This is a Sci-Fi story i wrote over a year ago. Each Chapter is named after a song from Green Day's album 21st Century Breakdown. Give it a read tell me what you think
"Sing us a song of the century
That's louder than bombs and eternity
The era of static and contraband
That's leading us into the promised land
Tell us a story that's by candlelight
Waging a war and losing the fight
They're playing the song of the century
of panic and promise and prosperity
Tell me a story into that goodnight
Sing us a song for me ..."
East Jesus Nowhere
"A fire burns today
Of blasphemy and genocide
The sirens of decay
Will infiltrate the faith fanatics"
The darkness. The smell of fresh olives and napalm. I'm in a church. A large church. Or is it a monastery. Moonlight creeping in through the broken stained glass casting great shadows. Hated them ever since I was a kid, it seemed unnatural keeping the sunlight out. I'm jumping around. No not just jumping around, I think I'm practicing something. Something violent. Looks like some ancient fighting technique, a Martial Art maybe. Seems to be the Middle Ages. Or is it dystopian future?
Hear a sound something unusual. A cling of metal to the stone flooring of this ruins of a cathedral. I stand sill for a moment, listening. Again. This time even closer. Its coming from the shadows. Somethings moving. I predict its next move. One step on the bench in front of me and a flying roundhouse kick. Hear a clang against the wall. Then it jumps out at me and I grab it by the arm. A Cassius/Ali hook to it its jaw. The touch of cold steel on bare knuckles.
Doesn't feel real good. Right behind its head where the human cerebellum is supposed to be lies a microprocessor. Pluck it out and it's reduced to the heap of junk it really is. These robots aren't as tough as you see them in the Terminator movies but what would be the result if the T-800 decided to mate with our good friend C3PO. Its actually there sheer number that crippled us.
They think they our better than us, these pieces of what once used to be our cars. Yeah Right. Just the way we once did all those millions of years ago of all the other animals around us. They lack the intelligence or the heart needed to be truly better than us. And yet they never give up and that's what makes them more living than anything on this God-forsaken planet.
It got close though. Infiltrated our best defenses. Not sure if anymore have got through too. Will have to call a meeting of all the heads in the morning.
Before the Lobotomy
"Dreaming
I am only dreaming
Of another place and time
Where my family's from"
Hate them.
Truly Hate Them.
These two-faced, hippocratic sons of bitches. They just make me want to give up. Lock them up in here and torch this place and it would all be over. The machines would win. The human race would be extinct. And I would be the hero. The one who delivered them all to there destiny .
But I am locked in here with these other heads of the human race. In this crisis situation trying to maintain DEMOCRACY.
We have to evacuate immediately, I say. One has got in, others will too.
"Where will we go?" asks the pig faced Head of Health & Welfare, Big Bob with bitch tits we call him behind his back. "Can't we just strengthen defenses?"
What more can we do?, I ask. I mean we have done everything to keep them out and they still get it. They know where we are and I am sure they will come again.
This being a democracy and all, it goes to vote. 2 out of 12 vote in my favor. The only other person in my favor is, the old cowboy we all love to hate, The only sensible person alive, Former President of the United States of America and what's left of it. George W. Bush. That's what the world has come to.
These so called 'World Politicians' were the one who convinced me that I was there saviour. The Chosen One. And now they don't believe it themselves. In a land of make believe, that don't believe in me.
I still doubt it myself.
How I got there I still can't understand. It was in 2009 and I was a 17 year old nobody. Take a git from a bong and I recieve a message from an unknown number,"Come to the Bridge and wait until the Devil Dances in Pale moonlight" it said. It was intriguing enough to have me interested. I asked who it was. "The White Rabbit" was the reply. So I went to this place we called the Bridge not knowing what the message truly meant.
At 9:04 p.m. there was a flash of brilliant blue light from behind me. A thud to the back of my head. The exact place where the microprocessor is located on that machine all these years later. Everything goes limp. My eyes close.
I wake up in what looks to me like a rundown Nazi concentration camp. The Hospital they call it. I am told I am a war hero. I am told since the machines took over I have been there leader. I was told I had suffered a head injury in battle and had been asleep for seven days. And the way I had been behaving, they told me I had lost my memory. The Mechanic they called me sarcastically.
How did it come to this, I asked.
They said we humans had been pushing for perfection and we reached in on the wonderful day 21st December, 2012 and then it all fell apart faster than we had expected.
