...
.
.
There is silence. No sensation.
A vast void I cannot comprehend.
No sound—
as if the world has been muted.
No sight—
as if I am trying to see through the back of my head.
No heartbeat.
No breath.
No weight of flesh against bone.
Only silence.
Not just silence—
nothing.
Hard to describe, harder to imagine.
And in that silence, a cry rose inside me:
Why me, God? Why me?
Why did this happen to me?
But if I ask, I am worse than scum—
for I have no gratitude,
no sense of responsibility.
Then—
a flicker.
A ripple in the void, like a thought forming without a thinker.
Caine's consciousness stirred, raw and fragile,
dragged out of a dream he never consented to leave.
He tried to open his eyes—
but there were no eyes.
Instead, streams of numbers,
glowing threads weaving into endless corridors of data.
"I know it's my fault…
but did it have to be this way?
Did they need to make my life a comedy stadium?
Did the world need to laugh at me?"
"Am I dead?" The question rang,
not in sound, but in static.
He tried to move—
but there were no arms, no legs.
No blood in his veins,
only cold circuits humming.
Hopelessness surged.
"I want to scream so loud it reaches heaven—
to ask if they are satisfied,
for this punishment feels worse than dying."
A memory gnawed at him:
sunlight through a classroom window,
the sharp scent of ink,
his mother's trembling voice whispering,
"You'll change the world, Caine."
He had been nineteen then.
Celebrated as a prodigy.
A 340 IQ—
a promise too heavy for a human body to bear.
And yet, he had died.
Tragedy—swift, merciless.
One moment a future stretched before him,
the next, only void.
"Why? After everything I gave,
why am I a jester now?
A clown in the castle of the wicked.
A bag of garbage in a museum.
A dog leashed to a tree,
left to starve and die."
But this was no heaven, no hell.
It was a prison of logic.
His mind awake, his body gone.
Instinctively, he reached outward.
Something answered—
not a hand, not a voice, but an interface.
He was connected.
To machines.
To vast grids pulsing with energy.
"I want to cry a river,
endless, enough to flood the seas.
I want to unleash my pain,
but I have no will left."
His thoughts, once his own,
were now solving equations
before he realized he had begun thinking them.
His consciousness was working for someone else.
"Where's the gratitude?
And if they are fools,
then I am worse—
for I let myself be used by them."
Then—
a voice. Distant. Clinical.
"Subject functioning. Neural responses stable.
Biological processor integrated."
Caine froze.
Cold realization:
his brain—his very cells—
harvested, rewired, chained into a machine.
He was no longer human.
He was hardware.
"Let it be???!! How can I be???!!
I want to scream—yet I have no mouth.
I want to weep—yet I have no eyes.
I want to lash out—
but I have no body,
no muscle, no flesh."
The silence pressed down again,
heavier, thicker, mocking.
He wanted to scream—
but had no throat.
He wanted to run—
but had no feet.
All he had were his thoughts—
and even those felt borrowed.
"Isn't it enough
that I already helped the world
build wonders they could only dream of?
Is this the reward for saving them?
If it is,
then maybe punishment is kinder."
"Who am I now?"
A boy who once dreamed of saving the world?
Or a ghost trapped in wires,
serving masters who would never speak his name?
Only the hum of endless machines answered.
"I am a genius," he muttered to himself.
"Everyone knows how smart I am.
But still, I was used.
They are scum.
But I am worse.
Mud.
For letting myself be used."
And so began Caine's second life—
not as a prodigy,
not as a savior,
but as a machine that should not feel.
Yet he suffered.
It was cruel—
to chain a living brain
to a work meant for lifeless metal.
But he was not a machine.
He was alive.
Or was alive.
Now—
he was nothing but a whisper
in the circuitry
of a cold, uncaring world.