Drums | A flash fiction story
55 of đź’Ż
Beasts roared, birds sang, and Daisy danced. The shrill droning sound of the cicadas cut the thick air of the jungle, monkeys yelled at each other in a vigorous discussion in the distance, large birds’ screeches pierced through the wall of sound while her tribe smacked drums furiously, and Daisy danced.
Her plastic body wasn’t covered in sweat, her feet didn’t bleed from the pointy branches and sharp rocks, and she didn’t have a heart beating in sync with the drums. She didn’t have a human body, but he had somehow imbued her with the human soul. She danced and jumped in the clearing while Violet sang to the sound of the drums, the sound of the jungle. There were no lyrics, just the up-and-down of her voice telling the most primitive of stories in a single long syllable.
The intricate system of microphones in Daisy’s ears captured the soundwaves that shook the jungle and fed them to her brain as electric signals. The rhythm of the drums reverberated on her chest and the multiple touch sensors under her artificial skin broke the information into bits and bytes. The sensory receptors in her nose, specialized in detecting scents, transformed the binding of odor molecules into electric activity. She felt the music, the forest, and the members of her tribe. She felt it like humans do. She felt human — here, she was one.
And Daisy danced.
