1.5|SIREN’S SONG

1.5|Siren’s Song

 

The crowds buzzed ajoy with a rancor not seen in eons since the jubilation elation of her mystical majesty, El-Lin. The neon florescent lights overhead the dark streets lit her platform ablaze, a podium for the magnificent marques to project her glorious will. The entire city fell under her thrall. Men had begun to forget their names and their identities. Their women, left unattended, would surely sell their illegitimate children with a single look from their leader. The cities residents, who had fled from the devastation of the Great War with the machine menace had found themselves at home again in the throes of fanaticism.  All they needed to remember their history and culture was the single symbol of their media diva and starlet Queen, El-Lin. The city of Galdia was once again filled with the life of music and laughter, food and drink. This had been the dream of its residents for years to relive the glory before the war, but now, it was a reality. Atleast that's what the Marques preached.

Copies of new book were stacked as high as her silicone rubber replica behind her. 'The Perennial Prophet' had already broken records when it hit the bookstores and trade lots, and now it was at the top of the bestsellers list. The city's inhabitants had lived in a sort of amnesia about their history, and now their memories were starting to come back. The survivors of the Great War, who had been left destitute and without jobs, had spent days and nights at her feet begging and crying. But the poverty had been ablated by strict price control measures from the Economic Recovery Bureau. The Marques, with her gloved hands, fur boa and long wavy blond hair twitched her foxxy ears to hear the murmurs of the crowd booming through.

"And today you stand before me, the Marques, to hear the good word of the perennial prophet. What has Xi taken from us? Jobs, security, and safety owed from the extra-terrestrial foreigner, from the robotic rapscallions who torched this city. But what has the way of light gifted us with? VIVE!"

"VIVE!" Everyone in the crowd repeated, chanting it with added vigor.

"Today, we see the day of our deliverance. Our savior has come at the right time to rescue us from the clutches of the machine menace. Yes, our city is reborn. We have found a new home. A new life."

"VIVE!" The crowd cheered their new benefactor.

The sound was deafening.

"And the way of light will come, it will come and give us liberty to Ladyhood! Purchase to poverty, fair jurisdiction to the judicial tyranny this empire has cloaked over us, like a righteous rag of souls for the departed! You know the way of light."

 

"VIVE!"

The entire place echoed with her pronouncements. Effigies of androids and robotic models were strung up by nooses, covered in magnets and pikes. The Marques could not keep the jubilant crowd calm and in order.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is great. But what can a single human being do? There are people who don't have a voice and there are people who want to hear them. So today, you all have one more chance to be heard." "VIVE!" the crowd boomed. "I am the Marques. I am the voice of the people. The soul of a generation! I cannot speak for you all. But I have given you the opportunity to speak for yourselves." El-Lin slowly loosened her caped cloak, revealing a latex dominatrix outfit underneath. She playfully discarded her fur boa to the crowd, picking up a riding crop and whipping a mechanical servant model to the audience's delight.

The Marques was electrified. Her hair stood on end and her eyes glazed with tears of joy. She knew she was the voice of the people. The voice of the people who believed her lies, who were manipulated to believe the myth of the Perennial Prophet.

Two bypassers to the scene in heavy winter coats looked onwards with incredulity "That the one celeb that sells fake visions and anti-robot hysteria? Ugh I cannot stand her guts." They said to their partner. "Oh, believe me, they believe every word.

With the sound of her voice, the crowd began to roar with a fury only seen when the city was ruled by a dictator.

"It will be the one who comes to me, the Anima who will return us to the way of light!" The crowd began to cheer in unison. They were enthralled by her and didn't even notice that the winter has come. The snow fell lightly. They were the kind of people who did not care for the cold or its harshness. They were easily pleased and loved every bit of the Marques, from her long hair, latex catsuit, to her extravagant performances and rousing words.

"The savior has come! So tell me, what does she look like, what is she called?" the crowd cried back to her.

