Hello!

Take a gander at my short essay/story. I think you may like it! Also, take a look at the other submissions in the writing forum. (here). Cool stuff!

and the story.

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The Storm
A short story by LetoVox

The explosive impact shattered deep within its frame, severing the hydraulic systems. Next, its circuitry began to short, sending the frequencies of its operations into neurotic scatters. Momentum ensued, spinning it sideways at a dizzying pace. It tried to regain balance by grabbing the fragile limbs of sparse trees. It didn't succeed. Instead, it tumbled to the ground, falling upon an entrenched boulder that had seen far too many falter in its lifetime.

As it tried to stand, the buzzing pitch of winding gears only spun higher, creating a noise so sharp that it pierced the bearings of its metal joints. It was finished. As the bearings broke, the fuel lines exceeded their pressure limits and cracked open its once indomitable armor, further exposing its tangled wires that fell to the ground like entrails.

Though still recognizable as a mechanical entity, it now blended better with the landscape. The dull shade of its grey, interlocking armor matched the scheme and aesthetics of the smoldering and dead world.

Its gaze fell right and then left. There was no sound, no movement. Nothing. Nothing, that is, except for the looming clouds and fog that drew closer. Black as soot and towering with intimidating animosity, they had hid the source of the mortar that struck the critical hit to its steel appendages.

Still against the boulder and now completely immobilized, its ocular lights focused upon this coming scene and recognized it. It was once a part of that shrouded force. It too had walked upon the, now, macabre surface, sowing its rust through the scathed earth.

But it was alone. Alone it degenerated. Alone it dissembled. To die was not an option. It was neither living nor dead. It had forfeited that luxury long ago. For "it", was once a he and he, was once a father, a son, a brother, and a husband. However, time had nullified those labels and in turn, their purpose.

Progress had choked mankind and told him to sacrifice himself to the comfort of a machine. A machine which then sacrificed itself to an ideal, which then sacrificed itself to the fall of humanity.

It spoke to the emptiness, gurgling on the leaking oil that spilled upon its vocoder. "I was supposed to be strong. It wasn't supposed to be like this." It was right; it wasn't supposed to be like "this". But, you see, "this" never really happened. "This" was a thought. And quite a formidable thought at that. For, it created more thoughts that created a fortified belief in what leaders, pragmatics, teachers, families, individuals, scientists, and I called, "the future."

"The future is now," we would pontificate. "The world is changing in amazing ways that were never even imaginable only years ago." If only the "never even imaginable" had never been imagined. The sky would have still had its shine and renewing energy. It would have still been a "he", one with a life. One that encouraged instead of coveted, that focused on relationships instead of a directive.

But brooding upon the past was of no use to it now. The storm of advancement was closer yet. It craned its malleable neck to beckon the approach. As it did so, it noticed how the clouds contained a swirling cargo of acid spit and tar that nauseated the fog.

Closer. They would purge. They would rain and burn through its armor to short its processors. It wanted that. It wanted to be terminated. That was the closest thing to death it could grasp.

The dead wind carried the sounds of compression and mechanical syncopation, screeching and howling like the sound of a pig being slaughtered in a tin barrel. They were almost there.

Then came the putrid smell of sulfuric metal and burning carcasses. It was the smell of the new order of life. No longer apart of the cyclical process of birth and decomposition, animal and human bodies alike were burned to fuel the forges of an artificially intelligent death.

Artificial by nature, yes, but artificial in consequence, no. It knew this well as it had seen the organic resistance perish in the clutch of progress. It fancied itself lucky to have excused itself from such an end by adopting a mechanical hide. But alas, there is no camaraderie in indulgence.

The rain began to fall upon its depleting shell. The liquid sank through and it sank in deep. The mortar wound contracted on all sides and split open further. The rain began to boil inside the suit. Though it was unable to feel physical sensations, it knew that the small comfort of white noise was close at bay.

The ground trembled more and more, finally breaking into a rupturing quake. The boulder it was sitting against began to slip from the entrenched hole it had resided in for thousands of years. There was no room for such stubborn objects in the new order of things. Soon, all would be ferreted out of their holes and crumble beneath the pressure of mechanized advancement. And it was to crumble with them.

The clouds and fog slowly engulfed it as the rain fell harder. Its armor tried to bear the suffocating force that began to splinter at its remaining composition. Then came the others. So innovate in appearance but so ill in intent. They trampled upon its body.

Stomp by stomp, its helmet and armor were battered and crushed, severing its mind from its memory. There were pliers and drills, torches and blades, saws and hooks. They were tools of innovation and they comprised the insatiable maw of the future, a future that it had once defended.

Its circuits were blowing at a frenetic pace. Its vision ceased, then the hearing. Soon it was indifferent to the roar of the salvaging machines.

Then, silence. As quickly as the fog had come, it had passed. Everything was still and everything was the same. Everything except for where it sat. There, a hole was dredged deep into the ground. In it, a single object.

A polished eye peered out of the hole and upward to the charcoal sky. It was his single eye, the eye that contained his novel retina. It was the only part of his original body that the suit required for operation. It gave him sole control of its manifestation. But the others had no use for such things and so the left it. They left it to rot in a world that had lost to itself.

-I dedicate this story to the death of pragmatism-