(Originally Recieved from Europa Station Historic Records, 2232)
Moxie Arctura had been born during an interesting time in history.
She was never really one to latch onto fads, not that she didn’t try. She was under intense peer pressure to try and fit in, to adapt to her surroundings as best as she could, because in the year 2098, adapting to your surroundings was key.
She had come of age here, in the Rocky Flats Arts District. It had once been a national wildlife refuge, a long time ago, long before she was born, but the wildlife had since moved further up into the mountains as the temperature had risen. The sea level had gone up by as much as a thousand feet, rendering many of the old coastal cities uninhabitable. As a result, the climate refugees who could afford to escape had embarked on what was to become humanity’s initial colonization of space. Those who could not had migrated inland- to St. Louis, to Detroit- and, of course, to Denver.
Denver was, by 2098, America’s third-largest city after Chicago and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metroplex. It was also the location of Denver International Spaceport, America’s largest by a wide margin. And so many a night Moxie could watch, off to the east, the rockets taking off and returning from the lunar colonies and Near-Earth-Orbit satellites.
She had been nine when her parents first took her to see the Rocky Flats Arts District. She had been fascinated and inspired by the wide array of galleries, the limitless spirit of human creativity. Glass bowls in every window, studded with tourmaline and jade. All the paintings, lined up on their canvases in the hot Coloradan sun- cracking here and there from prolonged exposure on the dusty street at noon, yet gorgeous all the same.
The live music which bustled out of all the cafes and holes-in-the-wall, each building designed for maximum efficiency. And of course there was the large expanse at the north end of the District, a wide, sweeping vista with thousands of old concrete barriers- the ruins of a town once called Superior- which muralists emblazoned with sweeping swaths of color.
Her parents had initially wanted to settle in Denver proper, however they had been swayed by their daughter’s fascination with art, and promised to take up residence there on the condition that she would utilize the numerous job opportunities there to the best of her ability. It would be cheaper this way, they reckoned, and so long as she was content, so were they.
A decade had passed and Moxie was now firmly ingrained in the distinctive culture which had erupted from the Flats, as they were known. It was the 90s, and Denver was preparing to close out a decade of unsurpassed growth, of contributions to the arts and humanities, as the stronghold of the center of the North American continent. The mood was optimistic, despite the setbacks of Earth’s slow death. Everyone was looking forward- to the Moon, to Mars, to the asteroid belt and beyond.
Moxie still lived in a complex with her parents, though not in the same apartment as them. They depended on her for rent, yet she had still failed to live up to their expectations. She worked mainly as a paint mixer, creating vibrant hues and pigments from the natural mineral deposits which surrounded the District. But she had yet to come up with any really groundbreaking ideas, anything that could turn the District on its head, offer a new perspective. She knew she had those ideas inside her, somewhere.
She had made a lot of friends to assist her and give her a certain reputation within the industry. She was helpful, polite, well-respected. Her favorite artist was Jurl, she had known him since around the 9th grade, he always wore the same scrappy denim outfit while he painted. It was easy for them to get along- they had similar interests and hobbies, although she never considered him anything more than a friend. She had no idea what she would do once she really came of age, however for the time being, being an assistant to the masters like Jurl would suffice.
She always supported Jurl, and the strange figures he would conceptualize. They were blobby little people, endlessly fascinating, always in abstract morasses of green and violet. She would wash his palette with soap, rinse it, supply him with the correct brushes, watch as he brought a world into view, a world which seemed so real but which was ultimately inaccessible. She was amazed at how Jurl had progressed from when she first knew him. He had come here from one of the sunken cities in California, and back then he had been very amateurish. But now, he was well on track to receiving an arts degree from the University of Boulder.
“Watch this,” he’d say, and she would stand there, spellbound, while he swirled and dipped his way into those weird dreamscapes. He would do this for hours on end, and she wouldn’t notice the passage of time, just hand him the sponges to blot up his mistakes and the bucket to rinse his cloth in when it was all over. And then, he would hang his new masterpiece up alongside the rest, on the wall of the communal gallery, and they would leave for the night and out into the wasteland of Old Superior and sit between the silent ruins, holding hands, watching the night sky with equal parts curiosity and fascination.
