Author's note: Finally, finally, done with part one! That took way too long, and I can't promise anything about part two.
Well, I'll promise you this: it shouldn't be quite as boring.
Cadet
We go in one of the small, bright machines. It presses close against me, closer than before. It is not so painful as getting something in my eye, or being hit with the door, but it lasts longer and I want to get out.
But when the machine stops, I can get out. There is a great machine, like the one that goes up in the sky. I run toward it, and a ramp comes down. I go up it, the Great One behind me, and soon, I go up in the air.
This machine is not the same one as before. There is no smoke, and I can walk normally. So I walk around until I see the beautiful red sun, even brighter than the golden one in the sky. I gaze at it, and when I tire of this, the Great One drags me towards another part of the machine.
There, the ground slides away from me. He pulls me towards the box with the buttons. As I struggle to hold on to it, he hands me food, and I have to practice again. It is easy to remember what color goes with what food—I have been matching them for a long time. But it is hard to control my legs to maneuver over to the box.
I work and work, though, until even being in the great machine is tiresome. Even then, I must remain, awkwardly fighting through the air, grappling for something to hold on to.
The Great One makes noise now, when I give the food to him. If it is a red-button food, one noise; green-button food, another. I do not take note of it until he offers me several different kinds of food at once, and makes a noise. The blue-button food noise, actually, though I do not realize it, and reach for the red-button food. He pulls it back, giving me the blue-button food instead and repeating the sound. For good measure, he makes the red-button food noise and infrared-button food noise too as he points to them.
The next time, I take the green-button food when he makes the green-button food noise. Then, he shows me another box. Inside is very much food, food that needs all sorts of buttons. I open and close the door to this box until I am good at it. From then on, he does not hold out food to me anymore; whenever he makes noise, I have to get the right food from the box.
After that, many other Great Ones are there, making the noises. Each one sounds a little different, but not different enough. I learn what to bring to who. Sometimes, many Great Ones want food at the same time. The first one that makes noise gets food first, then the second, and then everyone else.
One day, I am working when I feel myself freeze. It hurts, but I am tired of working. I drift through the room, floating from one part of it to the other. The Great Ones make noise. They want food. But I cannot even show them that I cannot change the food. At last, one of them finds me and makes noise, though not the food noises. Soon, I can move again, and am bigger. But I cannot go and look at the red sun. I must work.
Soon afterwards, we move down, towards the world. We have to get out of the machine. But my Great One is in the machine. He comes to me and makes noise, not food noise, but it sounds nice. He gives me a ball, but there is nobody to play with, so I give it back to him.
Then he goes away, and the Great One who helps me make food leads me towards another great machine. We go up, into the sky again. Everything is fine; I stay on the ground. Nobody tells me what to do, so I go and look at the red sun. It gets smaller and smaller, until it is just a dot in the sky. There are many stars, tiny but golden.
Then they seem to turn away from me, and I can only see white where the stars should be. I run around nervously, but I am dimly aware that running around won't do me any good. Eventually, I go looking for a Great One, grabbing the first one I see and dragging her towards the white emptiness.
She makes a long stream of noise, finally ending with the yellow-button noise. I walk around, and there are the two boxes. So I get her the yellow-button food. But then, there is not much to do. Either the Great Ones do not want any food, or all of them want it at once. I am either frenetically working or bored, but it is easier than it used to be. I have ground under my feet.
There is another child in the machine. He works like the Great One in the big room on the world works, rubbing material up and down the walls. The Great Ones give food to him; he cannot make noise to get it himself. I myself eat whatever I want! There is so much food here, and I keep some in the place where I sleep.
Gradually, I forget about the blankness beyond the machine. There is a routine to life, if a quiet one. But one day, my legs seem to work without me telling them to. They do not go anywhere: I am standing around some boxes. Yet my legs are doing something without trying to, and I feel tired.
A Great One makes noise. He wants blue-button food. I try to take control of my legs, but something is growing around them, getting in the way. This is not like how I froze when I was about to move between compounds. This is scary. I do not know what it is.
And slowly, the machine blurs, and everything shuts down.