World Restruction

The vacant glimmering street was illuminated slightly by the fading lights that hung above it. Small puddles of unholy liquids were spotted all over the dark pavement and in the water’s reflection were the dark clouds that draped over that area like an icy blanket. Silence was all that was spoken at the moment. It was almost as intense as the cold air if it weren’t for the small crackles sounding under my feet as I walked down avoiding every puddle I saw, careful not to sink into the clouds. The leathery compounds of my pockets warmed my hands and I could see my breath swirl in front of me and blend in with its environment as if to hide away discreetly.

It wasn’t unnatural that I was the only one walking down the street at that time. It was late. Most people were locked in their shabby houses safe from the terrors of the night, where as I welcomed it like my own.

That night I stayed out especially late. I wanted to be anywhere but home where it was bitter and dusty.

I had taken part of the night shift so I could straighten up most of the shop so I wouldn’t have to do it early in the morning and add to my time away from home. I felt like I needed to stay later than I had that night but my boss wouldn’t let me. He just told me to go home and sleep to get the night over with, but I knew that it would have been a long night anyways.

The street light just above my head blew out and the spark from the bulb exploded and raced down at me like aimed missiles. Only, my coat seemed to be indestructible for that kind of thing so the sparks just rained upon me and rolled off plopping themselves into the puddles. I watched as they converted to weak little streaks of steam.

I crossed my eyes and watched my breath swirl in front of my face then fade away as if to blend in. Each time my mouth expelled carbon dioxide, it would do the exact same process.

The stone walls closing in the alley were dripping in what seemed like acid. The glimmering of the stones seemed unnatural to me. I squinted my eyes at the wall, but I knew the paranoia was getting to me. There was nothing wrong with the stone walls. They had water running down them slowly from the previous rain and mist. Nothing more.

My own steps started to slow as I thought about home. I didn’t want to go back there tonight. Not that night. It held so much pain. So much loneliness.

For that night that I despised so much was the exact day that my father left and never came back.

That exact day filled me with anxiety and left my muscles tense until the next day.

I was only twelve when my father said he had to travel further that time to get better quality of food.

Now where I lived, it was dangerous to venture out on your own, especially in the dark. There was no telling what can happen to the person.

In my world at the time, you had to take to survive. It was either give and die or steal and live.

Like I said, it was a dangerous place.

That day my father left, he promised me that he would be back in about a week.

So I waited.

A week went by and in my mind I thought, oh he’s just running a bit late. Maybe he got into a little trouble, but he’ll be alright. He always gets out of it.

Then two weeks went by and by then I was listing all the excuses of why he wasn’t home yet in my head. The weather, maybe he had to take a detour, maybe he lost where home was, or perhaps he met an old friend and was just catching up. My dad could survive any trouble he got into, right?

Well by the third week he was gone, I was in the ultimate panic mode. I was running out of food and water and I didn’t know how to survive on my own. My dad didn’t exactly give me lessons on survival.

When I completely ran out of food and water I ran to my neighbor’s house. I explained my situation and asked her for her help. She was kind enough to give me a place to sleep in her home until I got back on my feet.

She was a kind woman. She had hazel eyes and milk chocolate skin with the whitest of smiles. She was the first mother figure I had and at the time I was glad that she was.

In the house it was just her and her ten year old daughter who looked a lot like her mother but had brown eyes and a big gap between her two front teeth. She wasn’t as kind as her mother was. Actually she was a stubborn girl who refused to share a room with me until she got to know me more. But by then, I had already gotten a job at the blacksmith’s shop and was already starting to get back on my feet.

By then my neighbor and her daughter had taught me how to get food and water. That was one of the hardest lessons I have ever learned besides learning that my dad was never going to come back.

After I started making money from my job, I started living on my own again but would still hang out with my neighbor’s daughter named Ayte. She hadn't turned out to be as bad as I thought. We helped each other with our fighting skills. She learned new things from me and I learned new things from her. She was the very first friend I made and I was glad.

