The Waltz

I walk a world of death and forgottenness — people strung up and hanged on walls that rise as high as the sky itself. Nothing here could ever be called pretty. Everything is gray, built from the same lined metal panels you’d see in a factory. The only name this place has ever been given is the Waltz of Rapture. Nobody knows where the name came from, but it’s been around longer than I’ve been alive.

This world is filled with lawlessness and machines that can turn on at any moment, crushing you under a single mechanical foot. And like the walls, those machines reach the sky too.

I have no idea how I was born into this place. I don’t even know who I am. The only thing I had on me was a tattoo — the number 13. I’ve been roaming this world for two years now and haven’t seen a single living soul. Only decayed, rotting corpses strung up on walls. As far as I can tell, there’s no life left in this world… and if there ever was, it died long before I opened my eyes in it.

I only learned this world’s name from the corpses. Some of them had strange tablets on them, filled with what they claimed was the history of this place. One line read: “The world we walk is the Waltz of Rapture. We live here so God can take us and transform us into something higher than ourselves.” They talked like raving madmen. What is this god they speak of? And why would it want to “take” them?

Meaningless questions now, since everyone is dead.

From the moment I opened my eyes in this desolate place, I already knew how to read, write, speak, think… but how? How could I know these things without ever being taught? Sometimes I feel like I’m not flesh and blood at all, but just another one of these mechanical beasts. My hands look humanoid, but I don’t bleed like any human. My blood is black, not red. I don’t feel pain — only a strange discomfort.

So what am I?

The only thing that makes any sense is that all the tablets referred to something called the Dyson Sphere in the middle of the world. And I feel like if I can find this “Dyson Sphere,” I’ll learn the world’s secrets… and maybe find out what I am.