Libra | Teen Ink

Libra

July 1, 2011
By Zach Weekes BRONZE, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Zach Weekes BRONZE, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Those born here do not leave. Those born elsewhere do not exist. The whole planet is a ocean. Storms and waves that touch the clouds. For all anyone knows there is only one place here where land based life prevails. A white metallic eye that floats the planets waters. A city in the center of a ovular platform. A platform eleven miles across and five high. No history of how it was made or how it was put here. Only the creamy white metallic walls arching up from the endless seas.

In a housing complex nestled into the top floor of one of the city's circular skyscrapers, I looked out at the natural phenomenon of the sunset over the waters. The balcony looked out from the height of the tower and out to the calm seas. Where seas met the sky were three orbs, three suns, The Libra. Perfectly aligned, in perfect balance, setting and rising together in perfect harmony. Streaks of pink and blue painting the sky and mirroring onto the water. Behind me I heard a mechanical whoosh. Droids, robotic machines. A population that out-weighed the population of the people. Droids ran the city behind every cream white surface. Allowing for the people to go about life without lifting a finger to help isolate them from the outside. I often wonder who the city really belongs to, the people or the machines.

I turned away from the spectacle and into the sleeping room. The balcony opened out from the sleeping room, the balcony it's only window. White metal that so well made up everything in the world enclosed me. The material was meant to make the isolated world seem more vast. When the outside world was an limitless ocean and in the world everything was white, I can not help but feel claustrophobic but at the same time, exposed. A certain isolation, a certain prison that made your eyes widen at the large spaces and your stomach get butterflies in the feeling of openness.

This place is a dreamy place. A dream with no explanation to how and very little to why. A dreamy planet where history is irrelevant and the present and future are life. All dreams end.






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I stood there in a daze, looking upon the room. A bed on shiny metal frame was adorned with white sheets and pillows. I then turned my head intently on the door. I tried to drill into the white metal with my focused glare. When a button nearby was pressed, the door in all it's flawless white glory would instantly slide noiselessly into the wall to its right. I stared even more intently at it. Fatefully at that moment the door preformed its function,in strolled a droid. This droid was the basic household maid model that all residents received upon getting their houses assigned. This one was called “HM 19-72”. It walked on two legs connected to a skinny frame with it's optics in the center of the torso. A black gap above it's one optic eye marked where the speaker was from which the machine communicated.

“Master,” it addressed me, “What needs doing” It stood in front of me now in all it's three feet.

“I want all machines smart enough to hear shut down completely in ten minutes. Including you. Now.”

“Yes.” It turned and out the door closed it on the way out.

I slumped down onto the bed, looked at the digital clock on a glass table beside the bed. It read 9:11. One minute more, more minute and it would begin. I looked out past the balcony's ledge. Nothing but orange sat on the horizon as The Libra sank deeper into the earth. The orange light sat next to the navy blue early night sky where stars started to take their places. On the water the same picture was painted. I swallowed hard. Only two more hours til- The door flew open. My chest hurt. I blinked as my eyes widened. The breeze stopped its ambient flow into the room.

A woman strode gingerly on the cushioned floor. The gray sole of her shoes only slightly pushing in the cushioned pads of the floor. She turned and stood before me, she was about my height of six feet. She wore simple white pants with a simple gray t-shirt that fit her form snugly. She had perfectly white hair. So did everyone here. Complimentary to her hair she had yellow eyes, as did everyone in the dream world. Her eyes were adorably big on her soft, white face, which bore a confident and dreamy smile. A appearance that simply defined beautiful. Then again so did everyone living under The Libra. You were not from the Triad system's single planet if you did not have these three traits.

I stood abruptly in front of her. “I shut everything down. I wanted- to be- I wanted to be alone for- for-”

“Why are you crying?” Her smooth, sensual voice moved to my head and stopped me cold in all my shaking and sweating. My muscles tensed. I felt cold but I was sweating. I felt under a lot of weight, my limbs ached from being clenched for long. I let my face hang. Letting my muscles ease and my mind clear into comfort.

