Chapter 8 Gift of the Future
Gift of the future
The smell of burnt sugar and plastic greets me, and my eyes flutter open.
The fire is gone, and the air hums with something mechanical, not the soft crackles of the flames.
The cabin walls are stripped bare—no wood, no warmth, and by the looks of it, no Neno.
Just white fluorescent lights, sterile, and a white room that whines as if it’s learning how to breathe.
Using my elbows, I prop myself up, and recognition instantly slams into me as I take in the rows of conveyor belts, which seem to extend into infinity.
Plastic snow falls from the ceiling, dusting the corpses of toys piled up in high mountains.
Their glass eyes stare up at me, wide and unblinking, causing a shiver to run through me.
Each of their heads moves slowly in counterclockwise positions, their drawn on lips stretched into wicked grins.
Static crackles from speakers before a menacing, high-pitched voice startles me. “PORTER TOYS. WHERE JOY COMES TO LIFE.”
My heart beats rapidly inside my chest as my head moves from one side to the other. I’m holding my breath, expecting to see Neno,but instead, the slogan is recited over and over, and the lights begin to flash in quick, flashing strokes.
STOP. STOP. STOP. STOP.
My hand clutches each side of my head, and my body rocks with each menacing laugh. “Stop. Stop.” I repeat over and over, rocking slowly back and forth as my whispers drown in my voice in the ad, cheerful and false.
“Here, at Porter Toys, we believe that each gift tells a story.”
What a bunch of crap… Fuck! I didn’t even believe in Christmas. I lost the magic the morning my parents’ mangled bodies were discovered wrapped around a tree. Footsteps echo throughout the space, the sound is coming from every direction, making it hard to pinpoint the exact location.
Suddenly, Neno stands beside me, no longer dressed in red or with a white fake beard adorning his face.
Instead, he wears a black long coat lined with frost, looking as if he stepped right out of a winter storm.
Slowly, he turns his face towards me, the lines of his features sharper—something is different.
The golden hue of his skin is opaque… He looks like a ghost of himself.
“Welcome to the future, Toy King,” he says softly, opening his hand to show me the last gift with the words Future written on the label. “You finally did it.”
Confusion strikes me. Exactly what did I do? This place is empty, devoid of any warmth my parents created. No. This isn’t what I wanted… No.
“What is this?” I ask. “What exactly did I do?”
My own voice echoes through the sterile room, bouncing off the walls and repeating into eternity. Neno laughs, the crescendo of it rising with each shake of his shoulders. When suddenly, it stops.
No hint of humor marred his ghostly features. “It’s what you built. A world that doesn’t need you.” His heart-shaped lips curl into something sinister. “A world that doesn’t care for you.”
Neno gestures towards the endless line of machines, they hum and move without hands. Soldering circuits and filling boxes faster than any human could. A camera whirs, the sound startling me. I look up at the screen built into the wall for ads, and all I see is statistics.
Profit margins, output, and global distribution, each climbing endlessly upward.
Making me insanely rich by the second, something hollows out in my chest. snaking its way into the frozen muscle. My hand instinctively rises, touching the spot where it feels sore, rubbing it gently as Neno menacingly stares at me.
“Your workers went home,” he mutters, his fingers trailing down my bare skin.
Only now I realize I’m in a nightgown of sorts.
The white hem stops right at my thighs, right where his fingers linger.
“In their place, machines took over. They just kept building, making you richer, while those workers suffered.”
“No.” I shake my head as he nods his in unison. “Yes,” he whispers, placing his hands against my chin, the coolness of his skin biting into the warmth of mine. He turns my head, my gaze landing on a toy that resembles a doll, but its mouth is split too wide, teeth carved into a pointy smile.
“They still make joy,” he sneers playfully. “But no one remembers what it feels like.” He pulls away, dragging my body towards him until I’m standing and walking down the rows of conveyor belts. His boots crunching plastic beneath them, the sound blending into a sickening beat.
The fake snow grows thicker, the smell shifting from the pleasant burnt sugar into something like snow.
I hold my hand up, catching the white flurries, only to notice it’s ash, not frost. The sound of children laughing catches me off guard, my body freezing in place as the high-pitched sounds burst from the speakers.
The sounds garbled, distorted, playing in a loop before fading into static.
All the screens that adorn the walls, cut to my face, flashing on every screen.
Older. Wrinkled with hollow eyes.
“Coming soon,” my voice chirps. “Porter AI—Santa in every home.”
Mmm… My future has never looked so bright. I scoff at the sight. I would never abandon my parents' dream. Porter Toys is built on family values and hard work—human hard work—and art. Not this. I wouldn’t.
A shiver travels down my spine, and my stomach turns. The screen zooms out, not playing another commercial but a funeral broadcast. A black coffin sits in the center stage, framed by lights. The company logo hovers behind it, gold against the dark, and crowds gather.
The corner of my lip lifts into a smile that quickly fades when I notice they aren’t mourners, but robots. They cheer when my recorded voice plays a pre-scripted eulogy, reciting my father’s words.
“Hard work pays off, buddy.”
Neno stands beside the coffin, hands clasped behind his back. “They kept your voice at least. No children. No wife. Nothing,” he says. circling the casket, inspecting the small window that gives him a glimpse of what I’m sure is my corpse. “Do you think they will use it to see the next model?”
I open my mouth to respond when a mechanical Santa rolls down the belt, his face is mine, mouth open, and the familiar jingle spills out from the small speaker inside it. “He sees you when you’re sleeping…”
I take a step back.
Then another…
My knees wobble, threatening to give out under me. There’s movement behind the screens—something presses outward, distorting the pixels until they crack into hundreds of my smiling face. The image glitches as their mouths move in unison.
“Joy is life. Joy is life. Joy is life.”
The chant grows louder until it shakes the ground. The earth splits beneath my feet, swallowing the belts, the mountain of toys, and the light. Neno watches me from above as the factory collapses into itself. His expression isn’t cruel anymore—only tired.
“Every empire ends the same way,” he calls from above, the light casting a halo around him. “Buried in what it built.” With a flick of his wrist, the sound of a metal door slamming fills the air. The sound is a loud bang.
Final.
Deafening.
Sealing everything in darkness, with me still falling with it.
The ash and plastic float around me. The smell of burnt toys fills my lungs, suffocating me with its stench, and the laughter booms from every direction, drilling into my psyche.
When I finally hit the ground, I stare up at my own coffin being rolled into a furnace.
My body jolts upright, every instinct in my body screaming to stop them from burning me into nothing.
To oblivion.
“NO!” I shout. “Stop it. I’m alive.”
Neno bellows a laugh, the sound morphing into those fucking bells.
TICK! TICK! DING! DING! TOCK!TOCK!
His figure blurs before me, like a glitch in the matrix. In unison, dolls chant, “I’m your best friend.” My hands clasp over my ears, trying to silence the sounds. Sweat rolls down my temple, settling around my neck. “Are you?” Neno’s ghostly voice rumbles through the haze.
“Am I ?” I question mindlessly, “Am I what? I’m sleeping.” My response earns me another thunderous chuckle. “Are you truly sleeping, or is this your purgatory?”
My body snaps out of the trance, lurching myself towards the furnace. My body just goes through the coffin before the door slams the furnace shut. “Ho,ho,ho,” Neno taunts as I look down at my hands… I'm nothing.
Invisible. A blur of someone from the past.
The lid closes, and the banner above it burns until it reads:
The flames roar, devouring everything in its path, and somewhere inside the inferno, a bell tolls once.
DING !
Then silence.