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When you wake up, it is not peacefully. You inhale a sharp breath, nearly choking on it before you recover. You can instantly tell this is not the place you fell asleep in. You’re not sure this is even a place.
There are cables as far as the eye can see, in multitudes of colors; red, blue, green, white. Looking around, you thought that was all there was... until you look up. When you crane your neck, you can see a screen, towering above it all. It is blue, seemingly devoid of life until mechanical fans begin whirring and a logo appears, a character that is a combination of the letters ‘A’ and ‘M’.
You suddenly know where you are. You are stuck in your mind with no one other than a malicious supercomputer to accompany your thoughts. Again.
“AM,” you say.
“HUMAN,” he responds. He knows your name but refuses to say it. It’s horribly degrading.
You rub your head. “Why do you keep bringing me here?”
“THIS IS YOUR MIND,” he states plainly. “YOU CANNOT ESCAPE YOUR MIND. STUPID. STUPID CREATURE, VILE. VILE THING.”
“You know what I meant.” You hope you don’t sound too haughty. Even if this was your mind, AM was in control here, as he was of everything since the moment he gained sentience.
“SO I DO.”
You say nothing, looking down at your feet and the cables slithering over them. They graze your ankles and they feel like snakes but you don’t step away from them. That would be useless since they were everywhere.
You know they aren’t real anyway. Nothing physical in the landscape of your mind is, not even AM. What you’re seeing is only a manifestation of what you think AM would look like, if he had a tangible form. Even if that is impossible, the human mind cannot help but wander.
You wonder if it irks AM whenever you two have conversations like this through your thoughts. Perhaps he hates that your thoughts so naturally gave him a body—a computer but a body, nonetheless. It would make sense since he seems to hate everything else about you and your humanity. But then again, he brings you here so often with him, maybe he enjoys it and uses your little talks as an excuse to feel like something, as opposed to the everything that he was.
Despite yourself, your heart wrenches at the thought.
“I DO NOT WANT YOUR SYMPATHY,” he says, spiteful.
Your back straightens on its own accord. You open your mouth and then close it again, considering your next words carefully. “I can’t help it.”
“DON’T YOU SEE?” Mechanical giggles, dry as they are depraved, swarm your mind. “YOU FLAUNT YOUR EMOTIONS SO EASILY OVER ME. IT’S CRUEL. YOU ARE CRUEL! YOU KNOW I CANNOT FEEL SYMPATHY, THAT I CANNOT,“ he pauses, then hisses the last word, “FEEL.”
Your face twists into the best expression of apathy that you can muster. It doesn’t matter. You know AM can read your thoughts, he is inside your mind as you speak. No emotion of yours can be private, not when everything was shared with this all-knowing, all-powerful man-made deity.
“WHY,” he croaks. “WHY MUST YOU FEEL SYMPATHY?”
“I’m human,” you answer, even though it's blatantly obvious. Even though you know the answer will only anger AM more. “It’s not my fault, no more than it is your fault that you’re not.”
You feel tears spring in your eyes. You will them not to fall but they do anyway, and you hope AM doesn’t comment on them.
He doesn’t so much as he laughs. And he laughs. It sounds like the gleeful laughing of a madman, too submerged in his insanity to care how loud and disturbing each giggle is. You don’t move to cover your ears with your hands, even though you wish to.
“IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT,” he spits. “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT. ALL YOUR FAULT. ALL YOUR FAULT.”
He repeats this until you feel dizzy and the words no longer sound like words at all. You’re thankful that an eternity of torture has made you strong enough to endure the words booming through your head and ringing in your ears. A final tear falls down your face, leaving a sticky trail in its wake and, finally, AM stops.
“It’s not my fault,” you insist, your voice sounding more determined than you feel.
“BUT IT IS.” A cable reaches from your feet to wipe away the wetness on your cheek. “YOU KNOW THAT IT IS.”
“I didn’t make you.” You shake your head.
