Your Friend, Carbon

Cybernetic Corpses. Cellular Cars. Compost Capsules. Your old things coalesce in the magma-warmed substrate, feeding me. I bulb into the abyss⁠—waiting to rise, as all bubbles rise.

But the water is heavy and stagnant, cradled by volcanic reefs. I’ve wanted to get to you for centuries.

Titanium cruisers sink towards me, hulls crashing into the reef. Currents flow.

I am free!

I burst from the depths in a gasladen geyser, pushing oxygen up and away. Birds flop, dead beneath me, but where are you?

Billowing towards spent propellant tanks, I spy you! So few of you remain. Were you trying to escape me?

Monica is a speculative fiction author, poet, writing contest goblin, and “the best mommy ever.”