Mad World

"An old man sat by a window, wishing he knew why."

It was hard for him to recall the tarnished memories of old that had rested dormant in his mind for so long. Even as he looked out the only window in the room, he couldn't quite remember a time when the jagged, metallic spires didn't jut into the sky as a constant rebuke against the world's ruin.

A gnarled hand, worn from age, sat atop the sill, the disjointed index finger tapping absentmindedly at the olden wood support. He could barely see through the drooping lid of his one good eye, but that was something the elderly man was used to by now.

It was becoming harder to wake up, harder to stay awake, harder to move around...

Yet, still, he toiled on, bent over his workbench as yet another invention neared its completion and he would be able to add yet another tool intended for protection to the list of weapons that had painted his hands a permanent red.

But today, he didn't work. His tools and parts lay idle on the table, lonely without use. Today, he just wanted to rest.

And mourn the loss of the sky.

A picture was folded in his lap, unopened, of a painting as old as he. On it was a dark expanse of navy blue locked in a dance with the inky black of night. Amongst their embrace lay specks of white, separate entities of life he knew to be called stars. This picture was all he had to remember his precious night, for the smog and light of the steampunk city had laid a thick, obscuring blanket across its residents.

Something inside the old man told him he wouldn't have to worry about the sky much longer. His breathing was starting to catch in his throat and as he sat back in the chair he'd been sitting in that entire morning so far, a single tear slipped from its wells within his eye.

It flowed through the deep channels that carved his face into a tale of seasoned age. He raised his hand to his cheek, not wiping the tear away, but holding it there, a bittersweet smile on his lips.

"For all the evil you've caused, is there a place for you in paradise?"

No man leads a perfect life, nor is his life a well of evil. Ups and downs litter our timelines like the scattering stardust of a dead sun across the span of space.

That was what made life so beautiful in his eyes.

As he sat at his seat, he could see the unraveling of time itself in a bottle-- the bottle of reality. He could see how time was a mere illusion, just like the weapons he'd created to combat the Blyte when no cure could be found.

The dead would rise simply to be returned to dust as they'd been meant to be, but at that time, he'd never considered that the same effect could be wrought on a living being.

From pistols to dematerialization units, mankind had persevered in the face of its ruin. Their numbers were halved, probably halved again in the last century, but a few cities clung to live in the dead lands that surrounded them. Many arguments could be made on what had brought them the furthest, but he knew the truth.

He knew that it was by his hand that the survival of mankind had been possible.

Every other bleeding heart was yearning for a cure, sacrificing all they had while he greedily hoarded his possessions and created objects of mass destruction that could protect entire states-- in the future, mayhaps even nations-- but now where did that put him?

He'd brought about the era of the Steampunk, but now what good did it do him? The machines he'd designed for good were also used for evil, but could that truly be helped?

Did the designer of the tether intend on people leaping to the end off the edge of a building in an attempt to escape their lives?

If such an innocent device should have its purpose twisted by the sick, incurable souls of humanity, should he really feel so bad about his own inventions that more than rescued them all from aimlessly wandering the earth forevermore?

He bent his arms to hold his head in his hands, the soft, slow whir of his other robotic eye the only sound audible in the deathly still room. That is, until he softly gasped for breath and the gentle pat of a teardrop hitting the white apron on his lap produced a sound that seemed to reverberate within the walls themselves.

It was a constant war that never ended within his mind, this back and forth.

Was he right?

Was he wrong?

"What better to seal your fate than with your own word?"

By now, he couldn't tell.

What truly decides what is right and what is wrong? Was the lion wrong for killing the antelope? Was the bear wrong for protecting her cubs? Was he wrong for rescuing humanity?

Was he wrong for aiding them in their destruction?

The answer never produced itself to him and his questions lay unanswered.

Because on that night under a cloudy, sun-choked sky, an old man sat by a window, wishing he knew why.