Small Fables: Moral Stories
Fables and little parables are the lifeblood of every aspiring dreamer- in society they serve as the perfect tools to teach us what to do, how to act, and what's good and what's not. Of course, if we take them at their face values these stories are short, sweet, reflective, and driven by contemplation. Here's a nice parable- it's newer than what you might remember in your bedtime story repertoire but perhaps it comes from a similar place.
On a knoll in the middle of Nowhere in the world of Nothingness, there sits a pile of odds and ends. They’re imaginable to human eyes; metal and run-down. Corroded by the harshness of a Nowhere. It’s Somewhere but it’s Nowhere all at the same time. The robot has a mind of its own, and of course it remembers the days back when it was made. It was covered in a cloud, made simply out of wisps of cloud-fibre, swirling in the wind and accumulating on one piece. It glowed all different colors, until the sun gave it its own color. Green was taken by the grassy knoll on which it was living; rich blue by the sky, yellow-orange by the sun, and black by the matter outside Nowhere, which was of no matter or importance to Nowhere’ers.
Metallic grey was all that was left, after the elimination round culminated. So it was to be that the robot would be metallic grey. After the Cloud Creator oversaw the final draft, it looked good enough to dwell in Nowhere. So the Creator Created a small red heart. It was taken from fragments of the reddest, deepest, prettiest red love in the planets and galaxies ahead and behind, and bound together in the size of the robot’s fist. Shiny, dull and dreary, the robot was brought to life with pops of light and suddenly, two vivid, creamy, true eyes appeared at the top of the robot’s main screen. The Cloud Creator chuckled at the sight of the little robot, whirring gently and whizzing about the clouds. “Now, my little robot, it is time for me to go. Here- I have made a nice home for you.” That’s when the Cloud Creator created the knoll and the Dome on the Knoll. Forever there it would last.
The robot sat in the midst of Nowhere at first, wondering what it was here for. But it was here, and that was enough for the robot. It whirred around on the grassy knoll. It whizzed through the grass and into the Dome on the Knoll. But soon enough, it realized that the Cloud Creator had really left. He had left the poor robot to a condemned life on the Dome on the Knoll.
Chained to its dreary life, unable to rocket to new worlds, the poor robot sat for days on end, hoping that the sitting would bring back the Creator to take it away. Not once did it explore the world it was in. The Dome on the Knoll lay empty and barren, a metal can in a scoop of ice cream. The robot gave up soon and picked a Sitting Spot and did its duty to its Spot and Sat for days, which became weeks, turning straight to years on end. Sad and alone, the robot started to cry, to rust itself. And with every tear it shed from its cold eye-lights a new color was drained from the sky, as the Cloud Creator, who was watching from above, wept with its creation. And thus the sun was gone, replaced instead by a confused haze of clouds that served to bring the Creator’s tears down to its once beloved little world.
The robot spent its whole time Sitting and Rusting and didn’t once bother to check in the dome, as the Creator had left a present for it- an Easel. And Paints.
The robot had spent years crying. It had no heart, nothing with which to love with, or feel with. When it was sad, it rusted. When it was sad, water dripped from its eyes. But the robot never felt, nor did it ever hope to feel accepted as much as it wanted to accept itself. It was not accepted by the world, nor was it by itself.
It doused itself in turmoil, a horrible wrath of self-anger, as if in a bath of oil. It submerged, couldn’t breathe. Then it would reenter the light, but the grease of anger still dripped down, hung on its heart. It could close its eyes, clouded with the mist of despair, abandonment. It would feel nothing, but something. It was feeling the pull of something on its heartstrings.
This moment on the knoll, this moment under the brown, downcast clouds weeping upon it, this moment when the barriers broke and the clouds cried and the dam above spilled with a loud crack, the robot stood.
Since it had sat on the Spot, the world it lived in felt no sound, heard not even a minute squeak or creak. The sound of pattering water from the sky, mini bombs cascading from the depression around the robot, this sound amplified, sounded like the crash of a thousand bombs piercing its eardrums. The sorry little world in which this robot lived started raining. And the sorry little robot in which the world lived started speaking.
“I was not meant for joy. I was not meant for joy. I want joy. I want something now, and something that this world can’t give me. I haven’t lived with anything. If I had a creator, this creator must have hated, hated me so that he abandoned me in this world of nothing. It is not with heart that he created me, rather the absence of that very heart that keeps me here. Had its intentions been for the purity of my soul and the joy in what he saw of life, I would yet have more to speak of, more to dream of. Yet my space of mind has been filled with lamentations and sorrow, perhaps more than that he must have felt when creating me. I am merely a lone spark of life in a dead world. I exist on no happy realm; both the internal of the creator and the world that I stay in now are dead, shriveled, lifeless. I know now that sitting on the Spot was meant to show me that I am not a manifestation of life, rather that I bring death. I know now that though I bring death, I have the power to take it away. The creator who made me so many years ago has died on my birth, so I shall terminate death to revive him. But one day in my soul, I will be brought to justice, perhaps on some faraway world where life is imminent and the world is new with every breath- where life is omniscient of death and present where I stand. ”
Lonely but for the rain around it, the robot rose from its Spot and advanced to the top of the knoll, where the clouds were most reachable. The skies parted, but rain still poured down over the Dead World. Clear skies still brought rain. It was as if the rain had washed off the clouds, leaving a canvas of sky as the downpour became little more than a kiss of mist.
In dead night, the robot felt the wind on its radar and opened its lenses. The breeze had left something for the robot on the knoll. It was a paint set.
Next morning, there was no haze or smell of death surrounding the robot. There was no robot. The robot had decayed, become a pile of rust, dusty on the tip-top of the knoll. There were no paints in the palette, they had all run out. There was no more world, for the sky had changed. The robot spent the night painting, whirring softly, making small strokes on the clear glass sky. There was a sweet blue in the sky-painting, something soft, and something bright, radiating gold on the ground down below, where there was something aerated and puffy lacing the floor. Brown soil was raked on the world to cover the death of yesteryear. There was nothing left of the old world but for a knoll and a pile of metallic dust, remnants of the lively robot who called itself death, but left life in its last breath.
The sky was painted sunny, the clouds were wispy and bounced off golden wash, making the glistening soil shimmer. A warm breeze breathed through the new beginning, and sent the powder upon the sky, sticking to the fresh paint, glistening and flowing on the golden waves of light. The world was radiant.
Up above was the soul of an abandoned who waited for a creator to come and take it. Now, it was the creator of the loved down below, the ones who would love one another, and themselves. Seven tiny sproutlings that had popped up from the soil. A glistening, dewdropped family that would never feel abandonment. At night, when the sun had left, the robot made sure the stars would glisten and shine on the planet.
