The blonde, as beautiful as she was, did not get her admittance. In a fit of rage she swung her bionic arm at the bouncer's face. He caught it. Broke it. Then knocked the blonde to the ground with her own arm.
Mr. Deadman dismissed the footage in disgust. "How far I've fallen..." he whispered to the snowy mountain peaks around him. He had never felt so hollow.
He breathed in the brisk air, the reel spinning all around him. His reel. If nothing else, he would leave that behind when this was all set and done with. This... sham he'd begun to think of it as such.
Humanity always succeeded to disappoint.
"Next scene."
His bench was now surrounded in darkness, red-tinted stalactites gave the scenario a haunting visage. It fit his disposition perfectly.
"Play." Mr. Deadman said to no one or nothing in particular. The reel heard him however, it was the last thing that did.
So the reel spun, and the lives of millions spun with it.
The urchin swore at the bot, but the bot did not conform to human taunting. He took the boy by the scruff of his neck and sat him back down next to his father. The boy was a young diver however, who tried to hack the chaperone droid. He came close, but the droid's defence systems rebounded his attack. The boy soon discovered what happened when you tried to attack government property - he would never use his link again...
Mr. Deadman sat for a long while. better than the last... He sighed and the world sighed with him. Once, footage like this would be dismissed out of hand. Now it's a consideration? Folly.
Still, it left him with hope. He hated the damn thing for that. Hope was a mortal's virtue. Father warned me this would happen. He sat in deep contemplation. The reel kept spinning. And yet, I find that hope is better than nothing... He chuckled at the absurdity of his thoughts.
"Next scene."
And he was back home. Lake Michigan the place was once called, now it was called nothing. He wanted to see something, anything to get him out of his foul mood. This place carried good omens - he deserved a good showing.
"Play..." he said the words almost reverently, a preposterous notion for a God.
The beggar lay defeated on the carbon road. His possessions were meager at best, and all those who floated past spared him no mind. His mind however, was undamaged. A little boy fell from his hover-car. As the boy hit the carbon he started wailing a child's petulance. The beggar picked the boy up and held him, his parental touch unlike anything the boy had experienced. He soon stopped crying. The tattered man smiled, deftly avoiding the traffic as he left the deadly road. He stood on the small sidewalk, cradling his charge. The boy stared at him, transfixed by the brasant showing of human emotion. The beggar waited for a hover-car that would never come. And yet, he waited.
The reel slowed, anticipating his master's inclination.
"Again..." Mr. Deadman whispered.
At the end he was silent. Mr. Deadman admired his long lost home, the lake he grew up on, relieved for the first time in a long time. Letting the reel wash over him, consume him - he had forgotten what it felt like. It was bliss.
As he indulged in its blatant humanity his form started to fade from the lakeside bench. The reel fading with him. The bench remained solid, it would wait for his eventual return.
For his and the reel's.
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Return from The Reel | A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words to Јоцко's Web3 Blog
