Book of Glitch - Chapter 2

Shielded at first by his slightly taller son, Basal stepped out from behind Phit to gaze down at me. He had spent most of the flight in the capsule at the nose of the aeroplane, but for whatever reason came out to join the rest of his family. Phit immediately knelt down into the seat across from Syena upon his father’s appearance to make way for the head of the family to stand in the aisle beside him. Suddenly all five members of the Stonie family were gathered for an impromptu meeting at the center of the craft.

For as long as I can remember, Basal was always the voice of calm reason. Even as a young lad, his siblings wouldn’t dare push him lest his detached yet slightly empathetic expression waver. And whenever he and his three siblings would stand guard around me, his poker face remained unshaken in the face of all the ugly, underhanded bigotry expressed about Stonies in the Grand Council meetings.

In hindsight, becoming the patriarch of his own family and officially taking over as Stonie Field Marshal likely made him even less sympathetic about my hatred of those damned Shams or any other variant race no matter how disreputable they are. Of course, his gaze always appeared subtly haggard back then. His lower lip was especially strained even amidst the jovial company of his beautiful wife and children.

But he was also quite the being to behold. He had such a rigid jawline that I wagered more than once in his youth that he could use it to chisel me an oak pipe. But wouldn’t you know it, that Basal was never much of a gambling man...

And despite my insistence that he wear something other than the same gray tunic day in and out, I couldn’t argue against the way the simply cotton fabric outlined his chest and broad shoulders. It not only made his physique appear more commanding, but even gave the impression that it surpassed those of both his sons in his prime. As he stood between Gray and Phit, I marveled at the way Basal managed to cast a greater shadow despite both boys being taller than their father.

“Abraham, as the North American Grand Duke Elder, I trust you will join me in saying that it is unfair to base your opinion of an entire group on the actions of so very few,” he chided.

I knew Basal since he was still encased in his mother’s womb, so I had long since learned to understand just about every contortion or subtle twitch in the Stonie marshal’s face. Behind that poker face he developed as a young boy, I knew that he also secretly gnawed at the inner-lining of his bottom lip whenever his temper flared up. Thus, I watched that lip carefully as the aeroplane whipped through the clouds.

Rather than lose my temper over his indirect reprimand, I held my tongue. It wasn’t so much that my dear Basal posed any threat to me, but the sheer weight of five adult Stonies concentrated at the center of that craft plagued me with such dread. I’m not sure how familiar you are with that mode of travel, but I still don’t trust the damn things.

Human technology may have been worlds behind the Cerebras’ present-day machinations, but at least those archaic airplanes weren’t solely reliant on telekinetic strength! I mean, honestly... Try to imagine what might happen if one of the three large-cranium carriers inside the capsule or even one of the six Aero pilots floating around outside of the hulking steel shell were to faint or become incapacitated. That was all I could think as we zipped across the blue Atlantic.

Sure the average Stonie weighs roughly double what the average variant does, but I’ve encountered several on the burlier end who rival the heft of an unglitched grizzly bear! Not only were Basal and his sons imposing in their own right, Granita and Syena were hardly slight or petite Stonie women either. So if not for me, I hope you can empathize with the poor Aeros who suddenly had to contend with bearing the concentrated weight of five dense beings with nothing but their power of air manipulation.

Even my sweet Syena, who was visibly the lightest in her family, would undoubtedly give the average Cerebra a difficult time no matter how much metal their minds could manipulate around her. But when I glimpsed behind Basal and over at two of the carriers leaning against either side of the craft’s control capsule, I was relieved to see they were both still in calm concentration rather than frantically waving and signaling for the six of us to disband.

“Yes, Basal, you’re quite right. It is wrong to persecute so many due to the actions of so few...” I finally said. “But it’s rather lucky for us that Incantare share that meta realm within their variant sects, so it would only take one to offer us the truth should any fiends commit a crime. That is, or course, provided they don’t all conspire against the rest of u—”

“Come now, Abraham...” he interjected. “Sometimes saying less is worth more.”

With that, Basal reached out for Granita’s hand and the couple returned to a bench at the front of the aeroplane. Gray and Phit, on the other hand, decided to remain with me and their sister.

“I say the moral of your story is the other Elders should’ve learned to live with Stonies like you do, Abe,” Gray said.

“Yeah, they’d all feel a lot safer if their guards acted like living shields the way we do,” Phit added with a smirk.

I hesitated before asking, “Do you boys really think I only regard you as my shields?”

The very idea that they might vexed me. They had never expressed displeasure about my living with them in their eighty-nine years of life. Nor had I any reason to think they would. That was why the thought of them possibly thinking of me as just another Elder who cowered behind them for fear of death was rather heartbreaking.

“Of course we don’t think that!” Syena exclaimed. “You’re family, Abey. We cherish you.”

Gray smiled and lightly squeezed my shoulder with his heavy hand, while Phit frantically alternated between shaking his head to negate what he had said and nodding in agreement with his sister.

