A Clockwork Colossus

            The barren field stretched for miles ahead of Eve, and yet she could still ascertain the whereabouts of her destination just from sight alone. Her dull brown eyes could see far better and farther than they should have been able to, far better and farther than the sight of her peers, and so she looked at the distant city with relief.

            A light wind started to blow her short gray hair to the east.  Despite retaining the appearance of a woman in her early thirties, Eve was ageless; her hair though had an odd habit of remaining gray despite her youthful appearance. The pale skin on her face shivered from the chill of the wind as she looked back.

            The forest she exited loomed majestically on an incline behind her. A cornucopia of greens and browns contrasted with the oranges and yellows of the setting sun and the dying field. The harsh juxtaposition of the lush vigorous forest with the perishing plain she currently found herself in had not escaped Eve, who found the whole thing remarkably drab.

            Eve sighed and sat down on the callous yellow grass. She began rummaging through her rucksack. A search for food yielded a lone piece of bread.

            She looked at the piece of bread reluctantly. On one hand she was remarkably hungry and on the other hand, this bread was probably about a month old. Eventually Eve reluctantly began gnawing on it. It was stale as a brick, tasted horrible, and yet the relief it had afforded her could not be overstated. Even with her considerable fortitude she had practically starved herself traveling between cities and the knowledge that she would be approaching something constituting civilization brought serenity to her uneasy mind.

            The brief solace that came with a respite from hunger was instantly shattered by a cacophony of clanking rusty chains and the collision of wood with metal. Eve bolted up and her once serene visage took on an air of seriousness as she looked towards the forest. She continued to gnaw on her piece of stale bread with one hand while with her free hand she slowly reached for her rucksack and carefully slung it around her back.

            She recognized the din emanating from the forest, and she cursed herself for not knowing better. She had seen the lines in the dirt and the massive foot prints accompanying them while traipsing through the forest, but had thought (quite foolishly she began to realize) that the tracks must have been made some time ago.

            She wanted to yell as loud as she could to no one in particular, but whether it was because of the bread in her mouth that refused to be anything resembling digestible, or because she had no intention of alerting the waiting giant of her presence, she kept her mouth shut as she stepped backwards. She made an effort to keep her eye on the general direction of the noise.

                        A gargantuan beast like man stepped out of the woods, his artificial muscles almost seemed like they had exploded underneath his synthetic skin. In places the skin had ripped away, revealing a rubber like substance that had become its sinew. The man’s face remained mostly intact except for a piece of cloth tied around where its eyes should have been; stripped it of its natural eyes, a pair of sickly yellow dots glowed beneath the cloth mesh.

            It was both artificial and natural, a man and yet not. It was like an erratic clockwork beast, confused, alone, ravenous and yet always driven by a set of procedures it could never grasp. These clockwork brutes had been known as Exiles among the remnants of civilization. They were infamous for their territorial desire to defend the vast cracks that existed between the pockets of civilization, and they were even more infamous for the strength that enforced this desire.

            Yet despite its abundant strength, the behemoth still had found a way to remain in bondage. Shackled tightly around its massive left wrist was a metal band with a chain leading off of it, and at the end of that chain dangled a chipped and rusted claymore that was roughly Eve’s height.

            Its artificial hair was patchy and most of it had been pulled out, revealing a partially smooth head atop its ten foot frame. Mostly it just looked sad and confused; this once mighty man had been reduced to a frightened mass of machine and muscle, constantly protecting its land for reasons that were never clear, from threats that died out long ago, afraid of change, afraid of a world it was incapable of understanding, all the while being haunted by a past that was not its own. Eve saw this in its pitiable, melancholic face and felt the remorse that the Exile could not.

            It continued lumbering with no clear path in mind, its sight was limited and so Eve attempted to make her escape as methodical as possible. Despite her best efforts the Exiles’s inscrutable path invariably seemed to lead towards her.

            It was not that the Exile lacked sight, but rather that its sight was limited. It could barely see past itself, let alone make out Eve’s lithe form. Somehow though, it knew something was there, perhaps she remained a vague blob in the distance to it or perhaps it was really as dumb to its surroundings as it seemed and luck had sent the behemoth careening towards her. Either way it looked around as it stomped its way towards Eve.

            As it drew closer, Eve could hear its beleaguered breath heaving in and out. She again began her slow retreat backwards as she attempted to remove herself from the Exile’s downhill path.

