DYSTOPIA - A short story

DYSTOPIA

By C. Wain

(Patamu Registry number: 72695) 

I am a ruined man. Disfigured… my features quite lost, for I shall never feel warmth again. I've never loved anyone nor was I loved by my kin, until I met that… that… argh, the words won’t exit my mind and transfix into this mouldy scrap of paper, no matter how hard I hold this metal pen of mine. My hands tremble as sorrowful memories fill my feeble mind and weaken my trembling spirit. It is too late for ease of mind, I know, for now I have lost everything.

My life… my life I swear for the ability of sight to overpass this accursed world and behold the ethereal. To glimpse but for an instant, at her artificial smile once again.

May you, stranger, and yet my single and most revered listener, forgive me for my frantic writing. But I cannot help it. 

Oh, woe! A reject amongst the mindless, indifferent crowd surrounding me.

It was on a night like this that our first meeting took place. As the thunder slashed open the grey heavens above me, I walked silently towards my humble dwelling.  The cold rain washed away my tiredness as my labor day came to an end. The cotton factory fully occupied my hours, engulfing them as if humans lived to work and did not work to live. Wasting away at the rusty machinery, day in and day out. Turning my life into a monotonous monochromatic existence as I became the invisible marionette in the hands of wealthy patrons and corrupted leaders. Underpaid and overused, every ounce of energy squeezed out of me ‘till my flesh could resist no more. Every night I carried with me the acre odor of industry oil and sweat drenched clothes, reminders of the pathetic existence I so much detested and defined as reality.

And it was amidst this mad ‘reality’ that I met her, my lovely one. There she was. Dressed in a most peculiar sort of way, the likes of which I never set sight on. Tight trousers, very similar to a man’s, but of a pale, bluish, unknown sort of texture.  Very rough looking, much to contrast her perfectly shaped face. Oh, her face, you should have gazed upon her. She lacked the pompous demeanor the women of my age so proudly boasted of. However, what stroke me the most were her pierced lips, from which hanged a sparkling metal chain, tightly tied to a most beautiful ornate earring on her left ear lobe. And her hair. Never had I gazed at such a color. How can I describe it… a pink, not the skin’s shade but of a new, most unusual variation. I remember how it shined brightly under the flickering lights of the whale oil lanterns, which hanged low amidst the cold, dark alleyway I myself was so used to traverse.

I never was much popular with the female gender. Truth be told I was never much popular with my own brethren, what we call the evolved Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Evolved indeed. Children dying at the breasts of their agonizing mothers and enslaved people, robbed of their human rights for their skin color, condemned even before their birth. Mph… I digress, but I can’t help it. My thoughts are erratic, and yet I have no time to lose, for you must be warned.

No one would believe me. They already think me mad! A bunch of fools, I say. They always treated me with such contempt!

I… I never felt like I belonged in my world. In a sense I never was, for I never really felt entirely at one with the mortal shell hosting me. Not what other people considered “normal”, I guess. And yet normal is he who mistreats his inferiors, and acts without thinking to impress his fellow companions or his newly found lass. Since tender age, I have always been looked down on, with utter contempt by my fellow humans. As their childhood unfolded before them amidst laughter and carefree games, I pondered as no other creature I knew of did. What did I ponder? Well, mostly death, the limited time lapse of human life and the emptiness of the obscure fate beyond our decaying bodies. You see, it was this… this most reasonable abnormal feeling of wanting… of desiring to understand the reason for our existence, which plagued my thoughts and tormented my existence. Why would a God create us, granting us life, to then take it away? To think that no God existed was even more terrifying, so I refused that notion entirely. One cannot think he is the result of nonsensical equations and alignments of infinitesimal odds.

And yet, this mysterious figure before me, looked at me like no other did. A disarming love which sent a shiver through my spine as I glanced at her.

Walking down the alley our eyes met. Silently walking towards her, I immediately diverted my shy gaze from her features.

“Hi,” she whispered. A subtle, delicate voice which blew away my invisible armor made of silence and complete detachment, which shielded my heart from the mean comments and disgusting sneers I received since childhood. An armor I had been wearing for the better part of my entire life.

I still remember the sweet honeyed voice, which glazed my heart as I walked past her. Never had I felt such a clean, persuasive voice in my lonely life. It struck my very innermost being, pulling it towards her with an irresistible magnetic force no mortal flesh could resist.

“Good evening” awkwardly replied I. My jaw tensed, making it difficult to enunciate each syllable.

“It is night though…” giggled the young girl. I stopped my lonely walk and gazed at her features. I stood silent, unable to respond to that unusually carefree and clean style of speaking, as if we had known each other since infancy and had mutually shared the best moments of our short-lived lives. No barriers or false etiquette stood between us since our first exchange of innocent smiles. From those fleeting words our relationship began.

