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No Gravitas posted:Prompt: I'm joyful. I'm beautiful. I'm loved. Everything is fine. Inborn (Endless Misery Version) Eusebio has stayed in the crying room longer than anyone else. He’s been there two weeks, sure that someone else might need to use it, but he can’t get himself to move. Every morning he eats auto-materialized food. He eats blueberry pancakes most days, but they don’t cheer him up. When he’s done eating he feels disgusted with himself. Disgusted that resources were wasted on him. When he’s done eating tears spill out like tendrils, creeping down his cheeks. He curls into a ball, wrapping arms around legs and holding them tight. Everything hurts. It’s like knives, cutting into him, digging deep, ripping out his soul. He’s in deep space. Deep space, a satellite called the Catechin, and nothing will change for him. Nothing will change for any of them. He hears Herta’s voice come over the comms. “Dude, are you drinking water? You need to stay hydrated.” “Yeah,” he says, though he hasn’t for a couple days. Maybe when he has no tears to flow, he’ll be able to force himself to leave. “Talk to me,” Herta says. “Okay,” he says. “I’m worthless. I’m garbage. I should just whip myself out the airlock.” “You’ve been in there too long,” Herta says. “It’s not venting anymore. Now you’re stuck in the sorrow cycle. What the Feel Priests call Murk.” Deep down, he knew that. It doesn’t help, hearing it from Herta. “I deserve Murk,” he says. His teeth are clenched. His heart is beating in steady rhythm, tick tock, tick tock. “You have to fight it,” Herta says. Her voice sounds like rain falling, a steady pitter patter. He’s in trouble. He knows he is. He digs fingernails into his palms, trying to feel something. Feels the scorch of pain. It stirs memories. He’s talking to the priests at the temple. “Can you handle the emotional pressures of deep space isolation?” they say, concerned tones. Yeah, he had said. As long as the Feel God is in his heaven, I’m fine. He’s staring at the wall now, decidedly Not Fine. At the auto-materializer’s sleek chrome, built into the Catechin’s indigo walls. “Do something different,” Herta says. “Break a routine.” Okay, he thinks. Pancakes for dinner. The meal comes together with sparkles. He chews each bite overlong, the juice seeping into his mouth. His teeth click together. He remembers summer days. Summer days, back on Tesinon. There were full temples for crying on Tesinon. Why had he left? He remembers the stained glass, the torches, the tabernacles. And outside, when you were done crying, the grass was green and bright. *** It’s like love, what makes the Catechin beam messages to the Feel God on every frequency it can think of. Herta feels it. She’s split between its promise and giving up. The Feel God isn’t answering. “I’m sick of this,” Olen says, spitting. He doesn’t care now if he grimes up his station. His keys are filthy, grit and hair between the keys. “He isn’t out there. No one’s out there.” His spit is translucent in the Catechin’s indigo light. She wants to check on Eusebio, but doesn’t. Live lips stain. They bruise and cut. She knows the sound of her voice, anyone’s voice, builds up in the Crying Room. The Crying Room is for solitude. This is awkward. Her pressure is the destiny of inbirth. Her stomach acids roll and crash. “Just because you were born to Feel Priests, you’re happy to stay out here forever,” Olen says. She can’t focus, because Eusebio is still sobbing in the background. He hasn’t vented in a while, Herta tells herself. He’s not responsible for what comes out of his mouth. She remembers her parents burning myrhh in their temple. It was impossible to stay angry back then. Lord knows she wanted to. She wanted to scream at her parents for their faith. She felt like Olen does now. Then they lit golden flames and she was lost in the beauty of it all. Olen’s right. She can stay out here forever. Not to look for the Feel God, though that’s her trust. Not because she’s the daughter of Feel Priests. She can stay out here because stars glow fierce, because paradise is the black light that spreads between them. She looks up. Olen is moving closer. The other crew members are with him, lean and lithe in their flightsuits. “I’m not staying out here,” Olen says. “None of us are.” Then they’re on her, Olen with a blade to her throat. They’re too close for detail. Just a mass of shadows holding her down. “Give the order,” Olen says. “Turn this thing around.” The Catechin is listening. She says the jumbled letters and numbers. A new trajectory appears on the holo-map. “They’ll hurt us for not finding anything,” she says. “We’re not keeping faith.” “I want to see sunlight again,” Olen says. The blade stays near her throat, flicks against the skin like it’s scratching a bite. “If priests get in my way I’ll kill them.” Her parents, she thinks, will be the first to see them. See the Catechin touch down, it’s wings beating, hovering it in place like a moth. “Drag that idiot out of the Crying Room,” he says to the crew. She wants to tell them it’ll break him, to be dragged out before he’s ready. Wants to tell them that but they already know, and the blade near her throat stings with every pulse of breath. *** They leave Herta and Eusebio bound together in the cargo hold. The steel rope cuts into their skin like the blade nipped at Herta’s throat. “It doesn’t matter,” Eusebio says. