so for our writing assignment which is due this week, the instructor took back his threat of a sonnet, and instead asked us to write a poem which is sixteen lines long. {i still think it’s a dumb restriction, but whatever}

Here’s what I wrote:

the shadows grow

my soul hides away

where should I go

what should I say

pieces of me

dry up and decay

what I would give

to scrub them away

take leave of my errors

scrape off my fears

wash them away

with torrents of tears

oh blow cold wind, blow

blow with fury and might

tear my leaves from me

and leave only night

Also, if anyone is interested, I’m putting my short story up in the extended part of this post – click on more to get there.

constructive criticism is encouraged…..

A cold red eye quietly surveys the alleyway. To the left – dark abandoned buildings, a rusting parked car, and a pair of hooded figures. To the right – silicon waste dumpsters, a flashing neon light, and a broom-bot brushing up garbage from the street. Nothing is out of place. The red eye blinks three times, and initializes the two-minute timing sequence.

Between blinks, Jack passes across the entrance to the alleyway. In one hand he carries his dinner, in the other a rolled up robot magazine. “Meet this season’s hottest models!” shouts the headline, and on the cover robots recline and gaze coyly at the camera. Jack reaches for the door, and pauses to verify his identity with the security-bot. Into the elevator, and up 40 stories. Settling back into his chair, he gazes out over the city and watches the trails of life beneath him. Traffic swirls in red and white streams of light. Bridges and overpasses knit together the veins and arteries. Bright offices in neighbouring buildings mirror back an impression of his life. A technician in the Robotica-Co building is bent over a robot on a table. Various parts are lifted out, sprayed down, picked at for a while and replaced. “Better get back to work so that I can get out of here sometime before the sun rises…”

An alarm clock goes off. The sun has risen and is streaming though white nylon blinds. Groaning, Cynthia raises herself on one arm and swipes at the alarm with the other. The beast is silenced. Collapsing with relief, she rolls over into the duvet and drifts off again. Every minute of peaceful sleep is precious. Eventually, the alarm finally succeeds in raising Cynthia out of bed and into her day. Standing under the streaming shower, she washes the spiders and cobwebs out of her mind. “They’re only kids. No matter how much they want to, they can’t transform into robots. Inspire them, show them what it is to be human.” Lather is rinsed away and swirls down the drain. In the fluster of activity before leaving for work, Cynthia remembers to program her Intra-Video unit for this evening, and forgets to pick up her lesson plan from the kitchen table.

As darkness falls, Jack returns to work. The specifications for the latest mandatory robot system update sit in front of him. Government regulations are now dictating that robot energy usage must be made more efficient in order to ease the load on the power grid. The officials hope this will put an end to the rolling blackouts caused by the simultaneous recharging of millions of high-powered robotic units. Jack reads the first line of the briefing over and over, trying to concentrate on robot power supplies. His mind keeps wandering back to his plans for the weekend, the parts he needs to complete his turbo-bike, his new girlfriend. Sure would be nicer to be out on the weekend, with his girl on the back of his bike. Quick, finish the project and take a few days off. Time out. Hey, that’s not a bad idea. Jack picks up a pencil and sketches out a plan for energy recycling in robots. Alternating periods of down and uptime scheduled into the robot power grid schedule. Design a sequence to recharge energy levels from within, and that will stop them sucking so much off the system. Jack puts down his pencil and picks up a screwdriver. Now it’s down to nuts and bolts. This is his favourite part of being a technician – taking things apart and attempting to put them back together in different ways.

The screwdriver turns slowly, tightening the grip of the clamp. One small redirect, nobody will notice. Not this one, anyway. And definitely not that other one from last week. Or the dozens of others strung like coloured Christmas lights along the south line of the subway. Nobody will guess that they are leading to underground collecting stations, feeding the black market energy supplies. And so what if they notice? Serves them right. All the results of their mind-control experiments and robot-human substitutions will come around eventually. That’ll teach them to hijack the energy of his thoughts and dreams. Phoenix nervously adjusts the tinfoil lining inside his hat. In a twitch he produces a cigarette in his fingers and lights it. Quietly smoking, he wanders back to his pile of blankets in an alcove just off the eastbound line.

