This Machine Kills Monsters

Two miles outside of the free world is a town so small that at any given time only two people are having sex. A few miles over from that is a field which the people of the village call nirvana, not because it is a place of enlightenment, (It is) but because they found a small disk with Nirvana Nevermind written on it hidden below the ground in a metal canister. The metal container also contained a copy of the breakfast club, two illegible letters, five plastic squares, and a few other useless baubles. The canister is the second strangest thing the villagers have found in that field. The strangest thing is the two robots sitting on the grass and beeping back and forth to one another.

The village elder claims that he can understand what they are saying, but gone are the times when people assume that age and knowledge accumulate proportionately. Every week the village gathers around the robots and tries to figure out what they are doing, but nobody has been able to come up with something better than what the first guess was. An eight year old girl had claimed that they “Looked sad.”

One of the villagers, who is rarely one of the two people having sex, spends large amounts of time with the two sad robots, trying to learn their language. He has made little to no progress. A few people have suggested touching the robots to see if they could be manipulated into doing something else, but most agree it is a bad idea.

No one knows how they got there, or what they are, and they don’t really seem to care. They are far too interested in what they’re doing.

I once read an obituary section that came in a newspaper from somewhere in Washington D.C. The writing was fantastic, it brought out emotions of mourning for people I’d never even met, and it made me wonder about the writer. Is he some dark presence, showing his face only to turn in the new admissions each day, or is he a cheerful guy who you’d go out for beers with after a long day of work? Neither seems right. It is hard to imagine a human being who spends their time writing exclusively about the end, and not fake death, writing about real people who had loved ones. 

Then I wonder whether I could do that for a living, scribbling out people’s lives in a few paragraph’s time, facing angry loved ones, and wallowing in death. I feel oddly attracted to the idea. I’ve never been that connected to people I don’t know on an emotional scale, and the writing would be an interesting challenge.  Perhaps if I did take up the profession of speaker for the dead I could even meet this man from Washington. Maybe we could talk about the instability of life, or go to a party!

No, I most certainly am not in love with you, because I just don’t do that. I don’t fall in love any more than I go skydiving. It’s not only pointless, but also dangerous. I mean; yes, you are pretty, and smart, and you make me laugh, but that doesn’t mean I’m in love with you. I just like you as a friend, because I don’t believe in the whole love deal, no matter how cute your nose is when you laugh. No way. Love belongs in the story books, not in real life, regardless of how beautiful your eyes are, or how I miss you when you’re not around.

The sun is setting on the little hamlet of Burgshireburg, named for the Baron Tim Von Burgshire.  Eventually night fell, and fifteen people were trapped beneath it, by the time Morning had arrived they were all dead of suffocation.  The obituaries read that they had been “killed by the darkness”. This caused a large amount of distress amongst the city, people were running outside to point industrial sized flash lights into the air while shouting, “Back Demons! Back!”

In an attempt to calm the populace lieutenant Morning called for a press release in which he explained, “We at the Burgshireburg police station are doing our utmost to catch the criminal responsible for the deaths of these fifteen people. We advise that no one attempt to capture the perpetrator on their own as he has proven himself to be quite dangerous. To help with this investigation the head of the local FBI branch Agent Mourning will be assisting.

After a few hours explaining the difference between Mourning and Morning the people of the city seemed to calm down; at least for a few days.