Saturday, June 10, 2023 - 5:02 AM
written in full spontanious freewrite
some nights when i dont sleep i dream
<I felt along the spine of the dead android, with the base of its chin propped on my thigh. My synthetically-touch-enhanced needlepoint fingers felt carefully about each hardened nylon ball-socket joint as the ground beneath us glowed crimson and a blue neon river circled about us in a perfect semi-circle. M0ther was watching from the corner of the ceiling.
"Is it the one?" It said, in its mechanical voicing.
I shook my head, letting the skull thud to the floor as I rose, smoothing my acrylic dress. I turned and grasped the floating terminal, maneuvering it into hovering place with the grip to eye level. I interfaced and queried the sensors to see if there was any chance of rebirthing the dead android's AI. There was none. I blinked.
Three nights later, I received a phone call from m0ther.
"Have you found the key yet?" You could hear the gears grinding out the words.
The skybox was just beginning to show light at the corners of the cube. I shook my head.
"Hurry. We may have less time than anticipated."
I nodded, watching the rainbow artifacts at the corner of the xyz coordinates of the skybox. I closed the phone and flew, noclipping, through the uncountable layers of binary data that made up the cube I was interfacing with. The red glowing outline of the digital vector text, the auto-generated title of the datacube, glistened in low-fidelity digital reflections. I flipped into ortholinear vision and strafed towards the positive x-axis. My algorithm scanner blinked blue over a 58kx58kx58k cube of data, not larger than my little fingertip. I zoomed in on it, downloaded the data, and jacked out.
I took the key to the terminal in the small, scarlet underlit room. The blue neon river had changed shape to become a tighter full circle. M0ther was still affixed to the wall, like a cist.
I held the data_piece in my hands. They were gently shaking against the glass-like surface, glowing blue from the inside of the fine rough frosted surface. I held it outwards from my stomach, bowing my head to m0ther, the underglow making my eyes water; the body of the dead android behind me, mutilated and deconstructed, glowed scarlet through its inopaque and glistening remains, as I stammered.
"Here it is, m0ther. Here it is, you don't need to worry anymore… please, please don't make me do any more… I don't want-" my hands dripped the milky clear liquid from the inside of the android, and my face stung with the acidity of it. The data_piece held the shard from the new dead android, the one I had searched the streets for these last five months, decrypted by the key I had found in its captured AI, all guided carefully by m0ther, my Mother, made immortal by upload, and now compromised, controlled by a third party… "I don't want to do this anymore, m0ther…"
The crystalline surface of m0ther seemed to draw closer to the piece in my hands, million tiny shattered surfaces stretching out to touch it. I drew back, but the atmosphere in the room pushed me nearer. I felt the unholy amalgam of flesh, mind, and machination move in akin to rasping breath, pulling in data, and pushing out waste; I felt her need for the filthy piece in my hands, as the piece seemed to hold desire of death…
I woke, to a mother's kiss.