Clockwork

• Charlie Milne, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2019

My eyesight is faint, as though looking through misted glass. Focusing my vision on a specific object is a task correlational to lifting weights. When was the last I slept? Days, months, years? Time is an immeasurable object without the hands of the clock to count it down.
I’ve been sitting on a solid plastic stool for as long as memory can salvage. I glance directly to my left, only to glimpse an ever-expansive row of people receding into the distance. And in front of this row, another row. And in front of that row, another. Our sea of heads reaches an eventual horizon before meeting the walls of the structure in which we are confined. With each other on all sides, we are without the privilege of privacy.
Life is a pattern – space bar, letters, new paragraph, repeat. We type on computers. Always typing. Always working. Our fingers create a demented chant on the keyboards, as though shouting, pleading, for retribution. Such a delusion will never come.
My fingers are ablaze with the pain of repetition. How could such a simple task produce unwavering agony? My hands collapse atop the keyboard and spasm as though unable to remain stationary. My fingers, bright red and bleeding at parts, visibly pulsate to the beat of my heart.
“Keep typing,” whispers a voice. How long has it been since I heard one of those? I turn to my right. My eyes would have passed over the speaker, were she not glancing in my direction out of the corner of her eye. On a stool directly beside me, with the slightest movement of her mouth, she says, “One of them is coming. Keep typing.”
I stare again at my throbbing hands.
“I can’t,” I declare, and I’m surprised by the defeat in my voice.
Footsteps pound mechanically, as though following a rhythm. In the computer screen’s reflection, I see a human figure. I blink, and as I open my eyes, the thing’s face is staring at the screen in front of me. Staring at my reflection. I turn away, breaking the connection, and a rough hand clasps onto my shoulder. Reflexively, I cry out an incomprehensible sound. The grip turns my entire body, and I’m facing the thing eye-to-eye. Its face is smooth, flawless, as though artificial. I cannot pinpoint its gender.
“Did anyone give you permission to rest?”
Its voice is rhythmic, almost sing-song. Its eerie quality clutches at my spine.
“No,” I gasp. “No, no-one did.”
“You are to continue typing,” it says, and, as though allowing anger to seep into its being, its face flickers, a flaw in the code. In the instant, I can see the thing beyond the mask – a smooth digital screen, mounted atop a human neck like the head of a mallet. The armour repairs itself instantly, and the thing becomes human once more. It kneels and exhales a smoke-like substance into my face. “Do you understand?”
I nod.
“Yes,” I say. “I understand.”