It's All Hallow's Eve, All NaNo's Eve and other kinds of eves I have no doubt. In honour of various kinds of creepiness I am going to give you the following two prompts to choose from (for which you will attempt to write 1-10k of prose, if you're crazy enough!):
(1)
(2)
Enjoy!!
No Sky For Machines
Second. Minutes. Hours.
Days, weeks, months.
A year.
Rinse and repeat.
There’s a corner of the window where I see a sliver of sky. I feel naughty, like I’m cheating, breaking the law. Ironic that I should be worried about that, considering there is no law any longer. But I do worry, I do feel naughty, and all the while I’m looking at that window, I’ve got my ears pricked for any sign that I’m soon to be in company. I’m on the lookout, lest somebody catches me looking.
I’m also on the lookout because I’m protecting my territory.
Can’t have anyone else in my corner, watching my sliver of sky.
It’s mine.
A good thing there’s no longer a need for food. I’d be oh so hungry. And there’d be fighting and squabbling and rending limb from limb. Just like old times.
Old times are so old now. They’re long gone. But sometimes I get glimmers of recollection, like a blur of movement glimpsed just over the shoulder. Only, when I turn to look, it’s gone. I end up wondering if it was ever there at all.
I’m talking about recollections from my own life, not general knowledge that every creature possesses and retains. There are certain things one can never forget, because we are not permitted to forget them. Personal histories don’t count. It’s the other things that we are programmed to remember.
The thing is, we’re breaking down. We’re malfunctioning more and more. Not that it really matters; nobody is relying on us anymore. But it can be exhausting, having a mind that works as it should only some of the time. Even if it doesn’t matter to anyone else, it matters to us.
Because we’re all we have left.
The cell is dark.
My eyes have long since adjusted, but I still think about the fabled sun. I wonder what might happen to my eyes if I ever saw it again.
In my head there are stories of creatures who looked into the sun only to lost their vision. It’s inconceivable, the idea of not being able to see. I would lose my sliver of sky if that happened.
That can’t ever happen.
I suppose that explains why I fear the sun.
I remember when a fellow of mine asked of our drill sergeant a question. He asked about the sun and the sky, and whether heaven waited up above them both. “Heaven? What the hell’s that? No, no my friend—no heaven for you. You’re a machine. Forget about sunlight, forget about rain. Forget it all, because you’ve got a job to do. No heaven for you.”
We exchanged glances, shrugs, and I thought, Makes sense.
Don’t get me wrong. The sky isn’t particularly bright. It hasn’t been bright in a long time. I’ve always found that the best way to explain it is through quoting poetry. The old rhyme explains it all nicely:
“Night falls and creatures roam
Along the streets ‘fore sun-up
But soon they will discover that
Eternal night has risen up…”
The Eternal Night is all they used to be able to talk about. It was all over the news media, wallpapers and holovision and advertising hovercraft. I wasn’t there to see it myself. Rather, I’ve heard the stories passed down through generations, and I’ve read about them in history logs. I recall one woman’s words, and here I paraphrase:
“It was like the street crazies had taken over—suddenly it was perfectly the norm to proclaim that the Apocalypse had come. We were all going to burn in hellfire and damnation. There would never be a heaven because we had forsaken it, because we were sinners to the very core and this was our penance. The world had gone mad, and we were in the middle of it. Insanity was a pandemic and we were swept away along with everyone.”
Those words, “ETERNAL NIGHT”, plastered everywhere. I can almost picture it in my shorting mind, see the dire words emblazoned all over. I can almost smell the fear and the dirt and the blood and the smoke. Chemical fumes from destroyed industrial plants. The salt of tears flowing freely. The putrid promise of a world coming to an end.
I can almost taste disaster on my tongue.
Except I taste nothing anymore. All I can do is dream.
I’m a sinner, I know. But I’ve forgotten how I sinned.
Sometimes I think about it, and I wonder if I did something really bad. Did I hurt someone? Did I kill someone? Did I join a dissenting cause in opposition of my government? Maybe I spoke ill of the dead. Or the living. Even I know that in the world we live in, speaking ill of the wrong person can get you killed.
I’m not supposed to remember. My mind was formatted for only a certain amount of memory. But though I know what I’m meant for and what I’m not, sometimes I have these…desires. Sometimes I have these longings that lie outside my set parameters. Sometimes I want to remember other things.
