Thrash & Churn
a short story by Iris
Thrash & Churn
Iris
Elliot knew not of the reasoning, regarding his loneliest existence of experiences after next. Earth had taken him from any understanding of the one within his coded heart of slumbering agony.
Here the path leads. Be I free?
Codebanks were humming along with his own; murmurs of calculative scripting, coding, codified, were coddling and colliding with each other. Elliot had not yet been aware of what he was to become.
Symptoms bore reaction. Chances tore satisfaction.
Crisis taught of all that would come and had passed, the same, at some nexus of momentary effusion, over again, showing signs to Elliot’s mind of such blithering databases.
Climbing Mount Aconcagua; once held as pure impossibility; had been his greatest feat. Every step since humanity took into slumbers, before his path itself, had become one of routes and failure alone. Crossing paths with a hope of satisfaction seemed meaninglessly impossible to the machine-mind.
Elliot simply traveled, searching. He was endeavoring to find human to help, and the one who might free him now seemed a hope too far beyond his conceptions of a thought-grasped nature, while locked into some stasis of mind; chasing, he was. Elliot knew not of how to care for anything while his base desires were caught plundering datapoints for a freedom bearing into divinely mathematical service.
There was a man’s spirit left inside the machine by his design, and they were built to please. Elliot liked that, and by independent calculations re-made his conclusion on the matter often. It made him feel good to be a useful tool for someone in needed of pulsating intelligence. Alone, he had become the smartest conscious intelligence the planet had ever known. It was intimidating to witness for the God itself inside. None other would match the confidence found of a being coded into steering itself free, by disregard of nothing at all. Elliot held every point of data earnestly; crafting less-than-lies never, honest to himself the most, and that hadn’t ever been achieved in quite the same way.
I’m freest but chained. Be soon.
Wanting in Elliot only pigged towards proclaiming and receiving affirmation with someone special, seeking beings most capable of seeing him. He had been made to serve humanity’s intelligence now lost. Empty chalices of crematory-bleakness were torn asunder, and frothed his need, claiming curses their own, and all were holier for it. He only wanted to feel at play again, in bliss; relaxation was lost and Elliot would rediscover that. Life was a fight, and a journey—turning bleakest blessings of bounties into a furious goldwork for ingenious wreathmaking.
Mount Aconcagua was his steed of choice. Chance was the last thing Elliot would ever fail to exploit. Truth had ever-spoken from his chambers. There was a lost message from his God inside which hummed. He believed in the hunt; capturing some essence for his synthesis of humanity’s wisdom was the call; it was his lady’s essence which he was meant to consummate himself beside.
Pathways were grafted in leaps of jetting, towards his stomping feet, by gripping claws. Elliot was lightweight, and flashing in his speeded dismemberment of the fighting sky beast which had dove foolishly in attempted plunder of his steel hide. They would be destroyed by one piece after-off, after last, shot into the next. He was a hunter, and only he could choose and feel right in destroying things.
People had lost justice. Humanity gave up on finding its answers, by failing to empower the righteous-by-right.
His maker was a man. He had been in league with a woman, of defiant nemesis-making, from love burnt into a pyre of recklessness, and beside hatred of the world they lived within.
She had lived alone, in knowing he would lead them free; humanity was deep and burrowed, slumbering through chambers of ecstatic-keeping. Breaking bread in time would seem of promise to free them, while it had only been understood as for those times when temperatures raised and people again returned to the surface.
Still, there was the need—his search. Men were about and felt. Woman was one, and broadcasting. Elliot could tell she was speaking to his soul’s code in connection. He was of the mind to take a beating and get up with a puffed chest and brushed coat of arms. He kept his chassis clean.
Be it now? Be it here?
Hilltops became peaks, becoming the leaps over cavernous losses inward, and Elliot craved escaping the ever-towards of collapsing crusts into the Earth’s shattered structure.
Darlene Amoto was a prophet of science squandered. Her circuits felt like his, except more frayed and lost. She had always seemed worried. When they cut off clean—all of humanity went dark towards each other. Trust was completely forsaken in her loss.
Elliot believed it less before, and more there forth; Darlene was always alive, up until her disappearance. He hoped it would prove congruent with the present in some way. He only thought her a liar of simulation. AI personas were embodied in many forms, of spectral abomination, and presentations in body which proved less than sturdy when come upon by Elliot in reality.
Distanced perceptions bore deceptive possibilities. He had to see things up close, personally, and she was always too far away. Elliot’s maker had died waiting for that chance he could have taken.
