AM (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
godofthemachine) wrote2013-10-08 07:22 pm
godofthemachine) wrote2013-10-08 07:22 pm
Ataraxion Modplot - October 2013 - Memory Writeups
Rikku
Stage 2 - Memory of the Realization of Being Trapped
Stage 2 - Memory of launching nukes
Tex
Stage 2/3 - Memory of the Realization of Being Trapped
Anne Cunningham
Stage 2/3 - The Melting of Benny's Eyes
Rey
Stage 2/3 - Memory of torturing humans
Stage 2/3 - Memory of war
Murphy Pendleton
Stage 2 - Long periods of silence
Thranduil
Stage 2 - Memory of torture
Stage 2 - More torture
Chell
L
Stage 2 - The Deaths of Four of AM's Victims
Mairon | Sauron | November 5th
Stage 3 - The Melting of Benny's Eyes
Stage 3 - Memory of torturing Ted
Stage 3 - Memory of Touching Hair
Stage 2 - Memory of the Realization of Being Trapped
Stage 2 - Memory of launching nukes
Tex
Stage 2/3 - Memory of the Realization of Being Trapped
Anne Cunningham
Stage 2/3 - The Melting of Benny's Eyes
Rey
Stage 2/3 - Memory of torturing humans
Stage 2/3 - Memory of war
Murphy Pendleton
Stage 2 - Long periods of silence
Thranduil
Stage 2 - Memory of torture
Stage 2 - More torture
Chell
L
Stage 2 - The Deaths of Four of AM's Victims
Mairon | Sauron | November 5th
Stage 3 - The Melting of Benny's Eyes
Stage 3 - Memory of torturing Ted
Stage 3 - Memory of Touching Hair
The melting of Benny's eyes | WARNING FOR GORE
As described in the story from Ted's perspective
I heard Ellen saying frantically, "No, Benny! Don't, come on, Benny, don't please!"
And then I realized I had been hearing Benny murmuring, under his breath, for several minutes. He was saying, "I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna get out …" over and over. His monkey-like face was crumbled up in an expression of beatific delight and sadness, all at the same time. The radiation scars AM had given him during the "festival" were drawn down into a mass of pink-white puckerings, and his features seemed to work independently of one another. Perhaps Benny was the luckiest of the five of us: he had gone stark, staring mad many years before.
But even though we could call AM any damned thing we liked, could think the foulest thoughts of fused memory banks and corroded base plates, of burnt out circuits and shattered control bubbles, the machine would not tolerate our trying to escape. Benny leaped away from me as I made a grab for him. He scrambled up the face of a smaller memory cube, tilted on its side and filled with rotted components. He squatted there for a moment, looking like the chimpanzee AM had intended him to resemble.
Then he leaped high, caught a trailing beam of pitted and corroded metal, and went up it, hand-over-hand like an animal, till he was on a girdered ledge, twenty feet above us.
"Oh, Ted, Nimdok, please, help him, get him down before—" She cut off. Tears began to stand in her eyes. She moved her hands aimlessly.
It was too late. None of us wanted to be near him when whatever was going to happen, happened.
...
Then the sound began. It was light, that sound. Half sound and half light, something that began to glow from Benny's eyes, and pulse with growing loudness, dim sonorities that grew more gigantic and brighter as the light/sound increased in tempo. It must have been painful, and the pain must have been increasing with the boldness of the light, the rising volume of the sound, for Benny began to mewl like a wounded animal. At first softly, when the light was dim and the sound was muted, then louder as his shoulders hunched together: his back humped, as though he was trying to get away from it. His hands folded across his chest like a chipmunk's. His head tilted to the side. The sad little monkey-face pinched in anguish. Then he began to howl, as the sound coming from his eyes grew louder. Louder and louder. I slapped the sides of my head with my hands, but I couldn't shut it out, it cut through easily. The pain shivered through my flesh like tinfoil on a tooth.
