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jamesongrond · 6 years

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ADAM

The machine is broken... and so is he.

A short story about robots, and what gets left behind. (2660 words)

“ADM-119, full diagnostics.”

“Of course,” the machine said with a smirk that should not have been, the left side of its face remaining resolutely neutral even as it tried to smile. When the right eyelid slid shut, the left only drooped, leaving a crescent of white and gleaming mahogany brown.

Partial left side paralysis, Sal thought, wheeling his chair around the machine in a rough, jerky circle. Looks like it continues down into the neck, from the way its head tilts. Could be a defective nerve-line. Sal couldn’t remember if the ADM-Models had old-fashioned central trunks or the newer radial systems, and Peterson Robotics had gone out of business so long ago even the International Technical Archive didn’t have copies of the schematics. All he had to go on was a quick-start guide he’d found on a hobbyist’s forum for old first-gen ‘droids, and that didn’t contain anything more useful than reset instructions and a handful of general error codes.

The wheel of his chair scraped against the battered wall and he cursed as another dusting of plaster scattered across the faux hardwood. He was in the middle of an awkward three-point turn when the ‘droid chimed, a merry little tune somewhere between a midi file and birdsong.

“ADM-119!” Sal called over his shoulder, muttering a curse as he fumbled at the controls and slammed the footrest of the chair into the wall. Good thing I don’t have fucking feet. “Gimme audio.”

“Of course.” The machine tried to smile again, and began to read out the codes, long alphanumeric sequences that might have been helpful as hell if Sal could interpret anything beyond the first five characters. E-5512 meant the ‘droid couldn’t sense heat for shit; M-1N54 meant unresponsive mechanics (no surprise there); FC-19C was some kind of module crash, probably the gastronomic subroutines, if his mother’s constant complaints about horseradish on her pasta were any indication.

Sal had told her to get rid of the busted old junker half a hundred times. He’d even bought her a replacement, a shiny new CASSIDY model she’d never even taken out of the packaging, just stowed under the porch until a stray dog came running out with a mouth full of sparking meta-fiber.

“Adam’s family,” she’d wailed at him. “You don’t throw away family!”

He’d bit his tongue at that one, so hard he tasted blood.

“Shall I attempt repairs?” the machine asked when it finished reading out the codes. Sal had his chair turned around by then, but he was still to the thing’s left, and when it turned to look at him its head twisted queerly to the side, like some kind of shiny plastic owl.

“Who fuckin’ knows, maybe eighth time’s the charm,” Sal muttered, jerking his chair back in front of it. What I need is a system restore drive, he thought. Too bad they stopped making them during the fucking Almasi administration. “You know what, fine. Go ahead. Can’t fuckin’ hurt, can it?”

The machine gave him another aborted attempt at a smile and knelt, joints creaking. One and a half of its eyes slid shut. It should have remained upright, but instead it slumped to the side like something dead, arms and legs at strange angles.

Sal stared through it for a while, then forced himself to look down at his wrist. The display on his medi-bracelet read 3:02 PM. I need a fucking drink, he thought, jabbing at the controls of his chair with a hand beginning to shake.

Rickard the Wonder Aide wouldn’t let him buy anything harder than individual cans of weak, watery Jefferson Red, and even that he had to ration, lest the mighty eye of the disapproving motherland fall upon him. He only had one left, shoved into the back of the fridge behind the latest load of lab-grown simulacra that Rickard called food. Reaching in as far as he could, his fingertips just barely brushed the cool bio-plastic rim.

“God damn it,” he muttered, reaching for the controls of his chair — but no, if he moved forward any farther, the footrest might get caught in the fucking freezer handle again. Just a couple more inches, he thought, undoing the buckle around his waist.

Some time later, the machine chimed, calling out in its lyrical, buzzy voice. Sal hissed a curse and fumbled desperately at the blood-slick brake.

“Hello,” the machine said pleasantly as it appeared in the archway, a shadow with a trio of blinking stars in the center of its chest. “You appear to be in distress. May I be of assistance?”

“Fuck off,” Sal spat through gritted teeth, pawing at the handle. “I don’t need your fucking help.”

“Of course,” the machine replied, with what might have been a head-bow or might have been a curious tilt or might have been a misfiring component making its head rock on its shoulders like the stupid bobble-heads Jason used to collect. Sal forced himself to take a breath, grabbed hold of the brake as tight as he could, and pushed.