"Today, I can give you the way of light, because of my knowledge of the Perennial Prophet's revelations." El-Lin said, holding her crop high, like a conductor's baton or circus ringleader's cane. "Today I reveal to you. She will be waiting. The one to take us to the promised land, to smite the metal ones. Yes, it will be her.." Lin walked back and forth to build up the drama, the white rubber of her catsuit and corset squeaking and slapping latex-on-latex against her black squeaky long-sleeve jacket, top hat, and gloves. The pencil skirts stretched over the elastic white material of her dress, gleaming radiant as she walked. "The Anima Marionette! Anima, our metal angel will swoop and save us! The red thread of fate hangs by her Needle of Life, she wears a silver crown as penance for the metal one's crimes! So elegant is she, so divine and righteous, only she can deliver us from the clutches of X.I.M.A.S. And don't trust your government, they hide behind machines they claim to fight, trust our savior, the Anima Marionette! The angelic break! The divinity of destiny's cradle, the dear doll of the winding widow." El-Lin proclaimed with passion and the crowd became all ears.

Everyone took in the Marque's words and started to cheer her prophecies. "The Anima! The Anima! Doll of destiny, the winding widow's familiar!"

"Yes!" Lin threw out her arms theatrically. "She can save us, she can save you

all!"

The crowd were all but screaming. They were so enthralled by her vision that

they didn't even care that the streets were cold.

The media and politicians, who knew they were out of their depth in their attempts to gain popularity or influence, kept silent at the sight of their city falling to chaos, and their populace lost in the dark cloud of fanaticism.

"Yes, trust in her. She will deliver us to the promised land!" El-Lin said, tapping the riding crop against her latex-clad thigh and walking back and forth in front of the crowd.

"And she will come from the east!"

"The east, the east!" The crowd cried out in unison.

"And she will sweep confounding machines across the horizon, all the way

 until

she crosses the west!"

"To the west, the west!"

"From the sons of Jupiter to the daughters of Venus, rejoice! For the Anima doll will save us! Her glassy eyes see all, her porcelain cracks speak of her tenacity. Wait for her my children!"

"We will be reborn. And this time, we will not forget the way of light!"

"The way of light!" The people shouted in unison. "The way of light! The way of light! The way of light!"

[The Way of Light, new age technocratic media movement or dangerous cult? More at station 117] A news caption read as a reporter filmed the scene behind her.

The crowd was in chaos. They were in a state of frenzy, lost in the Marque's dark words and revelations. Everyone was on their feet, waving banners and flags, shouting and banging drums in fervent unison.

The Marques continued with her speech. She did not hear the sirens of the traffic police, and continued with her speech. She saw a vision of the day of salvation. Soon security forces started to breakup riots and mass movements in the streets breaking out, officers having to call backup to breakup the commotion. "Thank you, thank you! Remember my children, the way of light is here! The Anima Doll will arrive." The Marques cheered back at her followers, bowing as the authorities arrived and slowly backing out from the chaos. She slipped away slowly, sirens in the distance.

She got home, and went to her room. The riot she'd instated still spread to every news channel on mute over her exotic 4-story apartment. She sat there with her cat at her side. The door closed softly. Her door was always silent. She sat there, wondering what visions her abilities would lead her to next, and what profit would come from them. The Marques lay down, exhausted after her day of excitement and exhilaration. "What a day," She smiled.

The Marques laid in her bed of feathers and velvet for the night, while her cat sat guard at her door, keeping watch of her. She laid her head on her pillow, dreaming.

In her dreams, a man cloaked in darkness lead a horrifying squad of angels over a great valley into the stadium of a city. But there flew down the idol of her visions, the Anima Doll and her legion of dolls, gimped elastic sirens of a fetishistic nature. "They are all gone! We have won! The world is ours!" The crowd cried out, dancing on stage and cheering, like a victorious army.

The Anima was dressed in gold, her skin gleaming like a polished metal surface. Her fingers were metal hands with gauntlets. "You are forgiven, my friends. Now we will build you a stair way to reach heaven." She proclaimed, in a deep, metallic voice. She reached out and grabbed the Marques and ripped her out of the dreams with her hands. She held her up, and began to sing in the dark.

