The sky was odd that day. Like a television, tuned to a dead channel. It gave me hope, some semblance of order that that my surroundings refused to offer. The wet slap of mud being flung by countless feet. The constant murmur of hundreds of whispers in countless languages, buzzing like a colossal humming bee. The sweet stench of rotting fruit and corpses. Slowly luring my sanity away from me. My lip began to quiver as I realized how insignificant I was compared to the vast swath of squat buildings that plastered the horizon, and also because of the realization that these very assaults on my senses would persist throughout. To play with the filth, one must get dirty. I took a deep breath, and plunged myself into the world of the forgotten, downtrodden, and began systematically categorizing those who seemed like promising candidates. There would be some fun to be had yet.
As light dawned, the residents of the avenue lay in a casual heap on the south sidewalk, legs mostly occupying the bottom layer of the nonchalant pile, but other than that a truly random assortment of violently dismembered body parts. The heap was particularly large, as it contained the remains of somewhere near 50 residents of the relatively small city street, maybe a few passer-by who had been added in coincidentally. The throng of the unkempt and dirty beggars was what originally caught the attention of a passing member of the city guards. Shielded from view, the pile was the last thing the guard expected to see. Maybe an entertaining fight, maybe a dispute between a man and his whore-for-a-wife. It was a letdown, a disturbing letdown, but a letdown nonetheless. When more guardsmen arrived, staring warily at the mud covered vagrants, the throng seemed to dissipate back into its original form of a sparse mob, milling about slowly.
I couldn’t believe I had found such a perfect place to begin. Here, the chaos seemed to abate, maybe for only a short period of time, but it seemed like an omen for me, as if the universe had just delivered me this wonderful opportunity. As I methodically began removing the tools of my trade from their receptacles I noticed I was quivering with excitement. It couldn’t be helped though; it had been far too long since I had been able to do this. Far too long. I decided to begin with the buildings on the North side, so I would finish on the South, no particular reason to do so, it just seemed right.
“I think we found something to feed into the machine” one guardsman yelled to the other over the racket of the removal team of insect-like robots.
As the other guardsmen raced over to his counterpart, he noticed what the other seemed so excited about. There seemed to be curious markings under the pile.
“This is probably the most boring assignment I ‘ve done all week” muttered the first guardsman, glancing at the awkwardly placed remnants of what he called “filth-eaters”
“The machine has yet to process anything we find here” answered the second
The first guardsman gave the other a concerned look
“You can’t be serious. Don’t tell you’re one the people who believe it shouldn’t be taken for granted” he said wryly
The second merely shot him a dirty look and proceeded to loiter about as he was doing before the brief moment of excitement, pretending to be carefully looking for other raw information they could feed into the machine to find out what happened to cause such a gruesome mess. But it was as the other man had said, taking the machine for granted was easy, and extrapolating the answer from their data would take it no time at all.
How does one find an anomaly? Why merely compile all the raw data into organized sets, quantify the variables and analyze for outliers. All the lives of a city of millions suddenly became a pattern, mostly in tune with an ancient circadian rhythm derived from survival instincts. If you analyze the outliers, they make patterns as well, if you do it long enough, or have enough data. What then. Where are the anomalies. How can there be anomalies if you can predict any number of possible events, stems of stems, and prepare for them. You create one. Or a few. Or many.
The red screens reflected on the sweat that layered every face that gazed upon them. Unknown. What does that mean? Within limitless sets of data, knowledge, raw computing power, here was something unknown? What chance did men have if their machine couldn’t answer their question? The first question left un-answered, and maybe the last. A woman fainted. A man caught her, then let her go as his arms failed him.
There was something wrong with me. I was losing everything. I was able to stand maybe an hour ago, and now I could barely remember what standing was. I was reverting to my previous state. Who I was was no longer a pressing the concern. The main concern was remembering how to stand, how to walk, how to breathe. Where was I going? What are these blurry images floating in my unconscious, stained with broad strokes of red, punctuated by a sense of urgency. I vomited, and a solid mass seemed to appear from my mouth. I was on my knees now. I couldn’t panic, I didn’t know how anymore.
The babies in the vats were twitching. The man in charge of overseeing the birthing chambers was called immediately. He didn’t know what to do. The machine was supposed to handle any problems, remove any anomalous embryos, and undertake the birthing process. After some time, the twitching stopped, and the man breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t know what to think and when he consulted the machine he saw what the problem was. Some individual had made a clerical error and listed every baby’s life expectancy as 2 years. Not just 2 years, but the month, date, time, down to the second. This was probably what had confused the machine, as it couldn’t possibly control the life of an individual that accurately. He smiled a smile of satisfaction, and remembered all the machine had done, wiping out any potential criminals from society, and allowing the separation between the filth and the people who had volunteered themselves to be rid of such deviants that caused mayhem within orderly society. Its amazing effect astounded him, and he vowed to one day journey to where it was kept, and gaze upon its fleshy visage of pristine brain matter coupled with the trillions of hair like wires that emanated from it.
Anomalies. So many. The race was on. How many could be made before they were found. The monotony was gone. For a machine this must be happiness, its logic spoke, the absence f monotony.
Gender:
Points: 300
Reviews: 0