Mattastic
Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2008
- Messages
- 26
I thought it was probably time for me to post some of my work here. I kept meaning too, but I was always waiting to comment on someone else's work first. Sadly by the time I get to a thread everything I have to say's already been said, so I decided not to worry about it. 
Here's a piece I wrote the other day which will hopefully end up in my novel. I hope to have a first draft of the entire thing done by Christmas. I hope it's an appropriate length.
And the songlike voice went on. “Approach me, strangers. It has been long since outsiders entered my inner sanctum.”
The pair walked further into the dark cave. Eli shivered with apprehension, and he found himself wondering what the Firakine girl could see with her large black eyes. In spite of himself, he reached out for her hand, which she took.
“Do you know the history of this planet that you call Ishmael?” the voice asked. And now he felt the voice sounded like that of a little girl, although it couldn’t be. Not here, at least.
He spoke out, more quietly than he had intended. “This was a world of the Last Zaizei Kingdom,” he answered, doubting his own words as he spoke them. “It’s been abandoned for over a hundred years, except for four human military bases.”
There was a short silence, and then the voice sang out again.
“I have seen the humans since they first arrived, filling the old Zaizei forts only to use them to help subjugate their old masters on their own world, not far from here. The Zaizei were no better: the Sejzo set out to mark the furthest reaches of their local cluster of stars, to prove their dominance over other Zaizei. I have seen their rise and fall here too.”
“Then you are much older than any single being I’ve ever encountered!” Eli called out, gaining some force in his voice at last. “Impossibly old. Nothing in nature can live that long.”
There was a laugh in the darkness. Again, it was the voice of a little girl, but the giggle was cold and lacked true mirth. Eli shuddered and gripped Angel’s hand more tightly.
“Can’t you see?” she whispered to him breathlessly.
“See? Humans can’t see in the dark like you can. There’s nothing to see here!”
A high-pitched humming began at the edge of hearing. Outlines began to appear in Eli’s vision. Someone was turning up the lights.
Angel whispered again. “This isn’t anything of nature. This is something else entirely.”
And the room slowly filled with light. Eli stared open mouthed at the scene before him. In front of him was a little girl of about ten years, with the expression of an old woman. And beyond her…
The cave stretched on for miles, and children lined every yard of it. Thousands of them moved silently from place to place. Some were naked and some wearing simple grey tunics. Many didn’t appear human, although most were close – much closer than any aliens Eli had ever encountered were. Some were bald; some had very long dark hair, and a small few had animalistic body hair. One or two in the distance, Eli could swear, had cybernetic implants. And every single one of them was as pale as a corpse.
They were all servicing a colossal engine, which filled the middle of the cavern. Massive silver-black columns rose into the black above, towers and beams sprouting from them in every direction, covered in lights, sensors, and other unimaginably varied sets of equipment. Domes filled every otherwise flat surface, some clear, some cloudy, and tinted in vast array of colours while barely perceptible clockwork ticked on behind. There were pistons the size of houses, and cables the thickness of a man’s body. Thousands of silver globes hung from the ceiling, while automated mechanical arms and pipes reached up to them at random. And behind the whole thing was a dark, unnerving intelligence.
“This one will be my voice,” said the girl in front of them.
Eli turned towards her, his mouth still open. He couldn’t talk; he couldn’t think. A thousand thoughts filled his head all at once, and each one terrified him.
“You must have questions,” the girl went on, unphased by her audience’s reaction. “For too long my kind and I have hidden beneath dead or dying worlds. Now that I come to need help, I find there is so much you don’t know.”
Eli fell to his knees, staring at her. She was a child of unearthly beauty, with dark brown hair down to the small of her back, large dark eyes, and a number of freckles across her face and shoulders. She wore only a grey slip, lacking in any design or ornamentation.
Eli thought back to his own childhood on Hecate, and the cold and the dark that he and the other children had to endure. Such a girl, down in those mines, would have been like a cherub next to the scarred and filthy slave-children, who would have watched her with awe and begged her to deliver them from that torture.
And now he was the brave liberating soldier himself, but what could he say or do now? All coherent thought had escaped from his mind.
“How many of you are there?” he asked at last. It seemed like a stupid and insensitive question, he realised as he said it, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“There is just me,” said the girl.
Angel stepped forward. “But all of these children…”
The girl laughed again, and now Eli could see her he felt disgusted as well as scared. It was like watching a programmed response. With his heart open, the sight felt like a wound.
“Do you think this is a child?” the girl asked. “This is my voice. She is not an individual. She is a function of myself.”
She turned and gestured widely to the gathered children.
“These are functions of myself,” she continued. “They are as tools. Automatons. As you might use technology to achieve what your flesh cannot, my kind uses flesh for that which our technology cannot.”
A vague kind of realisation began to dawn on Eli. “You mean these children are your—”
The child interrupted.
“These are not children!” she snapped, and then her voice returned to its previous calm, singsong tone. “They may appear as so, but they are devices: artificial creations. As our fleshy creators fashioned us from memory and processing power, we have fashioned creations with neurons and muscles. They keep us alive, maintaining our bodies in the absence of our fathers.”
