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.