            As Eve was slowly backing up she had wondered how much of it was human and how much of it was machinery. There was probably only a decayed brain left in there, she had reasoned. She also wondered if it had its face modeled or whether this was just a generic face they gave all “enhanced” soldiers before and during the war.

            Eve knew though that the Exile’s anger was not its own. Left to its own, the Exile would be no different than a beast, certainly dangerous if threatened but never openly malicious. This wrath that haunted it was the work of something else entirely, the work of those nostalgic specters that had plagued Eve throughout her new life, Anachronisms.

            In her post war life, Eve had become somewhat of an expert on these Anachronisms. The Anachronisms were once people but had lost their form, Eve was vague on the how but she knew its effects, and whatever did this left the people it affected as a formless mass of thoughts stuck reliving its last moments. Most Anachronisms merely affected people psychologically by “inhabiting” an object close to that person and altering that person’s thought patterns through direct or indirect contact. Eve had found that more often than not, Anachronisms were harmless.

            Eve recognized the type of Anachronism that plagued the Exile; it was an Iraplasmato, or a rage maker. They were constructed from the consciousness of the many soldiers who had died during the war. The Exiles would commonly roam the battlefields of the old war and so they had a habit of accumulating these Iraplasmato, Eve had guessed this one did as well, though she wasn’t entirely certain where they had coalesced. It would inhabit an object and induce anger in those around it. In small groups they would merely cause a minor annoyance, but in massive colonies, and to a being who would live with them constantly, the rage would become unbearable. Eve couldn’t quite decide where they had congregated though. Anachronisms would only inhabit an object that in some way reminded them of their shared past and if given a choice they would always inhabit the object that they felt the most connection to. A sword as a symbol of aggression would make sense, but the Iraplasmato might feel stronger towards something that represented the oppression that came with being a soldier, the chains.

            Every attempt to move out of its way always lead back to her path, then she tripped, the stale bread flinging out her hand. She scraped her elbow and it had begun to bleed as she jolted up. Crimson streams ran down her arm. Even through its abysmal sight the Exile knew that somewhere around it there was someone or something that had just moved, and that thing smelled of fresh blood.

            Its heavy breathing began to pick up pace as Eve began to speak in a soothing yet still uneasy voice, “I don’t mean you or your land harm, Exile, I’m sorry for trespassing but…please let me pass.”

            Eve had hoped to appeal to any humanity that may have been left in the enhanced brute. Her heart had begun pounding and her breathing too had become labored as her composure began to falter. The Exile responded with a series of loud and unintelligible grunts as if it had, at one time, been familiar with the concept of speech and was trying to mimic a long forgotten memory that lay on the edges of its shattered mind.

            It began fumbling for the sword as it lurched towards her. The Exile’s large hands eventually found their way to the hilt as it grasped the archaic blade that had kept it shackled for so long. At first it started out with a slow charge but then it let out a primal below as it gained a surprising burst of speed.

            There was a decent amount of distance between them and the yellow dots began blurring into the encroaching night as the exile rampaged towards Eve’s direction. Eve’s pale brown eyes briefly met its glowing yellow dots as she began to tense up.

            Eve had encountered an exile once before and she knew from experience that they were relentless in their pursuits. There was no point in running that would only incur more of the beast’s rage. It didn’t matter how far she ran, if given enough time the Exile would find her, and it would brutalize her at any cost.

            Her trembling hand reached for a knife and she held it out in front of her, ready to kill it if she had to. The last time she had encountered an exile she had been ruthlessly stalked by it for days. Fortuitous enough though, she had been rescued by an expert in the exiles, who had taught her how to take down an Exile efficiently. The key was damaging its neck where the repair center was. If Eve could manage to dodge its assault and get behind the lumbering beast she could severely cripple it. Eve thought that it shouldn’t be spectacularly difficult for someone as nimble as she was, to accomplish this task.

            When she had first been assailed by an Exile, fear had been what had defined the encounter. Now, with the benefit of knowledge Eve couldn’t help but feel pity for her assailant in addition to fear,

            “I’m sorry for what I have to do” She yelled as it uncontrollably barreled towards her.

            “I really don’t mean you harm, b..but you’re not giving me an option here. So if there is a side of you that is still intelligent… I really am sorry.” Eve made sure to yell this in as soothing a voice as possible, whether it was for the benefit of the machine or the beast, Eve couldn’t decide.

            As it charged its breathing became more erratic, and its scream grew louder.

            Eve turned her left shoulder towards the beast to better position herself to dodge the charge. The Exile’s archaic claymore dragged behind it as ancient trees snapped and broke upon impact with the brute. She pointed the knife outward towards the direction of the beast. Then The Exile’s reckless gait faltered as its right leg buckled under the tremendous weight. Eve shuffled back. A clear snap pierced the dusk. 

