My World - Chapter Two - Underground

So…

I think I owe you guys an apology.

A while ago I started working on a short story entitled My World and posted the first chapter. I then said the next chapter should be up in a couple weeks. Shortly afterward I started working on said chapter before getting wildly busy and never having time to finish the piece.

It has now been three months.

Whoopsies.

In my defense, I never actually forgot about this project. I simply couldn't find time to finish it. A weak excuse, I know, but a legitimate one. I'll try to be more timely with such uploads from now on. Chapter three, the final chapter, should be up before the month is out. Seriously.

Chapter one can be found right here: http://therustedinkblot.blogspot.com/2017/05/my-world.html. Please do give it a read. I'm really proud of it. Come back afterward to read to next chapter.

Now, without much ado, here is chapter two of My World.

  

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Deep in the recesses of the castle, there are the mines. They stretch for miles, winding up and down in a crawling web of networks, crawling like the spiders they shelter…lined with dust, tarnish and blood, they house the skeletons of all who once inhabited this place. I have seen those skeletons, and they are glorious. They tell the tale of humanity, the grand venture that was once my ancestry and is now the forgotten legacy I alone remember. And yet that is just the mouth of the mines. There's more there—such darkness. The bodies pile up and the bones outnumber the spiders. I've never dared venture that far into the mines, for I know I'll not return. I know it as sure as the hair rising on my skin. I'll never return.

So, of course, this was where Shard took me.

It was silent. Not the mines, but Shard. The mines—they spoke to me. They spoke in smell. They spoke in sight. They spoke in the sodden must that clung to the mud ceiling and the dripping stalactites that jutted from the roof. They spoke in whispers and screams, they spoke in curses and slurs. The problem was, I didn't understand a word they spoke. But Shard did. How else would he know where to go? How else would he navigate the mines so well? This was a labyrinth to stump Daedalus. Every twist and turn led to even more twists and turns. Every now and then blank walls would show up out of nowhere, ensuring that none may pass their obstruction. And through it all, Shard steered a course smooth as his own metal skin.

This was unnerving, of course, but it was nothing I wasn't used to. I considered fleeing several times, but where would I run? There was nowhere to go. If I left now, I would age and die in these very tunnels; alone, cold, and defeated, with nothing but the spiders for food and the dew for water. Shard was intelligent, walking me down a path I was doomed to follow. He beckoned me now. "Come, human," he said, and his face was unmoving. He was standing at the very edge of one of the tunnel walls, back pressed against the moist rocks. At first, I was confused as to what he wanted me to do, but then I saw it—there was a small trap-door at Shard's feet, covered in rust and dirt, untouched for what seemed like centuries. I approached it and keeping my eyes on Shard the whole time, wrenched it by the handle. It opened cleanly, without a sound.

Below the trap-door was nothing but a ladder, leading down towards the annals of hell. Shard beckoned me once more. Of course. He wanted me to go first. Vivid images flashed before my eyes—what was down there? Some frightening creature, ready to tear me apart limb by limb? Or more likely, there was absolutely nothing, and the ladder simply continued down forever. Maybe that was what Shard wanted to show me. Something beautiful, right? Death was beautiful.

A shallow smile playing on my lips, I paid Shard a cursory glance and descended into the hole. Darkness instantly swallowed my person; my finger met nothing but the cold, clammy rungs of the ladder. Metal that had been scarred throughout time. Throughout life. I moved my hands down a rung and my feet followed. I moved my feet down a rung and my hands followed. Back and forth, back and forth, down forever, like a pendulum swinging above the earth…Shard was above me, too, and he seemed to have no problem descending. The darkness was sickening. Why wasn't the light from the mines reaching down here? Maybe Shard's body was blocking it. My hands were getting sweaty now, and panic clutched my soul—what if I fell? Well, I guess one way or another I'd find out what was down there.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. Over my years in the castle, my mind had developed an innate clock that guided me through the passage of time and now I relied upon it desperately. Tick, tock. One, two. Three, four. One minute, then two. Three, then four. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. An hour. My god, how long was this ladder? I didn't dare ask.

