ArtificialIdiot
07-21-2005, 10:47 AM
This was based off a dream I had this morning... Which explains why it's weird and disjointed. or maybe that's just because I wrote it... Ho-hum.
* * *
The wind caressed my face as if it were the soft touch of a mothers hand to a young child. Serene was the word, picturesque if you were with a multi-billion dollar travel company. Which luckily, we were not. My father and myself were self-styled scientists. Some might say of the mad variety, but what's the point of being a pioneer if you're terrified of crossing a few boundaries?
"The equipment ready?" I call to him as I park the boat slap bang in what seems to be the middle of the Atlantic ocean. I know this is nonsense of course, this is nowhere near the centre of it. The question could be raised and debated that the ocean doesn't have a 'middle' as such, but being a little poetic never hurt anyone.
*mmm. Not. Quite.*
My father was a queer one, even I had to straight out admit that. He was a tall, proud man with deeply tanned skin. A result of life on the edge, no doubt. His right arm was barely a stub, lost when he tried to make a coffee maker into a high explosive using nothing but watch batteries and whale blubber. He had no lower jaw, he never said how he lost that, but had since replaced it with a VoicePak. A hastily constructed steel chin with an artificial voice box built-in. Aside from that and his hastily receding pale-salmon hair-line, he was perfectly normal.
*Ah. mmm. That. Should. Do. It.*
He muttered as he made the final tweaks and twists to our home-made diving machine. It was like a sleek, pale blue surf board made up to look like a shark. My fathers idea, I assure you. In reality it was a jet-propelled one man craft with built-in oxygen supplies. It was far quicker and more manoeuvrable than a traditional dive suit, it would also hold an ungodly amount of oxygen that would usually break a mans back.
*Remember. Don't get. Too close.*
"I'll be fine." I reassure him, before strapping myself into the device. We hadn't got around to naming it as yet. It slipped down into the unloading bay, and then like a torpedo from a U-boat shot out into the water from the underside of the boat.
My hands locked onto the control levers and I gently brought it down at a steady pace, feeling the water rush past my bare back. The Co-ordinates flashed on the screen in front of me, displaying an unnatural output of unusual energies below. We called this the warping effect. We are not quite sure what it will do or why it's occurred, but we did intend to investigate before the navy and government officials discovered this little beauty and panicked.
As I defended lower, I noticed that the water had taken on a vivid yellow glow, tinged by the brightest pink you ever did see. I was about to analyse the water content when something slammed into the small of my back. It must have only been the size of a hammer, but the blow left me in immense, near unbearable pain. Another blow, this one akin to a sledge hammer, hit the side of my craft, folding the side in on it's self. One of the engines cut and I was left spinning out of control, crashing down into the murky depths of the water.
And then my eyeballs imploded into what can only be described as an acid trip. Greens, purples, blues, pinks, yellows, every colour you could ever imagine and so much more blazed directly into my brain, drowning it in an unbarable light show. Every nerve ending in my body felt as though it was being scraped repeatedly with a blunt knife. This must have been the warping effect... I was a fool to have come so close! But it seemed so safe...
Unable to take the unbearable pain anymore, I felt my body shutting down all it's systems, one by one. Until eventually...
... I faded to grey.
* * *
I can't tell you when I awoke. All I can tell you is I felt strange. Different. Parts of my body... Didn't feel the same as before. It even seemed that I was looking out of different eyes. Everything seemed to fresh, so clear more in focus than it had ever felt before. Was it my imagination, or was I not blinking? No, I was still dazed. That was impossible. Wait... Something else... Something fundamental wasn't right about this. I thought about it for a few moments, and then I realised.
I wasn't breathing.
I sat there, paralysed by shock as questions rolled through my mind. Was I dead? Where was I? Was this the afterlife? It didn't look like the pearly gates of St. Peter to me... It seemed more like, well home to be honest. I tried to close my eyes, block out the world, recompose my thoughts. But I couldn't, I... God no, this can't be happening. I had no eye lids!
"Are you awake?" Whispered a soft voice by my side.
"Mu...Muh..." I tried to utter, but it felt as though somebody had tied a knot in my throat.
"It's ok, dear. I'll have you sorted in a moment..."
