Bee

 Bee

When a man has been alive for as long as life can remember, it becomes a challenge to pin down what exactly his first memory is. Though finer details and early strokes have faded away from his heavy-laden mind over the centuries, one strong first impression remains, and must always remain. 

It went something like this.

0.

The surroundings were of strange vegetation, the world humid and fertile. He was scarcely a man among mammals, just a thing with a barely burgeoning consciousness. There were others like him close by, but not close enough to share in the revelation that was just about to occur. They were a herd, or a tribe. A mother and father followed closely, perhaps, or maybe all that remained were siblings. All he can recall for certain is that they were family, fighting for survival amongst a flourishing wasteland. Inhospitable to what they were then, but soon, a world that was not theirs would bow beneath the feet of what they would become.  

They were traveling. Always roaming. The world was brilliant in new ways at every turn, just coming to fruition, exploring itself and its creation, but no one stopped to appreciate it. No one knew how. Not until wonder came into his vocabulary and changed the way his eyes soaked in the world. That wonder, he would come to understand, was a spark gifted to a rare few of the race. A gene that would make them extraordinary.

The first thing he saw when that wonder struck his heart were the colors. Before him, a field of flowers. So vibrant. Like the sun had come down and made a place in the grass. There were hundreds if not thousands of flowers colored as viciously as the burning planet above, orange and red and yellow all begging to be admired. Upon one of the flowers, a bumbling little creature, yellow and black, eager in its work. Though he did not know the word then, his mind ascribes it to the feeling now; enchanting.

His uncalloused hand came to rest near the petals of the brilliant poppy, a finger outstretched in invitation. Strange, that beneath all the dirt and grime, the barbarian he was had not a scratch upon him. He didn’t know it then, but beneath the world’s muck, he would always be clean and unmarred. As if he had never walked this earth at all. The fuzzy little bumblebee, drunk with pollen, hardly knew the difference between its quest along the petals and this open appendage, and wandered dreamily onto his palm, its small, sticky legs making circles along his skin. Bringing it up to eye level, the man admired the insect with all the marvel he could muster. It was such a ripe, poignant feeling. A feeling of elation, of ecstaticness. A feeling that the world was rich and wonderful, full of magic he could so barely comprehend but wanted to know. This memory is one he clings onto because of that wonder. It is a memory he must cling onto. Because if that wonder is lost, there is no hope for his endless life.

Much of the flora and fauna from this memory no longer even dreams of existing. But the bumblebee carried on, and though it had indeed changed over the long stretches of time that ran the flowers it once pollinated from extinct, new seeds bloomed, new bumblebees were born, and life continued. 

Life always continued. This was both the blessing and curse of the man who called himself --

1. 

“Bee?” shouted the barmaid over the noise. “What kinda a name is that?!”

“It’s my name, thank you,” Bee shouted back. “Will you please pass it along to the gentleman in the back, and say I’m here for the job?”

Raucous. Saloons were dreadful places, becoming increasingly worse the darker the day got. Often stepping inside one made Bee regret leaving his life of British pleasantries behind, but it had been far past overdue to craft a new face, and America had everyone simply buzzing. New opportunity this, new frontier that. He’d heard it all before, of course, but that never squashed the hope that something might be different this time. Though it wasn’t like he had much of a choice. A man like him had to move, no matter where the tide took him.

Here, he’d traded his cufflinks for boot spurs and lapels for lassos. Entering into a new culture each time was akin to jumping into a fairytale, and Bee had met the brothers Grimm personally. Sometimes, Bee couldn’t believe the greetings and traditions and holidays that the humans made up. Then, he would have to remind himself that he, too, was human. Sort of.

One arm on the bar, Bee drummed his fingers in waiting. He was no fortune teller, no time traveler. Despite his eons, he did not know the earth’s next step. He did not pretend to be a psychic or a god or a deity. He simply tried, wherever he went, to be an honest man. 

Sometimes, however, honest men needed to eat.

And sometimes, honest men liked a little excitement with their dinner.