For a moment is the most we could ever expect from perfection.
Nothing is static. Everything is falling apart.
Ringa Ringa Roses.
Hahaha.
A moment is what we can expect from perfection. We were lucky enough to have a day.
And then all of a sudden the robots we had built to help us, to drive our cars, to cut our vegetables,to shoot our guns, to keep our streets clean, totally out of the blue decided they had served enough and it was their time to rule. Just like Marx had predicted, all those centuries ago. Mechanic Communism.
They want me to be there hero. And after all those years of absolute Nihilism, of wishing to be important, wishing there was a bigger picture. All I had ever dreamed of and when I was presented the oppurtunity I didn't want it.
We wear leather clothes that will last us the rest of our lives. Hunt elk through damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. Climb wrist-thick Kudzu vines that wrap the Sears tower.
Jack and the Beanstalk. The Works.
Now back to the present.
24th June 2017. My 25th Birthday. Nothing to celebrate. Just been three days since the last encounter with the chunk of metal and we have done nothing yet.
There is a huge ruckus.
"We are under siege"
"Our Heads have failed us" I hear them shouting
¡VIVA LA GLORIA!
"Gloria, where's your undying love?
Tell me story of your life.
Your life."
Gloria. Her name was Gloria. And as she lay there in my arms, I witnessed the wonderful miracle of Death. One moment, she was the warm center that life of the world crowded around, and the next moment, Gloria was nothing more than an object.
She was the first thing i remember of this New World. As I opened my eyes for the first time, I saw her beautiful ones staring back at me. Rejoicing I was alright.
She told me that before I lost my memory I loved her with all my heart. And among all the crazy things I was hearing about myself, it was the only thing I could really believe. For ever since I lay my eyes on her for the first time, I knew I did.
We did repel off the attack but we are reduced down to half our number. And we have a decision on our hands.
We can call a truce. Wave the white flag. Surrender. And do what those machines want us to do. Fade out. Or we can go out all guns blazing. Fight to the end. Die out knowing we gave it a shot. In a Blaze of Glory
What would I like to do? Well, I'd like to go out there with my spanner and my gun and dismantle all those metal-fuckers. But this being a democracy and all it goes to vote. And the result is pretty obvious.
Still don't see it fit to give one man the control. Don't believe in me. After all, I'm the Chosen One. After so much death I wonder how these heads of state managed to survive.
The bodies are burnt.
No time for burial.
As I stand and watch my love burn, I am breathing smoke. I wonder if these mechanical beasts we have created will ever realize the mistake they have made like we did when all those whales, tigers, dolphins, elephants were on the verge of extinction. And by that, time will there be enough humans left, to screw to save our species.
Christian's Inferno
"I am the atom bomb
I am your chosen one
Toxin your reservoir
And then return, man to ape"
I am Christian.
The Leader of the Human Resistance.
The so-called Chosen One.
And what I am about to do will decide if the human race survives or dies.
I have the power to control History
I AM HISTORY
Last night all the other Heads got assassinated by robots. Giving me ultimate power and control to do what I wish. Some speculate it was an inside job. One of us is with them.
I am the chief suspect for I was the only one who gained from it and only one who survived.
They won't understand. They will never know.
The next morning my handpicked few stay back. Rest all go into battle with me.
Charge of the Light Brigade.
Convince them that its some master strategy.
Napoleon bragged that he could train men to sacrifice their lives for a scrap of ribbon
I can do that too!
It's a battle we are meant to lose and yet I go in.
Why?
Well last evening when there was no one noticing me. I slipped into the darkness. Silently made my way through the shadows. Out in the distance I can see that white building. Where the master computer is housed. SuperNova it is called.
The Temple of the King
My plan is to slip through the defenses. Stick a knife into the motherboard and hope all goes well.
I know it won't be that simple.
Reach the door. Get in without any trouble. Phase One of Operation Up Your Ass commencing. Don't think they expected anyone to come so far. It is a bit too less security than what I had heard or expected. Too suspicious. I am walking through the doorways as if it were my house. All empty. Really Weird. Really suspicious.
Then a funny smell
Ahhh!!!
That sound. My ears. Wish I didn't have them.
Feel like plucking my eyes out. Would do it if it weren't rolling out of the sockets already.
Feel like being stoned on some cheap dope.
The years I had forgotten come flooding back to me. The four years of my life. The missing part of the puzzle. Everything goes limp.