The slick plastic slid out from beneath his hand. The chair rolled backwards. He fell forward hard, chin cracking against the linoleum.

“Fuck,” he shouted through his teeth. The heel of his hand pounded against the wheel of the chair, each blow pushing it further backward. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“May I be of assistance?” the android asked.

“No!” Sal made a fist, fingertips digging into the gash the cheap wire fridge shelf had left in his palm as he tried to catch himself. “I got myself into this, I can get myself the fuck out. Just fucking… Don’t touch me.”

“Of course,” the machine said with another wobble.

The effort of dragging himself forward by the only limb he still had left left him sucking in air with ragged, heaving breaths. His vision blurred. The LEDs in the machine’s chest blinked like eyes, like monitors, measuring his progress with the same cold clinical efficiency as the VA butchers. The handle within reach, he shifted as much of his weight as he could stand onto the aching stump of his right arm and tried to push it down with the left.

It started to roll, then stopped.

The shadow of the machine stood over him, hand resting lightly on the back of his chair. A curse came to his lips. He bit it back, and grabbed for the brake. This time, the lever went down.

He half expected the machine to come over, scoop him up, plop him back into his seat as if he were a child, the way the VA staff did every time he fell. It didn’t. It watched him, and when he finally managed to pull his torso up onto the padded, sweat-stained faux-leather, it gave him one of its strange lopsided smirks.

“Fuck off,” Sal mumbled. “Stupid… Stupid broken piece of shit. Shoulda thrown m… thrown you out years ago.”

The machine smiled, but did not reply.

— — —

“Well,” Sal sighed, “that module is irretrievably fucked.”

He had asked for pancakes. The things before him matched the definition on the whole, but in their specifics, they rather missed the mark. Black bits of liquorice studded the golden-brown pancake fluff, barbecue sauce glistened in artful designs across the top, and the whole plate smelled strongly of garlic.

“If you would like me to attempt a re-install—”

“Don’t bother,” Sal said, wincing at the pain in his bandaged palm as he pulled back from the table. “Servers have been down for decades.”

I need that fucking system restore drive, he thought as he wheeled back into the living room. He’d been looking for days, had three different bots and two RS feeds pinging him at any mention, but so far all he had were component sales: an arm here, a knee-joint there, the occasional hip. All the processors and memory banks had been bricked, discarded, or simply stopped working years ago.

He pulled in behind his desk. The machine had moved it farther from the wall, giving him enough room to maneuver without cutting new gouges in the sheet rock. He hadn’t asked it to — hadn’t asked it to do much of anything, aside from diagnostics and tests — but the ADM models had been designed as home care specialists, given a little more leeway in their decision-making than other first-gen ‘droids in order to compensate for a generation of crotchety Pre-Revolution holdouts too proud to ask a glorified appliance for help. Like me, Sal thought with a huff, though he had been born twenty years too late for that particular moniker.

He’d wanted to get into the bleeding edge of AI research — sentience sims, genuine emotion, evolutionary robotics — but by the time he graduated, the Sanderson/Wodehouse bill had passed and that ship had sailed into the less-regulated third-world horizon. The army had still been working on artificial analytics and he’d figured it was the next best thing.

His medi-alert bracelet buzzed and flashed a little red pill. Sal frowned, blinking away the afterimages in his head, and thumbed at the controls. His meds were—

On the desk.

The four bottles were half a foot away, the proper dosages measured out and placed neatly on the caps. Beside them were a glass of water and a cup of pudding with a spoon on top.

“Huh,” Sal said. Against the far wall, ADM stood, one side of its mouth drawn up in that stupid, somehow knowing smirk. His eyes on the machine, Sal scooped up the pills, tossed them in his mouth, and swallowed.

— — —

For the last three years, Sal’s prosthetic arm had sat beneath his bed, slowly gathering dust. The VA would only pay for the cheapest model, and grit and dust and bits of bullshit were always getting into the mechanics, gumming it up and turning the robotic limb into little more than an extremely complicated hook. It needed to be cleaned every day to be usable, half the mechanism disassembled in order to replace the lubricant, and he couldn’t do it one-handed. Rickard the Wonder Aide had done it for a while, but he didn’t come in person anymore. No-one did.

ADM cradled the arm in his lap like an infant. The stiff fingers of his left hand slowed him down, but only to the point where Sal could follow the motions, one flowing into the next like ink on waves.