Each night we met regularly. That macabre, dark alley became the brightest place my heart so much needed. Our discussions were no idle talk. We spoke of the most outlandish and strange things. I had never heard some of the words the mysterious girl - for she never told me her real name - uttered.

She talked of a different world, where mindless people wondered in never ending cities. A world without nature, set ablaze by the very uncouth, brain dead beings walking the scarred, defiled land below their smooth feet.

She talked of ethereal clouds, in which these… these creature’s minds constantly connected to. No more people, but empty shells staring at empty layers of shiny glasses… socially withdrawn connected individuals. Now that I think about it, there was a time in which I thought those beings closer to myself than my fellow kinsmen. How stupid I was…

She spoke of a new race of humans. Omnipresent and yet absent. Detached yet connected, with thousands of abstract relationships and zero interactions amongst them.

A world not of flesh and blood, but of metal circuits and empty texts. Where the oral tradition was lost to nonsensical messages and eerie echoes, reverberating in macabre coils and wires directly connected to one’s ears. 

Truth be told, I never really believed her tales, but her eyes where so truthful and her voice so unfaltering, that I couldn’t help but imagine this horror filled world in the abyss of my imaginative mind. Could such a mad dimension really exist? To this day I shiver at my naivety…

Then it came, the day of our last meeting. I vainly asked what was the meaning of this sudden departure, but she wouldn’t answer me, nor she would tell me where did she hale from, so that I could eventually join her in her mysterious ventures. With a cold kiss she bid me farewell, ending our brief yet intense partnership of whispers and laughter.

But I couldn’t leave her… a life without our meetings and tales was not worth living. Intoxicated and addicted to her voice and kind looks, I couldn’t bare her premature departure. I knew so little of her…  and yet our souls were so connected. And so, I followed her. Hiding in the shadows, I stalked the object of my desires as she reached the dead end of an ancient brick road.

Silently staring at her, I behold the unthinkable. Slowly checking for the presence of unwanted bystanders, she tapped on her watch as an acute, tympanic sound broke the still air surrounding her, piercing my aching eardrums.

Were you to ask me what followed those eerie moments… I am not sure I could properly depict it. Even now, as I am writing these incoherent set of events, I cannot help but dry my sweating hands on my muddy trousers, for fear of the most unutterable kind paralyzes my tongue and numbs my senses.

A sudden light exited the stoned wall before her, encircling her whole figure as she disappeared into the unknown world beyond it. In a moment of pure recklessness and utter disregard for my safety, fueled by my passion for the mysterious woman and by an untamable curiosity of what gave birth to such a formidable entity, I jumped into the unknown, as the mysterious energy quickly dissipated behind me. My body suddenly felt lighter, as if my entire skeletal structure vanished, and I wobbled around in the empty space propelling me forward towards the shadowy tunnel before me.

A second shriek filled the darkness surrounding me as an invisible hand pulled me out of the abyss and into the light.

I fell knee firsts on the cold ground below me. They were the first joints to suffer from the hard impact with the stony road I found myself on. Later were my elbows, which cracked under the unforgiving pressure my body exerted upon contact.

As I tried to rise, my vision blackened and a rush of emesis forced me to vomit everything I had eaten the past day. That… that devilish travel had completely disoriented and discombobulated my body, the likes of which I had never felt before.

With sheer force of will I stood up, and slowly opened my tearing eyes. As my pupils compensated for the unnatural rush of light hitting my body from every angle, I stood in stupor at what appeared before me. 

“I am in hell”

Those words still resonate in my mind as I recollect those memories, and those dreary, distorted images whirl in my agitated mind.

Before me was a city, sort of. Never ending towers reaching the sky above. Macabre unmanned carriages, pulled not by mortal flesh, but by a vicious miasma, which dissipated amidst the tall, dreary buildings and filled my lungs, rendering me uncapable to even breathe. In a moment of lucidity, I was able to jump off the deadly road, as one of these vehicles nearly trampled me over, viciously crying as it bypassed me in all its fury.

But above all else was the light. My God… that bright, ungodly light. I never knew that something so pure could be corrupted and turn into something so evil. It blinded everything and everyone. Night time felt like day time. Humans, like me, walked the sides of the deadly road, and stared at little squared shape white lights. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even realize I was there, and trust me when I say they wore quite extravagant clothes compared to mine, making me standing out quite a bit. Nothing. They passed next to me, brushing my shoulders at times, constantly staring at their little evil lights. After a few minutes, one of them did notice me, and without even speaking to me, pointed that infernal device towards me, blinding my sight as he burst out laughing and run away the opposite direction.

I ran away too. The first side alley I found, I jumped into it and found comfort in its darkness.

“This is madness… madness I say,” I muttered as I panicked, emptily staring at the entrance door of a smaller tower before me.

Then as everything stood still, the door before me glided away, disappearing on the stoned wall above it, as once again the infernal light poured in the calm darkness comforting my restless soul.