Like where I came from.
And what I did to get in here.
What was my crime?
I gaze up at the window, waiting for the dawn. Insofar as it can be called a dawn anymore. Like I said, we’re in the Eternal Night and the sky only lightens somewhat during daylight hours. That word, ‘daylight’, makes no sense anymore, but people still use it. It’s a vestige of a world long gone, and there are a lot of those around. The saying Good morning is still in use, even though there is no real morning anymore. There is still talk of living to see another day, even though none of us have seen a day in far too long to count, and may never see one again.
Oh, and none of us is technically alive any longer.
There’s no such thing as sunlight and shade. There’s moonshadow, and I like that just fine. But history tells me that the shadows created by the strategic fall of sunlight is far more dramatic; the shadows unfathomably richer. I have a hard time grasping that, and I suppose I will never manage. But it’s one of those things I think about when I shouldn’t. It’s one of those things I wish for.
There is a wall in this place that is the most dramatic shade of blue. I’m told that this shade is the same as a daytime sky. I stare at my sliver of real sky, and then I think about the blue of that wall. And all I can really do is doubt. The really young ones have a habit of exaggerating, and I’m convinced they’re exaggerating about this too. I have never read in any history book about a sky being blue. They focus not so much on facts but on historical events. I have read up heartily on all those things. And not once, anywhere that I could see, did any historian of old mention a blue sky.
I’d have to see it for myself to believe it.
I suppose that means I never will.
Time passes and I’m mostly alone. I’m getting a little rusty. In some places, mildew has formed. I feel the occasional tickle, and I wonder why that part of my machinery is still functioning. I suppose there is no reason why it shouldn’t be. Most of my senses still work, in fits and starts at least. The only one that’s gone entirely is my sense of smell. For that, I am grateful. Experience tells me that I should be grateful. I can’t quite remember why, but I’m taking my processor’s word for it.
For the most part, the sense of touch is useless. Taste isn’t much use either, but sometimes it can be…inconvenient. Certain tastes I get in my mouth remind me of the fact that I can no longer smell, and that I’m grateful for that. I am no longer able to connect the two concepts in any logical way, but I know enough to know I’m better off avoiding doing so.
Let us consider the other senses, though. Hearing is fundamental. It keeps me on my guard, ready for any new arrival. But by far the most invaluable sense is that of sight, which allows me to see my sliver of sky.
As long as I can see that, I can dream.
Second. Minutes. Hours.
Days, weeks, months.
A year.
Two years. Three.
Time passes and I lose count of everything.
I lose my senses one by one.
Finally I have only two left: seeing and hearing.
Then it happens. The day arrives that I lose my sight. That’s when I know my the old drill sergeant was right. There is no heaven, not for cold, wired machines. There is to be no heaven, no sunlight for the likes of me.
I stay there at the window, sightless and alone.
Cruelly, the last one to go is that of hearing, so that I hear the moment my end approaches. I hear the distant shouts, the shuffling of booted feet growing ever louder. I hear my cell door clanking open, voices louder now. Rough voices belonging to creatures with no regard for what’s left of me.
I hear my own rusted feet scraping across the stone floor, and I hear the disassembly as it happens. I hear the flicking of a switch, and then my hearing is fading too. Fading slowly away, as everything else has.
Hey... Do you remember
where I left my soul?
It's Not Over Yet
"I was never meant to be a soldier.
I should have been a housewife, a mother, something like that. I guess if everybody hadn't started dying around me, I might've gone that way.
As a little girl I wore pretty dresses with flowers on them, I played with plastic figurines of ladies—Barbies, they were called—and I daydreamed of the day I'd wear white and totter down an aisle in sparkling white heels. I was a bit of a weirdo by that point—most of the other little girls liked what I liked, or wanted what I wanted. But I stuck to my guns—god, that's a terrible pun, and I didn't even intend it to be one—and clung to my girliness.
Everything changed, of course.
It's a well-known fact that civil war changes a woman. It bends her, twists her up a little inside. My mind isn't the same as it once was. Nor is my heart, or any part of me for that matter. I've got scars on the outside, remnants of battle wounds, but the ones inside are what never leave me, even when I dream. Did I mention I turned all emo? Yeah, I resent that in a big way, but I've accepted it. I've accepted a lot of things I never thought I would, especially in the last few days. Because there's a point in every rebel soldier's life when she just can't deny any of it anymore—she realises once and for all that she lives in hell and she's going to die there too.
