Beware the machines!
Enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe and leave a review.
Beware the machines!
Enjoying the podcast? Please subscribe and leave a review.
“Please…he is…It must be near….get him to it…Don’t let the Orthodoxy find him!” Her head rose and her chin arched downward into her chest in another spasm. This time her feet rose from the floor as the two furthest points of her body seemed to being try to fold into one another. She finally let out a terribly loud scream that Re and Fex would not dare hush no matter how instinctual it was for them to at least try to. When she came out of the spasm, her face now pale and still, her head sank back down into the dirt. She fought for a final breath and then carefully mustered enough to say “the story always ends the same.” Re brought the boy to her and the woman smiled at him and held his hand, before becoming as motionless as the shadow over her.
Fex thought about her request. He could remember as a young man hearing stories about a some -thing that haunted the fields, but he couldn’t remember its name. What were the stories? Much of his past had receded behind a thick shade, the little of it that remained trampled by the routine of surviving. He could remember the story scared him deeply. As he thought, Re turned to him with great urgency.
“Fex, we must hurry.”
Fex got up only at the insistence of his wife, who also held the child up and rested his back against her legs. She pushed him forward and made him kiss the woman’s dead cheek and then brought him back to her legs. She motioned back toward the valley and the mountains in the distance. Though she was still tired, Re found herself reinvigorated by the blanket the orbs’ shadows gave her from the heat, and after making the boy place his hand upon his mother’s head one last time, she led him out toward the valley, Fex following behind her.
They walked quietly for some time, undisturbed by the ships that passed further away from them, doing everything to keep their eyes off of the mountain’s fiery manes. The legends and myths of the gods still chased them, but Re insisted they not push the boy too hard. When they finally made enough headway to see the mythical passage only a few miles away, a stone archway built in between two great mountains, they rested. As she sat with the boy cradled against her Re looked up at the sky, realizing she looked at it expectantly. But what did she expect? A flock of angry machine gods swooping down at her? The clouds had cleared and she could clearly see the fleet. It bustled about, the sky painted with its smoke. If the machines did indeed roam somewhere amongst all of that chaos she didn’t see how’d she’d be possibly be able to tell. When she looked back down she saw that Fex was watching her, his eyes terribly frightened. She knew he had seen something without him having to tell her. They both nodded, not needing words, and quickly got up and began to run.
They ran as fast as they could, each taking turns carrying the boy, and hurried toward the mountain pass in front of them. Their bones ached and their feet burned but still they hurried, pushing harder and harder toward the passage. The girl could hear the little boy wheezing and in one fell swoop grabbed him from Fex and pressed his chest against hers. She kept running, pushing through the burning pain in her ankles. Only after reaching the gray stonewalls etched between the mountains did she allowed her knees to fall to the floor, and the boy to gently slip from her arms. A narrow granite path, as white as snow, stretched out less than a mile ahead of them. It led to another valley, from where no traveler was ever said to have returned. However, the reality of the fire and smoke behind her made such legends irrelevant, and the more she pressed on the more she understood her husband’s cynicism. They let themselves walk slowly down the granite path, watching the water trickle down the rocky cliffs on either side of them. It took some to hours for them to reach the valley, and when they did they popped their heads out of the walkway like meerkats poking out of their dens. A sumptuous valley sat ahead of them, filled with green grass that parlayed the brown rock woven into it. The smoke was much less thick here, and in the air above they could see the suns clearly. There was something eerily disquieting about the field. Something that evoked an image reminiscent to a strange dream. Re picked the boy back up again.
“Just further, look! The water,” Fex said pointing to a river not far from them. The river consisted of silver blue water that seemed painted between the banks. The girl smiled at her husband and clutched the little boy again. The child rested his head on her neck, quiet tears dripping down his cheeks. They took two more steps when the terrible shadow appeared.
It seemed to fill the entire valley and both could swear made the temperature drop. It fell upon them with such might they found themselves unable to move under it. As if they were being pushed by two large hands stretching down from above the clouds. The hands pressed their bodies against the floor. Re mustered only a faint sigh while Fex, his mouth locked open, gasped loudly as he prostrated his body against the floor. The little boy sat down. His eyes were distant, the shock still palpable in his pale face. He tugged at a few long strands of grass and held them faintly in his hand before the wind took them. The girl, seeing the boy now sitting a yard or so away from her, reached out to him desperately, still unable to move her body. Then the inhuman thing the shadow belonged to screamed and even her hand now succumbed to it, paralyzed by a sensation she couldn’t explain.
The humanoid machine monster, a thing with smooth, incandescent skin, stood just feet from their prostrated bodies-itself some seven to eight feet tall. Its bald head bowed toward the earth, the thing looked almost human, only with sterile features. It was sleek and athletic in build, with a defined human abdomen and chest, only barely hidden by its robe. It biceps were likewise trim and sculpted, and though it was a a shade of dull blue otherwise, under the brief glare of the sun its flesh became translucent so that they could see the silver, pulsating veins underneath it. It walked toward them slowly, its long muscular legs lifting up and down like those of a spider. Each step met with a resounding thump that echoed through the valley. The thing was grotesquely and maddeningly beautiful, both horrid and magnificent.
