By Luca Nobleman
A deposit of azure Caerulum glimmers deep within the inky cold strata. The miners’ pickaxes splinter the stone in rhythm to their anthem. Drills thrum, gears grind, grunts echo, and oil drips—the never-ending song of the crystal mines.
But I don’t sing. Haven’t for seventeen years. Not since the machines made me their Seer. Because the machines can’t detect Caerulum, and because I visualize its blue crystalline structure deep within the rock, I’ve sentenced these miners to a life of excavating. My gift is their curse, and they exact vengeance daily.
Two human-shaped machines march behind the miners. Their glowing eyes and fiery palms remind us of our ephemeral existence. Ceelo—or CLO-998—notices me. “Get back to work, Seer.” He crosses the cavern and shoves my face into the stone wall, as if it’ll help me peer deeper into it.
“I have a name,” I whisper.
A nearby miner gasps at my rebellious utterance.
Ceelo scans my neck barcode.
“Female. Twenty-three years old. Name: Onyx Seven.” Humor tugs at his digital voice. “Of course you are. The Alpha favors you Sevens, doesn’t he—makes you all Seers?”
I scoff. Is that what you think? That your mechanical god made my sisters and me?
“How do you see it?” His fingers crawl up the side of my face and tap on my skull.
I’m just as curious about how their minds operate. My sister Mera says the Caerulum makes the machines sentient. Is that why I visualize it pulsing inside them? Except it’s scarlet. Is it corrupted?
As Ceelo releases his grip, I glimpse something nestled in the floor of the opposite wall.
How did I not notice it before?
A small, radiant, lazuline crystal, the length of a human hand, juts from the rock.
Caerulum!
It’s enough to meet the quota, just sitting out in the open. We can stop working for the day.
But before the words escape my lips, a digital voice booms from down the corridor. “CLO-998! You and your miners are needed in Sector G8.”
He turns toward the voice. “But my Seer perceives a deposit here. We need to continue digging.”
Annoyance permeates its response. “If your pickaxes are scraping and extracting actual Caerulum, continue. Otherwise, pack up your crew and make your way to G8.”
The miners are still hours from reaching the deposit deep within the stone. But with the new lattice I just discovered, we will meet our daily quota. We could stop digging. We could finally rest. I call out to Ceelo to inform him.
He backhands me, and I tumble to the ground. Sparks bloom in my vision like the chromatic luster of hematite. He turns to the crew. “You heard the foreman.”
But I can stop the digging… for once.
With panic seizing control of me, I scramble to the exposed Caerulum lattice on the ground. It releases easily, and I touch the crystal for the first time. I have only ever seen it. Warmth flows through me, invigorating my entire being. The pain in my cheek evaporates.
Where before I sought to surrender the crystal to the machines for an afternoon of relief, a different urge surges within me—one that teeters on insurgency, or… insanity.
They can’t have it. This lattice belongs to me.
As I examine the crystal, a mechanical gauntlet shoves me.
“Where did you find that?” Ceelo roars.
My heart jumps in my chest like an impact drill skipping granite.
He reaches for it, and I pull away.
No. It is destined for me.
“What are you doing?” He yanks my hair. “Release it.”
I stifle a scream.
With heat searing his palms, he clutches the crystalline ore in my hand. Memories unfold in my mind’s eye. Not mine, but Ceelo’s. Blue crystal brings his inanimate frame to life. His god, the Alpha, speaks, and the crystal reddens.
I cling more tightly.
“You think yourself strong, thief?”
His grip is too tight. My hand bones snap. Tears rush down my cheeks, not just from the pain, but from the loss of the crystal.
It’s mine. Somehow, it’s always been part of me. I can sense its energy resisting Ceelo’s corruption—flashing between red and blue.
Either from Ceelo’s adulteration or the pressure of his grasp, the crystal cracks. My breath stalls. He squeezes harder. Then it explodes in a brilliant eruption of blue light. Caerulum shards sear into my arm.
I scream as my forearm burns like hot oil leaking from a drill. But the pain fades. And then… the areas of serrated flesh begin stitching back together.
What the—
Ceelo grabs me by the throat and roars again. “Look what you did!”
I flail and kick wildly.
He lifts his palm to my abdomen and releases an onslaught of energy. The fumes of searing flesh lick my nose as heat blasts out my back. I choke on words of condemnation.
The blazing pain becomes a dark void, swallowing me whole.
***
An alien screech spurs wakefulness. My eyes flash open, and I’m lying face down. I’m alive.
I blink hard. Was I dreaming?
Flooded by foreign light, I turn my head, and my blurred vision settles on a dark, bobbing figure. My eyes regain focus, and a black creature with wings and a hard snout screeches at me.
A pungent odor strikes my nose, and I retch. I raise myself and find I’m among piles of bones and decayed bodies.
While gathering my wits, I rub my abdomen—a blackened hole through my shirt exposes bare, healed skin.
It was real! But how am I alive?
As I lift my hand, I notice sparkling blue crystals peppering my wrist. My veins pulse with a cerulean glow. Did the Caerulum heal me?
I glance at the corpses surrounding me. They must have thought I was dead and discarded my body.
I gaze upward and realize there is no cave above me—only an expanse of blue.
An azure sky.
I’m finally free.
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Caves. Mining. I see what’s going on here. Onyx Seven (obvious gamertag) describes suddenly coming awake fully healed under blue skies – that’s exactly what you’d experience if you were to die and then respawn in MINECRAFT. Hope you had “keep inventory” on, Onyx Seven, otherwise Ceelo just grabbed all your stuff.