My Idea Box

ORIGINAL IDEA: A Ship in the Desert

When Alam awoke, he first thought he was staring at the face of a god. He quickly berated himself for thinking that. As he sat up on the rocky desert, he stared at the body that had been lying next to him.

Though half-buried in the sand and rocks, its brass-colored form gleamed in the light of Sahar's two moons. Arms, too skeletal for a human's, popped out to grasp at the purple sky. The legs, held up by pistons, bent awkwardly by gears that were undone long ago. Sand piled through the crooked hole in the metal man's battered and bare chest, covering its metal insides. The head atop it was the same too, with the stars shinin in its glassy eyes to complete the dead look.

A dead look for a so-called god.

Snorting, Alam stood and walked past the corpse of the dead being. He wondered how his people could call those things gods. Even when alive, they were just as lifeless. Immobile things that commanded his people from their high thrones. They made up their lack of numbers with their immense sizes, and it was at their feet that Alam's people bowed and prostrated to their whims.

Alam knew he had seen enough, after so many years of copying everyone else. The few who spoke to him and turned him away. The others would do the same, or worse.

So Alam left. He crawled his way to the surface. He dragged himself through the rock, as he currently dragged himself through the sands in quick strides. The night air, and the lack of any one sun, made it easy, but that wouldn't last forever. Already, a dim yellow glow of Sahar's first sun had spread itself thin on the horizon.

The same glow grew within minutes. The cool air began to warm. Alam, rushing on his two legs, unknowingly breathed in some of that air. The heat, however small it was, filled his nose and house, and his insides processed it like food. In seconds, the same energy spread through his body, and the cracks on his second skin soon flowed a dim orange, mirroring the skyline.

The ever-glowing glow drew Alam's eyes up. Just beyond the horizon, tiny stars twinkled in a fading night sky. They were beautiful things, always shining brightly against a darkening void like lava crystals in the darkest of caves. Alam recalled from his childhood, when his parents and elders told that the stars were the "homes of the god" before they came to save humanity from its dying days. The stars were mere palaces waiting to be reclaimed, shining like beacons to their masters.

But Alam knew those "masters" would never return. They did nothing as time passed by them. The stars themselves, as "divine" as the giants of his people, would do the same, so Alam brought his gaze back down to the desert.

He didn't miss much as the stars set and were soon blotted out by the rays of first light.

The first sun's edge rose over the horizon, and Alam couldn't find anything. The great Sahar wastes, as he had known it, laid beyond his home, open to the three suns. If the stories he heard were true, then it should also contain dozens-if not hundreds-of wreckage, more monstrosities from a time when mankind first stepped on Sahar. Alam quickened his pace to continue his now-desperate search across a desert with nothing but the glow of one sun.

Alam's search continued to produce nothing, but he didn't stop. He wasn't tired–far from it. His stubbornness wouldn't let him be, and his body agreed with it. The air, hot as a bonfire, coursed through him, and the orange cracks had turned red, crawling to his limbs and powering them. Using through limbs, specifically his legs, Alam turned when he believed he saw something.

In that same direction were Sahar's two moons. Placed further away from the dawn, the shone blue and red like a pair of eyes. The elders said the moons were supposed to be the "eyes of the gods," always watching Sahar carefully.

If that was the case, it was a poor job. The moons were mere crescents, as if the eyes were tired. Alam casted his own forward and wondered how could something so holy become so exhausted. Sooner or later, those eyes above would close and sleep like a babe's, and the ones who were watching would do the same.