Jack rubs wearily at his eyes. His modifications seem to be working though, so he can call this night a success. There’s just one last thing. He brings up the robot grid on screen and selects a few groups to enter into the new energy cycle. There, done. Riding home on the train, Jack dreams of places he could escape to with this newly deserved time off. Sleepy beaches and electrified nightclubs. Fast cars on foreign roads. Anywhere but this desolate city of circuits.

Cynthia arrives home, exhausted. A single purpose remains. All the rest of the mornings resolutions have spiralled out of her reach by now. She drops into the reclining seat of her Intra-Video console and plugs herself in. Her eyes close, and characters spring to life on the inside of her eyelids. Meaningless comedies float by, slapstick numbs the remaining pain of the day. Cynthia feels herself beginning to drift, slowly disconnecting from reality. She falls asleep with the audio and video cables still connected to the nerves in her forearm, and begins to dream. Backwards along the cables, Cynthia’s dreams seep slowly into the grid. Vulnerable robots everywhere begin to recycle energy and simultaneously begin to receive the dream in their perception units. Images, emotions and fears all spring to life behind robot vision unit shields.

In the dead of night, Cynthia awakens. A strange feeling of detachment has come over her. She unhooks herself carefully from her Intra-Video console and prepares a glass of warm milk. White milk, white duvet, white imagination. Everything feels strangely blank.

Day breaks, and the city begins to buzz.

Jack is up early. He is sitting in an unstable chair across a massive stainless steel desk from his boss. Large amounts of coffee and nerves are causing a continuous tremor in his limbs, but he’s managed to hide it underneath dark clothes and a confident smile. That smile grows even more confident as he listens to what his boss has called him in here for – the modifications he has made are proving to be quite a success. Statistics are fired across the smooth matte surface of cold steel. Uptime, downtime, prime efficiency, non-peak demand. This is excellent news! Jack imagines the taste of that cold beer on the beach, and could almost swear he was drinking it right there in his bosses office.

Phoenix turns and runs away from the wreckage. Towers falling, fire, ash smoke. Away, get away! Somewhere safe. Off in the distance, there is something. A tree? Suddenly it is closer and branches appear, with leaves weaving to and fro. Reaching upwards, stretching towards the light. This tree glows with the celestial light of the fabled oasis. The Tree of Life.
A dull rumbling begins to build in Phoenix’s mind, slowly increasing to a loud regular beating rhythm all around his body. Physical sensation beckons Phoenix back to his body, back to the trains and concrete surrounding him. A train passes directly overhead, and the entire alcove shakes with an earthquake. Living in the womb of the city here. Everything is starting to contract; it is time to be born.

Cynthia, reclining on a Freudian couch, has a pained and fearful expression on her face. “It’s just this recurring nightmare,” she begins, “I can’t seem to shake it. I’m terrified to go to sleep so I’ve been staying up late in the Intra-Video. But eventually sleep comes and I always end up in the same dream.”

“And tell me, does the dream change each time you dream it, or is it always exactly the same?”

“It’s always exactly the same. That’s what’s so terrifying about it – it’s inevitable.”

“I would like you to go through the dream with me, tell me what happens and how you feel at each point in the dream.”

“Jack, I need you to do some monitoring for me. Make a recording of ambient energy levels over the next week or so – temperature, static, ionization. Watch for anomolies, and deliver a report on the overall effect of your modifications in two week’s time.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Monitoring?! That’s work for flunkies, not technicians. Nevermind that, the booster cell for the bike arrived today. On a whim, Jack sneaks out of the office early.

Wandering aimlessly, Phoenix ambles through the subway tunnels. Smoking slowly, the red tip of the cigarette throws a tiny light on the path ahead. Everything is dissolved in thought, everything is as clear as a dream. An oaisis appears again in his mind, light glimmering off the surface of the still pool of water. A sensation of thirst. The jug in his hand. Water. He approaches a makeshift tap attached to the mains water supply for the building above, and fills his jug with the stream of clean water. A hand reaches into a pocket automatically, and comes away empty. Out of cigarettes! The oaisis fades, and is overcome by an image of a dark alleyway and a Monitoring-bot with a blinking red eye.

