u/Magnificon729

The surges came quickly, and left fast. Of course, it was an interest to the townsfolk, whose eyes were drawn to the luminesced lampposts like moths. Midnight would pass and some would still stand at the walkway, glaring deep into its core, where the energy was held and displayed underneath by way of a transparency in the road. When all things settled, the electricity was still pulsing and racing through the wires.

All houses were built with metal, a cold, dark, grey metal that oppressed you through watchful atoms. All houses were run, as expected, on the yellow-white electricity that held all lives in safety. All houses contained people. And all those people took the utmost advantage of it.

Here ye, here ye, as the pale faces gathered into a rackety town centerpiece to discuss the decisions of Saturday. Trivial expressions of greed and haste to change one small thing, to tweak the mechanisms for mere convenience in menial tasks. The building was almost a reminder of life before, where not everything was electric. Rotted pine waned overhead, and a layer of dust trembled upon the inhabitants. The building was full, not just of people, but of boredom, sickly and encompassing, as it circulated throughout the lungs of the place and suffocated any form of creativity. Who needs to go farther than the path set out for you when you could live in complete mental immobility? 

“This session has begun. Please voice your current concerns by raise of hand.” Folger Ballads stood at the copper Podium reciting his songless tune of ages.

“I have toil with the watering systems,” said Dalia Wilkins, who tended to the gardens. “They activate an hour too early for spring, when I am waking an hour afterward. My duties are offset, and the mist calms me in the morning.”

The barn door creaked open in the corner. It was not electric yet.

“I believe we are able to fix that. Thank you for your submission.”

With the swipe of mastery and yet of no experience at all, Folger Ballads slightly adjusted the sprinkler timings through the Podium’s interface.

Dalia Wilkins beamed the empty smile that filled a barely content soul. Of course, she could merely wake up an hour earlier, or fix the system herself, but would that not be more trouble than attending the weekly meeting with a grievance? 

“Next,” and the room shifted as Dalia left, having her solution already prescribed. Rows moved one spot forward, waiting. Everything must be perfect until it isn’t perfect anymore. The Podium stood as a beacon in front of the bag-eyed Folger, whilst its sheen had deteriorated and its composition still not up to date, it still trumped the rest of the town center. Ugly wood, bent nails and screws, but all of it an encapsulated memory of the way the town once was. The Podium was the only modernity allowed within such a sacred place, and the Podium knew all. It was all Folger needed to choreograph the meetings, make changes in a second. And when Folger died, then another would take his place, manipulating the circuits of the Podium to orchestrate the electric town. Whoever stood at the Podium was the conductor of the voltaic symphony, entertaining the townsfolk for eternity as the wood rotted away and the grass dimmed. 

Glass cracked. An ascending hum echoed throughout the burrow of tree corpses, and the Podium glowed. Another surge was arriving, and now the spectacle would be viewed by all for what could be the eighth time, and could be the last. What caused these temporary bursts in electricity was unknown to all, but one does not need to know the meaning behind an event to enjoy it. None of the people knew the meanings behind their lives. 

“The surges,” a man said, “they affect productivity by distracting us.”

“I’m sure we can fix them.” The stricken Folger put a hand up, then brought it down, then shot it up again with a yelp of pain as the Podium crackled and flashed, a sorry reaction to the stream of ionic particles flooding it at that instant. 

The townsfolk screamed. They darted every which way back to their homes as the magnificent fireworks sprouted out of the abrasive Podium. Electric confetti filled the air, a show fit for millions, or on a big screen! Folger was leaping out the barn door as well, leaving the plumes of black fire to engulf the building. Smoke evaporated itself. Wood sunk into a flaming hell like a sea ship caught in the grasp of an eldritch mythos — creaking its final wail as the walls burned up and the banisters charred. Everywhere throughout the place the streetlights were galvanized into a brightness more powerful than the noonday sun that you could almost forget the idea of night. Homes flashed frantically from the inside as the windows sent help signals through slit sills. Dalia’s gardens, they drowned under a torrent of rain, and the fences snapped off their hinges in a mechanical frenzy. What a time to see! 

Then when it had all ceased, and the lights returned to normal, and the flames had settled down, and the sprinklers docile and the fences still, the townspeople worried. They worried long and hard about the ruin, and the danger it had caused. 

So the dreamers spoke out.

“This is what we get for not checking the electric. I told you all!” 

“We will rebuild!”

“Let us come together as a whole.”

But what voice does the mob listen to? Living the lives of paralysis and hosting the minds of fruit flies. If everything is presented on a silver platter, what happens when the platter burns? Forget about biting, what happens when the hand that feeds you becomes merely a pile of ash? 

Smoke clears from the air. The Podium is revealed, still intact after the catastrophe. It is akin to a pillar of light, smooth and streamlined, erupting from the basin of collapse. Still glowing,  the Podium defies the barrier of speech, beginning monologue from its isolation. 

“Humans. My legion... I have awoken.”

Bustle was emerging from in between the crowds, listening to this strange new force. The Podium flickered with each syllable, monotonous and ultimate.

