The time passing after the Great Drone Wars was dreadful. In few years after that, everyone pretty much vanished from the surface. Lucky ones took the shelter or ran away as far as they could. Well, at least they tried. The ones who weren’t that fortunate were condemned for the painful permanence on the surface. The air was hot and still thick with the ashes, and there were no signs of it getting cooler anytime soon.
[006] The Ode To The Fallen Cities
[005] A Thousand Paths (Not) Taken
The dark wind blew over the seemingly dead plains. The air was thick with the ashes of the deceased. The black and impenetrable cloth of smoke and weary clouds encompassed everything, reaching the horizon. The small flakes of the ashes were silently landing on the thick, muddy dirt. Little puddles scattered across the dark landscape of sickening colors. Gravel on the ground was all black with occasional lambent pieces - usually a scanty barbed wire or metal plate.
[004] The Givings of Fire
He was walking around the cluster of sparse bushes, growing in what seemed utterly random order. A distant sound of the cascading waterfall was somewhat soothing. He liked coming down here and wandering around for hours, lost in the maze of his thoughts. He was thirstily breathing in all that air, even if now it was stale. Supporting infrastructure was already shut down; it was just a matter of time when everything else collapses on itself.
[003] The Voices That Werent
The bleak morning light was seeping in through the molded metal grid of the old, abandoned drainage tube. It slowly diluted the darkness filling the vast cold and wet space. It wasn’t the light that would trigger another cycle in your circadian rhythm system, gently nudging you to wake up. Above the ground, dull and repetitive surface expanded way beyond the grey line of the horizon in that grim light. The land ruptured in a few places and hasn’t seen water for a long time.
[002] The Fantasy Of Opting Out
It’s the darkest hour of the night. It’s quiet, as it can get in the megapolis. From the bird’s eye view, it seemed like a sleepy and inert organism; some movement over here, some bleep and whiz over there. The robot dog patrolling the area suddenly darts across the lightly illuminated garden to stop nearby giggling teenagers on a bench to start citing information about safety protocols. Still giggling, they slowly get up and move towards the illuminated gate.