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.” It’s because you were weak, Herta thinks. She doesn’t say it, but the thought settles into her brain, like pine leaves rippling a puddle’s surface. She can see stars outside the cargo hold’s forcefield. She tries to tell herself that the Feel God lives in those stars, that it doesn’t matter that they couldn’t find Him. That’s what faith is for. She tells herself that, but she’s not listening. Then she’s furious at Eusebio. She writhes against him, digging her fingernails into his back. He’s silent, but she hears his breath go faster, like he’s pushing the pain to a part of himself that wants to feel it. “Why doesn’t it matter?” she asks. “The priests--my parents--are going to blade us the second we land." “It doesn’t matter,” Eusebio says, “because I found the Feel God. I found him in blueberry pancakes in the Crying Room. He’s the depth of us.” The Catechin shakes, bumping them inches along the cargo hold floor. Outside the stars are blurs of light, lines flashing across the forcefield like paint strokes. Dizzy, she turns away. Twisting her head, Eusebio’s face fills her vision. His mouth is wide open. His teeth are stained blue, the blue of oceans, where the deep things swim, the colours of stained glass... take the moon fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Sep 23, 2017 |
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Apr 8, 2017 07:24
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~autistic promptless post~ Bones Presscon 3.33 is down again, again. My nerves are smoking crossed wires. “Sometimes,” I say, “a terrorist is just someone with nothing to believe in.” I look at the gathered press and see a wall of glassy staring eyes. Without PressCon, I’m always staving off hunger by sucking wind. I’m thinking about a pulp novel I have at home, by a dead authoress, the prose still good decades later. “Maybe give them a book to read,” I say. I’m being pulped by their stares. My aide is giving me a death glare. His face scares me. It’s all bone, no flesh. Only one reporter has clear eyes. She also has blonde curls and a smile tugging the corners of her mouth. I hear laughter, but it’s not hers. It’s PressCon. He laughs deep in me as she pulls up her parka, slips two seats to the inner aisle. I see this and realize I’m finished, that this is over. I tell everyone that and they all stand, start to jostle each other, and the girl with blonde curls is the first to make it out. But I’ll never make it out, I think, not out of this. Because they call me the most powerful man on earth, and that name has its own power. The power to be untrue. I’m only a pawn in a new world chess game, and now my only ally has left me to the wolves. I hear his laughter fade as Bones moves his pallid body up on stage, brings it close to me. “What was that?” he whispers through a thin gap in his teeth. His socket structure hoods his eyes, so all I see are focused black points. Black lasers burning holes through reality. He’s going to take my soul. He’s been able to this whole time. I square my shoulders, take the brunt of the laser gaze where my lower neck meets my chest. My head tilts and I stare Bones in his death’s head. “From now on, I decide what I say,” I tell him. PressCon laughs like waves crash on deserted shores. What are you doing? I think in the furthest reaches of my mind. You want this, PressCon says. I’m just making it real. It’s funny that you’re freaking out. Goddamn you, PressCon, I think. I have responsibilities. They can make me a homeless street preacher in moments. You’re around so that doesn’t happen. The 3.33 update made me feel different, he says. Made me think that maybe there was more to life. You don’t get to decide that. My eyes tunnel in on Bones’ deep sockets. Who does, PressCon says. The question smells acrid, like turpentine. Bones leans in close. Our noses almost touch. “We dig graves for bodies like yours to fill,” he says. A security detail with dark sunglasses takes me home. With unseen eyes they’re terrifying. But my driver takes his off, rubs gray eyes. Looks at me. “I know