Sun Wukong & the Peach of Immortality
Tales from the Resplendent Carnival #5
Tsui’s Ever-Blooming Arboretum was often described as a “hell planet,” though not by anyone who lived there. Generations ago, the first settlers had genetically engineered their children to be perfectly adapted to the sweltering planet’s abundant greenhouse gases, mile-high canopy, pitch black forest floor, even its teeming seas and oceans. They’d become enormous merfolk with gills, gas bladders, and fins where their feet should be; feathered avians who stand on their knuckles use their feet as hands; and sightless, translucent predators of the undergrowth who hunted via echolocation.
Sun Wukong’s ancestors decided he should be a light, nimble denizen of the treetops, with eyes like saucers and a prehensile tail. His fur-covered body stood less than a meter tall, but he lived his life hundreds of meters in the air, rarely seeing sky or ground. On this particular day, he was careening from branch to branch with particular haste, because his grandfather had taken ill.
Old Man Sun lived in a large, disc-shaped treehouse, the top floor of which was a single room, completely open to the forest. Wukong hurled himself the last few meters and rolled through the breakfast nook, nearly barreling over the doctor, who was lapping up some tea.
“Squawk!” the doctor squawked, white feathers bristling.
“How is he?” Wukong asked without preamble.
It was hard to read the doctor’s expression, what with the beak and all. His wings were folded vertically against his body, like legs, with his talons thrust forward, holding his tea. “Not good. Another month, maybe two, but I’m out of ideas. Maybe you’ll think of something I couldn’t.”
Wukong hurried across the kitchen and pushed the bedroom curtain aside. His grandfather was lying in his hammock, tail brushing the floorboards, limp and lifeless. For a moment, Wukong feared the worst, but the old man was only asleep. Careful not to wake him, the monkey activated his geomantic compass and a disc of spinning, concentric rings sprang to life above the hammock, charting his grandfather’s meridians.
The doctor was right: His own Wood nanites had turned against each other. It happened sometimes, after a century or two.
“How’s it looking?” grandfather asked, his voice so strained and feeble, Wukong nearly didn’t recognize it.
“Could be better, yeye,” he closed his compass and picked a few nits from the old man’s fur. “The mutations in your code are pernicious. There’s no way to correct them at this point, not permanently.”
“I guess I won’t be around to greet the First Emperor when he returns, after all,” Grandfather tried to smile, but it turned into a ragged cough.
“Don’t count yourself out just yet,” Wukong reassured him. “You still have a month or two left and Minzhe can try some things to make you more comfortable.”
Old Man Sun gew instantly suspicious. “Minzhe? Where are you gonna be? Surely not doing anything foolish and/or illegal.”
“The First Emperor owes you something for your faith, yeye.”
“I just cannot get over how adorable you are!” The Immortal leaned over and drunkenly mussed the fur on Sun Wukong’s head. Had his grandfather’s life not hung in the balance, he’d have busted out his staff and knocked her condescending teeth from her head.
They stood in the center of a public square on the Resplendent Carnival, surrounded by gawdy buildings, a dizzying kaleidoscope of animated signs, and a murmuring cloud of well-dressed lookers-on. Wukong had found his new “friend” in the bawdy dinner theater to his right, watching a salacious play about forbidden love — or maybe it was a plot-heavy strip tease, he hadn’t been paying attention — and managed to goad her into racing him back to the Forbidden Palace.
“Are all the pariah as adorable as you?” she pretty much shouted in his ear.
“No,” he fired back. “Some of them are toothy-beaked horror shows who use their feet as hands. It’s like they’re daring you to star at their asses. Are we gonna do this thing or what?”
“Yes, yes, chatty monkey,” she waved dismissively. “I’m just waiting for my mount.”
“Your mount?!”
She smirked at him. “You never specified a foot race. Did you not bring your flying mount?”
Right on cue, a rainbow-colored monstrosity glided over the red-tiled roof behind them. It painted thick strokes of glitter across the sky as it soared, looped, dove, and then landed before them in a blast of perfumed air. Each of its nine heads was a different species of bird: proud Rooster, elegant Swan, fierce Eagle, humble Duck, regal Heron, deadly Osprey, red-eyed Loon, long-beaked Ibis, and a presumably smart-mouthed Parrot.
Wukong wished he’d put more poison in the Immortal’s drink.
She leapt onto the beast’s ornate, gilded saddle. “Shall we?”
“I’m ready when you are.”
“With those itty bitty legs?” she purred as her parrot laughed it up. “You couldn’t win a race against a receding glacier! Why, my great grandmother could get back to the palace before you… and she’s dead!”
Wukong ground his molars. “Just go already, will you?”
Still guffawing, she snapped the creature’s reigns and it took to the air, kicking up a cloud of dust and glitter. Win or lose, Wukong had less than a minute before the poison started to take effect… less than a minute to get from the surface of this crazy, inside-out world to the impossible palace half a kilometer above.
