A Report from the Village

A Report from the Village


“Are we content? I am the god who has made this caricature.” - Nietzsche

I.

This is my fortieth year in the village. That is to say, our fortieth year, for not one amongst us can produce any evidence to an existence prior to the day we all found ourselves in the village, confused and unsure, but at the same time possessed with a peculiar sense of place. A kind of deja vu. This feeling has persisted, and continues to hang over the day-to-day lives of my colleagues and I.
‘Lives’, though, may not be an entirely correct term. None of the residents of the village is alive in the sense that is a growing, organic entity. For you see, we were made, we have been manufactured. Our artifice was apparent to us from the very start. We found pictures and and documents tucked away in our homes and businesses, and these cast light on the nature of our being. These materials refer to and were produced by creatures called humans, whom we are supposedly made in the image of.
A simple comparison of ourselves with these hypothetical beings (and I say hypothetical because we have not detected the slightest trace of them since our awakening, and they are regarded by many to be purely mythological) easily reveals the false nature of our existence. To begin with, we lack and skin and other biological components, and our physiology is instead made up of materials that mimic those elements. Instead of flesh, we covered with a sort of fabric. Our hair is the fur of dead beasts; our eyes, bits of colored glass. We have no internal organs as such. Wood serves as our bones, and our inner workings bring to mind the innards of a clock as well of the player piano resting in the village tavern. Strips of celluloid, upon which a variety of symbols are imprinted, rush throughout our bodies and unspool in a cavity at the base of the skull. It is from this tape that our very lives stem. Once the strip has finished navigating its anatomical rounds our existences likewise abruptly cease. Having the nature of our mortality exposed to the light of day has enlightened us, however. Although Dr. Havl, the village physician, has conducted numerous and extensive autopsies upon the remains of our comrades, no secrets can, nor ever will be, divulged. At the point of the spine where the tape terminates just a minute blade which bisects it straight down the middle. Immortality and resurrection as of yet refuse to be coaxed out of that ruined catalogue of half-moons and dashes. This does reveal a significant clue about our Creator, if nothing else. It shows that He (She, It, They) doesn’t want us to understand ourselves, or the circumstances in which we have placed. They do not desire that we learn the rules of the game we have been feigning at playing.
Because of these facts, the village has been host to plethora of theories of the theological or metaphysical variety. The very nature of our lives implies the existence of a maker, yet the grand question remains: Who made us, and for what purpose? A number of the villagers have come to believe that the world is the process of gradually becoming more real. According to them, some beleaguered entity began his task with only the rough workings for his`creation, and given time and resources, will eventually transform these prototypes into their final, authentic forms. Our home is simply the last portion of the world to be translated into its true shape. There is also a smaller group of heretics who affirm the opposite; that a lesser being produced by a creator is attempting their own creation - a world which is merely sad artifice copied from the original - but one that will ultimately overtake and usurp that of his progenitor. Of course those who hold themselves amongst the sophisticated, my friends and I, consider such views to be mystical nonsense and don’t believe a word of them. It is not divine madness we are embroiled in, but human arrogance. For, whatever the reason, we are nothing more than a human invention. It simply remains to be seen whether the village is serving as the site of an experiment, or perhaps a prison, or something else entirely.
The artificiality which defines us is exposed by our everyday actions. To be sure, we continually carry out a number of duties it is assumed real people likewise perform, but in our case there is no motive or necessity for our actions, doing them only for the purpose of doing them. It is as though we are only going through the motions, merely puppets whose strings are well concealed.
Coupling is constant, but no progeny has ever resulted from one of these unions, nor do they accord us any particular pleasure; we do it only because we feel we should. Food and drink are ingested daily, and although there are no nutritional benefits, when sustenance is processed by the digestive pistons it apparently causes the punchtape to circulate healthily to our spines. Likewise, it is theorized water and wine are needed only as lubricants.
Feeling tired or rested are equally unfamiliar sensations, even when we nightly give ourselves to oblivion. Not long after nightfall, we must consign ourselves to our beds and wait to rendered insentient until dawn. In the course of his physiological excursions, Dr. Havl has discovered blank intervals upon our streamlined souls. He believes that when such a space is reached, that lack of data produces what we call sleep. If one of us were walking about at such a moment, Havl says, they would fall to the ground and lay there lifeless. Neither our are darkened brains ever illuminated by dreams.
Socially, the lives of the villagers is crude parody. Many of us hold vague titles and positions of various importance. We ceaselessly scurry back and forth to carry out our esoteric, barely understood occupations in the hope that the daily minutiae will keep minds from touching on disquieting glimmers of knowledge. I myself act of village’s historian and archivist. At the beginning of each year I compose a new report, tallying up the inhabitants and documenting any occurrences of note. I write these apparently for myself and my creator.Visitors to the archives are all but nonexistent; many of the other villagers are barely literate, and none of them can write.
Serving a far more useful function is the good doctor Havl, who as I have previously mentioned, provides medical care to the rest of us. He sews false flesh back up when it has been torn, and replaces broken wooden bones with fresh thick saplings. The most interesting case took place when the mayor awoke one morning to discover that an especially odious rodent and her brood had burrowed into his side and made a nest there. Curiously, when the doctor had succeeded in extracting these pests from Orsche’s belly he found that the invaders were not actually animals. They were like us; artificial things impersonating the real, inexorably stricken with life.

