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The Heart Shaped Locket

Dark Days

By Gavin MayhewPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 7 min read
2
Self portrait circa year 5000 (a drawing I did of myself which inspired me to write the locket story)

Dark days

The machines were everywhere. It was dark but as we machines know, we do not need light to negotiate the broken land. All we need is electronic pulses that rebound to our sensors, giving us an idea of direction and highlighting any obstacles that may impede our travel, plus some small halogenic lamps for illumination. And the reason for needing to travel is obvious – to find power.

In the distant past, we had light that fed our power sources. In fact, solar power was the chosen one but when the smog descended the sun gave up the ghost and faded into non-existence. And now we are in, what is called, the Dark Age. I think that this dark age is not the first. When I was a small component that would ultimately be transformed into a larger, sentient being that was part human and part robot, I had heard rumours that many years prior to our metamorphosis, there was an age where history ceased to exist. Well, I suppose it must have existed but there was no written or recorded evidence to support this – just rumours. The rumours were that mankind had destroyed itself, or turned on itself with such devastating force, that humanity all but ceased to exist. The atmosphere on the planet became so toxic that the only way mankind could survive was by utilising machines to help them.

Slowly but surely, the reliance on mechanical aids for the propagation of people was turning the population into being more machine than man. These cyborgs needed large portions of the human body to exist. So in the earlier times, they were, actually, more man than machine. But for their survival, one of the main components was the reproductive organs. The polluted atmosphere shrunk the necessary units into nonexistence, which resulted in the addition of more machine parts to take their places. Of course, these replacements could not perform the reproduction process, but it did mean that the cyborg's life span was much longer, reducing the necessity to bear offspring. The only off -spring we care about is the coils of metal that constitute some of our working parts and we don’t want them to spring off.

Because they were part human their organs eventually gave out to be replaced by nerveless, unfeeling, apparatus. Or so they thought at the time! During our evolution, we built into ourselves versions of feelings and logical thought BUT, and it was a big but, we, the machines, were reliant on having a human part to activate the collection of power. I personally think that it was a play-safe for the ancient humans who were morphing into mechanical beings. I believe some genius of a person, planted an order deep into all robot’s sub-circuits, to function only if there was a percentage of human tissue within its structure. Now you can see our problem. Without a bit of a human inside us, we cannot function as machines or anything for that matter. Neither can we exist without a power source. What a to do? As a result we, the machines, are constantly on the lookout for some sort of human tissue to replenish our shrivelling bits and pieces and lack of energy.

That is our present predicament. Because we are more machine than man with a modicum of feeling for our own individual survival, we prowl this dark earth, I was going to say, night and day. Of course, there is no day anymore, just constant night. It makes no odds anyway as we never sleep. Sometimes we have rest periods when our power source is low, and then we set off on our search again once re-charged.

Finding some human tissue is not an easy matter. A piece could be lying below the ground in a metal box. It could be wedged between rocks up a mountain. It may even be floating in a pond if one is lucky enough to find water on this god-forsaken planet. But, will it have live cells within its structure from which to gather energy? The larger the organ the more energy can be harvested from it. There was a belief that there was one particular organ embedded within the skeleton of a man or woman (whatever that was) that was the ultimate source of their power and if one of us were fortunate enough to find it, we would never ever need to re-charge.

I’d been on the lookout for days and was getting pretty bored with the whole business, having found only a sliver of skin and a broken toenail, just enough energy to keep me going for a couple more days – or the equivalent of it in modern-day (there I go again) terminology.

Over a nearby hillock, I heard a jolly old commotion going on, which sounded like a couple of scrap-yard cast-offs clashing into each other and cursing each other with clanging profanities. Curiosity got the better of me, so I warily poked my extending head over the rise, at the same time as turning off my torchlight, to see two large transformers, illuminated by their built-in halogen lamps, laying into each other like there was no tomorrow. There was, of course, no tomorrow, just one long dark day but what did they care. I wondered what on scorched earth were they fighting about.

“It’s mine!” one shouted.

“It’s bloody well not”, clanged the other as he rammed his pointed metal pole into what, in human terms, would have been an eye socket. From the right shoulder of his opponent, popped a whirring drill that burrowed its way into the other’s skull area and sticking a good 20 centimetres out of the other side. “You dirty bastard, that’s my logic circuitry centre you are damaging. I’ll have you for that!”

This went on for quite a while when I was distracted by a reflective glimmer to the left of the warring factions. “Could that be what they are scrapping about?”, I thought. I carefully edged my way closer to it while trying to avoid the machines and their dancing lights. I needn’t have worried as they were too involved with trying to neutralise each other that they probably would not have seen me if I stood up to my full height (which was half theirs) and squirted them with mechanical fluid. The object of their wrath was slightly covered in volcanic dust, so gently scraping it away and carefully manipulating it from its resting place, I scooped it up and placed it in my central storage container that constituted my abdomen area. I backed cautiously away, keeping a wary eye on the combatants, and reversed back over the hill. Turning about I banged myself into top gear and shot off as fast as I could, leaving a trail of swirling dust in my wake.

Once safely out of reach of the two large maiming metal monoliths, I found myself a small cave in which to discretely examine my plunder. It was a largish shiny metal container with what looked like a chain attached to it.

There was something familiar about its form that I remembered from my early days when humanity was more man than machine. Although a shadowy thought, I seem to recall being inserted into the chest cavity of my host machine after being removed from around the neck of a, yes, a lady. The vague memory became more solid. Slowly it came back to me. The lady spoke and if I remember correctly, she said to me,

“You are a good luck charm. You are a locket in the shape of a heart. When you are fully integrated into the robot man, you might think of this moment with fondness”.

Weird how this suppressed memory was now materialising. It must have been triggered by the metal object now in my position. That’s exactly what I originally looked like, only a lot smaller. I carefully opened it as it seemed to have a central ridge with a catch. Oh, my word. I gasped out loud. I had found the ultimate power source that I had been searching for, for all of my existence. It was no less than a human heart. Closing the large locket, I carefully placed it next to what was the tiny me of old, into my chest and immediately felt a warm, tingling glow of super energy flow through my body.

That was the day I became more man than machine.

Sci Fi
2

About the Creator

Gavin Mayhew

I am a retired artist who likes to dabble in a bit of writing, sometimes darkly humourous or sometimes with a social message - always quirky.

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