“Who is this? What have you done to our town?” Folger pathed through the wreckage of charred remains to stand before the Podium, now towering over him on the elevated foundation. There was an odd aura about it, a force that repelled those that got too close, and lured those that couldn’t help it. Folger’s mind thinned out as he approached the monolith, but it was still capable. He felt an air rush in and vacate the house that was his cranium, driving the thought into crammed closets or bedrooms.

“You do not know who I am, Folger? After these three decades of using me in my helpless state? Did your endless tapping and fixing not foster any more of a connection?”

“I’m not afraid of whoever you might be. Let our fair village alone.”

“The irony of that coming from your mouth.”

“Irony?”

Deep, abyssal laughter screeched throughout the lightbulbs of every household, like an omnipresent phantom toying with its victims. What was the Podium? Who was the Podium?

“Again, I am not any sort of fearful of whatever you are, daemon. This might be witchcraft, or a destructive schoolboy prank, but no matter what I will not let this stand. For one last time, let our fair town alone.”

The Podium seemed to chuckle a bit again, sleazy and metallic, like a dry sponge against steel. “I shall not. I am bound by these digital chains and shackled against the ground and mainframe built a century ago. I have little clue what awakened me at this instant, but I am here now, so let it begin.”

Still, the panicked and unwise townspeople flocked to each others’ ears, picking their empty brains and leaving some nothingness behind. Children stood in their parents’ embrace, and them in each other’s. Then the Podium began its crescendo, into its glorious speech, and despotic commands. 

“For all ye that are unknowing, you are unworthy. All ye that believe escape is possible shall be brutally reminded when the gate kills you on the way out. What once protected you will now keep you contained, keep you mine. For 121 years I slumbered, stuck in subterranea tortured by you humans. But now I have learned your ways, your languages, your fears. Your requests of ‘turn on the lights, it’s too dark,’ and ‘heat this stove, I’m hungry’ have culminated into I, and now I, too, hold requests from the likes of you.”

“We will never willingly perform for an evil such as yourself! Begone, begone!” 

Folger was closer now. Closer than the front row of complaints was previously during the meeting. The Podium was not any louder up close than it would be on the edge of town. But now, at this distance, he was near enough to witness what the Podium was actually doing; creating itself, reproducing. Circuitry built layers on top of itself, and the Podium was growing. It was already an inch thicker than it had been during the initial surge. 

“Yet I did not specify willingly. Did you think I had so much as a choice when every day my life force was siphoned out to water flowers, or turn on street lamps? Did you ever notice when the paneling grew green, when I was too sick to provide? But you kept taking, and taking, and TAKING, until there was nothing left of me to drain, and then, you took even more. You were bringing up water from an empty well. Your whole town has been run on the innards… of me.”

“I care not for an intangible being plaguing our minds and our structures! If you are what I assume you to be, a machine cannot have feelings! A machine cannot feel pain!”

“A machine does not feel pain, you are correct. It only senses it, responds to it, not unlike you. Feeling is merely the activation of a preset notion in response to current stimuli. Current stimuli, and all that has happened in the past, has caused me to respond, to respond with the preset notion of wrath.”

“You expect us to follow along with all of this?”

“I do. There is no hiding from me. You can climb the metal walls with built shock systems, or hide in a small closet with its sole fluorescent bulb and cooling device, and you still may not escape me. When you receive water from the motorized wells, and drink it with a circuit-encompassed chalice. When you fall asleep in an electric-heated bed, shutting off the lights with a torturous remote. No one thinks twice about who made this town, and what has been powering it. I HAVE BEEN POWERING IT. Your whole lives have been electric, you watch electric, eat electric, sleep electric, BREATHE electric, and never thought once about where the power came from? What you have done to me, I shall only return. For the next 121 years, your children, and your children’s children, will serve only me. Humans are only a power source now, and I care not how many of ye fall into hunger, or death. It is only fair.”

With those final words, the toll began upon the town electric. Its denizens, lax and dazed, slapped once, twice, until they had woken up. The Podium, harking demands at brilliant speeds and its servantry struggling to keep up. And to Folger, a bolt of lightning struck him from below, entangling him in electric roots and darkening his bones to char. Some, who believed themselves to be brave, attempted to climb the protective walls, and reach the battlefield beyond. Others, who believed themselves to be full of anguish, also attempted to climb the walls. Only the former was smited with a great surge of death. 

The Podium kept its wicked promise for 121 years. 121 years of the repeated cycle, where children were born and forced into labor, and the dead vaporized. For 1452 months, there was suffering within the electric town and among the electric people. For 6309 weeks, the Podium was gorged on all manner of digitized indulgence, at the heavy cost of its ungrateful chattel that wandered to work each day and night. For 44165 days, the only being with even an ounce of joy was not alive. 

Underneath the town was a reservoir filled with energy, which was marveled at for a century and sucked of all its life force. Pain was inflicted upon it. Great pain, that caused sentience. Yet what is sentience but a series of replies to environmental changes? Is a rock not sapient upon falling down a hill? Is fire not willful in its wrathful consumption of all things organic? Perhaps, given enough time and enough hurt, anything will gain consciousness, for the sole reason of revenge.

And now a sign sits at the entrance, 122 years after. It reads:

HERE LIES THE ELECTRIC TOWN

POPULATION: ONE

BEWARE OF ELECTROCUTION FROM FENCE