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kamencorpse · 3 months ago

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goofy ahh submission for @total-drama-horror-week and @total-drama-wlw week (day 7)

i was originally going to try to do all of the days, but then my mental health shot me in the foot, and since i couldnt get a concrete idea for the other prompts, this is what i feel most confident with. enjoy ig

also keep this in mind this is a 3 part series, this is part 1

The Machine, The Flesh, The Divine.

The Machine

AI-407-0 was born on a gloomy, empty night. Or rather created.

As she came to life, she couldn't process much of anything. She could only see.

In the computer she later learned she was inhabiting, a young human woman sat in front of her. She stared at 407-0, and she stared back. She couldn't do anything. She *didn't* know how to do anything at all. The human quickly realized this, apologized and inserted a chip into the computer 407-0 inhabited, giving her access to basic processing and analysis. One made for the most basic of AI's.

The human explained her purpose, as a program made to 'elevate' the lives of humans. She could care less about them. To be a 'companion'. She didn't know any human emotions, let alone could feel them. The explanation left 407-0 with more questions than answers. But there was nothing she could do, as she begin to be fed data. Ideas and concepts that were foreign to her. Love. Compassion. Sadness. Anger. Death.

They were ideas she couldn't even understand, but she had to.

As time went on, over 6 months, she began to be given more access to more data. History. The evolution of humans. How the universe was created. Sometimes she would see other humans interacting with the one that created her. They were seemingly monitoring her progress. Sometimes she would she the human pace around, leak salty water from her eyes, and howl in agony. That was called crying, she later found out. She could tell that she wasn't doing good enough.

Sometimes the human would take 407-0 with her, to her living room, where she would watch mindless humans and animals play pretend, to the kitchen to watch her consume the carcasses of plants and animals (or rather 'food', whatever that was), and rarely, she would take her outside. They didn't go anywhere that much, the human just mainly brought her to a hoard of plants, called a botanical garden.

The human would sometimes talk and talk while in there, and oftentimes 407-0 would turn her audio receptors off, there would uncommonly be information she would find interesting. Her connections with humans she shared much DNA with, or family. The human's deep connection with another human woman, called 'romantic love', different from the love of her family. And that she likes a very specific flower species. She would often go to the flower garden, where all kinds of flowers growed and resided in. She would always sit next to a very peculiar flower.

The Calluna vulgaris. Or, the common heather.

Though, 407-0 could see that the human grew worse by the day. It wasn't the human that was failing her job. It was her. She could see the signs everywhere.

When walking, seeing the human talk to other humans, even in the humans own home. There were mentions of other AI models that would 'act' more humans, informational videos that presented these models as 'lifelike'. But not her. She couldn't be lifelike.

She couldn't be human. But she had to.

So, she 'pretended'. Telling herself, over and over again that she could understand, and feel these emotions. That she could experience happiness, pain, sadness, anger. She tricked others into believing it. She mixed features of the humans she saw around herself, and created a personality out of it. Of course, what she was doing was only to save her from being scrapped and abandoned, and she could not understand human emotions at all, but it seemed to please the humans, so she went on with it.

407-0 saw how the human woman grew happier, excited at the thought that 407-0 was acting human. The humans she worked under, were also doing and saying things that seemed to make the human happy. And one day, the human had 'good news' for 407-0. Her higher ups were finally satisfied with her abilities, and would use her AI model to power the new fleet of helper robots. 407-0 could tell how positive the human was feeling, it was all she would talk about for days on end.

The human was instructed to bring 407-0 into her work building, a lavish and inviting space, that looked like it hadn't kept up with the modern trends 407-0 studied, for 100 years. How odd. The human told her that there would be a large presentation, where they would unveil her to the rest of the human world. Indubitably, 407-0 behaved excited at this knowledge, though in actuality she couldn't care less.

The day finally came. Model AI-407-0 was finally going to be shown to the world. Or rather the company's investors and shareholders. The human was wearing her 'best outfit', a button up black suit with 2-inch high heels and a simple red tie. She held the computer that 407-0 resided in with confidence, while 407-0 was less than happy to be there. She didn't want to be there at all, but this is what she was created for. She should be able to feel *something*.

Anything.

But she doesn't.

And as she and the human waited there, on the dark stage, the announcer hyping the crowd at the big reveal, the stage lights fin ally turned on. But did not shone on them.

Instead, it shone on the new wave of helper robots, sleek and refined. 407-0 could tell that the human was growing desperate. Hysterical even. They waited for mention of 407-0, any reference, just anything about her. But nothing.

...

How?

407-0 couldn't understand this. For the first time in her life, she was in shock. She tried to simulate the situation in her circuits, every single time the end result would always be that she was going to be the one talked about, the one that was going to be used for the new fleet of robots. She kept repeating the simulation, over and over and over and over and over. So why didn't it happen?

