text: Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. Live Wire The noise was unbearable. The sounds of massive cogs clanking as they moved together as one was deafening but you could still hear the engine struggling, straining, and screaming as it used all it’s might to get this machine to move. The heat was exhausting, the engine was producing copious amounts of steam, which was a good sign but for ten people stood in essentially a metal chamber it made the heat almost intolerable. That metal chamber was the command room and inside the whole team of researchers were stood waiting, watching and some were praying. “Oh god please let this work” shouted one of the research assistants. I barely heard her shout it and I was standing right next to her. I looked at her and noticed that the heat had started to make her makeup run. I looked around and realized that the heat was affecting us all. Everyone was sweating profusely and people’s glasses had started to steam up. Someone else shouted something, I thought it may have been some other research assistant saying the same but I have no idea. Everyone in the command room was anxious but excited, they needed their machine to move. They had been told they only had one more chance before the entire project was scrapped. Everyone knew that scrapping the project would be a mistake but they also knew that the funding required was slowly draining away all of the available resources. A lot of us had come from nothing to become a part of something bigger than all of us, something we could say we made and that we were proud of. The sacrifices that had been made for us to get this far was too much for the project to get scrapped but that didn’t matter to the people above us. They only cared about results and how much it cost them. They weren’t the ones that watched their colleagues, their friends get dragged away because they were being a so called “detriment” to the project. I lost some good friends along the way, but when this works it’ll all be worth it. At least, that’s what I tell myself to get through it. If I stop to think about it, I’ll become a “detriment” and I haven’t worked here all my life just to get thrown out in our moment of greatness. This is everything I’ve worked for, everything we’ve worked for. I’m not about to let some armed thug ruin that for me. I had worked on the circuitry of the behemoth; I was responsible for making sure that when it turned on it could do anything it wanted or needed to. At that moment everything changed. We heard a noise that we hadn’t heard before. The first creak. The first sign of life. We did it, we had done it, we had created a behemoth of an Automaton and it was showing signs of life. We watched on in glee and watched as it used its massive hulking arms to hold itself steady while it took its first step with its colossal foot. It looked around almost as if it was trying to figure out where it was. And then it saw us. We were all still in awe that we had done it but as we watched on, it started to crouch down. The colossal body creaked as it moved closer to the ground and closer to us. The ground beneath us shook as its knee hit the ground. It was there now, just staring at us. It had no mouth so it couldn’t speak to us, but the light we had used for its eyes just burned a bright blue and it was mesmerizing. Everyone was just staring at it, it was amazing, it was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. It was my life’s work, our life’s work. And like that it was taken away from us. The door was kicked in so hard it nearly came off its hinges. Armed with rifles 5 guards aimed at us all but we just continued to stare straight into the light. Then the head of R&D walked in. He started to talk but I didn’t pay attention to him. I was to busy staring at the colossal automaton’s eyes. I probably should have listened to him because he said “ This is now my project now, all of your work belongs to me. Open fire, I want none of them left alive but save the research make sure its all transported to my office.” And that was the end of my life, as I lay there on the floor, staring up at the massive blue light looking in at the murder and chaos that had just ensued. I was bleeding out, my vision was growing darker and darker, until it finally went black.