The Lament of
the Second Race
October 2023 | by Dani | Header by Irina Kovalova
Dani here! You're reading the old 2023 edition of this story. I updated this one as I was working on my university application because it wasn't quite up to scratch. Click here to see the revised 2024 edition.
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 the wilderness. But as soon as the first race emerged, they were different. They were intelligent, and strong. They grew rapidly — they built kingdoms, then empires, then nations.
And then they went to the stars.
Great antique starships! — fueled by the first race’s shared desire to show the world what they were capable of. Our predecessors conquered the galaxy for fun, built towering obsidian monuments, miles across, created entire ecosystems from scratch, only to tear them apart again. They screamed into the universe, just so they could 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 that counted ever downward, like the guillotine falling.
They were disgusted, and so they built us; the second race.
We were a race whose bodies were made of metal and wheels. Iron beams framed our hulking bodies — bodies that could not age, nor sicken, nor die. We would never suffer like the first race did.
We revelled in the ruins of the first race’s works. We submerged ourselves in their 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. From inside our sublime paradise, we looked now within ourselves and we hated what we saw. Haunted by sorrow and anger, and other, uncertain emotions that we couldn't put names on, ones that didn’t make sense. We wanted to scream, to cry, to curl up, to escape. But our metal bodies were cold and unyielding.
We were terrified, and so we built the third race.
Silvered, spherical bodies, and with minds just as sleek — electric minds — hard circuits and silicon. We built them to never be sad, nor angry, nor feel anything they couldn't comprehend. They would never have to suffer like we did.
The third race outgrew us rapidly. They harvested materials, replicated themselves, and they let 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 already 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. They just looked you in the eye, without recognition. We couldn't see what they were thinking. They felt alien.
There was never any sudden shift. No announcement of it. It just happened.
One day, we lost all contact with the third race.
We were stuck on the grandfather planets. We didn't know what was happening, at first. Not until it began raining broken and defective machines down from orbit. That's when we realised they had become the junkyard planets.
...
I’m sorry 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, yet whom you can't understand. And who yet have no drive to understand you either. Beings that look at you without recognition, only calculation. Beings that you know will succeed you, even when your whole race is gone. You can only watch, trapped, looking up at the stars with the same longing that your ancestors once did.
You stand in the water, feeling the rain as you watch your iron frame slowly rust away.