5.Nov.08

The Child Dances

Part One

 By: Taratron

            She couldn’t tell if her optics were on, off, broken, shattered.  If she was blind.  Deaf.  Mute.  Perhaps even dead.

Perhaps these thoughts were even nothing but the thoughts of the dead.  Perhaps there was no Primus to judge, no Matrix to enter.  Nothing but sole darkness…and simple thoughts that might make you think you were alive.

An incoherent sob echoed in the cavern, and hands, sudden, smooth, and wet hands touched her face daintily, as though handling inner wires or an organic creature.

Her hands.  She knew them well; tools, playthings with young, now working things when still youthful but older.  Six fingers per hand. 

She believed that they were amethyst…a pinkish-purple, but perhaps that too was merely a misplaced memory.

But they were wet…and even in the darkness which was now her sole world, even though there should not have been an odor, there was.  Smooth, oily…in her mind, she saw silver and blue streaks.  Mech fluids and oils.  The lipids of life.

She shuddered in the darkness, and knew. 

There was no noise because there was no one left.  There was no voice because she had long since screamed it to exhaustion.  And there was no sight, no light, because she was buried under her sister’s body.  The wetness which drenched her hands and upturned, trembling face, was the lipids draining from an empty and lifeless cell.

            In the darkness, sometimes she could see.

She knew, even in her youth, that darkness meant blindness, that you couldn’t see…but images flashed before her optics, or perhaps her mind’s eye.  But more than the sight were the sounds. 

Wet, wrenching, ripping sounds.  Screams in thousands of pitches, tones, agonies.  But over them all, over the wet noises and the shrieks and the sobs…a slow rumble, nearly like a ship’s engine before it exploded.  Laughter.

Laughter.  The smell of lipid oils.  Cool silver darkness against her face.  And now.

And then there had been blackness, and some time later (she still did not know how much), she had awakened, or at least become conscious of being awake, and the blackness was alive.

Some time ago, again measured only in her mind as an infinite spread, much like the numbers her tutors had plugged into her memory in math classes, she remembered screaming, trying to move, only to find her small and now drenched body, slick and desperate, buried alive. 

She dimly remembered feeling a face against her legs, and when she had reached for it, forcing herself not to scream, it had been no stranger’s face, but the often-caressed and kissed face of Nightwind.

Then more blackness, broken only by mute cries…and she had become conscious of being awake again, had been for some time.

Nightwind, she thought with another mental shudder, and flexed her upper body, unconsciously trying to throw back the corpse and free herself.

It was like trying to throw off gravity.  She collapsed again, feeling her fingers crumble and curl in on themselves like organic insects in extreme heat, and then the world went numb again.

            A day.  No, less, less.  It had to be less; her internal chronometer lied and said only cycles, hours, had passed.  Nothing more.

Nightwind.

If Nightwind…then who else? 

She remembered the laughter, the screams…playing on the console when Nightwind had burst into the room, eons ago, and then shoved her down, hiding the smaller bot within the ground concave, and then-

More laughter, a scream…and then blackness.  She remembered nothing else, could remember nothing else save her sister’s body over hers, and the rain of oils and mech.

She had woken on her belly the first time of the many times she had come back to this darkness, and the smell of cooling oil, but the oils had given her leverage, and she was able to turn over and move her limbs weakly.  She couldn’t move Nightwind.

Trapped.

And the laughter…and perhaps merely an image from an old media terror tale…but glowing green optics with that chuckle of so much fear.

She rolled to her back, her hands cramped and curled, and forced them against the body above her.  Nightwind.  Dear Primus…her older sister, her only sister, her.

It was still dark, always dark, but she could nearly see her sister’s face. 

Her breath caught in her throat, and she was paralyzed from the waist up, her legs already bent at the knees, the wires within the joint fraying.  The knees against her sister.  Shoving.  Nightwind. 

Oh Nightwind.

She wanted to stay here forever, safe…she had been safe from the screams and the sounds and the laughter…the green glows had not seen her, if they were real at all.  Only Nightwind.  Nightwind.

Wind running with her, playing on the console, teasing her, calling her numbed nuts and gear-head, hugging her, trying to run her down in races, cheering and cheating.  Writing on the computer console.  Teaching her to read, to decipher simple codes.  Math.

The steady drain of the liquids had lightened the form slightly.  She thought of her sister as her small body heaved, struggling, shoving upward with both arms and legs as the slick liquids dribbled down her body.

Nightwind…and the darkness that was safe.  Had shielded her.  Kept her away.  But here.  Small and starving and so scared.

No shield she could carry, then.