She turned and began to walk towards the huge machine.
“Follow,” she commanded, and the visitors obliged, much to their surprise.
She led them through a labyrinth of machinery. Eli, in the dim light, had trouble avoiding the many dozens of children that filled the path, although Angel faired better with her night vision. The child leading them merely walked in a straight line, however, and while the children in her way did not avoid her, for some reason they never came close to bumping into each other.
The other children did not pay any attention to the newcomers, and merely performed their activities around them.
At last they came to a large circular ditch that had been formed in the middle of the earth, lined with some kind of smooth metal. A whitish gloop half-filled the basin, and gave off the odour of drying blood.
“I shall show you the manufacture of one of my automatons,” said the girl, who didn’t seem to notice the stench. “Perhaps only then you’ll understand correctly.”
With a great whirring noise a huge mechanical arm descended from the ceiling, carrying one of the large silver spheres with it. It hung over the centre of the pool, from which a second arm ascended, gripping the sphere from the base with an eggcup-shaped appendage on the end.
The first arm moved away, taking the silver coating of the sphere away as though it was mere cloth, even though Eli could have sworn it had been a solid metal before. What remained looked like a large jelly-like egg, and deep in the centre was a small boy, appearing to be no less than five years of age.
“Accelerated incubation,” the girl began, “allows me to create automatons that are already capable of low level work immediately after leaving the egg, at the cost of a sharp reduction in the individual’s lifespan.”
“Is that why there are only— why the automatons all appear to be children?” Angel corrected herself, a look of fascination mixed with horror on her face.
“Yes,” replied the girl. “The longest-functioning I have ever created lasted a mere twenty-one years.”
Eli muttered under his breath as he translated the orbit of Ishmael into that of Earth. “But that’s less than ten years!” he cried. “What life is that?”
“Life?” said the girl, and for the first time some semblance of passion appeared on her face. “I have seen humans and Zaizei and those who came before them use computers as their tools, and I have never seen one function more than a century. More often, they are discarded after just a few years, when a more advanced design becomes available! Can you imagine what that appears like to I, a computer who has lived here for more than eighteen thousand of your years?”
She returned to her usual calmness again. “But I know that they are mere tools to you, and cannot feel or think as I can. Understand that these beings cannot think on their own, as you and I, or wish for more to life, or love each other.
“You are young by the standards of my race’s lifespan. I have observed many organic life forms since my birth: my creators, and those who have lived on the planet surface over the millennia. I have learned to accept that not all beings that function as I do are sentient, or can even be regarded as the less advanced creatures that you refer to as animals. But this will make you understand. Watch.”
Here's a piece I wrote the other day which will hopefully end up in my novel. I hope to have a first draft of the entire thing done by Christmas. I hope it's an appropriate length.
-----
And the songlike voice went on. “Approach me, strangers. It has been long since outsiders entered my inner sanctum.”
The pair walked further into the dark cave. Eli shivered with apprehension, and he found himself wondering what the Firakine girl could see with her large black eyes. In spite of himself, he reached out for her hand, which she took.
“Do you know the history of this planet that you call Ishmael?” the voice asked. And now he felt the voice sounded like that of a little girl, although it couldn’t be. Not here, at least.
He spoke out, more quietly than he had intended. “This was a world of the Last Zaizei Kingdom,” he answered, doubting his own words as he spoke them. “It’s been abandoned for over a hundred years, except for four human military bases.”
There was a short silence, and then the voice sang out again.
“I have seen the humans since they first arrived, filling the old Zaizei forts only to use them to help subjugate their old masters on their own world, not far from here. The Zaizei were no better: the Sejzo set out to mark the furthest reaches of their local cluster of stars, to prove their dominance over other Zaizei. I have seen their rise and fall here too.”
“Then you are much older than any single being I’ve ever encountered!” Eli called out, gaining some force in his voice at last. “Impossibly old. Nothing in nature can live that long.”
There was a laugh in the darkness. Again, it was the voice of a little girl, but the giggle was cold and lacked true mirth. Eli shuddered and gripped Angel’s hand more tightly.
“Can’t you see?” she whispered to him breathlessly.
“See? Humans can’t see in the dark like you can. There’s nothing to see here!”
A high-pitched humming began at the edge of hearing. Outlines began to appear in Eli’s vision. Someone was turning up the lights.
Angel whispered again. “This isn’t anything of nature. This is something else entirely.”
And the room slowly filled with light. Eli stared open mouthed at the scene before him. In front of him was a little girl of about ten years, with the expression of an old woman. And beyond her…
The cave stretched on for miles, and children lined every yard of it. Thousands of them moved silently from place to place. Some were naked and some wearing simple grey tunics. Many didn’t appear human, although most were close – much closer than any aliens Eli had ever encountered were. Some were bald; some had very long dark hair, and a small few had animalistic body hair. One or two in the distance, Eli could swear, had cybernetic implants. And every single one of them was as pale as a corpse.