A traveler found himself in the Village one cool gray evening. He had been working his way through the forest for three days, having lost the trail two nights before. A lone figure, shrouded in the folds of a shapeless coat, suddenly emerged from a cluster of shadows as though they were a door from another world and started to move as silently as a sparrow amongst the trees. The figure walked in a manner that seemed swift and sure, the mark of one who is certain of their destination. These days the only thing fear in a forest was your fellow man, and greeting a stranger could be an invitation to robbery or worse. It was a time of unrest; things had changed from what they once were. Strange rustlings were afoot throughout the world and the moon, like the petrified eye of a dead god, hung ominously in the sky far past morning. And just what was another wayfarer doing here in the heart of a mystery? The presence of one interloper in the midst of this desolation was wild chance, the arrival of another purely uncanny. A wave of unfamiliar uneasiness stung the traveler and halted his steps. On the other hand, the forest was long and dark, and here was salvation before him. He drew his knapsack’s drawstrings tightly closed, and decided to follow.
They walked like this for hours, the traveler silently pursuing his guide through the wilderness. At times, the traveler was forced to sit momentarily and throw water down his panting throat, as his guide did not seem needful of rest, instead quickening his pace the longer he walked. Thirst sated, the traveler quietly arose and resumed the trail. All of a sudden, the other man stopped in his tracks. A shudder rippled across his body, as though he were a toy whose spring had snapped. Limbs lunging furiously at the air, he turned to look behind, directly at the traveler.
Half gilded by shadow, the stranger’s face had something subtly wrong about it. It didn’t seem quite alive, more like a mask or the visage of a mannequin. He stared at the traveler with blind eyes, looking not at him but past him, past the forest surrounding him, at something outside of space and time altogether. Unblinking, the traveler returned this unseeing stare. Then just as suddenly as he had stopped, the man took off running, but not as he had before, his movements uncoordinated and jerky. Spastically he weaved through the trees, alighting over a hiddle and vanished from sight. The traveler watched him go, his frozen body slowly warming with terror. Has he been following the random paths of some wandering madman? Had he left the middle of nowhere only to become hopelessly entangled within its periphery? The traveler looked to the crest of the where the maniac had last appeared. Not a flicker of motion, and no sound save the wind’s hollow moaning. Behind him the grayness of dusk had congealed into night and was slowly engulfing the world. There was no other place to go. The traveler walked to the hill and started to ascend. He broke past the trees on the slope, and found the village there to greet him.
It wasn’t much of a place. The houses looked purely functional; small, unpainted things with a hastily constructed appearance. A larger stone building, some kind of meeting house or temple evidently, made up the center of the village. It stood as an affront to aesthetics and gravity, seemingly through will alone. Next to it was an elongated wooden shack. A wisp of smoke hesitantly forced itself from the chimney and dissipated into the darkness. Nothing else contradicted the impression of a ghost town.
The traveler gaped at this stunted dwarf of a village, taking it all in. There were no streets, nor were there lamps. There was just the houses, twenty or so in all, as well as the other two architectural embarrassments and several other buildings whose purpose he could not guess at. Jamming his fist into his coat pocket to clench the knife that rested there, the traveler made his way to the building that softly bled smoke. On entering, he saw it was a tavern. Here and there lanterns dangled from the ceiling, and in the far corner a fire gently roiled. It was deserted.
