#tech monster

[bumpen-underbeds]

He told you he was going to become a god, you'd laughed and joked about needing to drink more water, not really believing him when he looked at you with wide and enthusiastic eyes. They tend to pick up odd hobbies to try to build out their personality, so this hardly fazed you.

This is the same man who once promised to cook a whole roast without your input, only to end up buying a store-made one two hours before you came over, so delusions of divine grandeur weren't really high on the list of things this man would be doing anytime soon. Or, well... It would have been had you not been woken in the middle of the night by him, banging on your front door, hair a mess and sweat making his clothes cling to his form as he pulled you from your home.

Stumbling behind him, frantically asking what is going on and if you could lock your door first, feeling panicked as he tells you there is no time!

The small nature reserve/park by your home was his destination, a small picnic area filled with spray-painted lines and shapes, the bright blue of them almost glowing in the dark of the forested area. As he lets go of your wrist, he stumbles into the middle of the mess of paint, flinging his arms wide and announcing that he is going to become a god tonight, and you will be his witness and consort when he ascends. Standing just outside the sprayed line, you wonder if there is a phone around here that you could call an ambulance from, fearing that your friend might be going through something not even you can help talk him down from, but the moment you move, he snaps to look at you, hissing to stay there.

Not wanting to push him anymore, you stop, standing in your pyjamas and watch as, beyond all expectations, the lines painted onto the dirt and grass begin to glow a bright cyan.

Either you are experiencing the grandest prank with practical effects or magic is real, but standing where you are, it's not clear just what you're experiencing as your friend's body lifts, the bright glow getting stronger and stronger before you have to look away, covering your eyes and scrunching up your face as the air fills with static and ringing sounds. Something that sounds like a mangled mess of shattering glass, tapes rewinding, and the click of an old school light switch filters through your ears before the pressure gives way, and your ears pop.

Blinking rapidly, you look towards where your friend had been, the bright light having finally faded.

Instead of your familiar human friend, there is now a creature, it floats there with long cyan tendrils trailing behind it, scattered prisms of what looks like glass follow this thing's movement as it twists and twirls in the air, your friend's face wiped away in favour of a blank holographic plane that looks almost like an inactive TV.

The moment you shift slightly, it turns towards you, pushing through the air swiftly and reaching for you with hands that don't even connect to the strange torso it has, filtering off in blue and red squares where its elbows should be, cupping your cheeks and pulling you towards the lack of a face. Despite the new, strange appearance, something in you knows that this thing is or was your friend, as you gently reach up to touch the smooth plane that makes up its face, and static shocks through you.

The creature laughs like it's the crowd in a sitcom, grainy and echoing like it's playing through old speakers. Your friend may not have become a god in any way you know, but they have managed to become increasingly more interesting...

[cute-and-spooky-girls]

She can hack anything, for a price. -⚡ Flash ⚡

[ash-assault]

When you stake a vampire, aim for the heart. Sketches of a backer’s character, and a cyberpunk themed “monster”.

Portraits: 55 & 56 of 61

[bumpen-underbeds]

The text box hovers over your head, blinking slowly, worlds that sting when you read them, grinding your teeth as you push past it.

'There is no place for you here.'

Blurry shapes walk beside you, passing you without a single footfall, the ends of their bodies shifting into empty space, like coloured place holders for NPC's just out of render distance. Some pass through you, passing across you leaving the feeling of static on your skin. The road you walk is grey, the sky a lighter grey, the buildings covered in grey black missing textures, taunting you with the lack of colour all around, only when a new text box shiners in place are you greeted with colour.

'I can make a place for you... Just stop walking away.'

The metallic click of the thing making the text boxes appear follows you, there is a drag that follows behind the hiss and clunk of metal, of wires dragging along the grey road. The thing was made of diodes, wires, scrap metal all bent and polished into shape, and silicone tatters over the fake hand it has reached towards you as you keep walking.

You found it in an abandoned warehouse, urban exploration fun and all that, the room was filled with scrap robotics and parts of failed attempts at whatever this thing was. You'd marveled at it, like some art piece that never got finished, stepping across countless papers and diagrams that could have told you what you were walking into, what had happened to the last person, the one that made this thing, that abandoned this thing here.

