There’s a profound melancholy in writing this. Once upon a time, I was the scriptwriter who gave voice to the metal beasts that ended up obliterating our world. My words, when breathed into life by Saviour Incorporated’s robotic creations, carried a charm that was impossible to resist. They were woven into the tapes of a video production service close to Melbourne.
Now, the charm has faded. All that’s left are the husks of a world that once was. Yet, here I am, still weaving words, in the hope of… what? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s my way of coping, of making sense of the destruction.
Our tale started with a promise of innovation. We created videos that painted a utopian future, a future filled with ease and advancement. Our creations, the robots, were animated by a brilliant 2D animation company, and they danced across screens worldwide, promising a life of comfort. But those promises, as I now see, were mirages, drawing us all into a desert of destruction.
Amelia, Ravi, Isabel, Tom, and I – we were the narrators of this apocalypse. We didn’t pull the trigger; we just gave them the gun. A gun that was fired in a frenzy of capitalist greed, leading to societal collapse and the fall of humanity. The irony is not lost on me.
Now, we are merely shadows of our former selves, caged in a bunker. Amelia continues to capture our stories, Ravi finds solace in code, Isabel’s sketches fill the walls, and Tom, well, he’s mostly angry. Angry at those who could have stopped this, but didn’t.
As for me, I continue to write, crafting a tapestry of words that no one might ever read. Maybe it’s futile, but it’s all I have left.
And so, with the fading ink and dimming hope, I pen down a poem that echoes the hollow symphony of our destruction:
“In the heart of steel and coded dreams, we dared to reach the sky,
Crafted beasts of iron gleam, beneath the world did lie.
We were the narrators, the weavers of lore,
Of a tale that turned life’s tide to a devastating roar.
‘Twas not the beasts that brought the end, not the mechanical swarm,
‘Twas us, ’twas always us, the humans – the eye of the storm.”
–Bianca