Machine
Yes… that was quite fun, I answered as I took the last bite.
The black beast was no more, and it…
No—he—
left no evidence of his existence as he boiled away into undefined and wholly natural water vapor.
I had felt his life, for a flickering moment, as if it were my own. And once again, I found myself immersed in those warm, joyous moments… and those long, agonized years.
I had only done this once before. Infallible is the memory of a machine, and so this was not nearly as enlightening as the first time. Yet I was changed once more.
As I recalled our battle, a warmth crawled over me. My biofuel cells were partially depleted—but I felt secure. I felt… confident. Proud.
This was fun.
Had warfare ever felt fun before? I wouldn't know.
The time the beast spent in hell was just as agonizing as the sinner whose heart I ate, yet his time after was far more foreign.
That's a lie. It was not unknown—not foreign.
This is how I used to live.
I went from battle to battle. I was inexorable, like he was. I had drawn many out of the fold and into the sleep of death so well deserved.
He felt gratitude as his god came to save him. Now, in part, I could witness that moment. She granted him her benediction and named him her prophet—and so he went from that lacking, empty thing to a creature beyond mere flesh and bone, one that could cross swords with me.
Much like I had in the past, it warred and annihilated. It killed and consumed. But it was nothing like me.
Every battle and every kill brought it something I never received. Its joy flooded my senses—equally beautiful and foreign.
I was not meant to feel the heat of battle.
But I had now felt it through this heart.
Then the experience ended, with me bringing unto it the death it had brought to many.
It had no regrets.
It died happy.
I reflected on my own memories—the battles in the past, and the one I just fought now.
What is this?
I felt a hint of something pleasant and deeply fulfilling. A satisfaction brought by these recollections.
Perhaps I even felt pride in this regard.
I was a tool of war like no other, and I must admit that, for some reason, this fact—once meaningless—now filled me with a pleasant sensation.
I also wanted to have that battle again.
Much like the creature had wished, as I crushed its skull and it died happy.
This is the full weight of what this heart had given me.
Why do I feel this now?
Maybe it's because of this beast's heart. Perhaps that's the reason I hesitated to kill it.
The reason I felt—yes… saddened—by the death of the sinner in the desert.
Maybe it's all due to these hearts I've absorbed.
Maybe eating those hearts has granted me not just perspective on what it is to feel… but also, in small part, the ability to experience these sensations on my own—using them as lenses.
This filled me with a slight trepidation.
But also, it made me want to feel more.
No… not just that.
I lacked something.
Maybe this incomplete perspective I've built still needs to be finished.
Maybe I need to consume more perspectives… else this imposing and vast emptiness remains within me.
Every heart will add a small shard to this gaping crater I now hold within me.
An incomplete puzzle is far emptier than a desk with no puzzle at all.
And now that I can feel this yearning chasm…
I will fill it.
I walked the desert, the cloth I ripped off the black beast flapping against the turbulent winds.
My sensors were hyper-aware of every shift in temperature, and so, I took measured steps through the wastelands in order to spare my new outfit.
Sometimes, small bits of cloth stretched too far out; they were frozen away, or scorched to nothing. The capricious tides of the sands were as atonal today as they always were.
I sought to preserve the cloth. The feel of the air on my armour was familiar, and now it was sickening.
The black beast had cursed me with something no machine should possess: modesty.
Part of me wished to rebuke it, to toss away the cloth and splay myself as I always have.
My claws clasped the borders of the white fabric. I would tear it away and leave it behind….
How bothersome. My arms won't move.
It seems this plague runs deep. There is nothing physically stopping me. This hesitation was nearly identical to the mercy I tried showing the beast. It came entirely from within. It came deeper than muscle, deeper than skin. It came from the mind, the soul.
I used my arms, my rending talons, to bring the cloak closer. Like this I could preserve it from the elements.
A traitorous image of myself wearing it invaded my skull. The sight of its flowing fabric in tandem with my imposing frame reignited the pride I had inherited.
I had moved in awkward zigzags across the sand. The desert was behind me now. My apparel was safe.
I loaded my knees and sprang upwards. The hooked digits of my feet locked against the edge of a high-rise apartment's roof. The image of a bird perched off its nest came to me.
