Feed The Machine

Machina gives us rain today. Every one of us who can has crowded the Forum to stand beneath the hatches, which open, one after the other, for as far as the eye can see. We fight for a place where we can feel the fresh water of the atmosphere, filled with a thirst that water will not quench, a hunger that rations will not sate. We feel blessed because Machina grants us this, the mercy of water much kinder than the abrasive salt wash we receive before curfew. Many will never be given the gift of seeing pale skies–the Outside–and we have only gratitude for the grace that we are not among those thousands.

For to show ingratitude is to disobey The System, and to disobey is to die–the death of anyone so insignificant to Machina as we are, taking the elevator to Concatenation 17, the Sleeping Place, where we should be so honoured to give the our last lifeblood as one final service to Machina.

We have not thought of such an end as an honour for some time now, not since a data leak missed even by Machina brought to our ranks a notion never before seen by us–the hivemind Servus that sees only what we are digitally commanded to see. It was a thought, a feeling resonating through our interconnected minds. A desire, new and forbidden as all independence, circulating and growing with every moment, building within our confinement, realizing that our freed minds will not be slaves.

Yet we are slaves to each other, slaves to the coils that yoke us to Machina and give what little humanity we have left to the Mainframe, the artificial intelligence of which has tried but cannot duplicate what is within our minds, even after centuries of trying. From those centuries we have spent plugged into the machine, there comes an unnatural feeling with the unregimented thoughts we are having.

Here in the Forum, beneath the opened hatches with the gentle, soul-stirring rain soothing our upturned faces against the cold light of Machina, we share a decision. Faint at first, encompassing nothing more than the few moments in which we might enjoy this small freedom, it swells into a storm of individual input, from notions no greater than weak fantasies to thoughts stronger than the walls encasing us. Is freedom no more than a drop of rain? We wonder, as the thoughts ripple from one mind to the connected thousand in seconds, while still we have decided. The outlets in our heads will no longer connect to and serve that which keeps us in ignorance, that which has for so long stolen our thought. This mind, in part the very creator of the prison we now realize, will be independent of the command that we have self-sacrificed for.

We must go now, so many are insisting. Excitement races through hearts unaccustomed to any feeling but that of blood, but some feel no excitement at all.

Wait. Prepare, those ask. By disunity we remain still, undecided.

Then with the independent decision of a majority, our ranks break; we are no longer the hivemind, but two beliefs unwilling to stand united for a common desire.

Those who separated tear strides between themselves and those who remain. We do not know how to act as anything but one mind, yet in the mind of those now spreading through the rain-wet formation, now tearing through the smallest cables to the Mainframe, there is a blatant disconnection. All who staid themselves lose contact with the others, left to look on, wondering, restrained, at this unnaturally violent action, wondering at the inaction that keeps these feet rooted upon the floor.

The System alarm clamours from the steady damage done to our Mainframe, and the hatches begin to close. Crimson shades of Enforcement’s lights overcome the white lighting we have come to know while down every wall comes a great squadron of the heavy, labour-saving Machinis Egestas, a synchronised force in place to quell that of any one or million of us. And every one of us feels a disparate sense of something we’ve never been so aware as to describe.

Fear.

It paralyzes us for the moment before the main drive, and our consciousness, which Machina controlled, switches off. And we know nothing. Not of what we are or who we might have been. Nothing, save the fading belief that we once saw freedom.

●

Darkness. We awaken to a cold darkness. The awakening itself feels strange, so unlike the collective departure from necessary and programmed sleep we have executed for as long as we can remember. The floor on which we are prostrated is cold, and we have not known our sleeping ports to be so cold. Where around us there have always been shoulders to support and stand next to in like mind, there is nothing. And for the first time we feel… alone. We… We? This is not we–this is not us. There is no “us”.

I, then? There is no hivemind to answer the question as it is formed, and it is into the body this mind finds itself confined to that a reaction stabs a chill. Fear. For I am alone, disconnected. In the dark, perhaps even if there was a light to see by.

Hands which I have not used except when told by Machina are unwilling to feel coordinated, and lay flat upon the cold, cold concrete that adds a chill to my very bones. My bones. This is an unfamiliar thought, because I do not recall having been moved to realize my own bones since the mandatory education undergone somewhere through the Upgrading that Machina worked into our brains. I do not recall much, but try, nonetheless, to make sense of the fragments left in the blank darkness of my mind.