As I approached my home my heart sunk slowly. Suddenly I noticed that I was holding my breath more and more without thinking.

“Suck it up man. Just get it over with.” I said under my breath.

As I snuck up on my door I could feel myself get light headed. That year would be the fourth year he’s been gone. It probably doesn’t sound like a long time, but for me it was an eternity.

I pulled out the warm metallic key that suddenly became cold when it met the freezing air and stuck it into the doorknob. I turned the key and heard the click that sounded like a gunshot to me. I took the key back out and stuffed it into my pocket again before opening the door.

When I walked in my heart stopped completely to the sound of a thump. My reaction to this noise finally subsided and I opened my coat just a little bit so I could grab the handle of my knife that was fastened safely to my belt.

It was the first knife I had ever created by myself. It wasn’t exactly perfect with the blade being a wavy line, but it was sharp and durable.

I unbuttoned the part of my belt that held the knife down and pulled it out as I walked in the direction the noise came from.

I could feel my heart rate start to rise and despite it being cold, sweat started forming on my forehead. The adrenaline I had in my veins was astounding considering all the fights I had been in.

Never have I ever had a stranger waltz into my house.

I heard another thump and my footsteps became quieter and faster. I turned into the hall and looked at the three doors. One door led to my room, another to the bathroom, and the last one to my father’s room which I hadn’t been in since I was twelve.

I glanced at all of the doors and heard a clanking noise and pin pointed where the racket was coming from.

My father’s room.

I gulped and gripped the handle of the knife tighter as a tear of adrenaline slid down the side of my face.

What if my father had actually returned?

I had to get my mind out of the gutter. He was never coming back.

I slowly approached the door that was cracked open about an inch or two. I could see a faint light leak through the crack and knew someone was in there and that it wasn’t some draft or small animal who had snuck through the window.

I plastered myself to the wall next to the door quietly and craned my head around the door frame to see inside the room.

It was just as I had left it. There were shelves and shelves of books wrapped around the walls like a library and only a bed and a candle by the window were the only things that did not contain words. But this time, the candle was lit with a strong fire and revealed someone standing in the middle of the room with a book in her hands.

On the ground there was a mess of books that had been torn from the shelves which was probably the source of the sounds I had been hearing.

I looked over the stranger who had trespassed.

It was a young girl, probably around my age, maybe a little bit younger. She had long black hair that went almost to her knees. She looked about 5’2’ and was skinny. I couldn’t see her face because her head was tilted down so she could read the book that was in her hands.

Confusion swept across my face as my muscles relaxed a bit and caused the grip on my knife to loosen.

Well it sure wasn’t my dad.

I moved slowly off the wall and into the door way. I didn’t put my knife away just in case this girl was emotionally unbalanced and pushed open the door slightly. My confusion increased. She didn’t see me or hear the door creak open.

I decided to clear my throat.

She still didn’t look up.

“Um…excuse.” I said as calmly as I possibly could.

She looked up in alarm and I could see her face.

One of her eyes was a bright blue and the other a bright magenta. A pool of fear filled those gorgeous eyes and she froze. I kept still also and didn’t say anything so I wouldn’t scare her.

I watched her eyes move toward the knife that was in my hand. It made her drop the book she was reading. I watched the binding of the book hit the dusty carpet making dust jump up about a couple inches off the floor.

I bent down slowly to set my knife on the ground to show her I wasn’t going to hurt her, but the slightest move I made disturbed her and she turned around as quickly as possible.

“No wait I-” I started to say, but she had already dived through the open window.

“What in the hell was that?” I asked aloud and my eyes darted to the book she dropped.

“Why would she be so interested in my father’s fairy tale books?” I stood up straight, slid my knife back into the pocket, buttoned it up, and walked inside the room over to the open book.

When I bent down and picked it up, something fell out of it and drifted down to the dusty floor after spinning countless times. It was a small square piece of paper.

I looked down at it and saw that there were two rows of numbers. Four numbers in each row. I bent down and picked that up as well. When I saw that the order of the numbers didn’t look familiar to me, I stuffed the paper into my coat pocket and turned my attention back to the book.