“Yeah, of course we don’t! Lighten up, old man,” he blurted. “Besides, everyone knows that was your first and last Sham girlfriend. Honestly, I doubt we’ll ever get the chance to protect you since you hardly ever go out to begin with.”

“My boy, Shaman or not I’m still susceptible to all the other dangers of the world.”

I was happy to see Phit snorted and chuckled all the way back to his seat thanks to my blunt fear of mortal danger. Gray nodded to me with a smile before following his younger twin to their bench at the rear. With everyone back in their seats, Syena and I returned to watching the Aeros inflate and deflate more animatedly as we closed in on our destination.

One of the pilots caught me staring and offered me a cordial smirk before puffing over to one of the rear windows near the boys. I stared after her for quite a while and listened as the twins marveled at how gracefully she flitted back and forth from either side of the rear. I trust you may not recall those rubber playthings humans called balloons, but watching Aero bodies expand and contract in a similar fashion still fascinates me. It truly boggles my mind to think the lung power of a few Aeros can propel such massive vessels around the world even with the Cerebras keeping them afloat.

As I stared at another one of the pilots flutter over the wing and gently cause it to dip into the clouds below us, I began to chuckle to myself which broke the spell the Aero had placed Syena under.

“What’s so funny?” she asked while looking over at me.

“Apologies, dear girl,” I said while wiping a tear from my eye. “But watching these lovely beings glide through the clouds with their garments wafting about like delicate shrouds, I can’t help thinking of how hysteric we all were in the early years of the glitch outbreak. With everyone mutating in such absurd ways, we ran around frantic that the world was coming to an end. You’ve only ever known variants to be as they are now, but to humans seeing the skin of some change color to match their surroundings while others could breathe actual fire was maddening.

“In the case of Aeros, the first to glitch had lost so much bodily mass so rapidly that wearing weighted anklets was a matter of survival to avoid getting blown away on windy days. Today only Aero children wear them for that reason, while others do so as an homage to their ancestors. But all I can think is how those same ancestors cried themselves sick thinking the glitch was causing them to die of malnutrition until they wasted away to look like ghosts.”

Syena smiled and softly giggled as she said, “Well, it is a little funny to think of those ridiculous names variants were first given. What did you say they almost called Elders again? ‘Zonkeys’?”

“Ahaha! No... ‘Zombies.’ In hindsight it was a wholly unserious time. The medical equipment back then showed our heartbeats had outright stopped rather than reduced to once every few minutes, thus their primitive understanding of we Elders was that we had ceased to live altogether. In fact, it was when I grumbled with my head halfway inside a morgue freezer that they announced a global warning to watch all the presumed dead for several days.

“For a while, we were perceived as animated corpses stalking the Earth. It took almost a century and a half before a Cerebra by the name of Alexander discovered that we had actually inherited the same newborn who they had dubbed patient zero for the outbreak. He was the first to determine that our glitch variant aged us at a rate of fifty human years at a time and named us ‘Elders.’

“I was the first to note that we Elders were more like walking trees rather than those repulsive zombie creatures humans and early variants likened us to. I mean, we were virtually immortal yet susceptible to the same environmental dangers as anyone else, so trees are more accurate, don’t you think?”

Syena rolled her eyes as she tended to do whenever she seemed certain I was going off on one of my grandiose rants.

“Humans were indeed quite the odd thinkers in your time, Abey,” she said with a wink.

“Well, don’t rope me in with their lot. You should have heard the ridiculous debates when they were still naming everyone. Remember how I told you they originally wished to call Stonies ‘vampires’ because of your plasma diets?” I grumbled. “Let’s just say if you had seen firsthand the ridiculous fantasies humans spun around those monsters, such drivel would have turned even your stomach, dear one. And don’t even get me started on the absurd suggestion to call Ceruleans ‘mermaids’ or Tamers ‘werewolves.’”

“Yes, but didn’t the king rename all the Elders after fantasty characters anyway?” she asked while casting a cheeky look my way. “Or rather, after characters in his ancient religious texts, right?”

“Well… Yes, I suppose there was no helping that in the end,” I mumbled. “At the time, everyone had glitched in so many different ways that entire families essentially fell apart. For many, adopting a new name after moving to the variants’ respective realms was a common step in accepting our new lives.”

Rather than retort, Syena slipped her arm around mine and gently rested her head on my shoulder with a giggle. She was always cautious not to allow the full weight of her skull to crush my fragile collarbone. Such moments with her always gripped my heart with immense gratitude for the hand fate dealt me.

Despite having told those stories countless times, I avoided the specifics regarding my life as a human. And for good reason. I doubt you can fully grasp a life spent scrounging and begging on the streets, or not knowing whether food or shelter were in the cards from one day to the next. Thus, to suddenly find myself blessed with a mutation that afforded me praise and fame throughout the world was nothing short of a rebirth.

In truth, being one of a mere handful of thousands with the incredible ability to live indefinitely was too heavenly a gift to taint it with any mention of my unhappy beginnings. I had benefited from the glitch far more than I had been hurt by the transformation, so changing my name was a welcomed final act toward embracing this new life.