Her other friends were all extremely supportive and helpful, and although she never really painted anything herself- even though she seemed to lack the spark of creativity, at least for the time being- they guided her with techniques and resources.
Life was good in the District, it was well-run and engineered to be sustainable for its inhabitants. Moxie herself often spent hours out on the town, combing through gallery after gallery, always shocked and amazed at the output. She had never really been one for virtual games- that was more common in Denver proper, where headsets and immersive home theater systems were all the rage. She found solace in the simple yet exquisite novelty of viewing a fresh canvas for the first time.
It seemed to her, on occasion, however, that there was something fundamentally WRONG with the world in which she resided- a feeling of deep-seated dread she couldn’t really articulate. She caught it from the glances her colleagues threw her way in the evenings, the long evenings spent drinking THC kava and listening to the newest interactive visual albums.
She felt as though her life was one long, predetermined string, and the less she pursued her artistic inclinations, the less agency she had. She felt the time slipping away. In the future, she realized, people would no longer remember what earth felt like, what it was to walk on the long stretches of road, how a fresh field of grass collected dew in the early hours, the low, distant hum of a lone train whistle somewhere out in the railyards, carrying cargo to some unspecified destination, making those in the realm of sleep cognizant of tangible civilization in an abstract, blurry way. A way that became blurrier as the years continued.
Still the rockets continued lifting off and returning, again and again, and on certain nights when the view was clear, Moxie would take out her binoculars, lift them to her eyes, and watch as they made that geometrically pristine curvature, plumes of smoke in a fine gray jet over the looming navy blue storm clouds on the eastern plains.
It was the 90s, and humanity underwent renewal.
Her fears became materialized in August, because that was the first time she was made aware of them. It was the first time she was able to put her fear into words.
She had arrived at Jurl’s studio, as always, at 9:00 A.M. after a cup of coffee back at her apartment and a brisk 12-minute walk through the myriad booths that were set up and torn down like clockwork across this particular area of the District. She had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Until now. Until she saw it feeding off the back of Jurl’s head.
He didn’t seem to notice her, lost in thought, his brush making noble, quick strokes across the fabric, his eyes half-closed, letting in suboptimal light. Her breathing intensified as she neared it, not quite sure of what she was witness to. As the details became more defined, as the sun rose and let its golden ray grace the back of Jurl’s scalp, she realized what it was.
A cockroach.
A fat, languid cockroach, five times the size of the domestic variety, wings of exoskeleton and compound eyes without pupils, its arms twitching slightly in the morning breeze. Attached to its sides were two long, fleshy tubes which gradually lost the deep red hue of the roach and achieved a human-esque flesh color as they made their way into the base of Jurl’s neck, which now had two small, perfectly cut holes on it.
The roach was moving its arms, she realized, in tandem with Jurl’s brush strokes, albeit to a lesser extent. They were both lost in some kind of thought, and every now and again the roach would nearly drop off Jurl’s head, but then nimbly regain its footing and resume its position. She stood there, hands numb, eyes wide open, not sure how to initiate conversation.
“Oh, hi,” Jurl said, dropping his brush into a jar along with some others. “Hope you slept well.” He leaned back and stretched, and as he did the Blattodea stretched in perfect synchronicity, lifting its scrawny little extremities toward the skies.
“What-” she searched for an adequate description. “What- the fuck... is-”
“Oh, this,” he remarked calmly. “It’s an ArtRoach.” He picked it up off his scalp, flicked a few of its sizable droppings from his hair, then set it on his drawing table alongside his protractor and his compass, as if it were merely another piece of equipment. It scuttled around a few inches, but remained confined to the table for the most part, caught between Jurl’s notebooks and his sketches. He detached the strange cords from his neck with a popping sound, leaving two gaping orifices in which Moxie could vaguely discern his muscle tissue.
“It’s a body mod,” he said. “No different from getting your ear pierced or your tongue split. The difference is, ArtRoaches have a practical benefit. They help you make art.” He picked up one of the strange flesh cords, turned it over in his hands, politely offered it to her to feel. She declined, beginning to feel her stomach turn. The insect twitched.
“Cockroaches are extremely resilient creatures,” he explained. “This little guy is a bioengineered variant of the American cockroach. Periplaneta americana. Specially designed in a lab to have- get this- CREATIVITY.” As he said that he waved his hands out to either side, extending his fingers, reaching them outward.
