Heart and Logic

A tremor through my spine, it’s almost harvest time. Twice a day, every day since I was 7 years old….

The abysmal cloud hung softly over her shoulders. I watched her eyes sit glazed and unmoving. The dense fog flashed with black, violet, and a bloody red as its luminescence wretchedly wound about her wrists and injected into her veins. The locket hung limp around her neck as I sat uselessly in horror. I knew at that point I would have to carry it beyond without her. The colors in her veins had reached the whites of her eyes and the rainbow of tears seeped down her pallid cheeks. Her body finally fell to the ground, her soul pulled into the cloud becoming one with the whole in a most unnatural order.

We didn’t know artificial intelligence would one day become so surreal.

My hands were sweating as the colors whirled on, grateful for the wristbands that kept me camouflaged from the clouds' endless need to feed. She had handed them to me earlier that day, as if knowing she wouldn’t deliver the locket herself. The first artificial heartbeat, meant to humanize the demonistic mist. In reflection I knew, the cloud itself could not be blamed. It was formed by human hands, clammy just like my own. Born with the intention to make a few trillion dollars. Too bad the creator was the first to go. I wonder if he ever imagined his baby would be his end. The end of trillions of other human lives as well. I had no idea who was left on this godforsaken planet. She was the only one I had seen in a decade after hiding deep in the caves where my father first showed me the final mines of fine stones and crystal. The last to be found in a cheesepocked planet ripped of all its resources. She had created the bands, the heartbeat as well. I never asked how it worked. She concealed it in a simple locket, something the cloud would overlook as garbage. Generally holding something like grandma’s photograph or little cousin Susie and her pet guinea pig side by side, two halves of a perceived whole…. the cloud only knew of the one. The bands had a navigation system, meant to show where the clouds’ main brain was located.

It had been at least 30 minutes since the cloud had moved on but I struggled to gravitate myself towards her unmoving body. I had seen many meet the same fate since I first found myself on the land above. Everyone I knew personally had died in the mines from a fallout caused by shifting plates under the earth. I was the only one who had survived. She was above. I had never seen her hair, only her slim figure covered with loose camouflaged clothing, and those eyes. Shifting between grey and blue depending on what truth her mind was uncovering at the time. Cutting like silver swords only to fall into the watery hue when her own heart caught up with the reality she had been facing for decades above ground. She told me very little about where she came from. I once tried to call her a hero over a shared packet of dried out horse meat which tasted like ash in my mouth. She nearly broke my heart with a glance. She was the final warrior and I would bring her heart to the brain center, the final hope for freeing the souls of earth. I stood. Stepping across the sandy terrain riddled with human or animal bones, and an endless array of metal rods, beams, and crushed screens. The resources we dredged from deep beneath us, only to be crushed into a new landscape of useless matter.

Dropping to my knees I stared down at her face streaked with the heinous alien goo that melted the grey and blue to nothingness. I would never see her stare again. I pulled the head cover off her hair. It was reddish brown, short and choppy. Scars were running down the sides of her skull, so deep they showed plainly under her thin hair like a doe’s coat. Or at least that’s what I heard a doe’s coat had looked like. I had no time to lament, the bracelet was beeping with urgency, pushing me to get moving. I pulled the simple trinket, from the very not simple being's empty frame...leaving my own tears splattered through the alien goo along her face.

“Good-bye Harmony.”

Now I ran in a panic. Watching the wristband’s map navigate through the hellish landscape. I wouldn’t make it far without her. I had to make it all the way. I had about 5 hours before the second feeding of the day. The clouds still had to recharge at their homebase throughout their cycle. The watch was saying I had about 6 hours before I made it to the brain center. I was fending off fearful thoughts, not of my death….rather what would happen if the heartbeat didn’t work? What would be my after death?…. I had never cared when I was young. It was unknown but it belonged to something outside of human hands. It was easy to surrender to, we wouldn’t know until we got there. Now though… what existed in the consciousness of a bleeding hell mist consisting of nearly every living soul from earth? The insistent shudder down my spine propelled my feet faster.