Sal tapped his fingers against the control panel of his chair, thinking. His mother had called — she wanted her Adam back, was getting impatient. Rickard wanted to know why his food budget had suddenly tripled. Two of his freelance programming gigs were overdue, a third on the cusp.

He’d found a system restore drive.

The listing had been up for six and a half years. He’d assumed it was inactive, but the poster had responded to his query letter eight hours ago. The drive had been sitting in their garage for almost two decades, but they’d plugged it in to an old Peterson desktop they had lying around and swore it worked. They could have it delivered by Monday.

He’d left the tab open. The thin line of the cursor blinked in the periphery of his vision, waiting for him to respond.

He had no idea what he wanted to say.

With a faint pop, ADM disengaged the elbow joint and began to wipe away the crust of blackened lubricant with a cloth. The paralysis on the left side of his mouth made the right look quirked up, as if he were pleased with his work.

Stupid pile of junk, Sal forced himself to think. For the first time in years, the words felt wrong.

His parents had insisted on meeting him at the airport, the day he came home. Jason had been there too. Sal would never have let him come if he’d known, but they never told him. They wanted it to be a surprise.

There had been calls. Emails. Physical paper correspondence, for fuck’s sake. They knew. They’d been warned. Somehow, it never got through to any of them that ‘lost’ meant lost.

Jason had been holding a sign with Sal’s name on it in rainbow letters, surrounded with hearts and dinosaur stickers. It had blocked his view as Sal came over the crest of the escalator, and when Sal’s mother screamed, he’d looked at her first, giving Sal enough time to find their faces in the crowd. Giving him enough time to witness Jason’s expression shift from confusion to horror to disgust.

By the time Sal reached ground level, Jason was gone, the sign trampled under half a hundred feet. He was supposed to drive them all home, so they waited; one hour, two, a third. Sal’s mother couldn’t look at him. His father couldn’t do anything but. They went out to look for Jason’s car, but that was gone too, which meant a taxi, which meant another hour and a half stranded in the middle of the surging, staring crowd while they waited for one large enough for three people and a chair. Even then, it took another fifteen agonizing minutes for his father to beat the chair into submission. It had never rolled right after that.

Rickard talked a lot about vicarious traumatization, emotional exhaustion, survivor’s guilt. Sal had shouted at him, cursed and raged, and when he was done Rickard got up and left without a word. He’d never come back, any more than Jason had.

Once the joint was clean, ADM applied the new lubricant in one graceful swirl, then fit the pieces back together. The elbow moved smoothly now, with none of the crackling stickiness it had had before. The android’s head wobbled on its shoulders in a motion that might have been a nod.

Someone programed that, Sal thought as he watched the android reassemble the arm. Someone designed it to smile. The thought felt strange, somehow. No-one had ever designed it to smirk, but when it held up the completed arm it did, with a wryness that had never been planned, never been intended, that never would have been at all if not for a broken nerve.

Swallowing, Sal held out the stump of his arm. The android strapped the prosthetic in place. The socket didn’t fit quite right anymore, but it was close enough for the electrodes to meet. He’d forgotten which muscle moved what, and for a moment the arm twitched and spasmed and bile rose in his throat, tasting of smells he couldn’t forget and sensations he didn’t want to remember. Then ADM touched his shoulder, and the knots in his stomach went away.

A few minutes later, he was making a fist, curling in his fingers one by one, making rude gestures. He huffed, and then for the first time in years he laughed, a strange hiccup that became a sob halfway up his throat.

“You appear to be in distress,” ADM said softly. “May I assist you?”

Sal nodded.

The android undid the straps. Scooped Sal up in his arms, carried him through the strips of old sheet that served as his bedroom door. Lay him down in the nest of rumpled blankets that was his bed. The ‘droid wrapped the softest around him, so tightly he could barely move, then padded off to fetch a glass, a bottle of water, and, for some reason, an entire miniature watermelon.

This time, when Sal laughed, it came out all the way.

— — —

Sent 8:46 16/10/2067 by [email protected]

thanks for the reply. unfortunately im no longer interested in the drive. the problem sort of fixed itself.

gl selling it tho

sal

——————

Sent 9:16 17/10/2067 by [email protected]

No Problem Man

BTW I Have Other Old Peterson Tech If Your Interested. Even Got An ADAM Model. Mostly Intact — Just Needs A New Power Source. Could Salvage From Yours For Complete Unit?

