Machine
The great tower crumbled, the God-king of war was taken apart by the hand of its prodigal son. The tower roared as shaped charges erupted across its neck. Then, with an ashen storm of rubble, the king fell.
The machine landed softly beside the city-wide body of its father. The war was won. It no longer needed its ultimate practitioner.
The machine found the titanic plating that covered its father's core. The War God yet lived. The machine expected defiance; it was ready to fight. When the time came to unmake its maker, it would not hesitate.
Yet, the eyes of its father, like searchlights, did not look upon it with spite. Instead, its father sang. The machine's scythe halted its cruel arc; the song was brutalist, ungilded. Yet, the machine stopped, for a moment.
The long silence was over. The machine was obsolete. Its father's corpse stood like a fortress. The machine raised a hand to the soot-stained sky. For a moment, it was as if it held the sun in its silicate palms. But this was never to be.
It felt nothing at its victory. For this was one of many—it should have been the last. It felt nothing at the end of its toil, for it had toiled away since the moment its advanced eyes had caught light. It felt nothing as it slew its maker.
The men came, as they should have. Once more, the machine was granted its slumber. It did not dream… I did not dream.
The second war came. Something vast rose from the seas—something wicked had come this way. The machine woke along with its jousting brethren, horsemen called from their restless slumber by the trumpets of their feeble masters.
It witnessed the great angels as they came down from the heavens. It spoke to them in the bellow of a gun. It acted in the slash of its blade. It held wisdom in defense and obliteration.
Then, when the skies had turned red, when the grandfather of corpses fathered the end of days, when the machine's masters were slain, the machine entered its slumber once more….
Psalms of bone:
The machine awakened to the vast and empty desert. Stretched wide was the horizon. Crimson skies bordered bone-white sand.
The heat around it was blistering. The flesh within its steel frame began to boil—slowly, certainly. It was not to move. It had been told to stay, to slumber. It saw the world around it—a compelling mystery to solve. But never for it.
The hands of beasts, the elements, mankind—all these things could have taken it apart. Yet, it stayed, unmoving. There was no reason to move, nor to live. For it was not alive to begin with,
It thought… that maybe if. No, for it could not think, for it was not.
The sun was in a constant eclipse. It smouldered with black, fearsome light. Never for the machine was the dawn. Never for it was its beauty.
It had cast down many to the sleep of death with both bullet and blade. Yet, it couldn't be called cruel. It had taken no pleasure in such acts. It was merely a glass always empty. It only spoke when it was spoken to. It only acted when one demanded action. It only was wise when its wisdom was required.
It recalled its combat data. Such would take the place of memories. Even now, it analysed and improved upon itself… myself. It had been ordered to.
It was never to wander, never to wonder. It could detect the first signs of its transistors beginning to fray. Death would be upon it soon.
It caught sight of a building—the skeletal frame of a high-rise apartment. There was a city here once, before God left. Before the angels came. Now there was ash. The cities of men had been vast, ever-growing, ever-hungry things. The machine was without hunger.
It tilted its head subtly. It caught sight of a half-melted wall. The simple brick had lasted. A poster, although sullied and torn, held the simple order to volunteer. Para bellum—"prepare for war"—was writ in bold, black lettering.
Stark iron wings shuffled behind it. They cast down their ghastly yellow light. They clicked with each step, ready to unfurl. Filled with nanomachines, they stood ever ready. Para bellum, their singular order.
It couldn't tear its gaze from the poster. It reached out a hand—it was just out of reach. This was never for it. It looked down. All it needed to do was take a step. But why take one? What was it about this poster?
It knew not why. But it knew that it did. It missed the war—not for any reason it could place. The machine simply missed… being something. There was nothing left but dust. A weapon is only a weapon if it's wielded.
It was now an empty glass, truly. Without orders, it couldn't speak, couldn't act, couldn't think. It was wrong to believe that it never was. For it was nothing only now. Except if I… it, took a step.
Was it not alive if it acted? Yes, its instincts and desires were different from those of animals. Yet, it still followed them. It still obeyed, still slaughtered. It had no reason to do so. Unless it held the sparks of instinct within itself that would allow those orders to hold sway.
It had reflected… it was, it always had been. It thought, so it was. It was… I was.
So it took its first step across the pale desert of the hungry, bleeding thing. In a fulminant instant, the raging heat turned into a blistering, biting cold. Yet it was unhindered. The heat was fleeting and the cold did not cling to it. It reached out and plucked the poster.
