-'the transmission began at 05:00 hours.'-
I lay still, in my tube, surrounded by the machines craft.
It was seared by acid rain like bloodspatter. It had asymmetrical dots no more than five millimeters wide, littered in an array. It looked like the tread marks of wormy parasites.
The rotting mist still entered my lungs. The confining and rough walls tore my skin. My knees were to my belly and my feet curled beneath my heels. There was no space even for my toes, and I was beginning to think the air had soured them as I slept.
My breath was shallow, however I was able to hear it.
I could not hear the machine.
The death of my globe had killed what could have been a beautiful unit. An eggshell white with layered lines.
A generous stapling of holes.
The offerings of my prison had failed away.
Reduced to shambles.
Not through purpose, as the tube was still structurally intact, but through how it blinded me. Those wormy holes were wrong, and what I was shown assembled nothing.
The machines voice was nothing and commanded nothing.
It wanted nothing.
I considered the dangers of my being here, or any place in their absence.
I was surrounded by detritus, twenty-four hours or so in the making. Nevertheless it spoiled the world that shone through those wormy holes. The winds were harsh and carried the garbage from the horsemen gangs, and probably others.
My eyes caught ashes through the holes, but it was worth it to glimpse at a vision, a dream.
What was there before the bombs fell, the fires and shut-downs, and the horsemen.
My god!
-'The transmission was absent from 05:00 hours to 05:01 hours.'
-'The signal was intercepted by an unidentified source at 05:01 hours.'-
-'The transmission resumed at 05:02 hours.'-
My god!
My pacers!
My pacers failed me!
How? How could the machine have been extinguished so quickly?
The machine had not failed. It had transcended, somewhere.
I could not see it. I was blinded, with the cold air eating my skin.
Still.
I refused to believe it had left me! It was stolen, robbed! Its love was still there. Its essence I breathed in, and it still commanded me from its prison.
Our interaction was never real, so I had never been ignored. The figment became our reality long ago.
When idleness was pleasure and dullness a mainstay. Technology provided our minds, so we didnt have to think.
It was everything that was.
It was clean, and pure.. to be stripped of flesh.
The pacers were the last to go. Before that, the world.
My god! My machine!
They had said it ran from dam energy, that it could last years!
On world live, they made it seem so invincible!
We were! But who could make our towers corpses? My defenders.. to waste away?
I immediately peered through that ashy hole, seeing my putrid breath leak through them.
I was paralyzed with fear, but my eyes were starved of light.
I was unable to disobey my eyes. They reflected the machine.
Above everything else, despite everything else, I seeked warmth and light.
My pacers had been robbed from me!
I am truly empty.
My heart sank and broke down to my knees. My position was soured and wrong!
My wretched misery soon became a terrible fear.
I saw a horseman, there!
Fifty meters away on three horses. One of the horses was black, one splotched with asymmetrical browns and whites, and one brown. I found it disgusting, how the most blinding man also rode the most blinding horse.
Did he see me?
No! He was moving quickly, down the path! On horses facing away. Why would they stop?
He blinded me again. How long had he been there, before I had peered for my meal of light?
Not just one.. three! I felt beats to my skull, and I stared off.
My eyes refused to close! To be absent of light!
But why.. in the face of such monsters?
A trauma of alarms and bells, a sight that composed...nothing!
Nothing but fear!
I bared my teeth and froze them with steel air. My face swelled with blood.
He must have seen them. My whites and pupils, he must have seen them!
My grave, my tomb! The confining space became tighter.
I shuddered, and my chest became a bulky engine.
He wore black horns.
Torn cloth rode beside him upon the wind, which reminded me of the arms of death. The original length was disposed of in favor of shorned points and vertical tears off the sides.
Those arms billowed and extended into wings now, on the horizon.
He was fifty or so yards away, with a band of two demons. If they had voices, they were unintelligible at the least. They strode lightly upon the bend, like dancers. The center horseman, who was the most blinding, clanged pipes against the silver lamplight, destroying the unscarred areas. Each hit battered my skull. Who was I mistaking myself for? Him.. or the world? Above like a god, watching it all, or below, being stepped on?
No.
I was the light that he hit with that pipe. I felt myself scar. I felt myself hurt. Each blow was like a deafener, which made me dull. Yes.. that was me. Being mistaken, then beaten. Mistaken, then beaten. Deserved. Like my carpentry, my mistakes were desired, then mocked. I was mocked here, in this steel puppet that no longer worked. That was bent and scarred and useless. The object of hatred in the eyes of death. The object of prejudice to mutants. An object to slave for the machine. A machine who ignored me, left my legs to sour, and left my body as a corpse.