“Look at these,” he said, pointing to several new canvases, all awash with his familiar abstract landscapes. “The Roach did all of this. Just this morning, alone. Five paintings in one hour. It taps into your spinal cord through these ports, gets into your brain. I can’t quite describe it, there’s a lot of science that was included with the manual. But I feel so fucking creative right now, Mox. A whole new world of possibilities has just opened up for me.” He smiled and focused blankly on the new paintings, clearly proud of what he had achieved.
“You don’t feel-” she hesitated, ever so slightly. “Disgust? At that thing?”
“Disgust?” he chuckled. “Heck no. Once it taps into you, once you bond with it, you stop fearing it. It’s just a cockroach. Cockroaches are wonderful creatures. They’re some of the oldest insects to inhabit this planet. They’re intelligent, resourceful. Of course it comes naturally that such an animal would also have a wonderful, near-limitless imagination.”
“You’re not creating these paintings, though,” she pointed out. “The roach is. All you do is sit there and have the roach do it on your behalf.”
“That’s an oversimplification,” he muttered, a slight hint of resentment towards her beneath the surface. “I’m also doing it. It just helps me, that’s all. It’s a useful tool. Like a protractor, or a paper cutter, or an eraser. It gives me ideas, ideas which I can then work into my portfolio.” The creature on the table spasmed again, and began projecting a trail of viscous spittle from its jaws.
“You don’t need it, Jurl,” she said, backing away too slowly for him to notice. “You’re good enough at painting on your own. You’re smart enough.”
“Maybe,” he said, listlessly twirling a brush with his index finger. “But with this, I can paint SO much faster. Five times faster. Hell, ten times if the roach really applies itself. Do you have any idea how great that is for an artist like myself? Who gets paid in scraps? Who can barely afford to make a living off the fruits of my labor? Now I can paint so much more, endless possibilities! Countless worlds thanks to this Roach!”
“Why?” she stammered. “Why get holes in your neck, why attach those- those things to it- it’s unnatural, Jurl, it’s not GOOD for you, there’s no way it could be good for you-”
“I doubt you know what’s good for anyone, considering you’re not an artist,” he reiterated, knowing she hated to be reminded of that. “You’ve never painted a thing in your goddamn life, so you’re in no position to lecture me. This rach- it’s my ticket out, don’t you understand? My ticket off this rock and into space. To the Martian colonies. If I can paint ten times faster- sell exponentially more paintings- I’ll be able to LEAVE this place.”
“I want you to come with me,” he said, extending his arm in the blink of an eye, grabbing her tightly, digging the nails into her flesh, baring his teeth like a caged animal. “I want you to leave with me, don’t stay here, Mox, you’re better than this-”
“No!” she yelled, slapping him in the face and running out the studio into the noontime heat and the blazing sun. The door quietly slid closed behind her on its pneumatic hinges, the Rocky Flats Arts District appeared to her the same as it had always been. Except for that all-present chirping. The sound of millions of little graspers and feelers all clicking away in unison, behind closed doors.
She went home and vomited.
The following weeks were, of course, filled with news regarding the wonderful release of the ArtRoach. Journalistic puff pieces advertising the invention’s benefit to humanity, how it helped people who were too busy to create art, or people who didn’t have any real artistic talent, how it could transcend boundaries, mend divisions, unify people. Bond people and roaches.
Everywhere Moxie went, her friends had a Roach. Those who were hesitant about it at first eventually started wearing mockup bio-ports, just for fun, and then decided to go through with the surgical procedure so as not to feel left out of the craze. Everyone she knew was getting little holes in their necks, and anytime she would approach any of them about it, they would dismiss her concerns.
“It’s just a new technology,” they said. “Fuck, Moxie, what are you, a caveman? The same objections were made whenever a milestone was achieved in art. When photography was invented, when TV was invented. This is no different. It’s just new technology. If you don’t get a roach on that noggin soon, Moxie, you’re not going to fit in with the times.” And then they would converse with each other in their own private circles, aided by the ongoing clicking of the Kakerlac, who appeared to converse in equal measure.