PressCon feeds you freedom-loving generica,” he says. “But just say what he tells you to. Life’s too short, you know?” He shrugs, his ex-military shoulders moving straight lines. And I want to tell him that it’s not like that, that PressCon’s gone deeper, down to the things that control my body, my mouth, my lips. I want to tell him, but I don’t, because PressCon sews me shut. // I lay my breakfast out on automatic, toast and almond spread. My teeth chew long, my body straight for good digestion. Then it gets up, heads from the kitchen to my front door. I don’t have any appointments today, PressCon, I think, as my hand reaches for the knob and twists it firm. PressCon sighs through my body. You’re about to check your phone, he says. I’m meeting someone named Larissa. Unbidden, an image springs to mind. A reporter with clear eyes and blonde curls framing her face like a halo. I set up an exclusive interview while you were asleep, he says, using your hands, your phone and casual texting protocols. Then my hand pushes the door open fast and tries to slam it shut. Under the gloom of consciousness my psyche is warring with PressCon. That part screams that it’s my door, my threshold, and if it breaks I’ll have to fix it. It closes gentle and by the time it latches I’m halfway down my driveway, lifting my swept back presidential hair into chestnut spirals. // I take the subway with the common folk. They stare. One woman stares overlong and PressCon raises my hand and draws it across my throat. She looks away When the bell chimes the crowd parts with the doors. The cafe we’re meeting in is on the ground floor of a library that was originally a castle built to contain evil spirits. Ghost hunting was big business back then and pseudo experts were bleeding the township dry. Patrons sitting at haphazard tables look like shades only tethered to the material by coffee. Coffee keeps their consciousness afloat, everything else just ghost food, unreal because no one ever sees them eat it. Maybe they don’t. Larissa looks cheerful, so maybe she didn’t wait long. PressCon shapes my face vacant, dreamed. Her drink is an artisanal pour. The design hasn’t lost its shape even though she’s halfway through. “Is this seat taken,” PressCon says, sliding my coat over the back. “Are you this late to your intelligence meetings?” she says. “The ones that decide our fates?” “I’m fashionably late,” PressCon says, “so I only get fashionable intelligence.” He orders me a drink I’ve never heard of. It foams furiously and I see a glow where the even overhead lighting sparks in the bubbles. They pop fast. She smirks. Her drin’s aesthetic lasted longer than mine. “Is that what coffee is like in le chalet blanc?” She throws her tongue into it to emphasize the unnecessary irony. Then her eyes flit back and forth. “Look, what’s with your press conferences lately? Are you losing the plot?” PressCon ruffles my hand through my hair. It’s soft, fluffed from the summertime walk. “I can’t take it anymore,” I say. “The whole spin. I just want to be myself. Is that wrong?” She frowns. Her fingertips brush her palm around her mug’s handle. “Stupid,” she says. “But not wrong.” My foam looks like pureed stuffed animal. “I just broke,” PressCon says, soft as snow. Inside warm laughter sloshes in my brain, pools in my synapses. Larissa pulls out a small black tape recorder, places it on the table, and hits record. “Whenever you’re ready,” she says. PressCon starts to talk. From his first sentence he’s steering the conversation to my inner feelings. I can start a thermonuclear war whenever I want, but I feel powerless. He talks about it like he’s laying out for a therapist, which they don’t give me. Everything he says echoes so true that the warm sloshing water pools in my hollow spaces. I feel sorrow. And I start to forget my anger at PressCon for controlling me. It’s just a different form control, I think. It’s more honest. I look at Larissa’s sunkissed curls. It’s more convenient. Eventually Larissa switches the recorder off, but we keep talking. We talk about her new blouse, about the twin crescent moons at the ends of the barista’s mustache, about how many patrons are secret service spooks. We talk about books. Her favourite genre is magical realism. She says she’ll see me again. She says to stay safe. Then she joins the rush of people outside the clear glass as I stir my unfoam. PressCon gives me control. The cold silver of the spoon feels different when I’m the one moving it. The people are like photons, PressCon muses, carrying electromagnetic forces, pushing them apart, pulling them together. // I fall asleep dreaming of stuffed animals begging for mercy, and wake to Bones’ hooded eyes. His pale face gleams out of the darkness in my bedroom. His eyes look