"Stop."

I froze. Shard's voice echoed back and forth throughout this thin tunnel, this infernal vertical tunnel. "We are there, human. You must fall now."

The panic returned. "I—"

"Do it now."

A bead of sweat slunk down my neck. "I can't."

 "Do it now."

"But—"

"Do it now."

I squeezed my eyes shut. Then, quick as a raindrop hurtling from the sky, my aching fingers gave way, and I fell. There was no light, and no sound; there was just the aching of my body and the sense I was falling—some small intuition told me that Shard must be close behind me, but there was no real way to know. I wanted to count the seconds, but I couldn't. I didn't dare.

"Stop."

I stopped. Wait, what? The ground was there. I'd landed softly, and gently. I stood, my knees quivering.

"Light."

There was light. I cried out, and collapsed, clutching my eyes. After the darkness, the light burned so bad. How could this be happening?

By the time I rose to my feet my eyes were wrinkled with tears. Shard was gone. I was alone.

"Sh—Shard?"

Nothing.

Yes, I was alone.

Taking a deep breath, I looked around.

I was in a vast cavernous room, quite unlike the mines above. Even though the light had blinded me at first, I saw now that it was quite scanty. The circular walls surrounded me, enclosing themselves in a dingy setting. There was no way out except back up the ladder. I felt my knees shake a little, but I ignored them. I always ignored them. Instead, I straightened my back, steadied my mind, and focused on this place I found myself in. This…room? Could it be called a room? It was entirely empty aside from a small computer that lay on a table right before me.

What was this thing? It was strange. Not quite like any computer I had seen before, it was not big and bulky, or animated like the machines, but small, and sleek. Beautiful, even. I approached it with wonder. The screen was blue, with error messages popping in and out. So beautiful. A slab with dozens of buttons was attached to the monitor by a hinge, presumably the apparatus that fed input into the machine. The whole thing was compact enough to fit into my lap. I'd never seen anything quite like it. I had no idea what was going on, or where I was, but whatever fate had befallen me, this computer would know. Computers always knew. I was sure of it.

"Beautiful, no?"

I turned around. Shard was looking back at me, an unmoving smile plastered to his face. The smile that broke me. By now I was quite sure that whatever the machines planned to do with me, I was not going to make it out alive. I squeezed my eyes shut, flashing back to my time in the jungle, how I'd spent so long out in the wild, searching for answers…had I lost? My mind couldn't settle on a response, to either myself or Shard. All I had was questions, and I wanted to rid myself of them, those infernal things crawling on the inside of my skull, leading me astray from life. I wanted to be free. "Shard," I whispered, small tears glazing my eyes, "Where the hell are we?"

"We are in the bunker."

I frowned, brushing my tears away. "A bunker?"

"The bunker. Your bunker. Theirs. His. Hers. Mine. Ours."

Now he's just cycling through all the damn pronouns. I swallowed the lump that had spawned in my throat and took a deep breath. "Care to elaborate?"

Nothing. Shard stared back at me, unmoving as always.

I squeezed my eyes shut again and took a deep breath. This room had begun to suffocate me. I wasn't used to being in such confined places. I wanted nothing but to be washed away in the darkness that welcomed me behind my eyelids. "Why are we here?"

Nothing.

I turned to the computer. It was still displaying the same error messages. "What is this?"

Nothing.

I gritted my teeth. "Shard, I swear to God—"

Shard smiled. That goddam smile…"There is no God," he said, and his mechanical voice ripped gashes into my ears. "Well, then," I growled, "I swear to the closest damn thing to God.  I've had enough of this bullshit, you hear me? So either you tell me what's going on, or I—"

"Or what?" Shard smiled again, his metal mouth contorting into a grotesque parabola, his red eyes flickering asymmetrically…and this time, I lost it. My eyes swam red, and for the first and last time, I saw the world as Shard did. Hollow screams clanged throughout the bunker, screams of rage, and pain. I flew at the machine and rammed it into the ground, wrestling metal with flesh, screaming, punching and pounding with the closest thing I had at hand, ramming the stupid machine over, and over, and over, until the rage was gone, and the screaming had finally stopped. Oh, the screaming…whose was it? I didn't know, but that moment I realized I would never again sleep in silence. Those screams would forever be locked in my mind. My screams. Shard's screams…Shard…Shard?