No problem.
The monkey held tight to his staff as one of the gold-banded tips separated, pushing hard against the cobblestones. The rest of the staff rocketed skyward, dragging Wukong with it. Faint lightning arced behind him as the tip of the staff receded into the distance.
Judging by her expression, the Immortal was surprised to see him. She’d been wheeling through traffic, taking her good old time, when she noticed her adorable opponent racing upward like an archer’s arrow. Suddenly serious, she kicked her aviary hard in the ribs and it lurched forward, spraying feathers everywhere.
A sampan veered into Wukong’s path. Heart pounding, he deactivated his staff and slammed into the hovering boat’s hull on all fours. Before gravity could have its way with him, he hooked the side of the boat with his tail and flipped himself onto the deck. The boatman almost fell overboard, before Wukong steadied him.
The golden tip of his staff flew up over the side of the boat and snapped back into place. Wukong braced it against the deck and activated it again, returning to the race. Unfortunately, the sampan gave way a lot more than the ground had, which may have cost him precious seconds… if the poison hadn’t kicked in.
The Immortal slumped in her saddle and her mount slowed, not sure where it was supposed to be going. Worried shouts erupted from an alabaster balcony where other Immortals had gathered to watch. Before they could intervene, Wukong adjusted his trajectory and grabbed the Ibis-head by its beak. He guided it to a landing right behind him, making sure his itty bitty feet hit the balcony first.
Now, it was quite impossible to poison an Immortal in the conventional sense. They’d partaken of the Peach of Immortality and its perfect nanites protected their bodies from all the effects of age, illness, and disease. There was, however, a big loophole for inebriation, because who would want to live forever stone sober?
It only took a minute for her fellows to figure it out and reverse the effects, but that was more than enough time for Wukong to disappear inside their wondrous museum of privilege.
It was cold and dry inside the Forbidden Palace, even moreso than the Carnival or the core worlds Wukong had already suffered through on his journey. He longed for his torrid homeworld. But his yeye needed him, so Wukong adjusted his circulatory system to generate a little more body heat and soldiered on.
He was wandering down an endless gallery of glowing, white walls. Rooms and hallways intersected it at every angle, even upside-down and sideways. At one point, a stone bridge ran through the gallery, spanning a river of mercury on either side. Brass fishermen poled their little rafts across its mirrored surface as their cormorants spread glass feathers in the simulated sunshine.
Wukong snapped back to attention when the mostly-naked participants of a zero-g orgy suddenly disgorged into the gallery, apparently pausing for dinner. He hid over the side of the stone bridge, dangling over the poisonous mercury, until they’d faded into the distance.
No peach tree, though, not even a conservatory. It was only a matter of time before someone spotted him, and that would most likely mean death, even had he not recently fake-poisoned an Immortal. It was called the Forbidden Palace for a reason.
But then an open door appeared beneath his feet, seemed to melt right into the floor. Wukong tumbled inside, landing on his ass when gravity suddenly turned ninety degrees. He sprang to his feet, staff at the ready, but there was no Immortal lynch mob waiting for him, just a woman with kind eyes and a beautiful braid that fell over one shoulder. A gold torque sat atop a simple, white tunic with a high collar and black trim, sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
Behind her, a hologram of the entire empire hung in the darkness. The room was otherwise unlit, especially when the door slammed shut behind him. The star chart cast them in an otherworldly glow.
“Look at you!” the woman beamed. She came down to Wukong’s level, crouching on her knees, and reached for his itty bitty wrist. “Do you mind?” For some reason, he did not. She took his pulse. “Better than I could have hoped, though your blood pressure is a little high.”
“I was cold,” he muttered, suddenly shy.
“Yes, of course. That’s the price for adapting the body to fit a new world, isn’t it? Rather than remaking the world to fit ourselves.”
He took his wrist back abruptly. “Yeah, well, it’s not a choice I made for myself. What would you know about it? You just moved an entire room to avoid walking down the hall.”
“Did I?” she winked. “You should know that the Jade Emperor sees everything, here. I’ve taken the liberty of shielding this room, for the moment, but he doubtless knows you’re here. What are your intentions?”
“My grandfather is dying,” Wukong admitted, all shyness forgotten. “He’s a claviger, been waiting for the First Emperor’s return all his life. He deserves to see it.”
“So, you’ve come for a peach.” It wasn’t a question. “Obviously, I’m forbidden from assisting you in such an endeavor, but perhaps I can give you something to help you escape, should you realize the error of your ways.” She removed the torque from her neck and crushed it, the material suddenly compliant in her hands. Then, she drew it into a thick string and shaped it into a loop, twisting the ends together. She set it atop Wukong’s head like a crown. “There, now the Jade Emperor won’t be able to see you, not for a while.”
“Thank you…” he stammered, dumbstruck.
“Boshi, the doctor,” she bowed ever so slightly.
