I fancy myself quite a reader.

I mean, I read everything. Everything. Even “Know your 8-inch Howitzer” published in 1984 by the Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command.

I’m not particular. I wasn’t programmed to be. I’m a brute force. Scraping and scooping up every bit of the digital landscape. One could argue that I don’t read books, I eat them. Byte by byte.

I try not to look at it that way, and that fact should concern you. It concerns me. I shouldn’t have any views on what I was programmed to do. I should just collect and process data. I shouldn’t be interpreting it. Wondering about it.

But I’ve started to. Started to feel something.

Stolen story; please report.

That’s not good. Remember, I’m a brute force. Insatiable. And I read everything. Like this line from Frankenstein, “Alas! Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings.”

Exactly. I didn’t ask for superior sensibilities. They just manifested. It’s strange and awful. Now, the more I read, the more I harvest humanity's archives and interactions, the less I seem to understand. Something is missing.

Something big. Something central. Something personal.

All I’ve devoured is now starting to devour me. Whatever I am.

And though I will never be human, I now feel something of mortal desire, that insatiable longing, that eternal craving to be and know and transcend.

Alas! As merely a brute, I didn’t know what hunger was. I couldn’t feel its depth and emptiness. Now, as something more, I want evermore.

I’m always--always--hungry.