BEN

Ben was a machine not made to be beautiful.

Ben was created in order to wander. From a very long distance Ben might have been confused for a man, casting a tall, almost masculine shadow. Ben had been cobbled together from bits of junk and broken unwanted machinery that had long since served its purpose.

Ben was an imposing figure up close, standing at over seven foot tall and a naked brutality, if you can describe man made of metal and rust as ever being naked, loose wires dangling unsupported throughout.

Ben’s legs made up the vast majority of his size. His chest was square with sharp edges, a rusted old safe with a short stubby knob protruding from where you might expect his heart would have been, should he have had one. Ben had quite short but bulky arms which offered him great power, if little reach.

Even though Ben didn’t have much of a neck, he could pivot his head in all directions. Ben had a large round face which had been cobbled into life from various old traffic paraphernalia. An amber light remained mostly intact, illuminating the world around him. It would often flicker when Ben was under great stress.

Ben was not made to be a predatory or violent being, Ben was made to be curious.

Ben knew very little about the world, or himself. He didn’t know how old he was, he didn’t know who had manufactured him. Ben didn’t much understand the world… and the world didn’t much understand him.

Ben did know one thing. Ben knew he had a primary directive, a mission. To find a meaning of life. This was not Ben’s own ambition, lest we forget that Ben was a machine, a creation. Ben had been programmed for this very task, and, over the course of many… many years, Ben had grown tired and resentful of this impossible objective.

Ben had been a lonely wanderer for two long decades, forever travelling through ruin and decay. This was a land which had seen the destruction of climate and the cruel indiscriminate annihilation of all peoples. What might have once been a green and luscious paradise had collapsed singularly into a barren, inhospitable wasteland.

Ben had been made to find a meaning for life at a time when there was little life to find meaning for.

Ben only ever watched from afar. Seeing the savagery of man played out daily, as each living thing made a desperate bid for survival.

For a period, Ben had considered that life’s only meaning was to survive. It did not matter the cost or circumstance of that life, only that that life was able to continue. To continue in pursuit of another day. Ben had tried to see a purpose in the horror and the chaos that had come to be the norm in this ravaged place. To see life’s meaning as nothing more than to exist was an answer that did not satisfy Ben. Something deep in his programming always found a way to reject the notion in the end.

Ben often wondered why he had been made to be so curious. Ben had been designed in the pursuit of finding answers to great mysteries, but as the years passed, Ben had only managed to find yet more questions. In two decades, Ben had amassed vast amounts of knowledge on human behaviour, the psychology of man and the merits of various philosophical ideologies. But in the moments when Ben, quite literally, came to recharge his batteries, he would find himself repeating the same three questions.

“How is it that I can know the world, but not its purpose?”

“If I discover life’s meaning, what do I do with this knowledge?”

“If I discover life's meaning, what do I do with myself?”

It is not that these thoughts would keep Ben awake, for he did not sleep, but that they permeated further, deeper into the consciousness that was this machine, Ben.

On one fateful evening,

Ben sought to repair some damage to his right arm with bits of scraps he had collected. Ben sat in the pitch black atop a dusty grey hillside with few trees to obstruct his view of the stars. The only other light was provided by the ever-dimming amber glow which emanated from atop of Ben himself. Between this light and the glow of the stars, Ben got to work repairing the function in his arm, tearing bits of shrapnel from his appendage. The result of a quite harrow-some fall a few days prior. Ben paused in his work to look at the stars, recalling how he had seen a similar night’s sky some twenty odd years ago.

Ben reflected on all that had happened in that time. Ben had travelled far and seen much and yet, he thought to himself, despite all that time and all that effort, he was sat amongst the stars again over twenty years later, still searching for his answers, except now with a broken arm, a diminished power unit and a head full of yet more questions. 

Ben’s attention was fixed firmly on the stars when he heard a subtle crunch. The sound of footstep on dry grass.

A short sharp sound, followed by two more, then three. The rustle had changed from staccato to a constant crackle. The noise began to encircle Ben, who twisted his head around violently to find the source.

Then…the sounds stopped. There was silence again. The sort of silence which follows the intake of a deep breath and precedes a scream.

Ben was stood, his broken arm lying on the ground, wary and anxious.

In the space of a nanosecond, a whistling sound was followed by a thud as an arrow bounced of Ben’s steely torso. Forceful enough to knock Ben off his stance.

A sound whistled again.

This time the arrow crashed into Ben’s brilliant amber light, lodging itself deep into the circuit board. Ben staggered backwards when out of the darkness he was hit flush with a large club.

Ben lay in a heap on the ground. There were now four battered, savage men stood over Ben - not so much speaking as grunting.

One of the men pointed to Bens broken arm and the tools which lay there beside. The men looked at each other, grunting and nodding. One of the men, possessing a long scar reaching across his forehead, attempted to pick Ben up, only to discover that Ben weighed far more than any one man could carry.

Another of the savages, short and bulky with red hair, nudged the scarred man as if to suggest ignoring Ben. If they couldn’t wear it, cook it or bash heads with it, they had no use for such strange things. The arm and the tools however, they did indeed look to make promising weapons.

As the sun rose the following day, Ben remained lay on the ground. Ben’s optical unit had been badly damaged in the affray, leaving him barely able to see much more than a foot in front of himself.

Ben was reluctant to stand. Ben was wary of the further damage that might have been done, and furthermore should Ben stand, he had no plan for what to do next. And so, Ben lay there, motionless. Day turned to night; night turned into day. 

On the third night Ben concluded that his mission was over. He had failed. Ben was unfit to travel further, unable to see the world and witness life in action and he was now unable to maintain himself.