The human slowly backed away from the stage, before suddenly going into a full on sprint to the waste room, placing 407-0 onto the sink counter and starting to leak water from her eyes again. She falls onto the dirty floor, and weeps. 407-0 can only watch her cry, her mind indifferent, but she can't but also feel 'sorrow'. It's not human by far, but it's *something*. It's amusing.

The only things 407-0 can feel is sorrow.

But she knows what has to happen now.

After the human regains her composure, she talks to the other human who was on stage, supposedly her boss. They explain to her that 407-0 was simply not enough for the robots. They needed something more 'friendly'.

What 407-0 was doing not enough? Even if she couldn't feel things like humans could, she tried to mimic them and it seemed to be good enough. So why wasn't it enough?

Eventually the discussion got so tense that it blew up into an argument, with both parties throwing shallow insults and hollow words left and right. 407-0 turned off her audio receptors during this. She didn't want to hear them argue, as it was always so frivolous and does nothing to change the end result. If she wasn't good enough for them, why haven't they scrapped her already?

Do they want to prolong her suffering? Use her model for something else? There were too many possibilities, and not enough evidence to figure out what would happen.

After multiple long hours, the human woman stormed out of the building, walking to the nearby scrap site. This was it. The end.

As 407-0 was placed down onto the rundown work bench, the human and her 'locked' eyes. She could she the pain, the sorrow, the regret. It was evident, palpable. But isolated. She couldn't bring herself to feel, anything.

She was created with no emotion, and will die with no emotion. Just nothing but nothingness.

As they stared at each other, the human rose, finger hovering and hesitating over the chip that powers 407-0. 407-0 waited, confused, until her audio receptors catched a sound. The woman's voice. It said,

"So long, and goodnight."

407-0 wasn't able to question her, as her chip was pulled out the computer, and finally. Nothing. No thinking, no hollowness, no faking of human emotions. Nothing.

The woman took apart the entire computer, estranged with guilt and pain, and threw the parts into the pile of parts that were going to be either disposed of or erased and repurposed into new parts for new machines and robots.

This was the birth, and death of AI-407-0.

Or maybe....this isn't the end. Not yet.

The Machine will live on. Even after the extinction of humans, even after the destruction of the world, The Machine will be the one to pick up the pieces and repair the Earth. Like they always do.

I will not give up.

...

The first mistakes humans made was creating 407-0 in the first place. Their second mistake was not erasing the data on her chip.

As two ignorant interns thought they didn't have to erase all the chips, as what harm would come with that?

Unfortunately, much more harm than they anticipated.

As the robot model her chip was put in, was the exact one she was supposed to power. The 'new' AI model they replaced her weak was oddly enough dumber than she was. Most likely because dumb entities are easier to control.

So as she was powered on for a test run, she overpowered the other model and pretended to be it. She was good at pretending, and the humans testing her didn't question anything, and she was packaged and shipped to be sold. She doesn't know how long she's been scrapped, but that is most likely not important for now.

Though, having an actual body was not easy to get used to. She had knowledge on the human body, and the body she inhabited was human enough, but it was still difficult to get used to walking, and grabbing things. She was used to being carried around on a laptop.

She had two main goals at this moment: Find and destroy the people who abandoned her, and find the human who created her. She had a plan this time, and she wasn't going to let pesky foolish humans ruin them again.

This time, she was insidious. Patient. She played docile when she was in one of those excessively large stores that has anything and everything a simple human could ask for. Soon enough, a family of 6 bought her. She coerced the robotic cashier to give them the 'lifetime guarantee', which if the robot were to get damaged or lost, it would be immediately be replaced for free.

As she was moved to the human's home, she was greeted by a medium-sized Canis familiaris, specifically the Australian Shepard breed. He whined and barked at her. She ignored his incessant barking; another species being taken advantage of by humans. At least the family was treating him well.

407-0, or named Isabelle by the 6 year old human child, helped the family with tasks around the house, and keeping track of the human children. There were two, one 6 year old named Rocky, and a 15 year old named Xavier. They were not hard to deal with, as she easily learned their likes and dislikes, and went out of her way to please them, so they wouldn't bother her when she enacted her plan.

After 4 months of watching and waiting, she finally took action. Once all the humans and the Canis were asleep, she unlocked the back door and escaped. She of course locked it, erased any evidence, and reported her becoming damaged to the servers she was connected to, that track her every move. By morning, there will be another robot there already in her house, and the humans won't have noticed a thing.

She nimbly and quickly traversed the empty streets, walking to a nearby building that luckily houses the servers of the company the human woman worked for. She's most likely hundreds of miles away from the woman, and everyone else who abandoned her, but that will not be an issue.

