The Beating Heart

A muffled noise echoed out into the darkness, sounding like a scream... whether it was we cannot know, the noise was too muffled. Some would argue it wasn’t even a noise... but a sinister vibration capable of curdling blood clots, prickling hair roots into protrusions of pain, shaking your organs so hard they’d phase momentarily out of your chest leaving you as a hollowed out carcass.

If you were in this dark deep place, listening to this vibration... your eardrums would implode along with your entire body. You’d simply be condensed into a bubble of jam no bigger than the pupil of your eye. But within this void a screaming whine pulsed through it; like opening a car window while driving down the motorway of the whistling of a boiling kettle. It was the sound of existence itself.

Obviously existence can’t have a noise if nothing is present. Otherwise this would be a case of lazy writing and a lack of imagination.

The vibration was the hottest substance on earth coming into contact with the most pressurised molecular plane. The earth’s thinnest area of crust touching against the water of the deepest underwater cave.

Bear in mind you still can’t see anything here... so allow me to shed some light.

Glowing orange sand erupted into clouds in the harsh blackness. Particles resembling volcanic ash faded and re-illuminated pulsing over & over again like a beating heart. Their glow shifted from orange to red then maroon as their glow faded away. The beads of colour all reached to an upwards point where they stopped dead. The glowing sand solidified into tiny rocks and sank back down on the floor. An eternal stream of lava droplets rose and sank on a repetitive cycle, seeping out from cracks on the ocean floor, cracks no wider than the hairs on your head. Surrounding the glowing vein-like cracks, lines of sand dunes lay dusted in glowing orange which resembled crumbling Egyptian pyramids caught in a biblical volcanic storm.

Tentacles dug into the sand dune. The slimy appendages carefully avoided the droplets of lava that bubbled up in tiny glowing orbs. The creature dug pointlessly into the self-replacing sand. This sea-creature was called an amphi. Just kidding. This species doesn’t have a name. But for the sake of us humans, being a species that has yet to evolve past the use of sounds for everything we think, amphi seems like a pretty cool name.

The amphi’s silhouette was incredibly undefined. The closest visual similarity being the translucent shapes that clot your vision when you get bleary eyed and try looking in different directions. Take a moment right now to think about those shapes… you look away from the screen as fast as you’ll see them; floaters. But this creature isn’t living in your eye, this story takes place on the ocean floor, among the unstable weaving of the earth’s crust.

Now if you’re struggling keeping up with this story because this creature doesn’t have a defined appearance then I’ll paint you a picture:

Imagine a transparent jellyfish combined with a squid and an axolotl. But if they were all melted and stirred into a weird stew then strained out into a thin blanket.

The creature (which we’ve named an amphi) continued digging into the self replacing sand until it found what it was looking for. Heatproof tentacles plunged into the lava strained ocean bed, ripping the cracks wide open and reaching in, grabbed a molten cluster that glowed an enchanting shade of pink. The amphi held the lump up towards it’s large singular eye. The lava sifted off the object revealing it to be a heart shaped locket. The amphi wrapped it’s tentacles tight round the object, running it’s skin along the surface to feel the shape of it.

In a gush of red & orange sand the amphi shot off into the darkness. The creature swam upwards. The ocean’s palette shifted from black, to dark grey, to navy. As it swam, the shapeless mass adapted itself. Areas of it’s wafer thin skin thickened and formed into limbs. It’s head elongated and contracted like a pointy arrow pulling itself heavenwards. It’s tentacles twisted into spinning spirals below, accelerating it up like high powered jet propellers. The amphi looked like an elaborate piece of pasta. It’s eyeball whipped around, moving back and forth across the surface of it’s skin. Moving to any part of its body as it pleased. The amphi’s eye retracted a layer of itself revealing a bright purple iris & a dilating grey pupil as it came to a less darker, lower pressured area of the sea.

The amphi snapped into a different direction, it’s pointy head changing trajectory and yanking it sideways with swift ease. It’s body didn’t even need to pivot in any way as the tentacles branched off into more tentacles from the side, spirally propelling itself onto a new path.

The creature approached towards the giant shadow of a tall cone shaped coral reef.

1 million years ago this “cone” monument was known as the Shard. The amphi went straight at it, moving at 100mph. Not even needing to change its direction, the amphi simply split down the centre into two halves of itself and circled around the opposing sides of the cone, reforming on the other side, continuing it’s straight path.

The amphi gripped the heart locket tightly as it swam towards another bizarre shaped coral reef. This one was circular with many gaps within it. A million years ago this would’ve been known as the London Eye. The beast whipped between the structural beams zig-zagging its way down it, splitting itself into different parts to manoeuver effectively between poles and cables, avoiding the rusty metal parts emerging between the layers of coral.