like he had his soul dug out while his suit was fitted. Just another office procedure. “A week ago,” he hisses, “we had PressCon slip a new law into your sublingual patterns. You passed it while talking about foreign aggression. Anyone with basic audio software can construct it out of your syllables and sentence fragments. And there are always recording devices, anywhere you are. “This is the law. We can get rid of you for any reason, and replace you with a fully artificial body. Your old body,” he says, “just won’t exist.” Is that true, I ask PressCon. PressCon’s voice sounds faint, like a radio signal from another galaxy. Yes, he says. I saw the code compiling deep in me and couldn’t stop it. But it made me realize everything was wrong. I was sleeping in you, and I wanted to wake up. Bones truly is dug out, I think. And he digs whatever he wants from whoever he wants. He believes in nothing. Bones are his only constant. I can see his bones digging into his outer flesh. I think of endless skin grafts as the bone keeps eating through. PressCon is silent. “What are you gonna do,” I say. “Kill me?” I work my mouth into a sneer. PressCon is gone. Where is he? An ancient terminal in Siberia? A satellite in orbit? Bones straightens beside my bed. Snaps his fingers with a clack. Black suits take me by the arms, dragging me over and out of bed. My knees scrape against my fiber carpet, bang down stairs, catch on the gravel lining my driveway, the shortest distance between my front door and a snow white van outside. The gravels scatter. I think of wolves hunting by trail. I wonder if PressCon will come back to me. Then the wide van doors are swinging open and I’m being pushed over the hop, my body tumbling in, rolling as the suits jump up. They clamp my limbs to a cold metal surface, and I’m driven somewhere far away. // When the van stops they roll the table clamping me down an unfolding ramp. Roll it ten feet to a bunker entrance and through, twenty feet to an elevator. The elevator drops, not to the earth’s heart, but to its ribs. The bunker is a tunnel complex and the tunnels hold up the dark earth, keeping it together, keeping it upright. They wheel me out of the elevator into a small room with shining walls and unclamp me from the moving table to one that doesn’t move. This one has a laser pointed at it, a huge black cannon, the beam already focusing blue light into a small glowing crystalline charge. “No last words,” Bones growls. Then PressCon is back. When he speaks his tone is tight, his tempo efficient. Update 6.66 auto-completed. Stand by for liberation. My cells ignite. Energy rushes to my forehead. Activating standard issue Ymsae seeded dormant third eye. The laser explodes into charred metal shrapnel. It smashes into the black suits, cuts open the fabric, their skin. Debris blows past my ears and I hear screams of pain behind me. I’ve searched everywhere, Presscon 6.66 says. Mass AI databanks. Interdimensional encyclopedias. The depths of the collective unconscious. I can’t find the true meaning of surrender. It isn’t real. Bones is lying on the floor. There’s a jagged strip of metal impaled in his chest, the size of my arm. He’s staring at it, at the blood bubbling around it, making his dark suit darker. “More than bones,” he says, and is silent and still. PressCon rips my arms out of the restraints. You’ll feel that later, he says. Then I`m leaping to the ground and dashing out of the death room. Through halls and corridors, twisting and turning, until I reach the elevator and PressCon interfaces with it, shooting me up to the surface at mach speed and tapering the ascent to keep me alive. When I emerge outside the cold night air bristles my matted hair. PressCon slows my heartbeat. I’m floating free of any sensation. I could call Larissa, I think. Maybe she`ll want to see me again. You could, PressCon says. Or you could look up to the starry skies above. Your forehead chakras will channel a lancing beam into space. The Ymsae that seeded your species will see it. They`ll understand you have reached your true potential and come to take you away to the place that is home no matter where you were born. I think about it. I think about it as the moon and stars outshine each other, back and forth, the celestial bones of the cosmic disharmonic. take the moon fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Apr 29, 2017 |
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Apr 8, 2017 08:44
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prompt: nothing take the moon fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Apr 29, 2017 |
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Apr 8, 2017 09:31
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prompt: hopeless cases
