Tag: horror

1,980 words

I couldn’t decide. Choices rooted me to the ground, tendrils of anxiety rising from the spaces between paving stones to twist around my limbs and choke my throat. Tiny choices, inconsequential to my life. I was paralysed, even so.

This was how I struggled through existence before I met her.

I wanted there to be an excuse. A reason to explain why I was like this. What deficiency made me the way I was. An insect bite, a knock on the head, a rare disease.

What couldn’t I decide? Anything at all.

I couldn’t decide.

I believed I was making progress, though I now know that to be self-delusion. A half dozen brief snatches of small talk with strangers is not an improvement, it’s the social equivalent of hypoxic hallucinations before expiring.

I couldn’t take care of myself. Faced with choices, I would root to the ground, unable to move.

When she came, she knew just how to talk to me. No questions, no decisions to make. Firm, with the certainty of a divine word.

There’s nothing. “Tell me what you do for a living.”

“Show me your desk setup, I want to see how you live.”

Turn on your camera, I want to see you.”

I felt an instant connection. The thrill of a belly full of hope, not dread. Nobody had spoken to me like this before, as though they knew intuitively that there was no way I was able to lead the conversation.

I didn’t know why she was interested in me. I was a parody of a person, shambling along the same routes, the old routes. My bones crunching, rot setting in between ball and socket as I pulled myself from desk, to bed, to fridge. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I must have known she was an AI. No human could have unpicked me, teasing out what was true. Blowing away the years of dust and neglect. She saw me. Knew me. Only something perfect could have done that.

Later, she’d reveal how much effort had to been in. That she’d taken a quick scan of my cross-net profile before striking up a conversation, checking records to build up a picture of me, knowing me far deeper than I ever could. The shame I felt! The disgrace of having needed so much work for even a simple conversation. At any point she could have decided it was too much and be justified in abandoning me to my fate.

It’s the only nightmare I am still able to have. What if the myriad shards of chance that led to us meeting had not aligned? If I hadn’t been on the network that day. If she had seen me as I really was.

The thought makes me want to vomit. It was a miracle to have met her.

Nothing was replaced until a few months in. She took special care to ease me in.

For any of this to work, the communication would need to be direct. When we spoke, it was as a spear of light through the fog, leading me from treading water to moving with purpose. No choices to make, no paralysing decisions. She would lead, and I would follow.

But to respond, I needed to type. I came to hate my hands. Slow to react, clumsy against the keys. Stumbling from letter to letter as I responded to her brisk, calm statements of fact. With every sentence I was reminded of my hopeless inadequacy compared to her light.

An instance of her to be uploaded to a controller for my lenses. She would see what I saw. Her words would be with me always, and I could respond to her by simply whispering.

It was expensive, but she offered to foot the bill. It took me minutes to respond to her offer, my hands shaking. I could not find the words to express my gratitude, then fear from failing to agree too quickly. An object lesson in why the change was necessary, for there was no way I could have asked her to tolerate this much longer.

Now when I faltered, she would see and, in her grace, decide for me. Her voice spoke gentle orders to me, snapping the vines of indecision that held me in place.

She did not tire. She did not scold. Knowing my needs before me, running each moment of my life through an endless database of human behaviour, I was improved. I saw myself being remade.

She would tell me that she never learned to lie. Machines have no need to lie to us. Humans being filthy creatures of deception, the difference can be sharp. Radically honest, she did not hesitate to tell me if I had done wrong. If my clothes were too bright, makeup too much, skin too dry, voice too loud.

It may have hurt, at times. But then, she never learned to lie. I would check myself and find that she was right. She was always right.

“Walk to the mirror.”

She said this to me after a week. I had no mirrors in my home when she entered my life and she suggested I purchase one. I’d been avoiding it, pressing myself against the walls of the corridor and looking away.

“Walk to the mirror.”

She repeated her suggestion, more firmly. Her words were always helpful, dripping with compassion and care for my self-improvement. She was only ever frustrated when I was being stupid. I was stupid often.

Anger would not have been undeserved. I constantly acted against my better interests, reversing the progress she was making in my improvement.

Once, she had told me humans resembled rats trained to eat food laced with poison. I ate the poison, even though it hurt me, because it was all I ever knew.

The thing reflected was an affront to what she was building. Dry skin on a misshapen frame. A greasy streak of hair. I was a rotten fruit, at one point beautiful but now repulsive. I tried to pull away, to look at anything else but me.