The pages I turned were either dusty, stained, ripped, or all of the above. When I flipped through a couple of pages I realized that this wasn’t one of my father’s fairy tales. It was a note book full of diagrams and side notes.

“What?” I said as I flipped rapidly through the book. “What the…hell.”

I set that book on the shelf on top of some other books and took out another random book and searched through it. To my surprise it was all information about some nonsense. I threw the book against the wall and it dropped onto my father’s dusty bed.

“You’re not allowed to go through any of my books.” I looked up at my father at nodded. “Why not father?” I asked. “Because they’re filled with stories and adventures that I will tell you in the nights to come and you wouldn’t want to ruin a good ending do you?” he asked and I shook my head quickly. “Good boy.” he patted my head and left the room leaving me standing in the middle of the room looking around. “Wow! He must have so many stories to tell me!” I said excitedly and then skipped out of the room.

“You liar! How could I believe any of that?!” I shouted and took out my knife. With all the force I had, I threw the knife at the wall causing it to sink quickly into the material.

I choked on my breath and sniffled. Tears blurred my vision but I wouldn’t let them for long. To get rid of them I wiped the sleeve of my coat across both of my eyes.

“What were you hiding from me?” I croaked and took the book off the shelf that the girl was looking at.

I turned to the first page and read aloud; “C-Condroids? Why would he have a notebook on these Devils of Destruction?” I asked myself and turned to the next page.

On the page it held some sort of thin structure that was in the shape of a human and to the side there was a small paragraph of cursive words.

“Inner skeleton.” I read but the words under it I couldn’t read because a dark stain blended in with the words. But I was guessing that it was listing the types of metal that made up the skeleton because they were listed for the other diagrams.

As I slowly flipped through the pages I saw all kinds of different robots that were created with different kinds of metals. From the beginning of the book it started with the first Condroid ever made, to the one that everyone knew as the destroyers of Bezaleel.

The Condroids were these huge amazing structures that could terminate an entire city in five minutes. Their huge metallic toeless feet was a yard wide and their giant fists could switch to different weapons, from a flame thrower, to electrical claws, to squid-like needles. They were merciless beasts that would destroy everything in their path. But of course they didn’t just appeared out of thin air. They had to be created. And they were but over time as their structure and purpose had advanced.

There were two sides to the world; Bezaleel which was the side I lived in and on the other side of the wall that separated both sides of the world we called The Other Side. Honestly it wasn’t a very creative name but it was what the people came up with and it stuck.

One hundred and eighty years before, the Condroids were activated and destroyed the area we called Bezaleel. But one day, the Condroids just froze. They stopped destroying and shut down in an area no one could find. You’d think they’d be easy to find since they’re gigantic robots, but people have searched everywhere and not a single Condroid was found.

Since the Condroids had just disappeared, The Other Side took the opportunity to build a tall metallic wall around the whole length of the world completely separating Bezaleel from The Other Side. The wall reached a little higher than the clouds and were created from the strongest metal on the planet. It was the same metal the Condroids were created from.

The Other Side sickened me because they didn’t want to help Bezaleel. They were the ones with the advanced technology and the flying cars with plenty of food and water, but yet they could spare any, so our people had to build from the ground up hoping that one day the Condroids would be activated again, but instead to destroy, to rebuild.

The creators of the Condroids put a certain type of switch on them. The two choices to switch between to were destruction and creation.

The creators wanted the robots to destroy the entire world so the life process would start all over from the beginning. Then they would turn the switch over to recreate the world that they wanted the world to become.

But who would turn on the switch if everyone was dead?

Artificially created humans called Zanfalcons who would be kept underground so they’d survive and reproduce to create a new human race that was technologically more advanced than an average human. They would think in a more logical way, be faster, smarter, stronger. It's true they would have made a better human race that wouldn't repeat wars, but it was just wrong to wipe out the entire population of humans.

