Neil Korera

The Cost of Self

Start David remembered. More vividly this time he remembered both sides now. There was holes throughout his torso, patterned with the scorch marks across the skin from those poor helpless souls, walking bags of steel and memory from a time where no true mind still reached. He could still feel the gore soaking through his skin. The memories he was never supposed to see. All of the things that it had kept from him. Where he was from. How he was made. What he really was. How more were made. And how it grew. How the core used all people itself to grow. And how it would keep going. The sounds in his head were deafening, like opening two worlds at the same time, opening your eyes in two separate places and seeing both at the same time. But this was finally him. His life was more than hunting his kin, was more than hunting men and women and children to strip them down to fuel for the fire to feed this monster, and ones and zeros for the AI to process. To grow. To become ' complete.' He felt it pushing memories of a family he had never had, had never belonged to into his mind, it screaming for control with no more options, no more abominations of man and metal it command to end him now. It had two options with him now. Either win control, or self destruct the building, and shield itself in the way down. Protect itself so it could rebuild, without losing all progress. Without losing itself. David felt the life spilling out of him, painting the floor and walls where he touched with an inky darkness. And as he wheezed from breathless lips, he knew he would make a third option. He stepped into the room, and the world went black.