Metal Threat - Chapter 1

I didn't know where down was. I could feel a cold hard surface on the back of my head. But there was no point of reference. I could have been standing up against a cold wall, I could have been attached to a cold ceiling or I could have been lying on a cold floor. All was indifferent. A thick fog lay over my mind.

I am going to have to get used to it, I thought.

What happened? How did I come to be so disoriented?

But most importantly, WHO AM I?

My head was empty. I couldn't remember who I was, WHAT I was, nor where I came from. I didn't even know how to move!

Darkness. I could not see a thing. Seeing things? Yes, I had a sense of sight. I had other senses too. I FELT the cold surface against the back of my head. I SMELLED the air which was... inorganic, unnatural, unpleasant. But the sense of sight was the most important one of all of them, I was sure of it now. If only I could see something beyond the void in which I was submerged...

Enough, I though. I have to acquire my sight. What must I do?

I didn't know.

Darkness... Silence... Void... Why was my head so empty? Why was this discomforting?

Silence. Yes, there was now silence. I was aware of it. Something was missing from around my head. I more and more sensed the discomfort at this absence.

Wait! All this time I had a head! What is a head? It is a part of the body... I have a body also?

And I somehow knew that the head was the more important part than the rest of my body. Because I was seeing from the head!

WAIT, NOT SO FAST!

Pain. Thunder. Beyond the darkness was light. It was white and blindingly bright. So bright that it pierced my eyes like a blade of a knife... Eyes? Yes, I had two eyes. And I had to close them, fast. It HURT!

I didn't know how to close them.

I didn't know how to move!

I screamed. It was probably the weakest of the moans but to me my scream seemed like the sound of all suffering in the entire universe. Because to me I was the only thing in the universe. Because to me I WAS the universe.

My scream came from within me and made me aware of my throat and lungs. I felt like an ancient machine, grown with rust, that was now put back into crackling action by its old and forgetful master. And as the long-aged gears creaked back into action the master would recall their sound from the backs of his century old memory.

I tried lifting my arms... Arms? Yes, I had two of them. But why two? It didn't matter, the picture was getting clearer. And I was indeed lying on my back, on something hard and cold.


...


At last, I got up. At last, I was STANDING. Indeed, STANDING, which meant on my two FEET. The word FEET was associated in my mind with a pair of lower limbs that were somehow convenient to STAND on. Although seemingly illogical and irrational but standing on my two feet did not throw me off balance.

I tried to WALK. I tried to move my left leg forward. WALKING, I thought, means alternating the stance between the two feet in hopes of achieving a velocity and performing translation on the surface of the flat ground. I did just that, but found the idea to be incredibly inconvenient as a moment later I lay flat on the ground with the metal surface making an imprint into my face. If this is called WALKING, then I am no good at it.

I used my arms to get up. With a loud grunt I pulled myself back onto my feet and stumbling made another attempt at moving forward. As I fell again, I came to a logical conclusion that I wasn't moving my second foot fast enough. My philosophical feel on this matter, however, was sharply abrupted by the pain of my chin smashing back into the metallic ground.

I grunted again, even louder. Swinging my head from side to side, I reconsidered this. If walking meant throwing the comfortable two-feet stance off balance I wanted no part of it. Maybe CRAWLING would do, I thought. Yes, CRAWLING, which meant moving on all fours. I wouldn't need to work so hard on keeping my balance and trying to remain only on two or more often, should I say, ONE foot.

And I started crawling. Slowly, moving limb after limb (it was very difficult to coordinate their motion) I was able to provide myself with SOME vector of velocity. Not a fast one, I must add, but it was good start. Very soon, however, I found myself inconvenienced by the inefficiency of the moves I was making. It occurred to me then that trying to walk had indeed been worthwhile.

With a grunt I got back onto my two feet. It was much harder to keep balance this time, maybe because my muscles were tired from crawling. I fought on and moved my left leg forward. A thought sparked in my mind, as to why did I always start moving with my LEFT leg? I wondered if it meant something. I also wondered if my having such peculiar thoughts meant anything too. How do I know that a creatures such as myself should be walking on two feet and not on two arms or all fours?


...


Presently I was running. I didn't bother asking myself how it came to me so quickly, after being unable to walk, not for a meter, not for half a meter. It was not relevant. Not at this point. It seemed to me that I was build for doing just that, RUNNING. Nothing else made any sense.

RUNNING meant walking so quickly that at each step I would be lifted in the air for a split second or two. This, in effect, allowed to acquirea significantly great speed at a relatively cheap labour. And if it had been so damn efficient, it made nothing but sense to use it for traversing the length of the world I found myself in.

I suddenly felt a great passion for exploring and analyzing this world, for taking in the information about all the geometrical shapes that stood rising out of the flat ground, for feeling and smelling the textures they were made of. I felt like a small child who had just learned to crawl, a child that would satisfy their curiousity about the surrounding world at any cost.

How was I able to draw these analogies? I wondered where my knowledge came from? I wondered how I knew about children at all, or how they develop. What was a CHILD?A small, tiny youngling of the same species as myself. But what species am I? I did not know.

It brought me joy as my position changed with every flying second, as I took in new things, new textures, new smells, new surroundings. Then, like a wave, it passed and my curiosity was gone. I sensed the uncomfort that one usually senses when they take in redundant information.

I stopped and looked around. All around me was the same metal desert, long, flat and grey, smelling distinctly of metal, the unnatural and inorganic fume. Not made by nature. Alien to me.

I was PANTING. PANTING meant breathing heavily. Indeed only now I noticed how tired I was from running. My sprint, it appeared, was not the most optimal way of transporting myself around.