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Once a man had set sail under a blear black sky and guided his ship between the stars until he reached the center. Here he found a vast technological empire unlike he dreamed before, where dimensions seemed to melt like shining liquid clockwork into one in the pure cool air. Everything about it was perfect, crystal in a sea of shining glass, except for one problem: no life existed in this place. He searched and searched for a single living organism; sentient, animal, plant, anything... nothing. But slowly and gradually day after day and week after week the technology grew; more and more was added and the existing technology improved, became streamlined, more efficient. One day e realized: the technology was alive and organic, and more than this someone had genetically engineered it to replicate itself and modify its own existing genetic structure. But worse than this, the race who created it was not so distant as he thought, and he soon came to suspect a sinister intent who nature and magnitude he had never before considered. He stepped into the room and gazed at the vast network of cables and machines which flooded the dark corners and crossed like spiderwebs on the ceiling. It was not a room devoid of light, for light shone in through the windows and cracks in the walls, giving the room a sense of slumber and quiet growth. A faint mustiness floated in the air, a scent like old cardboard boxes and styrofam crates filled with growing plants, verdent with chlorophyll yet waiting, waiting in the illuminated darkness. He felt like a child hiding away from parents, school, and classmates, who recently stumbled into a dark boiler room and decided to while away a few hours listening to the rumblings and faint emcahnical sounds, half-frightened by the darkness. Except that here no machinery rumbled and the shadows seemed to touch him gently crisscrossing to form variations of light and shading, making the light seem yet more beautiful and complex. Darkness of night flooded the still, small room, pouring over the bedsheets and filling mirror with its own image as dean looked across the room, his pupils dialted pinpoint-thin even in the darkness, even in the still night which brushed his ears with only the sound of his own breathing, slow and quiet, calm; a tranquility like resting still, eyes closed under a sky of shining stars. Thoughts swam like oil pools under his closed eyelids, slowly churning along well-worn paths, paths he followed time and time again under black canopies just like this one, all of them the same. |