Falling into Silence
The lone figure hunched at the end of an ancient table. Wind whistled through the dilapidated hovel and he huddled closer into himself; his bedraggled suit lending little defence against the cold. He stared at the small cake in front of him and tried to feel happy. A small cluster of other Silence stood around him, but rather than providing some much needed lightness to the atmosphere; they didn't add anything, he'd even had to bring the cake himself, they loomed over him in utter stillness and lived up to their name. He didn't care, he'd forget them soon and then he'd be left alone with his thoughts to ponder his problems. Of course, he could never truly forget them; for other species his people could operate on a premise of out of sight out of mind, but they were always remembered for him just enough to know what he was and just too little to know anyone specific in the colony.
He stared at the cake and they evaporated from his mind as quietly as smoke. He had been stupid to bring it, it was a human tradition and he shouldn't have been foolish enough to entertain the notion at all. The Silence didn't celebrate occasions to any extend and the passing of a year amid hundreds seemed insignificant to most. But not to him. He looked back at the cake and tried to twist his face into a sad smile, he failed. He tried to remember his mother's face, he failed again. He sighed stood from his chair and left the hovel. As he walked through the garden he glanced in at the window; in a dilapidated hovel of browns and greys, a bright red birthday cake in the shaped of a ladybird blazed with the light of 367 candles. He tried to smile at the strangeness of the situation and cried instead, he was far too young to die.
Humans were a very unusual people, they had proven that with their use of tally marking to remember the Silence. When they discovered their own death dates, they would cry as he had done; they would bring their loved ones together and tell them to seek comfort as he had attempted to do the previous night and finally they would seek to create a legacy. After watching in at the windows of a thousand homes, he felt he understood the beings better than any other in existence. He didn't see how they would need to be remembered as badly as he did but the seemed to fear being forgotten as much as him, they had companies developed which would build hospitals named after them if they gave money, they had trees planted and some wrote books about their lives. Lacking a name and caring nothing for nature, he saw one possibility.
No Silent had ever written a book before. Information was shared freely between mental links leaving personalities the only thing truly their own. He did not doubt that at this very moment a member of the council was reviewing his recent memories for useful information. What they would find were imperfections in his thinking patterns, it was dangerous to society for any Silent to begin thinking differently and adopting aspects of other cultures as their own was unheard of in the community.
He walked through the New York rains and wished he had an umbrella. Like all foreign items it was regarded with disdain by society, but it seemed utterly pointless to let natural xenophobia get in the way of comforts of the body. He wondered why he had never considered this before the prophecy. Hearing the date his death from the wizened old seer had turned his life completely on its head. He was fortunate that he had so little time left, if he had been wandering around humanity for too long and trying to alter society; he would have posed a threat to the equilibrium of society, and official would have been dispatched after two weeks of this madness to take him into custody. People had been entered into the asylum for doing much less than he, anything to keep society pure. As it was, with only a week of life left he would be left alone or so he hoped. He exited the sopping streets and pushed through a door into the class.
He seated himself behind and wooden desk and underneath the flickering orange lights. He covered his face with a hat and upturned collar so as not to cause any alarm, even if they did instantly forget seeing him, it was unnecessary hassle to encounter endless mentions of his "very realistic mask." A plump human female entered the room and began to address the class on the concept of creative writing. He left after an hour, nobody noticed. The woman had raised some interesting points but with such a small amount of time available to him, he did not wish to waste the entire night on the class. The main thing that had stuck with him was her insistence that every novel was about discovery of oneself. "A character can be fighting to save the Earth 2000 years into the future, be unleashing a curse upon humanity 500 years into the past or just taking a walk down the street in the present day but they should all discover who they really are during this story." Quite inspiring if you thought about it. She had also told them to write about themselves even in a work of fiction. He went home and tried to write about himself, he had no story except his own so he told it.
He put his pen down and reviewed the book. He still didn't know who he was so he supposed that the book had failed. It was odd, things he had never realised thinking about had been put down on the paper as his innermost cravings; dreams such as seeing his mother's face and recognising it amid hundreds of others identical in every way, keeping some memories private just to himself, and, most importantly, touching another living thing. He didn't know what would happen tomorrow when he died but death no longer scared him, maybe he would find comfort in death. He realised why no other Silence thought this way, why he hadn't until now; to think this way in a society as cold and grey as this was death. In the empty world of uniformity no creature could be imaginative and survive. He tried to smile but couldn't.
With a sheath of papers under his arm, he walked through the streets of Manhattan. The woman the night before had mentioned her publishers' offices in the area and to be remembered people had to read the book. He bought a newspaper to see what it felt like. He didn't bother reading the piece about some space expedition; instead he pushed it under his other arm and kept walking. He climbed the stars to her offices and entered through the open door. A group of men were crowded around a small television when he came in. He glanced around the room and caught sight of the woman sitting at a desk. He walked over to her and looked at the picture of her and what he guessed was her family: two men; one young, one old. He tapped her on the shoulder and she spun around in a whirl of red hair. The smirk on her face turned to a gasp when she saw him, she looked frightened. He realised that he had dropped his hat. He held up his hands to show he was unarmed then reached under his right arm and pulled out his legacy. She took the papers but didn't take her eyes off him; he hand reached for a piece of black chalk and scratched a line on her arm.
He spoke: "Please," he voice was raspy and scarcely louder than a whisper but he persevered. "Please, I was in your class…please could you…?" He paused nervous under her glare; a man of the television in a spacesuit waved a flag. "I want to be remembered," he said. A bullet struck him in the back from where the men were standing and he collapsed. The man turned away and forgot him. He lay on the ground and the world became more and more hazy.
The newspaper beside him on the floor displayed the date, 20th July 1969; it was time to die. The woman stood over him and he felt scared. "Please," he said, "remember." She knelt down beside him. "I will," she said quietly. "I promise." She reached out and took one of his hands in hers. The feeling was incredible, the warmth of her fingers seeped into his hands. "Thank you," he rasped. The world continued to blur leaving just greys, brown and the red of her hair. He closed his eyes slowly and saw beautiful colours. He tried to smile and slept.
The woman watched the corpse on the ground. Never blinking she reached for her typewriter. She left a message to herself then turned away. The woman blinked and saw and black mark on her arm. A tear rolled down her cheek and she wondered why. She found a sheath of crumpled papers on her death and a typed page on her typewriter. She decided to deal with them tomorrow and celebrate the moon landing in the meantime. She left her desk to go home and tripped over something on the floor. She looked to see what it was but didn't notice anything. She went home, hugged her husband and began to make dinner. She washed the black chalk off her arm.