“You should get one,” her parents advised her during their weekly dinner together. “You want to be able to provide for us, don’t you? If you got one of those, you could finally do what you’ve always wanted to do. Make some art, sell it, earn us a pension, a moderate retirement fund. You’re being selfish, Moxie, putting your own prejudices ahead of us.” She would sit, glassy-eyed, as her mother slurped up spaghetti and her father crossed his arms while chastising her for being out-of-date, as if they weren’t over the hill, as if they understood the present better than she could with her own two eyes.
The propaganda mill kept turning and within a month there were countless videos on the Web interviewing the lab that had created the ArtRoach. They talked about what a monumental point it was, how happy they had been when the first ArtRoach made contact with the human ganglia, tapped into the spinal column and infused the fluid with its own special roach juices. The shiny, happy reporter turned to the camera and held up a Roach for the audience at home to see, moving its little legs around, its fat, oozing body glistening as the light refracted off it.
In every cafe and gallery, the things were unavoidable, half the people in the District had one on hand at all times, and when it wasn’t plugged into their necks the Roaches could be found roaming around all over the canvases, on every coffee table, in every kitchen. Legislation was passed whereby if a particular artist wanted to register their Roach as a service therapy animal, they could, and the Roach could be brought into any restaurant, and the FDA, who by this point had long since abandoned their offices in White Oak for greener pastures in Albuquerque, and were pitifully understaffed, didn’t seem to have any issues with the idea.
Moxie had to admit that the Roaches were great for business. Now there was more pottery and paintings and sketches than ever before, windows were crammed to the brim with Roach-produced material, and rather than being embarrassed about how they had used Roaches to assist in the artistic process, shops directly advertised it as a selling point. New and improved, they said! Art of the future!
Debates were held over the ethical problems of the ArtRoach, but these debates were few and far between, and in general the consensus was that Roaches were beneficial to the art industry. No legislation was passed regarding the open distribution of the Roaches, and in fact some argued that it was cruel to use the Roaches for the desires of people, that they were superior beings to humans and that their untapped artistic potential proved that. That Roaches should be treated less like pets and more like spouses, or business partners.
Two months after the incident with Jurl, there was a news story about a Roach that could actually paint on its own, using a small brush which was specially affixed into the crook of its top arm. Of course the Roaches are intelligent creatures, the article stated boldly. This Roach is sentient! Look at it go! It created bold swirls of color, swaths of lovely fecal brown.
A scientist working at the the lab that had produced the roaches suffered from a mental breakdown where he was convinced that the roaches were communicating with him and whispering the secrets of the universe into his ear at night. He was sedated and brought to a recovery clinic, yet his delusion persisted. Nobody gave it much thought, that the onslaught of the Roaches could produce delusions of this magnitude.
Moxie felt ill whenever she encountered one scuttling around the heads of her friends, nesting in their hair. There was a certain smell that you could detect on a Roach user, caused by the morbid obesity of the creatures, their diet of filth and pestilence. Moxie wondered at times if she was some sort of genetic throwback, if her reluctance to adopt this new technology meant there was something wrong with her. What she perceived and felt was contradicted at all times by what everyone was saying. At times she felt as if she were living in a separate reality, that everyone else perceived these roaches as butterflies or something.
She tried her best to be polite, and over time convinced herself that the Roaches were probably here to stay, that there was no putting the genie back in its bottle. People liked the Roaches, the Roaches had a practical benefit, even if they were hideous to look at. They enabled creativity, enabled new ideas. New Roach-oriented ideas. Moxie was determined that she would never get a pair of Bio-ports as long as she lived, but she couldn’t bring herself to be hostile towards all her friends. So she settled, six months after the incident with Jurl, into a hesitant peace, a repressed terror.
She no longer worked as Jurl’s assistant by this point, which was understandable. She found odd jobs emptying out buckets outside, setting up cardboard for spray painters to practice on, recycling clay for the ceramics enthusiasts who now held a scalpel in one hand and a Roach in the other. She wasn’t particularly fond of odd jobs like this, and much preferred the steady ones like the one she had with Jurl, but she could subsist and survive, as much as any cockroach through any natural disaster. Like the roaches, she was markedly resilient.
The antennae kept clicking away, the brushes kept hitting the canvases with speed and agility, and across the Rocky Flats Arts District, life was good.