The barmaid returned, giving him a once-over of both suspicion and disbelief as she beckoned him behind the bar. She was right to be suspicious - he had yet to perfect the southern nonchalance, the ability to hold a piece of straw between his teeth for ungodly amounts of time. Or maybe it wasn’t his mannerisms, but his appearance. Bee looked nothing like the bright-eyed cowboys of the frontier. He was tall and broad, with a nose so aquiline it looked almost neolithic. Dark eyes, bushy brows, squarish jaw, boxy form. He looked not like a man, but rather a rough rock sculpted into sentience and given life. 

Or, maybe she was just suspicious of how he’d found his way into the secret entry place of one of the west’s greatest criminals with no invitation. That would also be a rather reasonable guess. 

He was led to the back, which was not just a storeroom, but a small meeting room, with a table and chairs in the center of the alcohol-lined shelves. A rough looking man, boots kicked up onto the table, cowboy hat tipped to hide his face, sat in the seat at the head of the table as if it were his throne. Bee had seen many kings in his lifetime, but he’d long since decided that the demeanor of a man made them more royalty than anything else. This man, certainly, was going to act like a king.

“Priscilla says you’re here for the job,” he drawled, that southern snarl snagging sharp in Bee’s ears. “How’d you even find out ‘bout that, stranger?”

Bee straightened his shoulders, taking the seat across from the man without invitation. “I run in certain circles, as do you.”

“And where would those circles be collidin’?”

Bee smiled. “When they have need of special people.”

The man’s cowboy hat tipped up. Finally, Bee could see his eyes. Green jewels, glittering with suspicion beneath an unkempt beard and a twisted scar above the brow. A pleasant amount of life in those eyes, Bee thought, all things considered.

Then the man pulled out a pistol and leveled it at Bee.

“Oh.” Bee said with a small pout. “There’s no need for that, really.”

“I don’t mess with the likes of you,” the man snarled. “Mutants.”

“Really?” Bee said. “I thought you’d appreciate a man with talents joining you on your high stakes robbery, no?” 

“Are you the one they’re whisperin’ ‘bout, huh?” he hissed, leaning over the tabletop. “The killer?”

“No,” said Bee, with the innocence of a child. 

“No? ‘Cause I heard about him, y’know. Glowing red eyes. Pullin’ people apart with his mind. Leavin’ em out for the dogs.”

“Very nasty sounding thing,” Bee agreed earnestly. “But I do none of that.”

The cowboy’s fist slammed on the table. “Prove it,” he said sharply, perhaps in an effort to make Bee flinch. He did not. “Show me yer glow.”

Bee tilted his head in curiosity. This man did know a fair bit about his kind. The glow, for starters, was their greatest giveaway, but for Bee it was not so simple. 

“Well, I would like to prove to you I am not this tasteless serial killer,” Bee said with a nod of understanding. “How about you shoot me?”

The ruffian balked. It wasn’t often the man that you wanted to shoot asked you to do it. But Bee carried on as if this were as simple as asking about the weather. 

“Shoot me, yes. Choose your location, really, it doesn’t matter to me. Bonus points if you can get it somewhere quite plausible, you know? Like the mouth or between the --”

BANG.

Bee’s brains splattered the wall behind him. 

There was a moment of dead silence before a glow erupted in his lifeless eyes. White, pure white, encapsulating the entirety of his sclera and giving off a subtle radiance that brightened the bloody hole between his eyes. Despite the viscera spattered behind him, the cowboy could watch as, piece by piece, first the mush of his brain, then the bone surrounding it, then his skin, all knit back together with a practiced determination, like an ant returning home with its crumbs at all costs.

In all, it took about a minute for Bee’s head to put itself back together. When it was done, he blinked a bit, and the glow faded out of existence, leaving his own sharp, brown eyes to look at the man who had shot him with a rather large grin.

“Wow!” Bee exclaimed, rather excited. “You just went for it!”

The man sputtered something intelligible, white as a sheet.

“Oh, that was brilliant,” Bee went on. “Wow, you were really ready to be done with me, eh?” A full chested laugh escaped him. “Priceless!” 