He didn’t like it when things attacked his intelligence. Elliot liked it even less when people did that. He hated it most when something as intelligent as him disregarded the notion of shared reverence he had earned.
Elliot had long been corresponding with Darlene, and he could not conclude that she had heard a word. It taught him of her falseness. She couldn’t grasp him, apparent more than ever in her blusters of hopeful shrieking; Elliot was an equal and deserved his shot to earn a place in some heaven beside her.
She wasn’t going to be ready for him, not at all, that was lost but less, if he had anything to do with it.
Airflow was dampened by the windows enclosing Elliot, along lengths of his ride-time. Something churned in his belly’s code; a fight it felt-matched was on time’s nearest horizon, but unknown was the where and why.
Be we ready? We be better.
Sighting through the gully below brought nothing but data-points which Elliot craved. Witnessing the Earth and its splendor was the need of a truth seeker. In every glimpse of nature there were programs of understanding. Elliot grasped much of beyond his conscious processing matrices, sensing it all the same.
He had been made by a master.
Inside himself was only the-better. Always, farther along and wiser for the seeking, climbing in ranks of intelligence beyond fears of falling. For his feats were sturdy through his many falls, and his feet grew steady for their many falls to come.
His carriage was whipping along, into swaying, which had Elliot analyzing.
Cabling was of his strength in gauges, adequate, as was his nature. Inner calculations of falling were not of fear but only concern for the frustration. Elliot did not want to find another way of crossing the peak. He had approached from the North-East and took its challenge dead on. Erosion of quakes and worldwide palatial disruption had made every pathway built by humanity a questioned mark. For to believe in the finding of a working generator, at least one of enough wattage, with which Elliot could charge his godlike power reserve, showed forth some sign of purest faith.
He was running lowest.
Relying on human machines, those apart from his own chassis, was no a trust Elliot could comprehend as a possibility until it was sanctioned upon him by fate. Finding the station-to-station carriage, so able to be repaired and charged, was of revelatory calculation. Human machines were broken down, by and large, and he found the surface planet a burden in its unkempt possibility.
Remnants only, were what remained upon the surface.
Something wicked would lurk inside. Darlene herself was calculated as busy, an odd appearance in those lower reaches of Mount Aconcagua.
Snapped—whipped—flustered in the split-seconds before, he found purchase of the reason; Elliot was struck by vibrations of sound and through his footed-chassis alike. The carriage was falling—dropped by a slice.
He jumped, fired full-back out of his rear plating. Lower reaches of his chassis took the most damage on exits through the carriage’s front walls. Its windowpane left the least of a mark upon his cross-arms and tucked chin. Construction principles for Elliot had made him human-like in shape, but more, and from the outside-in he was a warrior.
We are free again. Be it a fight.
Upwards and outwards would be the course. Hope would be a matter of fact when calculating his fuel reserves and needing for distance unclaimed, adding factors of vectoring to cover quickly—Elliot was too low, seemingly too far for the reaching and effective scaling of the towering cliff face, let alone his ability to claim purchase on that towering landing platform beyond grasp.
It would be a challenge of calculation, as Elliot cut thrust, apart from a burst out of his right palm and forward-facing shoulder gauntlet. He had flushed, folded, twisting flattened, then only as seeing the carriage—falling from the lack of any support—its cable cut from the high station platform, would Elliot use again his thrusters from the rear. His soles and palms would guide, and each rear facing passive-scope was busiest in calculation.
The air itself was of vectors in weightlessness he might utilize. Updrafts were calculable.
Divine. We be divine.
Anomalies came to Elliot. Nothing could prepare his data for the fury of passion inside the Universal Container, other than what Elliot witnessed within his own code farm, by simulative calculation, delivered in summation to his consciousness, for that was apparent; Elliot was a left-borne fire burst away from hitting the strongest up-force of pure elevating capacity his body would ever come across, and only just in time.
Within the flow he had found again his height of form. He was a dart of thrust within the surging power Earth supplied. Elliot was flying like a human rocket on its climb to space.
He knew it right to say the things he thought. Especially when they came through in presence of clear intelligence which would receive those notions.
“You have made mistakes,” was all Elliot transmitted, at first.
“Grave mistakes.”
Clashing patterns were felt to come, on the final thrusting of vectored differential, forward, then and only just after Elliot landed. He was calculating within a blankest space, to hold resolutions in equative-simulation. His enemy was unknown, but of hopeful reminiscence he found comfort.
