055 (part five of the retroactive update week)

Guess who was watching the original 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' with a sketchbook in front of him and a bottle of ink nearby.

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by Mo Martin

I rarely wonder if I was wrong. Throughout my rearing, I was told that my hunger for the light was an aberration, a vestigial desire, long ago abandoned when humanity chose life, chose the Underbunkers. We had changed in shape and ability. Delicate fingers, cavernous ears, sensitive nostrils, all allowed for us to eschew the foolish wide-eyed gaping of our ancestors. We were more than they were, peaceful where they warred, poisoning the earth, filling it with the radition and gasses we were freed from below; protected where they were exposed, deep in the world of stillness that were the ever-expanding Underbunkers, we knew no overly harsh sun, no whipping winds or rains; and we were leisurely where they labored, our minds given over to science, poetry, love and thought, while our mechamen performed and completed the necessary daily tasks of our survival. But something in me was an emptiness, a craving. I dreamt of a great whiteness, and it was visible. Instead of echoes of objects, in my dreams, I saw them for what they were. Instead of the roughs and smoothes that made up my friends and family, they had an existence, bold and independent of my touch.

But for all my longing, I knew I would never realize the world of my dreams. Overland was a death sentence, reserved for the most reprehensible criminals of the Underbunkers. I had smelt their rotted, burned flesh, felt the jagged bones emerging from their chests as they were dragged past by the mechamen into the Potter's Field. But still, I longed to have a part of myself out there, roaming the uneven ground, seeing the sun. So I took my personal mechaman, who acted as my valet, and I began to tamper with his programming. I thought about his hull, his pistoning legs, his wiring: as conceived and steeped in darkness as I was. But together, we would achieve the light.

Finally overriding the protections against harming a human, the night arrived. I could hear the subtle movements of air as the metal arms moved closer and closer my face, smell the cold tang of metal as it brushed my cheeks. And then the steel fingers were deep within my useless sockets, indelicately scooping out the optic orbs so neglected by this branch in my species' history. Then leaning on my servant, my salvation, as I felt and smelled the blood running down my face, my neck, we lurched to the opening to the Overland. I heard the door as it scraped open, and could smell the warmed soiled, feel the wild breezes. I leaned against the wall as my fellow creature of darkness, my metallic slave and my chariot, walked to its eternity in the Overland, bearing my eyeballs with him. Though I remained in darkness, I would see the light.