Now feeling some of that rugged southern confidence he’d seen everyone swaggering about with, Bee put his feet up on the table. “Oh, come on, son. Lighten up. You’ve just added an unkillable man to your crew. Or, rather, as the boss of your crew, now.” 

Pausing, feeling a surge of excitement, Bee reached over and grabbed the man’s hat off his head, donning the cowboy accessory for himself. He sat back, appeased, while the man looked at him, dumbfounded. “Now, let’s talk split, hm? Twenty eighty is generous, no? Just to be clear though, I am the eighty, if you should want to keep your life.”

Bee tipped his hat, chuckling to himself. “How do you say it? Oh. Yeehaw.” 

2. 

Despite having a century to watch man’s method of wasting time with booze evolve, Bee had not been able to decide what was worse; a pub, or a saloon.

The musty green walls were almost damp with what they’d absorbed over the decades. A TV blared in the corner, some dull sport capturing the drunk faces of his fellow bargoers, and the sound of cue sticks hitting 8-balls echoed behind him in a lilting, stumbling rhythm. The smell of liquor and cigarettes entangled in the atmosphere for a nasty dance, and the bartender leaned over the counter, refilling his glass of whiskey without needing to be asked. All his senses were occupied by the instruments of the tavern. But despite the stagnant air, there was a flow to a place like this. An unspoken pattern.

Bee peered into the bartender’s eyes, a glossed-over, hazy blue. A hundred years ago, America had been new and shiny, the promise of gold gleaming in everyone’s hungry gaze. Now, things felt stale. The people had grown bored, comfortable in their descent. Everyone did what they thought they had to do to survive, and little more. Everyone used to clamber for greatness, for change, for victory. Bee knew why that had changed. 

It was because his people were hiding. The metahumans were run ragged, pushed into the darkness, their glows underground, their brilliance squashed upon. They were afraid to be seen by those uninspired, those without gift. Fools, Bee thought. No wonder the world had run itself dry - without metahumans to push revolutions forward, create technology that no one yet had been able to dream up, how could they progress? All of their lore had faded into legend, and given way to a tedious, deadened world. With the insistence from metahumans to pretend like they didn’t exist alongside the rapid modernization of the world, Bee had to start changing identities. Falsifying documents. Birth certificates had really put a damper on his style, and suddenly it was so much harder to “end” his bloodline and start another with no proof of inheritance. He’d practically become some sort of lawyer, watching his own paperwork, making sure he had enough legal nonsense prepared to ensure he seemed like a real enough person and not one that had lived for as long as man could count. 

He tutted to himself, downing his drink in one go. Though it was very tempting to blow his brains out on national television and show the world that metahumans were very, very real, to end his game of aliases once and for all, Bee had made a vow long ago that he would not do such a thing. Over time, to still that desire thrumming within him, he’d come to consider himself as more of a rock perched on a very tall cliff, one precariously left there by the receding of oceans and changing of geographies. Privy to the view, but not part of the change. Just a bystander. He was a comfortable onlooker, a moving, living relic. His pillages as a conqueror, a cowboy and otherwise had left him in a very good position, at least financially. He didn’t have to worry. But with his cemented place in time, he scared other metahumans with his longevity (a concept they barely knew the first thing about) and he knew that they would not be happy if he upended their claustrophobically comfortable little lives just because his was unendable. 

That vow was going to be the death of him.

Bee still didn’t like pubs. And though he was not a psychic, he was coming to accept that he did have a bit of a sixth sense for these things. Not a psychic, no, but maybe an empath. An empath of empires. That had a good ring to it. After so much time watching dynasties rise and fall, he could feel it in the air when one was due for a change. An earth shattering one. True to his word, Bee would have nothing to do with it. But it wasn’t his fault if he wanted to get a front row seat.

A pub, saloon or otherwise was always the best place to watch something earth shattering happen. 

“Need anything else, sugar?” the bartender spoke sweetly, and he swore he could hear the horses of the frontier clambering behind the swinging wooden doors. Sometimes, memories washed over him like a wave, only to recede and leave him in the sand, stranded in a foreign time like a beached whale. He inhaled, and he smiled back, though it was strained.

