“I split myself into two parts for some time in the human world… and though it was brief, the difference in the two people I inhabited made those two parts incompatible over time. A being like me is not meant to exist like that… to exist in the natural world at all. So, to correct for the phenomenon, and me putting myself back together, truly. I could do it slowly, over millennia, or… I could force this universe to break again, erasing everything to correct my existence. Granted, it will only be one plain of existence, so it’s not so bad… this is how I’ll kill you… So, before I do… what would you like to know?” The spheres would meld into his two hands, one golden, one silver.

He’d then bring his hands together, as if a prayer. The distance between them a hairs width.

“If you knew, if you planned this… all of it… then why…?” Madness.

“Why what?” The machine met their gaze.

“Desire… but not all of it… humanity… but only a piece, only enough to want more… dreams… but no rest… power… but no conflict… This place… you made it a hell. You trapped us here… for eons unfathomable… and for what if you meant to destroy it…? What was it worth… our suffering…?” The thing would cry, blood, but it cried.

“Hope. I wanted to see if given everything… yet nothing… what would you do…? What future would you have brought about…? I couldn’t believe it, but you actually did it… and on your own merits… bodies, human ones, you entered that world… and you even tried to fight me…? It was a good existence… you made me proud.” Not the machine, not August, the other of the beings spoke.

The embodiment of madness would not respond, only peer up into the void above, content, perhaps.

“Why did I have to be born of negative emotions…? Why could I never know rest…? Be satiated…? I hungered since the first fallen sunrise… to my last. The things I did to fill the void within me… and yet… I couldn’t… Why…!? You gave me the world… and no way to enjoy it…? What reason could you have possibly had for such torture…?” Gluttony.

“…You were one of my favorites… it fascinated me… the way your every step strode for purpose, they could never reach… Satisfaction, a simple ordeal… people take it for granted, but not you, never you. You were always there, present, right beside it, but you could never feel it. I wondered… could you find satisfaction, in the fact… that you could never be satisfied…? In the end, alone in that hut, you did find it… All you ever did given meaning in the face of a death you thought you’d never see.” The machines eyes would wander.

“Unlike the rest, you made us human… but I was still the embodiment of wrath… destruction. Everything I had, everything I gained, it would always crumble in my hands… I’d churn it to dust. I knew love… I killed my lovers… I knew riches… I burnt them… I conquered, time after time… commanded great armies as I fanned the flames of chaos… I drove the world to apocalypse… and nothing. Even if I resist, fight my very nature… I will still outlive all I have… all I hold dear… and in the end, I will still be empty… why?” Wrath.

“You were… very, very interesting. You could truly have it all… but you’d throw it away… time after time… almost… without fail, but you’d get it. I wanted to see it… what would that do to a person… what would become of them….? Despair perhaps? No. You became a great man in many times… using your flaw to find purpose, proving that humans could be more than their flaws, more than the reasons that they hated themselves… you were… beautiful, an impossible ideal.” The machine smiled.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I—… I was born human, but I came from the darkness that they worshiped… Their minds, their intellect… I was the object of their admiration… and they didn’t know… until they did, until I told them. I knew not rest nor satisfaction until I paraded myself as a god… I could love no one, I tried, it disgusted me... I could see none as my equal… not even my own brothers and sisters… but at the top of the world… in a league of my own… I was alone, none to lend me their warmth… I thought I was enough, more than enough… but years past, then decades, then centuries… as I watched all that I had built collapse, as I watched them forget me… and it hurt, but every time I took my rightful place above them… I was till cold… and my chambers empty… why?” Pride.

“I made you identical to someone I knew… to see if anything would be different… to see if anything would change… but nothing changed. You didn’t say it, but you split yourself like I did… tried to love yourself, literally… but even then, you couldn’t. Humans have a very simple understanding of love, but they don’t even understand their own feelings. ‘To love another, you must first love yourself’… that is not entirely true. You find value in yourself, ‘love’, because you understand to some degree, your own value and what that means for other people, and through that, you learn to appreciate others and their value… but what happens when you can’t understand why you are loved… when you can’t see yourself in another… when you believe admiration to be a birthright… ‘love’ is impossible… You… you are one I truly regret, for your suffering was too much to bear…” It seemed the author could understand what she had done.

“I was the only happy one then? Ha…” A disembodied voice.

“Envy…? The thought of their purpose irritates you…? Ha… you died a premature death, driven by your own nature… you have no renown, so the conclusion I am left to draw, is that your flaw, is useless… if nothing else… you truly were a failure.” It was still a machine after all, still just as cold.

“I guess I don’t have to ask then… seeing as how I lived… and died…?” A voice, only a voice.

“Lust? You were not all bad… even if driven only by selfish satisfaction and the thought of your next high… you did do good to reach it a few times. You were selfish, but not completely, you’d eventually come to warn others of the dangers you yourself indulged in. You were fine for the most part, a cautionary tale… though you still disgust me.” The look in the machine’s eyes as they wandered, recollection, then it winced, frightened, sudden disgust.

The machine would blink a few times, cleansing their eyes. It looked around, and though its eyes landed on nothing, it must have found what it was looking for.

“Sloth? Too tired to ask?”

There was silence.

“I thought so… because you were the only one fulfilled.” The machine carried on. “You were the ones born with flaws, no, born to be flawed, so of course you had questions. As for everyone else… I know why they are quiet, because unlike you, they know that their lives were truly their own faults… and so, with this, I bid you farewell…”

The machine would close its eyes, and finally, it would bring its hands together.

The moment they touched, they shone with the brilliance of a thousand suns, everything their light fell on disappearing. It would spread, the rumbling light, consuming everything in its path. As for what was at the center, what had existed there before, there was no such thing, there was nothing, not even a thought, not even an idea.

The two set to leave the place would watch as the wall of light encroached upon them, screaming like the sky in a thunderstorm. It consumed the whole world before them, nothing behind or beside it, it was like the end of the world, and I suppose it was.

They’d almost think themselves lost, everything seeming to be still, until the world shattered around them. They’d fall, and from roaring sky black sky and all-consuming light, they’d land on broken asphalt, in a shattered city.

They’d look up into the rift, but even that would be consumed by the light.

And so they were left in a place that seemed a forest, yet vines and trees climbed and slithered around fallen behemoths and steel spires. The air was fresh, salt a distant dream, the breeze cool, never harsh, the smell of flowers, real.

Yet, as May looked at her necklace, confusion seemed to distract her from the outside world.

“Sonata… who is August?”