DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Gui dreamed of red. The color receded to the size of a fingertip, set inside a circular panel on a shadowed wall. Then blinked. He blinked back. A console arrayed with knobs and buttons sat in front of him. Gui turned a knob and flipped a switch on the console without thinking. Work only he could perform. Important work. The knobs and switches told him this. His fingers that worked the controls expertly told him this.
Cables anchored to the back of the console jittered and swayed. Some attached to the wall to his right where red lights set it panels blinked. Others attached to featureless cubes on the ceiling. The final two reached out across the sunbleached and rust-kissed hull of the machine that was his home. A vast structure that could have been a vessel at sea or a city in itself, though Gui only knew this spot.
He stopped his work to consider that thought. He studied his workspace, noting his sunken perch that led to the tunnels below, the pipes and wires and bolts stretching out in front of him and behind him. To his left, the sky was almost gray, the sun burning away the blue. At least he worked outside. At least he could see the sky.
His console beeped and the panel lights on the wall beside him strobed.
“All right, all right,” he said.
Gui went back to work as the sun crawled toward him. He made a game of it, seeing how many signals he could perform before its edge reached him, which would mark the end of his shift.
He worked furiously, moving beyond conscious speed. Soon he was an observer of his actions, his hands flying across the console, a mathematical art form he couldn’t take credit for. The cables whipped around, angered. His carefree gamification was an offense to his work. Disappointed in himself, he commanded his hands to slow.
Gui’s work was important. He couldn’t jeopardize that. The details of that information were at the edge of his mind, then lost. The cables were arteries surging with lifeblood. Gui directed the flow. Yes, that must be it.
His arms and hands exhausted after their frenetic performance, Gui decided he’d earned a break.
The sun was almost here. Gui placed his hand on the cool metal, fingertips ready to meet it.
Then something else reached him before the sun. A bird. Small with a red-capped head, it hopped over to his hand, looking down at it as if it were a quartet of worms.
“If they were,” Gui said, “they’d be too much for you, little one.”
The bird cocked its head one way, then another.
“Disagree, eh?”
The bird hopped closer and tapped its beak on his index fingernail. Then his middle, working its way across them. The bird looked up at Gui when it reached his little finger.
“Ah,” he said. “But it’s not the same, you see.” He lifted his hand and wiggled his fingers. He felt the sun. His hand held in the light, he saw something peculiar: translucency. Then shapes beneath his skin. Almost like the cables attached to his console.
“Well, that’s not right,” Gui said.
The bird appeared to shake its head, though nothing seemed right anymore.
Gui tucked his arm back in shadow. The sun would overtake him soon. It moved across the platform. Faster and faster.
The bird seemed to realize what troubled Gui and pecked at its approach. Scratched at it with its slender talons.
Eventually, the bird tired. Its beak was powdered with dust and speckled with flakes of rust. Feathers bristled as the bird’s chest rose and fell at a pace that worried Gui.
“It’s okay,” Gui said. “Thank you for trying.”
The bird ignored him and pecked and scratched at the edge of sunlight with a fury, its wings fluttering to lift it up to strike down hard.
The poor thing, Gui thought.
The sunlight had crossed Gui’s shoulder. Pleasant at first, then it burned. His skin, dry and cracked, which he hadn’t noticed in the shadow, peeled away, carried on a breeze he couldn’t feel. Finer and finer his airborne skin became. Granules carried away into the sky.
“I suppose my shift is over,” Gui said. He anticipated his submersion into the great machine, where he could rest, but nothing happened.
The bird bounced up and down, wings beating. Its red-capped head seemed redder. Like a dream.
Gui lay his hands on the console. He touched a knob. More flesh crumbled away. His concern grew as he faded. Memories, or what he thought were memories, fled to corners he could not find.
“Can you help me?” Gui asked the bird.
The bird chirped and bounced, agitated as the sunlight flooded over Gui.
“It’s all right,” Gui said. “Thank you for trying.”
Gui saw the skin lift from his face, first a membrane, then a screen of particles that muted all the details and color around him.
Not much color to be had except for the red-capped bird. It was the last thing he saw before emptiness was all he could perceive.
“I’ll be fine,” Gui said before his mouth turned to dust.
Gui’s thoughts were all he was left with, and those weren’t much. He chased them like the bird had chased the sunlight, fought them as the bird had fought the sunlight. And just like the bird, his energy dwindled to nothing. A void consumed him, dissolved him to particulate, drifting on a current, like a surge of lifeblood.
A flash of red. It receded to the size of a fingertip, set into a panel, set in shadow. It blinked.
Gui blinked to reveal a console full of knobs and buttons. He went to work, because it was work only he could perform. Important work.
From the sky bounded a small thing. A bird. Red-capped. Like a dream. No. Like a memory.
“Hello, little one,” Gui said. “I am glad to see you again.”
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