New & Complete

Oops.

Again it's been too long since I updated last. I said last time that I did not want to turn this into a habit and that I certainly didn't want to dwell on the ifs and the buts and the whys at the the start of every post.


So let's not and get straight onto the story yeah?


Human

A thousand faces blur in the busy streets. People moving up and down and between the towering buildings. All of them occupied. All with place to be or somewhere to go. Cars drift overhead with a distant whir, heading in predetermined directions down preselected routes. Above them a dull neon shell blots out the greyness of the sky, flicking away the endless drizzle; collecting and storing the rain for the late hours of the night when the crowds have gone home and the streets are empty.

Among all this a little boy walks with his mother. She moves with purpose, pulling him along with a nervous hand. He wants to stop and stare, to stand and marvel the sound and the colour, at the movement of so many people: For both it is their first time staying in a city so big.

After several words of caution, and whispers of “come on!” and “hurry up Joe!” the boy stops resisting and contents himself with staring at the many faces as they pass by.

There are so many.

It is more than his young mind can take in. He had not imagined that it was possible for people to look so differently from one another. Or, at least for some, for them to look almost exactly alike. He tries to catch their attention, to win a glance or a smile. The people just move on. He sighs and his mother pulls him ever onward.

Slowly he becomes aware that someone is calling out amongst the crowd. Their voice is low and distant. It sounds scared. No one around him seems to notice. He pulls on his mothers arm, ”Mum? Can you hear that mum? That man? Is he in trouble?” Her grip hand tightens on his. “I don’t know Joe. But it doesn’t matter. We have to go. We’re late.” She keeps walking, taking him with her. “But why is no-one helping? Can’t they hear it?”. His mother ignores him. Keeps walking. Pulls him round a corner. The voice grows quieter and more desperate.

He pulls his mother’s arm again. Begging her to stop. “We have to help them mum, his small face full of concern, “Someone is in trouble so we have to help.” She angry this time. “I said no Joe! Please! Now come on, we have somewhere to be!” She pulls at him, but his mind is set. He wriggles out from her grasp and into the crowd, heading back in the direction from which they had come.

Very quickly he is running. He can hear his mother yelling frantically from somewhere to the left and behind. People are noticing now, pointing at him and calling for him to stop. He ignores them. The voice is growing closer. It keeps repeating. Keeps asking for help. He keeps running and calls out in response. “Don’t worry sir. Help is coming!” People look at him oddly as if he has done something wrong. Some try to stop them. But he is small and they are large and their reach is clumsy.

He finds his way through the crowd and off the main walkway. He slows. The voice is closer. He moves further down the alleyway, pulling up the hood of his jumper: The rain gets through here.

Slowly he finds himself picking his way past piles of rubbish, stowed out of site of the clean streets of the city. The voice has gotten quieter, but it is close so he can still hear it. It isn’t long before he realises the voice is coming from under a heap of broken things.

He moves closer. “Sir? Are you okay?” The figure lies motionless, prone, but the voice has stopped. “Sir? Do you need an help.” He pulls at some of the garbage, uncovering a face so similar to many that he has seen today. The face smiles at him, dirty and battered. “Thank you. Something is wrong. I can’t move. Help me? Please? I’m scared.” He smiles sadly at the hurt man, “I’ll try. Though I’m not very big.” A hand shifts weakly through the garbage he takes it. He takes it in his own; it is cold. He begins to pull


It takes a while, but finally he is able to pull the man free. For a moment he sits back, exhausted. The man still is not moving. “Sir?” He takes his hand again. “Is that better? Are you okay now?” The man looks slowly towards him and then up and over his shoulder. He turns around.
A crowd has gathered at the entrance to the alleyway. His mother pushes through. “JOSEPH!” she is furious now “what on earth do you think you’re doing running off like that? Do you know how worried I was!?” He finds himself crying and angry. “He needed my help mum. No one else was going to so I had to help him.” She tries to pull him away. “You don’t understand Joe. Now come on. We need to get you washed up. You have no idea where that thing has been.” He is screaming through the tears now. “Why!? What is wrong with him!? Why would no one help him!?”

His mother sighs and gives him a look full of sadness. “Because Joe, he is not a he. He is an it and it is not a real person.” He looks at her frantic and confused. “Why? Why isn’t he real? He talked to me, asked me to help him.” His mother’s voice is quieter now. “It’s just pretending Joe.” She tries to brush his tears away. “Look at it Joe. Look at its face, at its hands.” He looks. The man still looks familiar. His face similar in almost every detail to those of several other people in the crowd. The hand is still cold and lifeless. The realises the skin is made of metal. “See Joe? It’s just a machine. It’s just supposed to look like it’s real.” She holds him close. “It called you because it is broken. It’s probably why it was thrown away. That’s all.” He looks at the figure on the ground. It's eyes look real. They look at him. He sobs. “But mum... He told me he was scared. That he was afraid” His mother looks at him in slight confusion. “No Joe. It can’t get scared.” She picks him up and moves back towards the crowd and the busy street.

“It doesn’t know how.”



Now as you may or may not be able to tell by my poor editing (I like to let stuff sit a bit before I edit) I wrote this story about an hour ago. So it's definitely new, but unlike my last new story it is complete and (hopefully, reasonably) clear and self contained.