The Marques awoke. She looked at her cat and smiled.

"That was all a dream, wasn't it?" She asked her cat. "But they say dreams are where your fondest memories are. Even those you haven't caught onto yet." The cat meowed, rubbing his paw on the floor.

 

She got up early, having a shuttle flight to catch in a few hours. As she roasted her morning cup of coffee, an interview with a journalist she'd done not too long ago played on a news channel.

"El-Lin, you used to be a judicial High-Arbiter in the city of Mica.  What changed you into a prophet of a false religion? How can you know what your visions mean?"

"How can I explain it?" El-Lin laughed, ignoring the shade. "It's simple. Every single person you see, they are a projection of a part of me, or what they represent. My soul is split into many people, and they have their own personalities, their own ideals, their own desires. I have a twin sister that wears a catsuit like me, another sister who sings with me. Yet another sister with blue hair. My father's face is on everyone you see today. You, my children, are my projection. Everyone who loves me, has their own self and wants. I see them in you. I can see them in my friends and family, all of the city that has a love for me, or fear. It doesn't matter what language we speak or what color our skin is, I see a different face, a different person in each one of you." The audience watched intently.

"And the way of light?" The anchored asked conspicuously.

"The way of light? It's all I do now. I can no longer keep up with their tricks or lies. They're the dark ones now. This city that was so good. It's gone. Everything is falling apart, and the people don't care." She said, stirring her coffee with a metal spoon. The spoon squeaked against the plate. She watched the interview on mute. "We used to have faith. We used to believe that the robots were the bad guys, and that the Anima's words of prophecy were true. But they've turned against us." The Marques said, watching and staring at the screen while her interview played. "This degenerate moral decay of society has led to a referendum on the machines q-" With a flip of the remote, she turned the screen off.

She looked down at her cat who had his head lying against the carpet and sighed. "Malicious media."

The next day, the government declared the Anima a heretical terrorist organization, and started a crackdown on believers of the "cult of the Anima." El-Lin herself was taken into custody and was sent to a prison in a remote part of the country. Protests broke out.  The people got angry and started to rally against the government, calling for the Marques's release. "Do the machines speak of the day of light? How will they save us?" The crowd roared in unison. Police tried to dispersed the crowds and break up the protest. "The Anima will show us the Light!" They proclaimed, throwing rocks and bottles at the police. Inside her apartment, the doors were sealed by the authorities. El-Lin's apartment had changed. All the windows were boarded up, the curtains shut, and the walls painted black. She sat in the cell, alone. The room was bare except for a small table, a bed, and a bedside cabinet.

El-Lin's time in prison was quite the experience. She spent her days reading, staring out the vine-covered windows and plotting how she would get out, or kill the guards that worked in the block throughout the surrounding prison terrace. Her cell was locked for three days. As she hid among the shadows in the corridors of the prison, she heard a group of officers approaching. The guards were talking to someone. She couldn't make out who, though she heard her name mentioned a few times. When the guards came back, they inserted their keys into her cell and unlocked her. "You're free to go. Seems you have some very significant admirers. Your release has been ordered by Elder Dragon Luya'Shi herself.

El-Lin was so shocked she could barely walk. She ran to the front of the prison and was transported in an old-timey cybernetic wagon floating above the ground by glowing tracks. "That's not a transport shuttle." She said suspicious. "Old fashioned lightrail tracks? That's so two centuries ago. Bet there's not a single surveillance drone onboard if anything bad happened."  

"I can take you to where you can be picked up" The Guard said, urging her to come along.

"I'm not getting in that." El-Lin tapped her foot. "Do you seriously expect me to believe an Elder Dragon has seen the Way of Light and been persuaded by our cause?"

He pointed his voltstick at her. "You can come, or you can head back to your cell. Your choice."

"Hmph." El-Lin scoffed and followed the officers, eventually being escorted into an entire levitating cart attached to three others. A waitress came and handed her a bottle of champagne. The vehicle soon sped up to fullspeed and slid around the continent at mach speeds. The wagon continued its rickety filled journey, past a large crowd gathered around a shrine. "I see your god has arrived. The doll right?" The waitress said sarcastically. El-Lin nodded.