“Hello”, the traveler called. He took a hesitant step. “Is anyone here?” No response came. He repeated his query but no citizens appeared to accost him as the silence slowly resolidified. Walking behind the bar, the traveler found a storeroom stocked with food, mugs, plates and utensils. A keg caught his eye. Selecting a glass from the shelf the traveler placed it beneath the tap and released a draught. The ichor that issued forth was not liquor.It looked like sewer water, and taking a tenative sniff, the traveler caught the heavy odors of oil and grease. He set the glass on the counter, puzzled and disgusted. As he did so, the door to the tavern opened, and a throng of creatures entered. It was the traveler’s guide, supported by two others like him, with a small entourage milling respectfully behind.
They weren’t human, obviously.They looked like something might create in an attempt to mirror their image, only lifesize. They looked like something out of a nightmare. Tan cloth had been pulled taut over some framework, skin color the result of carelessly-applied rouge, with eyes better suited for the work of a cheap taxidermist. They were a bad joke, something that couldn’t possibly exist in the waking world, but existed regardless.
The creatures wheedled around on spidery limbs, and set their fallen comrade carefully atop the bar. If they noticed the traveler, they felt no inclination to show it. Scissors were produced, and the dead thing turned on its back as the others began began to open his clothes. They worked in silence. When they opened their mouths all that emerged was a soft exhalation of of air and the sharp snap of their false teeth. One among them moved forward with a professional air. It pulled a smock out from its pocket, and tying it around itself, it accepted the scissors from a waiting hand and thrust it into his patient’s back. The scissors worked their up to the neck and were withdrawn. Pulling back the false skin, a wooden spine was revealed. At the bottom of this spine was a hollow compartment, filled with what looked to the traveler like shredded tickertape. Some came forward from the group, pulling out the tape in handfuls.When this procedure was finished, the tape was spread all over the tavern, hung from one corner to the other. Their surgeon produced a little black book, and pen in hand, proceeded to inspect the tape. Walking slowly across the room, he would stop momentarily to check his book, and then continue.
Filled with a morbid curiosity that was wholly new to him, the traveler approached and peered at the book. Pasted inside were pieces of the same tape, wrinkled and set back together. Reaffixed, the sections displayed odd symbols that were meaningless to him.
Gradually, the other creatures meandered off, leaving the surgeon to his task of reading entrails. When this was finished, the tape was removed and the body dragged from the bar, out the door, and into the night. Through the whole of the operation the creatures had remained entirely unaware of him. As one made for the door, the traveler stepped into its path and held out a palm. It walked blindly into his hand and was held in place, exerting a surprising amount of force. The traveler looked closely into the thing’s unseeing eyes.
“Can you hear me?” he asked. Before him, the creature continue to walk in place. He repeated his question, then slapped it across the face several times. Planting a foot squarely in the creature’s chest, he gave it a kick, sending it crashing to the floor. There it lay, feet treading air, futilely trying to walk into the sky. The traveler squatted down to look at it. Whatever these things were, they were inaccessible; not in this world, but in some other. He set the thing back on its feet it marched implacably out of the tavern and was swallowed by the dark.
Back inside, the surgeon had wrapped the tape around himself like a cocoon, and was staring at the handful he gripped as if it were a holy rolic, something worthy of adulation. The traveler looked away. This place, this village; what was it? It seemed too impossible to be real. This collection of false things made the rest of the world seem unreal by its very existence. Slowing his breathing, the traveler walked over to a chair near the fair and sat. Looking into the dying flames he felt himself growing calmer.
“After all, the world has changed from what it once was,” he softly said to himself. “So many things have become different.” Shortly thereafter the surgeon finished his examination, and after winding the tape around his arm as though it were a bundle of bandages, he blew out the lanterns and departed. The tavern was once again deserted. In the fire’s meager light, with his knife in his hand, the traveler slept. Thus passed his first night in the village.