            The Exile crashed and rumbled towards her, churning up dirt and dead grass as it tumbled wildly.  Eventually it came to lie just barely out of Eve’s reach. The Exile’s massive claymore stuck out of the ground between the Exile and a massive boulder. Eve watched the whole catastrophe unfold with her mouth agape. Despite her experience with the creatures, she still found astonishment in the critical failure.

            It took her a second to regain her composure as she stepped back to avoid the facedown Exile’s flailing arms. She looked upon the mechanical beast with pity and remorse. She was glad she wasn’t the one who had to kill it. Eve looked at its legs and saw the error, its right leg had a fairly sizable gash that cut down to its mechanical bone, the leg had given out and the body was running out of power trying to repair it. Much like a normal human body an enhanced body had ways to repair these things, mostly nanobots usually stored in the back of the neck, but these cost a huge amount of energy, a luxury that the Exile didn’t have. Now that the leg had snapped, the repair center would go into overdrive trying to repair the damage, the energy consumption would be too great and the Exile’s body would go limp as it lost power, until it completely ran out, then it would die.

            She stared at it for a long while, pondering which past had kept it shackled, the sword or the chain? She had given great thought to this before gently striding towards the sword, all the while keeping distance from the Exile. There was work to be done. The sword was made of a light metal (much like the metal used when “enhancing” soldiers). The metal though strong when first made, didn’t have much durability, with the rust that had accumulated, Eve guessed a strike against the boulder would snap it in two. She looked towards the boulder nearby the dying colossus.

            Eve waited a couple of hours for it to run out of power as it threw a fit. It hollered, often times looking at its legs as it alternately pounded the ground and took futile swings at Eve. Occasionally it would reach around and try to punch its own legs as if trying to command them to work.

            Eve searched for the right words to calm the Exile and a meek, “I’m just… sorry” was all that Eve managed to mutter as she waited for the behemoth to tire.

            Eventually it gave out and Eve began the arduous task of picking up the sword. She had managed to, through much effort, swing it over her back and position it to strike the boulder before her. Her strength was above average for a person of her stature and though lifting the sword was a difficult task, it was not an impossible one. The Exile looked at her with its poor confused yellow dots. It had lost the use of its arms and it began wailing at Eve, the tone had kept its unquenchable rage from before but now there was a hint of remorse, as if it were an old man cursing the world, and itself, for changing.

            “Let this beast rest Anachronism, its struggle is not yours. I’m kind of sorry about destroying your home and everything but you don’t understand the pain you’ve been causing this … thing. Your anger isn’t its anger. This beast cannot let go of your anger of its own volition, so I will quell your rage for it.”

            With the sword successfully swung over her shoulder, Eve took a second to breathe. After taking a minute to breathe Eve lifted it above her head and swung it down on the boulder. A satisfying clang broke the silence as the rusted sword broke clean in two. Eve immediately let the half she was holding fall to the dead grass.

            Swinging the sword took Eve a tremendous amount of stamina, so she bent over to catch her breath. A translucent spectral like substance began pouring out of the sword’s shattered blade. Eve observed that the blob lacked any feature that could be considered even remotely human. Most Anachronisms had at least tried to remember their forms, but this, this was so scarred by its past that it hadn’t even attempted a return to humanity. These once proud soldiers had been reduced to an unfeeling blob of painful memories and fear. She fished a jar out of her rucksack and kneeled down. Alerted to her presence the blob began aggressively snaking towards her. It was attracted to her great age, as most Anachronisms were it longed for a past it thought Eve embodied.

            The Exile’s contorted and miserable face turned to look at Eve and had taken on an air of serenity as its yellow dots flickered on an off before the Exile released a great sigh. The anger of the past had returned to where it belonged.

            Eve reached out her hand to the Iraplasmato and scooped it into the jar before sealing the lid tight. The Iraplasmato had no association with the jar and thus would not inhabit it.

            Eve had no words for the dying Exile. It had been a victim of an aggressive past that was not its own, it had spent so much of its life fighting a war that had happened centuries before it had even drawn its first breath. Instead she looked at the jar filled with nostalgic wrath and stuffed it back into her rucksack. It would be good for research.

            Eve sighed, sat down next to the Exile and began patting its head. She looked out with her enhanced eyes into the far distant horizon and quietly muttered; “Now where’d that piece of bread fall off to?”