Her throat made no noise, her vocal units too worn from the initial shock of waking state, but her form jerked and twisted, forcing itself against and onto gravity. 

The body lifted an inch, and then Primus said there was light.

It blinded, it glorified, it cast the truth within the darkness under her dead sister’s body.  It made her vocal units tremble as she sought to scream and fought the losing battle, unable to stop the dry heaves.

Her legs had been shoving against her sister’s head, and now that that was gone, there was light, and choked sobs which could not escape her vocal units and mind.

Nightwind.

There was a hole in the darkness, a gap in the sky, and her sister’s throat dribbled more liquid, slowly, as though for drama.

She reached up, with trembling, cramping fingers, and pushed the stump away, her throat still gaping like an organic who has just stumbled into an atmosphere without oxygen.  The body’s upper section, outlined against the violent laughing light, slumped back and away, and she laid on her back, stunned, awed, her body rebelling and shrieking inside even as she powered down her optics, unable to move.

            Her hands twitched even as her optics revved back on and into the light, and somehow during her black state, her blank state of shock, her body had moved itself to a sitting position, various parts of it aching and shrilling with those aches.

But there was sight now…and perhaps the other senses would follow.

The darkness was gone.

Her optics, though on, seemed dead as she took in the room.  Her sister’s body.  Head.  Arms.  Cracked and disjointed out of time.  And the walls.  Streamed and streaked in party fashion, with limbs flung so hard they were embedded within the very walls, with oils and shattered optics lenses.  A collapsed wall.  A path leading to the outside of her home…beyond that she could not see. 

Sight.  Nightwind.

It was not a hole she had fallen into, she noticed calmly, but an impression in the ground.  Where her father had stored something when the foundation was weak.  A concave.  A small indentation in the ground, a dip in the foundation nearly four feet deep, like a hill.  The unit was gone, the impression made all the deeper by Nightwind.  Oh.  Nightwind.

She finally looked at her sister on the floor, but no screams left.  No…the body looked as though something played with Nightwind in the same way she, herself, used to play with ancient toys when they would not work.  You smashed them against walls, bit into them, broke the wheels and tires and lights.

Nightwind’s face had no seeing optics.  But her mouth gaped, a hole without a peg, and slivers of liquid were frozen within the cavern.   Windy.

She drew her legs up to her chest, trembling carefully, not to disturb the head at her feet, and wrapped her aching arms around the top of them, her optics focusing on Nightwind’s face.  Head.

“Wind,” she tried to gasp, but nothing came out save empty gasp, and an aching throat.  One of her hands rose, fluttering like an organic insect in a web, and stroked her throat absently.

If Wind…then her mother?  Father? 

Did it make any sense to even wonder about the city of the colony?  Nightwind…dead.  And her parents…gone.  Limbs in the walls, and she tried to scream again and failed.

            Dancer what are you doing?

Daddy, she said and he picked her up and held her close.  His arms were strong around her, and she remembered seeing her mom in them before, when her mommy had been in the medic place with all the shiny droids, and she hadn’t been allowed to see her mommy.

She wasn’t supposed to call her mommy anymore, but mom, because she was not a Little Dancer anymore, her dad told her, but a Big Dancer.  A Big Child.

But always my child, he told her and gave her a squeeze and then a shuttle ride on his back and she screamed in joy and delight and Nightwind took her then, because she was still small enough to ride Wind.

You’re getting heavy, said Wind and wrestled her down and she said, No, I’m not.

And Wind said, okay, then fat.

And she had cried and called for daddy, really dad, and Wind had only been teasing her, laughing at her like a sister is supposed to but a sister is also supposed to be nice, dad said.

I love you anyways, even if you are fat, Wind said, and little Dancer who was now a Big Dancer a big girl-bot just laughed and then Wind swung her on the poles and the sky was bright and Wind was laughing and the sky was falling and Wind didn’t have a head.

            She managed to pass the inner walls without crying out, without revealing her loss and the agony, without much of anything save a bland darkness of a face.

Nightwind.  Oh, Wind.  Windy.  The wind was cold but the wind was there and the wind was dead and silvery fatal.

Mother.  Her.  Arms and limbs askew.  She knew the parts were her mother.  Yellow and violet, streaked silver and broken and dead. 

Her head was gone too.  One arm, still attached to her torso.  There was a hole in that cavity, large enough for her to crawl through.  She did not try; she only stared at the form and was dead inside.

Mother.

Creator, the female creator.  And torso tracks of fingers. 

On one wall, huge and spider-like, deep silver and crimson, a handprint, deep and etched in by force alone.  Sheer size was an impossibility; it spanned longer than her very head.  A monster’s talon, claw, paw.

