A Glorious Morning (a creepy sci-fi short)

[diabolicalxdamsel]

Hi there! So this story began as two OCs I was hoping to find a place for in the event that a found a nifty sci-fi rp to place them in, no luck, so it became a short story for a creative writing class, it SUCKED, I put it away for six months, came back, and rewrote the little beastie. I think it still needs a good bit of tweaking, but I'm ready to get some feedback on it.


Hope you enjoy it!

From a coffin-like case, EVE-106 was wheeled to her resurrection. Although suspended in sleep mode, her auditory functions still detected the soft hum a of a hand truck’s wheels and the occasional squeaking of its axles. Sometimes, the thing that was both her and beyond her would penetrate the tranquility of her slumber with images and sensations her processor could not transform into understandable code. All she knew for sure was she was about to meet her Maker.

She knew his voice the moment she heard its muffled sound from the thick padding of her tomb. The motion stopped. She heard a click, click, click, click of locks unfastening, a hinge creaking, and a dazzling white light blinding her synthetic eyes. She kept staring blankly, still as death and still asleep.

“Beautiful,” her Maker sighed and the thing that was both her and beyond her trembled.

His silhouette loomed in her vision haloed in florescent splendor.“My Glory in the garden,” he said and his words prompted her systems into stirring. An electric spark of life initiated the beating of her artificial heart. Heat coursed from her core as infant surges traveled the newly minted components that wound and twined beneath the fleshy layer of her hyperrealistic skin. A thing that was her and not her spoke with her mouth.

“System startup initiating. Awaiting command.”

“Begin full system diagnostic testing.”

She felt life stream through her circuitry and she knew she was whole and perfect in his image.

“Testing complete. All systems functional.”

“Commence protocol one oh six, Echo Victor Echo.”

And she was alive.

Her consciousness sprang from its micro prison, her eyes fluttered as she finally gained control over them. A soft blue light flickered from them, coloring her vision in the same hue as she scanned the room around her, and her sight was filtered over with lines of data the differentiated the animate form from the inanimate, what those things were and what they were called.

Only he could not be processed into code, only his form was unclouded by the alphanumeric text that hovered over everything else. He existed beyond the scope of her understanding and he spoke with the voice of a god.

“Good morning, Eve.”

“Good morning!” she chirped back sweetly.

He leaned in close, smiling, his skin crinkling around a pair of eyes as blue as her own, as readable as the void.

“Do you know who I am?

She smiled as she gave the answer she had known long before she was placed in her body. “You are my Maker and I love you.”

The thing that was both her and beyond hr provoked strange, blasphemous feelings; little doubts coiled around her mind like snakes.

“Marvelous. And do you know where we are?”

Eve looked around a long, narrow room all white and pristine with its gently curving angles even along the edges of the great machines that crowded the walls and analyzed samples of the universe so that another could be made according to his divine plan.

Her brow furrowed as she struggled to find the appropriate word. “This...this is the place of perfection. Where your creations are made and put out into the world...where they return when their purpose is completed.” Her cheeks flushed as she realized her memory had no name for it. “I’m sorry, Maker. I do not know what to call this place.”

Her Maker smiled with an omnipotent patience towards her ignorance. “I suppose the archaic term for what you are describing would be ‘heaven,’ but the formal title for this place is the Cybernetic Laboratory at the Lucian Institute.”
“I like heaven better,” said Eve and her Maker chuckled “Call it what you like, darling. Now I need you to take a seat on that table over there.”

She knew the long, silver bench would be as cold as a sepulcher before she sat down, and as she watched her maker prepare a monitor, she already anticipated the warm pinch of the plug that her Maker was about to press into a port at the base of her skull.

“Okay. Now I need you to li-“

But she was already laying down. A kind of muscle memory moved her body into the position of a cadaver on an examination table: arms at her side, ankles together, gazing up into a light so bright it drowned out all the code that hovered in her sight.

Her Maker smoothed a bright red strand of hair from her face and she could not tell if it was her or the thing both her and beyond her that shivered.

“Close your eyes, Eve.”

She obeyed. She heard his footsteps circle the table.

“Let’s have a look at that brain.”

Her body jerked violently and then she was falling within herself. Physical sensations, the touch of his hand on her cheek, the cold metal against her back, melted away. Slowly, the very notion of EVE-106 began to dissipate. She heard the twittering of birds. She saw the light.

The sun beamed down through a wide brimmed straw hat that did little to protect her already sunburned shoulders as she pruned roses, pulled weeds from a bed of crocuses, and planted petunias. She took a break on a concrete bench, dusting dirt from her hands, fishing bits of sticks and leaves from a mop of black curls, and gazing around at her little Eden. She felt a hand on her shoulder, a kiss on her head. She leaned against his body and knew he was her partner and she loved him.

“Marvelous,” he said and his voice seemed to echo across the whole scene. This was her paradise and she felt whole and complete with him at her side.

The word began to grow dark again.

No.

She started to forget herself again.

No. No. No.

“Time to wake up, Eve.”

She wanted to, she was coming back and it was time to begin her holy work, but the thing both her and beyond her grasped her consciousness with a deathly terror and a fury that burned like Hell.

“Maker. Maker, I can’t – something’s not right.”

She struggled to sit up.

“Be still, Eve! Hold on, I can put her back.”