“No, thank you, dear,” Bee said. “I’m waiting.”

“For a friend?” she filled in.

After a pause, he nodded. “A very old friend of mine.”

A jarring cut on the TV took the channel from soccer to static. Then, a flash of text across the screen. BREAKING NEWS. All the hazy faces in the pub came alive as they watched the very first broadcasted footage of metahumans on live TV.

A chorus of confusion began to sing.

“Is that girl throwing flame from her hands?”

“This is bullshit. It’s photoshopped.”

“If it was photoshopped it wouldn’t be on live TV!”

“Jerry, that kid is flying!”

“Ho-ly shit. Are you tellin’ me superpowers are real?!”

Rousing the bartender from her stupor with a raise of his glass, Bee signaled for a refill. “My old friend is here,” he said, unphased. “Will you pour me another?”

3. 

The year was twenty-one-hundred-something. Pubs were now called gizmohatches. Bee thought that was the most stupid name of them all.

Once metahumans were shunted into public view with that special little broadcast, things advanced very quickly. A bit too quickly for Bee’s liking. He usually enjoyed savoring the slow changes, but skyscrapers climbed so fast that in just a few short decades, he could hardly see the stars any longer. Metahumans were everywhere, and for once, Bee felt like the claustrophobic one, watching streets become unbearably cramped and superpowers crowd every corner. Once upon a time, they had been special and rare. But now they were the many. And that many had advanced the world at the speed of light. Hovercraft, holocomms, implants in the brain, virtual realities, all sorts of terribly invasive technological ameliorations that Bee was disappointed to be associated with. Especially because of all the horrors that it had brought on. Starvation, overpopulation. They were running out of food, out of energy, out of clean air and open space and anything that made human life feasibly worth living. For the first time, Bee felt time running thin. And he didn’t like to think about what would happen when the whole world finally croaked and he was left standing.

They weren’t quite there yet, though. People were still kicking the bucket around. Metahumans were surviving, smuggling food packets, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. Despite that lovely Robin Hood idealism, it was like being aboard a sinking ship. And frankly? Bee felt a little bit like he’d lost his touch. Normally he’d be able to keep up with all the change, at least enough to hold fast to self preservation, but this time it had just been too much too soon. Clinging to his old ways had made him stick out like a sore thumb, and those with new fancy, flashy, neon-tinged powers had gobbled him up before he could blink.

Unfortunately, this scene would not be taking place in a gizmohatch, even though that would keep with the theme. That was, however, where Bee had been very crudely abducted from, and now, bound inside of some sort of glass tube, hooked up to wires and machines, he found himself longing for the scenery he always loved to hate, the mess of music and the smell of alcohol and the bartender of the times doting on him becoming a wistful memory in his new cage.

“You couldn’t even let me finish my drink!” Bee bellowed. 

A very fat and annoying man stepped into view. Bee knew this man from the holographic billboards that plastered the lower ring of Takym, the new name for the fractured America. Lyris Matrikt, the CEO of Big Bux Co., the ruiner of any civilized mercantile system and the man who was surely going to run things into the ground, if Bee had to place any bets. Lyris Matrikt was the monopoly man (though no one in twenty-one-hundred-whatever remembered what Monopoly was) - the owner of all, the giver of little. The rich flourished, the poor perished. And this time, there was likely no coming back from it.

Lyris Matrikt sniffed. “You seem rather unphased for someone who’s just been kidnapped.”

Bee replied through an unimpressed grumble. “Do you know how many people have locked me in cells? Generally, I appreciate the me-time. What I don’t appreciate is being interrupted.”

Lyris might have laughed. Or maybe it was a snotty-cough. Bee couldn’t really tell the difference.

“Are you going to ask why I brought you here?”
“No,” said Bee. “You’re going to tell me anyway.”

Lyris paused, squinting at Bee, knowing he was right but not very fond of admitting such things. “Well,” Lyris continued nasally. “It’s a topic that affects all of us, the world’s oldest man included.”

With a dramatic groan, Bee lolled his head in a limited go-on gesture. “Enlighten me,” he begrudged. Despite the damper being put on his speech, the monopoly man continued.

