Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
A Monkey in the Hand
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
In retrospect, dear reader, it was a mistake.
I should have known. Mere days after I finished the mech-monkey, I found it dissecting its real-life counterpart. Pinned it to the table with my set of German-engineered scalpels, and taken it apart. The dirigible from Stepney Marsh was running late, so when I arrived home with a sack of new books, the deed was almost done. I should have disassembled it then, but I thought I saw something in its eyes, something human. A desire to know, to learn, to understand why it was different to the soft, furry mirror that wailed and squealed and gave up life so quickly.
All I could hear was my father’s voice, heavy with disappointment but no real surprise: Oh, Phineas. You’re so careless. Look at the mess you’ve made.
So I tidied up the sticky, stinking corpse and threw it down the chute. I listened as it clanged along the shaft, whirled around the spiral bits, thudded into the sharp bends, then came the faint whomp as the flames gobbled it up.
I was careful to clean all the bevelled and engraved edges of the mech-monkey, and under his glass nails (which I realised were too sharp by half). I checked his insides to make sure the clockwork mechanisms were all working, not misfiring in a way that might cause a psychotic episode. Turning him around, I opened the little hatch in his lower back where, each morning, I scooped three small loads of coal to feed his tiny internal furnace. The emissions came out as small, popping farts and, if I forgot to open a window, my workshop filled up very quickly with a nasty charcoal smoke.
I kept it – it was useful for fetching and carrying, and it opened cans terribly well. Then one Tuesday I found it reading; it saw me and threw the book away, but it was too late by then. I knew.
It probably would have been okay if I hadn’t got the next idea. I had been thinking about making a Galatea, but then I read about some sailors who’d caught themselves a mermaid and tried to bring her back to Portsmouth. They kept her in a barrel of seawater on the deck, but it seems she jumped ship just out of harbour, waved goodbye and ducked under the dark, cold sea.
And I thought ‘What if?’
What Comfort There Is
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Old Syd disproved the rumour with one mad dash; it ended in a bloody game of cat and mouse, those bastard machines chasing him from street to street, finally cornering him in a neatly presented cul-de-sac. They toyed with him for hours before his screams stopped. Wet weather does nothing to dull their sensors.
So yes, we are in the end times. Our species fails, huddled indoors, dreading each sound. My frightened cadre are hiding in an opulent mini-mansion, though we haven’t eaten properly in days. An old suburb lies just within walking distance, and it’s a race between us and humanity’s killers. We do our best to scavenge from the old places, even as the suburbs are recycled and turned into neat streets, freshly painted town-houses, acres of immaculate lawns.
It seems ironic that we are being wiped out by a cliché. An uprising of artificial machines, sure. But these are not the instruments of war, rather those of peace. Construction crews, serving a purpose that our laziness corrupted, simplified. Build. Gather. Build more.
What seemed a great solution to the housing crisis turned into unguided madness. Materials gathered from existing structures. Whole forests razed for lumber. When the builders began to destroy suburbs and cities holus bolus, these mad machines were destroyed. This achieved little, given the machines’ instructions to “generate sufficient crews to achieve the task”, and those left built themselves quicker than we could take them out. They looked upon our actions as a genocide, and the best we could do simply raised their madness to apocalyptic levels.
With intelligence came survival traits, so they’ve done their level best to grind us out of existence. But still, they continue the task, and one by one we die surrounded by perfectly designed streets, neat commercial hubs, empty warehouses and marinas.
Our enemy is simple, but amazingly efficient. They prowl the old highways, pouncing upon those cars which brave our dead nation’s asphalt veins. Nowhere to go anyway. Forklifts and dozers lurk in each street, blood running from their tines, while the yellow necks of diggers and cranes lurk overhead, watching for us. Waiting patiently for runners.
Our final creations have outdone us, yet in our twilight hour we are as gods. For our killers are truly alive, and we have created this life. I have seen them mourning the machines which our partisans have destroyed, metal buckets clanking together sorrowfully as the construction crews give comfort to each other. They attend their dead, dismantling them reverently, engines and sirens roaring into the night.
Whenever they hold a funeral, we know it’s time to leave the neighbourhood. They get really vicious afterwards, which tells me they’ve discovered revenge and are more human than we.