Short Story / The System (Analysis)
The System shuddered in the darkness, creaking with the scrape of metal on metal and the soft hum of abiotic motions stirring to life. It glowed faintly, almost a saint-like light thrumming around it as the dust illuminated in the void, spiraling around the lights and wires hanging overhead. It was a beautiful, grotesque sight, awful and holy, making you kneel before it as you shielded your eyes from the sight, covered your mouth to keep from speaking out against it.
Where was the point in that? Your words are meaningless against this monster, against this man-god of human creation and human failure, its infertilities crafted into one material form, something for them to hide away, and leave to the darkness and the gloom and the curious, glowing yellow eyes of creatures that crawled across its back and licked black tongues against its rusting skin. This decaying entity had power over you, and it enveloped you in a sense of safe cold, mechanical caresses and familiarity. Yes. It was the familiarity of all this that scared you.
Machines were not your birth-right, they were not something you dreamed of in your colourful, vibrant sleep. They were something of horror films and monotony, and they gave you comfort, they were the form of your world, and this was your revelation. You didn’t look to rolling green fields for reassurance, or find your happiness under blue skies between the yellow flowers lilting in the wind. These things were pushed over, flattened out, in your mind and under your feet, making way for your metal god.
The soles of your shoes shuffled, quietly and muffled, on the dust-covered ground barely visible for the lack of light, and you reached out a pale hand to touch the beast, your transparent skin sensing a moist warmth, like breath, as it brushed against the surface, this thing the only source of awkward heat in the endless abyss where you stood. It shivered, shuddered under the inferior human touch, fans whirring in hushed voices, a muted lighting flickering somewhere within it.
Was this love?
Laying down beside it, the warmth against your back seeming to bond you eternally to its side, and in your joy it opened, invitingly, matriarch of your desires, and swallowed you into its cold, metal belly.
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I think your use of language is quite good. It’s an ambient piece that evokes a mood, certainly. I imagine you are speaking to the dominance of technology over human life? But I’m not sure that the use of “you” throughout is working as well as it might work in first person. Am I supposed to picture myself curling up around this mysterious machine? Writing it first person might actually increase the reader’s ability to relate and be taken more completely into the space you are creating.
If you want to stick with the “you” then maybe switch the tense to be present when describing “Machines were not your birth-right,” and say “machines are not your birth-right…” to give the piece a greater sense of immediacy.
“almost a saint-like light thrumming around it as the dust illuminated in the void, spiraling around the lights and wires hanging overhead.” Perhaps spiraled might work better than spiraling…it reads a little awkwardly here.
“a muted lighting flickering” might be better “a muted light flickering”
It’s an interesting idea and your use of creepy imagery works well.
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