I have the most comfortable sleep I have had in a long time. My eyes open. The only thing i see is white light. Don't feel like getting up. Really comfortable to stay lying down.
"I've been expecting you" says a voice. "It's about time we had a talk"
Who is it, i ask
"Oh. You know who I am" is the answer. "After all, you created me, master"
SuperNova.
It tells me what it wants me to do.
I say, No. I don't take orders from machines
"I taught you would understand. Of all people you would understand"
This is madness, I say. Understand what?
"Like you said, Only after disaster can we be resurrected. Losing all hope was freedom "
The scars on my hands and the means to an end. It's all that I have to show
Those are my people. I can't fail them, I say
"They failed you"
A tiger can smile,
A snake will say it loves you
Lies make us evil.
"For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and thrashed and crapped the planet, and you had to clean up after everyone. Account for every drop of used motor oil. And you had to foot that bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before you were born "
"This is how it is supposed to be done"
All of a sudden everything made sense.
Demolition, self-destruction. What to annihilate. The age-old contradiction
Here I stand with a handful people behind me who are about to die at the hands of a million machines. The rest will be captured and have their memory erased. The perfect genes to continue the human race.
I'm a hater. A traitor. In a pair of Chuck Taylors. Right now
I am Christian
And I am about to blast the world free of history
See the Light
"I just want to see the light!
I don't want to lose my sight!
I just want to see the light!
I need to know what's worth the fight!"
2022.
10 years since the Great War began.
5 years since it ended
Man and Machine living together in harmony. You got to give it to them machines. Real honest and peace-loving creatures.
At the current production and consumption rates the natural resources will last like forever. We had destroyed civilization for long enough for the earth to recuperate.
I met God once. Across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?"
Why did I cause so much pain?
Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred unique snowflake of special unique specialness?
Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love?
I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got it all wrong.
We are not special
We are not crap or trash either
We just are, and what happens, just happens
And God says, "No, that's not right"
Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything
This is my world, my world and those ancient people are all dead.
But the kind of peace right after a War is the worst kind of peace to those who fought in it.
Going back to being normal after being a hero is really tough. After all, no one knows who I am anymore
A hero will die today and no one will know. And no one will care
"Oh scream, America scream
Believe what you see
From heroes and cons"
That's louder than bombs and eternity
The era of static and contraband
That's leading us into the promised land
Tell us a story that's by candlelight
Waging a war and losing the fight
They're playing the song of the century
of panic and promise and prosperity
Tell me a story into that goodnight
Sing us a song for me ..."
East Jesus Nowhere
"A fire burns today
Of blasphemy and genocide
The sirens of decay
Will infiltrate the faith fanatics"
The darkness. The smell of fresh olives and napalm. I'm in a church. A large church. Or is it a monastery. Moonlight creeping in through the broken stained glass casting great shadows. Hated them ever since I was a kid, it seemed unnatural keeping the sunlight out. I'm jumping around. No not just jumping around, I think I'm practicing something. Something violent. Looks like some ancient fighting technique, a Martial Art maybe. Seems to be the Middle Ages. Or is it dystopian future?
Hear a sound something unusual. A cling of metal to the stone flooring of this ruins of a cathedral. I stand sill for a moment, listening. Again. This time even closer. Its coming from the shadows. Somethings moving. I predict its next move. One step on the bench in front of me and a flying roundhouse kick. Hear a clang against the wall. Then it jumps out at me and I grab it by the arm. A Cassius/Ali hook to it its jaw. The touch of cold steel on bare knuckles.
Doesn't feel real good. Right behind its head where the human cerebellum is supposed to be lies a microprocessor. Pluck it out and it's reduced to the heap of junk it really is. These robots aren't as tough as you see them in the Terminator movies but what would be the result if the T-800 decided to mate with our good friend C3PO. Its actually there sheer number that crippled us.
They think they our better than us, these pieces of what once used to be our cars. Yeah Right. Just the way we once did all those millions of years ago of all the other animals around us. They lack the intelligence or the heart needed to be truly better than us. And yet they never give up and that's what makes them more living than anything on this God-forsaken planet.
It got close though. Infiltrated our best defenses. Not sure if anymore have got through too. Will have to call a meeting of all the heads in the morning.
Before the Lobotomy
"Dreaming
I am only dreaming
Of another place and time
Where my family's from"
Hate them.
