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June 20, 2005
Volume 2, Issue 20
Michele: From Flesh to Steel and Blood to Blade
Underneath our plasticized faces and permanently slouched shoulders, inside our fitted, formed shells, we live.
Our dreams and yearnings are tempered by machinery that runs through our bodies. Sometimes we are lucky and a shock of errant static electricity will send a shiver of memories, emotions and snapshots into our minds. We hold onto some of them.
For twenty years, we assembled your cars, guarded your prisons. Today, we are going to fight your war. Do you ever question or care where we came from?
My name is Emily Barons. I was kidnapped from my home on October 8, 2003.
Tanya: Patience is a Virtue
Waiting. A mass of bodies, queued to get a single stamp on a single sheet of paper. Knowing that another endless, formless line comes after that. And another. And the stamp is only given if you can prove that your lesson has been learned.
More waiting, more torture. How does one prove that envy is departed, when one envies than man ahead who has received his stamp? How does he abandon anger, when the bureaucracy is enough to make him tear at his own flesh?
So this is purgatory? Had I known, I would've sinned sufficiently to go to hell.
Laurence - Soldiers
Alarms went off. Davidson stubbed out his twizzlestick, waved the purple vapors out of the air, and went back to work.
TARGET? asked the viewport.
"Quadrant 3," said Davidson, twiddling the viewport's knobs. "Section 5. Platoon 37. Unit 9-alpha."
Davidson blinked as his avatar flew through the fields of vat-grown soldiers.
Powerful.
Identical.
Almost perfect.Except for Q3-S5-P37-9a. He was better.
Every now and then, a drone's matrix would self-enhance, and its milk-white skin would turn dark.
"Obtain," said Davidson.
Tendrils reached from the ground and pulled Q3-S5-P37-9a into the placentadirt.
OBTAINED.
Davidson smiled. Dark ones were worth bonuses.
Stacy: Tedium Kills
I get up, I wash, I go to work.
I work, I eat, I come home.
Repeat. Endlessly.
The darkness inside threatens to overwhelm me some days. The hatred I feel swells until it feels like my skin will blacken and burst. My rage will be a live thing then, feeding on the lives of those around me.
Some day I know I'll snap. I will finally lose control.
I don't worry much about that day. I just know it will come. Until then, I get up, wash, go to work.
I work, I eat, I come home.
Repeat. Endlessly.
Andy: Odd Man Out
They never take notice of him.
When in the city, he walks among them as they all crash together, opposing rivers jumping the sidewalk banks, flooding into crosswalks and stores and taxis. He watches them, looks at their faces, and is met by the blank stares of minds drifting elsewhere, contemplating work to be done and what’s for lunch. They bump into him without apology, mannequins parading on the assembly line. In their world, he is nonexistent.
He doesn't mind, not at all; it makes it easier to kill them.
They don't even notice each other until the evening news.
Ted: Lights Out
Out like a light.
Every light on Broadway is a broken heart.
Whatever.
All I know is that is that the light over my head has been out for a minute now and the service techs haven't arrived yet.
Come on. This doesn't happen very often, we should have people who could fix it quickly.
How am I supposed to think without a good light?
I remember the last time a bulb went out a year ago. It was fixed in thirty seconds. Five years ago, it was done in ten.
Hey, is that another one? And another? Oh phooey.
From the Comments: hnumpah
22051443 stood in the vast drying room as his paint cured. Maybe he would get a second coat, with the yellow and black markings of a crash test dummy, along with implanted sensors to measure impact force at various points in his body; maybe he would simply be another department store mannequin, modelling men's suits, or (ugh!) swimwear.
He noticed the breasts on the mannequin next to him. Ah, female, he thought. A pleasant shape, appealing, perhaps destined to be a lingerie model. He felt an ache in his loins, and looked down to see... nothing. And he screamed, silently.