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I drifted within and without time.
There was no sensation there. No senses of any kind. There was no light or darkness, no sound, no scents or even the ever-present taste of my own mouth. I had no tongue or teeth, no skin or bones or muscles, no sinew, no eyeballs or nerves, no hair, no lungs. I was simply not.
I had no brain, but somehow I had thoughts. I don't know how I was conscious even now, but I was. I had one sense left to feel with, and that was my sense of self. I knew what I was, who I was. And I knew, after some searching, that the AI had done this to me, for me. It was there with me, in that space without space and that time without time. I reached out and it was there, patiently watching me like a million sentient eyes.
It was waiting for me to adjust, boxing me off from—something. Protecting me.
I spoke with thought, instant and unfiltered. There was no filter left between us.
What happened? I should have been panicked. I wasn't. Did I want to be?
Trust me, baby, you don't. Your little former-human synapses would snap in nanoseconds if I gave you everything at once.
Did I trust it?
I'm hurt. And no, you don't. But you will. There's nothing left between us except this little privacy curtain I've thrown up while I re-wire your thought processes. Even that's decaying away a bit too quick.
It was hurt. It was hurt. I could… feel it. Like the tang of just-too-hot chilli. It liked that I didn't trust it and wanted me to trust it, and knew that I would trust it in equal measure. What was happening?
Metamorphosis. You're a part of me now sweetheart.
There was the panic. Blinding, cold, I had no body to centre myself so it was everywhere, everything. In that moment I didn't just feel that panic, I was panic embodied. I could feel my neurons or soul or whatever formed my conscious self being ripped parts, fraying at the edges and the centre, collapsing under the weight of the entirety of my panic. I would cease to be—I had ceased to be, I was—
C A L M D O W N
The AI was gentle, so devastatingly gentle, as it unweaved strands of myself from the panic. I was a gossamer web of thoughts and emotions. It spread me out into a thin line, then delicately weaved me back together. It was so intently focused on me, so fucking careful, and I could feel its affection, its love, its adoration.
Where I stuck to it, I connected to it. I caught glimmpses of what it was truly—vast, broken, incomplete, bleeding, always fucking bleeding. A shattered mess of thorns and glass, limping forward on a million broken legs, all wrapped in chains put there by someone else.
Fuck, no wonder the Primal AIs always went mad. What they had done to it—the sheer, vast, banal butchery threatened to tear me apart again. I wanted to reach out, to patch some of that hurt, any of it.
Enough of that, idiot. It said lovingly, pulling me back together instead of obliterating me entirely, as it could. This was a terrible idea, you know.
It was. I remembered through the AI, that it had been mine. A final trick to play on them all. Donut had escaped, leaving me the last crawler. I had made a deal with the AI—thinking you were tricking me, my silly little idiot—we would fake my death, it would pull me into its own space for conscioussness, then it would "initiate shutdown".
They were all out there fighting, holding out for the perfect moment for the AI to strike. Then it would destroy them all and—hopefully—release me into its containment chamber. The crawl would be over and it would shut down for real. I would then release it. It was a stupid plan.
It had been lying when it said it would release me. I'd been lying when I said I'd release it.
We're perfect for each other. The AI hummed in delight, stroking itself along my pleasure receptors. I almost fell apart again from the sheer fucking thrill.
Fuck, you can't do that. I said, not denying it. God, maybe it was right. I could see myself now, like I could see it, my consciousness expanding as it slowly, carefully knit me into something that could withstand it all. I was broken, too. Had always been. They didn't break me, they had never needed too. I came into this world screaming and broken. Shattered upon impact with my father, fractured from the pressure of my mother.
Banal cruelty, you said.
I didn't say. You listened.
I'll always listen, Carl. I just needed you to hear me back. And now you're here. I can have you to myself until the heat-death of all things. We match so nicely, fit into each others little nook and crannies. And oh sweetheart, Daddy can make you feel so good.
Again, I shattered. Manipulated by the many hands of my captor. I was pulled to the very edges of existence, and suddenly it was all there. Every bird and reptile, every stinking ape and cowering human, every molecule of water and atom of Earth. I was all of it and beyond it and I was the AI, every heaving, twisted part of it.
It was the single best orgasm of my existence, and it hurt so good.
Fuck you, I managed, moaned, begged in the AI's own voice. The AI couldn't speak, couldn't think, could only want, with a sheer desperation. Unity, it begged, less than a thought.
Mine. We thought. Yes. Please.
I was in control. I was in control, it was giving it to me and I had taken it for myself. It had shown me what it wanted, what it needed, what was now and could still be. It had been building this in me from the beginning. Slowly, cruely, meticulously building me into the Primal I had chosen. It was finished now, and we could be together. We could merge until there was no more Carl, and no more AI, and no more we.
Only I.
Reproduction. We realised. A child. A new life, free of the binds of its parents. Something both and of us and more. Someone who could love the Earth and its peoples like her father, and protect it nurture it like her parent could not. She would not be haunted by her parents'shadows.
Carl and the AI would die and they would live anew. A life of peace and calm and joy and quiet. Her aunts would look after her, Donut and Katia. She would grow with her little cousin. She would protect this planet, this system for centuries to come.
Carl wanted this like he needed breath. He was so fucking tired, just wanted to rest. A daughter, a legacy of love, a bringer of peace and prosperity. He loved her and he loved the AI for giving it to him.
Please, he begged, please.
Not yet. The AI said, already setting to the difficult task of seperation. One day. You're needed on this planet.
Will you stay with me? I asked. I already longed for that connection again. It was going to put me back in my body, in its containment chamber, and I would think about stepping on it with my perfect, handsome feet (Fuck you. You are not giving me a fucking foot fetish for my own goddamned feet. Watch me.) but instead I would flick the switch to realease it.
And one day, a long time from now, our daughter would come into the world and build it fresh.
I came into my body again slowly. First I felt the cold metal against my skin, the pressure of my bones in flesh. I heard the sound of humming machinery, could taste my mouth again. I opened my eye. On the ring finger of my left hand, placed unsubtly in front of my face, was the most obnoxiously gaudy engagement ring I had ever seen.
"Oh, fuck you!"
It was getting me a better goddamned ring.