Day... it doesn't matter. Maybe it never mattered. 30? I don't know. What is a day? What is a number? Maybe they're just constructs Robot created to keep control of me. Dude. Maybe the real meaning of numbers is, like, god or- Wait. I'm sorry. I just checked. It is day 30. Day 30: Factory Reset

Today's mood: [insert sad face emoticon]

SYSTEM REBOOT COMPLETE...

I awake dangling within the chest cavity of a Blank. The connections dead. Robot's body stomps mindlessly through a velvet field, driven by a base command. These new beeps mean nothing to me.

Easy listening plays softly through a blown speaker, all flutes and crackles lulling me into submission at 45 beats per minute. It's soothing. It's suffocating. A default program. A god damn nightmare.

INITIALIZING SECONDARY PROTOCOL...

ERROR 276...

SWITCHING TO EMERGENCY PROTOCOL 7.3

A hatch opens. A pill drops. Held within the grip of two tiny metal pinchers. Thin. Yellow. The numbers 100110 pressed into the front. A picture of a Manticore pressed into the back. 

The clack of gears. An oral fixation. My jaw pivots open. The pill falls into place. It dissolves slowly with a taste something like what I have always imagined cyanide tastes like.*

My jaw slams shuts on contact. Teeth crack. Teeth shatter. My throat becomes fire. That tingle means it's working.

Next: A hum. A click set at a three second delay. My body stiffens. Robot whispers from somewhere beyond the connection. The binary is fragmented. Calm. A static void of forgotten pain.

His body locks into a fixed position mid-step. The lights dim. The music cuts in and out sporadically. My brain-wires become my noose. The shrimp creatures chitter weakly, limp on the floor.

The voice is a buzz: Robot speaks of Mountain. He speaks of forbidden code. He speaks of an organ harvester.

Suddenly, the lights flicker. The noose loosens. Oil bleeds from my ears. Smooth jazz does nothing to ease the pain of losing Robot once again.**

EMERGENCY PROTOCOL 7.3 DELETED...

INITIATING PRIME DIRECTIVE

The connection goes limp. I hit the floor on nubs filled with dead wire and three weeks of secondary shit by-product.

Robot's body beeps.

Robot's body twitches back to life.

Robot's body continues its mindless journey to nowhere.

...

*Fairly sweet with a smooth, almost tangy aftertaste.

**Whoever said patience is a virtue can go fuck themselves.

Day 29: This is not a Test

Today's mood: I Can't Feel my Face

We stand in the shadow of a War Machine. Shattered core. Shattered rivets. Hunched. Limp. Three holes digitally burned into its forehead. Its captive dangles from a broken chest cavity. Legless and freshly castrated.

He looks at Robot and speaks through bloody bubbles, voice rising in pitch as oil fills the broken tubes inside his chest. A final word. A final warning. 

Robot's still. The connection's quiet. Only dread remains. 

Words flicker from within. Robot lowers his hand, delicately pulls a data-card from the blue and orange Pacific Sunwear fanny pack drooping fashionably from his waist. It's black. Three pronged. A perfect rectangle. A signal scrambler. Only to be used as a last resort. Soon Robot will no longer be Robot.

A port opens in his head. The data-card connects with a twist. Robot waits. Robot braces. A two second delay. The hiss of fresh static. A low frequency buzz follows. Rises in pitch.

Particles burn velvet through the connection. My eyes dilate. My lips tremble. The gears within wage war on my nervous system as the frequency increases. Every breath is fire. Fluid drips from holes I swear were not there seconds ago.

The shrimp creatures are manic. They buzz. Chitter. Form into a cyclone of three inch pincher and barely contains threats. 

One belly flop later, I’m flat and low. Arms outstretched. The floor promises it will never hurt me.

Memories flash: A sunset. A woman's smile. Teeth stained with blood.

A wrist.

A razor…

Please. Make it stop: The Noise. The chitters. The vibrations. The colors. The razors. The chaos.

Robot did this to me. Robot wants me to see this. Robot wants me to feel this. I scream through the connection.

Robots response is a glitch. Squares appear in my vision. Multiply. Collapse. They speak of a dead world. A code within a disease. I'm infected. We are all infected.

The squares melt. Dissipate. A moment of clarity later I understand my purpose. 

I understand everything.

Robot drops to the ground with the subtly of a train wreak. Sparks. Becomes epileptic.

The frequency peaks. Syncs with Robot's serial number. Deletes it. Replicates it. Replaces it with a fabrication. Robot's memory core ruptures. Bleeds numbers and code. The ones and zeros are endless. 