“You are so- so inhuman. You act like this is a bad thing.” She voiced in a smile. Her grin faded when she saw my expression unchanged. She frowned and looked to floor. Her face was brighter when it returned form the cushion tiles. A new smile was across her lips now a sly and crafty one. “But lets not make it bad.”


She put her right foot forward confidently. I then in turn took a more tentative step with my right foot. Her hands slipped gracefully through the air. Her perfect white hands gingerly exploring my face. I in turn reached my white arms forward wrapped them around her perfect torso, pulling her body to mine. Her eyes were closed, mine were forced shut. As I got comfortable with the reality of darkness I accepted her breath on my cheek. I allowed the moment to sooth me further. Her lips then tapped mine lightly, the familiar and comforting taste of her lips welcomed me to somewhere real. A warm sensation rolled down my face and then again on the other side. I did not stop moving my lips when the warmth dampened my shirt. I opened my eyes for the slightest moment. Her yellow eyes met mine. I witnessed a crystalline tear well up in her yellow eyes and roll down her white face. Our tears soaked our lips as we kissed. We closed our eyes at the taste of salt between us. Her tear fused with mine in the metaphoric space between our mouths. In the black space of the reality the two crystalline droplets twirled together into a vortex that picked up speed as the world got clearer and the dream further away. Every time a warm sensation rolled down our physical forms another vortex was added to the black space. In harmony dozens fell as time became irrelevant. The dim vortexes were brightened into stars as our saliva intertwined from our tongues meeting. The stars whirled as our shells fell together onto the bed. The stars now burned a bright intense white. Black space was washed away and fluxed into white emptiness. The stars were no longer stars but black holes that spun in the vastness. They twirled faster as they grew in size but no black hole could fill up emptiness. Time no longer existed as the portals paused their intense storm. Seconds hung in the air for what could have been hours for our knowledge. The pause was broken as the black gates imploded on themselves in unison. The sent out shock waves of blue that traveled through nothing. The waves of blue energy faded in the circular directions they were sent out in. They made a deafening roar that split reality and dream. Then like the whole affair was sealed in a jar there was no noise. Then blackness. I slid into the blackness comfortably as exhausted sleep took me away from reality.













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I slid out of sleep, not jumped, but peacefully slid back into a dream-like reality. The world's massive moon lit the room in a star white hew. The balcony that opened up to the limitless waters was occupied by a black silhouette standing before the huge moon. I blinked and upon reopening my eyes the moon burned brighter than before. My vision blurred into a blazing white, contrasting from the blur was a black figure where the silhouette was. The rays of white blaze appeared to be drawing from the back of the figure and consume my senses inside its cone shaped maw. The intensity of the blaze flickered to a point where my eyes burned. I squinted my eyes and raised my arm to my brow. I closed my eyes once again. I looked a gain upon a silhouette on the balcony, the moonlight only a soft and comforting shade. The water made it's ambient sounds as the it ebbed.

“Ten minutes.” The silhouette spoke. It's melody carried through the breeze and into my ears. Terror gripped my head in its tight and sudden grasp. I froze. I was petrified and no amount of logic and reason could explain why. It only felt so right to be afraid, it needed no explaining. I turned my head to the right, the clock read 11:01.


“No.” I feebly mouthed.


“Why!” The angel of fear stopped me in my petrified state and swung me in the cradle of purpose.


I stood up. Looked straight into her. Her naked body tensed. “Why is it wrong?” She spoke softly almost like she was now scared.


A minute of silence passed. 11:02. I floated above the cushion floor. I reached up to my white hair. I pulled. My scalp moved unnaturally. It looked painful but my face proved otherwise. My scalp peeled of my head, my real head. Synthetic hair and fake skin rested at my side now jammed into my tense fist. I unclenched my hand and let the facade fall on a cushion tile. My birth head, short cut black hair covered the second scalp.


11:03. One tear, only one tear fell from the crevice of her yellow orbs. It tumbled down her star white face. It splattered in hundreds of smaller tears as it landed on her chest. Out of the hundreds of tears there was one large one that lead the charge of the others down her breast. In a glorious stampede the dropped off her nipple. 11:03.37, the lead tear particle hung frozen in the moist sea air. Elevated in lost time between the floor and her body. The smaller tear particles rushed to an occult call and joined with the with the large tear making it larger, back into it's original form from which it began it's journey. It hung in the air. One star in the sky, one of million glowed brighter than the rest. The star paused in frozen space. Imploding upon itself sending out a halo of light from it's epicenter as it's existence ended. The rays of light cut through the frozen molecules of atmosphere, stabbing into the suspended tear. The light was amplified inside the tear's crystalline structure and light was shot out in all directions into the spectrum.


My eye caught the amplified light. A glimmer in time. Fatefully as the tear fell the light rays were perceived through my yellow contacts and into my brown eyes. That silver light, that split second moment was now imbedded into my memory, to haunt and comfort me at nights to come.


11:04, The tear finished its purpose when it exploded on the cushioned floor. Her eyes froze not even noticing the tear's phenomenon. She did not blink. As her life streamlined past her, all of the puzzle was solved there. Inside she need not question, she now understood. It was like her mind was so shocked it skipped the need for discovery but instead was hard pressed by an awesome sense of revelation.

11:05: “I...I- love you... outsider.” She stumbled through the words, uncharacteristically. “You have appeared as a lie to the physical world. You have lied every since you put foot on this world, whenever that was. You lied to me through our whole companionship.” My face sank deeply. Seeing my expected reaction she finished her phrase. “But nothing is a lie about the love we share. I understand why you had to lie and I forgive, if I even needed to in the first place.”

My face brightened. “And... I love you insider.” I said gaining strength. “My lies were, still, and always will be separate from the truth of our passion. No matter what world I stand on, dream or other-wise.”

11:06: “ I now see the world, this world from two different perspectives. Like you have all along.” Tears started to drain out of her yellow orbs. “I see now why you are crying, now I know why you are crying. I feel why you are crying. I know now why you are scared, you care. You care...”

“Our worlds view the word, death, differently.” I attempted at explaining it all.

11:07

“In this world, seeing your partner out is the ultimate act of love. And in the other plane, the other world, wherever it may reside you- you just don't-”

“ We know, you know, I know. We are above all others we see from two, not one.” I fell off at the end to sob unbearably, she followed suit. She stumbled forward trying to run to me. Instead she fell into me, grabbing my shoulders for support. She took her time looking up into my eyes. She cried loudly without concern. Her wet face glowed in the starlight. She started speaking in indescribable denials. She muttered things that sounded like no or why. She ended her rant with a bloodcurdling screech, maw wide open and head up toward the ceiling so bloodshot, desperate eyes pounded into it. I paused at the agonizing sound. Her scream faded out across the endless seas to reach the ears of nothing but sea predators. I took the back of her head and softly pressed her face to my shoulder.


11:08, she drew her pouring eyes to mine. “It doesn't have to be this way does it? Does it?” getting softer now. “Does it?” Her voice now miniscule to the vast world, she sunk the words into me hopelessly. A light rain poured on the waters outside rhythmically, playing a sad song.

11:09. She looked up. Into my eyes once again. Her face so wet from crying, her stare so helpless. I wondered than what I looked like. Similar? I though that nothing could save her. In a hopeless attempt to do so, I kissed her. One time on the lips. She exasperated, in fury or desperation she grabbed the back of my head and continued the simple gesture, trying so hard to find an avail.


My eyes jetted open as her sudden action startled me. I then found an escape for myself in her bond with me. I tasted salt from our tears. Between my toes pooled the water as our tears built a pond. 11:09:54, I swam now with her in my arms waist deep in our own tears, my eyes still closed.


11:10, I heard her speak but our connection did not end. I heard her angelic voice clear as day, “Send me from my dreams.”


11:10.01, a crystalline needle slid under her skin and into her spinal column so silent and precise that it made her not stir or even react. Drifting now in the sea of our own tears I held our kiss and our tears kept flowing.


11:11.11, Bre?a's lips stopped moving and her last tear was added to the rest.



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