Writing Prompt
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A figure stands in the distance, houppelande sleeves billowing in the wind; he stands in awe of the Colossus Cluster, the only remains of the great giants of yore.
The Stranger flaunts an intricate staff, the very one responsible for this, reunited with its victims at last. The armor-clad lad who bears it is the closest thing left to a king.
After The Annihilations, the world deteriorated into a state of sullen despair. The air is thick with humidity, fog, and ash as the cracks of the parched gray earth reach for the rain.
The Stranger finds the head of the great creature through the mist, pressing his nose against its own. He feels a strange connection with these beasts, though also the sense that they do not want him here.
A shiver runs down his spine as his gaze flicks to the 3 crows resting on the giant’s index finger and the lone magpie ominously perching on the thumb.
Bad signs of death and sorrow.
The Stranger mutters to himself, “I must go.”
As Kayla walked through the baron wasteland, she could see almost nothing. The fog was thick and she almost ran into two massive robot hands. Her long coat was rapped around her body keeping the cold from getting in, her backpack was full of her tools and belongings.
She held her sword onto her shoulder and kept walking. She had a destination and nothing was gonna stop her, not even the robots who guarded the place. She could see the random brush sweep by and trees who were dying in this climate.
As she came to her destination, she could see the silhouette of the robots that were at the gate. She took an EMP out of her bag and threw it at them. She saw one of them lean down and look at it. The next was a flurry of movement. It blew up and they fell to the floor, she ran as fast as she could with her sword.
She went to the first bot and stabbed its “heart” and took its head off and quickly did the same to the next one. These were the easy bots, the massive dead ones in the wasteland were all dead but one. That was her mission; to get the last giant bot, who was called the colossal bot.
She ducked into the gate and made her way to the metal castle. Two more bots guarded the entrance and she discarded them quickly. She went in and made her way to the “throne room” where the colossal stayed hidden.
She weaved through hallways that could hold hundreds of buses on top of each other. As she came to the colossal’s bunker, she saw hundreds of robots guarding and realized why so many had tried and failed. She ducked back and looked up, she spotted a small vent that was at least 30 feet high.
She took out her batman gun that she had fabricated and aimed it. She shot and got it hooked on the edge, she sprang up there and got a hand in it. She was confused why there was a vent there but it was useful. She crawled in and made her way to her objective.
She came to the massive room and saw the robot sitting on its chair, staring at the doors. She was currently behind it, so she went down and made her way to the robot. She climbed the 50 foot tall chair and made her way to its head. She only had to put her bag of explosives and EMPs in there to destroy it.
She jumped onto his shoulder without thinking and the robot immediately stood up alarmed. She ran to it’s neck to hang on and not get hit by a hand. She held for dear life as the colossal tried to get her off. As they moved , Kayla swung her bag around and activated the magnet on the back of it. She attached it to the bottom of the robots head and jumped off, shooting her batman gun back to the vent.
She reached it and had a quick glimpse of the event before she rushed away. The robot stopped confused as to where she had gone, it looked around but saw nothing wrong so it sat back down. The next thing Kayla knew as she got out of the vent and ran to the exit was that a massive explosion had taken place in the throne room.
The last colossal robot was dead and the war was beginning to finally end.
I would hate to be the last to remain.
In a world carved clean of feeling and touch, Where all that remains are skeletal husks of metal and wire.
I would hate to be the last to remain.
When flesh and movement turn to static and cold, And all that’s left to caress our bodies are the rain and the night.
I would hate to be the last to remain.
When it is only I and the birds, And the whirring hiss of technological brokenness.
Bolts, wires, metal and determination all of the things that go into making a successful machine.
I thought i put all of those things into my robot, and at the start it appeared that way. But i was on proven otherwise.
I was a young lad, just leaving home learning to stand own two feet. I was good with my hands, creating, mending and destroying if needed. I’d accrued an apprenticeship with a blacksmith who lived two towns over. A two weeks travel away from my family. It was doable. So i did it.
The man their taught me everything i know, how to forge, tighten bolts, and how to put love and creativity into my work. He was my mentor and my best friend.
Until the accident.
I never believed the authorities when they said it was an accident. Tripped down the stairs and bashes his head, thats what the report read. Bullshit if you ask me. But i could never prove it, and i was still young so my opinion didn’t really matter.
We built incredible things. And that was just the stuff we made for the public eyes.
Most off our work was tremendous, enormous metal begins that could touch the skies. They could move to, or at least we were going to figure out how to make them move. But after his passing… i just couldn’t. I gave up my work and went back home leaving the robots out in the pasture were nobody ever ventured.
Only now have i returned, to see my beautiful creations in ruin, fallen over to their sides. Legs must have rusted and made them colapse.
They had so much potential.
I had so much potential.
The explorer shielded his eyes from the dust and harsh sunlight as he looked at the land surrounding him. It worked. He made it to the future. 2052. When his eyes adjusted, he noticed that the only sign of life were the birds flying in the sky. To his left was what appeared to be a giant robot, so large that he couldn’t even see the full height of it disappear into the horizon. Even that appeared to be dead, or maybe deactivated is a better word for it.
