The Logic-Chapter 1-Visions

The Logic

Chapter 1

Visions

The surrounding architecture dwarfed every sentient being that walked across and beside the roads as- in their billions- they went on living their lives pointlessly and obliviously. The velvet horizon flickered in the fading light and the sharpened cityscape was left blanketed in an ever darkening shadow. People looked down at their feet as they glided in solitude throughout the labyrinth of roads and back alleys. Suits and formality seemed to shift ever more informal as the areas moved further from the city centre; from the buildings that reached towards the heavens; the core as I was more commonly referred to. A growing trend of thievery and murder seem follow this pattern. On the out skirts, it was rotten: rotten not only due to its inhabitants, but also in its atmosphere. Sagging walls and broken homes seemed to characterise these places. Shards of metal and wood stuck out in the most impossible places from the most unstable structures; houses that were pieced together from anything around; anything that might have been dropped from the aftermath.

The people themselves plague ridden. Their bodies lie on the cracked roads, skewed and twisted and deformed; their skin boiled and torn to depths of unspeakable atrocity. No one dared to venture there anymore. There was no reason to. Restoration was an impossible dream and exploration was shunned by the lack of curiosity in the people. The aftermath caused an abolition of creativity, of curiosity, of human emotion. Humans were more machine like than the machines and machines, more human than their creators. I was a paradoxical society to say the least. Beyond it stood nothing but wasteland: a baron desert full of oblivion. No grass or trees rose out of the grounds, no water struck the greyscale sand’s shore. There was no shore to strike. It was utterly and completely empty.



Leigh Knightly, a young man of around twenty-five, grasped his rather skinny and pale face, running his fingers through his short, oddly cut and greasy hair as he walked. The pain in head worsened again, like a vice in his skull, eating away at his brain. His hand seemed to follow this pattern, giving an ever-tightening grasp to his temple as an attempt to dull the pain. It was, like the rest of this world, pointless.

He continued to stumble forward, stopping now and then to crouch and breathe more heavily as if to alert someone of his pain. “Why was he doing this?” he though to himself. He knew that no one would care and even if they did, it would be masked and hidden from view. The emotion was gone from people; he tried to tell himself this over and over; there was no hope for emotion. But something deep in his mind swayed him towards the alternative; the belief that the hope existed. It was not a matter of faith over, more like a sixth sense; he knew there was still hope, it was not him believing in something that could not be proved. He knew people could still feel the emotion they once felt; the emotion before the war.



         It was believe that the war was a cause of emotion. The anger, the hatred, the justification; it was all fuelled by cold hearted emotion. This believe caused only one logical answer; its abolition. This was imposed by one government; a government that no longer existed. But still people clung to its illogical logic. People still believed that the DM’s  view was the only view that made sense. It wasn’t a sense of brain washing or propaganda that caused this unquestionable believe within them, it was desperation; a result of horrific environments and situations, but mostly memories. The new view was a scapegoat for these images that were unable to be shoved aside. The people needed something to blame; it was never thought that they were to blame their own psychology; but the desperation coupled with its so called logic seemed to portray a sense of a new life; a life people wanted to live in. Or at least most did.

         

         There was a known resistance to this life. To call it resistance would be a lie however. There was nothing to resist against so therefore a resistance would theoretically be impossible. Governments had been abolished, there was no apparent need for them and consequently logic seemed to suggest that their existence was pointless. Irony, it would seem, occurred in the society that was left; one of no purpose. This denial of the common way of life (for that is all that it was) called themselves the class. Granted, this term seemed like a rather odd name for a group of people, especially the majority of them being over the age of 20. Even though there was nothing to fear, the class still seemed to stay distant from the rest; hiding in the shadows of the city. Maybe it was the sense of fear that they enjoyed that forced them to act in this way; it was something that caused differentiation from the others.

         

         Leigh picked himself up from the gravel. The rough texture dug into the one hand he had place on the ground like a mace piercing soft meat. As he lifted his hand, he glanced at the imprint the stones had forced into his palm and the redness it had changed it into. Gradually, he lifted himself onto his feet and continued onwards; still clutching his forehand as he did. He looked up at the clock tower to check the time, shielding his eyes from the harsh rays by adjusting his fingers into the correct position. Number by number, he read it slowly in his head.

         19:29:54          24/05/97

His head dropped again, followed suddenly by his collapsing body. All around him blackened. Then, almost seamlessly, a blurry grey image of his surroundings flooded his eyes. He looked up at the clock tower once more. This time he read it more hastily, expecting to see what he had seen before. The numbers changed harshly.

         19:29:57

He checked the date once more.

                             26/05/97

It had changed. He questioned himself obsessively; did he read it incorrect before? He looked at the tower again.

         19:30:00

A deathly silence fell over him. The clouds disappeared from the sky, brushed away like dust. The shadows inverted themselves into brightness. The building gleamed from the reflection. The core was an ocean of light. Then the silence was broken. The fear inside of the residents was ripped from their insides; their screams silenced as the wave of energy pulsed towards them. The orange wall of flames engulfed them as it passed. He watched as people disintegrated before his very eyes; watched them as they were reduced to nothing; not even air. The silence hit his ears once more and he fell to the ground; his eyes slammed shut.



         Three hours passed. The light from the sun had left the glass of the buildings and nothing but blackness covered the world above him. The stars were non existent, masked by clouds that had formed in what seemed like a spilt second. Awakening, he looked around him at the solitude he found himself to be in. The streets were empty. Not even a glare shone out onto the road beneath his feet; none, except for the soft neon green glow of the clock tower’s numerical eyes. He watched the numbers transform into others for a while, swaying with the rhythm it created in a type of trance; his eyes glazed and his mouth open.