| Stories by 'Punks |
| In the future, this will hopefully have more stories and such by other AOpunk writers. As for now, here is my one and only finished short story. Enjoy =0). |
The world is enclosed in a circle surrounded by darkness. I force Meetmedere’s cacophony of battle to nothingness around me, it is only the circular world. We are alone in a symbiotic oneness; silent, still. Within it’s rounded confines I am a watchful god, and it is I who decides who lives and who dies within it. Clan member after clan member fall before my benevolent gaze. The breeze moves over me, scattered rain perforates me. Just me and my circular world. My heart flutters a bit when I first see my prey, moving cautiously amongst the trees, unknowingly entering my circular world. I see their metallic head move amidst the electric ambiance that races across the sky. A loud boom crackles above me, thrusts hard into my back. Then darkness once again. I tell them it is safe, I coax them into the open field. As if they hear me they take their first steps into the grasses as lightning tears through the sky once more. My finger caresses the trigger almost lovingly. I thumbed the focus on my rifle’s targeting scope, my circular world tightens around the clan member. The surrounding darkness moves in. Not yet. My pulse quickens, I purse my lips. This was my supposed destiny, my calling. I could even say what I was bred for. To enact the righteous will of OmniTek. Born of a captured soul into a sterilized world suffocating with technology. No mother, no father....just a score of OmniTek scientists and a checked-off clipboard. No childhood, no memories. Entering life at the age of eighteen, bathed in amniotic fluids and crossed genes. To see the world for the first time, first nothing then a realization of self-existence, and knowing my surroundings but not knowing what I was. A Product of OmniTek (Copyrighted and protected by Intergalactic Law). Bred to be a messenger of death, to walk in the shadows. Knowledge collector, clan killer. Agent. No choosing in my path, only a name. Vexyna. A last ditch effort to give us an identity of our choosing. They gave us an attempt of at least bridging the artificial gap that was our creation. Ironic in a way, when I think about it. The scientists had legions of randomized materials at their disposal, but still they could not account for near identical products. Race, gender, psychological disposition. Numerous variables in a test tube world, and still I occasionally catch a glimpse of someone’s face on the streets of Rome or Omni-1 that resembles mine. I wonder at times, when our eyes connect in that flash of a moment, if she was thinking the same thing. That this opifex female, clad in Steel Ribbed armor and brandishing a high quality rifle, was anything at all like her. We shared a likeness, but do we share anything else? Feelings, emotions? Did we have the same thoughts about life, the same fears? How disconcerting it feels to see yourself in the crowd., looking back and seeing yourself with the same questioned gaze, knowing that someone else is out there that is you but not you. Now I find myself thrown headstrong into a battle that I am not sure I even understand. Pitted against they who were here first, born here, having family and friends. Memories. I envy them at times, me a person without a past. A soul stolen from some offset reality and grafted into a body floating in a tank. They are my enemy because they defy their creators, OmniTek. True, some may have biological pasts...but how many? It is near impossible to tread the lines of a family and find not one inkling of scientific intervention in their histories. Like some Biblical myth, we are all created in the image of one concept, battling over a supposed paradise we both covet as our own. Loyal versus the rebel, we who believe against they who do not. True, they resided in this world before us, but now find themselves outcasts and confined to underground hovels and personal hells. We are the righteous hands that wipes them clean of the world. My intended target darts further out into the battle seared grass. Not yet. The electricity in the air moves the hairs on the small of my neck within my armored form, my legs cry out from the position they’ve held for the last fifteen minutes. Not yet I tell myself. Once again the thunder looms above me, prodding my eagerness until I can fight back no more. They take one last look at the world just as my finger graces the trigger of my high powered sniper rifle. Gunpowder sears my nostrils. Thunder jolts my body as my shoulder recoils back. I watch their head fling in a backwards motion that is as unnatural as it is beautiful. They fall as once again brother lightning streaks across the sky. Thunder once more. A final movement. A final heartbeat. Just me and my circular world. Call it morbid curiosity, but I decide to walk up to the silent body and take a final look at it before it dematerilizes. As I draw closer I can instantly tell they are female, slim in form, perhaps a few inches shorter then I. In her left hand looms their unused rifle, a rifle similar to my own. An agent no doubt, I tell myself. I examine where the bullet shattered their helmet as I draw in closer, marvel at the beauty of something so grim, so perfect. Once again lightning pulsates throughout the sky and thunder ricochets off my chest. The rain caresses my face, running in small trails from my brow to my mouth, droplets kissing my lips. Closer... It is when I advance close enough to see her face that everything around me deafens by my heartbeat that threatens to shatter my eardrums. Similar contours in the cheeks, but not quite. Fuller lips, deeper inset eyes that will never blink again. A hairline that meets in almost the same edged widow’s peak as my own. Cold chills wash over me as I look at...at... ....myself. Granted, some differences were obvious, but the similarities too great. She was perhaps a year or two younger, the age lines not quite blemishing her as my own did. Still, I look down and see my face in a cracked mirror glistening red. Younger....she is younger then I. She chose this path even after OmniTek gave her a uniform, her orders. She chose to be on the opposite side. To be the enemy...my enemy. I wonder now if she ever thought as I did....if somewhere there was someone like her peering back. Questioning their own existence upon the plains of Rubi-Ka. Similar but different. My circular world closed in around me....enveloping me in it’s dark embrace. For in the face of the enemy, I have seen myself, and once again I am forced to wonder: Who Am I? |
| "Just Me and My Circular World" by Jinny 'Vexyna' Flummer |