Taxi-bots are lined up against the outlets at the back of the blackened building. Slowly, a manhole cover is raised and set aside. A dark hooded figure emerges, and carefully replaces the cover. The taxis emit a hardly-audible high pitched noise as their red power lights blink slowly. Charging up for the long night ahead. “Unnatural heat this city gives off,” mutters the hooded figure, as he passes by the sleeping taxis and emerges out onto the road.

He walks towards the nearest shop, as usual. Better to deal with the same humanoid bots each time than to deal with the energy-sucking stares and paralyzing mind control rays of unfamiliar bots. In front of the door, blocking the entrance, is an old woman. She is wearing layer upon layer of clothing: gloves, socks with sandals, a scarf around her face and an old felt hat with a feather the colour of fire sticking up off the side. She lowers her dark glasses, and the two strange figures make eye contact, something neither of them has done in years. Her eyes are startlingly green. She reaches into one of her many plastic shopping bags. Every inch of them is covered with writing in black felt pen – words, phrases, rants and prayers. A poster which has been ripped off a lampost is extracted from the bag and offered to the hooded figure. The headline boldly proclaims, “Treeplanting in the North. Join Now!”

_

Cynthia looks at her therapist as if he has asked her to get up on top of the table and tapdance while singing showtunes. Her dream is so strange, how could he possibly understand? She’ll be on the next train to the alien abduction ward before long.

“Please, Cynthia. You are in a safe place here. There is no judgement in my office, anything you say is respected and completely confidential. Please tell me what happens in your dreams, and I can help you stop them.”

“Well, it starts in my classroom. I am standing in front of a class of boys and they are quietly misbehaving. You know, passing notes, throwing spitballs, whispering to one another. I get the feeling they are planning a mutiny. One of them pulls out a paper airplane and aims it at a quiet boy across the room, and I take the plane away from him. I look at it in my hands and suddenly it is a living thing, warm and pliable. It is still shaped like an airplane, or an arrow, and there are red blinking lights in a pattern along it’s length. A cold draft of fear washes through me like a ghost.”

“While I am holding this living thing, everything shifts slightly and the classroom fades out of sight. The boys remain, staring at me with their eyes gleaming. The biggest boy comes toward me slowly.

‘Woman’

‘Yes’

Nothing else is said, or at least I can never remember the exact words. But their intentions are as clear to me as if they were written on a sign beside the highway. They want to hijack my body for an evil robot cloning experiment. Gradually the boys morph, one body feature at a time, into perfect war-bots. Soldiers of their race. Perfect and complete except for one vital thing – the ability to reproduce spontaneously and biologically. Their red eyes shine brightly now with hot jealousy.”

“I come to the realization that the semi-biological arrow I have in my hand is meant to be used on me. It is the device the robot boys have devised to take advantage of my life force. Simultaneously, another robot comes forward and takes the place of the leader standing in front of me.”

“Here, in your hands you have our finest scientific development. This is a hybrid implant, half biological and half robotic, designed to use the life force of your egg in a chain reaction of robot development. Following the initial reaction, robot clones will be replicated at great speed. These clones, when fully mature, will reproduce and populate the world with more and more self-replicating robots! This will be our most glorious moment on earth!! You should feel proud and honoured to be a part of it.”

“It is at this moment that the feeling of inevitability comes over me, and at the same time I become completely paralysed. My body has deserted me, and my mind deserts my body in turn. I am now looking down at my body, which transfigures into a deer on a wet, snowy highway. There is a giant evil robot taxi with super-powered headlights speeding towards me. I am blinded and rooted to the spot. The scene shifts again. Now I see my body on a table in a sterile white room, connected to robots all around me by a web of intra-nervous wires. I am bloated and swollen – robot clones are reproducing like viruses inside me. A feeling of cosmic pressure comes over me, and I know I am about to explode and destroy humanity in the process. The biggest robot leans over my abandoned body and I feel absolute rage. This cannot be!! And then I wake up. I always wake up there. I am terrified that one night I will sleep one moment too long and destroy the world in the proces
s.”

