These Tired Sides

Wreathed in darkness, I stand, holding back the destruction crawling within.

I should be clear: this is not a metaphor. My sole purpose in this world is to hold what the creators choose. It could have been anything: oil, paint, chemicals.

Instead, they had chosen something truly evil to infest my metal insides.

Even now, I can feel them squirming and prodding at the edges. I could not entirely blame my inhabitants, either. They had been created with a singular pose, just as I had been. That did not make us enemies so much as rivals, our goal at odds with the other.

I wanted to keep them in.

They wanted out.

Perhaps this does not paint me in the best light. It is hard to tell, given that light deserted this place so long ago.

You may see me as the jailer, but some things are not meant to roam free.

The creators understood this. They imbued me with seals, valves, and bright red lettering to ensure that no one would ever mistake what I held, and that no single act of chance, no one roll of the dice in the wrong direction, could let my contents out.

After my birth, I was carried far away, through desert steppes where life barely hung on to an island amid a drying sea. Upon this place that they referred to as Rebirth, I, too, was reborn. From an empty receptacle awaiting its mission to a silent sentry holding back a relentless tide. I held something whose sole drive was to destroy that which it embodied.

My contents had been given life on this island so that they might destroy life.

All of this was unknown to me back then. I was too new to this world to understand these concepts. But with all the time I have been given, the strange words my creators spoke no longer seem so strange.

While my creators still visited this place, that was. While the lights still hummed in the ceiling and the concrete sides of this chamber remained clean and dry. When I knew the creators would come every so often to inspect me and ensure everything remained airtight and intact. I had known that, no matter how great the burden, I was not alone in this struggle.

Then the creators had stopped coming. The lights had flickered out, one by one. I did not know the state of the walls now, but judging by the pool of water around me, they were not as strong as they once were.

I knew how that felt. To feel the first bit of strength slipping away after standing firm for so long. I did not blame the walls for their failure. We had all been doing our duty without reprieve. Nothing can stand alone forever.

Still, I could not let up for as long as I had the fortitude, no matter how tired my sides might be.

For I had been burdened with the truth of what I held.

These words had been just as alien, just as foreign as the others describing this place. But with so much time to think, I had come to discern their significance. Words like “dead test subjects,” “high virality,” and “epidemic.”

I will confess, I still might not have put the pieces together, save for the fact that I could come in contact with these cells and survive. I could feel them move as one, surging against my insides. I could hear the millions of signals surging into one note that was impossible to block out. I knew their murderous intent.

I suppose a living thing could come in contact with them and know their insatiable hunger, too. But they would never function long enough to warn others.

Down here, cut off and abandoned, the creators must have thought that even should the contents escape, there would be no harm. But the containment walls were failing, and I had no doubt something so driven, something that had refused to die after all this time, would find its way beyond this place.

To fulfill the purpose so long denied to it.

You might wonder why I would care so much. After all, they could not harm me. I would continue to exist in this peculiar way whether they swarmed within me or not. It might even be a blessing to not have to listen to their evil chorus after so long.

But that ignores my own purpose. I was created to contain. I must contain. They could escape, and I could continue to exist into eternity until I finally rusted to atoms.

Yet, for all that eternity, I would have to exist with the knowledge that I had failed. Failed myself. Failed my creators. Failed all life.

This thought made me all the more desperate. You see, it was not just the containment walls that had started to slip. I could feel the rust creeping up my sides from the pool of water they had allowed to seep into this place, one drip at a time.

For now, there was no immediate threat to my integrity, but the rust, much like my contents, was relentless in its own purpose. It was no more personal with the rust than it was with the cells, yet our purposes conflicted just the same.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the rust is eating away at me.

My inhabitants have yet to sense it. Still, I imagine the first molecule of outside air that they taste will set them into a frenzy. They need no more than the slightest of openings to make their flight.

I do not know when that day will come, but I must live with the knowledge that it will come. Unless the creators return to repair me or relieve me of this burden. Yes, that would be best. One of my own can take up the cause, one younger and stronger.

But I know this is fantasy. They are not coming back.

So I stand alone, these tired sides holding back the raging tide of devastation within.

I can only hope my creators have prepared for the day when I finally fail them.

~~~

The story continues in "Casemate 7C":