Alone in Black – A Flash Fiction

Hello! Is there more to the road trip? Of course. Did I say I’d post more? Also yes. Did I fail? Yes.

I’ve been doing Camp Nano editing Dewdrops and Butterflies for my betas soooooo most of my time on the computer has been used for that. However, I did write a short story a couple of days ago. It’s sort of a sad dystopian themed kind of story.

It was a photo prompted story that I wrote for a friend, and although she thought it was very sad, I really enjoyed just spilling words onto a page for once, especially since I’ve been doing. so. much. editing.

~~~

He lived in a slit in the rocks. Black rocks. Not in a cave, though it was a narrow slit. There was no landscaping outside. Sparse weeds. Black cliffs, stone ground, nothing else.

It was a house. Stark white, sleek, with sharp edges. Too many corners, everything square, everything symmetrical. When I say everything I mean everything.

Windows, doors, walls. The few quadrilaterals decorations on the walls always cam in twos, exactly identical to their counterparts. 

And everything was white. Almost painfully so. Every floor, every wall, every piece of furniture was kept spotless. Little but shadows varied from the empty whiteness.

If you asked him, he would not say he lived alone. He had 22 assistants. 11 on each half of the house .4 androids, 4 security bots, 2 chiefs, 2 mopping, and dusting bots, two water reusing, natural energy powered washing bots that did everything from clothes to couches. He had two mechanical cats and two dogs. Two AIs that communicated with each other but never crossed the black line.

None of the bots crossed the black line from their side to the other.

And he had two projects he was working on. One he called his child, the other, his friend. These two were not symmetrical.

He was a middle-aged man, slightly on the younger side. Full black curls framed his face and a bit of a beard came through when he didn’t shave. His nose was unique but not pointed. His jaw was sharp, chin prominent, and eyes the deepest darkest black. His lips were kind and soft, and his hands strong and firm, but gentle enough to work with the most delicate of technology. 

He wore a black suit and tie when he could. When he came up to see his house, to see the whiteness, the tidiness that was kept to his satisfaction by machines, brilliant works of his own hand.

But that was rare.

He lived in his lab in the basement. He breathed and ate and slept there. But most of all he worked there.

He worked tirelessly on his projects. His non-symmetrical masterpieces. His only hope and only reason for anything at all. Was it not for the fact that his early androids, prototypes of the products he would have changed the world with had there been a world to change, responded to oral commands and engaged in conversation, he would never have spoken a word again. 

Not after what happened.

Not after everything was lost.

Everything.

But they asked him questions, made him talk. To keep the house running, to keep himself alive, he spoke.

And he worked. He tweaked and adjusted and sighed and washed his hands and welded and shaped and carefully, with all the love that was left in his heart, formed two new androids. But he did not call them that. Nobody called them that. Not that there was anyone left to.

If there had been anybody left he would not need to immerse himself so fully, so devotedly, into creating something that would mimic humanity as closely as his genius mind could put together.

The computers hummed, bots came and went, up and downstairs. Androids occasionally required conversation and his basic needs as a human continued to be met.

Years. Years he spent this way.

But if you had appeared. If you had somehow lived, survived what cost everybody else, and you came to his home in the slit in the rocks, you would not find him that way. You would find him neat, tidy, waiting. 

He would greet you kindly, an impossible excitement hidden deep inside, but too disbelieving not to show in his black eyes. He would speak to you in his deep voice, in that systematic enchanting way of his. He would smile, clean and well dressed, and offer you a meal and a place to stay for this night and the next and the next. He would make sure you were safe and offer you everything in his home.

And finally, when the day came that you met his eyes with eyes that could never be created artificially, he would realize the impossibility of it. He would battle himself, the hours of sweat and tears that went into them. And then he would set his masterpieces carefully into their holding tanks, turn the lights off and shut the door, locking the key to the basement inside. He knew if he ever needed to go back, he would have to prove it.

Then he would remove the black like that split the house, that split the place you lived from where he lived. And every android and every bot and… you would live out the rest of your days together, as they were meant to. 

But you cannot. You did not survive. He was the only one.

So he labors day and night in the fiercely lit basement lab, alone. Living forever alone. The End.

~~~

So! What did you think? Was it too sad for you? Did you like it? I thought it was a lot of fun to write. Let me know in the comments! The next part of our road trip will be Next week. I was super busy this week so couldn’t put it together.

Live Laugh and Love girls!
~Libby