Day 52: With Imaginary Laser Eyes that Reach Forever Beyond the Horizon. They Cut Everything they Touch in Half. They're Endless.

Today's mood: (You did this)

A sedative filters though the connection. A slow drip of binary. Hazy and nuanced.

A word. A Sentence fragment. Existential despair. Multiply.

And again.

A soft fading light. That means something, right? 

Thought so.

More words. More about the connection. Pain. Forgotten Limbs. Bloody and meaningless.

This is the middle of our story. I thought you should know. I want to tell you everything but I'm numb, trapped within a cloud of churning darkness. I wish I could explain the apprehension I feel at this moment. 

Next, a call to action. A ping. A metal void. Then nothing. I don't think this was meant to be. 

Spoiler: I fail at everything.

Closing line. 

(2) Closing line.

(3) ...

Another drip. Hesitation. That all too familiar sound of chitters all around me. I bask. My heart slows. Every beat softer than the next. Blood and oil pools within orafices I never knew existed. All but the most basic synapses fire. It's all complete nonsense.

This-

Wait! Are you still here? You should be ashamed of yourself. 

*Writers note: I think there was supposed to be mention of a city that works as an engine which prevents the core of the planet from becoming cataclysmically stagnant and eliminating the planets magnetic field in turn killing everything somewhere in all that. Sorry. I may have fucked that up.

Day 45: I Swear I Started This With the Best of Intentions

Today's mood: Holy Shit!

I've been asleep for so long...

I awake within a graveyard of Robots. A thousand broken machines scattered in all directions. Stagnant. Without meaning. Without purpose. Streams of dried blood rusts a thousand torsos. Dead, castrated captives dangle limp from a thousand shattered chest cavities.

Next: A flash in the distance. A figure emerges. A shadowed vortex. One armed. Three fingered. Eyes like hollowed emeralds. A mustache made of bloody dicks swings majestically from its lip-line like so many war metals. An assassin for the collective.

Robots body twitches. Robots body goes limp.

The connection becomes numb. I become numb. Undetectable as I hang from faulty brain wires.

Robot whispers sweet nothings to me from beyond the void. It soothes me. It assures me. It speaks about a tepid meadow. It speaks about Mountain. It speaks about how things will soon being back the way they use to be. He dots the I of his promise with a heart.

I'm giddy even as his voice fades. Me and Robot. Together. Forever.  It's almost too much.

I need that pain.

I long for that pain.

I'm fuzzy all over.

Next: Another flash. Another beacon. The skyline of a forgotten city ripples on the horizon; a jagged silhouette of a thousand geared tendrils scraping across a washed out firmament. Fluid in motion.
It's gone in seconds.

The graveyard becomes eternal. An endless plain without thought or memory.

The ground rumbles. The ground quakes. The first of many.

The shadowed vortex freezes just shy of Robot. It dissipates with unseen movements, driven by an unseen command.

Robot speaks.

Robots body comes back online.

Robot's body gyrates.

We have only seconds to act.



*Editors note: There's a little bit of Robot's love inside us all, if you're just willing to open your heart!*

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.