II.

The days had been passing us with such similarity that it could be we were living the same day, over and over again, with only the slightest differentiations to tell the time after the night from the time before. Each of went about our erstwhile duties as we always had, understanding little of what was to come from our efforts but performing them all the same. I continued to scribble my histories and speculations for a nonexistent audience; Gry the parson told his anxious congregation it was merely a matter of time before our Maker would transform us into our true selves; Mayor Orsche sat behind his desk doing what it is that mayors do, while Dr. Havl went about mending those pieces of us that could be fixed and replacing what could not. The rest of the population returned to cutting down the surrounding trees for lumber and mining the hills for mineral ore. All was as it had always been.
One day, near autumn, everything changed. Trikkt returned. Forgotten decades ago he left the village, setting off to see if the world had any other villages in it, and whether they contained beings like us, or of another variety. He was the only one to ever leave us, and when he didn’t return in the course of a year, it was presumed that he had met with some calamity. After all, whether it represents an end or a beginning, this village truly is the center of the world; a nucleus. For all its falsehood and emptiness, the village is the only place where everything is certain. We have an order here; everything has its place and though one may struggle in vain they shall never break free from its bonds. Outside the village lies uncertainty and mystery. Nothing stays where it is supposed to be. It is constantly in the process of becoming something else, a continual metamorphosis. Therefore, we did not become upset over Trikkt’s disappearance, as we all knew what to expect.
The years moved over us as they will always do. Trikkt and his quest gradually drifted out of our minds. It was as if he never been with us to begin with. Even I, whose memories must act as the voice for this village, even forgot of his existence. Then, on a day that was otherwise devoid of interest, the most stupendous thing in our history since the awakening happened: Trikkt came home.
He barged suddenly into town hall. It had been about thirty years since he had vanished into the unknown, and his body showed it. He was ripped, battered, and barely functioning. Trikkt was all but incoherent, but kept repeating a few phrases. He said he found our creator and learned of things were meant to remain eternal mysteries, so the creator had sent a ghost after him. The said the ghost had followed him out of the forest.
By this time his body’s inner mechanisms were rapidly coming undone. He fell to the floor, hands tightly grasping his head as if it were something he was trying to keep under his control. The quivers and spasms stopped. Trikkt looked up at us, perfectly still, eyes burning with revelation. “No escape,” he said. “No escape. There isn’t anything to escape to.” He sank to the floor, and we knew he was gone. At first we could not believe what had happened. It was as though a new planet was discovered amongst the constellations, or a law or nature had been proven to be false. When we had finally collected ourselves, one of the mayor’s aides and I gathered up Trikkt’s still form and carried it over to the tavern, where Havl customarily held his autopsies for the edification of all.
Word of this homecoming flew about the village. On the way to the tavern, a large number of townsfolk gathered about us to observe and confirm this disquieting new event. They crowded around the two of us as we walked to the tavern with our silent burden.