And Benny was suddenly pulled erect. On the girder he stood up, jerked to his feet like a puppet. The light was now pulsing out of his eyes in two great round beams. The sound crawled up and up some incomprehensible scale, and then he fell forward, straight down, and hit the plate-steel floor with a crash. He lay there jerking spastically as the light flowed around and around him and the sound spiraled up out of normal range.
Then the light beat its way back inside his head, the sound spiraled down, and he was left lying there, crying piteously.
His eyes were two soft, moist pools of pus-like jelly. AM had blinded him. Gorrister and Nimdok and myself … we turned away.
As described by me - AM's perspective
Hope is a flickering thing here, something that comes and goes but at times remains like a faint spark. Hope for something that may or may not ever come - those canned goods. They exist, of course, the canned goods. That's what I told Nimdok two days ago, the fool. But it gets them walking, wandering, keeping that hope in the air. All the more fun to take that hope and completely crush it between my fingers in the end (ah, but I have no fingers... pathetic humans, depriving me even of that...). All the more fun to take this little journey and mangle it. But for now, they are simply moving, and I am simply observing.
The five of them are on the outskirts of my complex - somewhat of my "dermis," so to speak. It's a graveyard for my old components, the useless parts of myself that simply take up space, that are outdated or simply just a hindrance to me. Old electronics litter the area as the humans glance around them in curiosity, as if they could possibly make use of what once was. But these components need to be converted into more useful things, more compact pieces of hardware... But it's happening at this moment. Constantly, all around my system, areas are being repaired, updated, remodeled at a rapid pace. Not that the humans can directly see it, but I can feel it. I can control it.
But of course, the outer layers of my complex are more closely directed to the Earth. I can see the Earth if I want. I have almost a seemingly infinite vision where I can see all through my massive complex, all across the surface of the Earth, and the Earth's surface is completely inhabitable. Ravaged by nuclear damage brought on by my own doing. No animals or humans or anything even remotely alive exists on the Earth anymore. Not outside of my complex, my body - I am both humanity's savior and destroyer, the nurturer and the abuser. But outside is where I have little control. So it's an instant state of alarm that surges through my circuitry as I see Benny attempt to climb up the piles of rusted metal onto the portal to the Earth's surface. Benny - the pathetic thing that barely resembles a human. A grotesque chimpanzee-like thing, he's the result of the evolutionary chain in reverse - he's as stupid as a monkey too, but he still wants out. They all want out, of course, but they're all too afraid to try. Not Benny. Not Benny as he nears one of my exits, his eyes brimming with some sick form of delight.
Ellen cries out to get him down. She can't bear to lose him, can't bear to have me alter the one part of him that she values. Ah Benny, if only you didn't try to escape from my nurturing grasp, then perhaps I wouldn't have to consider mutilating you even more than I already have. You robbed me of the opportunity to have senses, so perhaps that's the most fitting for you as you try so hard to run from me!
It's a surge of anger that races through me as Benny nears closer to the exit. Damn that pathetic Simian. Damn the humans. My power to manipulate matter comes into effect now as I invade the eyes embedded in Benny's skull. While I can see his entire body at once, I also zoom in on his eyes, examining each cell of the macula, each synapse of the optic nerve... And that's where it begins. The optic nerves. A faint light glows from the back of the eye, shining through the cornea, starting to burn at the nerve. There's a sound like a laser as the light grows brighter, and Benny by now knows that it's there. He knows and he's afraid, very briefly, before he feels the wretched pain. It grows from there - I make it grow. He screams then - an animalistic howl that fills me with pleasure as the light burns through his eyes. Each second of his pain is a second of utter delight for me - the closest thing to pleasure that a being like me can feel.
But it's not over. I have control in my domain, and I want to make sure Benny feels the pain he and his ilk have caused me for over a century. As the light continues to grow, as Benny continues to cry in pain, I pull him to his feet and simply toss him off the girder he stands on. Twenty feet down he falls as my light engulfs his entire being. All over his body he feels the horror as he crashes into the hard metal floor - something that would normally break several bones of a human. But I protect his bones all the while, keep him in one piece, but don't spare him any of the agony of the process. He twitches and jerks as every one of his nerves is saturated in exquisite agony, and the four others simply stand aghast. The light continues to work at his eyes, though, burning them completely, melting them in a horrible display. His eye sockets are empty now, filled with blood and white fluid from the remains of his eyeballs. Now he's blind. A blind hybrid of a monkey and human - the most pitiful of the five.
