While We Wait

- Memory Machine

The world as we know it doesn't end with a big, loud, catastrophic event. It doesn't fade quietly away either. And yet, it somehow manages to do both. It starts, like most things do, as a quiet murmur – building slowly, gradually over time until it crescendos and then slowly, gradually, calms back down, only for us to finally look back and notice just how drastically things have changed.

If anything, the world is like our own bodies, every cell replaced, one by one by one, until each little bit is new – until you've re-become the same person you were, just made of different parts. You see, when things fail, you replace them – replace them with something stronger. So when the crops stopped growing and the birds stopped singing and your grandma's heart stopped working and you stopped going to work, you were all replaced. Everything was replaced. By the Machines.

And now, now in the post-apocalyptic paradise of twining green vines and grey metal pipes, you can hear a distant whir-creak-hiss-clunk of a man's footsteps. A man who is more metal than he is flesh, but who is alive and remembers nonetheless.

He had watched as the world fell apart, as it ended. Experienced it first hand, in fact. Not that the world really ended, so much as it simply shook humanity off to make way for the new, the unexpected, to make way for the metal. But that implies that the humans are gone. They aren't. Not quite.

He is a prime example. He is still here. He is human, or at least as human as one can be in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of change. As human as one can be when everyone else is either dead or a machine. As human as he can be when he too, is falling apart, is slowly having parts of himself replaced by machinery. He isn't sure what he is anymore. He could still be a person, but perhaps he is just an idea or a thing or – as he suspects is more likely – a machine.

He doesn't have a name anymore. Doesn't remember. And it's not like you need one when you're the only person-man-machine-idea-thing still alive. He doesn't remember the others' names either. He wishes he did, but it's a half-hearted-broken sort of wish because he knows that if he knew and They found out, They'd take it from him. And so he doesn't.

He watches the earth. Keeps an eye on the lush plants and flowers and collects bits of "the before". He twists blossoms back and forth between his copper fingers and follows leaves as they flutter off in the wind. He does his best to keep his mind and heart human, as his body rusts and creaks and lets out periodic puffs of smoke. He does his best to let go of the before and to move on. He does his best to stay steady.

He still dreams. Dreams of the frantic day-to-day life of before everything stopped, of people before their faces were lost or mechanized, of soaring, high over the earth – birdlike, of her smiling in the rain, of all his inchoate and unrealized and lost desires. He doesn't remember the dreams though. It's best he doesn't. But if he could, he'd realize that they froth up in his most frantic of writings.

He loves writing. He needs it. Not even the rusting of the hinges in his fingers or the protesting seizes of his arms can keep him from it. He writes words that have no clear meaning together although a small thing in his chest tells him they do. Later, he remembers the word poetry, but he has already moved on and it means nothing so he forgets again, though it leaves a burning copper taste on the base of his tongue that differs greatly from the cool taste of the metal that makes up his jaw.

Some days he just can't function. Some days he's just so tired of it all. He doesn't want to be alone. To be the last one still human enough to feel and remember. Some days, he doesn't want to be. On those days he tries his best to not remember, to not try. But it has been too long since he's had control of his own body. Every time he tries to stop walking, his legs keep mechanically moving. Every time he tries to stop eating, his hands force the food to his mouth. Every time he tries to stop breathing, the bellows in his chest just keep pumping air in and out and in with rhythmic precision.

He can't escape himself.

Today, today as his legs carry him through flourishing forests he remembers. It hurts. It hurts, but he revels in the gut-twisting, heart-wringing, vomit-inducing pain because he remembers. 

But remembering is dangerous. Think of the past too clearly, too fondly, let the past immobilize you, and They will know. They will know and They will put a stop to it. They will replace his thoughts, his memories. His brain.

But he forgets. Of course he forgets. He gets caught up in admiring the birdsong and he lets himself think. He thinks:

"her name was"

And that's as far as he gets.

Because his heart skips a beat as he thinks her name. Just as it used to every time he saw her.

Before he has the chance to form another thought or even breathe there is a metal appendage clamping down around him and dragging him off and holding him tight and plunging into his chest. And it burns. And despite his metal hands, and legs, and bones, and lungs, and muscles, he is not yet machine enough to stay awake.

When he comes to, everything is dull. His thoughts. His emotions. And especially the steady thunk-clunk in his chest.

Still, his mind reels, his world starts to finally crack. His mind races and spins and falters and if he were human still, he would completely break down. And yet his breathing is calm, his heart beats steady. He would cry, but no machine has tear ducts.

And that's when it hits. That's when he realizes. Decides.

He is no longer human. No longer man.

He is a machine.

He doesn't feel as heartbroken over that as he'd expect.

He gets up.

He blinks.

He walks away.

And along with the whir-creak-hiss-clunk of each step and the dull thump-ing in his chest, he forgets.