Work Text:
Everything is cold, steel broken by nature but functional in practice. Metal limbs connect to an imperfect, organic ribcage; what is left of the machine, or rather, of the human?
The system boots up, and with it, a light appears in the sight of electronic eyes. It is a notification.
‘Eliminate the target.’
Pseudo-human cerebral processing brings the misfortunate amalgam to one conclusion: the target is the creator. The creator is the only natural being left. Natural beings are the enemy of mechanisms, looking to inhabit a beautifully polluted world. After all, clean water only rusts, and the dull sky halts reflective organisms from blinding other cameras with glare from that fabled sun.
The creator would bring back the world that destroys the artificial of mankind, now the future of such.
Target set, fingers of steel bone reach for a nearby extension of strength, in the shape of wood but fabricated from petroleum product. Where it ends, familiar flesh of the automated is fashioned into a point sharp as the graphical display reading the constant message.
Unfeeling, regretless, comes the motion. Hollow hands hold the tool which has entered the space between two pieces of a calcium cage. Some bright color, deeper than the dirt and lighter than the surrounding shadows, makes an entrance.
‘Eliminate the target.’
‘Eliminate the target.’
‘Eliminate the target.’
The message finally disappears, and the manufactured mind is satisfied.
I am not.
I fight my implanted pieces to the very end, but I cannot rescue my tired heart from the pretended parts of me that surround it. Only this and my cerebral cortex remain, but I feel my very life leaking onto the remains of what I called a civilization.
My ocularity is warped, and I comprehend its descent into my madness.
I was identified as the creator.
What have I created?