For No One

Or.

Or the Endless Mass.

The clicking and clacking originating from the ground that resounded and echoed on the walls of the twostory parking lot at the industrial district.

…

Tic, tic, tic. They moved around at their own pace, so lifelike in their actions and almost unlimited on the number of how much of them they could perform. Yet, for how animated and celebratory their routines were, each one of them did it in an almost complete silence minus the subtle tic tic tic that came out of their machinery. 

Subtle on itself of course but they were many of them, filling a huge chamber and each one making its own sound. The combined and un-synchronized clicking and clacking echoing all around the place and becoming deafening.

All the automatons were on their place, bolted to the floor, gathering around a mute speaker and taking turns cheering and then listening as their centerpiece under the spotlight gestured as if mimicking some charismatic leader. 

There was a sense of emptiness in the scene that only Nicole was able to catch. Besides the obvious mystery of who or what had built the mechanical mass that surrounded them and why. And for how long had it been there, there was enough dust at the entrance of the place to assume it had been at least years.But at that time Nicole was struck by the meaningless of it all. These were lifeless machines, things, no more alive than a rock. No one. 

No one in the middle of a chamber forever performing for hordes of no one. 

Maybe that was the point?

…

Have you heard about the death internet theory?

Anyway, I finally got to use my old wooden mannequin for something. I had bought it as decoration almost exclusively because these kind of suck. 

I mean, not really, they help a bit with the human body composition but they do not work for posing. There's better things for that and I have some. And this one looks great next to them. I wanna get a hand one next but there's no hurry. 

I've been wanting to work this concept into something for a good while but I had struggled on how to make the automatons. 

Originally I wanted to make an endless field of writing automatons drowning in their own writings but this is more dynamic. And for that these mannequin based types worked better. 

It took me two days to finish this piece because I realized the first batch of pictures of the mannequin I took wasn't good in the morning and I had to wait until the night to take more.

It had been a while since I worked photography into a drawing of mine. Last year actually I think. But still I feel I'm a bit rusty. Unfortunately I had to work with my phone because I still need to take my good camera for maintenance and I keep forgetting it, and when I remember I don't do it because the place is far from where I live.

But one of these days….

Also, one of these days I'll buy a green screen. I've always wanted one and it would have been so useful for something like this but I wouldn't use it that often. Though if I had it, I’d maybe feel more pressured to use it so who knows…

I don't think I'm completely done with this concept and it's probably not the ultimate expression of it but it’s nice to have finally done something with it.

In fact, I'm still so not done with it that I'm considering expanding this. 

When I started writing this dissertation I actually started from what would be the beginning of this story but I stopped because I realized that it would be a lot. 

But who knows, I could make illustrations for other parts of it and expand it that way. 

At the end of this text I'm adding what I had already written of my silly little story though if I were to expand the story I wouldn't use that text like it is now because I recycled some ideas from it on the one above.

Though who knows If I'll do that. And there's some other stories that could use the fleshing out before instead.

Long story short. Nicole and the Whisperers were contacted by a security guard who works at a two story parking lot where a mysterious clicking can be heard at night. Last week during a black out the sound got worse than ever, almost driving the guards insane.

When checking the place out they discovered that the sound came from under the basement and that the foundations of the building were connected to an underground chamber containing thousands of automatons going wild at night.

…

Tic, tic, tic. An endless tic tic tic and an endless tricki-ti-clack. You couldn't hear it always, but it was there all the time.

At specially quiet nights at that multistory parking lot where the tic tic tic would echo on the walls of the place becoming maddening. 

The solution the guards came up with was to always have the radio on. There was not even a need for it to be too loud and thus for many years the tic tic tic wasn't a problem. 

They of course wondered from time to time where the sound came from. Many of them assumed it was from one of the factories that along some office buildings surrounded the parking lot and in some cases kept running all night.

Well, last week a power generator exploded and left the zone blacked out for hours. Pitch black wherever you turned to, and yet the tic tic tic persisted.

But not only that. On the almost perfect silence of that night the clicking on time became almost deafening, the Tricki-ti-clack sounded as clearest as ever, and even some new sounds were perceivable. Like the sound of metal rods being hit against each other, paper sheets being moved around, scratching and by the end of that night one of the guards heard claps.

The guards on shift that night have no answer for what that was and while scared, as long as the lights don't go out and it happens again, they don't really care. 

But one of them is superstitious enough to seek the help of professionals.