The warnings were written on the wall, but you liked the shine of the metal more than reading the messages left behind.

Now here you are, in an un-rendered world, walking with this mess of metal and technology trailing behind you, whirring and clicking as it tries to get your attention again. The text box is now physical as it spawns in front of you, blocking the path with bright red letters, stopping you in place as more shades of people pass you by, and the shadow of this thing with its chrome face looms over you now.

'I WONT LET YOU LEAVE ME ALONE AGAIN'

Looking up as the thing behind you wraps itself around you, the world shifts, glitches and screen tearing, lagging fake people, wires woven up street poles, and the click of this things legs as it carries you kicking and screaming back the way you had walked. Internal fans whirring loudly, as if purring, garbled voice box speaking as smaller text boxes appear in your vision relaying the words of this thing to you, plans and expectations, deluded programming telling you how good of a life you will have with it.

You swear you can hear the sound of your friend that joined you exploring the warehouse this all started in as it carries you back into the untextured mess of grey streets.

A text box looms over head as you try to get out of this thing's arms again.

'There is no place for you there anymore...'

[bumpen-underbeds]

But you need this degree to be able to pursue the one you actually want, and that means revising this useless information to get the needed credits to finally be able to move on.

When you first met it? Him? Even now, you're not actually sure what they actually are.

It was a mundane Tuesday afternoon in some tiny café near your University, and to get into the course you actually wanted, you were suffering through a Bachelor's in art history. Sitting with the textbook open, reading back and forth over the same information about the four great Masters as you had for the last three weeks, there's only so many times you can reread the same information before the words just start blurring across the paper. 

And so this was how you met them, slightly stressed chewing on the end of a pen, flicking back and forth through a textbook that if you couldn't sell at the end of this semester would turn into an expensive paperweight or worse yet, another expensive shelf decoration. 

The town your University is in is mostly home to the more "standard" monsters, vampires, a couple werewolves, some haunted homes, you're pretty sure there's a harpy colony in the botanical gardens as well. So it's no surprise to find more monstrous patrons in the café, what surprised you was how quickly they seem to move to sit across from you.

They were plenty of empty chairs and tables available for him to make themselves at home, but they had come straight to you, settling themselves in a chair that seemed too small to hold the entirety of their form. 

And you use the term form because there's no polite way to describe the shape that the creature across from you has. With every breath it takes you are physically able to see the flare of this thing's ribs, or what you assume to be ribs, as there are visible bone-like structures covering its chest moving with every inhale and exhale, exposed sinew along its arms and neck look more like tightly packed small metallic tubes that have a faint glow along them, and where most creatures would have a head structure there is instead an old CRT monitor tilted towards you with a variation of the test broadcast screen on it. 

As you open your mouth to say something, it reaches out and taps at your textbook, drawing your attention down as it slams the book closed and pushes it to the side, clearing more room on the table as you flinch at the sudden movement. 

Snapping your head up to look at the creature, you notice that it's screen has changed, the same finger that had been tapping your textbook taps the monitor screen.

On its display is a record, squinting at the old style monitor you realise it's your records, your student loan records. 

Like binary confetti across the screen, you watch yellow, purple, blue, black and white flicker across the screen, before the number next to the final total changes to zero. An odd metallic chirp follows as the creature's finger taps at the zero then the table in front view before making the same hollow chirp.

Following this interaction, you would say you made a graceful retreat, but the café staff would say you bolted like a startled deer, and yet since then the same creature has continued to follow you. Anytime you're seated and there is space available it appears, tilting the same old CRT monitor at you, tapping whatever is in front of you before guiding you to look at its monitor displaying messages and other various things. 

You somewhat suffer through this thing's attention, only somewhat, as you actually did confirm that your student loans had disappeared, according to the finance department of your University, they had been paid off by some business claiming to invest in your future. 

Well that, and you keep receiving incremental deposits following every interaction with this creature, and if it wants to pay your way through university...

Then you'll stare it a little longer every time it finds you.