A needle prick to the skin on my neck followed by a liquid being flushed into my veins and the effect was almost instantaneous. A soothing sensation ran down my throat and into my lungs. Loosening everything up again. But I still wasn't breathing.
"Mom?"
Her hand caressed my forehead and rested on my cheeks. She hushed me and then explained.
"You had an accident. Thankfully you floated to the surface and your father brought you home..."
"What's happened, why can't I breath?"
There was an unnerving silence in the room, the kind that looms around bad news like a pestilent stench.
"Perhaps you should look in the mirror."
I climbed out of bed, walking across the room to a full length mirror. The first thing I noticed was that my skin was pale blue. Some of it wasn't even skin anymore. It was hard as steel, or had the texture of electrical wire. I reached up to my eyes, feeling too glass orbs protruding from where they should be. That explained the lack of eyelids... Which wasn't much of a silver lining. Two jets had been fused onto the side of my ankles, which wasn't too worrying as the soles of my feet now felt as hard as iron anyway.
"The warping effect..." I whispered. "It didn't... It can't have..."
*I'm afraid. So. My boy.* My father placed an arm around my shoulders. *Fascinating though. It is. It. Seems to. Have. Merged you. With. The under. Water craft.*
"It's... Like something taken out of science fiction."
*You know. What. I say. My. Boy. Todays fiction. Tomorrows hard science.*
"Why aren't I breathing though?"
*Must be. The. Oxygen tanks.*
"You can go for hours without breathing, we think..." My mother chipped in.
*I've already. Phoned. Mister. DeGlass...*
"Deglass? But you hate DeGlass..."
* He. Gets things. Done.*[/] Stated my father matter-of-factly. [i]*This is. A. Discovery. My boy. It has. To. Be. Announced properly.*
"Announced? You've turned you're son into a walking freak and that's all you can think about!?"
*You. Have a. Week to. Recover.* He threw what would seem to a normal person like a Skittles packet my way. *Bring. Your. Brothers and. Sisters along. They'll. Enjoy the. Fresh. Air.*
* * *
And so the time had come. I looked out across the hastily constructed stage to see DeGlass crooning the crowds like the slimly bastard he is. Behind him was the famous town rock pool. The deepest one in the country. Nobody had ever touched the body of it without the aid of a nautical craft... And guess what I was about to do. All in the name of science and public entertainment. Everybody was here, from the worlds most respected scientists to the local butcher. Talk about a mixed crowd.
I occupied myself by pulling the red packet from my pocket. On the back there was a key of colour coded people. A yellow woman with a pony tail was marked lead guitarist, with a blue man marked drums and a red long haired woman marked bass. There was also a green diver and a grey man with a red cross painted on his chest marked 'expendable'. I opened the packet and fished around until I found what I was looking for and plucked her out.
The yellow woman lay on the palm of my hand, stirring in her sleep. I blew lightly on her and she started to rise. Stretching out her limbs and moaning as she exercised her stiff neck. Standing full height she was only an inch at most.
"Morning sis." I greeted cheerfully. "I didn't know you could play guitar."
"Truth be told I can't... But don't tell anybody that." She looked up at him and placed her hands on her hips. "Jesus H. Christ what happened to you?"
"The old man decided to go on a little diving trip. He'd decided he'd done enough damage to himself so he's started on me."
"Then put me back in that damn packet and super glue it shut, man. I'm quite happy as I am..."
"No way in hell. We're in this together."
She huffed and turned his back on him, whistling to the others. Slowly four figures crawled from the packet, dragging the final grey one. I plucked him out of my hand and clipped him to my shoulder. I heard DeGlass mention my name and looked down at the others.
"That's our cue."
I leapt into the moderately cool water, using my inbuilt jets to steadily cruise along the surface. It had taken a lot of pratice. I set my siblings down on a nearby flat rock and leapt out of the water like a fish, giving them all a good show. Like I said, entertainment. After that I dipped down back under the water again and released the miniature green diver from my fist. He bobbed at the side of me.
"Ready to go?" I asked.
"Roger Roger."