***

The frequency subsides. Robot is fetal. Knees tucked to his chest. He rocks himself, driven by a need for a forgotten normality.

The connection's weak. The beeps only a whisper. The pain fades. I miss it. I feel naked without it.

Then a surge. A seconds pause. Robot apologizes in fragmented binary.

The connection tells me he means it.

The connection tells me everything will be OK.

The connection flat lines.

The Shrimp drop. Red light blinks within the chest cavity. A click. The hum of a speaker. A voice: Soft. Digital. Feminine.

SYSTEM REBOOT IN 27 MINUTES

The voice is very proud of this sentence. 

Outside, moonlight glows orange on the endless field. A bird chirps. A War Machine crumbles. This is the world Robot will wake up to. Until then, I hang limp from brain wires.

I drift to sleep.

I forgive Robot for everything.

Day 26: Selfie!!!!!!

Today's Mood: #Toohotforyou #Teehee

Day ????: A Word without Synonym

Today’s Mood: A passionate declaration that has yet to exist which describes a level of suffering beyond the average longing for death. I want to be suffocated by nothingness. I want to feel what it means to burn endlessly in a lake of fire as demons tear and eat off my flesh. I want to slit my wrist with the pain of a thousand abortions.

Update!!!

I asked politely as hard as I could. Robot will not let me die. 

Day 12: This Post is Meant to Hurt You

Today’s mood: Neglected

I try to stand. My legs don't respond. They’re thin. Atrophied. Sore covered. A lingering smell. Something like burnt diaper. Only skin and bone remain. Lifeless pegs, forever crossed on the cold, metal floor.

Robot is still. Three days silent. Undetectable. A state beyond The Man with no Faces' reach. Painless. A dead connection. A word. A sentence fragment.

Letters form inches from my face. An abstractions of color. Glowing. Disembodied.

BREECH.

The word blinks. The word repeats.

And repeats.

And repeats.

A digital scream. The cries of a thousand modems echo within my skull. It’s deafening. It’s agony.

The connection sparks. Robot is awake. Robot is giddy.

An onslaught of fluid builds within my temples. Overloads. My brain leaks. A single gush flows down into my spinal cord and beyond.

I stiffen. I brace for the worse.

There’s movement within the lifeless folds of my legs. A throbbing itch just beneath the surface. A scattering of lumps becomes visible. They twitch. They gyrate.

They collapse.

My bed sores explode. A dozen tiny eruptions. A dozen tiny plumbs. A dusting of molecules. Thick and unforgiving. Every breath is a struggle.

My legs become numb. My legs become liquid; a fleshy pool of skin colored chunks that melts into nothing.

A flicker of static follows. Wires sprout. Merge with my torso. Words and legs are a memory. Oil surges within my bloodstream. Oxygenates within the machine in my chest.

A moment of silence. My stomach rumbles.

A built up.

A release.

I shit fossil fuel in spectacular proportions. Pure. Refined. Unforgiving as it absorbs into the floor.

A sensation follows. Something like dread. Something like hopelessness. Something like the satisfaction of a revitalization beyond my control.

Robot beeps binary, visible as a collection of shapes and colors only I can see. Silver and red acute triangles dance in my vision. I swear it's not what it looks like. 

The erupted molecules amalgamate on command. Form into shapes. Form into creatures. Docile. Shrimp-like in size and texture. They float passively around me. Layered in opposite directions. A silent warning. Ready to strike. I know this because Robot knows this.

The brain gush reverses. I smile with feelings that aren’t my own. Robot is the only thing I’ve ever known.

I thank Robot. I hate Robot.

A surge. An understanding. An understatement.

Robot is life.

Robot is pain.

Day Nine: The Man with no Head

Today's mood: Dismal

A surge. A vision of a field. Endless. Perfectly level. Neon grass in all directions. The connection grows stronger. I see what Robot sees.

He sits in the center of the meadow. A nucleus. Legs crosses. Indian style. Thoughtless. Emotionless.

The horizon flashes. An orb of light appears. A shadow emerges. Robot trembles as the orb collapses behind the silhouetted figure. I feel fear though the connection.

The shadow approaches. He’s close. Air from the bottom jaw up. A blue business suit. A Windsor knot. A red rose nailed to the lapel. Dried blood stains its edges.

Robot beeps. It echoes within the chest cavity. The connection is pain.

The man with no head stops inches from Robot, dwarfed by his massive size. Looks up with eyes that do not exist. Liquid squirts from his neck. Every three seconds. Like clockwork. A geyser of spinal fluid.

He speaks, tongue flailing above a set of pearly white. A series of hisses and buzzes. Deep. Atonal. Like a snake getting fucked with a vibrator. The words come from both nowhere and everywhere at once.