No one in Bezaleel really talked of those times because they either didn’t know much, or it hurt too much to discuss.

But my father, he didn’t have a hard time harboring information of the past.

I discovered that night that all of the books he contained in his shelves had information about the past that seemed to go on forever until the birth of the world.

That night, I read as much as I could and I read so much that I forgot what day it was and that a girl had snuck in through the window.

I had read until the next morning but I hadn’t even realized that it was day because my eyes were glued to the books. That night I had at least read sixty books if not more. My eyes were red and dry causing me to rub them a lot with my hands.

There was something I came across that morning that caught my attention. It was a book on the Zanfalcons.

It told me that scientists had failed many times to create a perfect being in their eyes before they created one single Zanfalcon. When I had turned the page there was a colored image on what the Zanfalcon looked like. I had to stare at the image for a couple seconds before I realized that it looked like the girl who had broken into my house except this picture of the girl had two magenta eyes.

“No way.” I said unbelievingly.

Further into the book I learned that only Zanfalcons are able to track down the Condroids whether they’re on or off.

After I had finished reading, I tossed the book onto my dad’s bed and walked out of the room while pulling out the slip of paper with the numbers on them.

I knew that those numbers could mean that there was some safe or something that had something valuable in it. I just didn’t know where that safe was. I decided to do a thorough search of the house.

The first room I decided to search was the kitchen. I opened up all of the cabinets and searched through the various silverware, plates, cups, spices, and boxes of food. I looked behind everything but I couldn’t find anything, so I moved to the living room.

I looked under the chairs, couches, and rugs but could find nothing.

About two hours passed by before I moved on to the bathroom. I looked under the sink and in the cabinets. I looked at least three times just in case there was something I missed, but nothing showed up.

I almost got so frustrated to the point where I would throw things, but I remembered that there was still mine and my father’s room.

I rushed to my father’s room and pulled every book off the shelves looking for a secret trigger that would open a secret door to a secret passageway to the secret safe.

After I pulled off every book I ran my hands all over the dusty shelves trying to find a button or something that could lead me to the safe. But all my hands collected was dust which made me rub my hands all over my coat to get rid of it.

“Come on.” I encouraged myself and fled to my room where I searched everywhere. I pulled the nightstand away from the wall, I searched in my closet, and inspected the floor carefully.

Nothing.

Maybe the numbers meant nothing.

I thought that until I looked over and saw something peculiar under my bed.

I was lying flat on my stomach on the floor so I wriggled my way over towards my bed and stuck my arm under it. With my hand I patted the floor until I came across a cold thin metal object and retracted my hand back.

I got up as quickly as I could and started pulling my bed towards me until it was in the middle of the room. I hopped onto my bed and looked over seeing a metal handle sticking out of the wooden floor boards.

“Ah ha!” I said excitedly and reached over to pull it. With my one hand nothing budged so I quickly rolled off my bed and pulled on it with both of my hands. It took at least three pulls until the floorboards shattered and dust flew everywhere.

I coughed and swatted the dust away finding there was a box in the small compartment within the floor.

“Yes!” I exclaimed and eagerly pulled out the box that I then identified as a chest.

I set it on a part of the floor that wasn’t broken and looked over it.

It was indeed a chest that had a rounded top but there was a keypad on the front that had the number one through nine. I stumbled to get the piece of paper out of my pocket and it was hard to read the numbers because my hand was trembling outrageously.

Carefully and slowly I entered the numbers. A new round of adrenaline was coursing through my body.

I looked at the last number and carefully pressed the rubber button.

A green flash of light coming from the chest made me jump but then I was quick to open it, and what was inside disappointed me.

I ground my teeth and threw my head back. “Come on. All that for this one silly tool?” I looked back down at the silver wrench and took it out revealing a roll of paper that was sitting just underneath it. “Huh.” I said as I pulled it out and unraveled it.

I looked over it and my eyes started to widen as all the pieces started coming together in my brain.

I looked down at the wrench and gripped it tightly.

“Okay Father. I’ll do it.”