Life was good for a few months, until an unpredictable genetic error in the bioengineered code of the roaches malfunctioned. They were, after all, not entirely natural creatures. They had been designed to suit their purpose, and as with some inventions, such as asbestos or cigarettes, they had a pretty detrimental design flaw.
Chromosome 22-A was slightly off-center on the ladder, such that it didn’t quite fit into its atomic slot. And on February 9, 2099, this one chromosome slipped in all the ArtRoaches simultaneously. It left its socket and turned on a particular switch. A switch that didn’t say “help your human host,” but rather “drain your host of all their bodily fluids.”
“Feed.”
Moxie had been struggling against the winter that particular morning. Winter still came to Colorado, even if the climate was far different from how it had been during the mythic stabilized past, and she had walked across the District facing a light morning sleet and some wind around 20 degrees. She had wondered whether she should put on gloves and was at this point regretting her decision not to.
Something struck her this morning. It had started with the pale blue light which made its way in through the window high above the bed where she slept- infusing every piece of furniture with an eerie tone of light blue. And the cold. It was colder than usual.
She got up, ate her breakfast, and it was then she noticed the rolling brush lying on her desk. The brush Jurl had lent her, a long time ago. Before the Roaches. Before all this nonsense, he had given it to her, and she had acted like she was going to do something with it. But she hadn’t. And here it was, two years after the fact.
She would have to give up her resentment eventually, she figured. Let bygones be bygones, bury the hatchet. Even if he did want one of those stupid things, it was his brush and he was entitled to it, and it would give her a reasonable excuse to make up with him. And so, mindlessly, she picked it up, stuffed it into the front left pocket of her smock, and left for what she assumed would be just another day of mindless wandering.
Something was different. She felt it.
The whistle the wind made in the treetops, gusts and gales whizzing around the canopy. And the gravel, crunching morosely underneath her boots, coated with a fine, impermeable layer of ice. Every window along the street dark where there should have been light, no pedestrians whatsoever on the District’s busiest corridor. It was only around 6:00 A.M. but surely, she figured, there would be shopkeepers and gallery owners setting their wares out for the day. Surely, there would be someone out to decorate, to breathe life into the area. There always was, even during the wee hours of the night.
No. Just that blue color. Across every rooftop and marble panel, a lightless dawn, and the mountains off to the west, behemoths standing blankly at the strange scene before her. She took a few steps in the direction of Jurl’s studio. Paused. Continued. Her breath condensed and fell before her as the sleet petered out and the sky took on more gray tones. Still the world remained mostly silent. She could hear a dog barking, maybe seventy five feet out. But no human voices. The District lay, sheathed in wintry solace, and her skin crawled more and more as she approached Jurl.
She hesitated before knocking. No answer.
She took out the key he had given her, again, in those good times before everything went south. The nice golden key with the expert craftsmanship, made by the locksmith two miles out. She stuck it in. It hit home. She bit her lip and gently, gradually, pushed the door open, until she was standing in the frame and looking into an empty, silent room.
She ventured past the main hall and then rounded the corner into the gallery proper- and what she saw should have horrified her. It should have made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, should have given her prematurely gray hair and cardiovascular arrest. But it didn’t. Because it made so much sense, on a deeper level, what the Roach was doing. It followed logically.
Jurl was surrounded on all sides by his familiar portraits, yet as Moxie neared them, she noticed that they had evolved, changed. The little blob people weren’t people anymore as much as they were humanoids. Humanoids with two extra arms. Four arms, two legs. Six legs. And on top of their heads, two little quick brush strokes. These paintings were scattered throughout the studio, thousands and thousands of them, papering the walls and ceiling, stacked upon each other like dominoes, more paintings than Jurl could ever possibly hope to sell.
Moxie’s breathing slowed the closer she got to the thing. Jurl wasn’t quite a person at this point. He was being slowly mummified, dried out, like a raisin in the sun. Wrinkles across his face, tiny little dilated eyes, mostly pupil, sunken back in their sockets. Lips extremely chapped. And his stomach- well, his ribs were poking out. They were visible, even through his shirt.
Moxie estimated, through a quick visual analysis of the scene, that Jurl probably weighed only 50 pounds at this point. His arms were toothpicks, his legs popsicle sticks, his hair rotting away in places and falling out entirely in others. His skin was a lifeless tone. He made a thin, rasping sound toward Moxie, as if he recognized her, although she doubted there was very much of him left. The brain, after all, needed spinal fluid to operate.