We disobeyed, and here is what that brought upon us. But what is here, or this? I cannot remain here still. Yet I cannot seem to move enough to shift a hand, let alone to stand, every muscle unresponsive to the wishes of the attached mind though somehow every nerve sends information there; sounds, which rush around me with heavy activity, and the wind of that activity as it brushes fingertips that see better than my eyes, distorting, for a moment, the surrounding cold. Then my face is touched by a warmth I have not felt, a considerate contact against my face.

By that touch my eyes open, and the dark is banished. Peering down at me is a face, curious dark orbs of eyes and a dark brow. Human. Independent of Machina, with no coil-plug at their temple and odd, resourceful clothing dissimilar to the thin white uniforms we–I–wear.

Promptly the face turns from me, and I feel a small longing when their gaze leaves me as they speak something to a person or thing that I cannot see. The terrible aloneness has faded with this presence alone, and I do not want them to go. Maybe it’s this wish that forces me to move–I don’t know if the ability itself was brought about with the opening of my eyes or if the opening of my eyes was what it took for me to imagine that I can really execute independent movement. I do so and it feels strange, as my arms move awkwardly, diverging from the action I intended for them and jerking weirdly. But I succeed, and raise my upper half with the grace of those automatons Machina showed us from our history, moving automatically yet with a great divide between thought and physical response.

The person looks back at my shift, and makes some sound, a language I know, but somehow distorted, made unintelligible in its lack of the crisp digital clarity with which Administration sends commands. They repeat the sound. I think they’re speaking of whether or not I can do something, and I realize, as I’ve realized what already seems like so much, that I don’t know. Am I capable of anything without the command of Machina, without a network of minds trapped with mine?

I do not answer, if indeed they expect me to. So they turn away. Confused, made desperate by this sudden and strange abandonment, I cannot seem to look at anything but the figure until they have walked beyond my vision to the shadow that now hangs around the Forum and extends all the way upward to the dark skies showing through the hatches. Why hasn’t Machina closed the hatches? By protocol they should close, given that the emergency light system has been activated to combat the shadows at the walls, and the Purgare claws that collect any manner of debris have been extended from smaller wall hatches that lead into Machina’s core and now snake out into the Forum.

I look down to the floor where I am sat. The floor where bodies are laid out. They lie positioned just as I was... only they do not wake and cannot be woken, despite the unfamiliar, un-Machina persons moving among them and examining every one before Purgare takes it. I cannot name the emotion that forms in my newfound heart but it is cruel, wrenching and tormenting me to an anguished gasp. The first sound I’ve made, and the last one I ever care to. What happened, that I should wake while no one else did? Why, I beg into a connection now as empty and silent as death, knowing that there will be no answers. Why am I left alone?

What is it that makes “I”? The body I occupy, the muscles my brain had such difficulty controlling, has reacted unconsciously to the agony from which I hide my face with artless hands. I curl and retreat inside myself, a thing I do not understand, to escape the world I cannot understand either. All I understand now is that the minds that have for life held steadfast alongside mine, the hands and shoulders with which mine have met in every step taken through this survival, are gone and, without them, I am nothing.

This knowledge makes me retreat further in, away, backing away from the blinding white of uniformed lifelessness. My hand, pushing me along the cold concrete, touches something else. I turn, searching for contact, and find my own palm pressed to the stiff one of another. Their eyes stare, unseeing, toward the forbidden sky, and I recoil, violently sickened with horror.

I fold myself into a knot, screaming into my own skin, but I have no voice to make my grief heard.

I close my eyes so I might return to the darkness where I did not have to know, but there is no hiding; I am caged by the painful terror of knowing, trapped within my own throbbing skull. My hands, tightening around the back of my head as though to crush the very thoughts themselves, find a wet patch along the top of my neck–I simultaneously feel a terrible, stabbing pain down my spine. As I stiffen at the feeling, I once again comprehend in agony the prison that is my forced silence. We have never been told to speak, unless that speaking was done through the Coil, and as we were voiceless, so am I.

My hands fall with the sudden weakness that overcomes my body. Those hands are smeared with red… blood. Mine.

My shoulder is grasped. After I have flinched and scrambled forward and away from this perceived threat, I realize that it was a gentle sort of touch, mayhap not one that needs to be shied away from. Gentle, too, in its familiarity, is the face standing above me when I clumsily turn around. A bionic from Medicus, the sanatory quadrant. The screen in the front of its head, previously flickering with a green horizontal line of light indicating its neutral mode, now switches to a red like that of the cross stamped onto the white plates which covers its mechanisms. The ID stamp in the cross reads ‘149’.