Fex was unable to look at it for long. He closed his eyes. Was he crying? He was! For all his preparation and planning, the god reminded him just how badly he was unprepared. The girl on the other hand grew restless under the weight of the thing’s shadow. Her stomach ached with love for her unborn children, and in her bones she could feel the strength of not only her affection but of the dead woman’s as well. Within her she now carried the love of that woman for her son. And as she lifted her body, kicking away the fear paralyzing it, remembering the human confetti forever engraved in the clouds, she realized she was more than one mother now. She now carried the strength of all the mothers, fathers, sons, sisters, and brothers she had ever met on those mountains. Not just the woman’s but all those whose lives were lost-but whose love remained unflinching-a power she would pass on eventually to her own children. She took a step forward. She had a life inside her, and that made her even more powerful-for she believed in the powerful nature of life itself. She took another step and stood up straight. The child, still too dazed to register much besides the gentle bending of the grass, took hardly any notice of her or the monster. The girl did not mind; she knew in him there still existed the love borne inside every child for their mother, and since she now was the living tomb of that woman, she knew that that love now belonged to her.
The monster stopped just in front of the boy and stood still. It was only now that Re finally looked at it-fully and deeply-seeing for the first time its long chiseled chin and its indented, round head. Its pupils were a fierce orangish red, and it possessed a definitively human mouth. The thing began to glow. The glow was overwhelmingly blinding. It grew brighter as it got closer to the boy. Then the thing’s mouth let out a powerful cry and it fell to its great knees and held its long arms out toward the sky. The thing’s bellow rattled the trees and Re could swear high above her she could see the great air fleet shake violently. Then the thing dropped, its face now so low that it now was eye to eye with the child. Re pushed herself closer to the boy. She grabbed his shoulders. The thing stayed still, in its solemn position-like it were bowing. Again it let out a deep, painful cry. Then, as if even the clouds and the sun were shaken by its thundering voice, the entire sky lost pigmentation. The hulking air fleet disappeared. There was now only the manlike monster on its bent knees, cowering before the child like a priest before an altar.
Fex lifted himself up, shamed by his cowardice. His wife was well ahead of him. He moved closer to her and cradled her under his arm. The two young lovers, impossibly overmatched-yet again, stared at each other briefly before their eyes turned back toward the monster. They didn’t say anything, neither had any words. They embraced in silence- accepting whatever would come next together. They later had difficulty remembering who heard it first, or if they both noticed simultaneously. A loud, deep, monosyllabic note that pulsated from behind them. Re grabbed the boy and pressed his forehead against her lips. The note was followed by an explosion of light that shot out from the Seven Dead Suns, which now rose up into the sky and glowed. The light then ran through the monster’s howling body…this would be monstrous sun- the light growing brighter with each turn before quickly darting up to the sky. At the center of the light a great opening emerged and through it, as if looking into a deep well, Re saw a quickly moving montage of planets and galaxies and quickly scrolling numbers. Fex figured they were looking at some sort of map, but even his wife couldn’t possibly follow it. Then the great light dissipated, and the black suns disappeared-dissolving instantaneously. The monster fell; the young uncreated jumped back so that it didn’t hit them. It crumbled to the floor silently. And after it fell and the two uncreated took the boy by the hand to the river, the sky regained its color.
Even though it was clearly immobile, the couple walked by the monster slowly. Was it one of the Orthodoxy? They couldn’t help still fearing it, a byproduct of all the myths. The valley now looked like some graveyard, the monster the pale color of bone. Above them the ships scampered nervously, gathering near the valley but apparently too scared to get close to it. This provided the Fex and Re great protection.
Upon reaching the water, Fex noticed a figure washed up against a rock. The current pushed him against the stone, but still conscious enough to hold himself up, he kept his body from being crushed or flung out into the water. But as they neared they saw that he was no man. His face, beautiful in a ghastly way like the previous monster, flashed toward them. His bluish skin glowed under the sun as his body crashed against the rock. Not far from him a small make shift boat, one that looked like it dated back to Vox-Zer, rested in the water, tied up to a neighboring tree. The monster picked itself up slowly, and they saw its tormented red eyes as it stepped out of the water onto land. Fex froze as it moved, figuring that he would not be able to escape the clutches of the Orthodoxy twice in one day. But how beautiful the thing looked. It looked exactly like the other, but fresher...younger. Looking at it was as looking at some great statue come to life. Fex felt his legs begin to fall and he grew faint as Re stepped in front of him.
“What happened to you?” The girl asked, but the monster remained quiet and pointed toward the boat. Again in the shadow of a strange monster, a rumored god, Re felt as much sadness as horror as she looked in its eyes. Its eyes were strangely human, and looked like it were the last one’s identical twin. A strange thought came to her that it might be the same monster but from a different time.
Fex followed the thing’s directions, and hurriedly rushed to the boat. He began to untie it from the post and motioned to his wife. She moved toward the boat slowly, finding it difficult to pull away from the monster, that looked sadly at the child nestled against Re’s stomach. It let out a slight noise- a human gasp, and then quickly turned to the woman. Their eyes locked. She wanted to tell him that it would be okay-or at least say sorry about his friend. But her husband called her again and Viarian ships buzzed overhead. She hurried onto the boat. As they traveled down the river, disappearing under a cascading network of branches and rock, Re kept her eyes on the strange creature on the beach. Then the child underneath her cried, and tending to him she took her eyes away from the shoreline. When they returned the figure vanished and all there remained were rocks and trees.