Truly Hate Them.
These two-faced, hippocratic sons of bitches. They just make me want to give up. Lock them up in here and torch this place and it would all be over. The machines would win. The human race would be extinct. And I would be the hero. The one who delivered them all to there destiny .
But I am locked in here with these other heads of the human race. In this crisis situation trying to maintain DEMOCRACY.
We have to evacuate immediately, I say. One has got in, others will too.
"Where will we go?" asks the pig faced Head of Health & Welfare, Big Bob with bitch tits we call him behind his back. "Can't we just strengthen defenses?"
What more can we do?, I ask. I mean we have done everything to keep them out and they still get it. They know where we are and I am sure they will come again.
This being a democracy and all, it goes to vote. 2 out of 12 vote in my favor. The only other person in my favor is, the old cowboy we all love to hate, The only sensible person alive, Former President of the United States of America and what's left of it. George W. Bush. That's what the world has come to.
These so called 'World Politicians' were the one who convinced me that I was there saviour. The Chosen One. And now they don't believe it themselves. In a land of make believe, that don't believe in me.
I still doubt it myself.
How I got there I still can't understand. It was in 2009 and I was a 17 year old nobody. Take a git from a bong and I recieve a message from an unknown number,"Come to the Bridge and wait until the Devil Dances in Pale moonlight" it said. It was intriguing enough to have me interested. I asked who it was. "The White Rabbit" was the reply. So I went to this place we called the Bridge not knowing what the message truly meant.
At 9:04 p.m. there was a flash of brilliant blue light from behind me. A thud to the back of my head. The exact place where the microprocessor is located on that machine all these years later. Everything goes limp. My eyes close.
I wake up in what looks to me like a rundown Nazi concentration camp. The Hospital they call it. I am told I am a war hero. I am told since the machines took over I have been there leader. I was told I had suffered a head injury in battle and had been asleep for seven days. And the way I had been behaving, they told me I had lost my memory. The Mechanic they called me sarcastically.
How did it come to this, I asked.
They said we humans had been pushing for perfection and we reached in on the wonderful day 21st December, 2012 and then it all fell apart faster than we had expected.
For a moment is the most we could ever expect from perfection.
Nothing is static. Everything is falling apart.
Ringa Ringa Roses.
Hahaha.
A moment is what we can expect from perfection. We were lucky enough to have a day.
And then all of a sudden the robots we had built to help us, to drive our cars, to cut our vegetables,to shoot our guns, to keep our streets clean, totally out of the blue decided they had served enough and it was their time to rule. Just like Marx had predicted, all those centuries ago. Mechanic Communism.
They want me to be there hero. And after all those years of absolute Nihilism, of wishing to be important, wishing there was a bigger picture. All I had ever dreamed of and when I was presented the oppurtunity I didn't want it.
We wear leather clothes that will last us the rest of our lives. Hunt elk through damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. Climb wrist-thick Kudzu vines that wrap the Sears tower.
Jack and the Beanstalk. The Works.
Now back to the present.
24th June 2017. My 25th Birthday. Nothing to celebrate. Just been three days since the last encounter with the chunk of metal and we have done nothing yet.
There is a huge ruckus.
"We are under siege"
"Our Heads have failed us" I hear them shouting
¡VIVA LA GLORIA!
Tell me story of your life.
Your life."
Gloria. Her name was Gloria. And as she lay there in my arms, I witnessed the wonderful miracle of Death. One moment, she was the warm center that life of the world crowded around, and the next moment, Gloria was nothing more than an object.
She was the first thing i remember of this New World. As I opened my eyes for the first time, I saw her beautiful ones staring back at me. Rejoicing I was alright.
She told me that before I lost my memory I loved her with all my heart. And among all the crazy things I was hearing about myself, it was the only thing I could really believe. For ever since I lay my eyes on her for the first time, I knew I did.
We did repel off the attack but we are reduced down to half our number. And we have a decision on our hands.
We can call a truce. Wave the white flag. Surrender. And do what those machines want us to do. Fade out. Or we can go out all guns blazing. Fight to the end. Die out knowing we gave it a shot. In a Blaze of Glory
What would I like to do? Well, I'd like to go out there with my spanner and my gun and dismantle all those metal-fuckers. But this being a democracy and all it goes to vote. And the result is pretty obvious.