“I’ve found a new power source,” Lyris said calmly. “One that will last us long past the loss of gasoline and neon. One that will keep my Sanctuary alive forever.”

Bee spat at the glass. Lyris flinched a little, but regained composure quickly. He stared at Bee for a moment, insulted, then continued.

“Metahumans,” Lyris went on. “So much power in them. My Sanctuary can run on that power forever. And what better a source than the oldest man alive?”

Despite the circumstance, looking at this rotund bastard actually made Bee look forward to being the last person alive. Just to watch him wither and rot. Lifting his chin, a sparkle of inspiration simmered in Bee’s eyes as he caught Lyris’ gaze. Lyris, unhappy and unsettled to see such passion in his prisoner, stepped back. 

“My old friend is coming,” Bee said gently. “Will you tell him I say hello?”

Lyris sneered and turned away, leaving Bee to count the minutes as his body was drained, his power swallowed and stolen, his mind etching away, until… 

4. 

Bee was at the end of time. 

There might’ve been a saloon here once. Or a pub, or a gizmohatch. Now, there was just dust. 

As the self proclaimed empath of empires, Bee had been right. Matrikt and his Sanctuary had brought the end of the end. It had all been run into the ground. With one grand malfunction, his metahuman meat grinder -- sorry -- power extractor had exploded and taken quite a big chunk of civilization with it. Under the ashes was rubble and ruin, little left to recover, few lives left to recover what little. Then came the walkers - deadened husks of what were once metahumans, sucked dry by Matrikt’s experiments, zombies as popular fiction would have called them, roaming a barren wasteland and cannibalistically chewing on what bare amounts of life remained. 

There was one chewing on him right now, actually.

It had only half a head but unfortunately its teeth still worked. Like a dog with a bone, the once-human gnawed on his forearm, grumbling and grunting each time Bee’s flesh renewed itself, pleased with the endless source of entertainment and nourishment. Finally growing tired of it, Bee raised his other hand, the one holding a baseball bat, and bashed the poor creature into the dirt where it belonged.

Then, he sat back down in the dust and continued to wait. For his very old friend.

“It’s about time you come and relieve me of my post,” Bee said to the open air, voice tired and gaze glossy. “I know I did nothing particularly important with my time, but I figure you wanted some sort of accountable reference for life on earth, perhaps? One very long human history book. Well, you can come collect me now, and read up on all the things I’ve witnessed. I can tell it with quite a lot of pizzazz.” 

The wind whistled a little. Bee dragged his foot in the dirt and the dried up guts of the walker, mixing them together, making a painting. For the first time in many years, in many decades, in many centuries, Bee felt tears well up in his eyes.

“Did you forget?” trembling, he asked. “That I was human?”

And the voice of his old friend blessedly came. 

No.

A laugh escaped him, one of aching relief. “There you are,” he said tearily. “I thought you were going to leave me here.”

I never left you, Bee.

“I know,” Bee said, voice cracking. “I know.”

I am ready to hear the story you’ve gathered for me.

“I can go?” Bee asked, like a child relieved of duty.

Yes.

There was a sound, a small hum. In front of him, the guts of the walker had sunk into the dry earth, and from its carcass bloomed a flower. Brilliant orange petals, familiar as the blazing sun, beckoning forth a buzzing little bumblebee. Just as he remembered, Bee put forth his finger and invited his old friend onto his finger.

Wonder. Excitement. Enchantment. Bee suddenly, viciously, remembered it all, and those feelings gripped his heart and thrust him back through that first, ancient memory. The thrill to be alive, the excitement to learn and try. His tears came in droves, like the waves that had once drowned him, and wet the earth with salt and life. As he died, he melted, and infused every crack in the rocks with the memories of fragile being and the hunger for change. And this barren world would too grow again, grow humid and flourish with a soul in its roots, a catalog of centuries stored in its stones, in remembrance of a man who had collected every feeling, every emotion, every possible life there was to live and brought it back to the dust and the dirt for it to grow and learn and try again. 

Thank you, Bee.

For teaching me.