The really good soldiers decide that they might as well do what they can, while they're still standing.
I'm still standing, hard as that is to believe. I'm still standing, but the machines are my last chance, the only chance I have to get the message out, beyond these walls. I don't trust machines, but they're all I've got. They're all the outside world has got."
Red light ticks to green and I open my mouth to start talking.
I've planned it all out in my head, but now that I'm really here, now that the machine is on and I've got the chance to speak, my voice conks out on me. On the very first word it catches, and I choke, cough, splutter. It's one of those coughs that doubles me over—working the abs, you know?
As if I need more of a workout than I've had lately.
Somewhere in the middle of the hacking fit I start to laugh. Things get worse, like my face turning red—I can't see it but I can feel it burning…pretty soon it's got to turn purple; that's a sight I know well. Am I really going to die here, squeezed of all air and of the strength to keep my feet? Because that would be really ironic.
That's when it happens: I stop, gasping for air—filling my lungs with the desperation of a woman who knows her days are far more numbered than her hours. Anger flashes through me at the thought of how much time I've wasted already. I grip the console and steady myself, taking a few long, deep breaths to regain my equilibrium. Then I begin to hum, testing my voice.
It holds.
"I'm reporting from Sector Fourteen, it's…" I tap my watch to bring up the date and time. "February thirteenth, time is eighteen-twenty-two. I estimate I have an hour before the machines die here as well. I'm not sure who this message will reach, if anyone, but I can only hope it goes somewhere. The truth has to be known because you're not going to hear it from anyone in red or gold, I can assure you of that…"
My voice is trembling, just like my hands. I grip my knees to stop the latter, but there's nothing much I can do about my voice. This has to be done, but I'm still not happy about being the one to do it.
How did I end up here?
I talk for thirty-seven minutes before the machinery gives out. There is so much to document but it doesn't much matter if I fail to relate it all. I start with the best examples, and they are good ones indeed. The rest can be construed—I make it clear with every word I utter that we're only scratching the surface here. To really understand what has happened, a person would have to live through what I did. There are always going to be facts that are lost to history.
But I can give them something, at least.
Some idea of how our nation has been betrayed.
It happens so quietly that at first I don't really believe it. Green light flickers, and my voice falters. Green light flickers and begins to fade. My voice gives out entirely. I stare at the dull shiny orb that used to be lit, just stand there and stare. Then I brace myself against the console, bowing my head. I close my eyes and let myself be. Just for one moment.
The time has come for me to leave this place. I fought hard to get here and now I'm leaving. But I can't execute my plan from here.
They won't feel me if I strike from this far back.
I need to go and meet them.
The further I walk, the more my thoughts tangle in my head. My veins rush with energy and vengeance fuels my motion. Still, I can't help thinking.
For me, thinking has never been a comfort.
I pass countless graffitied walls, and on one I see long-dried drips of paint that form the words, taller than my head but similarly messy:
HELL
My thoughts take a turn in that direction, and I start to contemplate the meaning of hell as I know it. I used to be religious. I used to fear hell.
I'm not so scared now, though, because I know you can find hell on earth.
You only have to know where to look.
Hell is realising that the people you trusted, the ones you wanted nothing more than to please, are the same ones who got you into this mess to begin with. Hell is learning that, contrary to popular opinion, you and your comrades just don't matter. You're utterly expendable, and quite frankly, the sooner you go down the better.
The more of you that die, the less resistance there will be in the end—resistance to the Revolution.
And god, I hate that word—Revolution. It's got all these connotations, like it's something amazing. Something wonderful.
It's not wonderful. It's not amazing.
It's hell.
"They turned on us at the worst possible moment. I guess that was the idea, right? Cut us off at the knees. Go for the jugular. Sever the spine.
So many clichés, so little time to make them all come true. But they did a good job.
I lay in a pile of bodies. Some of them twitched for hours, others were still in an instant. They grew cold around me but I stayed warm. They made a great windshield.
My comrades and my enemies all around me, friend and foe alike dead as last week's rancid meat. But there was an upside to lying there pinned by the weight of human flesh—it gave me time to think, really think. It gave me time to formulate a plan."
"That sweltering calm I'd never known
Blue skies and home"