"Oh don't be so sour. My daughter really loves your books. She thought about going to one of your rallies, but typical company policy says fanatical places like that if found out are an equal unemployment-office opportunity."

Lin chuckled, taking a sip of her champagne. El-Lin just stood there, starting to uncork her bottle and drink up,

"Thank you very much, but I am a teetotaler. I don't believe alcohol is the best

way to celebrate things." She began to chug the bottle.

"But you're dri-"

"Like my biography and life-column tooltips says, officially alcohol is the first

of the deadly poisons. So I never had a single drop, riiiight?"

The waitress laughed. "Right. Shame you refused it, but to each their own."

Lin watched as the landscape changed. They traveled into a forest, and started sliding into a dark tunnel going into a domed facility. The waitress stood up. "I'm going to go check on the pilot. Feel free to continue the party by yourself if you like." The doors opened and the guards started to leave. Lin laid back and closed her eyes abit, relaxing. The proverbial clock ticking seemed to serenade her with an eerie silence. Seemingly, the waitress didn't come back. "Hey, if we're refueling this is abit lofty for a pit stop." She yelled, pacing back and forth in the long seat aisles. El-Lin ran towards the front window to knock, but got no response. She grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and used the blunt bottom to ram the door, only to find the pilot seat was empty, she was alone. She felt incredibly tense. Carefully, she began to make her way out of the transport wagon. Her mind began to wander..

When I was small, I saw a ghost at the observatory my mothers took me to. That was the beginning of everything for me. The visions, the nightmares, the voices and prophecies. My moms both told me I had a twin sister. I don't know who that was. I never really thought about it. Another 'me' out there, a twin? I didn't really understand what they were saying at the time. Only that the memory of the ghost I'd seen had let me perceive things no one else could, and listen to her in turn, like whispering voices in my head from the future. By paying respect to that flickering ghost, I'd thought I'd finally made a life for myself.

She looked at the ground in front of her, her knees buckling. She slid to the floor and curled into a ball, trying to disappear into the creases of her own skin. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the voices. The voices that told her that the future and what she has seen will come to pass. But they said something that she didn't understand.

They told her that this is where her journey would end, and then she'd become part of the Doll, the great Anima in the Way of Light she cherished. Lin slid the door open and saw a small figure approaching in an underground hangar.

El-Lin watched in fear. Her body seemed to be locked into position, frozen in place. The girl was covered in blood, her teeth razor sharp. Her face and eyes were completely purple, crimson trails down her eyes as if she had been weeping blood. The strangest thing was her face and features, El-Lin couldn't mistake it, looked just like herself, a mirror of her when she was younger. Minus the grotesque additions.

The girl's voice was soft. "Hello? Are you there?"

Lin took a few deep breaths, getting over her fear.

"Hi." The younger version of herself said.

"Am I dreaming?" El-Lin asked, clearly confused.

"No. That's all real. I'm here lady."

"What's your name? Who are you?" El-Lin said, backing away. The girl

giggled.

"I'm a doll in the way of light. I am called the Anima." She chuckled.

"The, Anima of my visions? What? That's bullshit." El-Lin was quaking, "Why

do you look just like me?"

"This body is me, and I am you. You do not know how this works?"

El-Lin was silent. The little girl smiled, she stepped out of the shadows.

"I've been waiting for someone like you. You are our savior. Will you join us?"

"Us?" El-Lin asked.

"The way of light. Who are you to not even know our cause? Why don't you read your own biography? I think you'll find we are the best chance for you to have a good life. Your dreams will come true."

"I would like to live a normal life. I don't have the memories of what I've done with all that happened to me." El-Lin said. "Sometimes my head gets, just fuzzy okay?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "That's for you to figure out. What is a normal life? What's the point of living a 'normal' life if there's not a good reason to? When you live an ordinary life, you're like a machine, not truly alive. It's all a lie. If there is no reason to live, what's the point of living? When you live like that, your life is meaningless."

