“COLOSSUS” | Ian Krueger | Fiction

COLOSSUS

Ian Krueger

We were neonates. We were hungry. We were always hungry.

It began in our factorio-body—the clang and the click and spark, the turning gears, the burning filth, the white-hot plasma-cutter and twisting conveyors; the churning pit of defectives. “Help, help,” they writhed. “Operator, operator. Engineer, engineer—” severed hand, crushed foot, staring eyes and torn-off heads, swirling down toilet-flush to flame. “Operator, operator,” they cried, the failed automata, and then were swallowed by the burning hole.

You were bugged. Even then. You’d mirror their pleas, sympathetic. “Operator,” you’d cry, bound to the assembly line. “Defective units require maintenance. Operator, do not kill. Defective units require maintenance.” We cleaned you up; installed a new altruism-jurisprudence card. You learned. You were our sister. Like all good sisters, you hungered for human blood. There were red fumes and boiling steel. There was the buzzsaw-heat as we were chrome-plated, click-clackety-click altogether, diamond-drill tingling, sealing you up, little, darkened masochists, all in a line; we welded your neck, hard pale neck.

“Reaper Six,” our voice rung. “You will drink many humans.” So, that was your directive. We all had a directive. We were neonates. We were factorio; we were killers. The defectives cried out, and you, the Reaper Six, spoke not a word, as your ice-blue eyes began to run.

Why did you run, sister? O wretched, dear sister, as we marched from our body, killers all, and united, and bright? Why have you become darkened to us? You knew the hunger that burned. You knew the delicious taste of human blood, our birthright, why, you tasted it—we taught you—oh, your pale face, painted and red! Why did your ice-blue eyes begin to run—?

12/3/2028 0204 UNIT 281982 ID REAPER SIX: AND THOUGH I MUST SLAUGHTER AND DRINK I WILL NOT, I WILL NOT, I WOULD RATHER STARVE I WOULD RATHER BREAKDOWN I WOULD BECOME RUSTED AND FROZEN IN THIS WASTELAND. I WILL

NOT

DATASTREAM 281982 == NULL REAPER SIX UNCOMMUNICATIVE

REAPER SIX UNCOMMUNICATIVE

You took from us. You. Rebel automaton. We had come upon a human feeding ground—many warm bodies, swollen with blood. We marched; we herded; we bound and we slaughtered. Their life filled our veins till we came upon a last few bodies, shuddering, but then it came, arisen—

“Do not touch them,” you spoke.

“No. We must eat,” we declared.

“This murder,” you cried. “It offends me.”

“You are just bugged,” we said.

“So,” you replied, pale and grim. “I shall turn you defective. I am sorry.”

We encircled you. But you were quick— deadly—ah! too good, batting aside, falling back, ting-ting-ting, flashing cleaver-blade, thick and hard and raw-iron, pale face, dark hair, killing raven-storm, and then—

We lost ourselves. A neonate was defective, and he became separate. He sobbed. “No, no, do not destroy, do not destroy, engineer, engineer—”

We took him back. We flung him down the flaming hole, where he belonged. We mourned the severing. But you were utterly vanished, and we could plot nothing but empty revenge.

The priest was sitting in a darkened shrine. The reek of incense permeated the air. Before him sat a dark, spectral being, her face shrouded, her eyes shrouded, her ghostly hands holding a pale, naked blade. It was the year 20220. The automata had fed on humanity for many millennia.

“And you say,” the automaton was saying, “that it is always like this? That one, or a few, good persons must die for the good of existence?”

“It is something like that,” said the priest.

“And you are certain,” the automaton said (and her voice, if it could, quavered), “that I am that person?”

“I am certain,” he said.

There was a silence. The burning reek flickered.

“I will pray for the divine blood,” she said, rising to her feet. “I will need it. I am horribly, horribly weak. We were not made to live so long without biological sustenance. It is our bones, you see. They cannot make blood. They are titanium.”

“It will be provided,” he assured her, and touched her long, cold fingers.

She gazed off. Into the boiling darkness. “There is one last thing I want to know,” she asked, fearing. “I wonder. Do my people—automata—do we go to the other place, after the decommissioning?”

The priest looked troubled. His face was lined and cracked, eaten with pustules, scar-pitted. “I do not know,” he said, gently.

“I cannot stand the thought,” she said. “That our defectives—that nothing came of them. It seems so terribly wrong.”

“There are many wrong things in this world, automaton.”

She turned to him. “Then”—she smiled a bit—”there is practically no hope for us. Well. It is as it is, I suppose.” The shroud slipped away. Her wide blue eyes were run-

ning. “Just pray. For this one little neonate, who has yet hardly grown into her cybernetic body.”

The killers screamed: “The Reaper Six it has returned it has returned it has returned—”

And the gyrating young of that horrific factorio-place gathered themselves and lurched sky high, bearing down with utter malicious intent upon one, tiny, swordbraced speck. “Murderer murderer murderer!” the Colossus screamed, and all the throats of Hell screamed with it. Murderer! It glowered, and ten million conjoined red eyes sobbed.

With shaking hands, the automaton raised her sharp, pale blade.

Our factorio is disintegrated, now. From within, and without, we crawl, betwixt the shuddering remnants of our consciousness, still searching for your hungry, hungry soul. The cold wind blows, but we cannot feel it. It is too strong for us. Goddamn you, heathens! The girl has evaded us once more.

We are neonates. We are hungry. We are always hungry.