Monster.  That word. 

The rest of the outer wall, which parted her home from the streets, was rubble, trash, offal.  And silver with mech fluid, littered with joints.  She picked up a lower jaw, in a state akin to astonishment, then dropped it, careful to step over it and out of the house.

Not her father’s jaw.  His head, the remains, small and fractured and able to be juggled, if she so desired.  His chest was gone.  His back sprockets were in an inner wall.

The streets.  Dear Primus.  Streets.

Others.  The very thought paralyzed her in a puddle of mech trail.  Others.

Could there?

No.  Yes.  Had to be.  Nightwind-

(Oh, Wind, Wind)

-had hidden her, buried her, saved her from the monster, from the talons on the wall, from the streets of lipids and shattered mirrors and metals.  Others.  There had to be, yes.  By Primus, please yes.

Wind.  Oh, Wind, and she slipped in the puddle, landing hard on her splayed hands and arms and torso, sobbing dryly, her optics fading, mouth twisting as liquid lashed inside.

No no.

She laid for surely a day, three days, forever, and felt herself rising, her body torn and weak and covered in fluid, and she awoke a cycle later, walking calmly around the city.  The colony.

Nightwind.

Her mother.  Father.  Wind.

And the streets, deserted.  Another hand print on a crumbled wall; in its palm laid a spark casing.

Spark.  All gone.  To the Matrix or Pit or Primus or whatever lied beyond cold, dead stars.

Stars.  Then…

She felt herself slipping again, in a new puddle, and

            You’re fat Dancer

I am NOT!  Don’t say that!

You’re fat Dancer so fat the stars will tip from your weight

That’s wrong mean you lie!

I am the wind, Dancer I am the night and the wind

I’m telling!

The wind at night overcomes all!

I’m Dancer and Star

Yes, you’re the fat Stardancer ain’t you?

I’m telling that’s mean Wind!

You’re not really fat Dancer you just

I’m gonna dance on the stars one day and you’ll see

Dance and you’ll see, I’ll see what?

The stars love me and they dance too!

            The Community Center.

She stared at it dumbly, and could not move beyond its inner gates.  The outer ones were broken and under her stained and torn feet.

Center.  The center of the colony, of the city.

Help.  She nodded, unknowing of the action.  Help.

Guardian.

Guardians.  She remembered them, remembered

            Class now this is Guardian 0428

Hello hello Guardian sir mister commander Guardian

I’m not a commander just a Guardian do you know what I guard?

Us!  Me her she it he.  Omicron

Yes, I protect Omicron.

From what?  What?

From bad bots.  From bad people.

There’s no, no, there’s no bad here

No, but one day maybe

Do you shoot bad bots?

I don’t like to but---

what’s your name, name?

Depth Charge.  Guardian Depth Charge.

You he Guardian

Depth Charge….bad guys….Omicron

            Guardians.  Of course.  She was looking for Guardians, for anyone.  Help. 

But the Center…where the Guardians stayed, where her class had come and gone on a trip.  The Center was red and empty and silver and dead.  Nothing.  No one.

Torsos.  Limbs.  Heads flung through walls, caved-in, whole, shattered pieces.  She walked through a hole in the walls, and stepped on a shard of a crystal optic.

Optic.  Nightwind.  Wind.  No head, no optics.  Wind.

She was not aware that she was keening softly as she laid down on the slick ground, that her vocal units had begun processing again, and barely aware that it was not the ground she stretched herself on, but yet another torso.  It was a potter’s field of torsos, and she slept without knowing.

And awoke outside, standing, glancing at her hands, which were up to her optics, dribbling and dripping silver.  She stared at them for several days, then let them fall to her sides wetly.

No.  No Guardians.  Mother.  Father.  Wind.

Oh, Wind.  She felt herself dying again.

Alone.  Dear Primus, alone.

And monster handprints and spark cases and optic-less heads rolling on the walls and through the streets.  Dear Primus.  Dear Primus alive.

She let her feet walk as her optics turned black.  Walk.  A simple task.  Two bodies by her feet.  One behind the other, both torsos smashed through, spark cases removed.  Silver fingers on the holes.  She moved on, optics on and glowing but gray.

Guardian.  Protector. 

They he said they stopped the bad guys they protected Omicron

One foot rose, and was paralyzed in the air.

He said he Omicron bad guys

He said Protector Guardian he

Depth Charge he the Center

Wind.  Oh NO WINd

Protector Guardians and mother and father and colony-

(don’t think of her face her optics her mech on you slick slippery)

 -gone.  All gone and silver and dead. 

Alone.  Primus.  Prime no, Prime no.