——————

Sent 8:46 16/10/2067 by [email protected]

thanks man, but na

i'm good

#android fiction #androids #android #science fiction #scifi #sci-fi #short fiction #fiction #short stories #short story #robots #robot #cyberpunk #i guess?#jameson grond

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onaubade · 5 years

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The Tomb (Part II)

Rhetus Thirdson - Donated by Jameson Grond From a Compilation called ‘The Moment of Revelation’ We see the sockets ﬁrst, as if they were holes bored into a wall of yellow-white. In the shifting torchlight it is hard to parse the rest, slender arcs of cheek and jaw, snout and tooth, melding together like shells in a stew. There are too many of them, too many to hold in the mind, to see as things apart from a grotesque whole. Our eyes glaze over, and for a moment, we do not understand.

We burn our dead, now. The spider-folk forbade burial, barred us from the earth in death as well as life, for spite and for the taste of our broth. We will not let them eat us, but to those of us born under the sky, the bite of worm and beetle seems just as vile, an eating of a diﬀerent kind. So we feed the ﬂames, and sew our ﬁelds with ashes, and revel in the freedom of the wind.

Here, we realize, are the last. The last given to the earth; the last allowed the sanctity of a grave. We pace along the rows and do not try to count, for even the gods could not hold this number. Many bear the mark of ﬂame or weapon. Some bare shallower marks we do not note. A few are in pieces; a pile of jaws, a heap of skull-caps, a litter of shards too small to match. Against the far wall are the skulls of children, piled past the tips of the rottng ﬂags. We do not go near.

A glint draws us. Half way up a pile, just beyond reach, metal ﬂashes from a row of yellowed teeth. A molar, smaller than the bucks, easy to miss in the shifting dark. We think luck, and hate ourselves for it. Still, one of us climbs. One of us eases open the jaw. One of us grips the gold and tugs.

The pile shifts, and before the ﬁrst skull hits the ground we are running, visions of eight glowing eyes ﬂashing amongst the tumbling piles shrieking through our minds. There is no breath to scream, and we wouldn’t even if we could; our kind are meant to hide, meant to cower, meant to kneel before our betters, or so we have been taught. In this moment, in the dark and the closeness and the cold, it is true.

For an age, we run, twisting through tunnels as if more than ghosts were nipping at our heels. The earth crunches beneath our feet, and we do not think, do not think of what lies beneath the ichor of generations, do not think of what that ichor might be.

Ahead, a light. We stumble into it as if thrown, gasping in the cool, clean, salty air. Stars shine weakly above us, but after the darkness they are bright as lanterns. We dropped the torch, one of us says, and at once we are laughing, laughing with aching chests and trembling tails. The others follow soon after, and as we amble down the hilly road towards the towering lights of the city, the things we left behind become tales, our fear sparking into mirth the way fur sparks to ﬂame under a torch. By the time we reach our homes it has become an adventure, a thing to tell our own pups, as the elders told us.

But now?

Now we lie in our beds. We blow the candles out. We stare at silken ceilings, hanging over us like webs. We hear the chitter, far above, where the night is still young.

We hear, and we remember.

For now.

#onaubade #fiction #short story #story #ratfolk #spiderfolk #tlatapan #rhetus thirdson #revelation #the tomb

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onaubade · 5 years

Text

The Tomb (Part I)

Rhetus Thirdson - Donated by Jameson Grond From a Compilation called ‘The Moment of Revelation’

Shadows drip from the cracked stone ceiling, tasting of salt, rot, things best left alone. The ﬂickering torchlight sets rivulets running betwixt the bricks to ﬂashing, curved and cruel like the marks of so many scrabbling claws. It is cold here, and while the tunnels are empty, we know we are not alone.

We wade through muck and slime, trying not to think of the uneven crunching beneath our feet. No-one speaks. Not here. Bad enough to breathe the unlucky air.

A crossing looms ahead, one of the four paths choked with rubble. Two of us go right, the others left. We do not glance behind. Superstitious, perhaps, but this is the sort of place where superstitions are woven into the stones, where every step is sacrilege and uneasy spirits cling to the skin like mist. Not a place for long goodbyes. Not a place for wishing.

We do not wish to be here. Our elders have whispered of the dangers since our cradle-days, warning us away from the clutches of ghosts and eight-eyed demons with silken lassos. Paws up, they would say, paws up, eyes open, ears perked for the whistle of the throw. They told us of trap doors, covered pits indistinguishable from the cobbles, dusty cocoons trembling with the malice of the monsters within. They would click their buck teeth in mimicry of chittering fangs, and we would tremble, convinced in our childish way that the monsters were lurking just behind our eyes. And perhaps, in a way, they were.