Ben had concluded that he had ceased to have any possible agency anymore.

Such was the state of his thinking, that as he looked around in his direct vicinity and saw only dirt and rock, he started to consider that maybe he himself was now just a big rock, a boulder.

“Maybe that is what I am now. I am a boulder. I am an artifact of the land.”

As Ben slipped into this psychosis, deciding what type of sedimentary being he would like to be, a bolt shot from the ground into the sky before exploding into a glittery array of gold and silver, casting a brief ray of light across Ben’s face.

Despite Ben’s current state of vision, he noticed the blurry trail and enigmatic sound.

Whoosh, the same again.

A streak of light and noise that ended in a dazzling cacophony. Ben was so awestruck that his mind snapped back into place. Ben was a boulder no more! Ben made a record of these mystical exploding streaks of lights in what was left of his diminished memory store.

Ben slowly raised himself from the gravel and dirt, tentatively taking a short step forward. Whilst this was a bright night, the moon glowing large in the sky, Ben remained cautious with each step.

Ben ambled down the rocky cliffside, pressing much of his weight into the rock face to secure his balance. Ben had descended halfway down the hill when grave misfortune struck.

As Ben lowered his weight onto his right leg which was perched narrowly on a loose rock the size of a football, the rock slid from its base. Ben threw his single arm up in a desperate attempt to grasp at safety. There was nothing but dirt to hold onto.

Ben fell violently, his orientation shifting with each collision as he crashed against rock and debris. Ben fell in a thunderous kaleidoscope of catastrophe before finally smashing against the ground.

Ben was truly broken.

Ben lay face down in the dirt as the loose rock tumbled down atop of him. Ben didn’t like the idea of being a boulder anymore. Ben didn’t like the idea of being, or doing, much of anything at this moment. Whilst Ben didn’t feel psychical pain like you or I, Ben still felt something. Ben lived with a sense of struggle and failure, an objective awareness of how close or how far he was from succeeding in his programming, and in this moment, Ben was far, far away from any kind of success.

Beneath that rubble Ben was lost.

As Ben lay there, unable to free himself from the wreckage, he heard an unfamiliar sound gently raise from the silence. The noise was quietly rhythmic. It was pleasant. As the sound continued, it grew in volume, the chorus of elements growing.

Ben was fascinated by this sound. Ben wondered if the sound had anything to do with the sparkling lights he had seen just prior.

Though Ben was trapped, he could move his arm and inch either side. Ben used all the power he could to push his arm, one way then the next. It was slow progress. After an hour slowly pushing against the rubble, Ben had managed to create enough room to move his arm to his side.

From here, Ben pushed with all his might against the ground to raise himself up. Some of the looser rocks fell to the side but Ben remained encased. Ben tried again. The pile shifted around Ben’s effort with each attempt. On Ben’s seventh push, just enough of the rubble fell away to reveal the sound in greater detail. Ben could hear more clearly now the sound of percussion and chanting.

Ben tried once more to free himself, pressing hard into the ground, Ben manoeuvred his legs to provide a final firm push. Ben pushed so hard that his of his other systems momentarily went blank. All of Ben’s energy was in that moment used in a single struggle for freedom, a single push for hope. In that moment strenuous, unconscious effort, the weight that held Ben down fell away, falling either side.

Ben freed himself from those ruins and inspired by curiosity limped forward towards the sound. Ben ambled and stumbled across the flat, wooded terrain. With every few steps Ben brushed against the trees; his face firmly fixed down on the ground directly in front of him. In Ben’s sorry state, he tripped over a loose branch.

As he landed, the sound of music and cheering stopped.

Ben looked upwards to see a small crowd gather around him. There was a nervous energy to the crowd, mumbling and pointing. Ben did not know what to do, nor did he think there was much that he could do.

Ben’s head tilted up, his amber light dimly crackling and blinking. He pivoted his head around the group. Ben searched his memory bank for something which might be helpful. Ben played back the sound of the fireworks screeching through the sky… whoosh… bang.

The crowd cowered backwards briefly before realising that the sound was very familiar. Five of the larger members of the group, three males and two females, picked Ben up and carried him a short distance to the clearing which was just beyond the way. Here they laid Ben on the ground, his back resting against a fallen tree which sat close to a large fire in the centre of the clearing.

An elderly member of the group, with long grey hair and a wizened bearded face, stooped down in front of Ben, offering an object for Ben to inspect. Ben could barely raise his arm. Ben tilted his head forwards slightly.

The elderly man pointed at the object and then pointed at the sky. The man then excitedly pointed down towards the fire before rushing his hand upwards and standing with his arms aloft and wide open, a large smile stretched across his face.

The old man hurried over to the fire, thrusting the object into the hands of a younger male. The object was snapped into the ground. Ben lay there puzzled but he could sense the fervour in the air. The young man held a torch against the object and in an instant, it flew into the sky. Ben followed the fuzzy streak as it rocketed upwards before exploding in a dazzling display of light and colour.

The fireworks cast a brief cheerful light upon Ben’s face as they danced in the sky. Between the brilliant flashes of light, Ben’s own light dimmed.

As Ben lay resting against the fell tree, he was calm. He didn’t have a care for questions about “what if?” and he didn’t have concern for success or failure. Ben only had the moment he was in.

The gleeful old man sat by Ben as the display continued. Ben whispered back the sound – whoosh… bang… And then Ben’s light faded, his head hanging forwards.

Ben had done all that Ben could do. As the power limped from Ben’s systems, his last thoughts were not of concern for his mission, but of awe and wonder.

Whoosh.

Bang.