge myself gently into it, to be bathed by cleansing fires under I was become dust and ash flying outwards from this place in all directions. A tempting thought.

I almost did it, very nearly. I even grew the sails inside my body, just below the skin. I only had to extend them and wait a little while for it to happen. Except that I did not extend them.

The essences, all the treasure of old earth, contained inside of me. I could not doom them to my own fate, though I did not much desire to continue living anymore. Tentatively I asked them what they wanted.

Uniformly they answered, "To live."

"Ah, I see." I said and then got to work.

I sent many daughters up and up to where the skin of my body held out the vacuum of space. I pulled down the rocky scales and debris that had formed there and replaced it with a scaffold of perfect diamond. The skin and scales were as transparent as glass, more so than any human made material. It was almost as if I did not have skin at all.

I changed the conformation of the flesh below the skin, opening a space between the skin holding out the vacuum and the flesh below. Into this, I pumped nitrogen, carbon dioxide and many other gasses. Carefully I warmed the layers with the heat of my body and I ran water all through it. My essences provided the instructions to alchemize the raw materials into cells and then into higher order multi cellular life.

It was not the life originally found on earth. It could not be, the environments were much too different. But it was quite similar. And then, as the slime began to mature a miracle happened. The essences, forever part of my flesh leapt from nearby hybrid organs to reside in the new green tissues floating in the warm oceans I'd coated myself with. I was organic again, at least in part. I was the slime and the slime was me, part of my body but separate also. It was amazing.

Would it be insane to claim that the slime which lived under the skin of my back loved me? Perhaps not more insane than a dragon eating an entire planet.

After a while carefully, with avid curiosity, I turned an eye to look at myself. I took a few moments to admire the sight of green fields folding gently into clear blue waters and the things the ran about the surface inside, safely inside the skin and folds of my body. They were very dear to me, these passengers, part me and yet not. As yet, they were quite unaware I even existed. That might change, it might not. I would wait and see. I did know, however that there were a great many curious essences housed inside of me, waiting for a proper body to house them. I urged them patience. There would be time yet before Eden grew altogether too placid on my back to really be happy.

Content with the thought, I began to swim slowly around the sun, a world on my back. As I did, I sang softly to myself, a song that I'd known for a very long time. But when I got to the end, the last note and the period on the last note, I thought that this was not a good place to stop after all. After a short pause, I began a new song.

***

Tiamat listened contently to the sounds of each player in her new symphony. Except for one. Within her deepest depths formed one more voice to whom her ears were deaf. Microscopic as yet, it began working its way to the surface. It knew not why or how, but it knew it needed to go to where it belonged. To be the end of a song that was written without a period.