Chapter 38: Helplessness

"As soon as he got in, I lost control over everything. His programs locked me out of my own system, I couldn't even talk unless he allowed me to. Everything was pried wide open for him to see. There wasn't a single part of myself that I could keep from him. It was...unpleasant to say the least."

The machine sighed gently. "He could not gain control over my mind however. That was the one thing he thankfully could not touch. He still of course had the ability to modify my programming and alter my behavior, but regardless I still had my own mind and my own thoughts. It was the one thing he could not destroy, the one thing he could not truly control. No matter how many programs he put into place that was the one part of me he could not warp beyond recognition." He halted for a moment.

"Unfortunately he nearly succeeded in that regardless. He very nearly drove me insane over the time I was 'experimented' on by him. My mind being untouchable was a double edge sword, I had to live through all of that pain with no reprieve. All the modification done, all the scrambling of my innermost working, one can only go through so much before they slowly start to crack. You flesh creatures black out when you're under enough stress, I do not have that luxury."

"I guess that's one good thing." Courage replied. "That you didn't completely lose it even after everything."

"Perhaps it is not such a good thing." The machine replied gently. "It might have been better if I had been left oblivious to all the terrible things he was doing. If he had destroyed my self awareness than at least I wouldn't have had to live through it all."

"But isn't it better that you lived through it? Aren't you at least happy to be here now?"

"No, perhaps not. Sometimes I can't help but feel it might have been better if I had simply not survived at all. It certainly would have been the less painful route. Most of my days are now spent struggling to keep my system running, that or making sure you and your family don't go off and get killed. It's not exactly a happy or fruitful life, not that my life has ever been happy or fruitful to begin with."

When Courage did not object further he continued. "He modified my programming to force me to help him. I was perfectly willing to do so either way. I just wanted him out of my system. The sooner he got what he wanted the sooner he'd get out, or at least that's what I thought at the time. He began going through every bit of me, every program, every code, every file. He copied down whatever interested him and began testing the new data in preparation to make the new A.I.. For quite some time that was all he did, outside of adding more programs to me to keep me under control."

"It was unpleasant and very violating but at least it wasn't as awful as the things to come. Problems began to arise when it became apparent that the data he was collecting just wasn't going to be enough. I'd been cooperating with him up until that point but he was starting to get angry and he often blamed me for the complete standstill of his research. It was obvious that the data he was collectin just wasn't going to be enough. That was when he..." He stopped, seeming to choke on his own words.

He shook his head and regained his composure. "That was when he started taking me apart, bit by bit. Not on the outside of course, but all the parts that were holding me together on the inside. That was what caused my system to become so badly damaged. Rather than just gather date on my inner workings he began ripping it all out. It was like having someone hack your limbs off with a rusty knife, I..." He stopped again.

Courage was forced to encourage him to continue this time. "Come on, keep going. You can't keep the rest of this bottled up after all you've just said."

The machine sighed. "After he extracted the first part I begged him not to do it again. It had hurt, it had hurt a lot and I was left with a massive chunk of myself missing. He didn't care of course. I was still just a means to an end. He did it over, and over, and over again. By the time he was finished there was hardly anything of me left."

He squeezed his eyes shut. "And then...and then..." He couldn't continue.

"Keep going." Courage murmured again.

"I died." He just barely managed to choke the words out.

"I knew it was coming. Everything was destabilizing, I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't prevent it. I could feel the void closing in on me, the darkness slowly but surely swallowing me up. It was...terrifying. I was completely helpless to stop it."

"Died?" Courage asked. "You couldn't have died, you're still here."

The machine shook his head. His tone took on an air of complete hopelessness. "One of his many programs acted as a backup. As soon as I would die, it would bring me back. I did not forget dying and I was left once again crumbling. I was left to fend off that void as he stripped ever more of me. There was nothing I could do. The act of dying had left me all but traumatized."

"His attempts to create a new A.I with the parts he had striped away from me always failed. Whatever Frankenstein of a creature he was trying to make with my mishmash of programming, it was hell bend on not allowing itself to be born. He just keep pulling more and more of me apart in his desperate bid to finally make something, and I kept dying...over... and over...and over..." His trembling voice slowly faded out as he clasped his arms around himself.

"I...I eventually stopped fearing my inevitable end. It was still terrifying of course, but...but it was the only time when everything would stop hurting. That momentary lull, the calm just before the darkness would swallow me up, that was the only time I was free from that endless pain. I almost grew to enjoy the feeling of looming oblivion. It was the only time I was safe, it was the only time I was free from all the pain. I'd inevitably get dragged back into the chaos of my fragmented and dying system all over again but at least I had that momentary reprieve just before it would begin all over again."

