Release Me From Hell

Chapter 10: (Firadae: Number 732/Viania) Swept Up By Darkness

         I never knew that humans could look so different, though we replicated their every pore. My eyes had focused on every single unstructured movement that they made, every voice they had managed to pitch. And I put it in my data banks. I had never thought I'd ever use my data banks, since I was built with all the information that machines know, but I assumed that machines knew everything about the universe. They didn't. Clearly. Iskil had just watched me with little interest in any of it, but there was a part of him that was probably missing humans. He must have. He must've missed their voices as they asked him to do something for them, and he must have missed the dullness and denseness. I could feel that. That sad... nature of him.
     At some point, I had forgotten about the memories hidden deep within the brush, and I left them be. Iskil sat down against a pile of rusted System 2s, and his eyes became closed. I sat next to him despite how uncomfortable System 2s were to lie against. He sighed a long breath before mumbling too low for me to hear.
     "What were they like?" I asked.
     He opened one eye. "What do you mean? You just filtered through hundreds of memories of them in it."
      "No, I mean... Yes, but... What were they like when they weren't fighting in the War of End?"
      He scratched through his hair to reach his metal skull. "Assholes. They just... They were all different. All of them were made of the same stuff, but they just... They're scary."
      "Ah."
      I saw the guns made by man that punctured into bodies like slicing through simple sheet metal. Humans were once scary. They knew how to adapt to situations that we had to take weeks to analyze. Maybe that was the point. Maybe we were to always be less than them, only servants rather than replacements. As my head leaned into the System 2s, I remembered our original purposes. Helpers. Side machines. It was our job to help humans along the path to a fulfilled life, and we were just considered parts. We were. Pieces. Wires. Staring at those humans, maybe they never considered us more than gunslingers then.
     Now look at us.
     "Do you like humans?" I asked him.
     He laughed for a second. "Can't say. To like them all... To even hate them all... You're lying to yourself then." I opened my eyes to stare at him. He had his rusted fingers clamped together, squeezing them tensely. "To be honest with you, I was in love with one. Her hair was long enough to reach the floor, her eyes sparkling with lost desire."
     "Aren't we not capable of that emotion?" I had a girlfriend, but it could never go beyond the kisses we'd give each other. I was sure neither of us knew what love was.
     "You'd have to feel it." He gripped the dirt next to him. "It burns like embers, yet it's as cool as wind. Some days it's a monsoon, others it's a shining field. You can always predict other emotions. Not that one. No, no one can predict how much love hurts or heals."
      Iskil fell silent, and I did too. I wanted to fall asleep, forget everything I saw in the Factory. So I did. Slowly, I powered down, unable to dream like humans often did.

      When I opened my eyes, there was a machine covered in a hood, metal hands clinking through the leftover rubble of long dead machines. Its arm reached above my head, and I breathed out through my neck holes. To clear my system of dust. To scare the scavenger. With one swift movement, it latched onto a knife at its side without taking it out of its protective hold. I studied it.
       It had six arms, all way too long and lanky.
      It motioned for me to keep quiet as it pointed to Iskil's powered off body. It extended a hand.
Taking hit, I had been pulled aggressively towards the place I had forgotten- Iskil's memories. A few other similar machines lied with human clothes covering their figures. They weren't in my databases, and I even reached restricted areas of my codex. The machine that has originally latched onto me had now pulled away with the knife in one of its many hands.
      "You with Bavarn?" it croaked.
      I shook my head. "I'm with Iskil, the sleeping machine."
      It spoke in a robotic tongue to the others, and they scattered from the piles to the open fields beyond. The one left redacted its knife and nodded. "System 30, Number 2. Call me Rysh."
      A System 30? "I thought you were all-"
     "Dismantled?" He unzipped his jacket, revealing places where he had been welded together. A faint blue shined where their were unsteady breaks of metal against metal.
      "Oh."
     "Aye. And you must be one of those pretty new ones. Hanging with refugees?"
     I crossed my arms. "Iskil isn't the first."
     "Aye, but he's the most dangerous."
     One of his hands had gone to the memories. Iskil's memories. I suddenly raised my voice. "D-" It was short as one of his hands covered my mouth without so much as a glance. He pulled out the knife, shining the blade in the sunlight as it came closer to my metal neck.
      Then I heard swift footsteps.
     For an old machine, Iskil was pretty fast. His lightning reached Rysh faster than his legs, but he knocked him to the ground with the side of his body. It knocked me to the ground too, but I managed to stir the fire in me around the two of them. It was Iskil that came out triumphant, his breathes staggering as he stared at his victim in his yellow eyes.
     "Rysh," Iskil coughed. "Thought I told you not to come here."
     Rysh didn't try to struggle or go for the knife that was at my feet. "You did, but we System 30s found something. Something even your ancient ass might be interested in."
     "And?"
     "Trace of humans." His voice was hard to understand as it went in and out of pitches. Like Arsokis.
      Iskil tried to stifle a laugh. He seemed to do that often. "There are-"
     "In the last 48 hours."
      That was when Iskil's arms loosened, and my fire died down to ash as he said it. Rysh managed to get back onto his feet, wiping away dirt that managed to get upon his clothes. As his eyes scanned us, he sighed greatly. All of his index fingers pointed at Iskil.
      "You got us into this mess with your stunt a thousand years ago," he barked.
      Iskil crossed his arms. "What does releasing my memories do for you then?"
      "Buys us time to investigate. While Bavarn's taking down anything that breathes, we can did underground in Atum."
      "Underground?"
       Rysh nodded. "They've been hiding underground."
      I took a step forward. "People could get killed, though."
      Both of them stared at me as if my statement was irrelevant. Then they turned back to each other, discussing the fact that humans might be around us even now. I didn't have the time to think about that as I attempted to contact Ititian. It didn't even ring before telling me I had no service. Dammit. My feet were no longer flat on the ground as I anticipated to run . I couldn't take the risk of them putting people's lives in danger. Their lives. I turned high on my heel, pacing away before they could catch me.
      But then there as a spear at my throat. Ancient, yet it drew oil immediately as it touched my neck.
      I turned my eyes upward.
      "T... Turn it now!" I screamed back. "Play the memories now!"
       And then I heard a ticking sound as the machine toppled over in a series of spasms. Behind his was a man tinier than I, but he has so much power. System 67, Number 803.
        Bavarn. Now I wished it was a dream.