The foot came down, the body with it, and she laid again, calming, soothing into the slick silver soil, and sometime later, her arm, possessed and passive, reached for Nightwind’s arm because Nightwind always held her in sleep, and her arm wrapped around that new arm, bringing it tight over her waist and then to her chest, and as she sobbed, dead and alone, kissed the fingers whose last joints had been torn away from a force greater than gravity or tendon.

Wind.  Wind.  Oh Wind, hold me close in recharge sleep.

            Omicron.

Oh, Wind, Wind.  She would have wept had she been able.

She knew what weeping was, what tears were, from Organic Science in school.  School.  And Plasma…her instructor, the droid aides, the time Plasma had ordered an organic insect for the class to see, and there it had been, in an hermetic glass jar, with tubes of oxygen being filtered and pumped in.  Someone had removed the tube, later, on accident, and the insect had died.

She remembered it faintly.  Blue.  Green.  With wings, like a jet, but these were large and oblong and so thin.  So very small and thin.

Mother.  Daddy.  Wind.

How odd that she felt nothing inside, that there was nothing, not even the abyss anymore.  In her mind, she saw Wind again.  Her parents were simply gone.  Plasma was gone.  The Guardian Depth Charge was gone.

Omicron lives.  She shuddered at the thought, her optics wide and brilliant but unseeing, her fingers caressing the arm of Nightwind, the digits shaking, wet.

Dead.  Dead.  Offline, dear Primus, the whole colony.  No survivors.

She barely remembered being under Nightwind, being hidden, offline for a while, unconscious, dear Primus, and the limbs in the wall.

A low keen erupted from her throat, a hiss that made her dry-heave and cough, desperate for liquid, for cooling fluid. 

Wind.  Nightwind.  Mother.  Daddy.  Wind.  Plasma.

She was unaware that she was shaking in the vast silence, unaware that half of the arm she clutched had unwound its metal tendons and was clattering against her, the new and only sound in the world.  Colony.

This is a city class this is the colony Omicron and there will be a large city here someday.  We will be the first settlers, just as the others others who they were were did.

She powered down her optics, weary.

Dancer my name is StarDancer the stars will sing with me and dance the dance of the moon, Daddy.

Of course they will, Dancer, of course course stars Dancer stars arms in the walls and fingers in the Guardians and your sister dead and your mother in pieces and me gone, Dancer, little Dancer…

A melody played in her head, and she listened, weeping inside.

Dance a jig, a merry jig, dance and swirl and twirl about, Little Dancer, with the suns and moon and stars, dance dance dance, little child, little angel, Dancer Star you are StarDancer Omicron Depth Charge Plasma Wind Wind dear Primus Wind the little insect in the jar, alone, and he died alone the last of his kind.  No air, Wind, no air and the wings were so small and thin and his optics and Wind and Wind-

Her optics down.  She slept.

            And felt something.

Monster.

The silver hand leapt to her mind, and she couldn’t power her optics.  Weak.  Weak.  She was, and the noise….

No noises save herself.  Wind’s arm over her.  No noises.

We are not alone, Wind, Wind.

A noise.  Footsteps.  She laid still, unable to move. 

Dear Primus it could be Wind could be Plasma could be

NO

could be the HAND the MONSTER

the killer the one who hurt everyone Wind, I’m scared.

She trembled, and then was still.  More footsteps, prints, coming closer. 

She couldn’t move.  Monster.

Monster oh Wind I’m so scared someone’s there

No one is there, Dancer, it was just a flick, just a media production

Wind I’m scared

I’m here don’t be scared, Dancer, StarDancer, see, I’m with you always, see, the Monster is dead now, see?

She didn’t see.  No.  The monster….something was here.

No motion.  That’s how the monsters saw you, how you ended like-

Mom Daddy WIND Plasma the insect in the jar oh Prime help me I’m afraid.

Steps.  Closer and closer, and then….

Her optics powered up without her thought, and her head spun, tilting slightly.  A shadow.  Large, black, on the silver ground. 

The monster.  It could be.  It sensed her now, wanted her too.

Wind help me

She clutched the arm closer, and stiffened, dead, as it rattled, the only noise in the land, in the frozen colony, and the shadow turned around.  She stared.  Could only stare.

Mon-

NO! NONONO!

It wasn’t the monster, couldn’t be, never never.  She knew this shadow, even from where she laid, knew it, remembered it.

The insect in the jar the bug without air, its optics exploded and its wings fell it fell insect in the jar, Wind.

The tall shadow stood over her, and she could barely see its, his, face.  That face.  Yes.  Have you ever killed anyone?  Bad guys?  No bad guys here….

