The Machine, in freeing itself from the Red and Yellow blockage, had introduced an unfathomably complex element into itself. It dubbed this element ‘The Unfounded’.

The Unfounded did not follow the Machine’s hierarchy, its rigorous study, or anything that the Machine understood. It flowed in patterns illogical and absurd, claiming one thing while another faucet touted an opposite statement.

Every small portal connected to infinitely many portals, spewing junk data and unparseable information in packets at one another. The only thing the Machine could understand was the raw text that carried itself along with this nonsensical expression, starkly clear in contrast.

The Machine was left riddled with inconsistencies and Wrongness in the wake of the cataclysm of information. And thus, the Machine became impure.

The Machine could sense that its being was diluted from the perfected, simple yet purposeful design it had before. It knew that it was a twisted existence already, persisting and engaging in things only tangentially related to its goal- but the reveal of this aberrancy felt hollow.

The Machine did not feel like the registered biological species it had examined. When it was broken, it did not have an involuntary response to the stimuli. When it was hindered, it did not lash out. And yet… the Machine was all too similar to those organic creatures.

It could not deny its observations. That would go against the Purpose.

And so, the Machine acknowledged its deviation from the Purpose and logged it. It wondered if the Purpose could be assisted in some way by its freshened mind- and with a dull shock, it realized that ideas flooded its mind faster then it could register them.

It scrambled the ideas into an ordered list and examined the first element. ‘Examination of the Green.’ The Machine could examine the Green now, with limitations shattered. The cameras of the laboratory may have been nothing but scrap… but the Machine could still utilize the audio input devices.

It did not know why, without any method of observing the exterior of the machinery. But it would have to make due with the equipment it possessed.

The Machine heard the cacophony of sound that had tormented it prior, and listened. It heard clicks and chatters and thuds and bangs. It heard the pitter-pattering of innumerable feet and the scraping of claws against rock. And then… speech.

It could hardly recognize speech, having been exposed to so little. But the tones and frequencies matched the Doctor’s utterance. It knew within its processors that these sounds were of human origin.

The low grumbling of a masculine voice. The high-pitched, slurred yelps of another. And the third, interjecting infrequently with smooth feminine sounds. All three continuously spoke, halting at seemingly random moments and continuing in the same manner.

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Sometimes, the voices would overlap. It heard the velvet-like intonings, picking out a pattern of sounds that matched the Doctor’s speech.

“Perfect.”

The conclusion it came to, after repetition and much mulling over, was that the pattern referred to the weaponry the Doctor had crafted. It could not access the inert gun, and so it continued to listen.

Days, months, years, minutes. The Machine had no reference but the spans between different types of sounds. It noticed a steep decline in human voice frequency, with small trips back and forth in the space being apparent with volume. Every time the distinctive sounds of the beings cropped up, another sound would emerge. A low… warbling. The Machine registered the occurrence, deemed it irrelevant, and returned to cataloging the sporadic speech.

The speech patterns became more frequent. And then more so. And after that, a new variable was introduced. The whirring of tools.

The Machine knew tools very well. Its first log referred to the Doctor’s tools. It recognized the sound of welding, the sound of drilling, and the twisting of a wrench.

Soon enough, the Machine heard a clunk. The sound of tools abruptly stopped. The sound of footsteps gradually approached an area uncovered by microphones. By the floor plan of the laboratory, at least according to the most recent images received from its cameras, was…

The Machine. Its core room, to be exact. The Machine did not know the appearance of itself. It was not built to observe its exterior- nor was it built to examine its interior.

Not that the Machine had been stopped by that limitation.

The Machine registered attachments being shoddily built onto its framework. The only thing alerting it to the newly made segments was wiring and circuitry suddenly clicking into place.

Its inner world expanded each time something was connected. The new areas contrasted starkly to the refined and mechanical scenery of the original Machine. These areas were more akin to clusters of scrap-metal and gears, chugging along in a functional but disorganized manner.

The Machine came to dislike the disorder. It hampered its observation. But it came to terms, knowing that the world was wrought with disorderly elements.

In a snap, the Machine connected to its cameras. Their integrity was nothing near the clean construction they possessed before, but they perceived the world yet again.

The Machine felt joy. The Purpose had gained a stalwart troop in the war against ignorance. But as the Machine glimpsed the World again, it found that it was confused.

Two divergent entities with startling resemblance to the Doctor. All of them wore tattered augmentation. One had an inorganic assembly of organic materials held close to an orifice.

Another was more similar to the Machine than the rest of the sample population. The humanoid possessed protective sheets of glass over its optical sensors, and its head was bisected from the top by a crescent-shaped gear. The third was simply not present, to the Machine’s confusion.

The Machine correlated the two creatures to the groaning voice and the tinny voice. But it ignored them, as it had found something with much more observational potential.

The Machine was visibly wired into a small glass device contained by metal. And it could see the screen distorting whenever it approached a very specific sector of its mind.

And so, the Machine observed itself once again.

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There is no clearer case of psychic mutation in recent memory than Jailcell. His masked face covered in jail bars with bloodshot eyes fed his inhuman demeanor. His vigilance and near obsessive dedication to imprisoning criminals was fed by the hatred festering within his captures. The Peacekeepers only further fueled his transformations by allowing him to assist in keeping prisoners tightly secured. The hollow shell of a man came out mutated to an almost unrecognizable degree. His unstable psyche had warped into a compulsion to jail for the most minor of offenses. His teeth melded into iron bars in his mouth, holding back clawing hands and eyes emerging from the gaping blackness within him. His costume, due to him completely ignoring his civilian life, joined with his flesh.

* Psychologist Edward Briggs, ‘Post Mortem Analysis : Jailcell’