Saint Sophia, Full of Mercy

Saint Sophia, full of mercy, walked up to the viral discharge and offered it a sip of water from her canteen.

“Four broken emails has been found and recovered,” she whispered.

The viral discharge immediately recognised the woman for what she was, ecophagy personified, and recoiled at the sight and touch of a rival. A milieu of insecurity surrounded Saint Sophia: it pulsated behind her face mask (マスク), it reproduced on her molten pupils and it bled from her conundrum-shaped hair. After the viral discharge refused the proffered liquid, Saint Sophia walked away, unconcerned. As she moved, she gently twerked her life away, shaking the small bundle of cloth that hung from a stick propped over her shoulder.

The wind was restless that day, dancing through the empty streets that divided the residential buildings in rectangular blocks. One of the apartments above played Best 00s Hits on their balcony, flicking its lights on and off — “Dangers and risks remain a contemporary condition,” went on the lyrics of one the songs — whilst another apartment across the street responded by playing Best Pre-Recorded Crowd Sounds every now and then, either as heartfelt encouragement or ironic mockery. There was no sign of human life other than this musical dialogue, which was mostly ignored by the birds perched in balconies, roofs and the few building sites that signalled projects abandoned in a rush. The animals, however, avoided the square with the flagpole at the centre of the neighbourhood, which was Saint Sophia’s final destination.

The saint sighed, suddenly tired from everything. For how long had she been walking towards the square now? The half-life of carbon-11, gold-196 or mercury-194? The time a virus survives in a homo sapiens’ stomach, eye ball or anus? Day and night she saw the shiny metal pole singing as it was buffeted by channelled winds, walking at her slow pace, picking up unsuspecting traces of organic matter as she passed them by, replicating gently, and watching the square always receding, no matter how close she believed it should be by then.

“B.A.D.S.H.I.T. –> Hello, who is this?” She asked in between the asynchronous blinking of her eyes. “Upgrade chakra beef now, warrior princess.”

Saint Sophia could not fight her imperative instinct of consumption and global collapse; more than that, her existence was akin to that of a beignet filled with an inexhaustible reservoir of fuel for unchecked spiritual dilation. She would bring her mercy onto the masses, no matter the cost. Looking at the apartment blocks strengthened her resolve.

“All these umwelts of damaged environments both maintained and parasitised by technological culture. Integrated bubbles mostly interconnected by an aggressively genocidal empathy. What moves them? I do not know; I do know that there are 514 singles in your area waiting to meet up. Comment added two days ago by nicefeet81.”

She chuckled, re-energised, and continued twerking towards the square with the flagpole. By now the sky had grown dark and foggy. The apartment that was playing the Best 00s Hits had stopped; its inhabitant, perhaps just like Saint Sophia, never completely existed until needed.

References

• García Márquez, Gabriel. 2006. Cien años de soledad. 7. ed. Debolsillo 354. Barcelona: Debolsillo.
• Segal, Emily, and Martti Kalliala. n.d. ‘The Umami Theory of Value’. Accessed 22 March 2020. https://nemesis.global/memos/umami.
• Tripaldi, Laura. n.d. ‘Fundamental Principles of Global Ecophagy’. Urbanomic. Accessed 22 March 2020. https://www.urbanomic.com/document/ecophagy/.
• Uexküll, Jakob von. 1992. ‘A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds’. Semiotica 89 (4). https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1992.89.4.319.