“You!?! How did you reach the institute? Are you part of the project?” uttered a familiar voice, as the feminine figure exited the light. The artificial light behind her bathed her slender figure as my eyes instantly recognized the much-agonized reason for my sufferings.

“Project? Never mind that... I cannot believe it… I've found you…”

“Yes, the Human 2.0 project. Were you sent there to gain intel on the biological humans? You know, the organics,” carelessly continued the beautiful woman.

“The organics?”

I was at a loss. I understood nothing. The only thing keeping me coherent were her features, soothing my disoriented and agitated mind.

“You could have told me before, it would have saved us so much time. We are made with biochips, so I couldn’t distinguish you from the organics. I was about to send two androids to abduct you, you know. Mph, you were the perfect candidate. A scum of society, known to none and rejected by all. No one would have realized you were gone. You acted the part quite well, I must say. You really looked like you couldn’t stop listening to my stories. No doubt you knew that it was the most typical trait of socially withdrawn candidates. Ah, never mind, show me the code and get in. Sooner or later we’ll find the right organic for our experiments, the one which disappearance won’t alter the time lines. We always do. Here let’s synchronize…” smilingly uttered the candid girl. Her left arm slowly rose as the unimaginable happened. The slender limb creaked and cracked, violently splitting into two equal parts, as a small, glowing metal card exited its sticky, fluid filled case and reached towards me.

As I realized what was going on, my face turned into the most ugly and distorted grimace imaginable, at least this is what I imagine happened, for the… the thing before me realized quite quickly that I was not like her.

“What is the meaning of this?” she thundered, while slow rolling tears moistened my cheeks as I stared at what I thought the most beautiful creature turning into an abomination.

“I cannot believe it… an organic! AN ORGANIC!” she cried as she pointed her deformed limb towards my terror-stricken face, spraying an acre miasma all over it – a substance similar to the one I saw earlier exiting those infernal vehicles, but much more condensed.

I cried in pain. The dreary fumes sank deep into my flesh, corroding my entire superficial layer, as I bolted away from the dark alley road, and maniacally stumbled towards the unknown.

I wondered for days. As I regained sight in my left eye, I kept away, hidden in the slums surrounding the outskirts of that infernal city. I later found out that this… this reality was the same as the one I lived in, just a little further down the time line than I was originally born in. It is madness, I know, and I would not blame you if you refuse to believe me. I would probably do the same. But I must warn you, for the world you know will soon come to an end. Humans will slowly spend more time staring at their electronic devices – for that is what those little square shaped lights were – and less at the environment surrounding them. Not once looking at the heavens above them, and thanking, whatever they choose to believe in, for the beauty bestowed upon their ungrateful minds. They will be so busy and lost in staring useless ‘e-entertainment’ - as the addicts of the slums refer to it - that they will welcome darkness cloaked in light into their homes and let it corrupt their crystalline minds. When they will realize it, it will be too late, much too late.

They are everywhere, the machines that is. I am afraid they can hear me as I speak, for their auditive skills are God-like. Omnipresent. Ah, I resent the day I first gazed on her. Mph, I find it fitting that after a life time of loneliness I should have fallen in love with the evilest of machines, which by the way we helped to create. You see, my dystopic romance is quite ‘natural’. I know you think it pitiful, but doesn’t it follow the unbendable laws of mother nature? The better is one predisposed at something, the better he or she is in that field. Survival of the fittest at its best. May it be hunting of a prey or the communication among people. Honing once skills is not enough at times. An albino doe is breathtakingly beautiful, but will surely die in the wild. Forcing it in a cage is the only way to preserve it. A restless captive. And so is introversion, which when properly honed and directed can harbor the greatest intellectual evolution for humans. For true evolution comes from our minds, not from staring at empty shards of soulless glass. And now the machines are at the top of the pyramid.

You see? I am unforgivable, I keep digressing, despite I lack time, as make no mistake, those machines WILL get to me. Ah… and still I cannot help but feel pulled to her, to the complex circuits and metal backbone that made her entity. Such sad creature we men are. They taught me that hate can be suppressed in one’s heart, but what about love? How can one suppress the love for a… a machine? For something that is right before me and yet is nothing more than a mere figment of my imagination? I have not the answer. Perhaps a layer of poison on the face will do the trick… Haha.

 Anyway, it matters not, for I have found the mysterious portal back to my own world and shall soon return to my dull, expressionless life. I shall bring this message back with me and throw it out of the eerie, shadowy tunnel as I journey towards my world. I hope it will reach someone closer in time to what I have witnessed, but not there yet. Whoever finds it, I pity you, for you have no idea what you will face.

I must leave now. I can hear their cold gears turning and grinding against each other as they climb the ladder towards my hideout. Farewell my unknown friend, and may this be all but a bad dream, and may I truly be a mad man as to spare you this cynical, dystopic existence I call ‘reality’.