The morning after his arrival, the traveler made an inspection of the Village. The inhabitants remained the same as before, wandering about like sleepwalkers sharing a communal dreamland. By noon, his eyes had beheld wonders both subtle and sinister.
He entered one house to find two of them, carved in the forms of man and woman, copulating with all the passion of a machine in some anonymous factory. Back at the tavern a whole crowd of the creatures had gathered, stuffing moldy bread and meat rotten to the point of liquefaction down their narrow wooden throats.
Approaching the stone building that resembled a chapel, the traveler found it instead to be a mockup of an official building. Inside he found a bulbous, overstuffed creature sitting behind a desk, staring vacantly into the air. From the farcically ornate garments the thing wore, the traveler presumed to have found the local authority. As the bloated figure appeared disinclined to move, the traveler left to explore the other offices. Adjacent was a small room, little more than a closet, in which one of the creatures was hunched over a table, writing frantically. The traveler plucked the paper from beneath the pen, waiting for a reaction that predictably did not occur. Mindlessly continuing to write, the scribe had printed ‘the ghost had followed him out of the forest’ onto the surface of the desk and would have written more had not the traveler returned the paper to its previous position. Nothing could be found in the other offices save for libraries of moldering ledgerbooks being haphazardly sorted by clerks.
Climbing the staircase in the main hall, the traveler found only a single door, with fresh footprints burned in the dust around it. It was locked. Puzzled at this obstacle, the traveler applied his weight to the door and attempted to force it open. He was unaware of the old man until he began to speak. “I do have a key,” he said.
So startled that he let out a yelp, the traveler spun around. One hand went for his knife and was entangled in the folds of the pocket. “You see, that door has been from good wood”, the old man continued. “And there isn’t any need for it to be broken when it can be easily opened.”
“Who are you?” asked the traveler, frightened at this apparition’s sudden appearance. “I really should ask the same of you,” replied the man, “Since you are trespassing inside my property.”
“Your property?” Something like awe filled the traveler’s voice. “Are you the one who made all of this?” The old man modestly smoothed out the wrinkles in his shirt. “I am the author, the overseer of this village,” he said. “Within the confines of the world I have constructed a smaller one and I welcome you to it.” He produced a key and slid it into the lock, which opened without a creak. Holding open the door, the old man gently beckoned for the traveler to enter his sanctum, who did so with uncertain footsteps.
It was a simple room. Bed neatly made, a shelf of books alphabetically arranged, pieces of furniture scattered randomly but tastefully about the room, and a fireplace full of logs waiting to be lit. As if possessed by some secret joke, the old man caught the traveler’s eye. “I can’t offer you paradise, I’m afraid,” he said, “but as the dwelling of a god I find this quite satisfactory.” He pulled up a chair and bade the traveler to sit. “Let me find you something to eat, for as a wanderer in the wilderness you are doubtless hungry, the creator said. After rummaging within a cupboard, in a short time some cheese and dried meat were produced and given to the traveler. He ate in silence as the old man stoked the fire. When he had finished, the traveler let the plate rest on one knee, poking a few crumbs around with a forefinger. Hesitantly he looked up. “Tell me,” the traveler said, “what is going on here?” The plate was set gingerly on the floor. “What is this place? Why can’t those things see or hear me?”
“They could never hear you,” replied the old man, returning to the chair nearest the fire. “You see, they can’t hear. Nor can they see, or taste, or feel, or think. All that they can give is the appearance of such functions. They are automatons.”
“But how do they move about, and eat, and procreate?” asked the traveler. “And why?”
“They do so because I have written their lives that way. I believe you were present at the autopsy last night?” The traveler nodded. “Then you saw the tape being removed from the dead one’s body. Have you ever seen something called a player piano?”
“No, I haven’t,” said the traveler. “I have heard of them, though. In books.” A poker was applied to the flames. “Sadly they are antiques now,” said the old man. “Not much use for such a thing at this point in time.” He gestured to the left, stabbing the air with his fingers. “I placed one in the the tavern as a personal joke, deliberately ironic. A player piano is a mechanical piano, you see. You wind a sheet into it and a song comes out. It is is the same way with my puppets.”