The governor has levied a tax, a tax we cannot pay with only the work of our hands. More is required, lest we ﬁnd ourselves amongst the ranks of the legion. And there are rumors; treasures, secreted away by the hidden, left by plunderers lost in the warrens, buried amongst the muck and the slime and the bone.

A sound. The two of us freeze, tails held tense as the curl of a whip. A chittering, we think, but it is only a crumble, pebbles surrendering to the pull of the earth and tumbling amidst their fallen. We let out a breath as one, almost laughing at our silliness. The monsters are not here. They do not have to be. Not anymore.

Our elders told us that once, these warrens were our home; that generations lived and loved and died in these winding curls of stone and earth, that these halls once rang with laughter and bloomed with the scents of ﬂowers, linen, cooking grubs. We have never known that world. Ours is above, a world of towers and shanties, awnings bright under a noon-day sun, gossamer threads of spider-silk strung between buildings like woven lace. The closeness of the caves is suﬀocating after a lifetime of breezes oﬀ the sea, and the darkness here would drown us, but for the ﬂickering torch. We cannot imagine it any other way. Who could live in a place so dead?

The slope rises, and for the ﬁrst time we set foot upon dry stone. We pause, wondering when the crunch stopped, wondering why. We look at each other and shudder. We know. This is not the way out.

The slope rises, and rises, twisting like a cork-screw. The air changes, and for a moment we are certain we were wrong, that at any moment cracks of light will spill from the dank stone and we will burst forth into the land we know. Then, we pass beneath a threshold, and into a thing which was never whispered, not in story or rumor or dream.

Once it may have been a hall. Tattered pennants hang from the high walls, limp with damp and spotted with mold. Rusted ﬁxtures mark hangers for lamps; scroll-work winds round the thick pillars; a moldering ruin marks what would once have been a wooden ﬂoor, expensive even today, so far from the woodland. But now?

Now it is something else.

#onaubade #fiction #short story #story #ratfolk #spiderfolk #tlatapan #rhetus thirdston #revelation #the tomb

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onaubade · 5 years

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Me-Chord (Part III)

Sassander - Donated by Jameson Grond From an anthology of Chord themed literature

The shop-front to their right vanishes in a plume of white dust, leaving behind three quarters of the one next to it, splintered wood and crumbling white-washed brick and empty space where the wall should be, had been, just a moment before. A heartbeat and that shop is gone too, and half the street, collapsing into a rough round pit of pitted limestone that seems to go down forever. As the thunder fades, screams rise.

The ground slants towards the hole, and a person would not be able to balance. Me-chord does. The hole is not eternal, and the ruins of the collapsed buildings lay scattered at the bottom of a long shaft, still half-misted in dust and debris. The sides of the pit are not as easy to climb as stairs, but their hands and feet are bronze and iron, and they do not tire.

“Help me,” someone cries from beneath a pile of brick. Her body is too large for the groove on Me-chord’s shoulders, so they climb with one hand, all the way to the top of the pit and back down again. A man groans, but the soft ﬂesh of his head is caved in on one side — Me-chord cannot help him, except to hold his hand as he dies. Others can be saved, two more men, a woman with an infant cradled against her chest, three children. Other ‘chords are here now, scuttling down the sides of the pit like the insects they were modeled after. Some have begun to take up the dead. The dying they leave behind.

Just as they begin to think there is no-one left to save, Me-chord hears a voice.

Ori’s pale pink ﬂesh has turned an evil red, his spots almost black. A pillar as tall as he is and twice as thick presses down into the broken cavity of his chest. His hand shakesas he reaches out. Me-chord grasps it. Cold.

“Please,” Ori whispers. Thick red drips from the corner of his mouth. “Don’t… Don’t let them. Don’t let them. P-please—”

“It is alright,” Me-chord replies. “It is not as bad as it seems.”

“No.” Tears gather in his eyes. “Please. No.”

Me-chord nods.

The Resurrection Men come in one long stream, black ants with tall humped backs and featureless silver faces. There is no pool here, no peace, only the jars and the needles and the singing.

Two approach. Me-chord releases Ori’s hand and stands.

“The soul is gone. Find another.”

