You Killed My Love

I studied the gears, whirring, winding, spinning. My sword sheathed at my side, as I watched the very last mechanical man die. He creaked and groaned, his bits sputtering, many of them visible from the way I had flayed his skin away to find the “off switch”. Peering down, I dropped to a crouch to better look in his eyes.

“I wish you could feel pain” I whispered watching his gears churn, lights blaring and alarms dinging. They would’ve been triggers for other mechanical men to come save him, had there been any left that is. Tears filled my eyes, my hand shot out clenching his throat. Forcing his head up to look into my eyes.

“I know you can’t feel anything.” I murmured listening to the way he ticked beneath my hand. “But somehow this helps.” His arms moved from finding leverage to grasping at my arm. A last ditch effort to kill me as he died. Drawing my sword I sliced through the connection in his arms, the gears in those limbs died instantly as electrical current wires broke. Those wires swiped through the air freed; every now and again one would lash my bare skin. But I could barely feel it. I felt something so much worse.

I cried silently as I watched this thing slowly die. He was studying me now too, my hand clenched harder around his throat feeling the mechanical pits bite into my palm. Yet just as the electrical currents had not awaken me from this hysterical slumber I was caught in, they barely stirred me.

Deep within me a voice rumbled. I never felt myself speak, but somehow I did through the crushing pain, weighing me down deeper into the earth, deeper than this compound, deeper than everything. Until I was in the center of the core, burning alive yet not dying. This pain could not kill me, even though I wanted to die.

“You killed my love. My true love. The love of my life. You ripped the life from the one person I adored more than anything on this planet. But you don’t understand what that means do you? You cannot feel anything, you are nothing more than gears wires and goo.”

I paused looking for word that could describe what I had felt. Love.

“What you did is the most grievous fault. For when you stole a life, you stole a Force from this world as well. You thought you had the right to intervene with Something so much more than you. Something that burns hotter and brighter than any star I have ever seen, or ever will see. It burns you just like the sun as you let It in. Leaving a mark on your soul as indelible as a birthmark, Something that will never leave, though It may possibly fade. It can make you feel as though you are drowning, from how immense It is. You strive to reach oxygen for one moment where you can think clearly, but you cannot for while your brain should be what guides you, your heart pulls you in an entirely other direction: deeper into the water. Because now It runs the show. You are never without It, but you never want to be.

Because just as everything within you calls for you to kill, you mechanical man, everything within me calls to It. I was drowning, voluntarily. I was sinking deeper and deeper into Its ocean, letting go everything that was me for them, for It. I may as well be dead without It, for It was what made me—me. For It, I would’ve cut my own beating heart from my chest. Because of It, I was the most powerful person on this planet. No harm could touch me, no matter how many times you and your brethren attacked me it didn’t matter. My skin can grow back, I could’ve learned to live without sight, or without a limb, but I have no idea where to begin without It.

With every slice of your claws on my arm, I felt nothing. In my veins was a blocker, put in place by It. And when you would cut me the pain would be stopped by how amazing It was. And I knew I would be ok. Now, It is gone, and I cannot feel anything—just like you. For what is the point of swimming in a kiddie pool, after living in the ocean for ten years? Anything you could do to me now would send no alarms, for I simply do not care. Without It, what is the point. It was a once in a lifetime thing, like certain comets streaking across the sky. It was more beautiful than that, more awe inspiring, and more dangerous. For had the world unanimously voted for their death, I would have burned the entire world to the ground. To save them, I would’ve burned myself with it. Had I been killed before someone killed them? I would drag myself from the pits of hell to seek revenge on the person who thought they had the right. Or in your case, the machine.

You took my light, my life, my soul, my everything. You took the best thing in the world, for no one else had It more deeply in tune with them than us. If I were you, It would’ve been inscribed in every gear. But because I am me, It was whispered with every beat of my heart. It was coded in every strand of DNA in every cell pulsing through me. It was carved in my bones. And any action involving It was muscle memory, even if I had never done the action before.

Because It was everything to me. It was me. It is me, but you took It. And now I am empty, as if someone scooped out my innards with a hot spoon. I’m alive, but is surviving after writing the best story in your life only to have the “the end” come on the tenth chapter with seventy more to go... really living? I may as well be you.” I spat out the final insult. Returning my eyes to him.

During the monologue, my eyes had closed, but now they were open. And the mechanical man looked different—somehow. He was still sputtering and ticking. Yet there was something softer to him. And in the reflection of his eyes I saw something. A bunch of zeros and ones were running across them, binary code, again and again. After watching it awhile I made out the message. With a gasp of shock my sword flew from my side and I sliced his head away, finally the whole machine went dead silent.

Shakily I stood, the tears still flowing, but quite like white noise now. With purpose I left the last remains of any mechanical man behind. His final words, defying all we had ever known about his kind, spun through my brain. But they didn’t change anything. He had relocated me from an ocean to a plastic kiddie pool.

A fucking kiddie pool.