Re: Petty Squabble [ROUND 2] [Acidity City]
10-22-2011, 11:30 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by TimeothyHour.
One moment, he was sitting, unable to mourn. The next, he was standing, unable to scream.
His suit- just scraps, now- still dripped with the water from a fire safety system years and worlds away. The small streams collected in the cracks between obsidian, reflecting the silver moon, hung perpetually in the night.
Six looked up, and every significant word formed in the consciousness of mankind coursed through his circuitry.
”At its best, our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.”
“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair (DISREPAIR?], offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”
”Because I remember, I despair-r-r-r-r-.”
-no no no no FORGET, do not remember, push it out of your mind you have a job to do mourning is not an accepted emotion our society is founded on HAPPINESS and THRILL (your glitches are not thrilling) if not forever just forget for a moment you must do something or do you want to be destroyed at the hands of your creators no (but I do want to live)
And for a few moments, the robot hung there, the camera lens trained up to that giant mirror in the sky, a hand outstretched to some invisible being, and he froze. He was a statue, he was a hunk of metal, Six was nothing. And then, with a click and whirr, he was moving again, stumbling over the stones like a drunken beggar.
Eyes watched him, but they were the eyes of gruesome statues. The eyes of the dead. He spoke to them, the dead, with precise, distant speech. Words that would mean things, if not for context and moonlight silence.
“Contestant, please answer the question. You are breaking protocol. Question #29: What are these rocks made of? They are [not in my databanks]. Please answer. Please answer. Refusal to answer is elimination.”
He dragged himself a few more feet, into an intersection between alleyways, and collapsed to his knees. He looked around, and muttered some half-forgotten phrase about ashes and dust. The slouched metal groaned and echoed.
And then, in the distance, the rumbling of an engine. <span style="background-color:#FFFFCC;"><font color="#00CC33">Headlights, a car. Six directed his cube-shaped head and observed.
A car. Headlights, the golden rays suspending particles in the air.
A car.</span></font>
Specifically, an RV.
One moment, he was sitting, unable to mourn. The next, he was standing, unable to scream.
His suit- just scraps, now- still dripped with the water from a fire safety system years and worlds away. The small streams collected in the cracks between obsidian, reflecting the silver moon, hung perpetually in the night.
Six looked up, and every significant word formed in the consciousness of mankind coursed through his circuitry.
”At its best, our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.”
“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair (DISREPAIR?], offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”
”Because I remember, I despair-r-r-r-r-.”
-no no no no FORGET, do not remember, push it out of your mind you have a job to do mourning is not an accepted emotion our society is founded on HAPPINESS and THRILL (your glitches are not thrilling) if not forever just forget for a moment you must do something or do you want to be destroyed at the hands of your creators no (but I do want to live)
And for a few moments, the robot hung there, the camera lens trained up to that giant mirror in the sky, a hand outstretched to some invisible being, and he froze. He was a statue, he was a hunk of metal, Six was nothing. And then, with a click and whirr, he was moving again, stumbling over the stones like a drunken beggar.
Eyes watched him, but they were the eyes of gruesome statues. The eyes of the dead. He spoke to them, the dead, with precise, distant speech. Words that would mean things, if not for context and moonlight silence.
“Contestant, please answer the question. You are breaking protocol. Question #29: What are these rocks made of? They are [not in my databanks]. Please answer. Please answer. Refusal to answer is elimination.”
He dragged himself a few more feet, into an intersection between alleyways, and collapsed to his knees. He looked around, and muttered some half-forgotten phrase about ashes and dust. The slouched metal groaned and echoed.
And then, in the distance, the rumbling of an engine. <span style="background-color:#FFFFCC;"><font color="#00CC33">Headlights, a car. Six directed his cube-shaped head and observed.
A car. Headlights, the golden rays suspending particles in the air.
A car.</span></font>
Specifically, an RV.