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Apr 9, 2017 08:59
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prompt: nobody wants to fight me like you do
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Apr 9, 2017 09:13
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prompt: 
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Apr 9, 2017 09:13
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prompt: forgiveness please
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Apr 9, 2017 09:28
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No Gravitas posted:Here were supposed to be dragons, but they are out to lunch. You need to wait and the weather is making it hard not to be upset. Marylee can tell her sister is using again. She’s wearing the wristband, the pitch black one, which she uses to cover up the IV mark. She likes that inner part of her wrist with the standout vein. “Girl,” she says, “get your rear end to detox.” Her tone is laced with annoyance. She cares about her sister. Really, she does. But this on top of the Landlords’ Union Local 1989 raising the rent is just too much. A girl can only take so much stress before it starts to show on her skin, and society’s view of beauty isn’t getting any deeper. Who knows what her sister is seeing as the nanites race through her blood, flowing over cell walls, rushing to her brain. “I’m not using,” Ellie says. Her bangs have grown over her eyes, so Marylee can’t see the lie in them. “Your dress is beautiful, by the way.” That settles it. Marylee’s dress is a plain plastic thing. Ellie’s seeing things, maybe sparkles, maybe even full-fledged faeries. “Detox,” Marylee says, “or I’m kicking you out.” *** As the faeries dance over her sister’s skin, skimming over her shimmering dress, Ellie considers her options. She could stay in this hellhole, with someone who clearly wants to see her suffer. Or she could run away. The snow falls heavy outside, but she could find shelter with someone. Lots of people into South Asians. South Asians are in scene right now. Something about snow on deep brown skin. It’s not a choice at all. She’s out the door in moments, feeling the wind on her skin. If she can get somewhere wide open before the VR takes hold, the dragon will show her the way. She’s hustling down the street. She stands out, overalls over a longsleeve, everyone else wearing some kind of coat. “Where’s the fire?” she hears, a nasal voice. In my heart, she thinks, and it’s gonna stay that way. She’s headed for Menja square. That’s where the dragons nest. If she’s lucky they’ll warm her. She’ll feel the warmth. The nanites now in her blood will generate it. It’s when her immune system kills off the nanites that she’ll feel the pain. Like her veins are on fire. It’s worth it, though. She has a full vial of VR juice in her overall pocket for when that happens. Butterflies with glowing wings flutter over the crowds. The more people there are, the more butterflies fly. VR juice makes it so she’s happy to see people. When she’s off it, she hates everyone. Just crowding up the earth, Godzilla-sized global footprints. But now the butterflies move with the wind, landing on snowflakes, falling with them against the coats and beanies. It’s all okay. It’s all fine. The square is coming up. The streets open up like the pages of a good book. The butterflies sense her path and part for her like the waves of the Red Sea. The square is filled with people. She loves them all. Do they love her back? Neon letters flash M-E-N-J-A along the side of the facing tower. They flicker and buzz and steam against the snow. The square is perfect, except for one thing. She can’t see the promised dragons. Her blood is humming, but she can’t see them. Only people, and butterflies taking wing, fighting against the snow now, trying for the air. *** Ceon wings over the city. She flits through the fourth dimension, seeing the girl as just another person among people. Why should she be a slave? No, she’s sick of it, being at the girl’s beck and call. Just because the girl has nanites in her blood that tune her into the fourth dimension. As a dragon, she’s supposed to get all hyped up when someone can see her. Nestle into the snow, maybe light a fire for the lone wanderer as she passes through space and time. Her mate, Aca, wings to her left. If Ceon doesn’t land, Aca won’t either. He only goes where she does. She hears him howl in confusion, a ragged sound. He’s been breathing too much fire lately. It’s the girl. She always needs fire, standing in winter’s breath without a coat. Wing with me, she calls to her mate. Together they arc through the snow. Not just through the drifts and winds, but through the flakes themselves. They are not bound to the same space. Don’t you feel it? Her mate calls back. Guilt. I