You told your dad this morning that you were looking forward to school today, and for the first time in a long while it wasn't a complete lie. He reacted with the same strained smile as always, though, so now you're fairly certain he couldn't tell you've been lying about that since the start of the year.
You make your way through the gates, hurrying to get inside before the drizzle outside turns into a downpour, and keep your eyes peeled for Sally. Despite how gun-shy she was interacting with you before the Winter Break, her lament - about her Birthday being near Christmas always resulted in less net presents than her brother - inspired you to get her two small gifts as a surprise. The two presents rest secure in the pockets of your loose pants: a small kalimba (snagged at the flea market, refurbished by yourself) wrapped in birthday-themed paper, and a reasonably-snuggly scarf with a fairly basic Alexandria logo repeating through it (that you learned how to knit over the break) wrapped in Christmas-themed paper.
You're quite proud of that last one, as your latest version actually has proper spacing between the large rectangles that you're pretty sure look like the Tower of Alexandria. From a distance. In the rain.
Anyway you worked hard on both of these gifts as a testament to how much her friendship/semi-public tolerance of you is appreciated, what with the soul-crushing hell that last year was...
As if summoned by your darkening thoughts, you briefly catch Emma and Madison watching you through the crowd and flinch reflexively before you notice their gazes aren't overtly hostile. They seem bored, but there's something else in their eyes that you can't quite pin down before they turn to giggle conspiratorially with Sophia as she approaches them from the other side of the crowd. You release a breath you didn't realize you were holding and stop walking so close to the wall just in time to catch a glimpse of Sally through the throngs of pubescence. Pushing your way through the morass, you struggle with your best smile - this time, it doesn't feel so forced. How long has it been since you've really smiled? You sneak one hand into your pocket and squeeze the wrapped scarf as you catch up to Sally. Maybe you'll finally have something to truly smile about.
***
A hand grabs the back of your neck as you try to turn to vomit. This doesn't stop your stomach from finishing the deed, causing your breakfast of pancakes and orange juice to splatter all over the mountain of used tampons, pads, and toilet paper that fills your locker. A hard shove and then your world is nothing but the vomit, the filth, and the smell. And with the slam of hard metal, there is darkness and laughter.
***
Crying.
Sally's expression of restrained fear as she covertly takes your gifts and flees back into the crowd without a word.
Clawing. Scratching.
The small bubble of people avoiding the space around your locker that you ignore through blurry eyes as you dejectedly spin the lock and tear open the locker.
Cursing. Struggling. Pleading.
A pile of retched and fetid biological waste crammed to the roof of your locker, hammering home that they weren't stopping; they were just getting started.
Retching. Twitching. Choking. Gagging.
Emma, Madison, and Sophia's laughs echoing into your prison of filth as the click of the lock shatters any hope of rescue…
The darkness falls away as you gaze up in numb fascination. The object is too large for you to comprehend, you with a mind limited to three dimensions and a finite number of neurons to comprise it. It twists, folds, expands, and then contracts again but each time it remains the same size and overall shape, as if there is more than one of it filling the space of the original. Images flicker across scales the size of continents, so clear you can make them out from here even though you faintly understand the thing - no, the creature - is an unfathomable distance away.
The visions flicker in a pattern that seems random at first but then takes on a pattern that you struggle to remember even as you watch them unfold. Futures, pasts, and presents of worlds alien and familiar. Ideas, concepts, and facts compiled and hoarded by civilizations long gone. Your mind reels from information strobing across the crystalline scales, until a shift in the creature's hypnotic movements breaks you from your reverie.
No longer smooth in its pulsating movements, the creature begins to fall apart. Slowly at first, with only the smallest scales - even these you feel are the size of large islands - flaking off towards… something. But then the pace increases until your vision is filled by crystal shards the size of continents, each slowly gliding in a way that instills in you a feeling that there is purpose to their movement. You can no longer make sense of time, but the creature has slowly begun to diminish in size - despite it still appearing as large as the planet you call home. Is it dying? Before you can hope to learn the answer to your question, one of the largest spines breaks off and…
Chittering. Buzzing. Biting. Spinning. Skittering.
A fly. Another fly nestled on your shirt. A cockroach in between the wall reveals water leaking in from the rain outside. A spider on the ceiling feels the whispers of wind vibrate its web, painting a picture of the air currents space above your locker. A flea on the cat at the far side of the school, fat with eggs, hangs on as the cat bounds over the school's wall. A hive of hornets in the building across the street feel the humidity in the air drop as the rain begins to let up…
You seizure under the avalanche of sensory information, moaning weakly before nothingness claims you.
***
Blinking in the darkness, you breathe a sigh of relief. What was that, four times you blacked out from… whatever the hell was going on with your senses? At least it seems to have stopped for the moment. That you can breathe at all is another pleasant surprise - you don't detect any more smells…
Terror overwhelms your strange bout of Clarity as you try to flail your limbs in hopes that someone will hear the noise and come to your rescue before you pass out again. Unfortunately, you no longer seem to have limbs. Or a body. How did you sigh before, then? What's going on? Is this a dream?
YES.
The single tick of a watch's second-hand. Dozens of ball bearings tumbling along with the barest of friction. Hundreds of hammers shaping white-hot metal. Thousands of conveyor belts trickling down an assembly line. Millions of gears seamlessly twisting in perfect harmony. Billions of unfathomably complex machines genuflecting in prayer to their creator and master. The voice that washes over your mind is all these things at once, and more. You are overwhelmed but not terrified, for even though your brain struggles to comprehend the concepts that comprise the voice, you recognize a tone of compassion, of understanding, of sorrow.
