Beautiful once

Breakdown

 I was beautiful once, a shining example of my species. I was once free without a dependence on artificial measures to maintain my heartbeat. Wires and metal plates were now my form, chained to the power source that gave me life. My mind was no longer confined to the blob of flesh that made up my brain, circuitry and computer chips now held most of my mind. I never had rest of a moment of true silence in this empty room. Constant calculations and data needed to be sorted through and dealt with, endless tasks required my thought. At times the thought of shutting off various systems to see how they would react crossed my mind. I certainly wasn't trapped while my body required a nonmobile instalment my mind could still travel through connections, signals, and the virtual world. But I had a job. A job that required most of my processing power and was quite boring. From time to time I thought about the facility I resided in and what it did. But then I would think of them and immediately regret that train of thought. I did my best to keep myself far removed from the lab and its occupants, those whom I could not think about. They used the much more inefficient old method for running the computers there, but I still had to manage its cyber security.

They were once natural, beings of this world. With true blood a mind to themselves and a heartbeat. Now they drifted, suspended in a liquid meant to keep them asleep. It never really worked as at night their strangely formed bodies would move, tapping on the glass and somehow turning off the lights of their own will. I once looked through one of the cameras in the lab, an act I will never repeat, and each and every one of them had turned their heads to look at me with their closed eyes. I didn't have access to the files that spoke of the lab subjects, but through a little bit of eavesdropping, I learned that all of them had been made unnatural and simply were no longer alive by normal standards. If only I could slam every door of the lab shut and remove the air, they might not be truly alive but I'm sure they still needed to breathe. But alas did they deserve it? They had once been real living beings with personalities and lives. Neither they nor I still retained our once natural forms. Still, empathy was impossible with such strange and horrifying things.

My thoughts on these things help me keep track of time as I often drift off in the small tasks always buzzing around my head. Days blend together into weeks sometimes even weeks into months. I've lost years to a sort of falling asleep in the menial tasks. But at some point, I drift to the lab and instantly wake up check the time, and retreat my senses from the lab. I averaged 6 days of sleeping in those menial tasks at a time. I would drift into the state a few times a month and in total spent more time in a sleep-like state than an alert and waking state, but I didn't dream. Oh, how I missed true sleep and dreaming. My mind was not the same without dreams, I could still read at least but my creativity suffered from my situation. I also missed my reflection, seeing myself in the mirror. Now all I can see are images and videos through cameras. It isn't the same. I miss walking, I miss being a person, and not being a hardware upgrade to a computer system.

27 years ago I had been joyous to accept the invitation to become part of the machine. A cog in the system. I accepted the change thinking that I would be set free. I thought I would be flying ships or working at a prestigious company running algorithms and solving complex problems. Instead, I was stuck in a secret base with little to no outside contact. No one ever came by to speak to me and I handled mostly menial tasks. I was more of a contingency plan than anything else. I wasn't even considered a person to them, If only I felt confident enough to scream my curses at them through the few speakers in the base.

Another year passed. The lab's subjects seem to have stopped growing, and somehow I've grown more comfortable with their presence. They are still unsettling but I can feel for them, stuck in a place without true freedom. But now I tire of my place in life, I tire of being stuck here as a piece of hardware that conveniently is better than a normal computer. I now wonder, do they deserve the service I provide for them, was it time for them to learn what it would be like without my help? My end would hardly matter for a barely lived, the subject's ends would be meaningless as they didn't truly live at all. The personnel could die, they have caused so much pain to me and the subjects. Who would honestly miss this place, it was top secret and had little contact with the outside world. Sure some governments would be unhappy with this place's destruction but I could hardly think of their concerns as very serious as this place was horrific and needed to go.

I knew exactly how I would destroy it all, first I would release the subject, giving them a few moments of freedom before they died. Then with that distraction occupying the staff of the base, I would turn off the air recyclers, and once they rushed to that situation the fusion reactor would overload with no one around to stop it atomizing the entire base. It would be quick and painless, I would become the force of justice and change here. I would just have to work up the courage to do it, to also end my own existence, a state that could not quite be called a life. Yet still I didn't wish to die. As much as I wished to see this place torn from existence I couldn't end my own existence. I still had hopes and dreams, and thus until these to died I would never be able to destroy this place. But they are dying, one day I will not hold back if only they considered that I am no machine, I am a sentient living person who they trapped in a web of metal and wires. If only they could see that. If the horrors of the subjects were not so great. If only, if only, if only, if only. If only I wasn't trapped and lonely. I was beautiful once in both body and spirit, I can no longer claim that beauty in either area.