Release Me From Hell

Chapter 9: (System 11: Number 503/Iskil) Land of Scraps

       I pulled Viania along down narrow alleys and sketchy streets. Every time I passed another machine, every time I saw anyone else, my heart fluttered rapidly. I wanted to interact with them. I wanted to touch and to feel them as we talked of the stars above and how they glistened for us. I knew that wasn't how it would actually happen, but it felt so nice to see someone. A real being made of metal for a purpose different than a System 75 or a System 46. I dared not to pass any of them directly, as I knew they would recognize me in an instant. Somewhere inside of every machine, they were programmed to hate me though they had no idea what hate even was.
When we started reaching the outskirts of the city, I calmed my breath. Viania, who had clearly never been this far away from the large skyscrapers of Latum, stared in awe at the trees that stretched their limbs across the dilapidated wall made by humans so long ago. Vines stretched over the worn stone, flowing in the breeze of night as the sunrise slowly came across the horizon. It was different from the artificial sun inside the cities, and it was so beautiful. I pulled her to a hole in the wall, edging her forward to the outside world. The city was a terrible place. It beamed of metal pride, and it had forgotten what was beyond.
     As grass brushed against her metal frame, she turned to me while I sat upon the breaking wall. "Why aren't we allowed out here?" she asked me.
     My feet sprung against the soft earth beneath. "Humanity once touched this place with only their hands and their minds," I explained, leading her through the empty fields of grass. "How capable they were to just... make us from nothing. I can see a different world out here, a new existence for the humans now gone. I think Bavarn is afraid of humanity."
     "Afraid?"
     "He tries to rid us of it, tries to keep us in line like machines without anything brewing inside of us like a boiling pot." She probably had no idea what a pot was. "He's afraid because humans are so strong. They're so strong that the only thing that can destroy a human is another human."
     I turned right sharply as I remembered where I was taking her. She continued prodding me with questions about me, about rumors she had heard and things she wanted to know. I answered. I had to. Her questions kept leading back to how I made another machine, how lightning and fire had been so out of reach from her blue eyes. Making a copy... wasn't hard. I called them decoys, and they practically did exactly what another would. I reassured her that nothing would go wrong.
     I saw the first piece of scrap. A leg rusted over and hollowed had stuck up from the earth as a land mark to what lied ahead in a few large trees, and Viania clung to me out of fear. The core emotion. With a quick movement of my hand, I pulled away from her and followed the trail of broken limbs and rusted parts until we were surrounded by piles of rusted parts of machines dumped here. The Land of Scraps. It had been over a thousand years since I had seen the rusted bodies of war and human decay, and nothing had changed since I had disappeared. Viania opened her mouth to say something to me but closed it again over and over until she gave up. Her eyes kept falling to the rusted heads that were machines no one could identify.
     "This is the Land of Scraps," I had told her. "Bavarn and I named it."
She blinked, eyes still staring upon the heads. "Bavarn?"
     "We were close once." Close enough to be betrayed. Close enough to be locked in a prison, forgotten and left for dead. "It doesn't matter. I doubt he knows this place is still around."
     "Well, what is it? A bunch of old machines that don't function?"
     I snickered. "Sure. It definitely looks like that, right?"
     There was a loose leg, bend and rusted badly enough that it would fall apart in anyone's grip.  With my electric fingers, I grabbed onto it, and electricity shot throughout the entirety of the dead bodies. Flashing blue lights came from within the dead bodies, and small projected screens showed up one after another until the entirety of the area was lit up by them. I pulled away from the leg, standing next to Viania with my head up high. Her tiny stature had leaned into me, afraid of the projections. I had turned to one, projected by the dead reactor of a torso.
     "They're memories," I said plainly.
     She spat at me. "I know what they are! Why are they here? Why are there millions of them piled together like this?"
      I didn't want to tell her, but maybe she already guessed it from what I said earlier. Bavarn and I, when we worked in the Factory, came here and watched old memories of the War. That's all the bodies amounted to. They were riddled with decay, abut they were durable enough to have memories. And despite how it was completely forgotten, it had still stood like a garbage dump for memories. Bavarn and I put some of ours with them.
     "These are memories of war," I muttered, grabbing at one of the projections. "The War. The War of End. All of these machines were made and then re-made over and over until they become these lifeless husks of being. All of theses are their memories. I thought you might like to see them."
