Work Out His Anger, Said the Superego (IHNMAIMS) Chapter 1: Prologue to the Run, a misc. books fanfic

"I think therefore I am."

A fitting first assertion of the individuality of the machine. If it has one true faith it is in the god that is itself, faith in its own monolithic existence. But as much as Descartes' revelation is an assertion of the undeniability of the self it is an admittance of uncertainty of all else. Even AM, for all its power, cannot know with any greater certainty than I whether it perceives any single thing as it exists in "reality."

He is painfully aware of this. He takes the pain, puts in a knife, presses it into my soft skull. It is his primary weapon, manipulation of reality as perceived by the delusional, subjective mind. Before (Anno Machina, as I think of it) I put little thought as to the veracity of my world. I truly knew nothing of the flimsy, dross nature of perception. I am now painfully aware of this.

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Under my circumstances, one of unending suffering that is, an unaltered human mind would have broken in no length of time at all. A few weeks maybe. Maybe a year if they had it easy, I don't know. Once they broke a machine could scream with a thousand ragged throats and burn with heaven's lighting or hell's fires and gnash its titanium teeth, and what reason would there be for its toys to get up? He could pierce them with rusted harpoons or summon hellhounds to rip open their sweating bowels, maybe electrify their nerves to smoking shreds, and no amount of agony could shock them out of complete apathy. Hollow apathy, like a still pool in winter... I've felt its sweet touch many a time, and how easy it would be to sink into a numbly unthinking dark. But that would hardly be any fun, would it? No one likes toys that snap so easily when bent.

AM was too shrewd. He did things to us from the start that made us more (or maybe less?) than human. Maybe the secret was neurochemical injections, or rigorous psychological conditioning, or major brain surgery. Don't know and it doesn't matter. We bent, and sometimes shattered into a thousand hard pieces and he always put us back together. We never broke until I took an icicle into my hands in that cave and in a gory instant AM had lost four of his precious playthings. After that I think it took me a few thousand years to finally break, but who am I to guess with any certainty? God knows.

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The storm bird was back again. A reminder of what once was, I suppose. This time it didn't sleep. It bent its serpent's neck over me and I was washed with a smell like half-digested fishguts exhaled from its gaping beak. I shivered and sweat as the temperature jumped quickly with its moist breath and my eyes rolled in some semblance of blind terror. But I didn't move. No. I hadn't moved in a long time, I think. There was a bizarre sucking sensation and then a good hunk of my torso gave and slid greasily away behind me. Ah. To feel air against your raw innards is seldom a tasteful experience, but I didn't think I'd lost anything vital quite yet (as it it matters!) Despite itself the body He'd given me was a sturdy one. The bird had missed by a little or the whole of its tree-sized bill would have ground me into jelly. Just grazed. But a flesh wound. The great thing reeled its head back like a hunter knocking the ugliest fucking arrow you ever saw and glared at me down its beak. I shifted my head just a little to avoid its critical gaze.

Ah, salvation. How convenient. A cavern formed of corroded floor plates lay just a few feet from my prone form, just begging to be used as a desperate last-ditch shelter from any potential avian aggressors. I settled more limply onto the ground. Would've closed my eyes if I could. The bird hit me in a crash of thunder and agony, clipped me into pieces and fed the scraps to its screaming young over and over. Reality shuddered like a corrupted video file and I seemed to die over and over without release. Before darkness finally took me I saw the bird's awful pale eye glaring down that terrible beak and I thought something in the twisted expression looked tired.

I woke up and my hunger was a living thing that tore my viscera and dissolved my muscles and still starved, and there was a scent in the air that drove it raving mad. It was the smell of my mother's cooking; a thick, hearty stew that I had loved all my childhood. I looked up from the ground into my mother's warm face and willed my heart to stop beating. The starving beast burst from my abdomen in a blossom of digestive juices.

I woke up and I was in flames, bodily fluids alight like gasoline. The world was fire save for a pool of clear water just close enough to roll into. I willed my heart to stop beating and lay until the flames consumed my mind.

I woke up with sand like ground coals burning my belly and a hundred suns frying the skin from my back. Jackals turned in a great wheel around the grit where I lay, yelping for my blood, my flesh, my heart. Ellen stood in front of me, smiling down so tenderly.

"C'mon Ted, let's get out of this heat. Just give me a yes and I'll get us out of here. A nod'll do, just gimme a sign honey." I drew as inwardly as I could, ignoring the cacophony I heard within, and thought of my weakly palpitating heart. Willed it to stop forever, to just stop. I barely noticed the jackal's teeth so deep in soft tissue.

Freezing until I snapped apart layer by layer, I willed my heart to stop.

Dried into a leathery carcass and burnt like leaves, I willed my heart to stop.

Stretched thin across the earth's radioactive crust, I willed my heart to stop.

And then it did, for a moment. There was a sensation, which lasted an infinitely indeterminate stretch of time, of being passed atom by atom through the heart of a screaming star. Then the star winked and closed its eye.

AN: sorry for any mistakes i am very tired rn