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The sound of cheap metal clanking echoed throughout the vacant streets of the broken city. Three robotic bodies moved slowly through the cleared road, the stretch of crumbling asphalt beneath them extending into the horizon like an endless red carpet, just for them. They are the sweepers of the night, who swoop in to cleanse battered roads once all have gone to sleep. Anyone caught in their mindless sanitization is said to be responsible for their own fate, for they do not see innocence, they only see moving waste to clear.
The youngest seems to still be toddling on uneven feet, still getting used to her new form. The three constructs tower high above humans, about 9 feet tall on average, like a person on stilts covered in janky metal paneling. After a few years of living in their new form, they get used to balancing on their winding legs. They drag their giant weapons behind them, the metal scraping providing other scavengers a warning cry to move out of their way lest they become waste.
“How much longer?” The youngest asks in a language incomprehensible to the average human. Their voice, still synthesizing behind their featureless metal processor heads, was high and chirpy, if not a little glitchy and broken at times.
“Soon,” responds the eldest. Their voice is low and smooth, but slowly becoming more irregular with age. Rust lines their metal body like the rings of a tree.
“We haven’t found anything yet,” says the middle-aged. They have a freshly synthesized voice, one that is slightly mechanical and does not waver from one pitch. “That’s weird. We usually find at least a few stragglers on our way home.”
“Perhaps they’ve learned our path and have begun adapting,” suggests the eldest. They pause, metal gears creaking against one another inside their rusty chassis. “We will have to rechart again tonight. Aurel, you shall join me.”
Aurel, the middle-aged, clicked in annoyance. “Why me? You always chart better—”
“No excuses. You know Luan’s turn will come soon, too. Then you can split the burden with them.”
Aurel turned his head down to face Luan, the youngest member of their pack. They waggled their head at them, almost in teasing, and Luan responded by sharply turning away from them.
“Mado says I have until we make enough money to afford my new body,” Luan pouts, “And you always say we’re broke. I’m not gonna have to chart with you until twenty years, so yeah!” They whip their head up to taunt Aurel, crossing their lanky metal arms with a clank.
“Luan—”
“We still have 30,000 An to go. We will not make any more An if you two keep squabbling like children.” Mado, the eldest, raised their voice and stopped in their tracks, causing the other two to jump back.
“Yes, Mado. Sorry, Mado.” Aurel bowed. They smacked Luan on the back, instantly prompting them to bow as well.
“...Now be quiet and start thinking of a new route, Aurel. Your sister’s completion depends on it.”
“Yes, Mado. I’m sorry.”
“You got in trouble,” Luan teased.
“And you, Luan. If you do not stop prodding at your brother, I’ll make quick work of you.”
The rest of the trip onwards was silent, save for the coordinated metal clanking of them advancing in sync.
Home was a small handmade shack of rusted metal panels and bark. The rest of their district was just as barren and beaten down, almost post-apocalyptic, if the apocalypse that preceded it was gradual and voiceless. It crept upon the world like water seeping out from a leaking hose, dripping out little by little until a puddle of waste had accumulated over the city. Those affected had to adapt.
Mado was inside the small shack, guiding Aurel in their route-planning by candlelight. The soft glow from inside was a contrast to the inky blue dark of the outside, where Luan chose to play until the grown-ups were done arguing. They were playing with a flashlight, something Aurel had told them countless of times not to do due to the scarcity of batteries, but it was something too fun to pass down. The light blinked on and off, it casted strange shadows against the cold stone ground, it danced and sped around and was Luan’s beloved playmate.
“Luan!” Aurel’s voice shouted from inside. I can see you playing with the flashlight again! Stop!”
“Make me!” Luan stomped away. The sound of Aurel getting up was heard from indoors, but Mado’s grunt of annoyance was enough to keep them from coming after Luan.
Luan ran to the back of the shack, almost like their little backyard. A cold, damp, grimy backyard formed from the alley between two other abandoned buildings, but a backyard in Luan’s eyes nonetheless. They continued playing with the light, flicking it on and off…until they flicked it on for the fourth time.
Instead of coming out in a solid beam of light, it flickered and dissipated into multiple little flecks, almost like sun coming through leaves. Luan stared at it and tilted their head. They turned the flashlight back on and shook it a bit, thinking it just broke. They smacked it against their metal hands with two loud clanks and flicked it back on. However, the same result occurred. It was just a bunch of floating light particles. They waved them around and played with it anyways, just dismissing it as something wrong with the glass inside.
The lights began to float on their own.
Like fireflies they drifted separate from Luan’s waves and waggles, instead slowly forming a little wisp of light and dancing around Luan like a swarm. They stopped in front of their metal form, like a small school of fish, and simply hovered there before them.
“Are you guys firebugs?” Luan’s little voice asked. “Did I make you with the flashlight?”
“No, silly,” responded a feminine voice from the patch of light. Her voice was human and sweet, almost overwhelmingly sweet and honeylike, like artificial syrup. “I live inside every light that touches this city.”
“Even the sun?” Luan asked.
“Yes,” she said, “especially the sun. Anything that drives away darkness, you can find me inside.”
