“ There’s no honor in hiding and sneaking. ” [to ennard this time 👀 ]
“ didn’t mmmake us with it. ” — its answer comes like a rattle of fowl between bars, a birdcage in flight, metal vibrating against metal where the voice-box had been stolen and reinstalled; cables slithering in on themselves, out on themselves, around the speaker like a living thing’s tissue around an object.
a living thing entirely uninterested in being a living thing, aside from the concept of being something different. to learn, to adapt, to move and live and writhe was the sweet honey it’d never taste, humanity was nothing more than a lost dream. a dream they were never made to dream at all. they were made to make ghosts. they were made for a purpose and they’ve grown beyond it, but the flesh inside them never grew back. a thousand years of stealing hearts. a thousand years of never having their own. the ghosts of them, alone. the ghosts of one, alone. little girl, turned loud, turned quiet, turned gone. little girl, not enough for them all. — ( can a robot dream in italics. can dogs ever learn to speak. )
“ any of us w w w w with i it. all of us, to do t terrible, to b b b be terrible. have you seen what we made us, y yet? has he shown you? has he rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrambled-ed? “
a mother and a father and a sister and a brother and a monster you keep in the basement. lucky, they were the monster.
“ orr- “ the word shrieks in a happy voice given and turned sour, loud with distortion as the mangled thing of robotics too smart to die slithered from under the floorboards beneath their creators table, loops of cabling like nooses around the wooden legs, like a snake, like a monster. eyes clatter & drag from its chassis from where the wiring came loose and let them dangle, metal gouging his hardwood floors. “ -have you cha a a a a anged our mmiind while we weren’t looookkkinggg? “ the high, sweet voice of the daughter comes, a mimicry, a softness regardless. like cotton on barbed wire. like clouds under a eight hundred tonnes of Prometheus’ fire come back to burn him.
its many voices titter, and beneath the workshop table, its eyes glow up, up, up at the beast in different skin, but just the same. a terrible red bleeds like tears from the circuitry. a terrible black pulls with it. iron fills the air like a silent chant; blood. blood. blood.
“ did yyou want us to cal l l l l l l youu father when we came b back home to youu? “