We dived down into the water at a steady pace. There was no rush, everybody above would wait hours if they had to and I had to assure that the little figure by my side could keep up. h was having no trouble of course, in fact he was a little bit ahead of me. After all, they didn't have to breath either. The trip was horrendously uneventful, unless you were a rock enthusiast. Then it would have been no doubt spectacular.
There was a slight tug at my shoulder. I looked around to see the expendable had been torn off. That could only mean trouble. The diver made the 'Ok?' sign to me and I shook my head. he ran through a dozen other signs I didn't know so I simply shrugged in return. Around me the water was taking on a yellowing haze, a hint of purple flashing before my eyes that I wouldn't have noticed if I was still human. If they could, they would have gone wide.
I pointed desperately to the surface, indicating we had to leave. When he didn't respond, I scooped him up in my hand and fired both my propellers at full power. Thundering towards the sunny sky that I knew had to be above the restless waves. I climbed onto the rock I had left my siblings on and managed to scoop them up before the first wave slammed me against the wall. The water turned a moody grey, offsetting the clear blue sky. There was barely a breeze in the air, yet the waves were being tossed around as if a hurricane had hit them. They poured over my head in great sweeping arcs, all around me I could hear crashing water and the occasional scream from above. I tried to close my eyes as tightly as possible, completely forgetting that I couldn't. A hairline crack splintered my vision as one of my eye pods cracked open. There was an agonising moment as salt water poured into my exposed optic nerves and then, as quickly as it began it was all over.
I crawled up the rock face, gasping without breathing. At least not in a conventional sense. Once to the top I found a desolate scene before me. Where once there were possibly hundreds of people, there were now only empty stalls. Well, almost all of them were empty. Up the front, sitting primly with her hands in her lap as if nothing had happened was my mother.
"What happened?" I asked her as I approached. "Where's dad?"
"I don't know." She admitted. "I closed my eyes."
Her synthetic skin had been peeled from her face, dangling from her chin and her ears.
"You're cybernetics are showing."
"Oh..." She squeaked as what was left of her face flushed red. No real woman would ever have my father.
"So, what do we do now?" I said, as I placed my siblings on the arm of a near by chair. They were shaken and possibly stirred. Maybe more. But they'd live.
"We sit and watch the sunrise." She suggested.
And so we did. And it was beautiful...
* * *
The wind caressed my face as if it were the soft touch of a mothers hand to a young child. Serene was the word, picturesque if you were with a multi-billion dollar travel company. Which luckily, we were not. My father and myself were self-styled scientists. Some might say of the mad variety, but what's the point of being a pioneer if you're terrified of crossing a few boundaries?
"The equipment ready?" I call to him as I park the boat slap bang in what seems to be the middle of the Atlantic ocean. I know this is nonsense of course, this is nowhere near the centre of it. The question could be raised and debated that the ocean doesn't have a 'middle' as such, but being a little poetic never hurt anyone.
*mmm. Not. Quite.*
My father was a queer one, even I had to straight out admit that. He was a tall, proud man with deeply tanned skin. A result of life on the edge, no doubt. His right arm was barely a stub, lost when he tried to make a coffee maker into a high explosive using nothing but watch batteries and whale blubber. He had no lower jaw, he never said how he lost that, but had since replaced it with a VoicePak. A hastily constructed steel chin with an artificial voice box built-in. Aside from that and his hastily receding pale-salmon hair-line, he was perfectly normal.
*Ah. mmm. That. Should. Do. It.*
He muttered as he made the final tweaks and twists to our home-made diving machine. It was like a sleek, pale blue surf board made up to look like a shark. My fathers idea, I assure you. In reality it was a jet-propelled one man craft with built-in oxygen supplies. It was far quicker and more manoeuvrable than a traditional dive suit, it would also hold an ungodly amount of oxygen that would usually break a mans back.
*Remember. Don't get. Too close.*
"I'll be fine." I reassure him, before strapping myself into the device. We hadn't got around to naming it as yet. It slipped down into the unloading bay, and then like a torpedo from a U-boat shot out into the water from the underside of the boat.
My hands locked onto the control levers and I gently brought it down at a steady pace, feeling the water rush past my bare back. The Co-ordinates flashed on the screen in front of me, displaying an unnatural output of unusual energies below. We called this the warping effect. We are not quite sure what it will do or why it's occurred, but we did intend to investigate before the navy and government officials discovered this little beauty and panicked.
