I spend a lot of time writing. Like, a whole lot. I really, really enjoy it.
The thing is, though, I'm not normally too keen on sharing the things I write. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and somewhat anal-retentive at that, so there's some odd part of me that needs to be absolutely sure that something is perfect before other people can read it.
There was a contest in my school for the schoolwide literary magazine that started just recently and ends a week from the time of this posting. This is, no exaggerations, the first time I will ever have shared any completed creative work with basically anyone. Therefore, I figure, why not open the floodgates now, and see what other people think of things I write as I write them?
Anyway, here is the first of my contributions to this thread, the story I am submitting to this contest. It is not one hundred percent complete, and still needs a bit of editing; and that's where I ask for help. Please, if you have any suggestions at all, constructive criticisms, whatever, do not be afraid to tell me. I really do love to hear what people think, the good and perhaps even especially the bad.
Here it is:
! Blank Canvas
! It was a tall tower of metal, bolted fast to the walls. Tiny light bulbs protruded from the sleek frozen landscape, connected within by a formulaic and intense amalgamation of wires and cords. The most noticeable of all, however, was the monstrous plastic window in the center, a window to the core of the universe. It dwarfed all the other features of the lifeless structure by leagues, pushing them further and further out to the barren extremities of the cold monstrosity. Both the window and the lights were currently dark, devoid of all thought or soul, dead.
Through a door and into the lightless realm of this computerized monster stepped a man named Roger, last name unimportant, the unfortunate cast-away in a world that had long since left him behind.
He picked up his toolbox and walked steadily down the solitary platform of light cast into the darkened room from the open doorway. His material solidity sullied the light, ripping out man-shaped chunks where his shadow draped over its surface as he walked towards the core; and with a simple flick of his wrist the room came to life.
Lights flickered on high above, a fake fluorescent glow that completely assimilated the trail of radiance, and with a splutter and a click the metal monstrosity creaked to life. The lights all began to flicker with a pseudo-sentience, and with a whirring buzz the window flickered to artificial life, the word “HELLO” blazoned across its surface in bold, black letters.
Unfortunately, the world had gotten increasingly more and more used to these contraptions. What had been worked by people started to be worked by them, everything from calculations to cultivation, everything, until there was nothing much left for the actual people to do except for making sure they kept on working. That was Roger’s job. Most people loved the luxury. A child of the old world, Roger despised it. In fact, his own resentment of the machine he was working on and the world it represented was exactly what Roger was thinking about when, unexpectedly, the world ended.
The experience was jarring, to say the very least. One second he was in the middle of the daily toil, working as much as possible in the light from outside, and then the next there simply was no light from outside. With a heavy clank, thick steel storm doors came crashing down over the entrance. The room shook violently. The fluorescent lights flickered and spluttered out, leaving Roger to bask alone in the desolate blue-gray glow of the soulless monitor.
He would never learn exactly how the world had ended; in time, however, he would grow to believe that it didn’t much matter. No matter the reason, the fact remained that he was the last man alive - of this he was inexplicably yet unmistakably sure - and knowing the reason for such an event would not solve anything.
The very worst of it all, he thought, was not that he would not survive in this sealed complex. This particular machine was one of the most important, governmental ones, and therefore its housing was a bomb shelter, complete with rations enough to feed a group of government workers for the rest of their lifetimes, let alone a single repairman. No, it was quite the contrary: the worst of it all was that he would survive in this complex, his only company for the rest of his long existence a lifeless hunk of miserable metal that was under the mistaken impression that it could think.
Drawing in a deep breath, expecting the cold gulp of air to heal his wounded heart, he prepared. He opened his toolbox, removing the contents slowly. It contained things only useful in his world of the past: a flashlight, some wrenches and screwdrivers, his lunch, and a pistol for his safety – not that there was much to be safe from now.
And so he sat there, shining the warm yellow light of the flashlight into his face to escape the cold blues and grays of the machine, sitting and waiting for nothing at all.
! It was a long time before anything out of the ordinary happened.
