Halogen Lullaby, by Shubh Mamtora

Two machines meet after a decade apart.

“I brought your things.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m leaving for the Moon tomorrow.”

A pause.

“Hope it’s everything you want it to be.”

“You could go with me?”

“I can’t.”

“Please.”

“…”

“Go with me.”

Nighttime. Kavi tries to sleep, but between the banging hammers and hissing buzzsaws and the clang, clang, clang of construction outside, there wasn’t a moment of silence spared. Restless, she tries to ignore the noise. Turning her sleeping cabinet sideways, backwards, upside-down. Grating her metal body against the edges of its enclosure.

A passing railbus blows its horn, ricocheting shrills through Kavi’s electric frame. She tries to calm herself, opening the aperture of her lenses, peering out of the window of her apartment.

The construction yard shimmers with empty equipment. Unmanned bulldozers stroll around, mobile cranes sway their hooks back and forth, a silent railbus passes by.

Kavi’s mind rings with emulated sounds, a motionless fan whirring in the living room, a closed faucet drip, drip, dripping in the bathroom, an empty mailbox rustling with letters: invitations, requests, and messages that she did not have time to read. Another honking railbus, another bulldozer scraping through the dirt, another noisy batch of departures leaving for the moon.

Unable to calm down, Kavi unlocks the cabinet; it hisses, retracting power cables from outlets on Kavi’s body. Her plates magnetize like clothes.

Kavi leaves for a place to rest.

Nighttime in Sondur district. People exhale vapor from their mouths and vents. Rowboats paddle through icy canals. Luminous fish blink beneath the waterways. There’s a hum here, a constant exchange of sound. Spruce trees rustling in artificial snow. Malls swishing with the muffled sliding of skaters. Pulsing earthscrapers. Drones filtered by purple argon lamplight glow.

Kavi walks an empty pathway, head ringing with doubt. Tonight, the city could have been hers. Yet there’s so much noise, even at this hour. She wonders if a place in the universe exists without sound. If a place like that can exist just for her. But it’s getting quieter the more she walks.

And her lenses flicker.

And whispers of drowsiness begin to speak.

And the sidewalk curves upwards. Parallel with the buildings. Facing the Earth.

Kavi looks left. Sees the distant Moonlift. Firing departures someplace behind her.

Electrons slow down in her logic gates.

Purple seas of light oscillate in brightness.

A familiar piano melody starts to form.

Under a single orange lamp is a brass pianist with silver wire hair. She wears a synthetic leather jacket, covered in hand-stitched patches from places between the Earth and the Moon. Her four arms play a somber chord progression pressing down on nothing, as if her fingers have strings attached to thin air. The aching notes come out from speakers on her face, and Kavi notices that the pianist has no lenses. No eyes. Abruptly, the blind pianist completes her song.

“You’re out late…” says the pianist.

“Just couldn’t sleep.”

“Something bothering you?”

“Too much on my mind I guess.”

“Want to tell me?”

“I guess it’s that I don’t know how I feel.”

“About what?

“About all this noise.”

“I’m sorry I tried to decide for you,” says the pianist, “I won’t stop you from changing your mind.”

“Why? Why did you say that?”

“Maybe I’m a different machine now, or because I think we’re lucky to be able to choose how we perceive the world.”

Kavi’s lenses shutter. Everything goes black. She feels an erratic, cold tapping on the edges of her arm. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Her vision returns, and she’s one of two machines, bathing in orange iodine haze.

“Which way takes me back?”

“I don’t know, you should make that choice.”

Kavi picks a direction, almost setting out, but remembering the jacket, the patches, she turns.

“Could you tell me how you know which patch on your jacket is from where?”

“When I run my fingers through them, I know.”

“So which one of those places is your favorite?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Before Kavi can respond, the pianist waves and walks away. If I ever meet her again, I’ll ask her name. I’ll ask where she went. After a while, the haze clears, and the city recedes behind. Its spires — distant nodes.

In front of Kavi, there are clouds. Invisible shores hide behind them. Shaded plains textured by footprints.

Craters pooling to the brim.

Rainfall murmurs somewhere dusty, faraway.

Author's note
This work was written to help with my insomnia, I wrote it remembering an uncertain semester, walking home from an empty campus. The sun was setting, and some rumbling generators made me stop thinking about whatever was bothering me. Those busy generators made the most beautiful sound in the world.

Shubh Mamtora

Shubh Mamtorais a student, writing stories with his eyes half-closed. He tries to keep things short, favoring non-anthropocentrism and code-snippet prose.

• Website: https://shubhnanigans.substack.com/