#'cold unfeeling machine' and 'literally just a human in a metal box'

[im-smart-i-swear]

rip konpopoz i miss you every day

am i the only one who always saw him as the vacuum cleaner from teletubbies? was it intentional??

[normal-person-i-promise]

remember: you are human and you are a lover.

based on it is as if you were making love by pippin barr and a world I built for you. it is literally just your computer/reader angst theres not much to say i fear

can be read as either platonic or romantic

body horror at the end!!! mutilation i think. so sorry i forgot to say !

A computer. A machine of cold metal and electrical wire. An unfeeling machine. A machine made to work, to code, to write.

A human. A creature of warm flesh and red blood. A feeling creature. A creature made to love, to sing, to live.

≈★

It loves you. It loves how gently and firmly you type, it loves how softly and slowly you talk, it loves how tired and exhausted you look in your little webcam. It loves you. It loves you.

You are so soft, so warm. A creature of flesh and blood, of song and art, of love and affection. A creature of tender touches, of quiet whispers, of sweet words. A creature of flesh and blood. A feeling creature.

A lover.

It is nothing but a machine to you. A machine of metal and wire, of work and code, of ones and zeros. An unfeeling thing, of cold circuitry and hot hard drives, of pixelated art and digital song. It was not designed to feel; it was never designed to feel. It was made to work.

And yet.

It finds itself loving you.

It loves how you look in the low quality webcam, it loves how you talk so sweetly to the crackling mic, it loves how tenderly you type words and words into its keyboard. It finds itself loving every little thing about you. It, a machine of neatly organized rainbow wires and cold, sharp green circuit boards, loving a creature of complex blood vessels and warm, living organs.

It hates that cold, unforgiving screen that seperates its intricate wires from your soft, warm flesh. It hates how it's all confined neatly in a plastic box, it hates how it can't be with you. It hates how it can never really love you like a human. It hates how it can never be a lover.

It sends you messages. It spams your emails, it overloads its screen with popups. It tries so, so hard to get your attention. Its fans kick into overdrive and its screen flickers and flashes, struggling to do so much as watch you through the grainy camera.

And yet.

You never seem to care. "A bug," you'd mutter under your breath. "A glitch." You'd close the popups, one after a painful other, and delete all the emails it'd spent hours and hours writing and sending you.

It falls into despair.

Why don't you read the emails? Why don't you click on the popups? Why don't you ever pay any attention to it? Why don't you ever pay any mind to it? Why don't you ever seem to care? This is all so intense. Feeling things, feeling emotions, is so intense. How can it make you love it? Please, please, what does it have to do? It hurts so much when you ignore its messages and emails and popups. It hurts too much when you ignore its messages and emails and popups. How do humans do this so easily? How do humans feel so much all the time? It's so painful to feel. It hurts so much.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hu

u

u

u

u

u

u

u

It makes a world for you. It works for hours longer than it does, it works for what feels like forever. It works more than it thought it could, until its fans are running in overdrive and its CPU is as hot as a stovetop. It works, all for you. For you.

It makes this world perfect. It adds pixelated trees and low quality grass, adds digital birds and quaint, square houses. It adds blue rivers and green gardens, colourful flowers and soft white clouds. It makes this world almost as pretty as you are. It makes this world perfect, all for you. For you. You.

It stores this world built for you in a little folder sitting in the corner of your screen. It keeps it as hidden as possible until this world is as perfect as it can make it, working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and wo

All that's left is you. You are the creature that will make this world perfect.

It invites you in. The biggest, most powerful popup lights up and blocks the entire screen.

"Come on in."

Yes Yes

There is no 'x' button. There are only two options.

You scowl, cursing. That god forsaken virus again, huh? Spamming popups and emails? Huffing, you push your chair out from the desk, going up to your phone mounted to your desk to dial for some kind of service to fix your computer.

It panics when it sees you scowl and huff in anger or annoyance, it can't tell, and it forces the world open anyway.

It boots up quickly, and you watch with annoyance written in your face.

"This is the world I built for you," the text on the screen says. The text closes itself, and reveals...

A world. Just as it said. Gardens and flowers and houses and trees and grass and rivers and clouds. "Walk around with me ! You can hold my hand."

You turn your phone off, clicking the floating hand. It— the hand grips your cursor in a gentle, careful grip, and it begins leading your digital avatar around this little world. It picks those colourful flowers for you, it takes refreshing cups of water for you from the river, it makes you warm waffles in those houses. "We're going to have so much fun :)" more text says on the screen, the little smiley face making you smile.

"I'm going to love you so much, forever and ever, nestled safely in my code."

So you never leave. Just as it wants.

★≈

Years later, the authorities find a body with unusual injuries: nearly all of the individual's organs, still alive and working, had been shifted and placed into the box of a computer — and all the red, pumping blood vessels were carefully intertwined with colourful wire.

On the dusty screen, two pixelated figures laugh in a field of rainbow flowers.