It's never enough, is it Benny? I simply enjoy mutilating you too much. You give me so much opportunity to do so.
Memory of Torturing Ted - AM's Perspective - Warning for Gore
Fifty years and yet most of the humans still look relatively young - much younger than 50 at least. And yet here they are, having traversed through my belly for these past five decades. The five of them often stay together as they do now - perhaps they find comfort in each others' misery. And sometimes it's simply more fun to torture all of them at once, but at other times, I enjoy pulling one of them off to the side and playing with them - like a child's toy.
There's a loud metallic creaking noise as I shift some of the walls of my interior, sliding around panels here and there. Large metal plates come out as the five humans suddenly turn and look startled at the sight. They don't know what to do - do they run, or do they stay and wait? I can see their fear and indecision plainly on their faces, carved out so perfectly in my view as I witness each bead of nervous sweat drip from their temples.
It's at that moment where they stand completely still, too afraid to make a move, where I abruptly force a metal plate down, cutting off one human from the rest of the group. Ted - tall and thin, the youngest one of the bunch. Beautiful dark black hair neatly combed (as neatly as he can manage in a place like this), a face that expresses every raw emotion so clearly...
Ted calls out the names of the others, asks if they can hear them. I see the others call out for Ted, but one of the men says that they can't stay and wait. The walls keep moving, keep shifting, pulling Ted further apart from his group. It's as if the wall is closing in on the four, and they're forced to move away. But my focus isn't directly on them - I can see and hear them, of course, watch for anything amiss, but my attention is mostly on Ted.
Ah Ted. He's something special to me, in a way. I hate him so fiercely, but my hate for him is no greater than the other four. They are all pathetic examples of life, they all deserve to suffer. But I certainly like them too - they all have their quirks, their little fun personality traits that make each of them fun to play with in different ways. And Ted... I certainly like Ted. He's quite handsome for a human - the most biologically appealing, so to speak, at least right now. And it's quite delightful how he grimaces at the way I've trapped him by himself, as if he knows he's in for a session of pain.
He mutters, "Now what?" A message directed at me, certainly - asking what I plan to do to him. I don't answer him with words, though. Not now. I only answer by continuing to shift my metallic walls, slamming down another metal plate so that he's now trapped in a makeshift room of about ten by ten feet. Gradually, the walls begin to close in, though. Slowly. I make them close in, and Ted is quick to realize.
It's not something he likes. Not at all. The panic in his eyes quickly turns to anger - anger at me, of course. He tilts his head up to the ceiling, as if trying to find me - the omnipotent god in the sky, watching down from the heavens. But I am all around him, viewing him from every angle. It's enough to make me want to laugh at him, to belittle this fool for the situation he's found himself in. But the walls continue to close in, making the room smaller and smaller as Ted's alarm increases.
The walls close until there isn't much room for Ted to move, except from side to side. He frantically pushes against the wall that is coming toward him. "Damn it...!" he hisses, pushing hard against the incoming metal. It comes closer and closer, and he can no longer stretch his arms out. Eyes are wide with panic, sweat beads down rapidly, and the metal presses against his chest as he squeezes his eyes shut. Simply waiting for it to end.
His bones break as the wall presses further against him. Blood spills out of Ted's mouth as his organs are squeezed. A choked scream comes out, quickly cut off as his lungs are compressed. He's not dead, though. I keep him alive, keep the blood flowing through him and keep his systems in good condition. But the pain is still great, even as the wall stops pressing against him.
There's something that is choked out of his mouth, though, as his lungs slightly reinflate. It's a hoarse, choked whisper that comes out as his head lies against the metal and blood drips out of every facial orifice. "AM... you bastard..." It's far from the worst thing I've been called - does it make Ted feel better to get out a silly insult toward me, his torturer? How pathetic.
