Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Trash Golem
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
When I woke for the first time I had a little trouble focusing, since my eyes seemed to be made of burned-out light bulbs. Soon enough, things began to come clear, and I found I was slumped in the corner of a weedy dirt lot between two shabby row houses. Crouched in front of me was a grubby little Rabbi.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said the Rabbi. “You’re thinking, ‘Where am I? Who am I? Who is this disreputable person in front of me? Why do I have light bulbs for eyes?’ Don’t worry. It’ll all make sense soon when I turn you loose on my enemies.”
“Something smells bad,” I said.
“Smells bad? Smells bad? Never mind that, you have a job to do. You know what you are? You’re a trash golem. I didn’t have the clay and things they usually use, so I asked myself what we have a lot of here in this city, and I said ‘Trash!’ Of trash, we have plenty. Now, you’ll need instructions.”
I heaved myself to my feet, one of which was a dishwasher and the other of which was part of a rusted-out old street sweeper, with the brushes still on. I shuffled in the dirt, trying out the brushes. It kicked up a lot of dust on the Rabbi, who coughed.
“For crying out loud, never do that,” said the Rabbi. “Are you ready for your instructions?”
“I’m ready,” I said, although I didn’t know if I was or not.
“All right. So, you’re a trash golem. Why trash? It’s ironic! Listen, all these people around you, in all these houses, with their rich families, they make more trash than you could imagine. They’ll bury the world in that trash, so I want you to go and destroy them.”
“The children too?”
“Well, not the children, but everyone else.”
“The parents, but not the children?”
“What are you, a conversation golem? OK, you’re right, not the parents with the children.”
“Young couples?”
“You’re giving me a pain, you know. Right here in my neck. OK, they’re sweet, they’re happy, they’re in love, I get it. So no, not the young couples.”
“So just the people on their own?”
The Rabbi sighed heavily, and I went over and put my lawnmower gently on his shoulder.
“All right, I admit it: the whole thing about the enemies with the trash, I made that up. It wasn’t even a very good lie.”
“You’re just lonely?”
The Rabbi kicked an old tin can across the lot. “Well,” he finally said, “do you play chess? We could go to the park and play chess.”
I followed the Rabbi out of the lot and along the river toward the park. The sun glinted on my metal parts and warmed my rusty parts, and I thought longingly of destroying someone.
Helmut, Deep in the Rock
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Even in the middle of a war, Helmut didn’t want to lose his job, because he wasn’t very smart. If they didn’t want him on this asteroid, maybe nobody else would want to hire him either, and then what? Maybe they’d put him in space and laugh at him when he couldn’t breathe, like those boys did when they stuck him in the airlock for a long minute when he was little. He didn’t want that again.
Still, Helmut barely could make himself go in. He didn’t know anything about this kind of work. He’d never done it before. But he did what he was told, which was how he’d always kept a job so far. He got to the end of the rock tunnel, opened the door, and went in.
The room was full of children.
In the distance, some missiles must have been hitting the asteroid, because the whole place shook and boomed. Little showers of dust came down from the ceiling. Some of the children screamed. Helmut wanted to hold his hands over his ears, but he thought the kids might call him scared, so he didn’t.
“Where’s my dad?” shrieked a boy who was only about as tall as Helmut’s knee.
“We’re all going to die! Everybody’s going to die!” wailed a girl.
The wail echoed off the rock walls. They were hidden in one of the deep storerooms, as far from the surface and from the fighting as they could be. The children looked up at Helmut, waiting.
A little dreadlocked girl came up and tugged at the knee of Helmut’s atsuit. “You say, ‘nobody’s going to die.'”
Helmut didn’t understand, so he kept quiet.
“We’re not really going to die, right?”
Another explosion shook the room. Helmut kept thinking he could hear atmosphere breach klaxons off in the distance, but it was just imaginary. The children watched him.
“Maybe,” Helmut said. “If the air goes out, then we’d probably all die then. I hope it doesn’t.”
The dreadlocked girl teared up, but she nodded. “I hope so too,” she said. Then she latched onto his leg like she was trying to keep from being pulled out into space, and the children all clustered around, wrapping their arms around Helmut and each other.
Another thundering, louder now. The lights went out. But the children were holding onto Helmut, even while most of them were crying.
“This isn’t so bad,” Helmut said, wonderingly, and the kids clung to him harder.