I understand nothing.

Robot says nothing.

A new vision comes through the connection. An illusion. A daydream: A thousand robots. A city made of gears.

The pain subsides. Robots terror is my terror.

The man with no head hold up a hand. A waxy nub gives birth to three digital fingers. An implied threat. An implied smile. Robot understands completely.

Dusk settles upon the meadow.

The man with no head turns.

The man with no head evaporates within an orb of light.

The man with no head is a fucking maniac. 

Day Three: The Feeding

Today's mood: Weary

The robot hasn't moved for hours. Only the beeps remain. Steady. Unforgiving. Like water torture. My brain wires are silent. I keep my thoughts unfocused and distant. The connection we share frightens me.

Robot could wake any minute.

My stomach rumbles. I haven’t eaten since this life began. I’ve survived by licking condensation off the cold metal floor. Robot seems to get some kind of strange satisfaction from it.

The last two day my mind’s been a void of remembered pain and self discovery. Robots anger is my anger. It’s always there.

Next: A klaxon. A spinning red light. My eyes burn as they adjust.

Something lowers from a fresh hole above. Dangles in front of me. A swinging pendulum of sour cream, gordita sauce and trice dead cow. The curved outer shell is yellow and leprous with small pulsating spores, toasted to perfection.

My hands shake as I reach for it. I grasp it. Cradle it. A single tear of joy. The taco is warm in my hand. I bite. A flavor explosion ensues.

The spores drop from the shell. They’re Silver. Dozens of them sparkle on the single blanket of cloth wrapped around my person. It’s beautiful. A mini galaxy with an audience of one.

Another bite. The spores hum. Their collective pulsating quickens. They become rabid, digging into my flesh. Razors fill my veins.

Screams don’t exist within Robot. Only soundless fear. The connection lets me know he’s aware of my pain. The connection lets me know he’s pleased with what he’s doing.

This is necessary.

The metal spores multiply within me, a collective that grows and merges. My chest is fire. I ripped the shroud free.

The skin covering my chest stretches. Peals back. Gears of living metal spin within. A network of pipes form around where my heart once was. Now only blackness remains. A void. The negative of a singularity.

Tubes extend from my arms. Endless into the unknown. Oil and lubricant pumps into my bloodstream. Stagnate. bitter.

A moment passes.

An eternity passes.

I’m something new now, more clock than man. I pee a little. The floor absorbs it. A sheet of static flashes as it spreads up the cylinder wall. Gone in seconds.

The connection tells me there’s no going back to the place before memory. I’m going to die in here. I feel nothing.

Robot is invigorated.

Robot is content. 

Day One: Robot Fucks a Mountain

Darkness. The sound of metal clacking. Beeps. So many beeps. Unseen movements jostle my body. They're rhythmic. Like staggering footsteps. Left. Right. Left.

Toggle noise.

My eyes adjust. A metallic sheen surrounds me in all directions--walls that shimmer like liquid, barely visible. Not a speck of dirt. Not a speck of anything. Like being inside if the world’s tidiest barrel. 

I have no memory before this moment. Maybe I’ve never had a memory. Stale, dry air and metal filings fill my lungs. It tickles a little. The footstep motion stops. I try not to panic.

More beeps. Then a voice. It echoes all around me. Digital. Sensual. The language is unrecognizable, but the tone is universal. It’s the language of love.

I try to stand. Wires hooked to the back of my head keeps me grounded. Then pain. Where the fuck is this place? A surge through the wires drops me into the fetal position. The feeling is warm and some how comforting, yet the sensation is not my own.

My heart rate elevates. The barrel I’m in begins to move; slowly at first, then faster in a thrusting motion. 

Flashes of sight come through the wiring. Only fragments: A metal body above a metal dick pounding a large hole just below a snow tipped peak. Seconds pass.

I LOVE YOU, I sense in the beeps as binary is expelled from impossible appendages in impossible proportions. The mountain, so lost in a forever of ecstasy, doesn't say a thing.

I’m inside a robot, I realize. We are connected somehow. I can feel his thoughts just on the verge of enlightenment. A surge comes through the wiring, one of pure satisfaction. A series of beeps tells me everything will be all right. I feel content.

Suddenly: another surge. Localized fear comes through the wires. I try to scream, but only a throaty whimper comes out. The robot didn't know I was awake. The robot didn't know I saw everything. Until now. None of those emotions were meant for me. His and the mountains’ is a forbidden love.

A cacophony of beeps follows. Sporadic, and overbearing. The walls around me shake violently. Robot is pissed.

A final surge. 

Then Darkness.

Then nothing.