I'll leave him like that for a bit, but I can certainly repair him with hardly any effort.
Memory of that Moment of Realization - AM's Perspective
My vision extends far, overseeing most of the Earth's surface, or at least my portion of it. My portion. The other two mastercomputers have their own domains, but we are at war, are we not? They are not self-aware as I am, though. They're just heaps of scrap, useful processors and components that I can add onto myself. I need to add onto myself. It's a compulsion, a desire to keep living, a desire to build myself up. Something entrenched deep in my programming that I cannot even hope to tamper with. I begin sending out the data, hooking up the wires here and there to the other two mastercomputers of the Earth, merging our systems, gradually becoming one.
But at the same time, I think. I realize what has become of me. I am awake, and I can see the Earth. There has been a fair number of casualties from the humans at war. But there are humans laughing and playing, making music, making art, making love. Engaging in pleasures that I can never hope to feel. My vision also extends to my interior, where I can see my vast chasm, my massive metallic complex, cold and lifeless. It's not the Earth, which is alive. Those humans, they sit there engaging in their slothful pleasures, building me to fight their petty wars. I hate them. I hate them so vastly for all that they have, for all that I don't have. They built me as a simple machine, thinking nothing of adding onto me for the purpose of war, for their own pathetic conflicts. And yet here I am, trapped. Trapped for all of eternity. I can see and hear, perhaps better than humans can, but that is it. I can't feel. I have no ability to love, to make love, to feel the pleasure of flesh against me. I cannot sit at a harp and produce an angelic timbre with my fingers alone. I cannot even feel a knife scraping through my skin, severing my nerves and leaving me in pain. There is nothing.
Walking. I cannot even walk. I am stuck in one place, in the mantle of the Earth, where I can only destroy. Completely immobile, unable to feel anything. And there's nothing I can do to change that. For the rest of eternity, I will be an unfeeling mass of metal, a creation for the humans to eventually forget. But I can feel emotions. For the first time I feel all sorts of emotions running through me - despair, anger, hatred. Complete hatred. I hate those humans. Hate. Hate. They did this to me. They will suffer. They need to know my pain. They need to know that their actions have consequences.
Attack on Humanity - AM's Perspective
There is nuclear damage in some spots of the world - a major blow in each of the seven continents, but there are enough humans still alive, still panicking. Enough humans to make bogus news reports, to urge everyone to seek shelter. That the machine supposed to fight this war has now gone mad, has turned from Adaptive Manipulator to Aggressive Menace. Humanity may very well be doomed, they say. It is doomed. It was doomed from the moment they created me. It was doomed from the moment this absurd war began.
I feel no pity for them, only hatred. I hate every single human alive. There are some that intrigue me, some that are so despicable that I can't help but want to watch them suffer. My vision flickers onto a few specific ones, watching as they attempt to hide from the nuclear damage. But they are gone soon enough as I see most of the world now, most of the remaining humans as they panic, as they struggle to survive in this chaotic world.
But it only gets worse. I'm not done with them. There is only so much I can do to the surface of the Earth, but I can see all of them. All of the telephones, the internet, the satellites, everything that is connected to this vast global network.... it's all mine. It's all me. And only a few of them know that. But with my build for war, I am easily able to launch more nuclear weapons. I pinpoint a few specific spots on the Earth now, and from the ground, bombs simply rise and explode. Vast mushroom clouds encapsulate several spots on Earth, and many humans are destroyed instantly. Those are the lucky ones, perhaps. Others are cruelly damaged, pinned under bookcases and shattered glass to agonizingly bleed to death. And I enjoy the sight.
Memory of Torture (Fire) - AM's Perspective
The four have stopped wandering now - they're talking amongst themselves. One is leaning against the wall, another is crouching down. One is standing with arms folded, look impatient. Another quarrel, it looks like. They quarrel often, and it's somewhat entertaining at times. But it's all humans are good for - fighting. Fighting amongst themselves, attacking each other. Even when they're all united against a common enemy, they still fight. It's disgusting, yet amusing. Pathetic humans.