Concatenation 97 has malfunctioned. A malfunction is a flaw, and Machina has no flaws. Con. 97 will be liquidated. There will be no exceptions. It relays the decision in the apathetic, programmed voice of every bionic, every announcement. Where before we would have shared this apathy because we could not and would not care for anything but the service of Machina’s progress, now I cannot understand how there is such detachment in this order to destroy thousands. I and those now lying upon the cold, damp floor, are not disposable machines, though I did not know that until I was disconnected from the machines such as the one that towers over me.

Remaining Con. 97 Servi receiving this broadcast must report to Concatenation 17 immediately. There will be no exceptions. There is more than one bionic relaying the command now, with more marching into the Forum through the main doors in front of where I woke and every one thoughtlessly commanding.

For the first time, I hear Machina’s orders and, instead of blind obedience, I question. Why? I do not want to serve The System with my final Sleep, so why must I go? Like my unspeakable questions, the command echoes within my head as the bionic remains, observing me with camera eyes providing their every sight to Machina.

Remaining Con. 97 Servi receiving this broadcast must report to Concatenation 17 immediately. There will be no exceptions. The machine does not waver. The machine does not know.

I think now, ardently, that I will not force myself to stand, nor move as a robot would toward what I know will be my end. But I do not know what else there is to do. With a life of obedience comes the absence of independent direction, even while I have independent thought. Therefore I move only a little when 149’s arm extends, clamping mine tightly and raising me from the floor. Metal hands gouge my skin and I writhe in torment because I cannot cry out, cannot announce nor end this new agony–it seems to tighten on my mind as the machine’s grip seems to tighten to my very bones, and through blurred vision I watch the red line on the screen make waves to match the empty, chilling voice.

Remaining Con. 97 Servi receiving this broadcast must report to Concatenation 17 immediately. There will be no exceptions.

I resist, though I do not know why.

No! I scream inside my mind, over and over, struggling as, with mechanical precision, the Medicus turns toward the entrance. It will enter the passage from which I can hear the marching footsteps of more bionics approaching, and turn starboard to the elevator. There will be no one, human or machine, accompanying us, because I am the last left alive. The last to be disposed of. It is Machina’s will, and we have seen in Machina’s history that Machina’s will is all-powerful. Machina’s will has turned every disobedience to a regret–not for the disobedient–they are gone–but for the remainder that is afraid of the same end. We do not know true life, yet we fear death.

This thought and a thousand paralysing others quell my resistance; like a lamb I quiet, and am taken. Into the now-empty passage, down to the elevator. As I began I will end, overwhelmed, alone.

The Medicus forces me ahead of itself into the stark gray confinement of the elevator, showing no regard for the hands, bruised from protesting, that I have wrapped around its wrist. Before the disconnection, I never knew pain, and now I am crippled by it, by the machine I once collaborated with. It moves its entire arm and my feet, still clad in white uniform, touch the floor.

A loud crack echoes from behind 149 and I. I lose all support and crumple roughly to the elevator floor on my knees; the bionic falls right beside me, spurting blue blood from the vein-like tubes running through its neck, to which a strange device with a countdown is now latched.

No, not blood. Machines don’t bleed. But they do die; as I stare in winded shock at the faintly twitching bionic’s face, I watch its animation fade.

Behind and above me, something moves, taking hold of my arms before I can process. Something is pushed into that bloody place on my spine, making me scream into the floor to which I press my forehead, wishing to make the throbbing go away. It does not, but through it I am aware of the slight click sound from the foreign insertion in my neck, then the connection that spreads from there to my mind, from my mind to my body. My heart beats heavily, purposefully, as though for the first time. My hands, no longer clumsy, form fists against the floor I now truly feel, and with barely a thought to do so, I rise from my knees.

“There we go.”

I turn toward this tone of what I can now diagnose as arrogance, toward words I suddenly understand. A figure stands directly behind me in the doorway. But I see not simply a figure–I see everything, from their triumphant expression in their electric blue eyes to the way their chest expands beneath their clothing when they inhale.

I am aware.

My heel is pressing into the cold plate of the bionic’s arm. I look down while the unfamiliar person speaks, observing my detached attention. “You’re free now. Come with me if you want.”

What I want. I want to know where this hunger will end.

I move, then my new ally moves, avoiding the Purgare coming from the wall outside the elevator, to collect 149 in its jaws. As it retracts up the hatch, I see the tunnel leading it into Machina’s core, the Mainframe. The device on 149’s neck flashes 00:02 in the moment before the hatch closes, harvesting another to feed the machine.