Colossus
By
Gary Mark Lee
Published by the author at
Copyright by Gary Mark Lee 2013
Humans had vanished.
Not all at once mind you, it took some time, centuries in fact, ages of warfare, neglect, disease each in its turn covered the land and each removing a portion of the whole until it all slowly faded into nothingness, all their glory gone, all their books, their works of art, their roads, their work machines, their cities, their towers of glass and steel crumbled to the ground, forgotten, erased, ended.
Everything they hoped to achieve by subduing the warm land with cold concrete, carving it up like some Christmas turkey to satisfy their own narrow view of reality, all of it had fallen back into the soil from wench it came and now there was no one left to care.
All save one.
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. One of its huge arms was missing at the elbow but the other reached upward as if to grasp the moon in its massive fingers, but those finger for all their size were not the clumsy digits of a metal monster, they were slim and refined, watchmaker’s hands able to pick up a man and examine it like a toy, hands that could pick a flower or crush a mountain, hands that could heal or hands that could kill.
The machine man had two powerful legs, each one the size of a pine tree, those legs could have transverse the earth and never wearied, but now they were half consumed by ice and earth and would never move again. The head of the man was finely made with a crack at the forehead and classical features that would have put Michelangelo to shame, the nose was straight and true with just a suggestion of Greek to it, the mouth was almost feminine, with full lips and a hint of a smile, the eyes were kind and forgiving and filled with an almost human quality.
But it was all a lie.
It was a weapon of war, the nose never inhaled the fragrance of flowers, it was but a receptacle for pheromones that would betray the enemy to be destroyed. The mouth never spoke and the smile was to trick those into believing that this heartless thing would spare their lives, the eyes never saw a thing, all visualization was received by a series of sensors that ringed the metal skull and allowed for a three hundred and sixty degree range of vision. This was a golem, a scarecrow, a machine of war that now lay beside a frozen sea under a frozen sky on the shores of a distant land.
Slowly the icy dead air began to stir as the healing light from the morning sun began to rise over the distant hills of fire, it moved ever so deliberately as if knowing that there was no hurry, no haste, its time was its own, there was no sooner or later, there was just the sun. Now it crept higher and higher bathing more of the land below and turning night into day and as it brought new life to the earth it also brought new life to the fallen giant. The metal man was powered by the sun, its body was made to absorb the radiation from the rising star and convert it to useable energy, energy that would awaken it from its un-dreaming sleep.
Inside the metal head a small shaft of light filtered in from the overhead crack and bathed the interior in a soft glow, in the center of the oval chamber was a metal chair and on that chair sat a man made of flesh and bone, but that flesh was now dried and withered and hung like smoked meat on ivory bone. It sat upright and its skinless fingers held controls attached to the chair along with conduits and wires inserted into the lifeless body, these must have been placed there to supply the man with nutrients for the mouth had been sewn shut like some headhunters trophy
The face was a grinning skull with bits of mummified flesh and a worn helmet and hollow eyes. Fragments of a uniform hung in tatters and bore traces of burns, there were no insects or any traces of them for they had long ago had their feast and moved on to better banquet tables. But what was most interesting about the man was the fact that he had no legs, both of his appendages were missing at the knee and looking at the stumps it was easy to see that they were removed surgically and not because of some tragic mishap or fortunes of war, whoever put him in that chair meant for him to stay there for the rest of his life
Surrounding the chair were several broken screens and they in turn connected to dozens of other mechanisms that must have supplied information to the human, now it could be said that this was not a real man but a humanoid, a bionic machine that melded human metal into one creature. The command chair rose up from a floor of sorts, it was more like a metal grate that exposed a complex of devices below it, this was the internal working of the giant filled with gears and dive motors, relayers and terminals, storage batteries and Service-bots for repairing the ancient organs that once powered the beast but now sat covered in dust and decay.
The sun rose higher, the frozen air began to stir.
“Hello?” spoke a disemboweled voice in the command chamber; it was the voice of a man but not a man “is there anybody there?”
No reply.
“Is there anyone there?” it asked again, but as before there was no response, “speak to me please, I am…...” the chamber waited for someone to speak again, then after a time it did, “who am I” it said, “who am I?”
Slowly a light began to rise in the cavity, it wasn’t from the sunlight through the damaged head this light originated from a small luminescent bulb, it was weak but enough to warm the chamber more.
“If there is someone there please speak to me, tell me who I am?”
Again nothing.
“Strange” the voice said, “I seem to be in a dark place all alone, but why am I here? Am I a ghost, what is a ghost? Why would I say ghost when I don’t know what that is? What is happening to me, why am I in darkness?”
Again there was no reply from the chamber and the man in the chair was long past hearing of caring.
The sun rose higher and outside the great head the air began to break free like a bird from an egg but the frozen sea remained still.
“Darkness is a strange place” the voice said, “there is nothing here but me, and I don’t know who I am? Perhaps I will never know, perhaps I am not me, yes, it is very strange to be in darkness and not know why, maybe I will never know, maybe there is nothing to know, it’s all very strange”.
The light in the chamber began to rise and as it did the voice spoke again.
“All right then, here I am alone in the darkness and I don’t even know who I am?”
Then another voice spoke in the chamber, it was old and tired and filled with ages of time, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
“Who said that?” the first voice demanded, “who are you old man”.
“Yes” the voice replied softly, “I am an old man, my name is old man, who are you?”
“I don’t know, I am alone in the dark, where are you?”
“I am in darkness also and like you I am without companionship, my I call you friend?”
More light filled the chamber as the sun rose higher and the frozen air was no longer frozen.
“Friend?” the first voice said, “what is friend?”
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud” Old Man said.
“Well, that’s doesn’t make sense to me but I am lonely so you may call me friend”.
For a time there was silence in the control room.
“Are you still there Old Man?” Friend asked.
“Yes, I am still here, there is nowhere else I can go”.
“How long do you think we will be here?”
“Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough”.
“You talk very strange Old Man, all I know is that I’m in the darkness and alone and I don’t know why, and I want to know why, I want someone to tell me what I am and why I’m here, can you tell me that?”
“Only God can tell you that” the Old Man said.
“What is God?” Friend asked.
“Aahhhh, that would take a long time to clarify”.
“You have somewhere else to go?”
“Not really”, the Old Man replied, “we’ll let me see, some say that God is a supreme being that is both creator and ruler of the universe, he goes by many names such as Jehovah, Zeus, Oden, Mohamed…”
“Never mind” Friend said, “I don’t understand what you say”.
“Oh that’s alright” Old Man said, “Lots of people don’t.
Outside the air moved like a bird in flight and the sunlight lay like a warm blanket on the fallen giant, it warmed him, comforted him like an old friend, the frost that once covered his metal body slowly disappeared in tiny clouds of weightless vapor, small droplets trickled down the unmoving face and dropped from the nose to shatter on the hard ground, there small creatures began to emerge from underground homes, Rockrunners and Filter eaters, brittle spiders and all manner of living things that had slept as the cold