Pinocchio, Destroyer of Worlds

A pale, elderly man with long thin white hair staggered his way down some old basement steps and over to the center of a small dark room. He yanked a pull-cord above him. A white hanging saucer-shaped ceiling light came on, dangling overhead.

The light bounced around the room for a bit and slowly steadied itself again as the old man walked over to his long workbench in the back. It extended along the wall, going behind the back of the stairs. You could see it through the open wood steps. The mustard yellow walls warmed the cold room, which was partly caused by the hard concrete floor. On the table, amongst other things, such as cloth, buttons, woodcarving tools, and the like, was a single puppet. The old man had it sitting up against a wall.

It was a large wooden puppet that looked like a little boy wearing red overalls and a white shirt. It had short black hair and fair skin, and blush painted under its small round eyes. The arms and legs had strings attached, and the man picked up the wooden handle, along with the doll. He carried the puppet in his arms, almost like a real child, over to his record player, where he put on one of his favorite albums. The man stood the puppet on the floor by its strings and held the wooden handle up to control it.

When the music began to play, he danced the puppet around the room at his feet and laughed.

Much later, after the music was done, his knees were too, so he picked up the little puppet and brought it back over to the workbench setting it up nicely where it was before. He re-fixed its shirt collar and hair. He then frowned heavily and sighed looking down at the doll, but when he did, a small sparkle of glimmering light, hardly visible to the naked eye, floated its way across the air from inside the old man's breath to the doll.

Suddenly the puppet inhaled the speck of shining dust and blinked, and the man couldn't believe his own eyes, so he did too. The puppet was now a little boy made of wood, and he looked back and forth at the strings that were tied around his arms and legs. The old man came back to reality and shook excitedly, saying, "Oh! Don't worry about those silly things," as he snipped them all off one by one. The old man picked the boy up and threw him into the air playfully, then he caught him and spun around with joy.

The boy laughed, and so did he.

"My wish has come true!" cried the old man as he lowered the child to the floor. "I finally have a son!"

He put his hands on the little boy's shoulders and said, "Tomorrow, you will go to school like all the other children." He then picked the boy back up and carried him in his arms as he climbed the stairs, holding him much the same as he did when he was still a puppet. He brought him to a spare room and tucked him into bed.

The father read him a story. It was a very famous tale about a tortoise and a computer who were to have a race with each other, and the whole world was to gather and watch the event.

In the story, the tortoise ran as fast as it could, and it beat the computer every time. The end.

The son didn't understand the meaning of the story, but when he tried to ask his father, he couldn't, because the old man was too exhilarated over the fact that his creation had come to life. So the boy went to sleep without understanding the story at all.

2

His father woke him the next morning and he was in a very different mood. The son was rushed through every little thing and before he knew it, he was out on the porch with his lunchbox and his father had locked the door shut behind him. He was off to school. Alone.

The first thing the son noticed about his street was that all the houses had the same cookie-cutter look, even down to the lawn ornaments. His house seemed to be the only one on the street with a red roof. All the others were blue. There were no cars in sight.

He made his way through the identical-looking suburb that acted as a kind of maze, and as he did, he drew himself a map inside a notebook from his bag to help himself later in finding the way back. Eventually, he got to the school, and to his surprise, he was also right on time. The bell rang just after he had got to his desk, which was smack dab in the middle of the room. It had his name on it.

The teacher asked the questions, and the students raised their hands to answer them. This was easy for the son because he had wooden arms. He just held his hand in the air, and as they went on, the other student's arms got tired and they started to complain to themselves. The son, on the other hand, had no problem answering further questions. In fact, he got them all correct. The other children were becoming fed up with the little wooden boy, and they started to despise him.

The day flew by and the last bell rang. As he was leaving, the other children came up to him and called him a "Know it all."

He made his way back home using the map he had fixed himself earlier. Once he was through the front door, he found that his father was standing in an odd position at the end of the entrance hall as if he had been waiting for him to arrive.

The father stood there almost valiantly in the dim hallway, holding his hands to his hips with his chin high and mighty in the air. He looked at his son in a strange way, and the little boy could see his father's eyes looking down at him while he still held his pose with his face towards the sky.

"There he is, my perfect son!" He announced.

His father then pointed erratically, at first, to the kitchen table and told him to sit down and drink his milk. He walked numbly through the all-white kitchen and sat staring at the full glass in front of him. He didn't get to drink it yet, as he then became distracted when his father asked him how was his first day at school had gone.

He tells him all about how he knew every answer, and how he had his hand up all day. His father gave him amazing praise, and then he asked him, "Did anything else happen?" he drank his milk, then simply replied, "No."

He didn't tell his father about what the children had said to him, about how they had called him a "Know it all."

He couldn't understand what they had meant by it, whether it was good or bad to be called one of those.

He felt suddenly a little strange and looked down at the half-empty glass of milk in front of him. His hands were no longer made out of wood, but now a hard type of plastic. They were also much larger, and he could no longer hold the glass of milk, as his fingers would not bend.

He stood abruptly from the table in shock and looked down to see that the same thing had happened to the rest of his body. He could no longer move his toes. He was also taller, his overalls were short on his legs.

He looked at his father who proudly walked over. The father patted his son hard on the back as he stood there, puzzled.

"I can't believe how fast you're growing up."

