"Grandma?" I called out into the backyard. But when I say backyard, I really mean gigantic, overgrown forest with nothing in sight except for dense trees and bushes. Light wasn't present here; unable to find a way past the overlapping branches and leaves that made up the sky.
I walked back inside and sat down in front of the fire, holding my hands too close to the flames, but Grandma wasn't here to scold me for doing so.
In fact, she's been missing for 42 hours.
I sighed and stoked the fire, the sparks drifting up and settling on the floor, leaving even more burnt spots on the deteriorating wood. I shouldn't have let her go.
A scream echoed throughout the small cabin, and before I realized that scream was mine a chair had been thrown too, shattering against a wall and leaving splinters in my hands. My breathing was choppy, uneven. I was going crazy.
I sank back down onto the ground, my hands shaking. I didn't want to be like her.
Since the moment she took me in I had noticed one thing about her.
She was crazy.
Delusional.
Schizophrenic.
And I had been living with her for twelve years. Don't get me wrong; I was very grateful. I could almost remember the day she found me, huddled close to my parent's dead bodies. But because of her mental disorder, I learned to take care of myself.
My hands subconsciously found their way to the scar on my wrist, tracing the puffed skin while I wondered what that gray-colored speck beneath my flesh was.
I needed to leave.
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The hole in my too-small boot let me feel every rock and pebble I was walking on, but I ignored the pain and held onto the shoulder straps of my backpack, filled with things I had found around the cabin. A canteen filled with well water. A burlap sack of carrots. A small knife.
The two best things were tucked into the waistband of my pants: A small old-fashioned pistol with five bullets, and a yellow map of the city of San Francisco.
She had never told me where we were located, so I fumbled around with the map trying to see if there were any landmarks I recognized.
I nearly tripped over her dead body.
"Grandma?" I whispered. Her eyes had been eaten out by ants, and there was a trail of them leading from her mouth. My hands were shaking as I turned her tiny stiff body over, trying to find the cause of her death. There was nothing. My guess was she tripped on something while wandering the forest late at night in one of her crazes and the force of the impact was too much for her ninety-three year old frail bones.
She was really just... gone. I was alone. I waited for the tears to come, but they never did. Realization struck me that I never really knew this woman. Not really. I only remembered the stories she told me when she was trapped in her disappearing mind, when her eyes glazed over and she spoke in a monotone voice. Stories about how the world used to be, and how it was now.
I hung my head: whether it was because I was giving her soul a moment of peace, or because I was ashamed, I don't know. "Bye Grandma." I could envision her sitting in the rocking chair by the fire, mumbling to herself while I listened, curious but frightened.
I left her there, her body resting peacefully against a fallen log, where a ray of sunshine almost reached her, and the ants continued to make use of her decaying corpse as I continued walking in a direction that I hoped would take me out of the forest I had lived in for so long.
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When my feet finally hit metal I knew I had made it. I stared at the road until memories of me playing hopscotch when I was five began to nibble at my subconscious, but I pushed them back, forcing myself to concentrate on the things at hand. The road seemed to stretch on for miles and miles as I walked, litter strewn on the sides of the roads until buildings finally came into view, and I stopped to take it all in. From a distance, it looked like flies buzzing around a giant metropolis, sitting in the middle of a flattened field. As I got closer the flies turned out to be flying transporters, moving citizens from floor to floor and building to building. Soon they disappeared as a giant wall stood blocking my field of view.
"Hey you! Over here." A voice spoke through a speaker, muffled yet amplified, and the sound sparked with static.
I saw a break in the wall, and made my way over to the window.
"Uh...Hi...Do you know where I'm supposed to enter?" As I stepped in front a green light passed over my body before disappearing again.
A robot sat on the other side of the glass, looking both confused and annoyed as it typed keys on a system computer. "What are you exactly?"
"What? Oh..Uh..I'm-"
"Are you one of the really old models? Are you one of the models from the C-2 series? Like C.2-3 or something like that?" It sounded like a male, with the metal parts visible at the joints, as if his paint was wearing away.
"Yeah..Something like that. Can I go in?"
He rolled his eyes. "No. You're not allowed in and out unless you have a Switch Plate Pass, which is not available for your model."
"A switch plate pass? What is that?" I frowned.
"What is a-?" He leaned forward, getting a better look at me. "What city did you import from exactly?"
I backed away, holding my hands up. "Look, just forget it, I'll find another way in." My heart was racing as my senses told me too deep, too deep!
"Guards, we have an old model who's computer system is malfunctioning down by the gates," he spoke into a small microphone, and I could hear his voice being echoed out onto the other side of the gates.
While he was speaking a group of high-class citizens exited the giant gates, and before I stopped to think I ran into the midst of them, leaving behind the shouting gatekeeper, heading straight into the city I was forced to leave behind without even a second thought as to what I was doing. They growled with their snarky comments but said nothing to me. I dived into a nearby alley on the other side and saw some guards rushing to leave the gates, no doubt trying to find me.
I thought I was safe, but as I felt a cloth cover my mouth and my world began to blacken, I knew I was very, very wrong.
YOU ARE READING
Amongst Machines
Ciencia FicciónYou probably don't want to read this. You want to know why? Because it's about how your stupid creations were smarter than you. Because it's about how the stupidity of the human race led to its own destruction. So good job. And lucky me because as f...