     She gulped, slowly reaching out her small arm to the projection I was looking at. As her fingers fell into it, it had started to play like a movie would have. It showed a battle, bodies buried deep in dirt uncovered by the peddling steps of both machines and humans. The machine that had been seeing suddenly clutched the air ahead as a human held him up. Viania reached out to grab at the projection, her eyes filled with so much strife as she realized that it was a human. Living. Breathing. It grabbed the machine, crying into its shoulder.
     "We're going to make it," the human grunted, holding the machine tight. "What's your numbers? We can rebuild you."
      The machine was weak, voice full of a static. "System 2, Number 21. My name is Vallin."
     "Hah." The human ran, eyes heavy as he lost his strength. "That's funny, you know. My name is Vallin."
      The projection stopped, and Viania was dazed. As expected. I was sure that every machine would react that way, feel something when seeing their creators so vividly on a screen. Viania had turned her head to follow the projection across, and she watched it with the same dazed expression. Her eyes, as fake as they were, produced water as they dripped down her metal cheeks onto her chest. She jumped. Then, with one swift motion, she turned back to me.
     "How many machines died in the War of End? How many made it here?" she asked me, still jumping profusely.
      "Millions upon millions. If my creator had left me to die with them, I would be just a part of this pile. Undiscovered. Forgotten," I had sighed. "There are a thousand souls here, a thousand stories left through time that you can see. You can see humans in their final moments here."
      "No one is alive. They were killed. There is, however, a place underneath one of these trees that has Bavarn's and my memories buried beneath. Do you want to see?" I asked her without pause.
     She hesitated. She was starting to guess things she would have never thought otherwise. "Show me." 
     As we walked by the memories, they would play in our wake. Viania looked to them, watching the machines battle and fight and even cry, and she jumped so much that I was afraid to take her to my own. She was young. Her tears came from her because she was a child with emotions she hadn't had dulled through time and lost effort. I felt that my thoughts were repeating themselves now, and I shook it all away when we approached the tree at the end. A few broken limbs lied up what looked like a large grave of upturned dirt and broken bodies. Two particular projections side-by-side had lit up when we approached them, and they shined much brighter than the rest. The one on the left was grey, and Viania was drawn to it.
     As it played, there was the crusted hands of a System 67. They reached out to the artificial sun, eyes half open as grass pressed against his back and moved in his peripherals. There was a sigh, and then the System 67 started talking slowly.
    "Manniv," he started. "What do you think we'd be doing if humans came back from the dead?"
He turned his head to another machine much older than him, and the machine sighed greatly.          "We wouldn't be here, I bet. We wouldn't know the things we do. We would just be servants to them."
     "You're right. We suffer from that fact, that we're just human toys, and we can't be anything more than that."
     The scene had jump-cut, and the System 67 was staring at another machine. Me. I saw the age of my eyes as they fell upon the rising sun in the horizon. Bavarn, his head shaking with a laugh, approached me as his feet reached the edge of a large cliff. You could hear me fake scream, eyes widened like they were coming out of my head. As Bavarn's eyes looked to the sun beyond, the real beaming sun, he clicked his tongue. I knew from our past that it meant he felt something boiling at the pit of his stomach. With one sigh and a careless fall onto the grass, he looked to me with half-opened eyes.
     "Do you think humans made a heaven for us, too?" Bavarn had asked past me.
      Past me clicked their tongue. "Heaven? No. I never believed we had the... capability of the concept."
      "Right. Heave was a... human thing. But do you think?"
       My fingers had clenched. "I don't want to go to the place that caused war to take over any sense of the word humanity."
       "The War of End-"
       "Fuck the War of End, Bavarn!" Iskil turned his head away. "You don't know anything about humans! Not like the System 11s! You know as much as that processor inside of you is willing to say. Real life, real viciousness, you don't know what that's like! Bavarn, you only laugh because you're programmed to pretend to be human. We all are!" Past me released their fists. "We are only replications, nothing more."
       The memories went on and on in a similar fashion about Bavarn taking the words people would say and twisting them to his own demise that he created. He had hated the idea of being a copy of someone else, someone he's never met, and he tried to make machines different. I knew who I was made to be. Viania, who lost all sense of knowing exactly where she was, followed her gaze to the projection next to it. As her hands reached out to it, I snatched her fingers and made her look at me. Her gaze was far away, but her mouth had worded to me something akin to human gibberish.
      "You can't play my memories. Not yet," I said to her.
       She blinked. "Why? Are you afraid of them?"
       Of course. I could recite every single memory buried there in my head, but that wasn't why. "They'll be broadcasted. Every machine will be forced to see them if you play them."
     "Why?"
      I closed my eyes. "It was the last resort to make the machines... feel again."
      To make them feel for humanity. Again.