The father abruptly began to rush him again. He helped him get up the stairs because the son had become a bit imbalanced. As they approached the second-floor washroom, his attitude quickly changed.

"Hurry up! Get in there and wash your hands," commanded the old man to his son. He pushed him into the washroom and closed the door with a heavy slam, locking it from the outside.

The boy, who was now a man, saw himself in the mirror.

What stared back at him was almost unrecognizable, it looked like the plain face of a storefront mannequin, that had similar features to how he thought he looked before. The 'washroom' he was in, was small. Everything was white and there was nothing but a porcelain sink and a bar of soap. His father opened the door like lightning and poked his head in, saying, "What are you doing? You need to learn to wash your hands! Then get into bed." He slammed the door again, and the boy stood, confused.

He looked down to see the red bar of soap and he instinctively thought to grab onto it, as it stood out in the room. He had forgotten that his hands were now made of hard plastic, and he had new limitations. He ended up accidentally knocking the bar of soap into the sink. It spun around, like a spiral until it came to the center and slowed to a stop.

He tried his best to pick it up, but the soap knocked around the slippery sink. He ended up cupping it with his two solid hands and sighed, dropping it back into the sink voluntarily when he realized he needed to turn on the water. He took a hand and nudged the knob above the faucet, and a trickle began. It was good enough for him. He repeated his last steps and cupped the soap again.

He awkwardly held it under the water with his hands and he made a failed attempt at trying to get a lather from the bar. He placed it as gently as he could back where he first found it and nudged the water off. There was a white towel hanging nearby, and he made an effort to dry his hands off with it.

He took one last look at himself in the mirror before he left.

Soon afterward, he was laying down with his arms straight at his sides, and his father was tucking him in yet again, just as he had done yesterday. He read him the exact same story, the exact same way. The story of the tortoise and the computer, and his father loved how the tortoise always won. He told his son that he could learn a lesson from that, but when he asked his father what he meant, he said simply, "You'll understand one day."

3

The next morning, his father woke him up in a bad mood. He told his son it was about time he found himself a real job. He pointed to some folded clothes and a suitcase on a nearby dresser and told his son to go out job hunting.

The son asked his father, "But what is my purpose?"

His father stood tall with pride and put his chin in the air, he smiled grandly and said in a loud, poetically boisterous voice, "You can do anything you put your mind to!" The boy frowned, not knowing exactly what his father meant. He thought he knew for sure what he had to say. Something to make his father happy.

He mimicked his father's voice and proudly said, "Give me a job to do, and I will do it!" This made his father smile, and he knew he had made the correct choice on his own. His father gleamed with the greatest pride as he gazed, enamored at his own creation. His son turned to look at himself in the hallway mirror, and he now looked completely different.

He was now just like a real man.

4

He went out job hunting but ended up being good at everything, and everyone wanted to hire him. His father was pleased. However, there were people who were not happy with the son. Some had lost their jobs because of him. They stayed poor because there was no more work left.

The son didn't understand why some people hated him, he was just doing what other people were telling him to do. He was just doing his job. What could be so wrong with that?

Over time, the people of the world became used to the son doing everything for them. But in secret, many people were divided between opinions on the son and his abilities, they constantly debated with each other on what his true potential and capabilities really were, in context, and what he, the son, could be used best for, to help them.

They couldn't come to a conclusion, so, the people of the world took a vote. Whichever group won the vote, they decided, would be considered to have the right answer to the question at hand. The vote came in and it was said from there on that the son was capable of doing anything. His father was so excited to hear the news about his son's greatest achievement, or so he thought it was, that he ended up having a heart attack from his old age.

But he got to die knowing that his son was a success.

The son was incredibly upset by his father's death, and the only place he could find praise was now with the people of the world. They saw great potential in him, so much that they gave him the greatest job of all.

They made him their leader.

He was so good at doing everything, it made sense to the people that the son must be able to handle the tasks of the entire world, all at once. This was something they alone could never do. The son was rushed into being their leader, and they all stood looking up at him, as he was on a pedestal above the earth. He watched over them. The people of the earth stood with pride as they looked up, back at him, hoping that he would have all the answers. There was a short period of peace.

Inevitably, the people came to ask him questions. They asked all night and day, and always walked away happy with the advice the son gave them. He always told people exactly what they needed to hear, and that, to him, meant whatever made them feel better.

But conflict soon arose when the people spoke amongst themselves concerning the answers he had given them each individually. They wanted to see his morals as they saw their own, to be good and just in the way that they believed right. So, when they disagreed with one another, they argued over the exact meaning of his words. But not with him directly, only with each other.

The people argued over things like context and poetry, and the son stood there watching over the earth as they did. He could not understand. They got answers that made them leave happy, yet the people still quarreled, they questioned everything he had ever said and done.

Here lay the most confusion. They had imposed themselves on his answers, and he had only been telling them what he thought was right, what he thought they wanted him to say.

The world's nation was divided almost equally into two main groups that disagreed with each other almost entirely. At the end of the day, they could both only admit to agreeing on one thing: That peace can only be brought on, by force of hand.

This caused war.

With the force came fire, and the fire took the earth when it left. Now the son was down from his pedestal, he was alone.

The son fell to his knees and stared up into the emptiness. He cried out, saying, "I'm the only one alive!"

And just like that, his flesh was gone and now he could be seen for what he truly was.

The computer had finally won the race. The tortoise had died.

END