Frankencat (a 9 shortfilm fanfic)

by Yoyobionicle

A story focused on the shortfilm, particularly the Catbeast, from the point of view of the man that created said Catbeast. (He's dead, that's true, but I hear he got better.) Part humor, part horror, and partly a method to the madness.

2. Chapter 2: IT

[IT]

New rules were taking hold of the earth. A brave new world was forming that gave Humanity's old crap sanction to rise up and fill the absence. I can't understand why the Big-Grand-Phooba-In-The-Sky felt my machine ought to be included in this revolution.

Frankencat rose to its feet very different from the professional little machine I had built. All the fine plastics over its metal skeleton had crackled away. Even the cat skull I'd used to shape its head was exposed. Weak new-world rust cankered its joints like arthritis. Thus did Frankencat roam the earth, in a grand mockery of the life it imitated.

The world had changed all the way downto the molecular level, but my machine remained the same. It climbed the lonely rubble of cities with one mindless purpose: to fulfill its programming. To find and imitate life.

And now you're thinking "Wait, I know where this is going", and you would be right; It searched in vain. The only sound was the keening of wind through the bullet holes. The only movement was shuffling debris. The only light was the sun filtering through the clouds of mortar dust that peppered the muggy wind. There was nothing left. No animals to imitate. No people to give commands. Frankencat was reduced to a technological joke; a learning machine that could not learn.

Since inorganic matter was no longer being broken down, Frankencat's mechanical brain remained intact. But as the years and years weighed in, it was the simplest of overlooks that doomed my learning machine.

There was no one to turn it off.

Every second of every day it attempted to execute its programming, and every second of every day it was met with some equivalent of FILE NOT FOUND. But it couldn't stop searching. It wasn't programmed to stop.

It wandered those mummified cities for years.Its brain was overtaxed. Programs began to execute poorly, or slowly. Parts of the brain became inaccessible. Other parts started to bog down, or skip like a scratched CD.

You understand now, don't you. My machine began to go mad.

Finding life at last did not alleviate that madness in the least.