You awaken from a long, dry sleep.  A sleep where nothing pierced you.  You
felt as if something had reached out and swept you away from the life you
lead.  The life.  You open your eyes slowly, reluctant to pursue visions of
reality.  The first thing you notice is that you are outside, out on what
once could be called a plain.  But now, even the ground is desolate.  Your
eyes glance up at the daytime sky, and you feel the scorching pain of a
ozone uninhibited sun as it beams through the purple and blue sky.  The
planet has become defenseless against the terror of the star that was once
its sustenence.  You groan as you attempt to stand up after sleeping on the
mucky grey ground.  Your back feels as if it had been cracked in half.
Standing, you reach into your pocket to grope for a Life-Pill, mankind's only
hope for survival in such a desolate wasteland.  The pill protects people by
rendering the radioactive ultraviolet rays from the sun and other things
harmless.. but at a cost.  You pop the pill into your mouth, and doing so
you notice your skin.  Once perfect and healthy, and now grey, hard, and
scaly.  You purse your lips in grim realization of the being you have become,
and crack them, spewing out a short leak of oozing green unidentified liquid
from the dry cracks.  Science was never able to explain the effects on the
skin or the new oozing molasses like liquids flowing through the body after
the Life-Pill was developed, but always forgot it since mankind SURVIVED.
You survey the terrain around you, and notice there are only two trees.
One to your left, about a speedball rink's distance away, and one in the
smoky isolated horizon to the right.  But before you is the marvel of
modern society.  The fair city Smerol Triph, with its crystal dome deflecting
the blue-orange rays of the sun.  The city inside the crystal is as desolate
looking as the plain surrounding you.  Buildings of grey made of a new
substance invented by science.  On ropes, tram cars move people all dressed
similar to you to their destinations.  You'd think that such a large city
would be bustling.  But while it was busy, it was quiet.  You glance at your
clothes, loathing every square centimetre.  The dark grey hooded cloak makes
you look exactly the same as every other person.  You look at your
CommuniBand, a new type of wristwatch-calculator-television-radio device,
and see that it is 0850.  The military-type time, and military-type everything
is now the rule in your world.  You begin to walk towards the city, your
routine calling you.  But as you take your first soundless step on the
sickly turf you realize why you had left the confines of the city in the
first place.  You were running away.  You recall what had happened the night
before.....


  You stood in what may be reckoned to be a bar, submitting yourself to
the government's latest advances in survival drinks, when one grey cloaked
man came up to you.  He beckoned you to a corner, where he pulled back his
hood.  He was a hideous being.  The face had been worn off, leaving a grey
scaled blob with four small holes stragetically placed to look like eyes
and nostrils, and one large fissure acting as a mouth.  The creature told
you that you had been chosen to finish its job.  The job was to toil in the
sands on the northeast side of Smerol Triph, in the East Desert, which was
once a great ocean.  You knew that this would do the same to you as it did
to this creature, as Life-Pills can't completely protect you from the evils
of the atmosphere without the protection of the crystal dome.  The creature
slaved there for the government looking for salts and deposits that may
be useful in science advances.  You knew no other way out.  You snapped.
You hated science, the government, and everything they stood for.  Hadn't
they learned from their past mistakes??  You didn't want to be LIKE you were
slowly becoming, slower than most everyone else, as slow as the scientists.
And DEFINATELY not like this creature.  Your craze slowly took over your
disentigrating mind.  You grabbed a phaze ray and pumped three pulses into
the creature, annihilating it.  You felt relieved, until the angry hideous
faces of your species turned to you.  The sirens began to whine in the city,
the dreaded Politia was going to come for you.  The Politia was the
new police and militia together.  They were not, however, designed to protect
the people.  Rather, they were well known for their torturous treatment and
slow deaths given to enemies of the government, and general anarchists.
Gaining a last burst of strength, you wildly pushed your way through the mob
and ran out the door, and out of the city.  You ran until you collapsed....

  Now you realize you can never go back.  And you don't want to.  You hate
this new life forced upon you by the greed of the government and its defeated
counterparts.  From a distance, you hear the sirens of the Politia leaving
the city and coming across the dead plain in search of you.  You look behind
you and see, far off, yet another city, alike to Smerol Triph, and know
that if you could reach it, you can be a new person, and hidden forever.
The Politia would leave you alone if you became a new, working person in
another city.  To survive you must run due south.  If you stray southwest
at all, you would fall into the Great Crevasse, which falls into the very
core of the planet.  You begin to trot towards the new city.  But something
makes you stop.  Realizing you can make it gives you no happiness.  You
would lead the same life with the same activities no matter who or where
you were.  You look fifty paces to your left, and spy the edge of the
Crevasse.  You look three speedball-rink's south and you see the city.
You hear the sirens getting closer.  You can't take anymore.  You don't have
to exist like this.  You don't have to live this life.  You want what was
taken away - taken from every living thing upon the face of the once beautiful
planet.  Knowing that the warmth will never come back, and the wet grey
ground and air will be all generations to come will know, and knowing that
science will always try to come up with solutions to the problems they caused,
you decide you must get warm again.  You can not continue living.  As the
sirens draw nearer, you continue to wrestle with the thought pulsing through
your newly-ripened mind.  You look north again, and see the Politia coming
towards you.  You walk to the edge of the Crevasse.  You look at your shaking
lizard like hands.  You look up at the blue-purple cloudless sky.  You begin
to cry.  As you sob, the Politia come within a few dozen yards of you,
commanding you to halt.  Crying the name of your heart long passed away,
you jump into the Crevasse.  The Politia stare as you begin to hurtle down
into the immeasurable depths of the planet.  Your last fleeting thoughts
run into your mind as your body begins to warm from the heat deep in the
planet.  You think of grass, blue sky, and love.  Then, as your body
accelerates to the freefall speed, you close your eyes for the final time,
accepting the comforting graces of the


                I N F I N I T E    D A R K N E S S

            original story composed by force ten [ice]
   copyright 1993 by rick hadsall and insane creators enterprise