The Automaton

A Slave

Each barely audible 'clink' brought him one step closer to his goal, one step closer to what he wanted to be HIS. Freedom. Each shadow cast by the towering chunks of rusted metal concealed his presence, allowing him to work secretively, without worrying about the other ones accidently stumbling upon him. He knew what he was doing. The deepest chamber, the one surrounded by an aura of clanging machines, the gushing waves of water being pushed through rusted pumps. Disgusting architecture.It was messy, unbelievably messy, the screws and bolts barely tightened, the rythmic - drip, drip,drip - dripping and dropping of water that should have been frozen at this temperature was enough to drive a sane and knowlegeable man insane. He had attuned to it. Drip: His head cocks to the right. Drop: His head cocks to the left. It helped. It helped him keep the time. It helped him think. 

His back resembled a curved arch, that could be blamed on the position he sat in - No, the position he HAD to sit in if he wanted to be certain that his project would not be found by Them. The Feared. It was their fault, their fault, he knew it. Throughout his long life time he had learned that everything had a cause. Every evil and demon that had infected his life came from Them. Their brutality. Their factory. 

CLANG. The machine rang. It rang every two minutes. A constant reminder of the lack of his freedom. And then, only then, did he lift up his head. It had been the first time in four hours that his eyes had left it. He simply could not risk losing it. The meaning of his meaningless life. His eyes drifted around the room. Square. Cold. Dark. Lonely. Most definitely lonely. Company could be found anywhere around what They called 'The Factory,' but not here. The single light was dim and flickered on and off at random intervals, once again due to the terrible stucture of the chamber. The first word that came to one's mind was 'cage.' Four ironclad walls boxed in everything and anything in the room. Everyone and everything. It was the dumping ground, quite literally. Two huge trash shutes were the only things decorating the walls, blocky creations that seemed to be clumsily built in his eyes. The bottom plate of steel appeared to be pealing off the shute attached to the South side of the room. Ironic. That's what it was. It was always the right side that got massacred. The South side. Ironic and unfortunate. His hand, a prune-like tinkering machine, riddled with thousand of layered, meandering grooves, each filled with rivers of oil, grime and blood, reached for his long scraggly beard, whispy grey, speckled with white. His dark, deep eyes continued to search the room.

The light, casting an orange hue, illuminated the rest of the dungeon-esque room.  It was split into almost a North and South side. Like the Terra itself. Huge masses of alloys, lumps of scrap metals, that were not needed for The Feared's project, and ingots of useless  metals that were not needed, yet the slaves were still forced to mine them day through night. Hazel plates of copper, and bars of soft aluminium, littered the cold, stone floor. Ashen boulders of stone created the perfect hideaway for him. He no one came down here. You could smell it. The blood. The sweat. The hours of work done by the Southlings, just thrown away into a dusky room, waiting to be compressed and disposed of. No wonder no one wanted to come down here. 

Lowering his head once again, he went back to tinkering. His cracked, desert dry lips curved into a mild smile, his face lighting up. The silver gleamed and shimmered in the light. It was beautiful. Like a kaleidoscope of reflections, shining in the Sun. The Sun. He hadn't seen that in years. Although his creation was small, even the young ones would be able to tell that it was special. The metals used were not bottom rank and filthy like that of the Feared. It was pristine, all of it. A plethora of materials ranging from platinum, to silver with small iron gears and zinc highlights. It's resemblance to a human was fascinating and incredible. But, no matter how beautiful it was, the project was not complete. No. It was cold.  An absence of steam and heat. It could not move. It could not talk. And most importantly, it could not think. After five years it could not think.