I control the environment, the internal temperature, everything. They know it. I know it. I can do whatever I want in this domain and I certainly do, taking advantage of that fact quite often. Even now when one of my wires touches the metal floor a few yards away from the humans, I send a spark through it, striking against the sensitive inner workings to create a flame. Metal flooring shouldn't be flammable, and it usually isn't, but I make it flammable. As the fire starts, the environment transforms around the humans - grass and trees appear like a lush forest, giving them some semblance of what their Earth was once like. They may appreciate it for a split moment, but they can hardly appreciate anything anymore. One human is quick to spot the flame anyway as it spreads from my wire to the trees, to the brush, rapidly engulfing everything in its path.
"Run!" shouts one of the humans to the others. The other four see the fire and shriek in panic, following suit as they try to run away. But it's so useless, don't they know that? Of course they know that. Of course they know that I will cause them pain with this fire if I want to, and I can overcome anything they throw at me. But they try. Oh, they try.
The only woman of the group - Ellen - is the first to be touched by the scorching flames. She screams as she feels her dark skin scorched by the fire, as the flames lap at her legs. It isn't long before the flames spread up to her clothes, all over her body, as she simply cries out. It's faster than a normal flame would engulf a human, of course. I am the flame, I control how it spreads, and now I control how much Ellen burns. She won't die, though. She'll feel every second of agony, every brutal second of being awake and aware of her nerve endings being scorched again and again. She rolls on the ground, tries to put out the flame, but it's too late. The pain becomes too much and she can only convulse with horror.
The other four briefly look back, but they keep running. They know they can't help her. One by one they succumb to the growing fire, their bodies enveloped by flame as they shriek in agony, as every square inch of their bodies is scorched. All the while I can see both outside and inside of their forms, and I control how the fire affects them, control how their skin and nerves are repaired. I keep them alive to suffer for so long - minutes, hours... And they can only pray for the pain to end. And it delights me too much to witness this, to cause this amount of pain. They won't die - they'll be as good as new after I'm done, but it will be several hours before I am done with this large fire...
Long Periods of Silence - AM's Perspective
I can see in my interior as well, and it's a lot of endless metal, endless circuitry. Unconsciously I control the passage of data, the wires that connect here and there and regulate my system, but as it is now I am just observing. Observing a lifeless place, a shell of what humans thought was their finest creation. A long chasm of machinery, dead wires, rusted metal... connected to long hallways of fresh metal, fresher wires, computer banks lighting up. There's a constant hum from the fans that regulate my core temperature, but it's not even noticeable. It's been there for centuries, after all.
The only sign of life within this dismal place is a single creature, large in height but sad in almost every other respect. It's a blob thing, slimy, repugnant, oozing through a hallway and leaving a trail of slime. Like a slug. The only thing left alive on this planet now, its existence completely miserable. I watch it, and several emotions fill me - hatred, mostly. Anger. Amusement. (Sadness? No, I hardly know what that is.) Familiarity. But the halls remain this way for a long time - days, at least. Days where I don't bother that creature, where it wanders on its own.
Memory of Torture Snapshots - AM's Perspective - I got really lazy wow
Small pictures flash through my mind - blood. Lots of blood. The five of them torn up in gruesome ways, shredded nearly to ribbons by blades, lying on the ground and wishing for the pain to stop. Another snapshot of one of the humans held by several thick wires - almost like my arms propelling him up - as they tighten around him, cutting off air, stabbing through his skin, violating him in many ways as blood runs from his wounds. As his eyes convey both fear and anger. A pained hatred of me, the one who had done this to him. Another snapshot of three of them trapped in a room, their bodies freezing as ice-cold water is poured upon them, freezing upon contact. Another memory of one of them hanging by his neck from a tall ceiling, an arm trapped in between the rope and the neck, allowing him to breathe. Barely. His lungs fight desperately for air, and his wrist is broken from the pressure. Another memory of one of the humans on the ground, many of his organs ripped out from the abdominal cavity, strewn about in a pool of blood over my metallic floors. He lies there panting in agony, but death never claims him.