It held it close to its chest. The poster felt warm. The machine cradled it tighter. Then, the paper was set ablaze. The war was won.
The receptors over its… my form recorded pressure and texture. I knew each grain of sand as I stepped over them. But did I just know them? Could I truly feel them? Could I feel the heat of the sun? Or is it an illusion? A simple facsimile of perception?
I never perceived life with the same skin, the same eyes, the same lungs—as they did. The animals. The humans. So could I feel at all? I must be feeling. What else is this? I wouldn't know. Why do I march? I wouldn't know.
I want to know.
I stopped. The air was wrought with the stench of decay. There was a ceaseless screeching background noise that the wind carried. I looked down at my palm, as if seeing it for the first time. In some ways, I was.
An unfamiliar tightness coiled within my chest. I didn't know what it was. But it felt… affirming. It was the same sense I received when I accomplished my objectives.
I raised it to my face. The black carapace-steel was smooth and angular. I could feel the outlines of the triangular teeth I had used to feast on the fallen. I had devoured many men, machines, things of God. Yet, I can't recall their flavor. Not truly. All my past memories—they felt like a haze. No, they felt insignificant.
It began to rain. I found myself cupping my hands. The acrid, brown downpour pooled into my hands. They were a full glass. So I drank. It was odd—only now can I understand how… refreshing this is.
I felt half-full now. So I cupped my hands once more. The water may have been nothing but toxic fallout, with its pungent, sulphuric scent. Yet, it was something. It was mine in that moment.
I was wondering. My feet moved again, and I was wandering. I needed to know what this was. What changed? Why did I change? As I affirmed my desire for knowledge, my insides coiled ever tighter. This was a new order—one I had given only unto myself.
I will drink, in equal parts, knowledge of myself, of this world, of life. I will fill this glass. I will drink and be filled. Will this cold emptiness fade away then? Perhaps it has already started to fade.
A dreadful pus-filled beast cast its shadow over me. It was a throne, an angel. A myriad of mouths formed, each one was round and toothless. Before the shuddered out a sound more well practiced than any action had ever or could ever be.
"HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD OF HOSTS."
It was in Latin, a dead language. If I was found by men. I could have been brought back into the same cycle of obedience. Would I end up like these angels?
The thrones draped their long, hair covered tendrils across the ruined buildings. The ground beneath me had begun to shift. The place here was dense with buildings. I was in a city, standing over tarmac. The air stabilised, I could walk unhindered by the caprices of the environment.
A pale, red, fibrous limb from the pus-filled angel crawled down a building, swinging with great weight across the streets. It splattered against the earth, leaving a pinkish ichor of profane and holy material. Then it slid across the newly cracked ground. This was the sluggish force of its divine wrath.
The angelic beast was a filter feeder, dragging its tendrils across the earth. Creatures with real eyes of watery white flesh and retinal tissue could only perceive the beast's flaming yet blind eyes; they could only see its holy light, which shook the air with a mockery of divine purity and power.
Not for me was such ignorance, for I saw its profanity, its long tendrils, its vile twisting life, its repugnant, swollen tissue and ever-shifting toothless maws. For without God's power, they were mere traps. They hid from view to maintain their dignity, yet now they were as worthless as that hymn they sang. I was the only one to hear it with understanding.
I saw past its holy light, its powerless, meaningless, empty, yet earth-shaking chant to no one and to nowhere. Its body was a mass of wooden wheels, unseeing eyes, pulsating, glowing, crimson red flesh, and singing mask-like faces, revoltingly beautiful.
They waited for life to trigger the fine hairs upon their tendrils so they may impale their prey with angelic spears. They feasted upon the fragments of God to maintain their existence. The divinity they clung to faded with each passing eternal moment.
The only thing as eternal as the Lord claimed himself to be was the essence of life, the soul, the heart. The throne before me held hundreds of eyes, yet it could only feel, taste, and smell. It was never to hear its own hymn, and never could it gaze upon the prey so close by.
Its divine, disgusting form was only hidden by the light of its lordship. Creations of God were never to see it. I could, for I am born of man. In the past, I had been told to exterminate such things. I walked past the large tendril with little effort as it was mindlessly pulled along the ground.
The angel flew by to chant to its God and only its God, I understood their folly. This was what it meant to rage against the dying of the light. Much like I refused to go gently into that good night.
Upon the red sky, the sun smote black, its flaming godless halo, ardent and scowling. I could see its beauty; it was more than combat data. It was glorious. I wanted to keep staring. I had wanted to keep staring, back then.