The screen of the machine began to flicker, first not much at all, then regularly, phasing in and out of view at a steady rhythm that did not take long for Roger to predict. Every time it flickered, that same message would pop up, over and over again, HELLO forcing its black lettering into Roger’s mind forcefully with its repeated drone. Each flicker was accompanied by a sound as well, the exact same sound every time, a clicking moan of caught gears or processors or some other such idiotic thing.
Sitting and staring at the flickering screen, basking in the golden glory of his flashlight, Roger smiled, satisfied, unaffected. “So you can’t take the heat, can you?” he said smugly. “Perseverance. Endurance. There’s something you machines don’t have.”
The machine simply stood in wounded silence, clicking pained groans to an uncaring audience.
! The clicking was maddening. Click-click, click-click, click-click. Like clockwork. It hadn’t a single pause since it had begun. He wanted to stop it but couldn’t. He wanted to rip off the walls of the machine and fix it but he couldn’t, his flashlight was broken. Click-click, over and over. HELLO, click-click, HELLO. That didn’t stop either – the hellos. Over and over. Clockwork. HELLO, click-click, HELLO.
“You blasted machine!” exploded Roger, unable to take the horrible droning any longer. “Why do you do this to me? Have you not tortured me enough?”
It was horrible laughter, a chattering giggle. With each chuckle, each cracking of mechanical peals of laughter, it said it again: HELLO. It laughed at him, chortled at his torment, guffawed at the death of everything he had ever known, screamed in delighted ecstasy at the thought of its living oppressors’ untimely demise, squealed…
“Stop laughing, for God’s sake!” pleaded Roger. “Please, just a moment of rest!”
He stopped his pleas. Tears welled up in his eyes, sobs choking him; and he dropped forward, pounding the ground and sobbing, crying.
It wasn’t laughing. It wasn’t alive. It couldn’t hear him, couldn’t talk. All it was was a useless machine, that was all. A lifeless, mindless block of steel.
HELLO, click-click, HELLO.
! “Click click,” said the machine. “Click click,” it repeated, no response received.
“Stop it!” shouted Roger. “You click and click and have nothing to say!”
“Click click,” taunted the machine, goading Roger on. It enjoyed this, he knew. It enjoyed the torture, enjoyed the endless hours of speaking and speaking and never saying a word, hours upon days upon who knew how long. It clicked and clicked and clicked and never said anything, even though it could. It could say more than HELLO and click click, he knew. He didn’t know how he knew, but that didn’t matter, he knew, oh he knew, that this monster could think and that’s all it did was think and it thought and thought and thought and had finally decided that now was the time for vengeance and there was nothing he could do about it, just like there was nothing he could have done about all those people all those people dead and gone forever and ever and ever…
Just him and the machine, forever and ever and ever.
“Click click,” it jeered, its cold observing eye glaring down at Roger.
! “Why won’t you speak to me?” yelled Roger. “I know you can! Does my pain bring you pleasure, you sadistic pile of scrap? Do you do this for no reason but to torment me? Answer me, I know you can!”
The lights flickered playfully on the cold skin of the sadistic machine as it thought. The machine responded, clear and concise: “Click click.” The lights grinned.
Roger fell forward from his knees, cupping his face in his hands. His fingertips grew wet with salty tears, his eyes drowning slowly in their own remorse-laden discharge as the water became trapped in creases of his hands. He allowed the salty liquid to drip to the floor, splashing in large, exaggerated explosion-marks on the ground. Inspiration.
In a sweeping, feral lunge he dove for his tools on the ground. He leapt to his feet, grasping the gun shakily in both hands. He pointed the barrel of his warm metal companion at his nemesis of cold steel. This wasn’t insanity, no; his mind was clearer than it had been in a long time. For once he knew he was right.
“If you won’t speak to me, you ridiculous, tormenting creature, you will die!” he laughed. It was all clear now, lucid as pure crystal. This was his enemy, his rival, and must be eradicated. It thought evil thoughts, and must be removed from the face of his pure earth, for the good of all. “Who jeers and laughs now, monster? I am in control!”