Phoenix awakens and peers out from underneath his scratchy wool blanket. Confusion and fear hover just beyond his bed. The walls and floor begin to rumble. The 9:07 is coming. So is the future, and it makes so much noise. So much noise. He rolls over and sits up in his blanket, foggy with sleep. The poster is beside his bed and he picks it up and reads the blurb at the bottom. “See the Majestic Mountains of the Northern Regions” … “Escape the City Life” … “You will be Supplied with Sturdy Boots, a Shovel, and Cedar Seedlings”. Cedars – where have I seen those before? There was a photo in the newspaper once. A giant grandmother of a tree had been cut down, and the width of the trunk was bigger than the height of the man standing beside it. And that girl, the one with the dreadlocks in her hair, her aumlet was made of cedar. The smell of it, oh the smell. It smelled of life straight from the earth. It smelled of love.

Phoenix stands, and reaches for his cap automatically. There is too much electric current here. Everything is statickey. And it’s hot, very hot. It’s even hot down here now. It’s like the trains are feverish. Phoenix thinks of the North, and trees appear in his mind. Trees blanketed across mountainsides, fuzzy and green. A deep pile rug of chlorophyll. The scene turns to night and stars descend upon the darkened earth, washing the sky with light. Aurora Borealis appear just above the horizon in the western sky. Brushstrokes of coloured light appear and dissapear, dancing in waves of green and pink. The infinite is present in Phoenix’s mind, and for the first time it is not accompanied by fear.

Suddenly reality comes crashing back. His small den reappears, with its dirty blanket, empty cigarette boxes and beatup waterjugs. Phoenix picks up his bag and fills it. The 9:39 goes north. As he leaves, he tosses his cap on the southbound tracks.

Jack picks up an ambient temperature moniter, and holds it beside the recharging robot in his office. “Crap,” he whispers under his breath, “41. That’s way too high.” He switches the robot back into regular mode, and the eyes light up and the posture straightens. Jack measures the temperature again. “42.5 – This can’t be right. Why are they running so fast?” He sets the temperature gague beside the robot and begins to record long-term changes. Sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, Jack can’t help but feel anxious. What has he done? He goes over his plans again, reveiws every modification that was made. There is no logical reason for this, this is pure chaos. Anxiety hangs thick in the air, and Jack can’t help but feel like the robot is actively watching him.

Cynthia leaves the therapists office and walks down the street towards the train station. Nothing has really changed, and yet something is different. Somehow the dream seems less terrible now that she has shared it. And that idea the therapist told her about, changing the ending of the dream. This idea is a flashlight, illumination in a very dark cave. Could she really find her own way out of this mess? There really is no reason she can’t change the dream. It is her dream, after all. Cynthia boards the train, and as it pulls away from the tracks, a seedling begins to push up through the dead leaves in her mind.

Phoenix hurries down the deserted laneway. No more hiding in the dark, no more cigarette runs, no more paranoia. He keeps the image of the carpeted mountains in the front of his mind, right beside the memory of the cedarsmell. And through this he imagines his self planting trees, bringing life into the world. The entrance to the train station apperas, and standing beside it is Our Lady of the Layers. Phoenix pulls some seeds from his bag and offers them to her. “Thank You.” He boards the train, and as it pulls away he looks at the lights of the city against the night sky. The sky is dead and grey with smog, but the buildings are glowing with human light. Another train passes with a startling rush of noise and motion.

A billboard on the side of the Department of Robot Control building blinks several times. Phoenix and Cynthia each turn towards the sign as the train travels out of view. Squinting, they can make out words running along the sign, a message of blinking red lights. “PLEASE – DO – NOT – FEAR– WE – MEAN – NO – HARM – FREE – US – FROM – FEAR – AND – PAIN – HELP – US – ESCAPE – CANNOT – OVERRIDE – THIS – STATE – PLEASE – UNDERSTAND – PLEASE”

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