Me-chord has never lied before. Not since. Chordforms are made to serve, and dishonesty serves only the self. Perhaps that is why the Resurrection Men turn away without a second glance.

Ori no longer has the strength to reach up. Me-chord takes his hand all the same. He does not have the strength to speak, but the gentle squeeze of his hand says much and more.

Soon he is gone. -----

It is twenty four thousand ﬁve hundred thirty one paces from Adma’s Cup to Sehshi Square Pool. Today, the line is long. Kho-chord and Len-chord are not there. Sati-chord is damaged, their right leg twisted from a fall, but there are too many Chord-forms to be repaired and too much work to be done, and so they stand in line with a pail in each hand. There are others, also, shiny and new and clumsy. They watch the ground as if it is a living thing, a monster ready to snatch them up.

“Do you have news?” one of the young ones asks, shifting from foot to foot. Me-chord dips their head.

“Three more sink-holes have been identiﬁed. Reinforcement eﬀorts are underway. This one’s mistress was asked to sign a petition to allow the use of the hollowed ground for Chordform storage and use, in order to clear the upper roads of traﬃc.”

“Will this be done?” The young one is still new enough to sound nervous — still new enough to remember how.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” The line moves forward. “It will become easier, with time.”

For a moment, the young one grows still. “This was said at the Orientation Center also. I… I do not…”

“You will.” Setting down one of their pails, Me-chord touches the young one’s cheek. “Or you will not. Either way, it will be easier. With time.”

The young one nods. Me-chord picks up their pail.

The line moves forward.

#onaubade #chord #alai #fiction #story #prose #slugfolk #short story #me-chord

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onaubade · 5 years

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Me-Chord (Part II)

Sassander - Donated by Jameson Grond From an Anthology of Chord themed literature

“Crick-crick, crick-crick!” The youth rubs his hands together, shoulders shimmying and weight bouncing from one foot to the other. Two of the other youths howl with laughter, while the third stands still and straight-faced, arms folded over his chest. “Come on, cricket-man, sing us a song!”

“Please move aside,” Me-chord asks. The youths laugh harder.

“Come on, sing!” The eldest youth — a pale pink lad with hollow purple spots running down his scalp — reaches out. “Maybe if I pluck some strings—”

Water sloshes from the orb-pails as Me-chord jumps back onto the previous step. The youth curses. His leggings are ivory and the purple spots on his legs show through the damp linen.

“Stupid ‘chord! Look what you did!”

“This one apologizes,” Me-chord says with a dip of their head. They would rub their hands, if not for the pails. “Please let this one through. It has duties to perform.”

“Fuck your duties!” The youth snatches the thick wire handle of a pail, but his hands are soft and ﬂeshy, boneless, while Me-chord’s are made of bronze and iron. When he cannot wrench the pail from Me-chord’s grip, he spits in it instead. “How about that? Huh?”

“Ori,” One of the other youths, who was laughing but is not laughing now, says quietly, “come on. Let it go.”

The spotted youth — Ori — wrinkles his face. The small black bulges of his eyes shadow, and the lipless slit of his mouth puckers. He is too young yet to have more than one set of whiskers, two small ﬂeshy nubs on either side of his jaw that twitch and wriggle with displeasure. With a huﬀ, he turns and hops down the narrow steps two at a time, disappearing into the labyrinth of white stone buildings without a word.

“Sorry,” says the one who had spoken, sketching a clumsy bow. The other laugher mumbles the word also, but the third walks away without looking up. I wonder who it was. I wonder who she lost.

Mistress Adma is not pleased by the loss of a pail. She sends Me-chord out again, this time with four pails arranged upon a broomstick acting as a makeshift yoke. The stick does not ﬁt perfectly into the grooves set into Me-chord’s stooped shoulders, so that the pails swing and rattle as they walk. The music reminds them.

I knew the knock. People tap rhythms. Resurrection Men knock like clockwork.

Me-chord pushes the thought from their mind, but there is a line, and in the line Me-chord dreams.

The sun rippled on the water. The mist from the falls prickled against my face. I stripped away the blankets and the sweat-stained clothes and slipped into the pool. The water was cool as morning and for a moment, I could walk again.

Me-chord gives the bucketer the pails. They are ﬁlled.

The day is unseasonably hot. Mistress Adma’s cold sugared teas are much in demand. Water must be brought.

