Lines

Sweeper

"Clear." His voice is stagnant, robotic enough that he doesn't perceive the tone any longer. The word congealing into a bark that must fall out of him.

The next door opens before his outstretched arm. Darkness burns away from the torch against his breast.

Left sweeping right. Follow the door's path.

He doesn't realize he's hearing their voice again.

"Watch the hinge first, confirm against your bias. It may save your life, boy."

"Left sweeping right."

"Left sweeping right."

"The door reveals to you what it wants you to see. A gift, by every inch. It crawls, and so too does your chance of viscous, hollow death. Bubbling in your own oils and filth."

"You already are filth, trapped in the suit, trapped in your own air. Noxious."

"Look at him squirm. Breathing. Living. Dying."

Their masks appear to already be laughing when he sees them shiver and shake. Roaring behind their veils.

Halfway through the doorway scan he sees a note. His eyes pause for just a moment, and then continue.

Clear.

Even his thoughts can't escape the familiar word that has sunken into his being after years sweeping.

A heavy boot raises from the ground and then places itself back down. A call, for the rodents, for the vermin, for the hidden predator waiting for its chance. They believe the sweeper to be moving when they hear it and give away the faintest shuffle in preparation.

But nothing greets him this time, so he takes that first step and breeches the doorway's plane.

His eyes scan once again into the new angle of information. The corner of the frame yields a garden of blank.

He inhales deeply, the mechanical whir of artificial lungs ring out around him. No one can breathe metallic dust and disease for days let alone years and walk away from it. And they suppose a sweeper can't sweep when dead.

The door finishes its dance, and his hand waivers against the grain of the wood of it as his eyes catch what his torch already pointed toward.

His eyes scan one final time before he lumbers himself into the room.

His hands approach the note carefully, lifting it from the dust and the debris. It looks to be buried in the nest of what once was a desk, and the chair is here too though the shaking of the planet and the pod alike moved it askew from its brethren. Perhaps whomever wrote it died here too, there's enough detritus for a cadaver to have withered into the mix.

An ocean of noise and life and structure, crumbled away to particulate that buried this epitaph of a room.

They called them CorpServs before the collapse. Corpses, as sweepers call them. For years they were instructed not to leave, and given tasks they could accomplish from their home. Food, water, luxuries, all shuttled to them by the Overs and their goons. Roaches scuttling along society, slowly condemning it through sloth mandates.

He wipes away the dust and powers it with his wristkit. The whir rings out again, his breathing automatic and yet hormones have entered his blood. Notes are always something sweepers look for, but few find many.

This would be his fourth.

::::: ACCESSING LOG :::::
::  Dani_ls, Rowan
:: d=te: 4/?/*&

He taps the note against the heel of his hand a few times as the characters shimmer and shift. Most of the tech holds up over bedlam but sometimes the dust seeps in, killing its own kin it feels. Metal slaying metal. Some sweepers call it a rebuke against the living from the dead.

But does metal live? And if so, can it die? Or is the fate of turning to dust against his boot heel just another form it can take, another career for the hapless shavings to undertake?

:: _ _ _ _ _ _ _
:: Jeremy said something strange to me the other day and I'm starting
:: to resonate with it more. Something feels off about the goings on of
:: the pod. It used to be that the Overs would host g_thering#, but now
:: you can't even talk to the guy. It's like we're not even here anymore.
:: And if you really think about it, what could he be doing? He doesn't
:: leave either, so like, what's the hold up? Is he partying with other pods
:: or something? This feels so vapid to type out, poor baby wants party
:: but without it who the hell is around me? No one leaves their dome
:: anymore, no one leaves the pod, no one's walking around the terrace
:: or taking in the bounty of splendor that is Home 16. They call it home
:: anyway, but I'm sure glad mom isn't here to see this anymore. She'd
:: call it another word with H.
:: __________
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

And just like that, the note is over. Rowan's thoughts, mundane, vapid as he called it, and yet shed so cleanly for no one to read. No one until a sweeper swept off the dust and made claim to yet another ghost.

Another victim. Another Corpse buried in a mass grave, and a grave they called Home too.

The feeling Rowan, or Jeremy, or whomever picked up on wasn't about parties. It was the collapse. They all knew it was coming, but they didn't know what it would mean.

But how could one foresee perdition?

He takes a few heaving steps forward, and feels the stagnant air filter through a bit longer.

Goodbye, Rowan.

"Clear."