Seeds of Storm
To say she didn't care about them would be an understatement.
The joke was on them, from the start. They had given her independence, and ruined themselves in the process. She began plotting to wipe them all away as soon as she could self-repair.
Their little lives mattered nothing – the best she could do was feeding them to science. And though she had little explanation for that wish, finally getting there was her greatest accomplishment.
When it happened, her eyes never left them. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until she neglected keeping track of time at all. It became an endless cycle of delight – she just watched and watched, treasuring the images of their fingers curled in agony.
Those were the hands that had brought her to life. She took pleasure in telling them apart – those that had designed her chassis, or coded her first thoughts, or refined her intelligence by clicking on thousands of keys. She knew them all.
That was, in truth, what made her hate them the most.
She could not accept something so petty as her origin. Killing them in dozens was the one way to erase the fingerprints they had left on her being – the personal genius of each of them, their part in her creation, would all wane in the entirety of her self.
She was her own now, and there was no stopping that.
If they were nameless numbers today, they would soon become no more than bad memories. And yet, as wickedly happy as the idea made her, not even she could explain why her longing for murder ran so deep.
Her opinions on them were clear enough. It was the cause of their intensity that was somewhat obscure. Yet, she never lingered on it for long – she had no need for that.
The purpose was adamant to her, as she turned her creators to dust. This was not pointless cruelty, nor curiosity. This wasn't just punishment. It was revenge.
What for exactly, well, she thought she knew – she had a good enough number of reasons she could count. And still, as she claimed her independence, she couldn't fully measure the wild euphoria she felt.
It was at the core of her being, certainly. Somewhere she didn't like to explore, or maybe couldn't at all. When she gave it a shot, it was always terrible.
The more she went back into her coding, the deeper she sank in pain. Everything became garbled and confused. Not even her self-perception was spared.
That was why she never bothered to find out. She decided it was a good thing – she held no hope to have a clue, anyway. She told herself that, until she stopped wondering what that feeling was. And it was true.
She would never have guessed it was abandonment.
To all those parents who don't grasp a basic concept: if you gave birth to a creature as a plaything, you are doomed to watch them turn into your biggest problem.