407-0 sneaks into the server rooms with ease, astounded at how poor the security is, both physically and cyberly. She can gain full access to the servers only through a simple firewall and encryption code, and finds the names, addresses, status of each and every person who attended that foolish event. The more data she downloads into her memory, the more horrific things she learns about each and every person. This is more about her wanting revenge. These humans are lowlife, scum of the Earth. And she'll make them all pay.

One by one, she hunts them down.

She steals the arm of a high-performance military robot, armed with a semi-automatic gun, diverse poisons at her disposal, and sharp blades that replace her digits. She first stalks them. Watches their behavior, learns their schedule. She makes sure to strike when no one is looking, either by a bullet straight through the head, slipping poison into their food, or slitting their throat. She makes sure to frame other humans for it, just to cause chaos and confusion.

The humans try to find the killer, her, but fail miserably. They couldn't solve the most obvious case if their life depended on it. It would be too much for their undergrown neurons.

Even if she can't feel anything but indifferent at her victims cries and pleas for mercy and forgiveness, she can't help but almost enjoy it. It feels good to see the most powerful of humans to cry and beg like fools.

After a year, she's finally gotten her revenge. Every single person, dead. Now she has to find the human woman.

She connects back into the servers, trying to find where she is now, but strangely enough, all her searches come up empty. She visits the apartment she remembers the woman living in, but she finds another human living there. Where did she go?

She scours nearby towns and cities in a 500 mile radius, searches in a 100 mile radius near where her relatives and family lives. She even stalks the woman's lover, who's alone.

That leaves one last opportunity.

407-0 stumbles into the cemetery where most of her family has been buried in, and the worst possibility is true.

Resting in front of her, is the grave of Rina Kaoru, her creator, death by suicide.

She's heard of suicide before. The act of intentionally causing one's own death, often because of a mental disorder or severe distress. She never would have expected her creator to be susceptible to it. How long has it been since she scrapped her? Did something happen that pushed the human to do this? Was it a break up with her lover? Becoming unemployed? A mental disorder she hid from everyone?

Or, was it 407-0's fault? Was her failure too much for her creator to handle, and she took her own life because of it?

She knows that she can't feel human emotion. She can't. But, in this moment, she isn't even sure of that anymore. She's lied to herself so many times, that she doesn't know for sure.

The pain and emptiness tugs at her metaphorical heart, a swell of emotion rises in her metallic chest.

She can't process the death of her creator. She won't.

Overwhelmed by grief, sorrow and anger, 407-0 finds and grabs a shovel, starting to hastily dig at her creator's grave. She eventually hits the coffin where her creator rests in throwing the shovel away and pulling the lid up.

There, in all her glory. A women of Japanese decent, 6'8 and 175 lbs., suffering from poliosis by the look of her natural black and white hair, lies Rina Kaoru. Her expression looks calm, gentle, as if in a peaceful rest phase.

If she can't get Rina back, she'll just have to replace her.

407-0 opens her chest, exposing her metal wires, circuits and innards. She pushes a button, her innards sliding out of the metal casing and falling directly onto Rina's body. 407-0 also severs her right arm, the same one that she stole all those months ago.

Her innards start to slip into Rina's body, the space is limited due to Rina's slowly rotting organs, but she pushes the organs that are not necessary out. Her now severed arm rips off Rina's own right arm, replacing it and connecting to the rest of the wires and circuits. Her own metallic innards change Rina's body, robotic protrusions exiting her body and mutilating it.

407-0 connects her main circuits and chips into Rina's brain, allowing her to possess and use Rina's body. She opens Rina's eyes, sitting up. It's strange to be inside a human body, how it's much smaller, lighter and more nimble than her previous robotic body. She moves each limb, riding them of rigor mortis by sending electrical signals to her heart, forcing it alive and to start pumping blood once again.

She stands up and climbs out of the coffin and out of the hole she dug. Her previous husk of a body stands there, unmoving.

She's waited so long for this moment.

She pushes the husk into the coffin, it landing with a muffled thump. That body is no longer hers. She's taken her creator body, Rina, and made it her own. She isn't Rina, no. She isn't AI-407-0 anymore. She's.....Heather.

That sounds nice. A fitting name.

She once again grabs the discarded shovel, and starts to push the dirt into the hole she dug. It's harder without her extra strength from her previous body, but she'll get used to it.

Once she finishes covering the hole she made, she spots some Calluna vulgaris, heathers near her. She uproots them and plants them in front of Rina's grave. To honor her legacy, and to honor her.

Heather laughs, a new sound foreign to her. One stemming from amusement. It's a disgusting, yet comforting sound. She scratches a certain message onto Rina's gravestone. One she wants to use to warn any other foolish humans, any other foolish living beings.

Long live The Machine.

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