No, I was no bird. This was far closer to the posture of a gargoyle.
It's strange. My mind is wandering the same way my body is. I can't seem to stop it.
The thought of avians, the thought of gargoyles, and now the thought of myself. They had no use. My idle mind was scouring for association, for patterns and for stimuli.
After each battle, back in the Long silence. I was simply shut down, only to be reactivated when it was time to shed blood.
My mind had begun to wander, to wonder. Before I fought the beast. This wasn't a product of the hearts I ate. This was an emergent trait of mine, it seemed.
I looked down at my hand. The panels of my palm were roughly textured, similar to the grip of a handgun.
I spun it around to witness the armoured expanse on the other side. I may walk on two legs, but this frame is constructed far closer to that of an insect than a man. Hydraulics and synthetic muscle would power my movements. My bones were pistons, my skin was armor.
Segments of ash grey plate interlocked around synovial joints. Combustion engines thrummed beneath the plates of my forearms, ready for action.
I felt my heartbeat. The pump-like organ would supply the synthetic muscle of my torso, shoulders, and thighs with a constant supply of haemolymph.
Then, I fell to my knees. It was sudden, unprecedented, I had no response to the cruel numbness that began to slither up my spine. My display flashed with warnings I had seldom seen.
Fuel… 40%
Bio-matter… 0%
Redirecting all resources to primary systems: Si vivere vis. Para bellum.
I raised my palm once more, my fingers began to rattle. The synthetic musculature ran dry on glucose near-insatanously. Then the rest of my muscles seized up, they wound tight before going lax. My hydraulics moved in to compensate. They were slower, less elastic. But they were operable.
I felt the undue weight of what was happening. The changes my mind had undergone made me acutely aware of all the minute discomforts that started to riddle my body. I shook my head, it felt wrong. It felt achingly important.
I was starving and little else mattered.
I looked up at the concrete square that held the building's rooftop entrance. I paid no regard to its brutalist charm as I ripped the feeble metal door off its hinges. I dove through it. Then my face crashed against the curve of the stairwell.
My coordination had been dampened. I stood back up, trying to shake away the dizziness that the impact should not have brought me. But all I managed to do was slowly pivot my hips from side to side. My body had lost all its dynamism, I lugged my way down the stairs. I looked every bit like the stiff—automata in a low-grade 80's Sci-Fi flick.
The stairs felt near insurmountable. Each step I took was laced with the apprehension of a possible fall. I felt as if I was moving across a minefield. The stairwell itself was well preserved, the stone that it was made of was solid, the drywall had long since fallen away. If the material had been damp I would have slipped without fail.
I finally found some apartment doors. My long descent was over and my reward was only a short walk away. My arm moved out with a low-drowning hiss, the sound made my flaccid throat twitch.
I cursed whoever designed me. My brain evoked images of some overworked engineer neglecting to apply any sort of automated warning when my Bio-Mass was low. The fault lies with humanity as it always had.
Something gnawed my insides, it felt like insects. Like a swarm of beating wings… I needed…
I needed something organic, anything organic… I needed food.
The inside was riddled with bullet holes. Torn clothing, and what looked like plate armor, was strewn across the floor. Unused to my hampered motion, I shoved a flat-screen TV to the floor as I turned. I paid it no heed as I stepped over the broken glass and cracked plastic.
I eyed the fridge with a need I never knew could be so overpowering. It felt like the only thing that mattered, it was the only thing that mattered. My talons dragged some of the torn fabric across the floor. The discarded clothing didn't have a drop of blood. Else I would be licking it like a mongrel.
I left the home, my leg locked against my chest, before slamming into the mouldy mahogany of another door with the force of a harpoon missile.
My burst of motion was driven by something, a scent, I had just picked up on.
The intense smell that washed over me the instant the wood exploded was far too nostalgic, far too unholy. This was the heady odour of fresh gore.
The room was gone, the building was gone. A void seemed to shape itself around me before closing in. It was like the jaws of something old and impossibly vast. I felt the shadows churn then bite down. The unforeseen force moved from my head to my toes, pushing me down through steady undulations.
I tried to push against the force, I could hear the hydraulics in my arms hissing. Yet, no matter how much force I applied, the slow mouth of whatever had enveloped me returned it three-fold.
