stuckinthestrangecity

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Defeated, but not dead, the ghostwriter catalyst tried to do its one job under its hood: being an avatar for the voices of the ether, for the potential ideas that whisper between the bricks and buildings of the shifting city.

But, unfortunately, the machine couldn't do its one job without a consciousness to use as an author. But the littluns knew better than to touch it, the biguns didn't care, and the peacekeepers would try to destroy it on sight. So, it bided it's time, and then a being that was neither— a stranger to the city— came along and used it. And it finally could do its job. Until a pair of ideas saved the stranger and then the stranger stopped its metal fingers from moving and covered its body with a lid.

Stupid stranger.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Have you tried taking away the ink tape?

I'm not getting near it again, man! I don't want to get turned into a processing slave for whatever the hell's controlling that thing!

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Hear it? Does it make any particular sound?

I'm just scared, Orange. That thing took me and used me as if I was a fucking processor! It was ADDICTIVE, man. FUCKING. ADDICTIVE.

I mean, I heard it and I had to forcefully pull my mind away from it... And it's still writing. It makes the typical clickety-clack you come to expect from typewriters. Nonetheless, it's strange hearing it from within a closed case, where no one should be able to touch the thing.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

I've been reading what I wrote with the TypeStriker (yes, I've given it a name. No, I'm not changing it. No, i don't care it doesn't actually strike, it just sounds good and seems fitting for something that tries to strike your mind with its own thoughts.). One of them reminds me of this, it goes along the lines of "The Maker stares at the empty paradise/Alone, disheveled and torn/his only friend, his muse, his babe/ his wings are scolded and now he's gone."

It was weird, seeing poetry written by the machine.

Before God made man.

In another life; I am God, and you are Lucifer--

I have betrayed you, I have cursed you, but I loved you all the same. You had fallen from grace, yet you remain my muse. My Venus, the morning is for you. But bright as you shine, my North Star, lonely have we become.

Before God had loved His people, He had first loved an Angel.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

What. The fuck. No, really. What the fuck happened to me.

I'm putting that typewriter in a place where I can't see it. Or hear it.

I'm hungry, thirsty, and tired. I'll be back, guys. I'll be back.

Most importantly: I'm alive. And I'm me. I'm not a pawn, a pc used illegally to do whatever the fuck that thing was.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Ribbons and ribbons and ribbons of ink lay empty at his feet while he writes, completely absorbed by the whirlpool of memories that aren't his. He should get up, he should get up and eat and drink and sleep. "but there's something... beautiful about all of this", the thoughts whisper. "There's something beautiful and marvelous about becoming a relay for ideas that come and go, a conduit for the echoes of inspiration long gone inside the changing nature of the city."

"Yes," he thinks, ink covering any and all deviant thoughts, assimilating and eating its way into his brain, into his mind, with the desire to overwrite, to shift him like the buildings shift around him. "It is."

His fingers shift through the keys, the typebars hammering their way into the paper, bleeding painful black blood every time they touched the white surface. Almost like a loom, the letters started tangling forming words, the words tangled into sentences, then the sentences shifted into paragraphs and so on.

Ideas come and go, screaming like children trying to catch the attention of a teacher. Ducks, gears, machines that he doesn't comprehend, worlds where shooters gain access to the dead worlds long gone, and libraries where trees leak black blood to feed their librarians. He keeps writing. His mind screams at him to fight. He keeps writing. He shouts and kicks at the ink, screaming at the void for someone, anyone that is capable of helping him.

Two ideas answer, glistening like stars in a sea of tar and petroleum. One of them, a sinuous, elegant serpent of scales akin to stones, stares at him with its eyes closed. On top of its head, on two scrawny legs, stands a mess of feathers, beaks, wings and eyes, a peculiar bird not unlike the angels he read about on the internet.

The snake hisses, a raspy sound that echoes through the nothingness. Anger. Hate. But not for him. He instinctively closes his eyes as chaos unfolds around him.

The snake- no, the basilisk- opens its eyes, and stares at the nothingness. Of course, as the saying goes, the nothingness stares back.

That was their mistake, the one that caused its downfall.

The dark streams coiling in his mind stay still, paralyzed in fear- or something akin to that, as ideas don't feel fear, but the concept of it- as their surfaces turned grey, and started to spread like vines. The greedy rock desired to consume, to assimilate its enemy until they were enveloped, like a mother embracing their child.

Feathers of coal, gold and paper soared through the air like missiles, as the angelical bird stared with its indeterminate amount of eyes at the non-existent sky overhead and cawed with its many mouths. The projectiles struck true, and they started to feed. After all, the quills that feed on ink in the distant world of paper are just the most aggressive cousins of the feathers of any bird.

The typewriter's offspring screams as it dies, ripped off the root, and slurped like a smoothie by the strange quills. The writer opened its eyes to see his, now barren, mindscape. This wasn't right. He was supposed to write and write and write and write until he couldn't anymore.

The bird cawed once again, and a single feather composed of wood struck the writer in the shoulder.

They screamed, their insides turning into a slurry, fed to the starving feather. Jay opened his eyes, scared shitless, and stared at his mindscape. Yes. This was right.

Jay focused on reality once more, sitting in his home. The writing machine, despite not having an operator, continued to churn out words. "Oh, the sound... The feeling of being one wi- NO" He censored his own mind, and took off his jacket -that, now that he thinked about it, had never shifted, and neither did his phone...- and stuffed it between the typebars and the cellulose landscape they were supposed to stain, intertwining it in-between the metal pieces until they couldn't move anymore. Then, he grabbed the lid from the side of the desk, and slammed it into the machine, muffling it.