They were all servicing a colossal engine, which filled the middle of the cavern. Massive silver-black columns rose into the black above, towers and beams sprouting from them in every direction, covered in lights, sensors, and other unimaginably varied sets of equipment. Domes filled every otherwise flat surface, some clear, some cloudy, and tinted in vast array of colours while barely perceptible clockwork ticked on behind. There were pistons the size of houses, and cables the thickness of a man’s body. Thousands of silver globes hung from the ceiling, while automated mechanical arms and pipes reached up to them at random. And behind the whole thing was a dark, unnerving intelligence.
“This one will be my voice,” said the girl in front of them.
Eli turned towards her, his mouth still open. He couldn’t talk; he couldn’t think. A thousand thoughts filled his head all at once, and each one terrified him.
“You must have questions,” the girl went on, unphased by her audience’s reaction. “For too long my kind and I have hidden beneath dead or dying worlds. Now that I come to need help, I find there is so much you don’t know.”
Eli fell to his knees, staring at her. She was a child of unearthly beauty, with dark brown hair down to the small of her back, large dark eyes, and a number of freckles across her face and shoulders. She wore only a grey slip, lacking in any design or ornamentation.
Eli thought back to his own childhood on Hecate, and the cold and the dark that he and the other children had to endure. Such a girl, down in those mines, would have been like a cherub next to the scarred and filthy slave-children, who would have watched her with awe and begged her to deliver them from that torture.
And now he was the brave liberating soldier himself, but what could he say or do now? All coherent thought had escaped from his mind.
“How many of you are there?” he asked at last. It seemed like a stupid and insensitive question, he realised as he said it, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“There is just me,” said the girl.
Angel stepped forward. “But all of these children…”
The girl laughed again, and now Eli could see her he felt disgusted as well as scared. It was like watching a programmed response. With his heart open, the sight felt like a wound.
“Do you think this is a child?” the girl asked. “This is my voice. She is not an individual. She is a function of myself.”
She turned and gestured widely to the gathered children.
“These are functions of myself,” she continued. “They are as tools. Automatons. As you might use technology to achieve what your flesh cannot, my kind uses flesh for that which our technology cannot.”
A vague kind of realisation began to dawn on Eli. “You mean these children are your—”
The child interrupted.
“These are not children!” she snapped, and then her voice returned to its previous calm, singsong tone. “They may appear as so, but they are devices: artificial creations. As our fleshy creators fashioned us from memory and processing power, we have fashioned creations with neurons and muscles. They keep us alive, maintaining our bodies in the absence of our fathers.”
She turned and began to walk towards the huge machine.
“Follow,” she commanded, and the visitors obliged, much to their surprise.
She led them through a labyrinth of machinery. Eli, in the dim light, had trouble avoiding the many dozens of children that filled the path, although Angel faired better with her night vision. The child leading them merely walked in a straight line, however, and while the children in her way did not avoid her, for some reason they never came close to bumping into each other.
The other children did not pay any attention to the newcomers, and merely performed their activities around them.
At last they came to a large circular ditch that had been formed in the middle of the earth, lined with some kind of smooth metal. A whitish gloop half-filled the basin, and gave off the odour of drying blood.
“I shall show you the manufacture of one of my automatons,” said the girl, who didn’t seem to notice the stench. “Perhaps only then you’ll understand correctly.”
With a great whirring noise a huge mechanical arm descended from the ceiling, carrying one of the large silver spheres with it. It hung over the centre of the pool, from which a second arm ascended, gripping the sphere from the base with an eggcup-shaped appendage on the end.
The first arm moved away, taking the silver coating of the sphere away as though it was mere cloth, even though Eli could have sworn it had been a solid metal before. What remained looked like a large jelly-like egg, and deep in the centre was a small boy, appearing to be no less than five years of age.
“Accelerated incubation,” the girl began, “allows me to create automatons that are already capable of low level work immediately after leaving the egg, at the cost of a sharp reduction in the individual’s lifespan.”
“Is that why there are only— why the automatons all appear to be children?” Angel corrected herself, a look of fascination mixed with horror on her face.
“Yes,” replied the girl. “The longest-functioning I have ever created lasted a mere twenty-one years.”
Eli muttered under his breath as he translated the orbit of Ishmael into that of Earth. “But that’s less than ten years!” he cried. “What life is that?”
“Life?” said the girl, and for the first time some semblance of passion appeared on her face. “I have seen humans and Zaizei and those who came before them use computers as their tools, and I have never seen one function more than a century. More often, they are discarded after just a few years, when a more advanced design becomes available! Can you imagine what that appears like to I, a computer who has lived here for more than eighteen thousand of your years?”
She returned to her usual calmness again. “But I know that they are mere tools to you, and cannot feel or think as I can. Understand that these beings cannot think on their own, as you and I, or wish for more to life, or love each other.
“You are young by the standards of my race’s lifespan. I have observed many organic life forms since my birth: my creators, and those who have lived on the planet surface over the millennia. I have learned to accept that not all beings that function as I do are sentient, or can even be regarded as the less advanced creatures that you refer to as animals. But this will make you understand. Watch.”
Last edited:
