Larsen

This is an older science-fiction-e piece of mine and I must say I've lost much faith in it since, still, I'd be curious to know what people think....

There really isn't any moral that goes with it, I think I was writing off spleen when I did it....

Whatever....heh

The Simulacrum

Station Terminal Walnut-3 of Colony Hypos, connecting with a great part of the southern planet, bustled aswarm with people like a great many ants. Overhead, suspended by a post, was the sign indicative of the metal centipede's coming close along the track. Until then it shone red, indicating none should stray toward the exposed passage at anytime.

During this the scatter of ants made do with waiting, a whole train-load of men, women and kids, for the accustomed time when they would set off toward work or school or some other daily point in their lives. Mothers, with their small babies, did not bother opening up any communication not inclusive of their own familiar spheres. Groomed business tight-skins didn't raise an eye at the black teenagers that needled less than a centimeter by their suitcases. And a whole flesh of artists and students only gave the weakest signs of affection toward any single person.

And yet somehow this terminal sounded with a rhythmic sea of talk; it was the cacophony of groans and bickering that blew up whenever any single stranger slammed into another: two alien spheres crashing together. Or it might also have been the steady withering threats and pounding laughter of cell phones. Either way it was a living thing.

Aside from the music being pumped by this multitude was a dark stranger. White, middle-aged, in an olive-colored overcoat. Male, -- coming near him a young boy of three swallowed a jet of musk-sweet cologne from an un-zippered maw, -- before being tugged with all the impetus of a grave-robber by his mommy (a mildly attractive hag of 38 with one still in the oven).... The man looked subversively into her face as she took the struggling boy under the arm. She looked him pretty badly in turn.

The white, middle-aged man was not a looker. For instance, he had a pasty white scar on his fore-head from a beating a while ago. Actually it was a surgery, but no one could tell. And his teeth were a mess. Half his hair down the right side of his head was gone from radiation poisoning. This was thankfully to many of the masses concealed with a pretty tight skull-cap.

The man was not so dissimilar to any one else in particular, but it was after this petty, circumstantial event with the kiddie and the hag that rankled him, to the point where he believed himself naked to all eyes, growing discouraged to where he felt no choice but to leave. And yet if this didn't work, what to do then?

At 7:35:00 sharp the neon overhead should turn blue, translating thus to the waiting masses that the Oceania Pacifika train was on time. And it would, unless the ticker beneath the man's skull-cap played him false, which it never did. No, rather it would be some mites in the system, that had already infiltrated a great many philosophical bugs, -- planted by yours truly. Thus ending the onset of a potential hazard. But that would not do!

Back in the echoing depths of his skull-cap, the white man had remembered some ceaseless instruction, which dictated his life even now, and had led him upon this strange venture. To deal out death. The man had long ago lost much cognition, and for months seemed to have been treading a sleepy, insubstantial line. He slept most of his life, barely ate, and could only take care of himself just enough in order to maintain one singular purpose. Without which he could no longer be.

Where this purpose originally arose, he could not tell, save that each day he felt a deep and fiery ache in the middle of his chest.

The fire was indicative of something, as was the neon sign indicative of another, which even now, in under a minute would change to blue, quenching the flaming coal in his heart with cold water. He stepped up a platform, above the crowds and near the staircase, where he'd flee like the last time.... Only to disappear into the next crowd -- which would then again reappear at the next situational venture. But he must first wait out this hazard of his artifice.

A little further off a young man in officer's garb smiled wanly. He had a cigar (big for him) stuck in his grinning mouth. He was trying to obscure his ill-ease by imitating his veterans, which he didn't manage to pull off too well.

At the train headquarters a tiny ball-like creature was plugged up to a giant mainframe computer. The creature was diseased and disoriented. Slime oozed out of its openings, and its grey matter could barely discern a thin haze receding from an otherwise sunny morning. In its stupor its own grey eye protruded sarcastically. Its duty to monitor the different stations flashed across its peripheral vision: Vacuum 8, Regiment 9, Hotcake 11, Burgundy 12...

One of its essential nodes had been cut by an intermediary circuit breach. This was unknown to all but the white, middle-aged man in the drab olive-colored overcoat.

The pathetic little animal, the size of a tennis ball, was trapped in a sweaty algae-caked locker. The place smelled of sperm and electro-snapz. The last time anyone had bothered to look in on the poor feller was years ago. He made his own food.

Back at Walnut-3 the crowd continued to wait, this time a little more sullen. Still the constant overwhelming sea of talk drowned out any potential abnormalities. Unbeknownst to them was the 10,000 or so tons of steel hurtling at some 5000 miles-per-hour that would collide with the station terminal in...30...29...28...27....

Unknown to this too was the young officer with the fat Cuban that took up half his face. He was shaking like a leaf. All he knew was that a miscreant would be apprehended within a matter of moments. For a second he wondered whether he should edge in closer or avoid contact since he hadn't been clued to this particular circumstance. He chose to drift closer to the exposed passage.

Before the old white man could do any harm a loud titanic droning filled the station terminal. It grew within half a second to such atomic effect that any of the people who survived the ensuing massacre would not hear again. The sound pierced. It was representative of a subsequent rumble, that itself ripped apart a number of girders holding together some bits and pieces of the concrete station.... Metal shot out. A number of flames roared. Pandemonium! Distress!

The 38 year-old hag with the kid and one still in the oven died. As well as her mother and padre. A number of other, more anonymous people died too, or laid dying. Otherwise just down from shock, embittered, electrified, etc....

The young officer, even though having been closest to the edge still lived. Indeed, the train coming in from the Pacifika Sea had, by an emergency protocol managed to stop itself by its own accord; by a set of emergency breakers, -- still the shock-wave rang true. And that had dealt enough damage ALONE.

The young officer, deaf and bloody, came up to his former chief of police in an expression of disbelief mingled with the frantic, incessantly tingling urge to help. It was ghastly. It was two utterly alien spheres crashing together.

The old white man bled out his ears.... But stood perfectly composed and upright, like a bar were planted in his spine. It was as if this careworn statue had not blinked during the short-lived dance of chaos and his face certainly didn't betray any thing. Nonetheless, there was a certain raw, red incandescence to his structure that looked ready to burst at any minute.

The being's eyes turned aglow. His mission, not achieved to its fullest efficacy, made his heart ache. The distraught young officer tried to ascertain, by a sense of his recovered nerve, some trace of the old, jolly undercover officer in him, to no effect. Growing exceedingly anxious he opened up his overcoat to, -- SNAKES. A whole slithering, bloody mess of bio-mechanic creepers, taking up what was once the lower torso of the old white man. A little whitewashed hint of bone would peep ever now and then, and some miscellaneous viscera. All was smeared with a thin jelly, smelling of cologne, in an attempt to obfuscate the putrescence. Indeed this was what the young dead boy had caught a whiff of....

Hearing not his own involuntary screams the young officer fell shell-shocked to his knees. The ticker beneath the abomination's skull-cap tickered out. Dropping in an apoplectic fit, he fell off on the concrete. His duty vanished and rendered incomplete. The young officer himself, eternally disillusioned by this eerie mask of authority, never trusted his superiors again.

The maudlin shambler, taking several steps, stopped...

The simulacrum froze in a baby crawl. With purpose ceased and his chest burned of its own accord, not quenched by the surety of his baseless purpose, the simularum, as in an act of ended sacrilege, terminated -- TICK-tock dead.