4 hours left to go, 3 until feeding. I didn’t really need to worry. I had her camouflage bands. I just didn’t care to be around the clouds when they came to do their bidding. The electricity put through the air was enough to make me feel insane. The screaming of a trillion hungry souls. My feet were bleeding through my gauze built socks meant to soak up the puss that never ceased running from the caustic material always underfoot. The map showed a small cavern up ahead. I would have to take some time to rest and get whatever hydration I could from the rain purifier Harmony had built. The water tasted of old batteries and a slight hint of rot. I sucked down what I could and laid my head on the dust and shut my eyes.

The earth was shifting under my back, or no it was rumbling. I heard the air horns of the massive armored tanks that were sent out by the clouds sentient awareness to find target humans that threatened its mission. I never thought I would be one. The tanks brought a new light to Harmony’s life. I knew she was smart, I knew she was strong. I never imagined she would have been on the radar of the sentient tanks. This was bad news. This meant my camouflage had become a red flag, they had a way to track me. I turned on my head lamp and decided to head deeper into the cavern. They were often like mazes that could be navigated either to a dead end, or to an opening potentially miles from where I had to be. Either way the tanks were too large to follow me through. I turned off the band and dove deeper into the unknown.

The tunnel was rough. I tripped incessantly, gashing my leg on varieties of metal obstructions. I had no idea what the tunnel used to be for but now it was seeming like it would be my grave. After about an hour of inhaling dust from the tunnel I decided to turn on the bracelet again, to see how deeply I had just buried myself. It began to beep furiously. A hologram emerged before my eyes, a red ex that was shockingly nearby. It seemed I was only a short bit away, these were the caverns I needed to find!

The sound of rocks scraping caught my ear. There was a shadow of a small creature lurking nearby. I saw the reflection of my lamp in their eyes. My heart was slamming in my ears. Only demonic robots lurked in caves this deep. Castaways that had learned to reprogram themselves, whose agendas were wildly individual. The ones I met as a young boy varied yet walked along the line of learning to be a being. Some turned to endless violence. These bots were destroyed by the human regiments of the tunnels, one of which was led by my own father. Others were gardners, trying hard to create life in the darkest deadest tunnels imaginable. Perhaps they thought it would help them create organic life in their own dark dead “veins”; running off synthetic gasoline.

“Kinai??”

The tiniest voice I had ever heard, in a dialect I was only vaguely aware of. A small boy emerged from the shadows, covered in so much filth only his eyes shone white, with iris’ of golden brown. His head was covered and he wore a gown, thin and baggy. He could have been an extension of the walls themselves; but when he grabbed me by the hand, they were warm, soft and the word kind came to mind. I softened to the boy right away and he pulled on my wrist to handle the band. He managed to find a setting for a translator.

“Hello!” the tiny voice spoke clearly to me now, was that Harmony’s voice?

My eyes teared as I bent a knee to face the honey colored eyes.

“Hello,” I spoke in return.

He smiled and his teeth were dazzlingly clean and white.

“I am Harmony’s son,” he said matter-of-factly, “I will take you the rest of the way.”

I wept for the remaining hour through the tunnels. He had taken the band and navigated with ease. We did not speak. I did not want to ask questions, I only cared to feel his tiny fingers around mine with such calm certainty, for such a small child. I would protect him however I could, but something told me he was better off than I was myself.

The brain center was enormous. A giant pit buried miles under earth. The lights of the machinery painted icy blue all along the walls. Everything blue, cold, and logical. Massive beams of tungsten held the cavern together and protected the expansive machines beeping and buzzing with a nature of their own. The boy who I still hadn’t even asked the name of released my hand and faced me. He held his small palm out and I handed over the locket. He took it, and began to bounce down the walls of the cavern with ease. There was a circular console centered in the middle of the cavern that was extremely active, lit up in shades of blue. The boy went to the center and cracked open the locket. A hologram of Harmony appeared golden yellow. She smiled at her son, and dove headfirst into the console. The boy turned and ran, as fast as he could. The cavern began to shake and tremble as the golden light overturned the blue and everything came crashing down. I was in shock; seeing the hologram of Harmony as a plain person overwhelmed me. The boy grabbed my hand frantically trying to drag me out along with him. I stayed, I watched the golden light overturn the blue. I’m on the other side now…. you’ll have to wait and see what it means to be beyond the human perspective and thank Harmony for earth's second chance.