Pale Machine

• Jake Song, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2017

“Genevieve.” the words that wrapped around her head since the dawn of time. She always sort of knew that this was not the world.

A day so mundane that any would disregard, she came to life. Senses of sense tingled through, she raised her hand, peeked at it and smiled - it was pale. Simple yet elegant, just like everything else in life. A pale bus had pulled up and she stepped in without hesitation. At first it was strange, when she tried to seek the environment around her through the bus windows. It drove past nothing and stopped at the library. She was unsure how she had never noticed the bus wading through nothing,“… but nothing is not wrong,” she assured herself. “hmm.” The thought was almost completely wiped out from her memory.

Following her routine, she stepped into the library. The entire library is made of books, the walls, the floor, heck, even the wallpaper is filled with interesting quotes from various people. No, not people. From the wiser ones. She took out a book and started flipping through the pages. It started writing itself, filling it in bit by bit with her imaginations. The experience was so livid every time. She ventured into the unknown place of mind, she wrote about crashing the bus into the library and cutting herself with the books. But no, none of that would happen to her of course. She would harm herself. She would get hurt.

The more she wrote, the more her thought stretched. She learned to remember things.

Nothing is wrong.

Another, no, something had chanted “Genevieve” again.

Her vision blurred, through the pure white walls and the black text, she saw something.

Something more than black and white.

“Genevieve!”

“AHHHhh… wha, how long was I in the machine this time, David… Oh god, we have to get rid of this. It’s trying to erase some of my mentality to achieve permanent pleasure! My good times, my bad times, all to just pure pleasure! No…. NO. Destroy it now! DESTROY IT NOW!” Genevieve screamed with her eyes wide open, sweat sliding through every pore imaginable. “David… no…”

Genevieve looked around, trying to recover her senses. There were gray walls. Check. There is a neuroactivity detector strapped around her head. Check. Everything was here except for David, which was here, but instead of an advanced scientist, a skeleton took his place.

She re-calibrated her watch - year 9017. For seven millenniums that had gone in the blink of an eye. Memories flood back, the asteroid the nuclear winter.

She forced open her bunker lid and blankly looked at the sky. Clouds of endless gray swirls and fallout radiation fill the void of sky.

Genevieve stepped back in her bunker and looked at herself the mirror.

She returned to her bed and plugged herself back into the machine.

“Another seven thousand years.” she said.

The machine crackled and whirled, again.