they were powered with the souls of former individuals trapped within their automaton like bodies. Repeating the same mundane tasks daily as if they were living their life on repeat. From what I heard from those who had escaped, life in the city was like living on a rewinding video cassette. You got up, worked, and repeated that same routine over and over again. But tonight, it was different. In the city below us, the construct of time was finally progressing forward and with it came the airs of rebellious change.
Those metal cased coffins were no longer standing tall. They were dying as their steel platted interiors were busted open. Adorned and gutted out with the piercing of flames which lacerated the physical landscape and left behind the ashy remnants of burning bodies. They were the only souvenirs left behind in remembrance to the atrocity. Those bodies were the ones who did not want to defy the system of technology, yet they were longing for a change. They were longing for an escape for freedom. But freedom would never come for these bodies in life because they had lost their autonomy to make that choice.
The end of an epoch was signified as the defeated metal ruins were slowly sinking lower and lower into the nature’s depleted soil laced with the debris and smoky soot. What had been for millennia was no more as the city became a mass graveyard.
Within a dazing haze of grey darkness, my fingers dug deeper. Creating pebble sized creators into the fleshy pale mounds of my palms. I was gripping myself and searching for a physical barrier to let me know that I was still among the living. Yet the rising smoke and the loud crackles of the orange beast around me did not stop. The flames were growing like a rancorous weed. Each new flame curled around the city’s molten remains like a vine overtaking a garden.
“Was it ever going to stop? Or was this flaming beast coming for me as well?” I must escape its rising smoky grasp, or I will succumb to its desires of mortality. I must not let it win.
Glued to my mattress, the perspiration soaking between my sheets, clung to my body trapping me. An invisible force was pressing its weight down on to my mouth and crushing my voice box like a soda can. All I could do was lay motionless and stare up at the white washed celling as the orange beast’s flames grew higher and higher towards the secluded sanctuary I called home.
What will become of me? Will my fate be the same fate as that of those below me?
A jolt of hot energy overtook my petrified muscles making me move again. Gasping for air, the thick smoke permeated my lungs. Inhaling and exhaling the ash-like odor surrounding my bodily vessel. Coughing, I was reborn again.
…
Was this all possible due to the blazing light I had just spotted from below my poorly lit bedroom window? Or is this just a dream?
…
Boom… Clash…. Boom!
“What’s happening Grandma?"
“Ignore it child” she said with a smug smile. “Go back to bed. This is the city slicker’s problem; as they chose to live that life.”
Confused I stood shaken for a moment with a blank facial expression.
“Grandma aren’t these people just like us?”
“No, you are too young to remember the past and how things were. You will never understand why they chose to live that lifestyle over ours.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“The ways of life are not always meant to be understood.”
…
As the lights within the city had dimmed into nothingness. The nothingness had filled within me. Gazing as the fire consumed these giant pillars of steel below our secluded sanctuary. Yet calmness had overtook me knowing the burning bodies would be free from their earthly constraints. Their ashes scattered into oblivion by the world’s natural and desolate winds.
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