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the_fantastic_ms_foxFor a few days in my waking life, I'd been thinking of the streaks made by objects entering the atmosphere at oblique angles and high velocity. Tangents, caught by gravity, then by the atmosphere, curving and streaking to hit the Earth with a roar and distant thud.
This is why, when I saw them in my dream, I thought, oh, I'd been wondering if I'd ever see those.
You expect 'distant thuds:' you never expect them to come right on top of you. Then you're fucked.
The thing that fell was a large pod, akin to a black seed the length of a skyscraper, and glimmering with a thousand little windows. Five or more perhaps had fallen in the City - Vancouver?
Night falls. The pod lies high in a great crater, with office towers on either side. I had not expected so many other people to come see it. Thousands crowded to see.
Then it comes to life.
The pods are curious and aloof. Perhaps they are bothered by their own indifference. This one, like the others across the city, and all over the world by now, lances out a broad cone of searching green rays of light. All touched by it die. By this, I do not mean that they fall down silent: the pod wants to know "what is drowning is like?" and so, all under the passage of the flickering beam, even if only for a split second, spasm, jerk and flail as if immersed in deep water, their last breath, having rushed out of their lungs to bubble away above them.
I see that single figure, who I think is me, from the pod's perspective as it sprints through the crowd and over a ridge. The beam follows it, but perhaps only by coincidence. In doing so, all near the runner "drown."
These pods have fallen everywhere with dense settlement. They are smart, mobile and keen to see what it's like to kill us in a thousand different ways.
The knowledge and subsequent dread come clear at this point:
you can run, dodge and huddle, but this thing is going to kill you.
It will do it out of curiousity, and perhaps a touch of bored sadism.
In the end, you will be another corpse, right beside everyone else.
In the wilderness, towns of a hundred or less, people will survive. But you are too close to hope for survival. It will be over soon.
This is why, when I saw them in my dream, I thought, oh, I'd been wondering if I'd ever see those.
You expect 'distant thuds:' you never expect them to come right on top of you. Then you're fucked.
The thing that fell was a large pod, akin to a black seed the length of a skyscraper, and glimmering with a thousand little windows. Five or more perhaps had fallen in the City - Vancouver?
Night falls. The pod lies high in a great crater, with office towers on either side. I had not expected so many other people to come see it. Thousands crowded to see.
Then it comes to life.
The pods are curious and aloof. Perhaps they are bothered by their own indifference. This one, like the others across the city, and all over the world by now, lances out a broad cone of searching green rays of light. All touched by it die. By this, I do not mean that they fall down silent: the pod wants to know "what is drowning is like?" and so, all under the passage of the flickering beam, even if only for a split second, spasm, jerk and flail as if immersed in deep water, their last breath, having rushed out of their lungs to bubble away above them.
I see that single figure, who I think is me, from the pod's perspective as it sprints through the crowd and over a ridge. The beam follows it, but perhaps only by coincidence. In doing so, all near the runner "drown."
These pods have fallen everywhere with dense settlement. They are smart, mobile and keen to see what it's like to kill us in a thousand different ways.
The knowledge and subsequent dread come clear at this point:
you can run, dodge and huddle, but this thing is going to kill you.
It will do it out of curiousity, and perhaps a touch of bored sadism.
In the end, you will be another corpse, right beside everyone else.
In the wilderness, towns of a hundred or less, people will survive. But you are too close to hope for survival. It will be over soon.