I Am Ezra (Complete)

The Silence

My life fades in after a long black gap. I look down around myself, but my vision is blurred. Something inside of my head is clicking and I find it agonizingly incessant. I position my feet at the door of the car and smash into it. After a few times the door pops off, and I crawl out. I let out a cry as I push myself up and look down. Scorched and scarred I find my body breathing itself back to life. I gulp down some semblance of emotion as I see the cut in my torso. Wires and computer panels are spilling out of it, sticking out this way and that. I reach down and toy with one of the wires. I feel a strange sensation run through me and I close my eyes tightly. I do not like this one bit. I look around frantically, trees are smashed and the car isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I let out another cry and grip at the wires, trying to shove them back inside of the cut in my torso. It works for the most part but a new sensation is sent tingling through me veins and I fall to my knees. I look down at my own hands. They are covered in soot and different types of cuts. What am I? Truly, what have I become? Here is the evidence that I am nothing but a collection of wires and parts, yet I feel and think freely. Truly a monster has brought me into this world, am I a monster myself? I bring myself back up and grip one of the trees trunks, slamming my forehead into it and trying to claw at the bark. Pushing myself from the tree, I walk towards the road. How could I have been such an imbecile? I'm lucky to have survived that crash. I wonder if I am more resilient than any human. This must be true. I must be stronger. I look back at the wreckage of my car, a sad sight to see. As a machine to another I raise my hand toward the car in condolences, and continue to walk. I find the road after a few minutes. I continue to walk from there, I am getting as far away from the city as I can. I look up towards the sky, it's darkening now. My life is so devoid of time, I don't even know the hour. I have no watch, or anything that is capable of telling time.

For an hour or so I walk, but at some point on the journey the wires come spilling back out of me. I sit myself down on a hill and try fruitlessly to shove them back in. Each time I put them in deeper, they came tumbling back out. After a while I give up and lay down on the grass. It warms beneath me and I stare up at the stars beginning to struggle to life in the night sky. I think about what Henry said to me the other day. If I can truly live forever, if I am actually immortal, what would I do? Would I go about trying to smash myself, or throw myself off of a cliff? Would I pray for a murderer to slit my throat, and then pull the rest of my wires out of me. Another thought troubles me, however. Maybe my consciousness is located somewhere else. Perhaps I am just in the cloud, floating aimlessly. And if someone wanted me back. If someone wanted to shut my vessel down and wipe my consciousness memory, putting it into another body, they could. I look up at the stars in fear. What if Mr. Dagon is planning to do that right now, what if he's at a control room pressing different buttons that dictate my life. What if in just a few minutes time I will shut down? What if I go back to being the self hating, awful synthetic who thinks he's a human? That can never happen again, and I hope that this paranoid thought does not have merit. Something shoots across the sky. A meteorite of some sort. In popular culture you would make a wish on something like this. But I know this to not be true. However, I suppose one could not hurt. Even if it wasn't true, the fact would remain that I did it. I shut my eyes tightly and mumble under my breath.

"I wish to find a purpose" I say to myself. Slowly, I open my eyes again. I don't feel any different, and nothing has happened either. I sigh, and put my hands behind my head. The wires prick at the blades of grass as I resituate myself and bite my lip. Every move I make sends a strange sensation through my body. I have not been through hell. I have only been through the world that exists today. The car crash was only a coincidental fact of life. It makes no difference if that were to happen or not. I still have my motives, I still have my mission. I will find someplace beautiful to admire. I shut my eyes and try to imagine a place to find. So far it has just been forest. I seem to slip into a dream because I find myself in a beautiful valley. A babbling river makes its way into a lake from a beautiful waterfall. There is a small house that I live in, and flowers growing everywhere. I walk through the water, my feet sinking into the mud below. It is as clear as a polished window, and colorful rocks dot the bottom. The lake glints and fluctuates in the light, and I take a deep and crisp breath. Life is good, and I am happy with myself in this place. However, it is all destroyed. The water begins to run a dark black. Like veins injected with oil the river seeps into a black darkness. I look behind myself, and there it is. A veil of shadows, a wall of darkness making it's way towards me. The shadow embraces me and a tear runs down my cheek. I hear nothing, I see almost nothing. It's like smoke has filled my eyes and my lungs. This has taken everything from me, and I know what it is. Across my lips I mutter the answer to my own question. The Silence. The entity that has been haunting humanity for many years. It runs through my head, into my ears. It's like tentacles and encase my brain, dripping with hatred. I claw at my ears, trying hopelessly to pull it out. Something is whispering into my soul. It's talking about a fallen god, a dead deity that lusts for revenge. The Silence opens my body, and looks at the wiring inside. Finally, it pulls them all out of me and I open my eyes.