You Don't Belong Here: A Response to 'NaissanceE'
Spoken word version
Based on the fantastic free game: NaissanceE
This world was built for you
But you do not belong here
…
At first, your footsteps are the only sound accompanying your journey.
But then rises a dull moan. A static.
It’s a familiar sound, but one humanity was not born with. Before there was the rustling of leaves, rushing of water, and the beat of our hearts, now there is the hum of machinery.
And we know this sound better; we know its rhythms.
And with these rhythms, your steps can never be in sync. You are a cacophony of dissonance and tempo drift. A disturbance.
This world you walk through is perfect. Optimised. Utopic.
Built for you, in your image, from seeds we planted.
Far back in history, we built great machines. Boulevards, towers, and factories to pull humanity from the dirt and lift it to the stars. Gradually at first, but then faster and faster, accelerating to the point of whiplash. The body broke while progress continued onward. Always better, always further.
And this is the world you stand in now. A world built for you.
But one you do not belong in.
…
You pass what could be called streets, passages, and homes. Great vents protruding from the walls of steel canyons and stairways winding upward into the light. Stairways so long that your legs could not possibly carry your weight to their summit.
Great monolithic skyscrapers dwarf your weak frame. Monuments to industry and commerce. Empty tombs to a misplaced sense of purpose.
And everywhere, there is dancing luminance. Lighting your way while stretching down as distant flames in the dark. Dotting the landscape to and far beyond the horizon and stretching to the heavens to create a blinding haze.
An empty city of lights in all directions.
Empty. Perfect in its rhythm, before your off-kilter steps echoed through its expanse.
Though your presence is that of a single grain of sand to a desert and would go ignored by any living creature, something notices you.
The hum and the static frequency rise. Sine waves and fundamentals. The entire world begins to vibrate and scream. This perfect world that was built for you abhors your presence.
A cancer. Chaos.
This world is consciousness made manifest. Patterns and observations. Objectives and pathways. Goals to be met and functions to be followed.
A world perfected over countless iterations for a subject long since expired.
It is steel, concrete, and electric. But it is not rigid.
It hums, flows, morphs, and grows.
A grey goo that envelopes everything.
…
And so you run. If your footsteps disturbed before, now they horrify. All that has been made for you must be preserved. Something so perfect in every way cannot be allowed to perish.
This world. This vision. Nirvana.
Down corridors, through assembly lines, and up endless steps. Your flesh is thrown against the cold environment, hurtling itself forward. There must be a way.
Down corridors, through passageways, and along gantries. Your flesh is thrown against the cold environment, hurtling itself forward. There must be a way.
Down corridors, slipping through alleys, and around pillars. Your flesh is thrown against the cold environment, hurtling itself forward. There must be a way.
Down corridors.
Past mountains.
Beneath grey monuments.
Flesh is thrown against the cold environment, hurtling itself forward. There must be a way.
There must be a way.
Down corridors.
There must be a way.
Down corridors.
There is a dull moan. A static.
This world pulses with the sound of machinery.
This world was built for you
But you do not belong here
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