As I defended lower, I noticed that the water had taken on a vivid yellow glow, tinged by the brightest pink you ever did see. I was about to analyse the water content when something slammed into the small of my back. It must have only been the size of a hammer, but the blow left me in immense, near unbearable pain. Another blow, this one akin to a sledge hammer, hit the side of my craft, folding the side in on it's self. One of the engines cut and I was left spinning out of control, crashing down into the murky depths of the water.
And then my eyeballs imploded into what can only be described as an acid trip. Greens, purples, blues, pinks, yellows, every colour you could ever imagine and so much more blazed directly into my brain, drowning it in an unbarable light show. Every nerve ending in my body felt as though it was being scraped repeatedly with a blunt knife. This must have been the warping effect... I was a fool to have come so close! But it seemed so safe...
Unable to take the unbearable pain anymore, I felt my body shutting down all it's systems, one by one. Until eventually...
... I faded to grey.
* * *
I can't tell you when I awoke. All I can tell you is I felt strange. Different. Parts of my body... Didn't feel the same as before. It even seemed that I was looking out of different eyes. Everything seemed to fresh, so clear more in focus than it had ever felt before. Was it my imagination, or was I not blinking? No, I was still dazed. That was impossible. Wait... Something else... Something fundamental wasn't right about this. I thought about it for a few moments, and then I realised.
I wasn't breathing.
I sat there, paralysed by shock as questions rolled through my mind. Was I dead? Where was I? Was this the afterlife? It didn't look like the pearly gates of St. Peter to me... It seemed more like, well home to be honest. I tried to close my eyes, block out the world, recompose my thoughts. But I couldn't, I... God no, this can't be happening. I had no eye lids!
"Are you awake?" Whispered a soft voice by my side.
"Mu...Muh..." I tried to utter, but it felt as though somebody had tied a knot in my throat.
"It's ok, dear. I'll have you sorted in a moment..."
A needle prick to the skin on my neck followed by a liquid being flushed into my veins and the effect was almost instantaneous. A soothing sensation ran down my throat and into my lungs. Loosening everything up again. But I still wasn't breathing.
"Mom?"
Her hand caressed my forehead and rested on my cheeks. She hushed me and then explained.
"You had an accident. Thankfully you floated to the surface and your father brought you home..."
"What's happened, why can't I breath?"
There was an unnerving silence in the room, the kind that looms around bad news like a pestilent stench.
"Perhaps you should look in the mirror."
I climbed out of bed, walking across the room to a full length mirror. The first thing I noticed was that my skin was pale blue. Some of it wasn't even skin anymore. It was hard as steel, or had the texture of electrical wire. I reached up to my eyes, feeling too glass orbs protruding from where they should be. That explained the lack of eyelids... Which wasn't much of a silver lining. Two jets had been fused onto the side of my ankles, which wasn't too worrying as the soles of my feet now felt as hard as iron anyway.
"The warping effect..." I whispered. "It didn't... It can't have..."
*I'm afraid. So. My boy.* My father placed an arm around my shoulders. *Fascinating though. It is. It. Seems to. Have. Merged you. With. The under. Water craft.*
"It's... Like something taken out of science fiction."
*You know. What. I say. My. Boy. Todays fiction. Tomorrows hard science.*
"Why aren't I breathing though?"
*Must be. The. Oxygen tanks.*
"You can go for hours without breathing, we think..." My mother chipped in.
*I've already. Phoned. Mister. DeGlass...*
"Deglass? But you hate DeGlass..."
* He. Gets things. Done.*[/] Stated my father matter-of-factly. [i]*This is. A. Discovery. My boy. It has. To. Be. Announced properly.*
"Announced? You've turned you're son into a walking freak and that's all you can think about!?"
*You. Have a. Week to. Recover.* He threw what would seem to a normal person like a Skittles packet my way. *Bring. Your. Brothers and. Sisters along. They'll. Enjoy the. Fresh. Air.*
* * *
And so the time had come. I looked out across the hastily constructed stage to see DeGlass crooning the crowds like the slimly bastard he is. Behind him was the famous town rock pool. The deepest one in the country. Nobody had ever touched the body of it without the aid of a nautical craft... And guess what I was about to do. All in the name of science and public entertainment. Everybody was here, from the worlds most respected scientists to the local butcher. Talk about a mixed crowd.
