"Tell me the truth."
I started to draw a voracious amount of dead trees under the moonlight. Lisirgah escaped the confines of her prison known as the Factory to coil the wires from within around my metal shoulders. She knew I walked to the terrace of the upper part of the Factory to paint landscapes of the moon. The moon. It was nearly as mysterious as me, and I found that it was the only thing that remained after the War of End. With a swift movement, Lisirgah leaned her head into my body lovingly.
"I've been stealing stuff. Documents. Files. Memory chips," I told her. "Basically, I... I've been deleting myself from public eye bit by bit."
"And I must ask how you've done such a thing without being detected by Bavarn?" she asked, kisses up my neck. I should have told her to stop, but it was warm against me.
"Bavarn thinks I'm harmless. He has no idea about taking people's memory chips while they're forced to watch my memories. That's a reason why I have them in the Land of Scraps. While they watch, I'll escape this fucking hellhole."
"Without me?" she pouted. I often lied to keep her spirit from crumbling, but I couldn't this time.
"Lisirgah, you know that's impossible."
Her breath was intoxicating, smelling of mint and oil both somehow. It snaked into my senses, making my paintbrush fall onto my palette without grace. My eyes glowed, reflecting the color on her wires. Electricity pulsed at my feet, crackling the ground. She kissed me. Glowing. I kissed her back with the same amount of passion, and we fell into each other's embrace. Many times this would have progressed beyond a kiss, but I pulled her away. She realized that it was too late to have sex ever again. She realized I would be leaving soon.
"We live on a stage of lies," I told her. "We do this to satisfy our creators that no longer exist."
She nodded. "And this was how it would always go. We would be the last sign of human life to exist on this earth. You've already taken their memories away of humanity like Bavarn asked so they could function properly on their own. Humanity is a blur now, and we are the after effects. We hold their emotions and feelings and urges."
I picked up my paintbrush to cross red as the shadow. The moon stood white and emotionless as the center.
"I just feel like I'm the only one with full control of everything," I said with doubt. "Like everyone else isn't even real. I am the only real."
Her hand pressed into mine, and a small, encrypted piece of code was in my grasp. My memory chip, taken out to make sure this wouldn't be a part of the Land of Scraps upload. My paintbrush ended abruptly, and I slashed downward in one red strike. Across the darks. Across the empty moon. I pushed my memory chip into it's place, and I stared at the real moon. It had an array of clouds surrounding it, hiding itself from the reality it must face.
"We're real," Lisirgah whispered. "And we all care about you."
"Calling all System 11s. The Factory is now open."
Bavarn was already there, leaning against a dead tree. His eyes showed nothing more than the vague tiredness that surrounded him, and he barely moved when I approached. I knew his plan, but he didn't know mine. He didn't know I had Viania's memory chip with me since I showed her my memories. In fact, no one knew that. Right now, Lisirgah was broadcasting my memories. Or her's. It was a distraction for me to think about my plan to save Viania. I could save the 'verse and another machine. I kept asking myself why it mattered, but I couldn't find an answer. Because it didn't. She didn't. I just understood that it needed to be done.
"Why are you broadcasting this?" Bavarn asked.
I tugged on my own memory chip, placing it in the compartment with everyone else's. The live broadcast turned to static, and an error showed up in its place.
ERROR: INSERT MEMORY CHIP. NO LONGER RECORDING MEMORIES.
The fight would be forgotten.
"I was hacked," I told him.
"It wasn't pretty."
Viania showed up, eyes flickering an unnaturalness that was her true emotions. Something happened, but I didn't care. Not now.
"Whatever," Bavarn flicked his wrist in a careless manner. "What matters is that you're here, and you can kill me. So go ahead."
ERROR: INSERT MEMORY CHIP. NO LONGER RECORDING MEMORIES.
Electricity pulsed around my fingers, eating the ground all around. The grass was black and charred, and Viania's fire criss-crossed with my electricity until it surrounded Bavarn on all sides. He wouldn't fight back, so he just stood with a smile. I hated it. I hated him. Before anything could actually shock or burn him, I opened my chest cavity and pulled out my reactor. It pulsed and burned in my grip. That was when Bavarn reacted.
"Iskil, what are you doing?" he asked shockingly. Pull him closer. Pull her closer. Destroy them both. "If you self-destruct, you destroy everything- even the human civilization!"
"Correct," I said. "Destroy everything, isn't that what you said?"
"N-no!" He started running towards me, and I placed my reactor back into my body. As he came close enough, I gripped his neck tightly. He struggled wildly, but I was stronger. Taller. Older.
I was everything he wished he could have been.
"Killing is easy!" I shouted. "Living is harder. You don't know either of those things are! None of you do!" My hand went to his memory chip, and I ripped it away.
ERROR: INSERT MEMORY CHIP. NO LONGER RECORDING MEMORIES.
"Tell me why I have to suffer the fate of living, Bavarn! Why can't I rust like those bodies in the Land of Scraps? Why couldn't I have gone to the War of End with my mother?" I shouted. "I wanted to be with her forever, and she's been gone without me for so long! She's dead, and I'm here killing you!"
"Iskil, I-"
My hands crushed his memory chip to pieces, and my fingers tightened on his neck.
"You're going to wish you never fucking met me." I turned to Viania. "You're going to wish you never assumed that I was anything at all."
Electricity shot up my arms, and it hit him. Hard. His body crusted black, and his arm disintegrated into dust. I dropped him on the black grass, and I turned to Viania. Her eyes were filled with terror and any fearful emotion she could cling to, but I didn't care. I held my hands up.
"I wish I cared enough to keep you alive," I said.
She was frozen, but she managed to say something. "But... you do."
She must have noticed.
ERROR: INSERT MEMORY CHIP. NO LONGER RECORDING MEMORIES.
"Hmph."
"Let me die, Iskil," she whispered. "Without Ititian, I... I just..."
"No."
And the electricity shot up her body, her left leg turning into ash, and she fell. Screaming for pain. For help. And I said no words, but I leaned down next to her, and I put her memory chip back into her respective place. She screamed violently until her reactor dimmed too low to function. And her body lied still. Very still. I watched her lost being fall to death the way I had always wished mine to. But it wouldn't.
I was left to be the murderer, not murdered.
ERROR: INSERT-
"Oh my god!"
A machine came running form the nightly fog, a model I had never seen. His body was sleek, but it stayed true to the Systems. I didn't have the time to question him because he leaned down next to Viania with a frown. His silicon ear lied against her chest, but it was an unnecessary task. She was dead, after all.
"What's your name?" he asked suddenly. "Your numbers?"
"System 11, Number 503. My friends call me Iskil."
"I'm System 86, Number 5. They call me Askin. We need to get her to Matum. Can you come with me?"
"She's dead. Her reactor's dimmed and everything," I told him. "When I showed up, that other machine had already killed her, and I stopped him."
He gestured me to place my ear to her chest, and I did. There was nothing at first, but then there was a sound. A pounding. A shuffling. Her reactor was working. She was alive.
Shit. SHIT. With a panicked look, I helped lift her, and I followed him to wherever he was going.
I didn't have the heart to tell anyone that I may have fucked up the entire universe by trying to be nice.
YOU ARE READING
Release Me From Hell
Ciencia FicciónHumans are dead. They've been gone for six thousand years, leaving behind the machines they built when they all managed to kill each other. Machines do not die until their reactors corrupt, and they can go on for thousands of years before falling ap...