On top of his head sat the Roach, pleased as punch, having downed 130 pounds of delicious, savory bodily fluid through its tubes. In one hour, Jurl had been deprived of his blood, lymph, mucus, saliva, sweat and tears, and the roach sat, fatter than ever, ten times what it had been, a gluttonous king, immensely satisfied with itself. It made a clicking noise of contentment.
It turned toward Moxie, waved its antennae. Its face was a lot larger now that it had received its sustenance. Its compound eyes blinked, its stomach bulging profusely from its meal. Moxie wasn’t sure how to respond. It didn’t pose her any direct threat. It did pose a threat to Jurl, a threat which it had delivered upon in spades. But it couldn’t hurt her. She didn’t have any bio-ports, and it was too fat even to leave its perch. Its mass was roughly equivalent to what that of Jurl’s had been. She observed as it took yet another swig of the juice, letting it travel up those connecting rods into its sac.
She raised her hand to bash its brain in and put it out of its misery.
As it turned out, though, before she was able to take a forward swing at it, it ruptured. Burst. Like some kind of obscene fruit, it squeezed everywhere, a massive rupture in its side forming, a crack from which spilled a putrid blend of assorted Roach guts and human fluid. Onto everything. A geyser of potency, of wasted potential. Onto every canvas, sheet of paper, palette, brush roared 140 pounds of human and roach essence, combined.
As it split open and revealed its dinner, the Roach made a sort of high-pitched screech. Moxie covered her ears and closed her eyes while the Roach became little more than an exoskeleton and Jurl, left entirely desiccated, collapsed dead off his chair and hit the cement floor below, shattering into crispy dust powder.
Moxie opened her eyes and saw liquid and dust pooling together on the floor.
She stepped back so it didn’t get on her shoes.
As it turned out, 95% of the Arts District was dead. Moxie wandered the streets as the ambulances and reporters from Denver arrived at the scene. They pushed microphones and cameras in her face, as she was one of the only people left standing, but she brushed them all aside to make her way north, to the concrete slabs of Superior, where she and Jurl had spent such fond evenings during what at this point felt like a lifetime ago.
As she sat at the base of one of the concrete slabs, she took in the spectacle the Arts District had become- a haven of red and blue flashing lights, screaming, widespread havoc, policemen and investigators whose unfortunate tasks it would be to discover the husks of all those unfortunate dead artists whose creative juices had been bled dry. A single tear fell down her left cheek. Most of her friends were gone.
But they hadn’t really been her friends, of course. She would get by. Like a certain insect, she was resilient. She would live on, as would the few who had refused the onslaught of clever marketing and ad campaigns. And life would continue.
She didn’t know it then, but she would go on to become one of the most revered historians and authors of all time. She would die in 2180, having won countless awards for the advancement of humanity, her words having inspired every space pioneer and frontiersman on the cosmic front. Her words of caution against the adoption of useless or excessive technology, her firsthand experience with the subject, saved countless lives when, in 2134, a spaceship that would have exploded otherwise and killed all 500 Martian colonists on board managed to repair a critical design flaw and reduce the amount of metal in its hull, all thanks to one scientist on the team who had read her story about the ArtRoach disaster of 2099 and the importance of testing technology thoroughly.
As it turned out, writing books had largely gone out of fashion as a form of self-expression in the 2090s during which Moxie came of age. It had long been supplanted by the virtual headsets and the interactive experiences. While there were artists, there were very few novelists, and those who did carry on the archaic craft weren’t all that good at it.
Yet, as Moxie examined one of the concrete slabs of Superior, she noticed something, Characters in the Latin alphabet, the alphabet she had never learned in school but which she knew appeared on older signs and in certain shows. Her finger gently traced some of these characters. They read:
“Joan is a bitch, don’t trust her with yo mans. -Katy”
Moxie removed a small scrap of paper from another pocket on her smock, took out a little ballpoint pen, copied the message verbatim. She scanned the line carefully, tried to sound it out phonetically with her mouth. And suddenly, as if a lightbulb had flicked on, there in the clear noon haze, she knew what her artistic calling was. She was a writer.
With the same pen, she began scribbling:
“I was born during an interesting time in history...”