tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick
The clock talks. It did. Sometimes I like tapping against the metal myself. It reminds me of life.
No, I am not alive. I am merely a coagulation of metal, bones, spinal cord, brain. Whoever I was before (I cannot recall) is gone forever, rotting away with all the others in that cesspit. But yet, I am not quite dead either. They did not let me, and still don't.
Looking at all these documents, this laptop, I've had to use some ingenuity. But my head is old. I don't know how many more codes I can crack. Especially not with those damned black lines in the way. Not that I care much about the intricacies of the scientific process. I've always been more interested in literature.
….
'Log Code: 37849
In Relation: The Gas
Released the Red Mist into the vicinity. After momentary hysteria, hypnagogic effects appear successful. The effects are estimated to last around 48 hours, however this is unconfirmed. We are going to attempt 3 simultaneous experiments with the subjects as we attempt to instil a…more comfortable measure. As long as one is successful, that is all that matters. End of log.'
'…Unexpected findings present. 1186 and 1187 unsuccessful, initiating clean-up. 1188 still in progress. I will make this quickly to remember for later. Effects of the Red Mist appear to have provoked an unconditioned response to its hallucinogenic effects in the experiments. Simply seeing something red drove them into a frenzy. If this is what I think it means, then we have a readily-available solution to the Control Hypothesis using classical conditioning.'
….
1188? I don't know what you're referring too. Oh. Wait. Is it one of those franchise creatures? Why do you want to hear about them? Why, of course they're still here. They all are. Intact? That is another question. If you want to find them, you've come to the wrong experiment. I do NOT intervene in their business. There is one thing I do know. They are all broken. They have no idea who they once were. They have lost the last fragments of themselves, and what remains is bestial. Although. I suppose I'm a pot in this case.
When you have lost an arm, or a leg, you know you have lost an arm or a leg. But when you lose a self- YOUR self- you cannot know it, for you are no longer there to know it.*
Horrible. I hope I never accidentally touch one of those things.
….
F,D.
F,D.
Did anything come after that?
The Game Station was quiet now, the children who Moony was supposed to be watching now in bed. But he was never allowed out here. They would find out soon enough. They already did. They always know. But fear rarely triumphs the desire for knowledge.
It wasn't even the note. A certain squeak of a door, a child, metal shattering metal: that brought the memory above the tides. Now, hopelessly yet undespairingly, he turned the cogs in his brain, trying to continue the tune. He didn't even know what it was. He only felt feelings of joy and melancholy as he recalled the sound. Perhaps it was a song he once knew? Or simply the beep of machinery from a car he used to drive. Who knew?
Moony stared, fixated at the black and white tiles, narrowing his inner eyes, attempting to conjure the motor memory that would show him the next note…
'What do you think you are doing?'
A cold voice seeped into his ears, reflexively sharpening backwards as hot blood dropped in his chest, fastening his heart beat. A dark figure stood leaning on the doorway to the Game Station.
'...Thinking'. Moony answered the question despite the overt rhetoric. He dared not look back, continuing to gaze at the tiles. The echoing steps of the human drew nearer, its thud shaking the ground beneath his hooves. A sharp pain cut into Moony's escapism as it yanked his plastic antlers towering above his head, shoving him down to its level.
'You don't do that. Get back to work.' It spat the order as if it were foul-tasting wine at Moony's face, before pushing him away, back towards the station.
Moony limped away, trembling, as he gazed back at the one human he feared. It merely walked away, without looking back. The reprimand was shorter than he expected. The force perhaps sent most of the meaning. But, even then, the words disturbed him. They didn't question his motives, or acknowledge him as living at all. He was as they defined him. Nothing more.
….
If I die, and I mean properly die, I hope it will be by the means of eating an unwashed cranberry. I will pick it up, and ask the teachers "Did you wash this here cranberry?", and they will look at each other with death in their eyes as I eat it. "You didn't?! Cursed, cursed, creators! You must always wash a cranberry until nothing remains but the pulp! You have sentenced me to death! Thank you!" And I will collapse, and they will cover my body in a sheet of writhing centipedes, and throw me overboard into the firepit. What a fitting end for a wasted life!
….
I have no eyes, and yet I see. I have a mouth, and yet I cannot scream.
[*The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat]