Locomotive
"It was a desolate landscape, dead trees shrouded a dark skyline; a black wind effortlessly whipped through the night. Large machines chugged by, oblivious to all but their own function.
Churning. Always churning. The locomotives sped by, coughing up clouds of thick, black smoke. They made a deep, strange noise like a furnace in deathly overhaul.
They were everywhere. In a world with dark, clouded skies, there was nothing left but a sick trail of eerie trees and strange train tracks leading off into a distant oblivion, traveled by these strange machines.
Chugga chugga chugga chugga. The ominous, awful noise ground through everything, in a path of desolation lost in its own mournful echo.
They used to be humans. It was like someone had hollowed them out, lined them with metal, and put coal in them to power a brand-new world...
The others mentioned things to them. If they saw one go by, they sometimes knew to imitate its noises. They ask the thing if it's a locomotive. And that's when the machines seem to remember. Seem to remember a world where they were human beings.
There was a machine war. An underground king that tried to protect these people, while their masters above tried to hollow them out instead, and set them loose on the world.
God knows the truth.
Ancient factories, powerful, churning, and vast. Smoke pouring and billowing out of smokestacks, a promise to others their lives are next to burn into nothingness.
The meek kept their head down, were obedient, and did everything they were told. They were told to ignore the king underground, despise him, and bow lower and lower every day to the grim smokestacks of the above masters.
After a while, the underground king stopped helping. Without him, the machine factories spread. The king went back to his underground world, and withdrew from them and their lives. Primitive, he decided, as his kingdom and his functions were much higher.
The surface machines grew, and no one knew to be a part of anything but a holocaustic, burning world. There was nothing left but vast machines.
Churning. Coughing smoke. Churning. Coughing smoke. No soul left. No humanity. Pouring dead smoke into oblivion...
It was amazing to think that they ever lived at all."
Short Stories