Having stocked up on
LEDs some time ago, he never needed to leave his
workshop. Having stocked up on
foodstuffs, he never needed to leave his house. Having lost all interest in his the
stupid beings that littered the earth, he never needed to leave at all. There was plenty to do here.
At first, he had been interested in creating machines. Smart ones, ones that mimiced him and did tasks he was too lazy to do. He had a robot, robots interested him most. This robot looked like him, with legs and arms, he didn't know why it looked like this, it was not necessary, but it felt right. It made him feel alone. It did not talk or smile, so it was not a person, but it had a name, so did everything he made. He would call it as if it understood who he was and he would tell it to fetch him things as if it cared or could do otherwise. It was shiny and copper with exposed internals like an open clock; he could see the machine ticking as it worked. It was squarish and ornate with flourishes that had grown over the years. It looked very beautiful to him, like an idealization. He had made it first, before he made anything else and because of this it was his favorite.
His other creations were also beautiful always exposed to him so he could see them churning. Some of them were wind-up, others ran on electricity. Electricity had quit coming a while ago, so he had to create his own, which was difficult. There was a reason it was cut off, of course, but he didn't care enough to fix it. He didn't mind being self-sufficent: he could do everything he needed himself.
He made more and more machines, they covered floors and shelves. He made some to clean up, but they cleaned up the other machines sometimes, so some were reasonably unaccounted for. At first, the machines did things, useful things. But as the machines piled up, he couldn't think of things for them to do. He started to make machines that only did half the job, so that the other piece could do the other half. Then a quarter of the job. Then he made machines that did nothing at all. The would whirl and spin, but they did nothing. They would blink lights. They would cover the house with their uselessness. But he wouldn't cannibalize his machines, they were all precious. He would add things to his robot sometimes, it was his favorite. Sometimes it would do less, sometimes more, but he kept adding to it.
He noticed that various pieces were in short supply. Gears and shafts, transistors and resistors became less plentiful, until he had to grab in the carpet and the bins for them. There seemed to be an excess of lights, little tiny red and green lights. So he made more machines that used the lights to blink until there were none left. There was nothing left.
His machines whirred on, blinking and spinning, but there was nothing left to make. He could not make more, so he spent his days playing with the machines, spinning them and turning them on and off. He found many he had forgotten, and tried to improve them. He did not sleep anymore; he couldn't since he had run out of parts. There was nothing left for him to do, he felt useless and desperate. He seemed to seek the companionship of his favorite, but it seemed to roll around endlessly. He had never noticed that it seemed as desparate as he did. It just rolled around, lacking any instruction from him now that there was nothing more to build. He would sometimes notice that it seemed to be doing things with the machines, his machines. It eventually took itself apart, and could not avoid a cleaning machine, which swept it into its bowels.
As he felt himself being unwound from boredom and listlessness, he looked for his favorite. He could not find it and slowly felt the last of his sanity going. He looked throughout his dominion for the machine. He began cursing its name, he began imagining he would punish the thing as soon as he found it. He would never allow it to wander again. He began daydreaming about how beautiful it was, a pure vision. Finally he inferred it was not in the house any longer. It had left, it had not waved, it had not packed, it had just left. One should expect as much from a machine he thought.
He hadn't left the house in such a long time, he did not know what to do. He wandered through until finally, without courage and determination, just simple panic, he walked out the door. Into the abyss. At the edge of his threshold, he put his foot out, into nothingness. His other foot followed. There was something wrong, very wrong. There was no world. There was not grass, nor dirt, nor weeds, nor ground, nor gravity. He was floating alone in the middle of the abyss. His body slowly rotated in the blackness and he knew all was lost. The world, his life, his favorite, it was all lost to him. His home came back into view, slowing growing smaller. In his mind's eye he saw into it and saw into his partless workshop, and saw his meaningless machines. They would no longer blink for him. They would blink for no one as they always had.
-A waking dream I had when i slept with the lights on.