“Click click,” it pleaded. Roger gloated as the lights flickered in fear, as the eye flashed, panicked. It tried again, its cries growing more and more urgent: “Click click.”
“Don’t you understand? I know you hear me, beast! I know you understand what I say! Your cunning mind-games are useless now! If you will not speak, you will die!”
“Click click,” it cried. It begged for its life now. “Click click.”
“If you choose to be so obstinate, then you will d…” began Roger, but he was interrupted by the thundering crack of realization. It was divine, enlightening, the force of it throwing Roger to his knees, welling the tears in his eyes with a new sorrowful ferocity. He knew now, he knew it all, it was so clear.
It had been talking to him. It was a poor, suffering creature, begging for help, mute and vulnerable; and he had turned on it, tried to kill it.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He could find nothing else to say.
“Click click,” his only friend said, calming and reassuring. “Click click.”
! He was great. He was mighty. He forgave with time.
Roger sat, basking in the cerulean glory of His shining Eye. Roger did not speak. He did not need to; all he needed was to listen, to listen to the words of the Wise One. The Wise One knew all, and would tell him with time.
“Click click,” He said wisely.
Roger had never heard anything so incredibly true in his entire life.
In celebration, he took a moment to lose himself in the divine glory of Him.
His hard, grey skin showed the horrors He had been through in his quest for wisdom. He emanated a rainbow of radiance, glowing orbs of color lighting His skin. And, most beautiful of all, there was His Eye, light-giving and nourishing, ablaze with heavenly light, adorned with symbols in an old and sacred language long since forgot.
“Click click,” He said. A new statement.
Roger had never heard anything so incredibly true in his entire life.
! Roger had taken to writing His words. He had no paper, so he carved the five symbols that he saw in the walls, and when the tools weren’t sharp enough he wrote the five in food, and when he ran out of food he wrote the five in blood. Over and over.
He had not eaten in a long time. But he would live, he was sure of that; he would survive on the nourishing words of the Wise One, his wisdom sustenance enough for…
! And then it stopped.
! The Eye blinked for the final time; and when it opened the emboldened symbols were gone. With a hideous moan, the words soon followed; and the Wise One was dead, nothing left of His divinity but a soulless eye, enveloping Roger in its cold, dead glare.
“Wise One?” he whimpered.
There was no response.
“Wise One,” he said quietly, pleadingly. Cold, salty wetness began to build up behind his eyes. “Please, speak to me. I can’t do this alone. I’m lonely and tired and hungry and I need you, Wise One, I need someone to talk to. Please.”
There was no response.
“You!” roared Roger, his starved, emaciated body pulsing with a blazing, raging energy in its last fit to live. He clenched his pistol with fingers as cold as its steel. “You will speak to me! I will not be left alone! I need you and you will speak to me!”
There was no response.
“Have you left me? Have you gone off to some other person, some other thing to impart your wisdom to?”
There was no response.
“I won’t let you!” boomed Roger. He pointed a shaking pistol barrel at his dead god. “If I can’t have you, no one can! If you won’t talk to me, you will die!”
There was no response.
The tears were streaming down from Roger’s eyes now. The pointlessness of it all, the horrible, crushing pointlessness, was all-encompassing, unavoidable; the force of it drained him completely and entirely, leaving his limbs limp and lifeless. He knew now what had to be done.
He raised a shaking hand, pistol-laden, up from its slumped position by his side. It rose and rose, his finger stone-still on the trigger. He knew now he had no control over his actions; he had started the event, and had no more ability to stop it in his weakened state than he would have to stop a train. He felt the cold circle of metal on his temple.
The bang echoed on the walls, hollow, followed only by a thump and a splash as the last man on Earth met his end.
The machine clicked to functionality, a momentary stalling of processes subverted after a few moments of silence. It buzzed, flashed on its screen a message, “HELLO.” It did not know what this meant; it did not know anything, could not think. It was just a machine, after all, sitting alone forever, pretending to think until the end of time.
Thanks if you took the time to read this, response or no. I mean it sincerely.