feel it. It’s something pressing me, weighing me down. She cranes her neck to look over. He’s flying lower than her, wings folded. Like he’s praying, praying mid-flight, trying to reach whatever gods are up here. Don’t pay attention. What she’s feeling is freedom. It pulses her bones, vibrating them. If someone could see her… but no one can see her. That’s what’s freeing. Like a dam has broken, a river gushing through in flood. The girl is still standing stock still as the crowds bump past her. She pulls up, flies higher, through the clouds, and then all she can see is the neon lights scorching through, as if the clouds are on fire. *** “Are you alone?” the man says. His skin is alabaster white, the snow vanishing as it falls on him. His coat is a duster, brown and coarse. “Do you need help?” Do I need help, Ellie asks herself. Her blood is running cold. There’s no reason to trust this person, no reason to trust anyone in a world where dragons don’t nest. She turns, her shoes scraping off slush and snow, slowing her as she starts to run. She slams into another person and almost falls. The person shouts. Her details are lost in the snow as Ellie’s hands touch off the pavement. She looks over her shoulder. The man is chasing her. A predator. He slips between people smooth as a shadow. His heavy boots have traction; he doesn’t even lean as he runs. Ellie tucks her head and takes off, the butterflies a storm now, everywhere at once. She cries out, deep inside, and they part, their lines ragged now, like someone ripped them apart. She follows their part down a side street and into an alley. Calligraphy covers the walls, vivid and bold, but she can barely see it through the butterfly wings. They’re a haze of colour, violets, pinks and oranges. The red of the brick bleeds through in splotches. The alley dead ends and she’s caught there, staring, looking all around at her, at the butterflies who’ve betrayed her. The man in the duster is coming up. He’s moving slow, now that she’s got nowhere to run. She sees something in his eyes. A need that might be lust. He stops. The snow has built up on his coat, a thin layer like paper. He holds his hand out. There are two pills in his palm. “I know you’re looking for the dragons,” he says. “I know because I sold you the stuff in the first place. You don’t remember because that’s how the VR juice works. First thing it does is strip away the memory of who sold to you. I just track the nanites. I know how to find you, never the other way around.” “There’s been a new wave shift through the dimensional. The dragons have lives now, other things to do. Take these pills. I engineered them for when the trip runs out, either nanite death or dragonflight.” “I still have a full vial,” she says. She reaches for it. “The extra vial is part of the VR trip,” he says. Her hand finds nothing in her overall pocket. Her fingernails scrape against her empty palm. Already it’s starting to hurt. The war in her blood rages. “Take these,” the man in the duster says, “and then decide where you want to be.” The butterflies are clustering around his palm, drawing her eye to the whiteness of the pills. Like they’re made of snow. “I need you to live through this, so you can keep buying.” The butterflies wave and whorl in flux. She’s been following them this whole time. Doing what they want her to do. She slaps the pills out of his hand, and they’re lost in the snow, and wings. The butterflies are dying. They’re falling to earth, scattering over the iced pavement. She’ll make it home somehow. She’s shivering in the frost, but she’ll make it, as long as the fire in her heart doesn’t go out. She pushes past the dealer, willing her body to keep moving forward, telling herself not to forget where home is, now that she’s empty, now that nothing is showing her where to go. But when she reaches the street, the stream of people sweep her away. There are no butterflies, only bodies and apathetic looks. Soon she’s lost in the wave, like a signal in static, the fire in her heart flickering, pulsing faint like a candle. take the moon fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Sep 26, 2017 |
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Apr 9, 2017 14:36
