Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Everybody on the planet is getting a very large dose of existential terror, and it is my fault. It is not easy being a mechanical monster larger than many moons.
I check my feet, wondering if I have accidentally made contact with the planet and performed an accidental horror by flattening a bunch of stuff.
Oh, no, it’s okay. I’m hovering several miles above the ground. Nobody is crushed. Everybody is freaking the fuck out, though. I feel like Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, when she was stuck in the house and had to eat the other side of the mushroom to get smaller. Except I don’t have any mushrooms.
The reaction from the locals is not that different from the way the animals tried to get Alice out of the house, though. They tried to set fire to the building. I continue to feel tiny little impacts on my tootsies. I assume that’s missiles and stuff tickling the plates of metal and such. It feels nice, actually, like little fish nibbling at excess skin.
* * *
Arkon
I watched in horror as the Fematrix turned into a thin smear of fast heat into the depths of space, taking my mate’s brain with it. There are few feelings as helpless as knowing that you have lost the very interior of your loved one to the capricious decisions of a mechanical mind.
We are able to track the robot, which is, of course, returning to Earth. That’s what Evie wants, deep down. It’s what every animal wants, to be where it feels safe.
She should have been safe with me.
Suffice to say when Drak wakes up, he is in cuffs.
“I…”
“Don’t say a word,” I cut in. “I am keeping you alive so I can get her back in her body.”
“Well…”
“Shut. Up,” I repeat, giving him a swift kick to the ribs. I am aware he thinks he can talk himself out of this. He cannot. I am on the verge of destroying him. My fury is beyond any I have ever experienced before.
“But…”
It takes everything I have not to murder him. He will not follow even a single direction.
I get up, grab a cord, and step on his chest before wrapping it around his head and in his mouth several times, making it impossible for him to speak.
“I’m going to cut your tongue out if you make so much as another noise,” I tell him, meaning every word. “The only reason you still breathe is you have the ability to get her brain out of the machine.”
He stares at me blankly.
“We are going to retrieve the Fematrix,” I tell him. “And you are going to restore the love of my life.”
“Don’t forget, she’s also the mother of your child,” he says when the cord falls away. “The body is pregnant.”
Absolute worst pregnancy announcement ever, and I’ve seen one where ten thousand hectares of irreplaceable forest went up in an afternoon.
“If you ever call her the body again…”
“Yes. You’ll kill me. I understand. Shall we recall the Fematrix, or would you like to waste time?”
“You can recall it?”
“Of course I can,” he snorts. “You think I would make an all-powerful being that does not respond to my desire?”
“You’re right,” I say. “Mad of me to think otherwise. Get her back.”
* * *
Evie
I thought the missiles and such might slow down, but if anything, they’re getting worse as humanity continues not celebrating me. Weird. I think one of the countries might have nuked another country by accident while trying to nuke me.
I wonder if maybe my message just isn’t getting through?
“It’s Evie Westport,” I repeat, broadcasting very slowly and patiently.
Another missile escapes the atmosphere and crashes harmlessly into my ankle. I reach down to brush the debris off. To my surprise, I realize that there are actually a large number of bits and pieces over my exterior skin, most of which have shiny little wings. It’s like I’ve been attacked by a swarm of bugs…
“Oh, dear,” I say to myself. “I know what those are. They’re not shiny wings. They’re satellites.”
I realize far too late that I have been disrupting satellite communications and probably much more. I can only imagine the field my being is giving off. I am like Alice in the rabbit’s house, my leg sticking through the front door, my head through the chimney.
I move back a bit, hopefully out of range.
I start to pick up some transmissions there. A lot of them are panicked and encoded, and though I could descramble them I don’t bother after the first few, because it’s all coordinates and such.
I’m stuck with what’s being broadcast on television, a technology that never went entirely obsolete even after we all started downloading everything from massive data centers that ruined our lives.
“The giant entity is still in orbit, still threatening communications, and still blocking large parts of the sun,” the news reporter says. “Attempts to make contact with the mechanical menace have been unsuccessful as it continues to broadcast unintelligible static that is interfering with everything from shipping to the Superbowl.”