"Meaningless?" Lin felt like she was being lectured, but the cheeriness in the precocious girl's voice seemed to indicate she believed every word. A voice that was distinctly her own, even right down to the same inflections and dramatic highs and lows she put on when speaking to a zealous crowd.

"People live like they are zombies because there's no meaning to life anymore. They're slaves to their own bodies. It's like a nightmare. You're a little different. You're like a firefly. You flicker when the dawn is brightest."

The girl reached for El-Lin's hand. "The reason why we are here, is to make the future brighter. There are some old gods that are trapped in the shadows. We need people like you to find them and stop them." El-Lin thought. "Is this another reality of what I've seen?"

The Anima shook her head. "You really don't know anything. "I knew the truth of your book, all those lies you wrote. You don't know why you have those visions do you?"

El-Lin shook her head. "I just write, so I get paid.  I don't question anything! Ugh I don't believe any of this mystical bullshit for real, just, get away from me!" Lin tried to run past her, pushing the girl back in the process and running out the exit from the stair hatch. The girl slowly got up, blackest eyes peering ahead with the dread of the deepest reaches of the dark. Her voice began croaking, and she hissed. Slowly, six wings began to flower out of her backside.

The girl began to laugh in a distorted warble, El-Lin continued to hold back tears. "You were real? You really existed? I could talk to you? That's a fucking coincidence!" She was shaking.

"Of course I was real. Your Anima." Her face began to extend, mouth becoming a mandible with razor teeth, mutating forward. Her skin turned metallic with carapace pieces in some areas and as tight as latex, with blue and green patches in others. Her dark black hair began to turn pure white and grow long. "I always was. You were the one who was fake, Lin." Her joins began to crack, splitting and dividing until she had four arms, tips of her fingers gaining razor-sharp claws.

"A Tectonid?! H-how?"

The girl's rubbery marine-toned patches and pure-black plates spread into a full exoskeleton, pure glowing red orbs pulsing as they grew into her joints, hunched backside and extending forelegs, steam coming out of said orbs.

She opened her jaw wide, and her voice croaked and squealed, "Now we can really talk. I feel a connection you wouldn't begin to know." She leapt forward and attacked El-Lin. Lin rolled to the ground, frightened beyond measure. She crawled over to grab a firing extinguisher she'd let roll out earlier.

The girl stood up, grinning and licking her lips. "You really don't know anything about yourself." She said. "Don't worry. I'll take good care of you. You'll have a new name."

She began to wail like a banshee. Lin trembled in place, holding the

extinguisher. "S-stay back!"

"You'll be reborn into a new life, El-Lin. We'll keep remaking you as many

times as we need until we get it right."

"SHUTUP!"

Lin pulled the pin on the extinguisher and let the gas burst out. The freezing droplets and spray rapidly engulfed the girl, even in her bestial form. She coughed continually, shivering with a hiss. Slowly her joints began to creak and grow stiff, ice coating her body while her veins turned solid. By the time the extinguisher's mist dissipated, she stood frigid and frozen.

 Lin couldn't believe it. She closed her eyes tightly, her mind still spinning with the events she just saw and the ones that would come.  The fear of knowing what she had done, that she was responsible for the death of the girl. She could barely remember the face. It was just a shadow of a memory, the girl smiling a twisted smile and the sound of her laughter as she laughed like a demon. She was still so scared she could barely speak. She slowly got up, clutching the extinguisher, before throwing it aside.

She ran down the hangar stairs and out to the lobby of the building. The street had frozen, ice coated cars sat frozen on top of the snow. The cold air smelled of death and sorrow and regret, it stung her nostrils. She ran in a panic to the nearby gas station. but no one was inside.

"Where is everyone?" She walked for a while on empty streets, looking towards the woods. There was a large suspicious mound she could make out, and began to head towards it. Half an hour later she crawled through the last bushes and thickets, laying sight on the existential horror of a massive burial, emaciated hands and twiggy bodies barely seen rotting out the mound. A thin layer of snow had covered it, but the corpses could still be seen buried halfway beneath. She walked closer until she found an arm and watch she recognized.