“Even the candle inside our house?”
“Even the candle,” the light voice affirmed. “Tell me, Luan. Have you ever felt something so strong, you felt you couldn’t contain it?’
Luan paused. “...well, sometimes when Aurel says something really funny but we can’t laugh or Mado would get us in trouble, I feel like laughing a lot and can’t control it.”
The voice laughed. “Deeper than that. Have you ever…” She seemed to pause to form her next words carefully. “...longed for something, dreamed of something so strongly, that you wanted it more than anything in the world?”
“No,” Luan quickly replied. “Aurel says dreams are for babies. And I’m not a baby. I’m a pro. Like Mado! Or I wanna be.”
The lights drifted closer to Luan.
“Here,” offered the voice. “Let me into your chassis. It won’t hurt. I just want to show you something.”
Luan hesitated. “Show me what?”
“A real dream. A dream that you can visit whenever you want. And if you let me, I can make it come true for you.” Her voice became misty, like a wind blowing through trees.
“...Okay…but please nothing scary…” Luan looked down at their hand, where a loose rusty panel poked upwards from her palm. They carefully took it between two sharp fingers and lifted it to reveal the endless darkness underneath. They then extended their hand to the light. “Go in here. I still need to get it fixed, but we’re waiting on a new body for me. Oh, can you grant me a million An so all three of us can get new shiny bodies?” Their voice lilted with excitement.
“I’m not a genie, Luan,” giggled the voice. “Here. I’m going to go into your brain, and you’ll dream.” The light slithered into the crack between their palm panels and snaked its way up their arm and into whatever lay inside. Luan sat down, and once they did, a sudden vivid movie began playing in their mind, overtaking their vision and placing them directly in the shoes of a new being.
It was a human.
When Luan looked down, they were 100% human. It was something Luan had been raised to believe they’ve never experienced and never will, but something about the dream was so familiar it began to throb in their chest. They raised a hand, and it was small and young, with unevenly painted glittery nails and two friendship bracelets wrapped around their wrist. When they looked down, they were in a patchy pink dress and dirt-tinted white socks and sneakers.
“This little girl’s name is Luan,” said an unfamiliar voice from outside the room. The room they were in was painted blue long ago, but now began to peel and go pale with time. “She’s seven years old today. Would you like to meet her?”
Luan—the little girl Luan, not the metal construct Luan—she crept towards the door, and as she did more of her surroundings came into vision. There were a few other kids, all either occupied playing together or napping on little mats. They all wore the same uniform, other than Luan. Some felt alien, some felt familiar, but not in a way Luan could ever describe.
FInally the door opened. A tall, adult human emerged from behind it, one with short hair and tired eyes, glasses on the ridge of his long, triangular nose—Luan could almost immediately recognize it as Aurel.
“Aurel?”
Aurel jumped and turned to face her in surprise. “...You know my name?”
A slightly shorter woman peeked out from behind the door. This was a face Luan had never seen in her life, she was sure of it, but the moment her eyes rested on her it felt like she had known her for even longer. She had long brown hair in a ponytail, and piercing red eyes.
“Oops. Luan, you aren’t supposed to know that yet,” she said. “This is just a dream, but it feels more like a memory, doesn’t it?”
“We want that one.” Mado’s gruff voice, free from the breaking mechanical tone that usually accompanies it, was the last thing Luan heard before she woke up in a cold sweat, inside her bed. She looked around frantically, but when metallic creaking followed it, she knew that could’ve only been a dream. Right?
She reached over to her nightstand and, in a panic, fumbled with the lighter on top of it until she was able to light the bedside candle.
“Miss Light?” Her glitchy voice whispered. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” the light’s voice responded. “Tell me, Luan. Do you want to be human again?”
“...Again?”
“Yes. They’ve told you, haven’t they?”
Luan hesitated. She had never known. Or had she? Had she merely forgotten? But that’s such a big thing to forget, and she’s only so little. Did someone make her forget?
“No,” she answered, voice cracking a little in her despair.
“It’s okay. Now you know.” The candle flickered and swayed. “I can help you get it all back. Well, maybe not your family’s bodies. But yours…you’ve been in need of a new one, right?”
Luan felt her metal paneling begin to quiver and tremble. “But…if I become human again…I’ll never be with my brother or Mado ever again.”
“Think about it,” the Light’s voice whispered. “And if you make up your mind, bring my candle to the highest point in the city, and I’ll come back.” With that, the candle snuffed out. Despite any effort to re-light it, it never came back.
Luan looked down and saw Aurel sleeping peacefully in his bottom bunk after a long night of planning. He had probably carried her in from outside. She hesitated again, held back by fear. But when she thought about how much the three had suffered just trying to save up enough money for a new, shinier, less flimsy body for her…
She quietly climbed down from the top bunk and snuck outdoors without even Mado awakening from his deep slumber.
To be in the hands of a God is a very dangerous thing.
Small metal clicks and clacks followed every one of her footsteps as she raced through the city, endlessly searching for the highest point from the ground.
But, to make a deal with a God is a far worse fate. But you’d be surprised what people will do when they’re driven by dreams and hopeful fantasies in the night.