The Street (standard:mystery, 1155 words)
Author: Xin	Added: Nov 04 2000	Views/Reads: 3932/2902	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Time passes by..the one and only, faithful Time, and where are we going? In a long, grey death row, following each other.

The Street 

Part I of the Grey Trilogy 

All rights reserved. No part of this story may be copied, printed or
used in any other such way without permission of the author. 

(c) 1999 

It wasn't raining. The fog slowly surrounding the city wasn't allowing
it just yet. It was one of those days when everything's a shade in 
between, and every object casts half a shadow, ambiguous as this day 
itself. I was walking along the street, one of the many grey arteries 
of the City. I seemed to be the only person there at that time of the 
day, if you didn't count the cars that went past me, speedy silver 
capsules...somehow it didn't seem right that you'd count the person 
behind the wheel as being a real Person. The grey cars on the street 
were its life flow, and although they were going past me ever so fast, 
they all seemed to be going in slow motion, too slow and too quiet for 
the City. 

The drivers were in a hurry. All in a hurry to get somewhere, to their
base camp, only to start the cycle again the next day, and then the 
next, and then the next...spending their life in a never-ending cycle. 
It was all the same all day every day, unchanged by the circumstances 
or by the place. The setting might have been different, but the silent 
play involving the people was always the same. 

The buildings around me were massive and grey, tall and covered in
mirrored glass, that reflected the grey sky, and the clouds that flew 
by, like shadows of things past. 

The City was undeniably growing. A year, or was it a month, a day ago?
the buildings around me weren't there, or maybe they were, but not as 
tall, not as imposing, not really There. 

The street was empty. There were no People there, only Shadows. Shadows
of people. Shadows of accountants, shadows of workers, shadows of 
computer programmers, dressed in business suits that all look the 
same...a neat little white shirt, tucked in the neat little grey skirt 
or pants, under a smart grey jacket, with charcoal variations. All the 
same. The little details - the tucks and buttons - only drowned them in 
the already-present conformity. And all the Shadows of People looked 
the same, under their smart hairstyles and smart glasses and smart 
suitcases. 

The shadows were all coming from the same place, the tall mirrored
sky-scrapers that gave shape and volume to the city, and which were the 
home of neat little offices, containing white desks at which the 
Shadows sat and did Heaven knows what mundane piece of work that 
eventually, put together with all the other mundane pieces of work, was 
going to form the bigger picture, a puzzle that Society could look at 
and maybe even use some day, if it would become needed, if the grey 
canvas that the world was made of would somehow be ripped apart. 

And they were all going the same way, like a flock of grey sheep that
follow the leader, without a mind or will of their own. All going to 
their little houses in the suburbia, where their spouses, or rather, 
Shadows of Spouses would wait for them, and ask them how their day was, 
and listening for and hearing the reply before it was spoken and out of 
the other Shadow's mouth, a thing taken for granted, for it was the 
same every day. And seeing their children come home from school. The 
children were disobedient spots of colour, and for that they were 
promptly sent to their rooms, where the colour could be worked and 
improved on, until it decided to borrow a more neutral and less 
offending shape, and join the other Shadows for dinner in front of the 
TV box that showed other Shadows going about their grey daily lives. 

Flock of sheep. But who was the Leader? An unseen force seemed to be
driving these people around like puppets, a force greater than 
anything, a force that wanted everything, and when you didn't have 
anything to feed it anymore, it wanted you and your insides. It got 
inside of you, and sucked you empty. Empty of feelings, empty of 
emotions. Empty of thoughts. It just left you with a pre-programmed 
instruction, like a fake helix inside a dying cell. A coma, with one 


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