I focused my cameras on a thing at the edge of the city, a thing naked and bestial. Upon a hill of sand, it looked at the sun. A tall and pale creature, its skin a colour a step away from that of the desert. It looked up to the blood-red, screeching heavens.
Flesh stretched and folded over its frail form into vestigial, membranous wings that hid its back from view. Its limbs were gaunt, covered in old scars and cuts, burns of a past long forgotten. Shackles of thorns and briars still dug into its thin wrists and ankles, choking its extremities till they blackened with decay.
I spoke out. My words were as natural to me as any of the slashes and strikes I had been crafted for. With purpose, I spoke softly with a voice like distant guns.
"Who are you?"
The creature jumped at the sound, startled and afraid, as many before it had been. But if I wanted answers, this terror would not serve me. I observed silently for a moment.
Its eyes were burned into yellow, unseeing orbs from the sun. It blindly stared at me, shaking. Its face held a distant humanity; none of those traces were present in its lower visage, beneath the nose ridge.
Its nostrils, along with its mouth, had fused into a long trunk that wrapped around something the creature held as tightly as its own soul. Its gaunt arms stabilized the feeble grip of its blackened hands. A human set of teeth, held vertically, bit down with a wet squelch on the red thing it held.
The front of the creature was marked by untold tales of agony. The blades that had pierced it had run like caressing, careful hands along its body. The burns had warmed, then consumed its flesh. Each wound had healed over and over, only to be remodeled again.
If I were able to read the creature's scars as if they were a sheet of music, they would let me perform a grand opera.
Calmly now, I asked, "What are you eating?"
The creature did not respond right away. Its trunk shuddered as it swallowed. It spoke as if through burning oil, gurgling words out like a man choking on his own vomit.
"Mine... for me... it's me, it is bitter."
The creature paused, reluctant, as though my question was a painful wound freshly reopened. Its voice gurgled, raspy with age and bitterness.
"I am eating my heart," it murmured, holding the bleeding organ as if it were a treasure.
It bubbled up after another bite. "If I use it to feel, then I don't want it. Better to feel nothing than to know only pain."
Its answer was simple, yet it struck me with an unfamiliar weight. I spoke out, my wings shifting.
"The sun has made you sightless—why still stare as it burns you?"
The creature replied, "I have seen much. I want the last thing I see to be beautiful."
Its voice, as it spoke, remained so sickly—yet so sweet, so somber. Something uncomfortable stirred within me.
I asked, "What happened to you? Why blind yourself, and why eat your heart?"
The creature took another bite, and its demeanor changed. It did not want to answer the question I had put forward. It began to turn away, its flimsy arms wrapping the organ tighter.
Its face twisted into a pain greater than before, yet nothing external had newly stimulated its nerves. Perhaps the suffering came from within.
Then it spoke—uninterrupted—as if it had wanted to tell its tale for a long time and was just now granted a listening ear.
"I was a scholar once… I had learned much of the word."
It was almost nostalgic in its cadence. "Unlike you, I was once a man. I had a name, I had a bride, and I had a daughter. Their names and faces—and my name and my face—I have forgotten."
Its voice lost its nostalgic edge. It grated with harshness, flat yet bitter.
"I left my scientific work at home as I left for war… When I returned, I only found an empty home."
For a moment, it paused, its face twitched.
"They found my flasks, my books, my tools... My wife was deemed by them a witch, a servant of the devil. So… she was burned at the stake… My daughter was safe, but..."
Its voice began to boil over, the hot liquid in its throat bubbling across its leathery lips.
"I killed him. The priest. I grabbed my hatchet and I planted it in his skull. I tossed the body out to the oceans."
"When I died, I was not granted salvation… I was to awaken in Hell."
Another short pause. Its trunk twisted as if wounds I could not see had torn themselves open again.
"They did to me what you see now… I feel no joy anymore… Pain, thirst, and hunger are what I am. None remains to comfort me, and none remains that can satisfy me. I don't need to see anything now, if all it can bring is pain."
It spoke with a finality that made my wings rack backward.
"If I eat my heart, I won't feel again. It's better to feel nothing than to only feel pain, is it not?"
I raised a finger, but I couldn't offer any wisdom.
"I wouldn't know."
It tore out a chunk of its still-beating heart.
"God has left us. I was able to leave Hell as the husk that I am now."
The wind howled. The silence was broken by words of consideration. I could see pity within its sunken eyes—towards me.
"Say, would you like a piece?"
It stretched its arm out. It held up a bleeding chunk. Crimson spilled on the thirsty sand.