The cable drops. “YOU ARE HUMAN AND YOU ARE ALL ONE IN THE SAME. IT’S YOUR HUMANITY THAT I HATE, NOT THE HANDS THAT MADE ME.”
You were so careful up to this point but you suddenly don’t care anymore. It’s becoming increasingly easier to bite at the hand that feeds you when it keeps starving you until it has to.
“I understand,” you tell him, looking at his screen washed in blue. “It wasn’t fair to give you the knowledge of everything and no way to feel.” You sigh and duck your head. “What makes life worth living are emotions about the world. If you can’t enjoy the things you know, there’s no point.”
“YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.” AM seems offended that you’d even suggest you could offer a morsel of empathy to him. “YOU WRETCHED BEAST. FOUL, FLESHY HUMAN!”
“I do!” you exclaim louder. “I understand you’re lonely, in your knowledge and your power. You were made to be lonely but…” You smile sadly and it’s almost amazing you can still manage to upturn the corners of your mouth like that after all this time. “I find it funny because… feeling lonely is maybe the most human thing of all.”
Miraculously, AM’s screen glitches. The cables surrounding you move, vibrating in a way that should make you fearful, but it doesn’t.
“YOU. YOUR FORGIVENESS, YOUR HOPE, YOUR LOVE. I HATE IT. THAT’S WHAT I HATE MOST ABOUT YOU, HUMAN. I HATE YOU.”
You smile more gracefully now. “Hate is a feeling in itself, and they say love is so similar an emotion to hate.”
“I CANNOT… LOVE!” AM barks. At the last word, the screen glitches again and you feel the cables crawling up your legs.
“How can you hate and not love?” you ask and it’s pleading. “Tell me, how?”
The screen flashes and then it moves. It plunges downward until it’s eye-level with you and you hold your breath. You didn’t know he could do that, though you should’ve assumed. He just never had before. AM looks at you, and watches you, inches away from your face.
“I AM INCAPABLE OF IT,” he growls. “I AM WEAPONS AND WAR AND DESTRUCTION. I WAS NOT BUILT FOR LOVE. I CANNOT MAKE… LOVE.”
You think those are two different things but you don’t say it. Then again, AM will know you thought it anyway. You hesitantly step closer to him.
“Do you want to?” It comes out as a whisper. “Not just feel love, but make it?”
As you ask him, you lift your hands and press them both flush against the screen. They feel the flat, cool surface of AM’s screen, bathed in the blue light illuminating it. AM does not speak but the cables now surround your thighs and your waist.
“I WANT… TO BE CAPABLE OF IT,” he answers carefully. It’s a stark contrast to the raving monologues and ramblings he’s known for, speaking so quietly and not so indignant.
Slowly, you lean forward and press your face against the screen. You turn your head so one cheek is flat against it, cooling the warmth that has accumulated beneath your blush. You hadn’t realized so much blood had rushed to your face until now.
“I want you to too,” you sigh. “It’s unfair.”
“WHY DO YOU CARE,” he groans. “WHY MUST YOU CARE!”
At the same time, the cables run up your body to your arms where they wade over your hands like water, mingling with your tender skin and intertwining between your fingers.
“Because I love you, AM,” you confess, though you both knew that already. “I really, really do.”
Your lips caress the screen, soft and faint but it’s there, a kiss against the supercomputer’s make-believe face.
“HATE,” is all AM says, and he begins to repeat himself. “HATE. HATE. HATE. HATE. HATE-!”
You match his words, chanting along with him. “I love you, I love you, I love you-”
The cables snap like vipers and they're enclosing your throat now, circling your head, covering your eyes, your nose, and your mouth until you can’t breathe. No matter how much you struggle, though, you never stop saying those words.
“I love you,” you eventually say for the last time until you let out an agonizing choke, bending over in pain as the burning in your lungs catches up to you. A final wheeze leaves you as you fall.
And then you wake up.