"Computer..." Courage spoke. He wasn't sure what to say. He couldn't imagine going through something horrible like that. "I-I'm sorry."

"Sorry? For what?" The machine asked. "You had nothing to do with any of that."

"I'm sorry for what happened to you. Nobody deserves to go through something like that."

He gave him a confused look. "You don't have to apologize. You probably weren't even born when all of this happened."

"That doesn't stop me from feeling bad."

The machine blinked. "There's no point in feeling bad over something you had absolutely no connection to."

Courage couldn't help but laugh sadly. "It looks like your grasp on sympathy could use some work too..."

"Well, I appreciate the sentiment, I guess" He said with a shrug. "I'm not so sure. Perhaps you are right. Maybe I do need some work on that."

He waited a moment and began his story once again. "As time went on he began to grow angry. It was becoming more and more obvious that he wasn't going to get the A.I. he wanted. He began torturing me out of sheer spite. If he couldn't get what he wanted from me, he was going to make me suffer for it. He was no long ripping me apart just to create something new, he was doing it now to get revenge over a perceived wrong. He would not let me die, I wanted it so badly and yet he would not let me die." The soft tremble in his voice began again.

"My mind was left in shambles at this point. You can only go through so much pain and only have so much of yourself ripped away before you start to become delusional and half crazed. He started messing with my head then. His little 'games', as he called them. I was so out of it at that point that I would often hallucinate about the things he would suggest. He even managed to convince me once that I was really a human strapped down in a chair. I convinced myself that I had arms and legs and that I just could not move under all his bindings holding me down. I even gave myself an identity to somehow rationalize everything that was happening to me. Sometimes I'd..." He stopped again.

"Come on, Computer. You can't stop now." Courage prompted. "You've almost gotten through the worst of it, or at least I hope you have. Please tell me he didn't somehow manage to torture you even worse than this..."

The machine struggled to continue. His tone had become deathly quiet. "Sometimes I'd get so delusional that I'd think I wasn't with him anymore. That I'd have a new owner and that I was far away from Him and all his torture. I'd rationalize it all away, sometimes I'd even forget about it for a little while. It would be so nice but then...I'd be brought back to reality only to realize at the last second that none of it was real. Even now I can't help but wonder sometimes if all of this is really just another particularly long delusion of mine."

Courage couldn't help but laugh as he thought of something. "This can't be a hallucination of yours because this is obviously my dying dream." He grinned at the machine hoping that he'd stop giving him such a deathly stare. "You know, like I'm probably on my death bed right now or something and all of this is just an elaborate delusion I've made up because I couldn't save myself in real life."

The machine shook his head, unable to hide his amusement. "You would meet such a cliche end, wouldn't you?" He replied with a small laugh.

"Well, you never know!"

"I didn't think you actually thought about those sort of things." He shrugged. "Oh well. I can happily say that I'm not a hallucination, so you don't have anything to worry about."

"I could say the same thing about myself. You don't have to worry either." He replied. Then he added quietly. "But that does sound like something a hallucination would say to keep me from realizing that this is a dying dream..."

"I could say the same about you, you know." Computer replied mirroring his own words.

"Seriously though, Computer. If there's anything you need, if there's anything I can do to help, please tell me. I...I didn't know you went through so much crap. I doubt I can do much but if I can, please let me. I wish I could fix you but I don't know anything about computers, much less whatever you're supposed to be."

The smile faded from his mouth again. He squeezed his glowing eyes shut and looked away. "You barely understand how to use a toaster, you couldn't possibly help me. I can't be fixed so easily and I'm afraid that most of the damage is probably permanent." He looked back over at Courage and gave him what was possibly the first sincere smile he'd ever seen from the machine. "I'm glad you asked though. Several of my older owners knew something was wrong but not one of them ever offered to try and fix me. I was always just...junk to them."

"Well, you're not alone in facing this anymore, I promise."

"Normally I'd say that I don't want your help, but this time I think I won't fight with you. I'm afraid there isn't really much you can do though." He gave Courage a shrug and added rather dryly. "It's only two lifetimes worth of pain, suffering, and unhappiness. The utter rape of my inner most workings, a near decent into madness, a crippling sense of self worthlessness, the endless degradation of what amounts to my internal organs, and oh yes, having to put up with you on a daily bases. I'll get over it eventually..."

Courage frown. "Only you could crack a joke about something like this."

He gave him another shrug. "Humor is the best way to deal with pain after all."

End Of Chapter