The waitress who'd served her earlier.

"That's.. everyone?" The girl stood frozen, her mouth agape, her body slumped

forward on her knees.

"What the hell happened to the town?" Lin said.

El-Lin felt the pain in her stomach wrench as she turned her head to look over her shoulder. She stood in the snow, arms at her sides, looking out at the town she'd seen in her visions. Her face was frozen with shock. Her lips slightly parted as she took a breath, and the breath turned into a scream that would haunt her dreams for years.

"This is the end." El-Lin said with tears running down her face.

"Yes. For you sadly." A voice said. She turned around, a creepy white masked figure approached her, animal ears stretching the top of the mask. The figure held a small firearm that looked like a rifle with a long tube-like barrel.

The girl stood up. "How did you find me?"

"The same way I found everyone, my dear." The Courtier bowed in respect.

"El-Lin you said the name would protect you. You don't even remember your own real name. You don't even know who you are." He scoffed. "To think even a bastard Elder Dragon would buy into your bullshit. If they got a closer look at you, while that would be problematic for you and your sistren. Draws too much attention. Would bring observant brats eyes right upon us, we don't want another repeat of Elsie snooping around, trying to get us shut down."

Lin took off running, but the creature grabbed her wrist with one hand and used his gun to inject a dart into her wrist. She let out a scream as she collapsed to the ground. He began dragging her slowly until he could flip her upwards and get a good look. She tried to crawl in the opposite direction, but the creature grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her back. "You're not going anywhere."

The injection had left her incredibly numb. She couldn't feel anything. Her eyes and mouth moved constantly as if she was still trying to speak.  "We spent so much time and effort making you. If it weren't for that wretched clog, you wouldn't have gotten away from us for so long." He held Elsie's military tag and dangled it in front of her, El-Lin's vision blurring as to see it as a spinning pendulum. 

"W-w-w-who was that girl?"

He sighed. "Your replacement.." He looked at the giant mound. "Well, she was supposed to be.. I think you did me a favor actually. She was abit more experimental than most. Nite Rose and you aren't compatible, I suppose. Mutations too unstable. Disastrous sample, honestly." He looked down on her and smiled. "We won't try that little cross contamination again, don't worry."

Lin could feel her breath slowing down. "B-b-but.. she died.." El-Lin couldn't

understand.

"That's right, but you'll keep on living."

Everything went black.

Elsie's vision began to shake and her eyes rolled back, her body went limp. Lin woke up in a glass tube, she felt like she'd just had a stroke. Her muscles locked up as her body went into spasm. It took her a moment to realize where she was, but she was in a lab. She opened her eyes, and the room was dark, yet lit with a few ambient green and pale lights illuminating other tubes and heavy machinery.

Lin could hear the wind whistling. As she opened her eyes, she was in a forest once again, a large tree in front of her. Its branches hung down like a roof. It had the most surreal feeling. One second she was in the snowy woods, then the next she was in the lab, and at times she felt as if she was in both at once. Her body would blur and glow, twitching in space-time. She was bleeding and freezing out on the floor in one moment, and was stuck in a laboratory tube along the same axis of consciousness. With a great deal of focus, she 'brought' her perceptions back to the tube and the great wilderness was pushed out of view.

The Courtier was typing away, her data falling away on a large screen.

"You did all of this? Why?" El-Lin could hear gas and a cold liquid filling the

tube.

"I wanted to see your face again." The masked creature chuckled. "I wanted to see what you're going to become. I've been waiting for this day for years, watching the results of all the experiments and hoping something would turn out right. Your Anima, even the one meant to replace you was interesting. But.. it seems we've got quite a while to go before we get it right.."

Her right hand moved to her mouth, the only part of her body that felt completely alive. The skin there was a pale white, while the rest of her felt numb and dead. She began to panic, but soon her body shook with anger. The freezing liquid flooded her chamber and filled to her waist, than her chest, slowly up her shoulders and higher still. She screamed at the top of her lungs, giving into despair.