All in all i'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Yes it may need a little tweaking here and there and yes it is another sci-fi / spec fic piece, but i think that the idea behind it is pretty solid.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I'll say about Human until I get some feedback on it from one of the two or three people who actually read this at the moment (numbers are going up!).

As for the next post, I won't make any promises on time, but I will say that the next one will be of an entirely different genre than what has come before. It should also be up sooner rather than later as I have a few stories which I have either already finished or almost finished that I think might fit.

Until then,


M

Work in progress

Okay... Two weeks without a post is definitely too long.
I would give the usual spiel about being busy (which in part would be true) but I really don't want to make a habit of that being the opening to every post so I figure I'll just jump straight in.

So far (as I've said before) the only stuff that I have managed to get up is pre-written stuff – or stuff that I had finished and filed away before I started blogging.
Now there's nothing really wrong with putting up old stuff (I've written and read it but other people haven’t) but it seems like the blog would be better if I started to mix in some new stuff as well.
So without further ado (ado in this case being mostly padding and rambling) here is a story:

He runs. It has been hours since he left the city. Hours since he last had a chance to stop and catch breath. He knows he will have to soon.

It takes effort now to push past the man-high grass growing all around, and the dirt and muck fostering their roots seems to suck at every stride.

He keeps on.

A multitude of people move with him. Faceless. Nameless. Unknown and scared.
He can hear their heavy breathing mix with his own. Every so often one of them will drop off in exhaustion only to have their panting transform into calls of fear and frustration. He tries to ignore the screams that come as the men and dogs catch up with them. He keeps running knowing that he might be next.

Around him grass begins to thin, he finds himself running downwards as the soft earth gains water. He fights for his footing, falls, and plunges head first into a shallow pond and woody vegetation. He comes to his feet a second later, covered in mud and spiting away the brackish taste left in his mouth. The nearest embankment is steep and slippery but he climbs like a man possessed.

Here and there he hears yelps and grunts of frustration as a few others undergo the same experience.

He pays them no mind and begins to run again. Pushing his way past sickly tree branches and spindly green brushes of undergrowth. His muscles burn under their own weight. Low vines whip across his shoulders, thorns digging into clothes and flesh. He is panting now. After a few minutes he finds himself slowing. Stopping.

Something is different.

Others notice as well, voices whispering back and forth in confusion as they too slow to a stop. A low thud sounds out behind them. Then another. Another. Someone screams out a warning.

A dull whistle tears overhead. He throws himself to the ground as earth and sky explode. Chunks of white heat flicker out all directions, cutting through man and plant with indiscriminate violence.

A mist of dirt and blood floats down from the sky. He claws his way to his feet, checking himself, half deaf and gasping for air. Another impact falls behind and sprays water.

He stumbles onward. A lucky few go with him.

Vaguely he can hear those left behind, either screaming from their wounds or from dogs who rush in to finish them off. Or both. He wants to stop, to go back or be sick, to do anything but run, but his legs have a mind of their own.

Barely missing another stagnant pond he clambers up another embankment to find himself, finally, out of the muck of the mire. Out of the corner of his eye a cloud of ash chokes out the setting sun.

They are burning the city.

People sob silently until someone points towards the north-east. The waters of the Cambian River appear below through a gap in the trees. The riveted hulls of two Danmeer steamships move against the flow, turbine engines belching soot and churning water, they push through the normally hazardous currents with an arrogant ease.

One of the others, a woman, vaguely familiar, moves towards him questioningly. “So what do we do now? Are they still after us?” He looks at her dumbly, breathing hard. Her face is pale and smudged with ash. Her hair tangled and wet.

“Hey?” Her voice begins to shake. “Say Something!”

He looks to the others. They look away. She slaps him.

“Look at me! You brought us here! You brought us out” She shivers “...out of the city. Now tell us what the fuck we’re supposed to do!”

He comes back to his senses “Sorry...I don’t know...I don’t know any more than you do.” He is breathing normally now. “But I hope they’ll leave us alone now. Don’t see how we’re important. we're just a few who got out. Anyway they're going to be too busy looting and burning Rhys for them to care about anything else. At least for the moment.”

Another figure steps forward. A man. Large. He looks the others over, sweat beading on dark muscles. His voice is rich and low.

“But they have to come down the coast eventually. Need to eat. Need to be kept entertained. Not all of this is just swamp and grassland. There are farms and villages.”



Now as you can probably tell this is a work in progress, but as I originally started it as a way to toy with description and rhythm (and how this is affected by adding or omitting words that are not essentially necessary) it seemed worth putting up anyway - not withstanding the work I need to do on my paragraphing.

Still it seems that in the process of writing it I may have stumbled onto (at least in my head) an actual story and something which I would rather like to expand upon (and that potentially includes giving it a proper beginning) and upload the results.

That’s not to say that this will be the only new thing that I will be posting – I am working on one or two (or more like a half a dozen if I’m honest) other short stories which are intended to be more contained and I would like to put some of those up as well and on top of that there are still a number of pre-written stories left lying around as well.

But, for the moment, this should be enough.

Until next time

- I promise not to let it get to 2 weeks -

M