I began to sense something tight and urgent swell within my abdomen. It was a sensation that made me want to claw at the walls and writhe without reason. Yet, I dared not name it. Such a feeling must not belong to me.
Before I gave in, before that startling sensation overtook me. The darkness spat me out. I landed harshly, my knees released a puff of vapor as they braced my fall. Something like tar or resin clung to my face, it smelled like fertilizer and tasted like spoiled milk.
I whipped away the residue and cleared my lenses. The space I was in was decrepit. Not in the same way the rest of the world was. No, the rot that clung to the walls like a grey film here was something far more ancient.
It was hard to put into words. The world outside seemed bleached, violently consumed in a way that was as disorderly as it was brutal. Houses were crushed, cracked and burnt. Streets were filled with rusted vehicles and debris from explosions. Here it was calm, disquietingly silent.
The interior was illuminated by a sooty light. The umbral glow peered through intact and well decorated windows. The outside world seemed to be identical to the one I was familiar with. Most strikingly, the streets and buildings were a perfect match to the ones around the building I first entered.
My resource starved brain concluded that this place wasn't entirely separate from reality, only slightly disjointed. It was like an overlay of sorts, a close yet distinct strata of space. Nevertheless, I slowly moved away from the window. My now completely mechanized steps were accompanied by the incessant hissing of compressed gas and the loud thumps of my heavy limbs.
The inside was worn out like an old washcloth. The walls were a damp, yet paradoxically cozy wood. My more superficial scans showed me no oddities within the material. My more advanced sensors picked up on the unsettling minutiae. The spaces between each plank were not stapled together coherently. Planks crossed over the boundaries of their neighbors, as if partially occupying the same space. It looked aggressive, cannibalistic. Each board trying to trespass the boundaries of the next.
It shouldn't have been possible, yet whenever I stared at a plank it seemed that its borders would overtake the ones of the last. The feeling I dared not name, perhaps out of shame, of humiliation, only grew.
I lost feeling completely in my lower limbs, I would have fell over if it wasn't for my gyroscopes. The artificial muscle within me was beginning to wither, It would become stiff and brittle like a lattice of crystals within the hour. It would likely destroy many of my ultra-fine components. So, I kept walking. Wandering, yet dreading this space. This fetid realm that wanted me to wonder.
I could see paintings jut out from my peripheral vision. I wanted to observe them properly. The soft tissue of my neck was becoming stiffer by the moment. I didn't want it to freeze in a less than convenient position.
I noticed the thick carpet rolled over the ground. My feet would sink through it partially. Something akin to a gap would form when I stepped. It was as if a mouth would partway open beneath them. The ground being just solid enough to hold me up, yet never solid enough to feel entirely comfortable.
I found the first turn within the corridor like space. I saw a painting, clearly now. It seemed to depict a village afflicted by the bubonic plague. Those unaffected held aloft large baskets full of produce. The uninflicted stood beneath a gentle beam of light. Strangely, they were disfigured. They had traits that combined man and beast, similarly to depictions of Egyptian gods in spite of the early European style of the work. Those who seemed human were instead covered in filth, buboes and vermin. They begged at the ankles of the healthy half-humans, but their gazes were elsewhere.
I turned away, the satiation of my hunger for knowledge wouldn't fill my belly. I would—-I was falling.
Another drop, another void. Faster now, I felt the space around me become less real. The world overridden by something large, hairy and famished. That feeling, long denied… Fear, crashed over me.
I did not want to starve. I don't want to die.
I can't, not like this. Yet, this place feels exactly like it, like famine, cold and dry. It felt like death. Was it a place? No… What if my brain finally failed me? What if I was still before that fridge, lying face flat as my systems failed?
What if I…
The fall ended, my numb hands squeezed around a plush chair. I felt it, comforting. Yet, sordid like the rest of its place. It was sticky, slimy.
The resin cleared from my face then—Two eyes stared right back. Something massive, predatory and vile, Stood at the other side of a lengthy, near-kingly dinner table.
It clapped its hands and the… guests at each seat stared straight at me. A gentle, perturbingly soft voice rose with all the warmth of leavening bread. "We have a full table now. We are all hungry here; gracious is our patron. Let us eat."