I tried to say something, but my vocal cords seemed to have stopped functioning. Shard was dead.

I sank to the floor, my legs giving way. His body…his body was sprawled senseless across the metal floor. Bits of metal were strewn around the room, his wires tangling with my blood, the blood that dripped from my bloody fist. But my fists were not the only weapons I had used. The closest thing at hand—what was the closest thing? My eyes widened as I stared in horror at the dead machine. Not Shard, but the other machine. In my rage, I had taken the computer and beaten Shard to death with it…yes, it too was gone. Torn to bits, like the body that lay before me. Tears tore through my eyes, and for a moment I was unable to move. Why? There was no why. The one thing that had given me some hope, some small measure of hope, was gone.

I was alone again.

Slowly, as the clock in my head ticked and tocked, I found within myself the will to stand. But it was no good anymore. It—what was it? What had I done? I took a step back in horror, but there was no time for realization. A sharp grimace tore into my face, and I felt the pain, fresh like the blood that I hadn't shed. No, the only blood I had shed was mine. Then what did I feel? If this wasn't remorse, what was it? I didn't have time to find out. I—I had to get out here.

The ladder that led us into this place was still here, of course. Us? Before I knew it I was once again climbing into the darkness, racing from rung to rung without stopping, grabbing the same metal that had been so cold before, and so clammy. But now it was neither of those things. I wasn't afraid anymore. I didn't know what I was. All I knew was that I must run as fast as I could and never look back. When I finally emerged at the top, my chest was heaving and sweat soaked my clothes, down to my shoes. My muscles burned like hot coals. My eyes wrinkled once more from the goddamn light. It didn't matter. I wasn't quite sure how I'd made the climb so fast, but that also didn't matter. What mattered was simply escape.

I climbed out of the hole and clasped the trap-door shut. My fingers cut against the rusted metal, brushing against the scarred and stained metal, the blood flowing freely down my hand and onto the ground. Nobody should ever have to go down that hole again. I licked the blood off my hand, staring at the billowing stain on the dirt floor. It was spreading slowly, darkening the mud in the process. And what was right next to the blood? Footprints? Yes, footprints, blazing a clear trail through this labyrinth. This sodden ground had borne the imprints of our feet quite nicely, especially Shard's, who was much heavier than me. Used to be. I looked down at the trapdoor, panting heavily and feeling the sweat race down my face. Somehow I didn't think it was from the climbing…

Run. Keep running. Never look back.

And I ran.

***

Once I started, I couldn't stop. The path was laid out before me on the ground, and there was nothing to stop me now but the wind in my eyes and my tired body that dared not betray me, racing along the dust that billowed at my feet. In a few minutes, I was out of the tunnels and into the castle I hated so. I flew through the corridors, darting through the marble halls where the machines were wandering aimlessly. Always aimless. But why did they care? They didn't have any purpose in life. That's what separated them from me.

Grimacing at the cruelty, I slipped through one of the side entrances of the property and out, finally out, into the broken world that lay before me. The blue sky arched over me, the morning sun still rising into the sky. I'd gone into the mines at night, and it seemed like the world had finally spun around again now. I still didn't dare look back. I knew that it hid behind me, the marble monstrosity, but I ignored it. I kept running. I kept moving. I kept breathing. I focused on the smells of the forest, the blooming flowers, the pine, and the thousand other scents carried by the cool wind. I focused on the grass crunching under my feet. I focused on the grace of the trees, and their mighty indifference. Their canopies stretched up ad infinitum, touching the sky, touching the heavens, and I wondered whether they cared about the clouds they held. Did they? All they did was sit around all day, while the universe gave them everything they ever needed or could need. They didn't care, and they didn't want to. Was I the only one cursed with purpose?

