City of Pickering

City of Pickering Part 1: The Messenger

A black sky, studded with steadily glittering stars and shrouded in thin trails of cloud tinged silver by the light of the thin crescent moon, stretched over a mainly suburban area. Every once in a while, the small shape of a night creature such as an owl or bat would streak overhead, silhouetted darkly against the sky. Lights twinkled in the windows of homes and businesses, giving the whole air about the area a warm and glowing feel. Just off to the side of the suburban area, a copse of mainly deciduous trees sprang up from the ground, leaves and branches hissing gently in the cool night breeze. The loud, high pitched yips of foxes calling to their cubs drifted between the thick trunks of the trees, and every once in a while an owl would hoot deeply from its perch high up in one of the trees. A doe, completely oblivious to anything else, crept calmly through the small forested area, the end of her snout just skimming the leaf strewn forest floor as she foraged for food, all of her senses alert for possible night dangers.

A branch cracked loudly somewhere deeper in the forest, and the doe froze, one of her hoofed feet raised in the air as if she had been about to take a step. A mother fox somewhere close by paused in her frantic yipping and darted off, startled. An owl abruptly silenced its own hoot, its beak hanging open as it darted its head around, searching for the source of the unusual noise.

The doe stiffened, the blood in her veins turning to freezing cold ice. Something big was approaching through the forest. Something very big. Finally, with one last loud crack of a branch, a tall, thin, metallic figure burst out from the thick deciduous trees, sending lush green leaves fluttering in every direction. Birds fluttered up, screeching and terrified, from their night roosts. The doe's instincts screamed at her to run, to take cover, to escape, to do anything, but curiosity kept her rooted to the spot. Cautiously, she crept sideways and slid beneath the cover of a thick, leafy bush. As soon as she was settled, she peered out through the thin branches at the strange metal figure.

For one thing, it was the figure's staggering height that amazed her the most. It was easily fifty feet tall, and even most of the biggest trees in the forest would look dwarfed next to it. Its body was made up of a thin metal pole, and the doe could see that attached to the pole were what appeared to be a control box, a solar panel, and a long, weather vane like antenna. The strange being's head was made up out of what appeared to be eight speaker horns pointing in four different directions, and on top of one of the top horns and slightly off to the strange being's right was a blazing, pale blue robotic eye. Slowly, the doe twisted around to nip at an itchy spot on her back, and, when she turned back around again, almost had to sink the tips of her hooves into the dirt to prevent herself from leaping back in surprise.

The strange figure was looking right at her. Its robotic eye blazed a blinding pale blue color in the darkness of the night, and the small, black, steadily dilating and shrinking pupil was trained right on her.

"Wild life," it hissed, and the doe's skin crawled at the sound of its voice, which was high pitched, mechanical, and seemed to echo ominously around and through the tree trunks. As the doe watched, a human male slid silently out from the bushes that lined the side of the clearing opposite from the strange figure, acknowledging the strange figure's presence with a nod of his head. That did it! Quickly, the doe whirled around and sped off through the forest and away from the clearing, disappearing into the shadowy distance with a flick of her white tail.

Back in the clearing, the strange figure glanced quickly at the spot where the doe had disappeared before beginning to speak. "Well," it began, "Good evening to you, Max. Now, let's get this show on the road!"

"Actually, Frederick," Max replied, "I honestly think it's more like "Good morning, Max". After all," Max, the human, glanced at the watch on his wrist. "It's, like, three-thirty in the morning."