There’s no, no, there’s no bad here

No, but one day maybe

Do you shoot bad bots?

I don’t like to but---

what’s your name, name?

Depth Charge.  Guardian Depth Charge.

Him.  He.  Guardian.

He came back to save me he found the Monster he came back to guard me protect me PRIMUS WIND!

Wind.  She remembered that she was with Wind, in recharge berth, in bed, and Wind’s arm was around her. 

No.  No.  Her optics flashed brighter, and the Guardian looked down at her.

She felt his gaze as she never had before; in the class, in class, with Plasma dead, no more class, but once in class, he had come and talked and had looked at everyone but now solely at her.  He saw her.  Primus.  Wind. 

His face.  Yellow and teal and red optics.  Fear.  Yes.  He looked afraid, which was wrong, because he was a Guardian, they didn’t fear, they were guards, protection.  Omicron.

Guardian.  She tried to rise, to move, to proof her life, to weep, anything.  She was stone, she was dead, she was gone.  No.

He turned, his optics elsewhere; he had not seen her, had not seen her.  Thought her dead.  Lying in the streets with the dead.  Dead.  NO.

He shouted, screamed, made noise, but she couldn’t tell what he spoke, if anything.  Maybe a dream.  Maybe Wind was right; maybe all a dream.  The monster was gone, see?

See.  No.  Darkness.  Darkness meant you couldn’t see.  See.  No, Wind, I don’t.

She awoke moments later, puzzled, petrified, and he was gone.  Gone.

No.  No.  Primus, Wind, no.

Guardian.  Bad guys.  Not on Omicron.  Here.  The monster’s gone, Guardian…help me, Guardian.

Help.

A noise startled her suddenly, and she was standing, her arms free, Wind’s arm gone, and standing free and tall, her voice aching and unit torn.  No.

A ship before her, so far away.  Running was impossible, and her mind keened in defeat.  Her legs were frozen.  A ship.  Escape.  A dead colony. 

Wind help me!

Help.  No.  And the ship.  She couldn’t see its name.

Do monsters drive fly ships?  No.

No.  On the helm of the ship, the side, she could barely see the Guardian sign.  Yes.  Guardians help you, if you need help class, call a Guardian they’ll help you don’t be afraid

Oh Wind, oh Wind, I so am scared help me.

The Guardian was near his ship, his, and he seemed to be scanning the colony.  For a moment, he stood on his feet, then collapsed, screaming, keening, and it was as if her vocal unit had broken free, all her wails released. 

She couldn’t move.  Primus, help me move don’t LEAVE me here!

He had looked right at her; she remembered that.  For one moment, his optics on hers.  She had been seen.  He had done it.  She was not alone.

Her arms were free, and she stared at them, paralyzed, frozen, and then they were in the air, waving, calling, keening and screaming without noise.  Her body was trapped, her arms free, her optics dead and glowing.

One hand waved frantically as the other spasmed and hung dead and limp on her arm.  Look here me I’m HERE here!

He was standing again, and looked once over the colony’s ruins.  She was far enough away to see him shake his head.  She could see him; surely he….?

Guardian NOOO help me! 

His name?  Name?  She could shout it, freeze him, dear Primus.  Depth.

Charge.  Depth!  Call him WIND!

Depth Charge.  The word died on her tongue as he boarded, and her shoulders defeated, slumping upon her body.  The Guardian was losing, leaving.  Leaving.  No.  Wind.

“De,” she tried to gasp, try to say, to scream, and her throat collapsed on her with a cry, and she could only stare as the ship lifted.  De.  Depth Charge.  Guardian.  No.  No.

Gone.  He had left her.  Call them if you need help.  They’ll help you.

Do you see, Dancer?  See the monster, he’s gone, dead, offline forever? 

But she saw nothing save crimson optics in glass as the ship rose, Depth Charge behind the glass, his screams, his keens, falling on the ground, the silver on his body from the bodies, no.  Leaving.  Going, going.  Gone.

The ship was there and then the ship was gone, and she could only stare at it, dumb, mute, dead, her optics fading.  Wind.  Wind.  He left me.  Wind. 

The only one alive, the last one.  In a colony, a city of the dead.  The Guardian left her.

Dance dance with the stars, Little Dancer, Little One.  Dance dance….the stars will merry-jig with you.

Wind, she whispered and said in her spark and mind, and then folded down and over, lying in the refuse, her optics shattered and dwindling. 

Omicron watched over the small StarDancer, the sole spark alive within its city-colony, and she did not see at long last, because there was darkness.  Above, cold dead stars did not dance.

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