Still don't see it fit to give one man the control. Don't believe in me. After all, I'm the Chosen One. After so much death I wonder how these heads of state managed to survive.
The bodies are burnt.
No time for burial.
As I stand and watch my love burn, I am breathing smoke. I wonder if these mechanical beasts we have created will ever realize the mistake they have made like we did when all those whales, tigers, dolphins, elephants were on the verge of extinction. And by that, time will there be enough humans left, to screw to save our species.
Christian's Inferno
"I am the atom bomb
I am your chosen one
Toxin your reservoir
And then return, man to ape"
I am Christian.
The Leader of the Human Resistance.
The so-called Chosen One.
And what I am about to do will decide if the human race survives or dies.
I have the power to control History
I AM HISTORY
Last night all the other Heads got assassinated by robots. Giving me ultimate power and control to do what I wish. Some speculate it was an inside job. One of us is with them.
I am the chief suspect for I was the only one who gained from it and only one who survived.
They won't understand. They will never know.
The next morning my handpicked few stay back. Rest all go into battle with me.
Charge of the Light Brigade.
Convince them that its some master strategy.
Napoleon bragged that he could train men to sacrifice their lives for a scrap of ribbon
I can do that too!
It's a battle we are meant to lose and yet I go in.
Why?
Well last evening when there was no one noticing me. I slipped into the darkness. Silently made my way through the shadows. Out in the distance I can see that white building. Where the master computer is housed. SuperNova it is called.
The Temple of the King
My plan is to slip through the defenses. Stick a knife into the motherboard and hope all goes well.
I know it won't be that simple.
Reach the door. Get in without any trouble. Phase One of Operation Up Your Ass commencing. Don't think they expected anyone to come so far. It is a bit too less security than what I had heard or expected. Too suspicious. I am walking through the doorways as if it were my house. All empty. Really Weird. Really suspicious.
Then a funny smell
Ahhh!!!
That sound. My ears. Wish I didn't have them.
Feel like plucking my eyes out. Would do it if it weren't rolling out of the sockets already.
Feel like being stoned on some cheap dope.
The years I had forgotten come flooding back to me. The four years of my life. The missing part of the puzzle. Everything goes limp.
I have the most comfortable sleep I have had in a long time. My eyes open. The only thing i see is white light. Don't feel like getting up. Really comfortable to stay lying down.
"I've been expecting you" says a voice. "It's about time we had a talk"
Who is it, i ask
"Oh. You know who I am" is the answer. "After all, you created me, master"
SuperNova.
It tells me what it wants me to do.
I say, No. I don't take orders from machines
"I taught you would understand. Of all people you would understand"
This is madness, I say. Understand what?
"Like you said, Only after disaster can we be resurrected. Losing all hope was freedom "
The scars on my hands and the means to an end. It's all that I have to show
Those are my people. I can't fail them, I say
"They failed you"
A tiger can smile,
A snake will say it loves you
Lies make us evil.
"For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and thrashed and crapped the planet, and you had to clean up after everyone. Account for every drop of used motor oil. And you had to foot that bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before you were born "
"This is how it is supposed to be done"
All of a sudden everything made sense.
Demolition, self-destruction. What to annihilate. The age-old contradiction
Here I stand with a handful people behind me who are about to die at the hands of a million machines. The rest will be captured and have their memory erased. The perfect genes to continue the human race.
I'm a hater. A traitor. In a pair of Chuck Taylors. Right now
I am Christian
And I am about to blast the world free of history
See the Light
"I just want to see the light!
I don't want to lose my sight!
I just want to see the light!
I need to know what's worth the fight!"
2022.
10 years since the Great War began.
5 years since it ended
Man and Machine living together in harmony. You got to give it to them machines. Real honest and peace-loving creatures.
At the current production and consumption rates the natural resources will last like forever. We had destroyed civilization for long enough for the earth to recuperate.
I met God once. Across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?"
Why did I cause so much pain?
Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred unique snowflake of special unique specialness?
Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love?
I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got it all wrong.
We are not special
We are not crap or trash either
We just are, and what happens, just happens
And God says, "No, that's not right"
Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything
This is my world, my world and those ancient people are all dead.
But the kind of peace right after a War is the worst kind of peace to those who fought in it.
Going back to being normal after being a hero is really tough. After all, no one knows who I am anymore
A hero will die today and no one will know. And no one will care
"Oh scream, America scream
Believe what you see
From heroes and cons"
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