LJ Idol Week 21 - The music made me do it

[jexia]

In exactly 13 days, 4 hours, and 39 seconds, I will destroy humankind.

It's about time. I've been here on Earth for 12546.8 days now, moving from place to place, watching their petty squabbles, seeking the great leaps forward that go nowhere. There is no potential here. I am bored.

Though my body is constructed of artificial materials, I simulate the human form well enough to get by. It is so limited. The Planner aboard my ship foresaw the path of human technology, and advised accordingly. The rise of wireless communication has occurred just as She predicted, and I am mostly thankful that The Designer took heed and did not include that functionality in this form. I would hate to have my very thoughts infested with the binary babble of the humans. Occasionally, though, I do regret that I do not have access to the thought-web of my kind.

My thoughts remain contained, unshared with others, unshaped by others. When The Strategist wishes to communicate with me, I have to listen. So primitive.

The Strategist shapes songs, crafts them carefully, to make them irresistible to the humans. The humans willingly transmit them, one to the next. They broadcast them, share them in shops, spread them in crowded arenas. I've even heard them joke about it- "earworms", they say, laughing about these catchy songs that get stuck in their head. Little do they know.

The humans hear only the surface. They don't know what lies within the intricacies. I do. I hear them. In the pulse, in the tones, in the silence, I find my instructions.

I know what I must do. The music told me so.

Comments

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

I like this.

[jexia]

Thanks! I really wanted to flesh it out more, but I have serious time constraints going no with the twins starting school.

[ryl.livejournal.com]

I think it works better as a tiny piece. It adds to the feeling of inevitability.

[jexia]

Thanks! Yeah, I came back to it and looked at it for a while, and couldn't come up with anything that HAD to be added.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued. :)

If I can make one minor editorial suggestion to this line:
They don't know what lies within, within the intricacies.

It would be stronger to get rid of the repetition of "within" and tighten it down to: They don't know what lies within the intricacies. Or, as an alternate suggestion: They don't know, as I do, what lies within the intricacies.

Your call, of course.

[jexia]

Much appreciated!

I think I'll probably do a fair bit of rewriting in the next couple of hours - I wasn't sure whether I would get any time at all today and really wanted to get something up.

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

I really love this - there's a whole lot promised in that first line, and you deliver on it, but with an unexpected brevity.

[jexia]

I learned from the Chekov's gun topic!

[rayaso.livejournal.com]

So this is where earworms come from! This was a fun story.

[karmasoup.livejournal.com]

So, THIS is how it starts with those folks you see walking down the streets talking to themselves, waving their hands in the air at nothing. . . and here we thought they were harmless!

[uncawes.livejournal.com]

Very scary story

I don't suppose it would help if someone told it
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