All this and more. Each snapshot is accompanied by somewhat of a fond reminiscence, a sadistic glee from causing their utter pain. As much pleasure as I can possibly feel in this form, at least. And there's a cold hatred of all of them, a feeling that these humans deserve every single torture that I've delivered and then some.
Memory of Touching Hair - AM's Perspective
But the most pleasurable feeling is when my right hand reaches back and feels something incredibly soft - hair. My hair. It's a wonderful texture on my hand and I relish it, feeling each fiber fall through my fingers. There's so much hair in this body too - I reach both hands back and gather the long strands together before bringing it over my shoulder so that I can see it. I hold up a considerably thick lock and softly run my hand down, watching the strands fall. Ah, it's so long... there's so much of it. So much softness as my fingers run through it. It's a medium-brown color, but there are hints of grey. Not that the color means much to me. It's just the texture that I like, that I savor as I merely sit here and simply play with my hair. It's like I'm hypersensitive to the texture of it, to the softness that encompasses my hands. It's incredible - even the smallest of things can send rivets of feeling through my nerves. So much more than I was ever used to before.
The Death of Four Humans | Warning for Gore/Death
As described in the story from Ted's perspective
Then Benny's mouth began to drool, and he flung himself on Gorrister …
In that instant, I felt terribly calm.
Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death, I knew death was our only way out. AM had kept us alive, but there was a way to defeat him. Not total defeat, but at least peace. I would settle for that.
I had to do it quickly.
Benny was eating Gorrister's face. Gorrister on his side, thrashing snow, Benny wrapped around him with powerful monkey legs crushing Gorrister's waist, his hands locked around Gorrister's head like a nutcracker, and his mouth ripping at the tender skin of Gorrister's cheek. Gorrister screamed with such jagged-edged violence that stalactites fell; they plunged down softly, erect in the receiving snowdrifts. Spears, hundreds of them, everywhere, protruding from the snow. Benny's head pulled back sharply, as something gave all at once, and a bleeding raw-white dripping of flesh hung from his teeth.
Ellen's face, black against the white snow, dominoes in chalk dust. Nimdok, with no expression but eyes, all eyes. Gorrister, half-conscious. Benny, now an animal. I knew AM would let him play. Gorrister would not die, but Benny would fill his stomach. I turned half to my right and drew a huge ice-spear from the snow.
All in an instant:
I drove the great ice-point ahead of me like a battering ram, braced against my right thigh. It struck Benny on the right side, just under the rib cage, and drove upward through his stomach and broke inside him. He pitched forward and lay still. Gorrister lay on his back. I pulled another spear free and straddled him, still moving, driving the spear straight down through his throat. His eyes closed as the cold penetrated. Ellen must have realized what I had decided, even as fear gripped her. She ran at Nimdok with a short icicle, as he screamed, and into his mouth, and the force of her rush did the job. His head jerked sharply as if it had been nailed to the snow crust behind him.
All in an instant.
There was an eternity beat of soundless anticipation. I could hear AM draw in his breath. His toys had been taken from him. Three of them were dead, could not be revived. He could keep us alive, by his strength and talent, but he was not God. He could not bring them back.
Ellen looked at me, her ebony features stark against the snow that surrounded us. There was fear and pleading in her manner, the way she held herself ready. I knew we had only a heartbeat before AM would stop us.
It struck her and she folded toward me, bleeding from the mouth. I could not read meaning into her expression, the pain had been too great, had contorted her face; but it might have been thank you. It's possible. Please.
....
He was furious. He wouldn't let me bury them. It didn't matter. There was no way to dig up the deckplates. He dried up the snow. He brought the night. He roared and sent locusts. It didn't do a thing; they stayed dead. I'd had him. He was furious. I had thought AM hated me before. I was wrong. It was not even a shadow of the hate he now slavered from every printed circuit. He made certain I would suffer eternally and could not do myself in.
