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