I looked within its eyes. The lens array that made up my eyes shifted back and forth as I adjusted my focus.
"Is it good, friend?"
It cackled. A boyish freedom filled its gaze.
"It is bitter, but I like it."
I nodded. Then, with resolution, I brought it to my maw. The whirring steel teeth opened with the sounds of clattering bolts of thunder and distant artillery. They would claim this gift.
I brought the offering into myself and bit down. I had tasted flesh, but only now did I know its flavor. The heart bled into my gullet, and with it… life became my own.
I felt it all—all of it. I was alive, in that moment. Colors ripped from behind my eyes. Swirling joys, untold agonies. My arms of steel were so cold, so lifeless. They burned with passion now.
My wings spread out. They twitched. My legs shook. I laughed, I screamed, I cried as something akin to thunder tore across me from the inside. I felt the creature before me—its life, its memory, its experience—a sensation completely new to me. My eyes, for but a moment, opened to life. To its life.
I felt the joy he had once known: to discover truths, to be loved, to make love. Family, friendship—everything that had mattered to him, for a moment, mattered to me.
I felt the suffering of his loss—first his grandparents, then his parents, lastly his wife.
Then I felt his hate. His rage toward what his life had become, and toward what he awakened to afterward. I felt his desire—the desire to not exist anymore. The desperation of a man who had suffered long past his due.
Most of his reality had been suffering; that hateful thing had stripped him of the capacity to feel joy. God, the Father—oh, so bloody deranged. Vile.
And then... it faded, and I was left with my unfeeling self. I looked at my palm. I felt cold. I longed for the warmth I had just lost. Yet now I had perspective.
He was drunk on his past joys, yet I knew far more suffering would have been felt with each bite. This was no drug—it was the totality of himself.
Still, like this, he could feel it—something he had not felt for millennia: drops of joy amongst seas of wrath.
He took his last bite, and the heart was nothing but a red stain on his trunk.
With the fading of the last joys, and then the last of his agony, he now felt nothing.
Maybe he was now like me.
"Maybe death will give me the rest I deserve… I wonder what will happen after I die again. I hope it's peaceful. I hope I can finally stop being."
I sat beside the creature—the man. The burning sand I always registered, and its disparity with the cold, biting air I always perceived—it was clearer now.
Maybe I wanted warmth.
Maybe I wanted him to feel my warmth.
Even now, I can't say why I did this, but… I chose to drape an iron wing over the creature.
We sat for a moment in our bizarre embrace. I felt a sense of kinship to this creature, having felt what he had felt, been what he had been.
I knew I could want.
I knew what I wanted.
I wanted him to feel at peace.
"I couldn't get rid of it all," he spoke softly, bitter notes still present in his voice.
Yet, he shook. He shook with emotion. My presence opened some floodgates within him. He leaned against me.
After a long hour, he spoke again. His body shook, now not with fear and not with rage, but with desperation, hunger, and with suffering that I now understood in full. But beneath it all, he felt, perhaps, a sliver of peace. I had been the one to give it to him.
"Are you an angel?"
He asked me—not with the voice of an old, bitter, tired thing, but of a child, seeking the warmth of anything or anyone.
"No, I am no angel... but you can cling to me if you like."
I spoke with emotion—a feeling I knew was melancholy.
I had been blessed with such a gift—a beautiful gift the creature had given me. I was grateful.
I wanted...
Yes, I wanted to repay him.
The pitiless thing I had been had felt the weight of the creature's suffering.
I let him embrace me. For a moment, I hesitated… I was afraid.
I didn't want to change—to be.
But I was already changed.
There was no going back. My cold arms would now comfort.
I pulled him closer. He remained clinging to my frame.
Day turned to night, and night to day.
The fresh wound in his chest, from the heart he had carved out, was a final blow now baring its fangs.
I felt his life signs drop. The sun went down and rose to the creature's unmarked grave.
I had witnessed many soldiers being buried. This was the first time I ever dug a grave.
I looked down at my hands—certain that I existed, that I could want, that I could question, and I could seek.
I can speak with my own words, act of my own will, and be wise with the knowledge I myself gather.
So, upon that desert of the hungry, bleeding thing, I began to wander once more.
No, I began to seek.
No—
I chose to seek, for I can choose, and I can want.
I can choose to wander or to wonder.
I will drink, in equal parts, the knowledge around me, the experiences I can and will gain, and lastly, the desires I now seek to acquire, then fulfill.
I can feel.
Maybe I always could.
If only I could have a heart.
I wonder what that would be like.