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You are viewing Haiku of the day: A tower alone |
A HAPPY NEW YEAR! Something cracked in the dark, just beyond the reach of our campfire's light. Toru and I looked at each other. The kid was asleep, curled up like a puppy on the floor of the repaired gondola. He wasn't noticing a thing. CYRUS RELEASES NEW VIZ PHONE! We had crashed on this land just two minutes after we had crossed the town borders. Something had been placed under the ground that would crush anything made of metal that was flying above a certain altitude. Our friends the machines didn't even know what hit them. They just crumpled like so many sheets of loose leaf paper, and then they fell. From the ground, it must have looked like it was raining machines. Useless destroyed machines. Some of them exploded on impact with the ground. It was shrapnel from those explosions that tore into the fat balloon above us. As everything else in the sky was rocketing toward the ground, I and my crew were floating, light as a feather, to a landing zone far from the wreckage. MARS' REDMEN WINS WORLD CONTRABALL TOURNEY! The kid didn't die because he was made of some kind of alloy, non-magnetic or something. When both he and Toru tried explaining what had happened I wasn't really listening. Among the fire and the rubble, all I knew was that my chances at beating Cyrus City had just hit the bottom of the barrel and was currently digging its way beyond that. SECURITARIANS FAIL TO PROSECUTE 'ASSASSIN' MARKS! That was when Toru and the kid went out to search the devastation, to see if maybe there was something left of any of the CPUs of the big machines that were following us to our lost victory. They came back with nothing. None of them had made it out alive, the kid said. He looked like he wanted to cry, but I doubted he had the hardware to pull that off. Toru found the repair kit and started working on the hole in the balloon. "Aren't you going to help?" he asked, but I couldn't answer him. Too much was going on through my head to get through. I kept looking for another plan of attack, but it just wasn't going to happen. My one shot at Cyrus had been stolen from me. I was hoping for some payback, but there was no one around to aim that retribution at. The closest thing was a tower standing off in the distance, but it looked like it had been gutted. I stood and started walking toward the tower, thinking that maybe someone there could tell me why they had destroyed my future. Toru called after me, but stopped after he knew I wouldn't be coming back until I was satisfied or dead. PRICE OF BOOKS RISING YET AGAIN! When I made it up to the tower, the light of the sun was all but disappeared. About fifteen floors up, I saw the glow of a fire coming from one of the many hollowed out sections of the structure. I found the stairs and started walking. Music echoed in the building. Ritual drums stuck persistently to the same rhythm, following closely to the theme of the same beat. I quickly found where they were originating and opened the door to a room. There was no outer wall to the room. Instead, there was only a hole that gave a wide ranged view of the destruction that had been made of my soldiers. I saw the smoke rising from those that had fallen, like the steam off an air-miner after being scorched by an unexpected pocket. Near the right wall of the room the woman that had been drumming on a homemade bongo stopped and stared at me. CRIASTHMA WALK GENEREATES ©35,000,000! "You are one a dem from dat balloon," she said to me. "I saw you comin' up here after your followas went down. I play the drum for you. I play the drum for them." Her eyes were dark, though when they looked at me they shined. Her teeth were sporadically missing, and her clothes seemed to have come from the nearest curtain rod. "Why did my soldiers die?" I asked. The old lady smiled. "Them die because after I set the destruct sequencing, all everybody in this tower, all them bad people, them went away in their pods. Fleeing what them had made like rats on a drownin' ship. So when they gone. I flip the switch on the field they made for protecting this phallus, and when I do, they come crashing back down." The old woman held out her hand in front of her and crumpled it up into a fist. Then she laughed, lightly. "I took me long times to clean up they mess, but I did it. They all gone and buried. Then, is only me. Now, is only us." I stared out over the fire and destruction. Was this what Cyrus would become after I had my way? Was this woman what I would become? 