It was eerily silent as he started walking toward the distant city. It was abandoned and long forgotten. Buildings were crumbling to the ground and there were stray animals wandering through the streets. They were looking for any scraps of food that they could find or fighting over the carcasses of those who had already starved. When he got further into the city the explorer could see bodies lying all over the place. Some were untouched while the animals had already turned others into a pile of bones. There was remains hanging from windows, their empty eyes staring down at him. He shuddered as he continued on through the empty streets.
There was tanks and machine guns left abandoned. Soldiers bodies lying beside them. That’s when it dawned on the explorer that he was witnessing the end of humanity. ‘At least we went down fighting.’ His voice echoed through the desolate streets. He was truly alone here, and he had to go back to warn the others that they only had one year until the apocalypse. He took out his communicator, ‘okay guys, bring me back.’
‘Bringing you back. We’ve got something to show you when you get here.’ With the blink of an eye the explorer was back to his own timeline. ‘Follow me.’ It was one of the new scientists speaking with a look of pure excitement on his face as he led the explorer out of the building. ‘This has been in development for the past few years. He’s finally ready.’ The door opened to reveal a robot that stood taller than the lab facility being powered on. It looked familiar.
They were initially created to help reduce the strain on humans in dangerous jobs such as meteorite mining and and planet exploration. Having the opportunity of being a multi-planetary species lead to a huge drive in talent and monetary investment being throttled into new companies that could fill the new American Dream of living in space.
The goal was lofty but now people knew it was not only possible but also affordable, being on Earth seemed so basic and 25th century. People were always saying the speed of innovation kept accelerating but this new era made everything else disappear in comparison. New companies could be started, a success and a massive failure in a matter of months.
Hundreds of years ago, the legendary Captain Musk warned about this as a potential outcome of the success he had made possible but little did he know it would become way worse than even he could imagine.
Things were incredible over the last two hundreds years and I’m glad I got to experience it all. New worlds were terraformed, new species were organically created and universal peace looked like it could just be around the corner.
If anything was to derail progress I think people would have expected it to be those bloody Cryptonions who believed they were the perfect species.
Red Origin, the company behind the creation of the machines that turned them into the most valuable company in the Universe, managed to bring the universe down to its knees with the same machine.
I don’t think anyone really knows what brought it on but most of the tales think it had something to do with some kind of hacking agency that just managed to probe a few levels deeper than they should have. No-one really has any clue but how else does an ‘unhackable robot’ suddenly become hackable? Haha.
Regulators couldn’t stop it, they’d become redundant years ago so every company could say whatever they wanted in their marketing and all consumers would just take it for what it was. ‘Unhackable’, haha!
It does crack me up that the smartest people alive can drive things forward but it’s the dumbest people really have the most impact. All it took was years of planning, enough corruption at the high levels of Red Origin, the cash flow handed to me by my disgustingly success step-father and one word in a marketing campaign, ‘Unhackable’. God that never gets old.
It wasn’t even that hard.
I knew what this place was. It was a place for giants to die, and for older giants to just be buried by sand and dirt over time. One day no one would even remember these things. If they did, well, more people would believe the stories. I do, because I caused some of these machines to lay where they do now.
I don’t remember how, why or when, but all I know is that people stare at me and keep their distance. I’m better off alone anyway, as that is how it’s always been. I have chosen this path and the people around me have chosen it as well, so there’s no need to change decisions that will never change.
Gripping the hilt of the sword at my side, it dimly glowing blue as soon as I touched it, I prepared for another fight. I didn’t know why or how I knew, but I just did. Off in the distance I could see a large shadow, and to most people it would be terrifying, but to me, it was just another machine.
I slowed my walk down and eventually watched the shadow move closer, though it was a strange shadow because the ground didn’t shake every step they took. I kept watching and watching, always getting closer to the shadow, but the shadow never made the sounds or noises or feelings that one normally would.
Still keeping my hand on the hilt, I made my way over, keeping quiet, not wanting to do anything to alert it to my presence.
Once I was close enough I started to sneak around and eventually, I made it close enough to see ... just a random small robot sitting next to a fire. Well, they were a robot ... just a lot smaller.
Pulling my blade out, I quietly walked over, before I grabbed their shoulder and put my blade to their neck. I hear a female voice gasp with surprise, and don’t know what to do. Moving around to see their face, I look into a face that looks like mine, only different.
I continued to hold my blade to her ... its throat, and something in me is screaming to stop and sit. I didn’t know what it was that made me, but I removed my sword from her throat and put it away, before sitting on the opposite side of the fire, just waiting for her to speak or run away. She did neither of those things.
After some time, all that was between us was an agreed upon silence. Nothing needed to be said. I was going to leave once the sun came up, and never think of her ever again. That was all there was to it, considering that we couldn’t travel together.
The night was uneventful, as we’d stared at each other all night.
Getting up the leave, I hear her voice.
“I am Celeste, who are you?”
“I am-“
-end transmission-
Similar writing prompts
VISUAL PROMPT
Write a story using the above image as inspiration. Is it about the foxes story in the raft? How did it get there? Where is it going?