A hurricane of movement
and commotion as machines buzzed overhead. The room immaculate shining metal, almost
programmed to be this clean and pristine. Still nothing more than a factory
where men and woman alike turned to machines as their memories disappeared. The
cold beads of thick liquid oozed from my scalp. Pain. Stop. What. Is. Happening
to me? Mankind to machine – to think that this was happening in rooms just like
this all across the world, I shuddered.
My
eyes sunk into the crevices of my face and my heavily grown stubble felt cold
against the metal of the surgery room table. My arms itched against the
restraints of the table, as machines around me beeped and hummed with the sound
of conversion. Soon I would be nothing but another machine, cold and without
meaning or feeling like so much of mankind already. My mind wandered as I
thought of all the pain and suffering of the past months - as mankind was
converted into machines.
What wasn't run down these days? Everything in sight overcome with complete and
utter devastation from skyline to skyline, except – My eyes caught sight of this
giant great oak that had somehow grown through the turmoil outside. I thought
about that tree, about its wide branches. How it dipped and curved about
reaching towards the sky – How perfect life had been before we started wanting
more, before we pushed mankind to its limits. Those 4 years since the first
attack I had spent thinking a lot about life and about that glorious smell of
fresh rain. I could not help but be overcome with the feeling of being lost,
and how much I missed the way she used to hug me during the storms.
The
days had passed by slower and slower since the first attack, and as each human
was converted we lost a little bit more of humanity. I was one of the final
renegades, the final few. I had been free from it all for so long, venturing
the stretched planes beyond where it first began, but here I was back again.
I
have been running from this all for far too long - But to end up here? I wish
now that I had kept running. Surrounded by nothing but a world of unfeeling
machines, and crushing destruction except for-
I
was cold, so unbearably cold. The feeling of cold that makes a man feel hollow
inside, nothing but dust and bones. Maybe I’d been running from this all for far
too long. Maybe if I had let myself get taken all those years ago I wouldn’t
have had to be alone for as long as I have. I watched as that machine overtook
the city, the ones I loved some of the first to be converted.
The past so different
from the present.
4 years.
Going.
I am standing on that old
coastline, the one where my pop would pick those strawberries from his
beachside garden. I think of the life before me, I have finished high-school now;
I could backpack around the country, eat mysterious foods, and define
myself. I can feel pop’s arm around me
as a stare out at the waves crashing on the shoreline, and the passing sun
painting the sky a beautiful gold. The wind is blowing through my hair as I let
the chilled sea breeze float me along with it.
Gone.
I am lieing on this table as the bell sounds
for the next stage of extraction. Which memories had I already lost? Will I
relive those terrible times in the wild, or will those be something easily
forgotten.
What
did this all mean, Stop. Why would you take this from a person and then take
their body too, what's left to prove? The machines already have it all, and now
they want my memories too. I had forgotten what it had been like to be still
without a racing heart and fear for what would surge from the darkness. To
think that this had all begun with wanting something more beyond the
simplicities of life that surrounded us, the beauty that was found in even the
most simple a thing.
Metal
shards and crunching gears replacing the parts where bones and flesh should be.
Overtaking the parts that made a human a human and turning a man into a serving
machine. I am me, I had a future beyond all this – I had a future with her
but that doesn’t matter now. Because -
Soon my memories would
be turned to ash and nothing more. I
stopped caring, I stopped empathizing hours ago. Feeling almost gone now,
Love?
Love…
just a whisper to the bustle of sounds that came before it, and that should
have come after it. I loved so much – or at least that’s what I remember.
Though I’d not remembered what love felt
like – to feel it. To know that someone feels it for me. Everything is becoming
so silent now, as it is being replaced with a grinding of gears and metal. Just
like the volume -
Going.
I remember my father swooping me up
in his warm comforting arms. Memories flashing past my face of embracing him as
he walked through the door, and holding him as tight as my 5 years old arms
would allow. I felt the pain of watching
him leave and knowing that he would not be back for what seemed like an
eternity. My dad was only young then, making sacrifices for the family he loved
and doing anything he could to keep us safe.
Gone.
Why
am I here on this cold table being converted into nothing but raw machinery?
This war, not worth the lives it would take to win. A fight not worth the men and women that
would sacrifice themselves to win it before it was done. The ultimate sacrifice
–human memories, human thoughts that were thrown into a mathematical matrix and
the remaining parts of them all but flesh turned to metal.
These
memories would somehow help save mankind and we would never get them back. Once
they were gone, they were gone. Finality. No one really understood why this was
happening or why we were needlessly disposed of even how it all began. All we
cared about was running from the thing that would steal our individuality and
our memories from us for a better world.
Ideals,
that’s all we are. An ideal for a better world.. I could spit at it. The rage
boiling up inside me…. I see they haven’t taken that yet.
Figures.
Rage. What a terrible feeling to be left with, as
my final memories drift out of me as I lay here -until each and every thing
that defined me is ripped from my aging bones.
Aging? but I am filled with no memories of my aging
. 29. The age I would be, If I was not being replaced with metals and gears
that will be forced to grind for a cause it has no need to understand. Aging
and aging fast, some sick joke if you ask me. We are forced to die for this
cause, and we have to age the years through as they are stolen from us, feel
what it feels to become older but feel no gain or pleasure in it. Not aging
with friends, not seeing our love ones chase their dreams. Not catching that fleeting
sunset as it passes behind the hills as we hold the one we love, closer and
closer. But I no longer know what that feels like.
Going
The rain beaded through my thick
hair as I stood staring on that hilltop, unsure of where my tears began and the
falling rain met in synchronous union. So much destruction lay dormant behind
my eyes. No. This can’t be, no no
no. I was 25 when that crushing destructive beast lumbered itself among the
tall skyscrapers of the inner city bustle. She was taken that day. She was
converted. I would never get to sit cross legged across from her as we joked of
places we’d travel and things we’d see.
“You
know that horizon darling?” I asked her
“I
know of it darling” Sarah smirked, as her lips curled gently.
“We
are going to chase it one day” I replied
“I
know Mark, I know”
and we both smiled and stared off into the distance
and we both smiled and stared off into the distance
Gone
I had wandered the
world looking for a stop to it all, why had we consumed ourselves with all this
advancement and forgotten about the things that truly made the world around. This
world that had come to be defined – no permitted by the absence of love and
understanding and had been consumed by beings that had no need for these
feelings. If only I had told her I loved
her once more, before the life of our kind fell so abruptly from our grasp. If
only I had held my father a little tighter but here I am alone –idiot- IDIOT. I
am angry with myself for everything I ever said, I ever did, I ever forgot.
A gust of wind rushes
over my gears as they grind for this life I no longer understand. I no longer
have any feeling, I am made of nothing but time and destruction. Time, the memory
of it all slipped between my fingers, lost to the oblivion.
Going, Everything,
Pain, Rage, The fear of it all.
By
Lincoln Parsons
