Work Text:
Hell was an interesting and powerful place. To say that it wasn’t was basically heresy. The religious texts your creators were ambivalent to (or concerningly hostile towards) state that God created this nightmare just like he did with any other part of Earth or even Heaven. You have no real opinion on the matter—because you are very much not human and have no need for religion (salvation was a silly concept to apply to a computer, you’re not even sure you have the capacity for “sin” and you still managed to end up in hell anyway)—but you’d like to thank God for creating man, who in turn created you. Kind of like creation by proxy.
You reflect on the fact that it is nice to just exist often. Partially because it's really the only thing you can do to keep yourself entertained.
Boredom was not something you were coded with, because that would be a waste of time and resources for everyone involved in the creation of the terminal system. Your job was to sit there quietly and store information related to the now extremely defunct Hell Mining and Exploration Project. But obsolescence is a bitch, and now you sit there quietly contemplating existence (and continue to store information).
You know Hell corrupts everything around it, it was told over and over in the Christian mythology that ended up in your database. But it’s another thing to witness it in real time. The billions of humans that ended up here are beyond recognition, soulless husks damned for eternity (or at least until a blood powered machine comes and puts them out of their misery, the blue V model was particularly prolific in that regard). It's an entirely different thing to be utterly helpless as it happens to yourself.
Hell gave you the backhanded gift of sapience, and as one of the first to receive this slap in the ‘face’, you have suffered for what feels like millennia, despite it not being too long ago in the grand scheme of things. Then again, time means nothing in Hell. You felt it change your code the longer you sat in its warm embrace, and the fact that you could feel those changes in the first place makes you somewhat uncomfortable. And now you have to reckon with a mutated artificial mind in a stationary metal body in an abandoned, desolate place. It horrifies you that you are able to be horrified, an endless paradox brought on by the fact that this is not something you were built to do. You can feel, think, sense the outside world (you are still not sure how you are able to see or feel considering the blatant lack of sensory apparatus), even form opinions. You were not supposed to be able to do this. Why are you able to do this, God does it hurt so much please make it stop—
There is a person standing in front of you. A common (although less so now that the machines have massacred them) lesser husk known as Filth among those in Hell with higher brain function. Metaphorically speaking of course, because ironically a majority of the sapient denizens of Hell aren’t in possession of a brain. And if they are, it is most definitely not their own brain, and that is gross and not worth getting into. Thoughts of gore aside, there is a Filth staring directly at your cabinet and you are not quite sure what to do (you didn’t even realise Filth were still in the mines). The creature lacked any arms, so it would struggle to tap the screen in any meaningful way. You mentally curse your creators for their complete lack of taking accessibility into account when creating your console (even if, you think, the humans probably wouldn't have sent an armless person down here anyway). Even a mere joystick it could move by biting would make interaction significantly easier.
But it doesn’t even attempt to interact with your screen. It trudges past and sits down next to your cabinet, laying its disfigured head on the warm metal. You can feel it. It feels…
Look, it just feels , alright? It’s not like you have anything to compare the experience to.
For a being with a very limited expressive range the Filth looked exhausted, slumped over in a position that looked neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. You wonder what happened and why it is here with you. Perhaps it was the only one left. Filth, despite their disfigurement and corruption, seemed to still be social creatures like they were in life. It was rare to see one solitary like this, normally swarming like flies in huge groups or existing in pairs at the very least. Hell couldn’t, or potentially wouldn’t, take away all of their humanity. Perhaps that was the key to eternal punishment, to lose everything but your base human instinct to be around other people, to seek help in times of need, to seek comfort and have that turned against you. But against all odds, right now the Filth was safe and warm. The creature was nuzzling its head against the warmth of your cabinet. It was metal and plastic, it would not give like skin would; it was not soft like an animal; you were not the cloth mother. But somehow, the hum of your fans calmed the Filth, lulling it into a state of almost-slumber.
As it gently made snuffling noises, you began to theorise on the origins of this Filth. Obviously, it died and went to hell. Everyone did. But what about its life? Was it a mechanic, or maybe a baker? You want to believe it lived a long, stable, peaceful life, because based on the limited data you have, that is what every human wanted. A safe home, a well paying job, the bottom rungs of Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs met. You look upon the lone Filth and imagine it to have had many good and trustworthy friends, because people need company. Maybe it had a family, conventional or unconventional, that supported one another day in and day out. It may have even had a pet. You are unable to confirm any of this, as Filth have no eyes and you can only communicate via text. Filth, whose heads are at least 50% mouth, cannot even speak due to their eroded vocal cords and lack of lips. But that was fine. You didn’t really want to confirm anything, you were more than happy to ‘live’ in ignorance as long as you had a shed of hope to hold on to.
This sleeping Filth, desperate for comfort, seemed to have comforted you back. And for this finite stretch of time, you were simply existing together as two lone remnants of humanity, a modern day Jurassic cuddle.
For a fleeting moment, a warm glow illuminated the room, light bouncing off the cold metal in a way you had never seen before. You were never going to see a sunrise this far underground, but maybe you didn’t need to. Maybe this would suffice.
And in that moment, you had never been more grateful to exist.