who's keeping count anymore?

chapter 102 maybe , I cant read roman numbers anymore, can you?

"Hatching Like Turtles In The Dust."

The little martian finds me on the second floor of an abandoned office building.

I suppose abandoned is the wrong word to use for this — the building is full; it is I who have abandoned it.

I sit, shattered, tear-stained, and in a too-big company hoodie, willing my blue Trinity thermos to refill itself with black coffee — like that magic cooking pot that never ran out of porridge from that lovely little fairy tale in that kiddie book I read all those years ago…

“I wish I could be a baby again,” I tell the little martian.

“A baby?”

“Like a little human. With tiny hands, and tiny feet, and no responsibilities.”

“Tiny creatures get eaten faster,” the martian replies slowly, as though it is I who am daft.

“Yes, but I’m a human. We’re at the top of the food chain. No one will eat me if I’m a baby. Unless they’re Armie Hammer.”

“Army who now?”

“We don’t have enough time for this.”

The martian shrugs.

“Okay, so why do you want to de-evolutionize anyway? It’s taken a while to get here, hasn’t it? Do you really want to do all this crap from scratch?”

“I just want things to be simpler. To just eat and shit and sleep and cry without feeling lame about it.”

“You do all those things either way,” the martian reminds me, rather bluntly.

“Yes, but—”

“It sounds to me like the only difference between a little human and a big human is the fact that the little one owns his whininess, while the big one pretends it’s some deep traumatic truth that can only be unravelled on a specialist’s couch!”

“Ouch, LM, that’s harsh — and quite frankly, it’s rather problematic.”

“You humans are rather problematic,” replies the martian, deadpan.

“What was your childhood like?” I ask the martian. I have decided not to defend humanity’s honour from the cutting words of my grumpy little martian today.

“My childhood?” the martian replies slowly, as though the very concept is one that is foreign to him.

“You know, when you were tiny and young and still in a cot or hanging with your parents in a little martian onesie.”

The martian looks away.I hope I haven’t struck a nerve.

“LM?”

“Martians don’t have parents, or cots, or onesies,” he replies softly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, LM. We don’t have to—”

“We’re born in clusters,” the martian says instead, an faraway look in his eyes. “Groups of five or six, scattered in the sand dunes, hatching like turtles in the dust.”

“Eggs?” I ask, incredulous.

“No, bubbles. Yes, eggs, you idiot.”

“We don’t have mums and dads and aunts and uncles and dadis and nanis,” the martian mutters, his voice softening to reveal a strange sadness I have never detected before. “We have only each other — our clusters. And we raise each other like a team. We forage and flourish, tracking homes and building our own teeny- tiny villages until we lose one of our lot to a martian marital union. And then our clusters dwindle… from five to four, and sometimes two to one…”

I look down at my toes and ask the next question.“Is that what happened to you, LM? Were you the only one left in your cluster?”

The Martian’s eyes snap up to mine, and he winces.“Something like that…”

“Is that what happened with you and Estella? was she a part of your cluster as well?”

The Martian just shakes his head, weary and a splash irritable.

“No, she was not. I don’t want to talk about this anymore…”

This is the most I have gotten out of the Martian in years; I can't help but push.

“And the zookabug dynasty? How did that come about-“

“I said I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” The Martian says, soft yet firm, his words cemented like dahi in a cheese cloth ; moist, firm, and just a little sour.

I let his past ferment in the silence that grows stale between us.