I occupied myself by pulling the red packet from my pocket. On the back there was a key of colour coded people. A yellow woman with a pony tail was marked lead guitarist, with a blue man marked drums and a red long haired woman marked bass. There was also a green diver and a grey man with a red cross painted on his chest marked 'expendable'. I opened the packet and fished around until I found what I was looking for and plucked her out.
The yellow woman lay on the palm of my hand, stirring in her sleep. I blew lightly on her and she started to rise. Stretching out her limbs and moaning as she exercised her stiff neck. Standing full height she was only an inch at most.
"Morning sis." I greeted cheerfully. "I didn't know you could play guitar."
"Truth be told I can't... But don't tell anybody that." She looked up at him and placed her hands on her hips. "Jesus H. Christ what happened to you?"
"The old man decided to go on a little diving trip. He'd decided he'd done enough damage to himself so he's started on me."
"Then put me back in that damn packet and super glue it shut, man. I'm quite happy as I am..."
"No way in hell. We're in this together."
She huffed and turned his back on him, whistling to the others. Slowly four figures crawled from the packet, dragging the final grey one. I plucked him out of my hand and clipped him to my shoulder. I heard DeGlass mention my name and looked down at the others.
"That's our cue."
I leapt into the moderately cool water, using my inbuilt jets to steadily cruise along the surface. It had taken a lot of pratice. I set my siblings down on a nearby flat rock and leapt out of the water like a fish, giving them all a good show. Like I said, entertainment. After that I dipped down back under the water again and released the miniature green diver from my fist. He bobbed at the side of me.
"Ready to go?" I asked.
"Roger Roger."
We dived down into the water at a steady pace. There was no rush, everybody above would wait hours if they had to and I had to assure that the little figure by my side could keep up. h was having no trouble of course, in fact he was a little bit ahead of me. After all, they didn't have to breath either. The trip was horrendously uneventful, unless you were a rock enthusiast. Then it would have been no doubt spectacular.
There was a slight tug at my shoulder. I looked around to see the expendable had been torn off. That could only mean trouble. The diver made the 'Ok?' sign to me and I shook my head. he ran through a dozen other signs I didn't know so I simply shrugged in return. Around me the water was taking on a yellowing haze, a hint of purple flashing before my eyes that I wouldn't have noticed if I was still human. If they could, they would have gone wide.
I pointed desperately to the surface, indicating we had to leave. When he didn't respond, I scooped him up in my hand and fired both my propellers at full power. Thundering towards the sunny sky that I knew had to be above the restless waves. I climbed onto the rock I had left my siblings on and managed to scoop them up before the first wave slammed me against the wall. The water turned a moody grey, offsetting the clear blue sky. There was barely a breeze in the air, yet the waves were being tossed around as if a hurricane had hit them. They poured over my head in great sweeping arcs, all around me I could hear crashing water and the occasional scream from above. I tried to close my eyes as tightly as possible, completely forgetting that I couldn't. A hairline crack splintered my vision as one of my eye pods cracked open. There was an agonising moment as salt water poured into my exposed optic nerves and then, as quickly as it began it was all over.
I crawled up the rock face, gasping without breathing. At least not in a conventional sense. Once to the top I found a desolate scene before me. Where once there were possibly hundreds of people, there were now only empty stalls. Well, almost all of them were empty. Up the front, sitting primly with her hands in her lap as if nothing had happened was my mother.
"What happened?" I asked her as I approached. "Where's dad?"
"I don't know." She admitted. "I closed my eyes."
Her synthetic skin had been peeled from her face, dangling from her chin and her ears.
"You're cybernetics are showing."
"Oh..." She squeaked as what was left of her face flushed red. No real woman would ever have my father.
"So, what do we do now?" I said, as I placed my siblings on the arm of a near by chair. They were shaken and possibly stirred. Maybe more. But they'd live.
"We sit and watch the sunrise." She suggested.
And so we did. And it was beautiful...