CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - Become Tomorrow
"Please, please!" a girl cried out fearfully. "Please don't make me go in there, I beg you!"
"You were sorted into this department for a reason, young girl," the female scientist said sinuously, her exquisite words sewn together in luxurious prose. "Would you deny your young body its paramount apogee; will you not yield to the supremacy of your own transcendence?"
"My sister," the girl whimpered back, "I want to go with her to the sorting room."
"The incomprehensible sequence of time would see not that you venture with your kin, my child; yours, tonight, is the crucifixion of all past notion - as the moon glows before its lightless curtains, you, my dear child, shall become the starry sea itself."
The machine roared beside them, thrumming with electricity and pumping abominable syrup through its wires, knobs, and dials. The girl turned to look at it.
It did not look liberating, she thought silently to herself. On the contrary, it looked ominously free of any purpose at all, save but for the thunder of an ungodly choir that pulsed from it, echoing from the chamber's far and expansive walls as hot air rising unto the domed ceiling high above.
"I bid thee, forget your sister, as she is your sister no more. Yours is the history of all those who came before you, and the future of all who come after. Rise, my child, into the warmth of the garden of your purpose."
The scientist tucked a black lock of hair that had strain from her bun behind her ear; she pursed her lips and smiled tightly. Without removing her fiery eyes from the nervous girl waiting beside her, she ascended a small flight of metal stairs to a great vessel, bright as platinum - before twisting a wide handle, and gently pulling open a very narrow door at its front.
"Ascend, child," she commanded.
The young girl, delicately as white porcelain, placed her hand softly into the outstretched hand of the scientist.
"Become tomorrow," the woman whispered sumptuously to the child when she rose to the top of the steps, pushing her softly into the black chamber before her. "Become eons, become eternity."
As the child breached the vessel's entrance, the door behind her closed slowly, humming heavily on its wide, smooth hinges. It was only as the light was naught more than a sliver in the expanding vacuum of the darkness around her, that the girl could see the fearful eyes of other children already waiting inside.
Her wails of panic were unheard as the door clicked shut, and the cacophony of flipping, clicking locks and levers slid into place. A loud hiss erupted from the vessel's edges, steam and air being sucked out through pipes and vents - just as the deep rumble of an unseen engine roared to life in the ground below, and ceiling above.
The scientist waved nonchalantly to a window above her as she descended the small stairwell, and without a moment to waste, the vessel began its revolution around the chamber.
What is this grand machine's purpose? What is your purpose? Keep reading to find out.
If you're enjoying this story, please follow or favourite to let me know! And, as always, please leave a review if you have any opinions or critiques.