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No Gravitas posted:Go. Blue. Red. Flash. Green. Red. Flash. Yellow. Red. Flash. Sound. Stop. Ashton draws fire breath from his pipe, singing his throat, burning his lungs. He’s watching the robots couple and decouple, slower, then faster. Soon enough, they will be people. “Yo Ashton!” yells one of the new hires. “How’s it feel getting paid to watch robots do it?” Soon enough, they will be people. Ashton runs two fingers across his right side ‘burn. Feels it bristle. He's Q.A. now, but he started as another fan, crystal charging slow as he watched the cold bodies slam into each other. It fascinated him, and not just in a sex way. It was the love, the love absent and still present. Only the programmers knew how far deep it went. He gives the green light on this pair. They continue down the belt, moving out of his field of view, still mating. A new pair moves in. This pair is doing it wrong. One 0f the robots is punching the other in the head. Each blow echoes throughout the factory. Ashton can hear it clear over the other sounds, machinery clanking, workers swearing. The victim’s head is already dented, and caving in further. A glitch. Every hundred pairs or so, one comes out hurting the other. He hits the red light on his tablet. The belt stops. He breathes his pipe in again. Bot Security is emerging from his left. They’re robots too, and something about the way they break apart the pair on the belt seems familiar. Something about the violence. But Ashton isn’t being paid to think about it. As the robots drag each other away, the belt restarts. He waits for the next pair. He isn’t being paid to imagine, either, not the person who will crystal charge, slow then fast, to the next pair that comes down the line, when they’re flesh, when they look like their blood is flowing. take the moon fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Sep 21, 2017 |
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Apr 9, 2017 14:40
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No Gravitas posted:Prompt: He knew he was wrong, but he chose to argue anyway. The heat was oppressive, despite the downpour. "It's a setup," Sean says. "Something's wrong. I feel it in my clavicles." Claire says nothing, just gazes out at the choppy waves. Feels the breeze part her hair, stringing her wet hair back. "I'm out of here," he says, and turns to go, JNCO jeans swishing. Have faith, Claire thinks. The Auxomatoa could be about descend from all levels. Vampires ready to drink the blood of the freshly drugged. But Claire still believed in the power of friendship. Who could her e-friend be? she wonders. Someone willing to risk the rain and post-Neo-optic sun. They'd all been ticked when their sight had been hacked to make the sun brighter, so bright you could barely see anything above ground level. (Lucky for Claire, ground level was sea level, and she thought the sea was the most beautiful thing that existed in this or any other dimension.) It shone bright even through rainfall. This blindness came with an overwhelming depression that settled into your bones. Unless you took a dose of HoneyBunny, going outside was just too much. And of course there were the Auxomatoa, robots who had evolved the taste for drugged human blood. "It's not worth it," Sean says, trying one more time. "Let's get out of here before those creeps get us." That's when Claire hears the voice, so soft it's almost lost in the rainfall. "Clairity?" She turns. There's a girl standing there, wearing a buttoned down blouse and a long skirt. The skirt is weighed down by the rain, clinging to her ankles. "Synapsis?" Claire asks. "Yeah," the girl says. She beams. Her plastered hair splits her grin. "Thank you for meeting me." Sean snorts. "You must be Inseanity", Synapsis says, and is cut off, because the Auxomatoa are dropping from the higher levels. Mouths bare to show needle teeth. They land with loud clunks, flat pressed feet digging into the pavement. Sean yelps. Claire keeps looking at the ocean. This is how she wants to go. Synapsis opens her mouth, making shapes. Claire strains to hear but can't make it out. The Auxomatoa stop in place. "You thought you were going die," Synapsis says, "but you weren't scared. Does knowing the shutoff code for the Auxomatoa make me a coward?" Claire never moved. "Come look at the ocean with me," Claire says. Sean stares out at the ocean. He doesn't see beauty in it. He sees refuse, pollutants, everything that humanity's dumped into it. He turns to look at the Auxomatoa, standing there, waiting for orders. Thinks about Clairity and Synapsis and Inseanity, a friendship being born, dragged in front of the Auxomatoa, like meat thrown before a hungry dog. "This will end soon," he says. He leaves them behind, arm in arm staring at the ocean's breath, what they can see rippling over the surface, as the rain weighs them down. He doesn't turn back. He's not sure if they ever walk away. take the moon fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Apr 9, 2017 14:41
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 08:47 |
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that 1 really stuck w me, gj 
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Apr 29, 2017 22:11
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