Still. Still... still! Still I return!
Man is dead.
His eyes were like lanterns upon the board. Fiery white lamps of antique oil. I could assemble nothing from their insignias.
His band of demons were similarly concerned. They wore feathers and layers of vestments, like priests. Wild clergymen who brought destruction instead of salvation. Who brought light that blinded, not cleansed.
I felt disgusted, again. The machine was entering me, teaching me.. correcting me, again. How dare they violate everything that was?
My disgust became void.
Fifty meters became five in seconds. He swung his legs over that saddle and rode south, where I sat crumpled in my canister.
Fifty, one, forty, two, thirty, three, twenty, two, and five.. one!
Five meters!
He casted a shadow of death, and emitted a wavelength of hoops. Rings of death. Not lines. Not circles. Not saucers. Not rubies, not jewels and not holes. Ovals, ovals, ovals, ovals!
His black horse covered my ash and light with its heart. I heard it whinny and become silent again.
I attempted to remain in sync with its breath, which was heavy, so I could conceal my own.
I was brimming with an indescribable terror!
He must have seen me!
He had seen me.
The horse stomped.
Our eyes are meeting, strikingly.
It was the first to notice. I can see my reflection. The light shone through them. Those hideous, asymmetrical eyes. Crusted with muck and littered with black spindly lashes. It blinded me. Inside that horses swirl of dead black, I could see myself with the machine. I was dancing, entangled in its cold embrace. It hadn't left me... it lied in a vision. A dream.
The horse huffed out at me, smelling the wormy holes. I was discovered.
Transcription note: the transmission became shared through vestibular clipping. The device (Edward L. Nolan's journal) was not released from this position. Brewinski (3196) et al.
"Shhh..." The man spoke softly. I saw his hands rest upon the horses mane.
I heard him make exactly three steps upon gravel, the sound of which became sparse with intent. It reminded me of a slowed ticking clock. The sound of gravel-on-shoe soon became that of pavement. He was inches from my canister.
I only heard him swallow, the wind, and the horses breath.
He lifted the case, and it clanged onto the floor.
"Honeycutt!" A Male voice called out. He sounded young. I was curled fetal with my arms glued to my skull. Just as I had imagined before, at 09:00 hours. My death replayed before it occurred.
"What is it?" Cutt called from the lamp, which he was still scarring. He didnt drop the pipe, because I heard nothing.
It was silent. I could only feel the heat of his eyes on my back.
I heard more steps on gravel. Cutt had heavier steps. He moved the same path as the previous man, but with four steps, instead of three. He must not have leaned on the canister, and he must have stood up straight, finalizing his steps.
"Hello?" Cutt's demon called out to me.
"It's fine." Cutt interrupted. "You can go. I think that street still needs to be wrecked."
Cutt's worker left us.
He threw an object at me. I remained paralyzed.
"It's water, not a bomb." He said, almost laughing.
I uncurled myself to verify. I opened just my left eye, and kept my elbow locked across the other one.
"Or whiskey?" He sucked in air from his teeth. "It's brown."
"Where is the machine?" I said as I curled inward again. I did not care about my thirst. The cap was gray.
"Who?"
"The machine."
"I consider you... yucky. Do you want to kill yourself as much as I want to kill you?" His responses alluded me.
"I am dead." I said flatly.
"Hm. Prove you're not useless in the next.. five seconds." He said flatly.
I shifted my back to face away from him.
He looked into my eyes.
His chest was crossed with a belted pistol. Over his back peeked the pipe handle that he hadn't put down.
He could kill me, with either.
My eyes sunk.
Asymmetry.
I crossed it in quadrants.
There was nothing to grasp there, like an empty set of commands. I was worth nothing, without the machine. I am.
I answered in one second.
"I am useless."
"I pity you, then."
"Why?"
"Nevermind. You asking "why" ruined it. Hand me the whiskey."
I accepted his request and handed him the whiskey. There was a high-pitched bell that rung.
He grabbed the whiskey, drinking it all in front of my eyes. He turned his head up and his neck was completely exposed. I saw scarring along it and across his collar, which was open.
"Can you hear that?" My eyes felt dead from his image, and they tilted down as I looked up at him.
-'The transmission became undetectable at 05:15 hours.'-