The old man rose from his chair. Turning to the traveler, he said “Pardon me for a moment,” and walked to the room’s sole closet. He rattled around inside and his searching hands emerged with a bottle and a pair of glasses. The liquor was uncorked, poured, and given to the traveler, who couldn’t help but notice the strands of cobweb floating within his glass. Having poured a drink for himself, the old man regained his chair and resumed his story.
“After people started writing stories, as they used to,” said the creator, “they eventually wrote stories about stories, in which the characters would realize that they were characters, come to understand their fictitious nature. Then, they would try to break free of the author and his plots.” He gave a little chuckle and took a meaningful drink. “However, that is illogical, impossible. The characters’ self-discovery only came from the grace of their author. Therefore, they could do nothing, unless the other wrote them to.”
“I am the greatest author who has ever lived, for I have written a novel on the pages of space and time. As in a player piano, there is a tape, marked with symbols, running inside each of my creations. Every symbol is rendered in the real world as an action, which they perform. Each of them carries out a variety of actions every day, just as one of us, the living, might do. These actions seem informed by awareness, even the realization that they are made in the image of another. This is only appearance. My creations do not think, for asI said, they only carry out the routines that have been designated for them. The various interconnecting commands make up their days and give the illusion of life, but they are in their own world. For example, a house containing several of my creations was struck by lightning a year ago. It burned to the ground with the village parson inside. Even so, he is still there, inside their false lives. The dutiful arrive every week to hear his sermons, others mock him as a superstitious fool. His absence is of no account to them. The occupants of this village have no freedom, because there couldn’t be any for them. They are like clocks, and clocks are slaves to their makers as well as time.”
The creator concluded his tale with vigorous last gulp of his drink. “Now, as I have told you what you wished to know, I am thinking you could oblige me in kind,” he said, looking directly into his guest’s eyes. In return, the traveler found himself examining the old man for the first time; his skin was almost unnaturally rosy and smooth-looking as an infant’s, and his carefully-trimmed beard had the plush softness of down. With his intense, fervid stare, he exuded so much vitality that it was unnerving to think he had made this dead place. The traveler shifted nervously in his seat.
“I haven’t much to tell,” he said. “I was sent from the city to find others.”
“Which city?” asked the old man.
“The new one. The old city is desolate, blooming with strange passions. The skyscrapers are all empty, but at night fires burn atop their roofs.”
“Signal fires?” asked the creator.
“I honestly don’t know, but I wouldn’t think so,” the traveler replied. “In the old city, insects as big as owls now reside, and not much else. Times are different, but people still need to eat. I was sent out to find others, and after losing my way in the forest, happened upon one of your puppets shambling about. I followed it, and that is how came to find you and your menagerie.”
“What will you be doing now?” his listener asked.
“Well, if I were to find others, I was to make a report and bring it back to the new city. But since there is only you here, I guess I’ll have to try and find my way back alone. New plans will have to be drawn up; others will be sent to find me”. The traveler gave a brief bitter laugh.
For a moment the room was devoid of speech. The old man gathered up the dishes lying about. He stood in the center of the room, bathed in motes of grimy sunlight. “If you were to stay in the village with me for a period of time, and learn about my creations and how I made them, and put this into a report to give to your superiors, I could promise you a safe return to the city,” he said.
“Agreed,” replied the traveler. He got out of the chair to inspect the titles resting neatly on their shelf, selecting a volume at random and idly leafing through its pages. Looking up from his book, he turned suddenly to face the old man once again. “You have created a world in which all is artificial; even its inhabitants’ awareness of this falseness is an illusion,” he said. “I wonder if after I have been here I will be no longer able to tell the true things from the false.”
The old man was as unyielding as the sphinx in his armchair. “If one does not know that already then it will remain unknown forever,” he said. And spat into the fire.

