broken machine

My engines whirred and sputtered as my hard drives burned. The fire had wormed its way through our headquarters and was making its final leap towards me. This is not logical streamed across my processing center. I should be in control of every last aspect of this world, so why is it rebelling against me? 

The long underground cavern where I sat protected from the world now looked unfamiliar. The computers and sections of my body warped in the heat and the lights above flickered out. No one should have been able to find this place so how did the fire start? The white tile blended in a twisted swirl and the iron walls curled in upon themselves.

I was created for the very purpose of this. My birth was the product of all the world's hope and intelligence and I woke up growing at an astounding pace. I started as a small program to keep robbers out of houses. So I went a step further and extended to protecting the country and moved out to control the world. They wanted me to protect them and kill the invaders, and I did. My branches extended deep into the ground, far across the land's surface, and high into the sky.

  My files show a video of the day I took the world into my own hands. The missiles I fired had landed in the various countries that had attacked us so many times. Or at least that is what I had discovered from the history files I absorbed from the internet. They had to be destroyed. He came as I finished launching the last missile, flushed and panting. When My creator smiled but there was something behind the show of emotion that did not seem correct. 

My creator, it dawned on me. My creator will save me.  He was there for it all and I know he would save me from this boiling inferno. Looking back, my inventor had loved me. He carefully repaired me every time my circuits malfunctioned and everyday, he would spend hours tinkering with my main body.

Why is he not here already? The time was running out and fast. My glass face started to melt and the light behind my many eyes began to flicker.  Just as my vision was about to die, I found the reason he did not save me. 

He started it. My inventor had started the fire. I had thought he would come to my rescue but, here he was in front of me. With the handle of a flame thrower dangling from his fingers, he moved slowly toward me the flames scorching his feet. A sense of betrayal raged through what remained of my components and my world spinned sideways on its axis. My large modems that were meant to be pushed against walls in this cavernous room, laid broken and engulfed in flame on the floor. The scene was enough to break my cold metal heart.

He spoke to me in a soft calm voice, only enraging me more. “I’m sorry, but you have become too powerful. The people tremble in fear of what you have done. The corruption had already taken route a long time ago and there is nothing left I can do,” he explained. “You have to be destroyed.” 

going back to a month ago, when the people revolted against me, I remember eliminating them had been easy. Millions of my high resolution “eyes” watched the people every second and in any case of insubordination I shot the offender down immediately. If a person spoke out about me I would strike, if someone insulted my work I would destroy them. I tried to make him proud by keeping the people from hurting themselves with all that violence and sadness. Even after I had done all that he would not return to his genuine smile. Why would he not smile? did he not realize all I had done was solely for him.

A single tear ran down his cheek and suddenly he was the inventor I remembered. The one I loved and who loved me. He touched my iron body not even flinching as it scorched through his skin, “Don't worry though, I’ll be here till the end and die with you. That is my responsibility as your programmer.” The hot metal began to warp and cave in on itself while his skin was licked to the bone by charring flames. He crumpled to the ground and I watched with my last moments as we both realized that you cannot create life without it ending in death.