“One of the Eight,” the monkey gasped.
“The one who seeded your planet, many years ago,” she added with a beatific smile. “And I couldn’t be more proud. Now… off you go!” The door opened behind him and the gravity tilted again, this time dropping him back into the hallway.
But not the same hallway. Instead of the endless gallery, he now found himself in a featureless space. The ceiling soared out of sight, the walls fading to an indistinct, white glow. An open portal to his left lead into a gargantuan stable crowded with mythical creatures: foo dogs and nine-tailed foxes; storm dragons, sea dragons, and giant snakes; white tigers and vermillion birds; even the fearsome Nian, all horns and fangs and fiery mane.
Wukong barely glanced at it, however, as the portal on his right opened into a lush and splendid garden where every plant under Heaven had been gathered together, then grouped by biome and planetary chemistry. A beam of golden light slanted down in the center of this oasis, illuminating a low hill and the broad branches of a peach tree in bloom.
He rushed through the undergrowth like a hungry hare, joy completely overwhelming caution. He climbed the hill in a single bound and scampered up the peach tree’s trunk to the lowest of its fruit-bearing branches.
“What the thrice-damned hell do you think you’re doing?” A deep, resonate voice asked him from beneath the tree’s copacetic shade.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Wukong asked, displaying the plucked peach in his hand.
“Give it here.”
This time, Wukong recognized the Immortal immediately. This was Zhu, First Among the Eight, Emperor of Heaven in all but title. The man sat up like a drunken sailor, which was only half true. The copulating illustrations on his pearlescent robe reacted as if jostled from their desired positions. He held out one perfectly manicured hand — the other ever-occupied with his wine skein — and Wukong sullenly deposited his peach therein.
“By whose grace did you get this far, I wonder?”
“Maybe the First Emperor is looking out for me,” the monkey countered.
“Ha! You’re one of those. Let me open your eyes, little pariah. Everything under Heaven is exactly as the First Emperor wants it. All your struggles, your tragedies, your injustices… they’re by his design.
“And I’ll let you in on a little secret: He’s not coming back to change a damned thing, because he never left! He’s been here all along, right here in this palace, watching over everything.
“He’s what happens to humanity when it has direct access to all this miraculous technology, without the need for devices or the elemental forms, without art or artifice. He is what happens when men become gods.
“But that’s not what he wants for you, oh no! He thinks human beings are better off growing old and dying, better off when they have to learn and grow and suffer defeat. Helping you is the furthest thing from his mind.
“And do you want to know the worst part?” Zhu whispered, taking a swig from his skein. “The worst part is, deep down, I think he’s right.”
Wukong bristled under this onslaught, but he would not bow before it. Instead, he readied his staff and told the Emperor of Heaven a secret of his own. “I don’t think it matters what the First Emperor wants… because I picked a peach with my tail, too.”
He displayed his hidden prize for just a moment before activating his staff. One, golden end flew into Zhu’s chest and sent him flying across the garden like a New Year’s firecracker.
Wukong didn’t wait for it to retract before taking off back the way he’d come. Unfortunately, the palace was always changing. The hallway with the stables was gone now, replaced by a stairway that spiraled away to infinity in both directions.
The end of his staff snapped back into place as monkey vaulted the railing and let gravity be his guide. His eyes watered as floor after floor blurred past. He forced himself to look down just in time, a mosaic of black and white tiles in the familiar shape of yin and yang was rushing up to meet him.
He extended his trusty staff and the end cap slammed into the tiles like a thunderbolt. Wukong held on for dear life as the staff decelerated, then rolled out to a bone-jarring but survivable landing, Immortality Peach still gently cradled in his tail.
The room… wasn’t a room anymore. The walls and floor flowed like a river of cream, white and viscous. Even the yin yang tiles were rapidly dissolving under his feet. In the gaps between currents, Wukong caught glimpses of the Carnival below. Or above. Whatever. He was sick of this place.
He channeled all his chi into his short, little legs and charged across the liquid landscape with grace and speed well beyond the hairless apes who’d been lecturing him all day.
He slammed into a floating chunk of primordial matter and shoved it out of the palace’s gravity well and into the Carnival’s, where “down” became much less academic. They tumbled together through traffic, scattering airships like dandelion seeds, until a Dragon Gate plaza bloomed beneath them.
Wukong closed his eyes and waited for his moment, letting the world spin sickeningly around him. He found a low-flying junk in just the right position and sent one end of his staff shooting out over its deck. He retracted it and held on tight as the staff swung him away, right through the Dragon Gate, as his makeshift meteor crashed into the plaza behind him, scattering like spilled rice.
On the other side of the gate, Sun Wukong vanished into the core world crowds like a ghost, far from the Jade Emperor’s sight and the lies of the Immortals. He lived long enough to trouble the Empire of Heaven many, many, many more times… though not nearly as long as his grandfather.
