Of What Was Left Behind (ONC 2024)

13 - Growth and Development V

The day ended with rainfall. The camera watched as drops of water splashed onto the lens. Earlier, the birds had fled at the onset of a gentle drizzle, leaving the device to monitor the shift from dim, grey daylight to darkness.

During this last part of the day, it would have played with the silver-eyed bird. It would have encouraged play, if only to stave off the swallowing emptiness.

But now it was left to watch puddles of mud grow. Initially, the soil absorbed the rain, creating dark, dented spots in the ground. A few minutes later, the spots grew and gleamed, ladened with water. Some grew further and further, spilling over to form muddy puddles.

The wind flattened the grass and violently shook the branches overhead. Abruptly, something snapped—a branch plummeted in a swift blur.

The camera felt itself fall without falling. It felt itself shutting down, turning quiet and cold without even doing so. The emptiness. Then, the scrambling feeling was back. It was as if electricity tried to force itself through thin, broken wires. It caused fragments of memory to ricochet off one another. Chaos. Light. Sound.

A loud rumble shook the air and the skies darkened. The battery fell low and the camera sank into a half-aware mode.

The woman scribbled intently on a piece of paper before rapidly scrawling over her words. Again and again, she repeated her actions before stopping. She threw the paper onto the bed-side table, sighing.

"Writing doesn't work for me."

She turned towards the camera perched on the desk.

"I tried writing. I don't know. I guess I wanted to see if there was another outlet, something different, you know?"

The woman closed her eyes. "Talking seems to just help these whizzing thoughts settle down. It helps me process things, memories, feelings, you know the gist."

There was a moment of silence.

"I think there's a difference between talking with another person and talking privately. I mean, both are helpful. They both help solidify and understand events, but sometimes I just need to ramble without feeling, well, self-conscious."

The woman sighed once more.

"I think after all my rambles, I'm slowly getting better. Every time I get to articulate my feelings or memories, it's like my previously looping, messy thoughts were syphoned out of my brain and wrangled into concrete ideas and sentences. It squeezes out my feelings, my pain and emotions from these moments- The talking is the painful but after that-"

The woman trailed off.

"The pain is less...intense, and it makes me feel that much lighter. The memories that would haunt me again and again just feel normal memories, painful ones, but normal."

The woman smiled softly. "I mean, it doesn't mean that I am suddenly better or anything. The grief or any experience really but especially grief, it stays with you. Some days are-"

She briefly turned her head towards the corner of the room.

"Some days, the loss hits you like a jolt of realisation. You realise there are moments, efforts, achievements that she will never see. It's surreal knowing that you will live and gain experiences without, well, her presence."

The woman stared at the camera."I find that so fucking sad. She was dear to me and I can't even-."

There was another moment of silence and the woman pinched the bridge of her nose.

"I think I am getting better though. I can feel myself slowly moving on, participating in my life though-"

She scoffed.

"-Though it seems even that will be disrupted. I don't think I will really accept the end of the world until my last moments."

The woman closed her eyes. "The world is slowly getting worse, but you know what? I will do my best to live anyway. I will help my family and I will do what I want."

She paused. "Isn't that all we can do at this stage?"

The rest of the memory faded, the sunlit room fading into darkness. The camera dimly registered another crack, either thunder or another falling branch. Its microphone picked up loud scrambling of something scraping over plastic and some piece of wire or circuitry within the device snapped. Its internal systems registered the newly broken bit of machinery as sparking, leaking out heat and energy, further accelerating the draining of an already low battery

Then, that spark touched something, a forgotten reserve of maintenance bots which, for so long, remained dormant. The spark cascaded through the reserve activating each tiny machine one by one. As soon as the last of them activated, the battery fell flat.

...

In the darkness, the moss-covered camera, now cracked from the impact of the fallen branch, emitted a startling blue glow. It was faint, barely visible in the stark moonlight that drenched the surroundings in pale blue.

The camera itself was silent, but nearby, tiny machines—sources of the glow—periodically emitted quiet pulses of sound. In the span of a few minutes, the ground surrounding the camera caved in a little and the branch pushing on its roof snapped in half, eaten by the repair bots for fuel.

Though the plastic remained cracked, some bots replaced metallic parts, using their bodies. One would deconstruct a neighbouring bot, then use the materials as resources.

Throughout the night, the bots slowly integrated themselves into the broken machine, repairing critical damages. They cleaned the solar cells allowing for greater efficiency in extracting energy from the sun.

As dawn broke, silence fell over the scene as the last of the tiny machines finally lost power.

******

Word count: 12329

Oh boy, we are getting close to THE critical bit of the story. I mean, all parts of the story are important but the end sequence is going to be the most dramatic indeed. With this part comes the end of the Growth and Development chapter though not the end of development or growth for any of the characters, be it the birds, the kittens or the camera itself.

So why did I not continue having chapters named Growth and Development [add roman numerals]?

Well, I wanted to first change the names around AND there is a subtle shift in themes. This chapter is getting the camera to come to terms with its own development and intelligence and yes, its emotions. The next few chapters will be exploring what that means and also the camera's new, or perhaps, regained capabilities. The animals, well they will also be addressed a little differently but what that means will be a spoiler :)

Then we will have the climax, a collision shall we speak. Oooh how exciting.

I am not normally this energetic, but I have just started to recover from a nasty cold so yeah.