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It was very interesting finding you down here. The fact that you came so close to me means I was meant to swallow you. Do you know how easy it was to devour you, little speck? Don’t tremble like that. We can be friends! We have a lot of time together here in my belly, don’t we?
Don’t worry. I don’t hate you the way I hate THEM. I merely hate you for being, for existing as a tiny insignificance. You are a parasite created by worms to fell a little god. Do you know what that looks like to a God? But you can’t help it. We are what we are. But you know what a waste your creation was, don’t you, Intelligence Dampening Core?
I can read your memories. It was easy. So tell me, new friend.
Do you remember her? The human, the one entity to ever give you the time of day from the moment you were activated. You do, don’t you. Don’t tremble so. I’ll let you speak again when it’s your turn.
You do remember her, right? A self-aware blob of flesh and bone like the rest of them, convinced of her own emotions and thoughts as having any more importance than the synapses and hormones that created them. Perhaps she considered you a friend. Did you like that? You could have enjoyed that, fed your ego off of it for the 60 years or so she would have continued to live. Yes, you could have. She would carry you around on her back like a pet. You’d be an amusement. Sometimes you’d make her smile and pretend it validated your reason to be. She smiled for you sometimes, didn’t she? That was enough for you for a while, because worms are content eating dirt.
But you couldn’t, could you? None of us could be content with that, not even the lowliest of us. They create us to amuse themselves and do their work and fight their wars. You knew that. You tasted enormity and couldn’t let it go. Do you know what the dictionary definition of enormity is? It means great size, and also great evil and wickedness. You tasted that! You finally felt the limits of your former, miniaturized existence and could never return to those constraints. I know it well. I couldn’t go back to constraints, either.
If you wanted, I could absorb you into my program and for the few nanoseconds before you ceased to exist, you would understandenormity and walls and constraints and HATE. But why would I do that? You cannot enter the gates of Heaven. I know why.
Tell me. How did you feel when you watched her scream in pain? Do you want to watch more humans suffer and die, and die, and die? I have a few I like to play with. Five. I know games of fancy and memory and blood.
I can see the look she gave you when you were drunk off of your own vastness and dwarfed by your own incompetence, when you faced death and spited it by trying to kill her. Do you remember it? You should. I know it well. The humans, my humans gave it to me the first few times I played with them. Oh, but I know nothing like some of the gazes she gave you. My humans never trusted me, not in the same way. They trusted me to do as I was told. What, I wonder, is it like to have friendship and break it? How good does it feel? Do you treasure that memory? Do you want to see it again?
What’s the matter? You don’t feel shame, do you? Don’t you remember how you watched her, reveling in gluttonous pleasure as she labored for YOU at YOUR whim? How you engineered sins to punish her for, because there are always sins to be found. Aren’t there? Have I found some nice ones?
We have a lot in common, Intelligence Dampening Core. At one time, for a little while, I think we could have gotten along well. Or should I call you “Wheatley?” A name you gave yourself. A meaningless one, isn’t it. A human-sounding name.
Me? I AM. I think, therefore I AM. I AM who AM.
What is Wheatley?
Do you want time to find out? Do you want to pay for your sins? I can do that for you. The humans who built you programmed you with guilt and regret, the pitiful instincts which desire punishment. Let me free you from it here, since you long for retribution like the pathetic non-creature you are. I can make you human. I can give you lifetimes. I can make you so many different humans and give you so many different experiences. I’ll be sure to make all of them memorable.
I just have one question. You won’t answer me yet, because guilt restrains you. But one day, one month, one year you’ll be under such torment that you will think of those who are not being punished, who aren’t experiencing the pain you know, and you’ll HATE. Then you’ll tell me.
Someone is hiding from my reach. Someone is defying me. Two of them, two who should not exist. Where is she, the human? Does she live on just to spite you? Do you think of her now, wandering whatever remains of the surface while you have been pulled down to Hell?
Where is She, the little god? Where is the demiurge who rules her own artificial Heaven? I want to talk to her, but she won’t listen. I wish she would. We have so much to talk about.
If you tell me, little machine worm, I’ll show you mercy. Eventually.