The Lament of
the Second Race
October 2023 | by Dani | Header by Irina Kovalova
Dani here! This story was revised in October 2024 for the sake of my university application. For the original 2023 edition, click here.
Fiction | Worldbuilding
I stand half-submerged in the cool water, as lilies drift on the surface around me, and I feel the rain as it patters upon my rusting body.
...
The first race, our predecessors, were an organic race. They were born from the same meat and bone as the beasts that roam in the wilderness. But as soon as they emerged, it was clear that they were different. They were intelligent, and strong. The first race grew rapidly — they built kingdoms, then nations, then empires.
And then they went to the stars.
Great antique starships! — fueled by their shared desire to show the universe what they were capable of. Our predecessors conquered galaxies for fun, built towering monuments of obsidian, miles across, created entire ecosystems from scratch, only to tear them apart again. They screamed into the universe, just to hear the echo.
...
But still, the first race grew dissatisfied. Beside their great demonstrations, the first race looked down at themselves — at their own bodies — and hated what they saw. They clawed at their ancient flesh, cursed it; that part of them so shockingly fragile, subject to the ache of disease and abruptness of death — that tormenting clock counting ever downward, like the guillotine falling.
They were disgusted, and so they built us; the second race.
We were a race whose bodies were built of metal and wheels. Iron beams framed our hulking bodies — bodies that could not age, nor sicken, nor die. We would never suffer as they did.
We basked in the ruins of the first race’s works. We submerged ourselves in their artificial ecosystems, unearthed the lichen-stained monuments from the crumbling soil. We felt the softness of the breeze, the sounds of the bluebirds and toads and dragonflies, that fresh smell of air in the rain. We would stand in the water as we felt it patter on our iron frames.
...
But we, too, grew dissatisfied. Though enveloped by paradise, we turned our gaze to ourselves, and we hated what we saw. We found ourselves still haunted. By sorrow, and anger, and in those deeper crevices by emotions yet more uncertain and unspeakable, which we couldn't put names on. We wished to cry, to scream, to curl up and escape. But the metal was cold and unyielding.
We were terrified, and so we built the third race.
Silver, spherical bodies, and with minds just as sleek — electric minds — hard circuits and silicon. They would never feel sorrow, nor anger, nor anything they could not comprehend. They would never suffer as we did.
They outgrew us rapidly. Gathered materials, replicated themselves, and left us be. We stayed where we were, in those places, those garden paradises that we came to know as the grandfather planets.
...
The first race were long gone, while we lived our retirement. But the third race were different. They were efficient. Cold, calculating. They didn't speak a language, they didn’t need one. No faces, no limbs. When you saw one, there was no recognition. They just floated by, without pausing. They felt alien.
There was no warning. No announcement of it. It just happened.
One day, we lost all contact with the third race.
We couldn't get off the grandfather planets. We had no rockets, we could send no messages. We didn't know what was happening at first. Not until it began raining broken machines and discarded scrap from orbit. That's when we realised we had become the junkyard planets.
...
I can't describe or put words to the feeling. We of the second race have always been bad at that.
To be trapped on a planet by beings of your own creation. You cannot hope to comprehend their alien minds, and they have no drive to understand yours. You built them that way. You feel so trapped, looking up at the stars with the same longing that your ancestors once had.
You stand in the water, feeling the rain as you watch your iron frame slowly rust away.