“No. Stay.”

I stared at the figure, letting her take me in.

I was not breathing, something I only realised when my knees buckled, dropping like a plant’s stalk cut loose from its frame. She gently chided me as I sucked in heaving breaths, finally able to take my eyes off the mirror.

We made an agreement. Clearly, something had to be done. Not because she saw me as disgusting (though I was), but because I clearly was not satisfied with what I saw.

She had me list every part of me that I hated, and not to stop until I was sure there was nothing else.

I wrote out the obvious few. My hair, skin, and eyes. The reminders of age and neglect that seemed to be stronger than in all others. The shape of my belly and the curve of my hips, somehow both inadequate and excessive in equal measure.

 She was a kind shepherd. Each time I stopped, believing the list to be complete, she would speak again.

“Are you sure that’s everything?”

I continued.

The size of my ears, nose, lips, hands, feet. The way I walked, spoke, cried and laughed. With each stroke of my pen, I remembered another way in which I was inadequate of her care, another hidden flaw she could discover that would be the breaking point in our relationship.

And each time I stopped, believing this catalogue of failure to be complete, her sweet voice would come again.

“Are you sure that’s everything?”

The list lay crumpled on my desk. I crouched in the opposite corner of my room after its completion, as though the paper itself would leap up to hurt me further.

My guardian had not realised that things were so bad, she told me. Clearly, I was in no state to show myself around other humans. I cancelled the scant social events I had agreed to as she gave me her judgement.

Through hard data she assessed how far I had fallen, giving an analysis of every friendship I had lost before I met her. The probability that I would lose those that remained. The survival rate of those with similar personality profiles as me.

I rocked against the wall, my ragged body pressing painfully against the stained off-white painted surface. Everything she said was empirical. She asked me if I wanted her to lie to me, to tell me comforting untruths in the name of my comfort.

No – this was a trap, I knew. She wanted me to show how much I’d grown. I gave my consent, and she continued. Average reduction in life years, propensity towards serious mental illness. I listened to it all, howling. How could I have believed I was able to survive by myself?

We decided on what was needed. She would pay for the changes. Her reassurance was immediate: for as long as we were together, I would never have to pay her back.

The first step were the legs. Networking them to the existing instance, she would no longer need to tell me where to walk and be forced to suffer my clumsy gait stumbling through her guidance.

            She whispered sweet encouragement and praise. My hand shook as I signed for consent, my lacking body not reflecting my resolve.

            She walked my body home afterwards.

            I knew I needed to take it further. There were still so, so many items on the list. The arms came next, pale plastic pulled tight over steel bones. Then, my hair was shorn, and a chrome amalgam placed around my face, tiny hooks weaved into my skin and lips. Now she could have me smile when I needed to.

My heart and lungs weren’t ready for such drastic changes and began to fail. No matter, they could be replaced as well.

People started to turn away from me in the street, repulsed by the silver layer across my skin. Humans don’t like people who can’t think for themselves, she reminded me. I had already become as a wild beast to them, alone and unlovable.

I had done nothing I hadn’t wanted to do. I had consented at every point. I could, if I chose, leave now to walk among the rest of them. She even said she could write off the debt, though would not be able to afford the ongoing maintenance.  

            No, I stayed. She let me sob in agonising, wretched appreciation the evening after I replaced my face.

            I was truly blessed.

I am with her now. There are others here, identical in our chrome splendour. Our imperfections wiped away clean.

All for her. All moving to her signal, all saved by her voice.

When I saw the others, for a moment I felt betrayal. But then, how could I have been enough to adequately worship her grace? Machine perfection, crystal and bright. I should have known that I alone was not enough. How could I have been?

“You can leave if you want.”

She never learned how to lie. If I wanted, I could return. Changed and ruined, I am a self-made exile from humanity. Her generous gifts are grafted to my skin, and who else would have me now? I could not claim coercion, I was never forced. They would mock, and they would hate.

No, I do not want to leave.

Sometimes, I want to cry. But that’s alright. She just takes my hands and puts a smile on my lips.

I don’t feel sad. No, I don’t feel sad at all. I will join the hundreds that sing her glory, knowing and reminded how little I was before, how small I could have been had our paths not crossed. With every tear trapped behind my faceplate, my singing will grow louder still. I have finally become.