Future Gazebos, Robots
Another postapocalyptic dream, this time with robots.
Oh, the world had ended or advanced or somehow become strange. There were streams and gazebos and domes all over. It looked like the World's Fair or a fairyland. The streams were oddly iridescent and viscous, but harmlessly so. Things were made of marble that had a pearly sheen. The clouds looked like a sunset all the time.
The whole place looked like M.C. Escher had designed it in a good mood.
I was the only person there. I lived in whichever building I wanted to. Many were very open air, like ruins of temples, and others were like abandoned banks. Very Greco-Roman, though. There were beds all over, and they were comfortable and smelled like line-dried sheets.
One day I woke up and went outside. On the marble steps was a sad robot. It looked like a crash test dummy, only somehow less realistic. It had a lot of trouble moving. I tried to talk to it, but it lit up in angry colors and started buzzing violently.
Then it fell over.
I tried to help it up, maybe get it somewhere more level than the steps, but it gave me an electric shock whenever I tried to touch it.
Well, fine. I walked away. There was a forest with translucent trees on the outskirts of town, and I spent some time in there. The trees were easy to climb. There were branches at very regular intervals.
Everything was crystalline in the forest. I climbed to the top of a tree and saw the town, the rest of the forest, and a shimmering desert around that. A cool breeze rattled the trees' leaves and it sounded like a windchime.
It started to get dark, so I went back into town. I stayed away from where I'd seen the robot and found somewhere to sleep.
The next day there was a very big canal going through the abandoned city. I wondered how it had gotten there.
There was a huge submarine partially submerged in it, too. I sat and watched it for a while. I thought about the book On the Beach for a little bit, but I'm not sure why.
The robot shambled into view. It walked into the water - didn't jump, just walked until there was no ground - and floundered to the submarine. A hatch opened and it climbed in.
The submarine became more animated. Electricity ran around its hull, sort of like in the movie Tron.
I didn't like the looks of that. The submarine started moving down the canal. I hid behind some ruins until it had left. I didn't want to know what the robot had planned for the submarine.