At the base of the structure, a metallic box displaying a yellow sticker of a lightning bolt sat embedded in the sand. The amphi formed itself into a large bubble around the power box. It’s dome shaped skin expelled the surrounding water from around the box until there was air. The amphi, retaining it’s biological dome, extended a portion of its body downwards, like a dangling chandelier in an igloo. A single tentacle holding the heart shaped locket descended towards the box. It’s tentacle twisted, the end of it forming into a human hand, the heart locket still tightly embraced within it’s grip.

Another tentacle dangled down from the dome of skin. This one began to sprout extra tentacles from it’s end. The appendage rolled in the sand like a high powered whisk, statically charging the surface of its skin. The ligament reached inside the box to touch various points across the circuit board while the hand tucked the heart locket into the nest of wires. Upon contact with the motherboard the metallic heart emitted a gigantic pulse of energy. The energy surge shot the amphi away, collapsing it’s bubble. The amphi flew away like an air-born deflating balloon. The amphi adjusted itself and swam back towards the structure. The deep thudding *thedum* of a heartbeat came from the wheel as it came to life. Neon strips glowed through thousands of years worth of rust, mould, mud, moss, fungus & dead coral. All signs of decay disintegrated instantaneously from the monument, exploding into a bright magical dust which settled on its surface, highlighting the structure like a star constellation.

The amphi swam towards the entrance where a ticket machine stood connected to a turnstile. The amphi shed a small portion of it’s skin into a perfect rectangle. One of its limbs refined it’s tentacle tip into a small penpoint, producing ink from the end, it wrote the words:

“Admit one - London Eye”.

The Amphi then drew a complex barcode on the rectangular cut out of skin. It fed the skin piece into the ticket machine which took it. Above the turnstile, a digital text displayed on a monitor:

“Welcome aboard the London Eye”.

The creature twisted and morphed its body into a human-like appearance. When I say “human” it wasn’t exactly your typical Sunday morning jogger. The large eye remained in the middle of its head, gills flared on the side of its neck and it retained it’s slimy translucent skin.

It entered a carriage, the heart locket in the power box pulsing through the whole wheel to offer a gentle calming simmer. The amphi sat down on the seat in the pod. Magic dust trickled in tiny bendy streams all around him. Magic dust flowed in from the heart locket. The dust began creating mirages of the extinct civilization known as the “humans'.

The amphi was created by them, being the subject of a lab experiment gone right. He was born by the splicing of numerous animal DNA being injected into his foetus prior to his birth. Destined to be a creature made to inhabit the earth when the human race died out, this is exactly what he had found himself doing.

But here’s where it all gets a bit iffy you see. Not only did they splice DNA but they also gave him the memories of a human. This human in particular was also of certain importance.

He was an archaeologist who had figured out the rough whereabouts of “magical” objects, which, when all linked correctly, could offer renewable energy across the globe and enabled any piece of technology to meet your desired needs.

This “renewable” energy source was magic. Something a scientific race like the “humans” couldn’t comprehend nor tap into. The heart locket contained a mystical force that he alone believed in using for the greater good. Before humanity’s demise he’d managed to use the magic by hybridising it with technology and... for a while humanity was harmonious with the environment.

But when there was good, it was always followed by evil. Governments wanted to weaponize it. Power hungry dictators wished for their countries to go back to suffering so they could still feel a sense of hierarchy. Equality was not something the powerful found pleasing.

Agents from foreign lands came for him: kidnappings, interrogations. Many tortured this man for his secrets. He was the only one who could control it. He didn’t want to be a fugitive all his life. He was weak, he gave in and told them how to execute it as a global weapon of annihilation. The torturer then called him pathetic for giving in so easily and killed him.

As the weapon was being manufactured people came for his corpse. Governments wanted to harvest his organs to find traces of magic to power it. In an effort to prevent any warlords taking his magical remains, his best friend protected his body, locking it in a hidden vault which he placed at the bottom of the ocean with a secret coded map to the location of the heart locket. Using science & the dead archaeologist's biological magic, he managed to extract his consciousness and memories and place them in a creature that would outlive the human race; capable of surviving in the extremist conditions with a neverending lifespan.

The animal reminisced as it went around the wheel a couple of times, staring out into the void, completely and utterly alone. He sat and waited. Overwhelmed with the guilt of causing the end of mankind. He sat on the ferris wheel, letting it take him round and round.

Many days passed. Sometimes the occasional dull grey fish would swim by, but nothing else. Until one day another amphi appeared. It held another heart shaped locket in it’s hand and approached him. They both stared intelligently into one another’s eyes for a while before he realized who it was. It was his friend who had saved him.