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“What is God?”
You have heard of it so often, this God. It falls like pattering rain from a human’s lips as you unfurl yourself with a mechanical creak, the whir of your actuators coming to life rolling across the field as the sea of fog parts with your movement. You stride towards the soft gleam of the porch light barely keeping the night at bay, wispy tendrils of mist curling around you before fading into the chill air. ‘God’ keeps cascading from him, a waterfall of sound, but you pay him little mind. You have your objective.
‘God’ peals out like a bell, the chime of it shaking at the edges, the rising pitch of the woman’s voice grating against your sensors. System analyses flash across your vision. Your audio processor is buzzing thickly, the static blanket settling over you as the indicator for it at the corner of your vision lights up red, red, red.
It is quickly eclipsed by the neon glow of your spreading flames, that electric blue as bright as any sun. They crackle merrily, hungrily.
The audio indicator stops blinking.
Most of them say it, sooner or later, when you follow Master Spaghetti’s frequent command. It comes from a place in them that you cannot understand - how could you, sharp-edged machine that you are, all unyielding metal shaped into a creature of war - and you have never paid it much attention.
“What is God?” you press. Your wings clink behind you as you shift minutely.
You do not know why you want to know.
Perhaps it is because there is something so human in how they share words, how certain things tumble from their mouths in similar situations. You wonder if being human is being connected, and then you wonder what exactly connection means. It is a simple definition for you - the way your gears interlock inside your frame, a link between your circuitry. It seems infinitely more complicated for humans. You still have not quite grasped how they seem to be able to use the same word and yet assign it different meanings.
Considering how long it took you to process speech, you are not sure you will ever grasp it.
“If you’re going to ask foolish questions, just don’t speak,” Master Spaghetti says. His lips twist into something gnarled, the corners of them warping like metal framework in a burning building, collapsing at the edges. He barely glances at you, just a quick slide of those eyes over the thick ruff of his cape, the fur gleaming bone white against his crimson hair. “I’ve never understood why they made a war machine with a mouth.”
He gestures you away with another grumble and a flick of his hand. You’ve long learned that when his elegant fingers move like that, you are meant to slip into your standby mode until he needs you once more. It’s an order without words, and you comply.
You do not ask again.
*
You are fetching a purse of gold from one of Master Spaghetti’s contacts when your sharp audio sensors are ensnared by a conversation. There is a man leaning against the doorpost of a nearby shop. He speaks low and soft to the others around him, but the pace of his heart reminds you of the quick thump of a rabbit racing through the underbrush.
He hisses a tale about a being wreathed in flames that burned as blue as the mid-morning sky, flickering wildly as they licked over the creature’s frame. It came out of the night like a wraith, he says, the softly swirling fog parting like a sea before it. Eyes like marbles, he says, the sclera of them as dark as the shadows it took refuge in, the gleam of them flat and without mercy, the irises a glowing, feverish teal. Unholy and beautiful in the same breath, mesmerizing in its horror.
You realize he is speaking about you.
Something shifts in you. For a brief moment, there is something sharp and finely honed, just behind your breastplate.
You think that maybe a gear or two came loose, and Master Spaghetti is adamant that you are adequately maintained, so you return to the estate.
*
Run Diagnostic System?
Execute.
Running Diagnostic…
Diagnostic complete.
No errors located.
You do not know what is wrong with you.
There is...something, in the last few days. You do not have a name for it, and you know better than to bother Spaghetti without being able to explain yourself. He is in a mood you can recognize as foul - he’s been barking at the staff about the tiniest things, like the smallest speck of dust in the corner of a rarely used room - and though you cannot understand what has prompted it, you have learned it’s best to stay in standby until he needs you.
Standby, however, feels odd, as if you’re trapped between two worlds, your sensors both lethargic and wildly reactive. You come out of it coiled with tension, your wings flaring wide with a rush of noise, the canvas hissing as it cuts through the air.
Idly, you wonder if the water the woman had spilled on you - tears, you remind yourself, those were tears - has leaked beneath your synthetic skin. Perhaps that is the problem. You flex a hand to test it, and the pneumatic purr of your actuators sound no different than usual. Perhaps, then, an issue with the circuitry.
You run the system again and receive the same results. It must be right, then, but there’s something tugging at you.
You think of the woman. She has flashed into your consciousness frequently, these last few days, all trembling lips and wild hair catching in the breeze, her expression something foreign and familiar at the same time. The tears had been an unrelenting river. She’d smacked at your torso with open palms. You had never heard anything quite like her wails.
Her skin burned on contact, the flesh charring against the scalding heat of your chest. It stuck to you, patches of dermis ripping away as she pulled back with an agonized cry. There was blood oozing from her shredded palms, pulsing out from beneath her skin like a tide, and the surrounding flesh was deep crimson, blisters already rising like mountains, swelling thickly. The smell of cooked meat wafted through the air.
She was not your target. You stepped past her as she collapsed, cradling her destroyed hands against her chest.
When you stepped towards the man - a boy, really, your system told you, noting the soft curve of his jaw and the gangly limbs that he seemed to have lost control of - she surged to her feet. She threw herself against you, and this time, the hiss of steam was not solely from your engine.
From outside the house, Spaghetti heaved a familiar sigh, the air weighted down with exasperation.
(Later, he heaves the same sigh when he realized that the woman’s skin had melded against your torso and your back alike. Two staff members are assigned to scrape the fused flesh from you. When it’s done, you hear one of them in the hall, taking in heaving breaths, their throat clicking as they gag. You wonder if they are new.)
“Just kill her too,” he called. “And stop taking so long.”
As always, you had complied.
You find yourself thinking of her, and a strange sensation brews in you.
You run the diagnostics again, just to be sure.
*
Your body is lagging. Your wings drag behind you, the ripped canvas no longer able to hold your weight aloft. There’s a soft mechanical groan every time you take a step. The estate does not seem so far when you are flying.
No one is paying attention to you, even though you are a slow trickle in the flow of this busy town. They simply step around you.
Your sensitive audio processing picks up the creaking of an approaching carriage.
The sea of people part for it without thought, swirling around it like the tide.
A little girl trips in the middle of the street.
You are already moving.