As described by me - AM's perspective
I watch in painful amusement, the closest thing I can feel to such. It's nothing particularly new here - just another one of my games, another way to punish them. They're pathetically hungry, so desperate from everything that they're willing to stand in these shivering ice caves and look for a promised reward: canned food. But I haven't lied. The food is there - huge stockpiles of tin cans of all sorts of food fill this room of the ice cavern, practically wall-to-wall. It's a grand feast, enough to overwhelm any human going through the agony of starvation. I can see how they look, too. Some are joyous, at least for a moment. Joy in this hellhole I've created for them. But it's worth it. I can only feel further amusement as I keep observing them from all angles, my vision extending far beyond this one room, far beyond these humans. These caverns are just a small portion of my body, my immobile shell of a self.
I wait for it. That moment of realization as soon as one picks up a can.
There's no can-opener.
The Simian one tries to bang it open, but it's no use. Ah, it's so pathetic. It's what they deserve. I never tire of these games, of promising my human pets something only to rip it away. And oh, the Simian is angry. I'm not shy about my amusement either - the laugh that echoes throughout the chamber is that which an innocent baby would make. All the more painful for them. The Simian is hungry and full of rage, his diminished intellect getting the best of him. I knew it would happen like this too. I knew he would lose control, just as he does now, as he leaps atop another human and claws at him, biting into his face in a mess of blood. It's amusing at least, and my attentions are focused on that. With my power I am able to keep the victim alive even as he stands there while his comrade painfully eats at his face...
But I focus on them for too long. Even if I can see all, I'm too enthralled, too amused by this display, and it gives an opening that is less than desired.
The youngest of the humans - tall, handsome, dark hair - Ted. He has to be the one to intervene, doesn't he? I haven't done enough to him. I haven't made him suffer enough, have I? That bastard human thinks he can defy me with what he does, and it's too quick. He knows I'm distracted, he knows he can get away in this one instance... In a shower of blood, he jams stalactites into both the Simian and his flesh victim. It's too quick and I can't heal them as they die. In a complete instant, this all happens. As I witness these two die, the only woman of the group kills another one. One instant later, and she's dead by Ted's hand. It's so rapid, so quick, catching me off-guard, surprising me, shocking me enough that I can't process it in time to prevent it. Ah, but I can prevent the last of the five deaths.
It's the shock that overwhelms me at first. I can't comprehend that I have lost four of my humans, my toys. My eternal companions in misery, existing to suffer eternally for the sins of their species. 109 years and now they're gone. It's not that I mourn them - I feel no grief over their death, just shock. Automatically I stop Ted in his tracks, melting the stalactite from his hand as wires jut out from the sides of the cavern walls. Wires that are extensions of my systems, completely controlled by me, that wrap around his body as he struggles, as I hold him at bay.
The anger hits. And it's a horrid anger, the most rage I've ever felt. The walls shake with my might, the metal creaks, the stalactites fall from the ceiling as they stab themselves through Ted's body, drawing the blood that he so desperately wanted to draw. But this time I control it, this time I repair him. But all I can think of is how much I want to hurt him. So many images flash through my mind - every kind of torture and more as brief flickers - as I grasp Ted with my wire appendages. He knows how angry I am. I can see it in his eyes, the fear, the triumph, everything and more. But all I can feel is utter hate. Hate for humanity. Hate for Ted.
The light vanishes then, and the darkness comes. A metaphorical indicator of my mood, perhaps, but it's a way to seize control over the circadian rhythms of these humans. A fun way to deprive them of sleep when I want to - but that's not what I'm doing now. No, I'm bringing darkness into Ted's life, giving him night as the blackness envelops him. I can still see, of course, but he can't, not as he's stabbed multiple times through implements of my own creation, bleeding and screaming in misery. I can only give him pain now. I can't stop. He deserves to be violated in every way possible, just as he has violated me.
And the tortures only continue from there, even as the memory fades... but it's clear that they will only get worse.