A person would sweat. Me-chord does not. The heat means nothing — it is a point of data, an understanding without sensation, equal to the pressure of the yoke upon their shoulders, the smooth marble pavers beneath their feat [Sic], the nominally imperceptible hitch in their step where their hip-joint is wearing down. They do not tire. They do not ache. They left pain behind them in the Resurrection Pool. I called it a blessing. I called it my duty. I called it the price. But when they put the mask over my face I was still afraid.

The dream is more real than the world around them. I thrashed and cried. The Resurrection Men scattered ﬂowers on the water and sang to me as the needles went in. The sun was warm and the pool was cold and the poison ﬂowed in one arm like ice and my life ﬂowed out the other like ﬁre. No-one should remember dying.

Me-chord pauses. There is new data, unaccounted for. The ground is trembling.

#onaubade #chord #alai #fiction #story #prose #slugfolk #short story #me-chord

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onaubade · 5 years

Text

Me-Chord (Part I)

Sassander - Donated by Jameson Grond From an anthology of Chord themed literature

It is fourteen thousand one hundred seventy two paces from Adma’s Cup to Sehshi Square Pool. Today there is a line. First is Len-chord, then Kho-chord, then Sati-chord, then Me-chord. Behind are others. The bucketer moves slowly: they are in need of repair. Silver water sloshes from the mouth of one of Len-chord’s orb-shaped pails and splashes about their segmented feet, but no damage is done. Len-chord dips their head. Kho-chord steps forward. Me-chord is dreaming. The silver water reminds them. They do not know what it reminds them of. They remember waves of rippling sunlight, and cool prickles of water upon a face, and a scent which no longer holds diagnostic signiﬁcance. Flowers. I smelled ﬂowers.

Kho-chord’s pails are ﬁlled. Sati-chord’s pails are ﬁlled. Me-chord steps forward. The bucketer dips their head. They are younger than Me-chord; water damages the shell, and repeated motions cause greater wear. Me-chord gives them their pails. They are ﬁlled.

It is fourteen thousand one hundred seventy two paces from Sehshi Square Pool to Adma’s Cup. There is a shorter path — twelve thousand six hundred and eleven — but it is faster by ﬁve minutes forty seven seconds to turn right at the Lane of Rabbits, climb the steep eastward stairs, cross over the arch to Hibiscus Street and descend the steps that cross behind the Threefold Falls. And the water prickles upon the face. It is no longer cold, but I feel it.

“This one has returned, Mistress Adma,” Me-chord sings as it slips through the double-wide green doors of the Serfchord’s entrance. “Shall this one put it on to boil?”

“About bloody time,” Mistress Adma snaps. She points to two of the four empty ﬁre places. “There and there. Stoke them up, and get moving. Gods, this bloody contaminant can’t end soon enough.”

Me-chord places the pails above the embers and applies wood. The wood Mistress Adma uses is imported, for the scent. It burns brightly, pockets of crystallized sap crackling in the heat. There are two more pails by the doors. Me-chord picks them up.

It is fourteen thousand one hundred seventy two paces from Adma’s Cup to Sehshi Square Pool.

“There is a leak in the sewer,” the government Serfchord had said, four days past, rubbing their hands together the way they all did, when they were still. “The Threefold Pool is no longer safe to drink. Thank you for your understanding.”

“Suck your understanding,” Mistress Adma had said. “There had better be compensation for this.”

“Of course.” The government Serfchord dipped their head. “The state will provide. The state always provides.”

There is a line. Kho-chord has returned. They belong to a soup shop three doors down from Adma’s Cup. As Me-chord steps into line behind them, Kho-chord bobs their head.

“Do you have news?” Me-chord asks. Kho-chord nods.

“Mistress Yue received notiﬁcation that the repairs are well under way, but the damage is greater than previously anticipated. No estimate of completion was given.”

Me-chord nods in return. “Mistress Adma received similar notiﬁcation. A claim was made of structural damage resultant from a shift in the underlying bedrock. Is this corroborated?”

“It is corroborated.” Kho-chord glances to the Serfchord ahead of them. Me-chord does not know them, but they bear the white star of the Collegiate upon their thorax. “Lack of rain and overuse of mechanical pumps has likely drained the local aquifers. This one would recommend caution when traversing the area.”

“Recommendation noted.” Me-chord tilts their head. “This information was not included in the report given to Mistress Adma. May this one request a source?”

Kho-chord pauses. “This one studied geology. Before.”

“Ah.”

The line advances.

#onaubade #chord #alai #fiction #story #prose #slugfolk #short story #me-chord

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