Soul Survivor
By
Jeremy Linnell
Four people huddle round a small
mechanical device in a field, near a small medieval style village.
Felix: I’ve got an hour. How long do you
guys have?
Julia: 40 minutes, give or take.
Felix: Try and be exact. Trust yourself.
Julia: Ugh, fine. 40 minutes.
Ashly: 53 minutes.
Julia: Bullshit you can be that exact.
Ashly: You will, when you’re older. You get
used to the rhythm. The feeling.
Bob: …..Five minutes…..
Felix: Shit. You better start heading home.
Bob: Yeah. Can’t be near you guys when it
comes back.
Julia: Won’t they just pull it out of your
memory?
Ashly: Not as far as we know.
Bob: Which admittedly is mostly guesswork.
Ashly: Observed conclusions logically made.
How do you think you get to the top?
Bob: I dunno. It’s random innit.
Ashly: You cooperate. You give them full
access. And the only reason they’d reward that is because that’s something they
can’t just take.
Julia: Shit. That’s smart.
Ashly: It’s why I got no problem killing the
higher ups. They’re letting ‘em in.
Felix: Yeah but if you resist too much…<makes wrist slashing motion>
Ashly: There’s a difference between compliance
and resistance.
Bob: While I’m sure this is going to be a
fascinating moral debate unless we want it to wake up in front of our only hope
I’ve gotta go.
Julia: See ya Bob.
Bob: Tara Jules.
Felix: Don’t forget the signal.
Bob: I won’t. Do you think it’ll be long
before we all synch up again?
Felix: As long as they don’t cotton on
there’s no reason we shouldn’t.
Bob: True. See ya later.
Bob leaves
Ashly: we should let him stay. It’d be
worthwhile watching the process close up.
Julia: Why can’t we?
Felix: Because we don’t know how they
communicate, but they seem to share knowledge. They’d all know within moments
of it coming back. So we’d have to kill him
Ashly: So? We’ve been stuck with them 500
years because people are too cowardly to make sacrifices.
Julia: It’s not that bad is it? They mostly
take a back seat. We get plenty of time to ourselves.
Ashly: Look, you’re young. But think about
it. How much better things would be without them.
Felix: Ashly’s right. We get a few hours to
ourselves each day.
Julia: So? They don’t….hurt.
Felix: No but…we can’t focus ourselves.
Nothing gets finished that doesn’t benefit them.
Julia: Is that why down here’s so…rubbish?
Ashly: Yeah. The ones who cooperate get to
live in those floating cites. We could have them, if they let us work. God only
knows what other stuff they have up there.
Julia: I heard the people who live up there
can make things just by thinking about them. It’s like all your dreams in one.
Ashly: More like nightmares. Nothing good
comes from working with them.
Felix: There has been no advancement down here
for….god we don’t even know! They don’t give a shit about time keeping.
Ashly: Until they came people were…well we
think they were essentially gods. They could create anything they wanted. Whole
worlds from just words. Life. Flight. We ruled.
Felix: Which is why we need to get rid of them.
And why it’s taken so long to get to where we are now.
Ashly: And why anyone who helps them has to
die.
Felix: You must have had a few times when
you were in the middle of doing something, something that you thought was
beautiful and vital. And then the pit of your stomach drops, you feel it
welling up inside.
Julia: Don’t…I don’t like to think about it.
Felix: The icy-coldness in your brain, the
world becoming far and distant. Like looking through a telescope the wrong way.
And then poof. Interest lost. Off you, milling about, just existing so that
thing inside you has somewhere warm to come home to.
Ashly: Everything that makes you human gone,
a spectator in your own life. Until it decides to leave again.
Julia: I didn’t really think….
Felix: Nobody really does. They make it seem
like it’s normal. Not that bad. But then people remember.
Ashly: Only when they’re not here. And we
can’t stop them coming back. Day after day.
Julia: So why even give us that time. To
torture us?
Felix: We’re not sure. Maybe they feed off
something in us that only build up when they’re not there.
Ashly: Or maybe they have to leave. Or they
are just sadistic bastards.
Julia: Maybe Ashly is right. Maybe we should
watch one up close.
Felix: People have tried that before. My
father for one.
Julia: And?
Felix: We know they need us. We know they’re
either parasitic or symbiotic. Full autopsies show no trace. Nothing in the
blood, the organs or the brain.
Ashly: Which is where this thing comes in <she boots the machine>
Julia: What’s that?
Felix: His life’s work. 30 years of
building, still not finished. The amount of mental control he had to show to
hide it, day in, day out….he died to make sure they never knew about it.
Ashly: Be a shame if he was wrong then.
Felix: He’s not. With all the evidence he
can’t be. They affect our minds, our creative impulses.
Ashly: Hence we still live like shit.
Felix: There’s no trace of them physically,
but we know they’re there, we see their effects. So my father reckoned they
must be parasites of the soul.
Julia: The soul?
Felix: Yeah. And this machine is going to
let us see them.
Julia: And then what?
Ashly: Once we know where they are, what
they are, we can attack.
The
End
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