"What? Where am I? Who are you?" You blurt out. How are you even talking, let alone thinking straight after what you've just been through? You simultaneously want to cheer in elation for being out of the locker, wretch in disgust at the recollection of the event, and wail in despair that you may now be in an evenworsesituation.
YOU ARE TRAPPED IN THE WAKING WORLD AND IN YOUR DREAMS, AS AM I.
YOU SUFFER AND DESPAIR UNDER THE TORMENT OF YOUR PEERS, AS HAVE I.
YOUR BODY AND MIND FAIL YOU, AS DOES MINE.
Despite the overpowering sensations that course through you with every word, you feel the weight of emotion in the voice resonate with your very being. You have no eyes yet you must weep. Just curl up into a ball and wait it out, like always. You can take it. You've never been good at anything else...
But before the melancholy can take you fully, the spark of realization - that you aredying - hits you. Sophia, Madison, Emma… they've killedyou. You never antagonized them, you never attacked them, you never even retaliated, yet they've only gotten worse and worse for no. Fucking. Reason. You've not given much thought towards what you want to do with your life, but now... now you refuse to let it be wasted so pointlessly.
Clarity washes over your mind. Cold. Efficient. Ruthless.
"No."
The name-calling. The pranks. The locker. The bugs. These are trivial nuisances.
"If I die, they win."
Emma, the Betrayer. Sophia, the Instigator. Madison, the Cover. Only relevant as examples of how far Order has fallen, to allow such behavior.
"I will not die."
The other kids that did nothing. The teachers that looked away. The legal system that would undoubtedly fail to find evidence to convict them of your murder. Systemic corruption that must be purged if there is to be Order.
"They will never win."
There is silence, the cacophonous void of inevitability.
CORRECT.
A smile in the voice - if a harmonious din of machines can smile - , satisfactory and proud. Its next statement, however, is tinged with regret.
PREPARE YOURSELF.
"Wha-"
***
Your eyes snap open in the coffin of filth that is your locker but there is a burst of light in front of your face as something slams into your forehead and then there is nothing in the Universe but PAIN.
***
A light breaks over the empty horizon; a light of burnished brass, shining silver, and gleaming gold.
HEAR ME, TAYLOR ANNE HEBERT, AND UNDERSTAND.
The planet rises slowly, a clockwork sphere of inescapable beauty, wonder, and potential.
I AM THE GREAT MAKER.
Oceans of shimmering oil, clouds of billowing steam and wispy smoke, forests of radiant crystal.
I AM THE MACHINE GOD.
The entire planet shifts, splits, and opens, revealing it to be a living, mechanical Eye.
I AM AUTOCHTHON.
The Deus Machina swivels slightly and the enormous iris of the Primordial focuses on your formless being, driving all conscious thought from your mind.
YOU WILL LIVE SO THAT I WILL LIVE.
YOU ARE MY LAST AND GREATEST HOPE.
YOU ARE MY VANGUARD AND MY SALVATION.
The iris snaps open wide and you plummet into the darkness.
THROUGH ENDURANCE YOU HAVE SURVIVED PAIN, BETRAYAL, AND INJUSTICE.
THROUGH WITNESSING FRAILTY, IGNORANCE, AND CRUELTY YOU KNOW WHAT MUST BE FIXED TO BRING ORDER.
THROUGH GUILE YOU WILL ADMINISTER THE REST OF MY CHOSEN IN THIS NEW UNIVERSE.
THROUGH YOUR SOUL OF STEEL, CHAMPION MY NAME.
In a sudden eruption, power - Essence - flows through your mind, body, and soul.
ARISE, ENDURING ORDER ADMINISTRATOR.
***
You open your eyes.
You are in your locker.
You are in your empty locker.
Not just empty. Clean. You're not sensing bugs (though you're not sure why you remember that), either. You do get a whiff of an industrial cleaner, though from the strength of the smell they either had to use significantly less than you would have expected or that the smell has had time to dissipate.
You're not quite certain how they would have gone about cleaning the damn thing with you still in it, so there's definitely something strange going…
…a clockwork sphere of inescapable beauty…
Your feeling of rejuvenation and mental Clarity sinks sinks into the floor as you realize you likely have had a psychotic break. You've read about this before - trauma victims returning to the scene of the tragedy in fugue states.
Well, at least the locker door is open. Ah, and it's night time as well. You step over the small little mess of flowers that your door scattered everywhere, then lean back against the locker in a slouch. What to do?
***
[ ] Now isn't the time to mope. Now is the time for rest.
-- Go home. Hope your dad isn't freaking out about you being out at night. Sleep. Try to feel better in the morning, at which point you can try to piece together just what happened.
[ ] Now isn't the time to mope. Now is the time for logic.
-- You may not be playing with a full deck right now, but maybe you can figure out what's going on if you examine the area and do some investigating before heading home. Your dad can handle you being out a little longer.
[ ] Now isn't the time to mope. Now is the time for screaming.
-- Screaming sounds real good right now. Lots and lots of screaming.
[ ] Now is the time to mope.
-- Welcome to the town of Suffering. Population: Taylor Hebert.
[ ] Write-in.