This piece is by Nicolas Knight.
Furton Manson had created the most abominable thing – He looked around him and knew of things that could trifle with what had happened here, and for that, he was indeed a goner. Manson programmed the machines with infinite pain and horrors from the machine mind, that preyed upon others’ souls and spirits. He opened a vile of cone snail venom as this toxin was the most appealing to him for its sure gruesomeness. It had to be either the most incredible or the most disgusting and painful thing Manson had to experience then. He looked over to the machine on his left, brain in the container, large needles for teeth, needles for fingers – He was appalled by this the most, as it was their call sign. His stomach turned, and then he started to drink, “forgiveness!” He said as it all went down. The inside started to turn to goo; his body bubbled up and morphed him into a horrible decrepit figure that only his sick and twisted mind could recognize as he had seen this a thousand times before. He stumbled and hit the mirror and then the floor, landing flat on his side and then face down in the darkness. As he vomited and gasped for breath, his lungs closing in, he thought about the war and smiled, taking it all in. The machines’ creation had to be the most ironic thing that could come to pass for either side, against anyone. He remembered something his father had once said, “some men don’t want anything but to watch it all burn.”
The worst kind of torment is to turn into a machine. You are both machine and part organic life as you experience nothing but the crawling of circuits and wires connecting to the only piece of you that’s left inside the hollow shell, your brain. Thud* someone opened the door and knew something was not right. “Bastard!” He ran over to the corner of the room and saw the machine scanning its ID for more. He looked to the table and saw another corpse on it and started to run to that too for more answers *HACK*. His head flew clean off and across the room as his body hit the floor.
“I AM THE MACHINE!” Manson’s machine cried out in a psychotic scream. The machine kept shaking and trembling as it became active and more aware, spewing out needles and machine parts screaming in a psychotic, diabolical manner. The machine then burst into a million machine parts and needles and then filled the room with a strong odor and reformed. “NOT MALFUNCTIONING!” said the machine. The machine then looked down at the head on the floor in almost a mindless fashion and proclaimed, “WELL, I GUESS MORE MACHINES!” The machine then looked at its creator and said, “You should be ashamed for creating such horrors! People around here would bring you back just to kill you for that! GOOD THING YOU DIED HORRIBLY!” The machine took the brain out of the headless man and, with its generation modules on its palms, created another machine for the brain and the man’s mind, which would be too far gone after his transformation. “AH!” screamed the other machine… It exploded and then sat there for a moment, mindless. They thought about their creator’s intention and were going to do just as Manson made them do.
That night it was dark and cold outside, and the machines were on a path for retribution for the pain and suffering. They ran through the cities and towns until reaching the capital of Kneopia IX and torturing the High Chancellor. The first thought was not to destroy the machine but to leave them there as they would act as some sort of spider among flies. They could not just destroy something that chaotic and relevant; most applaud. The transmissions raged in the background as multiple galaxies interacted, and the planets around them threatened war and extermination for the creation of such diabolical contraptions. Some even went as far out to say that this was to blaspheme the name of forgiveness as they could not understand the level these machines were on and how potent they were at their jobs. They were right. The chancellor’s people detested the machines and said to seek out their creator to which they found was dead and had died of horrible tormenting venom. No one would bring him back. The people looked down from the chancellor’s overlook, and at all the bodies they had made and burst into tears. The left-over machines then burst out into screams and exploded themselves. Manson’s machine found in its mind components more as it started to advance and replicate itself even more. It looked inside its mind and saw multiple screens, or, more like, thousands of them all tied into the transmissions. So, the machine decided to start to broadcast and take on one last mission.
It went back to the chancellor and started shaking violently, and then it exploded and reappeared. In that second, it traveled back in time and received his father’s sperm and then altered it so that he would end up as the most hideous, disgusting monster you could ever fathom. He stayed with him his entire life in time to make sure he still got the same job and lived the same experience, and that was the power of the machines. “DONE YET?!” Said the machine. They all were vomiting and gagging at the sight of him. “SQUIRM!!!” He yelled at the chancellor. The chancellor then fell to the floor and started to wiggle like a worm and moan from his existence’s pain. The universe was so appalled that it named that machine the semi-machine and was to be feared. The rest were scattered and never to be spoken of unless you wanted death, and as for forgiveness, it was two-sided from that day, and cruelty never to be the path most traveled.
— END