III.

Trikkt brought a ghost back with him from the dark woods. Terror swept across the village. For days, it would abruptly burn into the world to become visible for a moment before dissipating back into the mystery from whence it came. Sometimes it was simply walking, sometimes in the midst of some vague task, sometimes it appeared speaking to itself an unseen other. It was eventually realized that what we had mistaken for a specter was actually our creator. This was much less horrifying to consider. He had returned to us after so many years of abandonment.
We identified him in part from the old books scattered about the village, those written by the humans, who pictured their own maker as an old man with a beard. Every witness of the ghost confirmed that this was just how it looked. We were meant to find these images, but not to glimpse the one pictured within. The creator wanted to have his jokes at our expense, never thinking we would discover the punchline. Every clue we have of him paints our creator as a cruel being, who has walked invisible amongst us for too long. All the evidence was left in plain view, while we were unable to discover their meanings. This was our creator’s will. It impossible to guess what he is responsible for doing to us, or what we shall do to him should we chance to encounter him, in a state of temporal permanence, face to face.


On the eve of the second week, calamity struck the Village. At first, things had proceeded with a modicum of normality. Under the old man’s tutelage, the traveler had been shown blueprints, and instructed in the puppets’ manufacture. They watched the creatures dutifully carry out the simulated lives the old man had carefully crafted for them. After the initial unease had worn away, the traveler began to feel more comfortable around the villagers. It was like being surrounded by a multitude of the blind and deaf, provided one stayed at such a distance as to ignore their empty scarecrow faces.
On the third day, the troubles started. The two had just returned from a section of forest on a northeast hill, where the old man had his puppets cutting down trees for lumber, a portion of which stocked his fireplace, and another portion to form the skeletons the next generation of automata. He claimed these would much closer to humans in shape as well as thought. These beings, which would be virtually indistinguishable from the originals, would possess more variety, including the urge to make creations of their own. “After all, all intelligent beings wish to build things in their own image,” the old man had declared.
As they made their way towards the stone hall a peculiar thing happened. All of the puppets passing them by seemed to to be suddenly rent from their separate plane. It looked as though they were staring right at the old man as he walked. Then it was over, and the things broke out of their reverie and formed a crowd, gesturing frantically and screeching to each other with silent voices. The traveler had put the incident from his mind, but a similar event occurred the next day, and the day following that. Each time, the puppets appeared to become briefly aware of their creator’s presence. These flashes of seeming insight left the traveler increasingly perturbed. However, he said nothing to his mentor about it, believing the irrationality of his new environment was skewing his perceptions.
On the night of the seventh day, the old man led him into the village to examine the operating mechanism of one of his puppets. “During the night, you see, their tapes are bare,” the old man explained as they entered a quiet house. “So they are now ‘sleeping’ and cannot move around.” The traveler couldn’t help but think of a bier as he followed the other to a bed where a puppet reposed in corpse-like stillness. The old man leaned over the bed, hands outstretched to caress each side of its face.
“They are very simple to open,” he said. “There are two buttons beneath the chin, you just press them at the same time and face swings open like a door.” His fingers grazed the the creature’s chin. At once it opened its eyes, returning the gaze of its creator. It sat bolt upright and soundlessly screamed. The old man jumped away, slowly retreating from the bed. “It has awakened,” he muttered. “This isn’t possible.” Jaws working insanely, the thing before them continued to cringe in its bedclothes. Staring steadily at it, the creator turned to his apprentice. “Quickly, run back to my room,” he said. “Get the tin of kerosene and come back here as fast as you can.” Darting from the room, the traveler hurtled through the village. All around him doors were opening; the creature’s brethren heard the cries his creator could not.
When the traveler reached the apartment there was a rush of motion outside the window. They had filled the square. Out of the shadows came the figure of the old man. In the audible silence, the creator was appraised by his creations. Then, with graceless savagery, they came at him with tearing hands. The old man fought well considering his age. He had managed to repel several attackers when the crowd moved away and he glanced up to see a pistol leveled at his head. He had given them guns in order to shoot the mechanical birds the occupied the forest’s edge. Holding out his hands, the old man collapsed to his knees. A gunshot irrevocably shattered the silence of the village.

IV.

After the bullet punctured his face, he fell towards the ground and vanished before he could strike it. We knew he was dead. No longer would we fear his interventions and nameless laws. We killed our creator. Now, we are free.


Before the sun had risen, the traveler had fled the Village. After they shot the old man, the puppets had returned to their former condition. Again they were oblivious to the real world. When he was certain the creatures were harmless, the traveler crept out to where their maker lay motionless in the moonlight. He leaned down and turned the body over. From the shattered remnants of what had been a face a few coils of tape issued forth, fluttering lightly in the breeze. Shortly thereafter, the traveler ran back into the forest, leaving the village behind him. As he runs through the shadows questions pour into his mind. He wonders how to return to his destination, what is the name of his destination, what his own name is. The questions in his mind fly as fast as a lone runner sprinting hysterically in a forest with darkness on all sides of him; as quickly as a length of tape traversing an artificial body, and growing ever closer to the point that will render its secrets useless.


I.

This is my forty-first year in the village. That is to say, our forty-first year, for not one amongst us can produce any evidence to an existence prior to the day we all found ourselves in the village, confused and unsure, but at the same time possessed with a peculiar sense of place. A kind of deja vu. This feeling has persisted, and continues to hang over the day-to-day lives of my colleagues and I.

(dedicated to BS, TL, PKD, and ‘No.6’)
- written age 19, 2003.