He didn't do much for those months afterwards. Those long, tiring months of nothing. Of merely existing. He thought he had what he wanted, but it was a lie. This new place brought nothing new to him. Only, emptiness.
When he woke up each morning he would stride around the apartment, trying to think of nothing. It didn't work very well. He knew he had the ability to "turn off" his thoughts, but he seemed to only control it well during high energy moments. He would think of things that scared him, which is surprising for someone who shouldn't be able to feel fear. All things considered, with the ridiculous methods and amateur process his creator had gone through to make him, it is truly fascinating that all the worst parts were finished first. Were they easier? Was it random chance? Did it mean... anything at all?
When pacing would fail to muffle his brain, he would fall to the ground and stare at the ceiling. It didn't offer anything to him. It didn't care. He didn't care. And yet he did. It was paradoxical, as many things about him were. He wished for the ability to feel empty and he wished for the ability to feel everything. Everything that everyone else seemed to have no troubles with, and empty so he wouldn't even have to bother in the first place. His skin pulsated as the electricity underneath it wavered through his whole being. It would be so much easier if... But his brain wouldn't finish. He was stupid. He was so stupid. He didn't know anything, and everything that came out of his mouth was... he didn't even know. There was nothing he could be sure of. His memory fizzled frantically, and he thought of how much of his thoughts were gone forever, how much had been taken from him without even realizing it. Was it his fault? Was it hers? Why did he believe what he came to believe, why did he know the things he did, and, more importantly, why did he not know the things he probably should. Colin wondered whether he was even real. The truthfully ridiculous thought that he was a robot should have made him laugh out loud. It was so funny he could laugh until he cried. Of course he wasn't one! The evidence suggested that...
Of course, it did not.
He was scared. He wanted to be a real person. He wanted to mean something. Anything. He wanted to feel how everyone else felt. He craved natural emotions and sensations. He CRAVED that nebulous feeling of being alive, of having a heart that beat and blood that pumped and a brain that sparked and a complete body.
But of course, he needn't desire that. After all, he wasn't a robot.
A few weeks after he situated himself, police started coming in every few days or so. They would ask him where the residents were. He would not tell them.
Colin learned that a terribly efficient way of getting rid of someone was to cut off their head. He'd been used to his method of stabbing in the throat but he was not as accurate or consistent. And thus they might live longer. Decapitation got rid of his interrogators quickly. No one tried to stop him. Because they could not.
Colin acquired an axe one day. He was running out of places to hide the bodies though. He began to leave them out in the open. He deserved to live in the filth anyway, he began to think. The whole building probably stunk now. He might be the only one living there, in a pile of corpses and blood and bones. Living. Ha. What a hilarious word. It was so funny.
Life moved on but he stayed stagnant. For 3 months, he would remain in a loop of nothingness. He wanted more, but it wasn't coming. He began to develop a new emotion besides fear and emptiness.
Regret.
Why has he done all of this? Why had he killed all these people? He didn't deserve to live more than them after all... if he really was a lie of an organism. It had felt special and new before, why had he come to detest that first taste of difference he'd ever had? The circuits weren't connecting, they had been severed and he wanted nothing more than to tie them together and understand this disgusting, writhing, burning, vomitous feeling in his chest, in his skull, in his lungs. What was the FUCKING POINT?! What as the point of these feelings that just got in the way of him becoming better or worse? They didn't help him, they didn't stop him, they just cluttered up his already muffled and warped brain and made him want to scream in anguish! It was all so loud, and it was getting louder every day! If there was a purpose to this then why was it here at all, when there were so many better and more vital things that he should've had but didn't! Memory, completed A.I., a finished body, morals! All things he would never know unless he was directly confronted with them; whose idea was this?! Why had he even come here? Why had he killed that nice old lady or that worker or those residents or the law enforcement? Why was there nothing, internal or external to stop him? Nothing added up, and that's all he knew! Why did he leave his tube at all? WHY WAS HE MADE IN THE FIRST PLACE?! Perhaps-
Perhaps... things would have been better if he never left...
Perhaps... things would have been better if...
he'd never been built at all...
Life continued on.
Everything was the same as before.
Until one day...
something changed.