Only then, he drew a sigh of relief. And then, he noticed the small internet router sitting on the windowsill of his studio-since when did he have a studio on the House?- and grinned, taking out his phone.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Oh, god. What the hell happened to me? I've been writing, and writing, and writing, my neighbors gave me a new ink ribbon. I haven't seen them, but now I know of their existence. The router shifted a lot, back and forth.

Orange? Steam?

I guess you both are gone. I mean, it makes sense. You guys have lives, maybe work or exams.

I'm just going to wait, I guess. I can't use the typewriter anymore, so I'm going to have to go out and search. I'm famished, how long has it been since I ate?

[stuckinthestrangecity]

What the hell. I didn't write that. I swear.

It looks like... Ink? How the hell can ink be plastered on the internet?

[stuckinthestrangecity]

The ship wobbled side to side while it lazily moved over the surface of the seawater. The Donna. Forgotten and lost, left to rot on the bottom of the sea, or so says the legend.

But it's only that, right? Legends. Tales for kids to listen to and repeat to themselves in fear for their lives being cut short.

"eat your veggies or the skin weaver will come and use you to make its cape"

"be nice or the unsiime will take over your life"

"obey or the shifting will kidnap you."

All legend. All tales.

And yet, there it was. As alive as a ship can get without a crew, its rigging moving by itself and driftwood floating towards every crack that opened with a scream of death.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Today the food was Meatballs. The water was some kind of soda. It looked like Sprite. It didn't taste like it.

Today the kids showed me something, while I was returning to my apartment. Seems like they trust me now, or something like it. I guess we share our distaste for the cops.

The little ones took me to a dumpster, and showed me an old typewriter, made with sleek black plastic. They wanted me to write something for them. I used whatever ink the ribbon had left, and I mean it. I left it completely dry...

It was weird. I blinked and suddenly, half an hour had passed, and I had written three pages worth of text about the ruddy duck, describing everything about it (behavioral patterns, migration patterns, etc) in excruciating detail.

I didn't even know that bird existed.

I obviously took the thing home, after giving the paper to the kids. But I'm all out of ink.

PS. I found a picture of a ruddy duck. It's quite cute. I find the blue beak especially fascinating.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

What's strange about the people?

Sorry. I've been... Tired. It's hard to write lately. And my router not coming back doesn't help, either.

I bought food.

I've been taking notes about the city, and its people, too.

So, the people. From what I've seen, I know that there's three types: the kids, the adults, and the cops.

The kids are always running, always playing, always happy. They're the most energetic and kind out of the three. I've played with them. They know a lot of fun games. We played one similar to football, it was cool. They wear brightly-colored clothes, too. I like them. They're nice.

There isn't much to say about adults. They look strange, like if they were a misprint in your retinas. It's like they fade into the background, as if they were made from smoke. They mostly wear suits and carry briefcases, but that can vary, too. They ignore you and you ignore them. It's simple.

And then, the cops. Oh, god, the cops. They're lanky, and tall, like a telephone pole with arms. Each and every one of them look human, but not human enough. It's an uncanny valley reaction. When you look at them, they smile and greet you, all polite and kind. But when you turn around, you can feel their eyes burning into the back of your head. The thing is, I'm pretty sure they don't have those. Their eyes are always covered by the same "crime scene- do not cross" strip.

I think it's their helmets. I've seen them whisper. The badge. It's golden, razor sharp, and has a big eye with a red iris on its center. That eye moves. I've seen it move.

And it whispers.

Anyway, I'll keep searching. Write to you soon, Orange. Hope either you or Steam can find more people.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

I'm not gonna wait

Alright, now that I know I'm being read, I'm not waiting until you ask. Just ask when you want to. Or at least ask me if I need help. I dunno why my chats don't work. So, the weird city. I woke up a week or so ago on my apartment, (again, not really mine, but I somehow know it is), without any idea on how the hell I got here in the first place. It has some basic furniture, and an old bakelite phone on a tiny table next to the door. The kitchen cabinet was full of cans of food when I woke up, and the water from the tap looked like molasses. Five days ago, the phone turned into a router for around 10 minutes. It then turned, somehow, into a phone booth. Three days ago, it turned back into the router, after shifting into a bunch of phones, a morse telegraph and a mailbox. It was that day when I created this account. I wrote the first post andfollowed the first 20 or so accounts. I would've followed even more, but the connection terminated. I got lucky, the phone stayed as a router for half an hour. So, yeah. I will have a hard time writing here. By the way, I'm almost out of food cans. I'll have to go out again. The people here are as strange as my apartment. And that's saying something

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Hello?

Oh thank God. The Orange guy following me was enough to tell me that my messages were coming through, but now I know at least I'm being seen.

Please. I beg of you. Help me. I can't explain much, the router keeps shifting into a bakelite phone. The people are weird. The city's gate shifts too. I need ideas. I can give you some background if you want to hear it.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Everything changes.

The rotation came around. I don't know how much time I have. I'll try to explain a few things. My name is Jay, and I woke up in this place. The weird city. I have an apartment, and I know it's mine, somehow. I woke up here about... Five days ago. I have food and water, if you even can call them that. The house is warm. Everything seems good.

The problem is, the house changes. Every once in a while. I've seen it turn from brick walls to ones chiseled from stone.

The food and water don't look the same. They look good, but it's weird. They don't have any flavor. It's just... Texture. Without any kind of hot or cold sensation. Just a plain, tasteless thing. The texture changes too.

Everything changes.

[stuckinthestrangecity]

Hello, Internet?

I wonder if I can make this one work. I've been trying to get a connection for days. Please. If you're reading this, talk to me. Ask me questions. I'll try to answer them. Everything I say will sound like I'm nuts, but it's the truth. All of it.