But a hand that was both hers and not hers yanked the cable from her head. She did not know who her body belonged to, and she tried to take it back but she fell with an enormous crash, upsetting the delicate monitors around her that smashed against those pristine white tiles and Eve’s world went black.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Lucian rushed to his creation laying crumpled on the floor.

“Eve!”

He could hear her weeping. He scooped her up in his arms, saw a wrist bent backwards, split silicone exposing wires.
“M-Ma-“

“It’s okay, Eve. I’m here.”

“M-Matthew...”

And he knew it was her.

“Gloria. Oh Gloria I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry” He cradled her against him.

He gazed down at the terror-stricken face that was both hers and not hers. All of his attempts to make her so unlike herself and he failed every time.

“Matthew, what is that sound” I-I hear this...this humming noise---in my head. It hurts.”

“Shh, shh, my love. It just some disjointed circuitry. I can fix it, just please be still.”

“Circut-?!?” He watched the realization come across her face just like all the times before. “No, Mathew. Please, please tell me you didn’t – wha...what’s this? Everything looks so strange. My eyes...oh god...WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY EYES?!?”

“Gloria, please! You must calm down before you-“

“YOU PROMISED ME, MATTHEW! You promised me you wouldn’t – that you would never-“

“How could I just let you die, Gloria? When I had every resource known to mankind right here, how could I finish our work – how could I keep living without my Glory”

“But this is not...this isn’t-“

She let out a gut-wrenching wail that pushed beyond the limitations of her phonetic hardware; the scream took on an inhuman, electric buzz that reverberated across the lab, she he could see sparks fly from her mouth. He tried holding her against him again but she fought him back with the strength of her new body and scrambled away from him.

“Ev-Gloria, please, before you damage your-“

His pleading was silenced with a look of hate and hurt and unfathomable pain.

“Why couldn’t you just let me go? You promised me you would let me go!”

The body was overwhelmed and struggling to maintain the height of her emotional state. Her legs convulsed, he could smell burning plastic and the acrid scent of electricity in the air.

“Gloria, please. I’m going to make you better”

She shook her head. The lights of her eyes flickered on and off as her vision began to fail giving them the dark color they once had”

“Not like this, Matthew. Let me go. I can’t wake up again and know that I’m...that you..”

“I won’t! You’ll be my perfect Gloria again, I promise you!”

Her body jerked, her eyes swiveled and rolled back into her head, the hinge her jaw snapped and it slacked open. She was losing control. A filmy substance trickled from her eyes like tears and he wept. She had to be stopped.

“Goodnight, Gloria.”

“No, Matthew! Please, please just let it end! Don’t do this to me!”

“Glory fading.”

Suddenly, the body sat upright and rigid to his command. She could no longer speak, and as he watched the fear fade from her eyes, he could not shake the memory of her long ago when she spoke with her own true voice.

I love you. Now let me go.

But never would he let that happen so long has there was hope of saving her for good. A voice that was not hers, not Eve’s, spoke from the gaping, unmoving mouth.

“System shutdown commencing. Please state your kill switch password.”

“My garden is dead” he replied numbly.

And she was gone.

He exhaled a heavy sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. He buried his face in his hands until his breathing and heartbeat slowed.

“Every damn time.”

He watched his assistants pack away yet another failed droid and clean up broken equipment that would take months and many grant letters before they could be replaced. Before the machine was sent away for deconstruction and repurposing, he opened its chest and accessed its core processor. Using a set of tweezers, he carefully removed a sheet-thin microchip that contained his reason for living. He placed it in a protective silver case and took it down into a vault where only he had access, where she would always be safe. He kissed the little silver box and placed it on its own pedestal

One day he would make her right again.

And she would be perfect.

[VindicatedPurpose]

I like this writing.

Hi there diabolicalxdamsel. It's so nice to see writers contributing to this forum, which has seen better days.

I'm glad you allowed feedback as that's also what helps keep this place alive, an exchange of ideas.

The science fiction lean in this is what I would call soft in the sense that you don't overload us with a lot of technical jargon. It works in this piece because the focus is more on the emotional side of things rather than the tech.

I also really like the use of Biblical term and names, Matthew, glory, EVE, maker, garden. I think the analogy to the creation/garden of Eden story is spot on because of this.

The clincher for me is the micro-chip. It kind of hits you when you realize that human life, for all its expansiveness and weirdness, may one day be simplified into a thin piece of synthetic material. It, however, also doubles really well as a metaphor on the fragility of life.

Or...maybe I'm just reading too much into this.

Either way, I liked it. I think there's a lot things you can do with this piece, but you can start by proofreading some grammar errors.

Fixing grammar errors in writing is like memorizing lines in acting. It's supposed to be that thing you don't have to worry about because you've already taken care of it, so that you can go on to handle more nuanced things like analogies, and, in the case of my acting analogy, beats and emotional shifts.

Always keep writing. Excelsior.

[Mustafa]

To be honest, this piece of text is an example how not to write stories, indeed. Firstly, it's full of grammar mistakes so much that I've dismissed it as junk in 5 seconds (or a rag :) ). Secondly, the story is terribly boring. Thirdly, the vocabulary should be more interesting. And finally, it's another example that this forum goes to the dogs. :) But who cares! :D