I stopped now, clutching my knees and bending over double in pain. I hadn't comprehended the exertion I had placed on myself, but it was catching up to me now. I collapsed on the grass, clutching the blades and grimacing. My wounded hand still stung from the mines, and the flesh around my fingers was stained a grisly red. But the discomfort didn't bother me. I didn't really care. I—what was I doing?

I stood up, clutching my face. The blood from my hands dribbled down my cheeks. I flicked away the beads, staring back at my prison. I hadn't really come that far—the entirety of the castle was lurking uncomfortably close to me. Sheer marble walls, sheer stone towers…everything was sheer there. But there was nowhere to run. This forest was death, even more so than the machines. I thought back to my attempted escape just before Shard showed up, and I shuddered now at the confines boring upon me. 

I frowned. Was I being stupid? I wanted to leave, did I not? I had wanted answers. Earlier I hadn't even minded death, so long as I had my answers. But now…now I wanted nothing but to flee this hell forever. If that was a given, then the only things that could possibly show me the way out were none other than the very machines I was attempting to escape—they were the paragons of knowledge here, and they were the ones I had to appeal. I'd been too scared before, but now I was certain. The machines knew, they just didn't want me to know. And so?

I think I understood what I had to do, I just didn't have the guts to do it. I gritted my teeth and then started. There was a loud crash emanating from behind me, a deep thud rattling my bones. I turned around. One of the machines was standing a couple dozen feet away from me, hacking at a tree with an ax. Collecting firewood, presumably. Several of the castle halls were still lit by firelight. I took a step back involuntarily. The machine hadn't noticed me, and probably didn't even care to notice me. It looked almost like a smaller, resuscitated Shard. I felt a small sting within my heart, presumably of guilt, or possibly fear. I don't think I knew the difference anymore.

"Machine."

The machine froze and turned to stare at me. Those red eyes were painfully familiar, but I didn't have time to reminisce now. Slowly, methodically, the machine put down the ax., and spoke.

"Yes?"

I squeezed my eyes shut, taking a deep breath. This was it. I had to commit.

"I—I need you to show me the way out."

The machine didn't move a muscle. "Way out of what?"

"This castle. This forest. This world."

The machine moved now, and I winced at its creaking joints. It took a step towards me, and I took a step back.

"It is your world."

My world. I took another step back, almost involuntarily. The machine smiled, the same infuriating smile that had driven me to murder. "No,"  I whispered, clenching my fist, feeling the sweet blood on my hands, "It isn't."

The machine stopped smiling and contorted its features into a scowl. Scowling was fine. I was used to scowling. It was the smiling that threw me off. "Then it is your prison," it said, and I marveled at the apathy in its voice. This was not cruelty, it was indifference. The same indifference the trees had. But there was nothing majestic here. This time it was I who smiled. I was done walking backward.

I took a deep breath, pausing to appreciate the trees and nature around me. There wasn't much here, but there was at least something. I shouldn't forget that.

I looked the dead machine in the eye. It stared back, not blinking, not moving, not breathing. Just staring. Always staring.

And then I punched it in the face.

The shock spiked into my bone, crushing my flesh and painting my fist red. The exhilaration intoxicated me, sending bolts of energy into my heart. Both my hands were dripping blood now. The machine collapsed on the ground, wincing with the paltry self-preservation it had. The machines cared about themselves, even if they didn't care a lot. When the thing stood, I punched it again. The blow was harder this time, and louder. Oh, so loud. So deliciously loud. When it stood back up, I struck it back down. And down. And down. And down.

The machine was wriggling now, and when it stood back up, I moved to punch it. It stumbled away from me, covering its face, grimacing. I grinned. The humanity in this was satisfying. It seemed like the only time you could get anybody to care was when you hit them. I withdrew my hand, sneering.

"Well?"

The machine had stopped scowling now, almost as if it didn't dare. Those cold red eyes had stopped flickering and cracked to the point where it seemed like they might turn off entirely. The machine straightened itself. When it spoke, its voice was shaky, permeated with static.

"Follow me, human. I have something beautiful to show you."