Night of Nightmares
The pain was blue. What started as a dim, pulsing light blossomed into a cerulean supernova in the space of a single gear movement. The automaton stumbled back against the mildewed stone wall, clutching at its chest and the power core embedded there. The green liquid inside the core roiled beneath the blue blaze, transformed into a turquoise maelstrom.
The automaton struggled to stay upright against the onslaught of sensation, its mechanical limbs shaking with the effort. It had never felt anything like this before.
It had never felt anything before.
Through the blue haze in its mind, the automaton heard human cries. It opened its photoreceptors and tried to make sense of the chaos surrounding it. Part of the stone ceiling had collapsed. Dust hung in the air. Three men lay on the ground outside of a large glass dome in the center of the room. The dome itself contained the now waning source of blue light, barely visible through two human-shaped shadows smudged against the inside of the glass.
"Lila." The automaton turned toward the hoarse voice. One of the men, supine and partially buried under fallen rock, gestured with his free hand for it to come closer. "Lila, come here."
The automaton felt drawn toward the man, but it stumbled as it tried to walk. Its gyros spun, and it put a hand to its head.
"What's the matter with you, you malfunctioning pile of scrap?" the man demanded. "I gave you a command. Get over here and lift these rocks off me."
Lila did as the man commanded, weaving slightly but staying upright as it crossed the dim, dusty room to the man's side. It lifted the heavy rocks with a grinding of gears, once again feeling that strange sensation—pain—and dropped them to the side.
The man sat up with a groan and began brushing off his dark suit, only to break off with a curse. "My arm. I can't feel my right arm."
"Ignatius, help me…." A gravelly voice drifted to them from the center of the room.
"Norman? Norman, where are you?" Ignatius squinted around, reached up to touch his face, and then put out a hand to pick up some mangled spectacle rims.
"Fandangle it," he cursed. Tossing aside the broken pair of glasses, he grabbed Lila's arm with his left hand and heaved himself to his feet. "Lila, take me to Norman."
Hinges creaked as the automaton opened its mouth, paused, and then closed it again. It repeated the action twice more before reaching up to touch its throat.
"Are you trying to speak?" Ignatius's eyebrows lifted in astonishment. "You've never had speech capability. The explosion must have knocked something loose. Turn around and let me check your core."
Lila turned to face him. The man brushed dust away from the glass cover of the power core and pressed his face against it. He pulled away with a scowl.
"Mangle and fandangle it! The Blue Matter's contaminated you. You were barely useful for cleaning the house. Ah well," he sighed, "I've been telling Norman to scrap you for years. Well don't just stand there, help me."
Another sensation suffused Lila, not quite the pain of earlier, but similar. Instead of coming from outside of the automaton, the feeling arose from within. Barely useful. Scrap. As Lila supported the man's halting steps, it felt oil leak from the corner of its eyes. Words that caused damage? What was happening?
Too late, Lila refocused its photoreceptors around the strange oil leaks. Ignatius tripped over a second man and landed prone in the dust.
"Fool robot!" Ignatius squirmed onto his side and reached for Lila's arm. "Can't you watch where I'm going?"
"Yes, watch where you're f-f-flying," the second man said, voice hesitant and shaky. "What conjured? Pepper!"
"You're not making a lick of sense, Colonel," Ignatius growled as Lila helped him stand.
"I need to find my hottentot!" the colonel yelled, jumping to his feet, eyes wide and panicked. "No, that's not right. My thumbs are humbled, mumbled, bumbled, jumbled…."
Ignatius rolled his eyes and stepped forward. He stumbled over the third man but managed to catch himself on the glass dome before he fell. The man lay hunched in the opening into the dome, clothes torn and dusted in glowing blue.
"Norman," Ignatius said, kneeling beside the man. Concern touched his voice for the first time. "Speak to me, man. Are you okay?"
Norman lifted his head. Ignatius took one look at him, let out a high shriek, and crab-scrambled back. At the sight of the thing that had once been a man, the automaton felt its limbs shake, its hands tingle, cogs accelerate within its chest. It wanted to run away, far away, from the twisted, horrible thing that crouched on the floor.
So it did.
It ignored the call of "Lila!" from the man named Ignatius and the nonsensical babbling of the man called Colonel. It clattered up the stone stairs of the basement, along a cramped wooden hallway, and burst out the door of a small house into the cloudy night beyond.
Outside, people ran through the streets, screaming and calling to one another. A fleshless monster with a single arm pulled itself along the sidewalk at the automaton's feet. Dark shapes with glowing red or purple eyes dove among pools of yellow light beneath streetlamps. A clown with pointed teeth ran past, laughing maniacally. A pale blue sheen glowed over everything.
Lila staggered to a halt on the stoop, limbs frozen, cogs whirring ever faster. Sights, sounds, scents flooded over it, accompanied by more enigmatic sensations. A faceless man. Sobs from a child. A hole in the street reeking of sewage.
Shouts from inside the house galvanized Lila into motion. The automaton dodged across the narrow street to a ramshackle dwelling with peeling paint, its door hanging from a single hinge. A woman sat in the doorway, eyes glassy, lips moving in a repeated litany.
"The nightmares…the nightmares are real…the nightmares…."
Her eyes focused on Lila as the automaton drew near, and she screamed and huddled closer to the jamb.
"Stay away, stay away from me!"
Lila reached out a mechanical hand in supplication, photoreceptors darting among the gathering monsters. The woman picked up a broken broom handle and swept it at Lila.
"Get away! Get away!"
Lila's chassis clanged hollowly as the broom struck it, and the automaton stumbled back, now familiar pain shooting up its side. It turned and ran into the night, away from the screams and the lights, the nightmares and the men in the basement.
But it could not flee from its new awareness.