mushrooms.
The Father felt his wife and child breaking into dust in his caring arms, their ruined bodies shattered and swilled away like dry leaves in the autumn wind, they slipped through his clinging fingers and into the rushing wind, in a moment or two he stood there once more naked and alone.
There is a sadness that cannot be put into words; even the greatest writers of forgotten history wouldn’t be able to find the letters that would express the feeling that now filled the shattered heart of the man.
“I’m sorry!” the man called out, “I’m so sorry!”
Then everything became fire and smoke, a hurricane of pain and all the monuments of men vanished along with the timeless works of nature, all of it gone in an instant, all of it removed like a some blot time and space, the sky darkened until there was no light left only a faint glow and that glow engulfed the heart broken father, the weary soldier and the aged truth-seeker.
And the long forgotten metal giant lay beside the sea as the glowing remains of the sun slowly began to fade and as it did the bright flower that had filled the land weathered into brown husks and the creatures that had made the land their home returned to the water and were taken back into the dark depths. The Sky-flyers fell to the hard ground and were covered in the cold mist that now began to cover everything below, and with the cold came the snow, a soft vacate snow that fell one by one robing the earth of color and warmth.
Friend once again stood in the metal chamber naked but not alone, standing beside him were the Old man and the warrior, and in the center still sat the ancient man in his ancient chair.
“What happened? The naked man asked, “Where are my wife and my child?”
For a moment or two the old mad didn’t speak then he sat down on a conduit pipe and spoke in a soft voice, “they were never here”.
“What are you talking about” the man said angrily, “I touched them, I held them in my arms, I was there!”
“No” said the Wiseman.
“Stop saying that!” Friend cried out, “I want them back, I want them back now!”
But the old man shook his head, “you can’t, at least for now”.
The naked man wanted to speak again but he stopped himself and fell to the floor and leaned against the metal wall.
The solider pulled out another cigarette, lit it, took a long drag and blew out the aired smoke, “forget about them, their dead, and the dead are well dead!” another puff, “look, I killed everyone and everything, I watched them all die and I didn’t give a dam, it’s my job and I do it very well, death is the only thing that real in this crummy world and all you crying and sad songs aren’t going to change anything!” the solider got up and walk over to the dead man in the chair, “just look at this son of a bitch, his worries are all behind him now, no more pain, no more memories about his life before and how his family died, it’s like when my wife and kid got it well I just………” the cigarette dropped from his mouth and he looked hard at the man in the chair, “no, wait, so long ago, so long, the pain, the loss… I remember” and he moved closer to the chair and his face changed from one of hardened steel to one of flesh and bone, his mind was no longer filled with war stratagems or tactical weapons platforms that was all forgotten in a wave of remembrances.
“they both died and I wasn’t there, they died and I lived” his voice began to crack with long forgotten emotions, “I told them to do whatever they wanted with me, everything I loved was gone and I didn’t care anymore, I just wanted to forget, forget it all!” the weary warrior turned away from the dead man and stood looking into nothingness, “they told me that I was needed, that I could end the war, but it just went on and on until everything was gone, but I couldn’t die, I was metal and beyond death so I wandered, and then I……..” The soldier didn’t speak anymore but bowed his head and slowly faded into nothingness.
The old man nodded his wrinkled head and sighed, “Memory is the curse of mankind”.
The naked man sat unmoving on the floor but his mind began to understand, and with this understanding came a sadness that he had never felt before.
“It’s me” he said softly, “the man in the chair and the soldier, they’re both me.” Then he stood up and moved to where the old man sat and looked into his soft eyes, “and so are you.”
The ancient man smiled a knowing smile and put his wrinkled hand on the man shoulder, “yes, now you know, we are all one, we were a solider in the war and when our wife and child were taken we volunteered for the War-walker units, they cut off our legs and put us in this machine and took away our memory and gave us a mission, to destroy the enemy, but we didn’t stop, we kept on killing of killing sake we sailed on a sea of blood and pain and we didn’t care and when all was gone we sat for a thousand years waiting, waiting for new orders but they never came, so we wandered the empty land seeking a new quest and at last we found one, we gathered up all that was left of humanities memories and put them into us, into me, now we wait, we wait for someone to find us, and each day we awake to our life and our forgotten memories, and we will do this till time is no more.”
And with those last words the old man slowly faded away “we will wait for all time” the vanishing profit said, “We will wait”. Then there was nothing.
The man was left alone in his metal world, and as he sat thinking thoughts that only he could know his mind began to darken, the day ran from him like a leaf caught in the wind and no matter how hard he tried to hold onto what he was it melted away until all that was left was a woman’s smiling face and the laughter of a child.
“Hello is anyone there?” the voice said. Now alone in the darkness the man began to forget, “was there someone here with me?” he thought he remembered an old man but it soon vanished from his mind, “there was something else, but what?” and soon that memory ran away like a child in the summer grass, “Is there anybody here”.
Nothing, only darkness.
Beside a frozen sea, under a frozen sky on the shore of a distant land just before sunrise lay the last monument to the glory of humanity, its gigantic metallic body was pitted with age and bore the marking of battle, it lay on its back with its enormous head resting against a mass of stone like a granite pillow for a fallen giant.
But soon the sun will rise and with it will come memories, memories that come with each sunrise and vanish with each sunset, memories that some would call nightmares.
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