93 DIE IN AIR MINING ACCIDENT! I wanted to strangle her, or to beat her to death with her own drum, but the moment passed quickly. Instead, I just walked out the door and back down the stairs. I kept going until I was back to the balloon. "We have a problem," Toru said as a way of greeting. He had fixed the balloon, so I knew it had to be something else. "We'll always have a problem," I said. "What's up?" Toru guided me to the screen in the gondola. CAN READING BOOKS CAUSE CANCER? Escaped Inmate 44T8SB3, This is your second notice. We have been tracking your movements and transmissions in an effort to provide our customers with the best possible information for their consumption. As you know, the quality of information is just as important as the air we breathe, and your information has been determined to contain poor quality. Contact with our quality inspector is imminent. Please restrain yourself and those in your charge from interfering with the inspectors task to achieve an expedient level of execution and a high rate of productivity. For your convenience, we hope that you are able to accept this fate. This message has been brought to you by the Cyrus Corporation. Breathe easier. FDA PASSES SYTHENIC FOR USE IN TOBACCO! "He's almost here," I said. "Let's make sure we're ready to greet him." I had the air rifle ready. Toru had a hand gun he found on board the balloon. It had a single shot. My guess was that the gun was a last resort kind of weapon, to be used on the occupant of the balloon if he or she deemed their situation hopeless. I told Toru not to use it unless he had a sure thing, an infallible shot. I knew he understood. The gun was just a prop to make it look like we were heavily armed, or at least mildly armed. When we heard the noise coming from the rubble, it wasn't nearly as masked as I expected it to be. The PNx3 was all but announcing his presence. Toru and I slunk back to the darkness and circled around him. When he came out with his gun pointed at the fire, I said, "I've seen better sneaking up from the Securitarians. Cyrus has got to start training you guys better if they want to stay in charge." We had him caught between us. CYRUS DECLARES HOLIDAY FOR FALLEN PRESIDENT! "Drop the weapons," he said, a little too late. "This doesn't have to be like this." "Doesn't it?" I said, smiling knowing exactly how it had to be. We were supposed to die on our knees, accepting that Cyrus was the way. No dice. I put the nozzle of the air rifle to is chest. I took his gun from him. "Since I'm feeling awful generous right now," I said, "or maybe just awful tired of this number, I'm going to let you go." Toru and I started backing up to the balloon. "But I don't want you to think that's an invitation to keep following us, because if I see you again, I'll kill you without a second thought." He didn't look happy with the situation, I could see that even through the visor of his helmet, but that was fine with me. "Rachael," Toru said. “Where’s the kid?” NEW HOLOVECTORS FOR CONTRA SQUARE! Toru was right. The kid was gone. I was about to look at the PNx3 and ask what he had done with the kid, but before I could whip my head around in time, he had pulled a sidearm he was hiding behind his back and pulling the trigger at Toru and me. We ducked and took cover behind the wall of the gondola’s basket. “What did you do with him?” I yelled, but the guy wasn’t answering. He was firing shot after shot at the two of us. “Shit!” I cursed. Bullets ricocheted every which way. What do we do? The question repeated in my head. “What?” asked the kid’s voice. He was holding something in his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think it would take me this long.” A bullet was deflected off his chest, but the kid paid it no mind. Instead, he took the air rifle from me and aimed it at the PNx3. With one pull of the trigger, the guy was lifted off the ground and hurled out into the darkness. Toru and I watched him fly away as we peeked above the rim of the basket. SEALS LEAK IN PS457 KILLING 4, WOUNDING 148 “Where did you go?” I asked the kid. “To get this,” he said, holding out the hunk of machinery he had with him. He tossed it up into the air and shot it with the rifle. Like the Cyrus officer, the part went flying into the night sky. “It was a part of that guy’s transporter vessel.” The kid smiled. “I figured you didn’t want him on our backs any time soon, so I was trying to help.” I pulled the chain, giving the balloon a burst of air. “You want to help me,” I said, “get your boys back there working again.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I did. I saw the kid’s eyes go to the ground. They may have been the saddest eyes I’d ever seen, alive or otherwise. We were off the ground in no time, but somehow I felt stuck to the scene. Nothing was being accomplished with us leaving, but then nothing would be accomplished if we stayed. All that was left for us was to keep going and hope that the wind would lead us somewhere with the right kind of opportunity, but as the balloon gained altitude, I saw that there was nothing but darkness in either direction. At that moment, it seemed the sun was going to be forever set. |
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