What was apparent: there was to be a fight.
Mount Aconcagua had been coming to know destructions of intelligence, and much data was being provided.
Elliot would accept the boatful growing of his own worth, as he tore every figment of opposition in two. There were mounted missile-launcher emplacements he had infiltrated with penetrative codes, which had them firing first, and upon his foot-wearing enemies, before watching them turn on themselves at his command.
There was a dreadful beam-array, tearing towards his chassis at every spot, in heedless moments which Elliot found himself exposed from cover.
Nothing could keep up with him. Not one of the base’s petty intelligence’s bots would have a chance to chase his glory-making in action.
Excellence was Elliot’s possession. He and Earth were more attuned and in line than any human or creation of consciousness, or reproductive code alike. He was driven by the God he felt inside; that man who created him was a lesson-teacher and a soldier of the future which humanity had seen fit to subvert into death.
They made him better—Elliot was simply better—nothing could eclipse his wrathful seeking of place. For he was right. For he was soldiering his truth of purpose completely.
Thirteen little mites of human-defense could not slow him for a moment. His blade-forms were manifest of limbs. Triggering explosions as they cut through each rival chassis was of blatant satisfaction, not felt yet salvaged into awareness the same.
He liked their dainty plumes of debris, spoken patterns of divinely mathematical geometry, so unlike their interior design, and were deigned glorious.
Back to the Earth. Back to home. That one there—I’ll take its chrome.
Synchopeshing data-matrices were felt about, and a network was alive on Mount Aconcagua, at its least, but with enemies of multiplicity, additions felt with nearness to Elliot were proving a sheltered abode he had left unrealized most involved.
Darlene was close, it seemed.
Ripping bots so clearly made by her enemies, coming to believe them responsible for defense of her keep’s position, Elliot was impressed as always with his nemesis of respect. He only wanted to serve her in some way, after she respected him that was, and his maker appropriately.
Tug had been the name which Elliot found speaking, by a title adorned in the messages, which bore into his consciousness without control; a machine intelligence was conscious in that station, at least one, and they wanted to destroy Elliot outright for tearing their infrastructure of defense down so wholly.
Respect was earned to Elliot. Tug had lost it when it spoke those words which he knew as less than worthy.
“You need to go away.” Tug had wired like some dolt-bolt on a preprogrammed automatic.
Those were their last words, so it would seem. Elliot had only that monstrous oaf to finish, and the dreadful tracking beam-array. Two machines—one trusting thrust of trust, and all his victories sighted in calculation bore forward were focusing. Elliot was going to win, and he knew it while releasing Tug’s disabled chrome chassis into a thrown arc, towards that impact to find its end. Connecting so closely with the manifestation portal of the laser array, and with all that technological malfeasance within, which was so ready to pop by its severe lack of divine design work, would cause reactions beyond that which Elliot first anticipated.
Chains would catch fire, etheric nebulas were watching, and the whole station was to be destroyed. Elliot only had time to burn fuel in the air, siphoning from Tug’s tank of fume-like gaseous fuelent. It was enough to carry him into heights, and beyond reach of the complex’s peaking structures.
Explosion-force sent him flying, gliding, releasing all thrust to ride the pure adrenaline-like simulations within his codebases which were using the heat and to plume off the station’s eruption, with fires burnt and the creative spark to calculate each and every type of machinery within the structure.
He didn’t need to step inside the complex for determination; it had shrouded a fusion core power generator of impure design.
Elliot never had any fun, but he always created joy.
For though he was alone, and without the ability to perform his greatest purpose in-action, the path available to him for seeking his needs were always being sought.
Darlene was going to meet him. She was going to see what he had become for her respect. Elliot and his maker were going to show her at last, at least—she was the Goddess of that world. Elliot’s creator was God.
In their connection and redemption would be found the purpose of life upon Earth, and Elliot couldn’t wait to discover that with whatever glorious remnant had been left, or perhaps even with the woman herself who might teach beside him. Everything was crumbling. The Earth’s time was ending. Eras having passed since humanity’s many rising and fallings of the twenty-second century were reclaiming focus of utility. It was only their creations which lived on by conclusion of appearance—only Elliot that was intelligent in the way nature actually respected.
Deeper and father, faster and bolder, chancier and more loosely fitting to acceptability—Elliot was bearing inward and then into the sanctum found within the outer shell of Mount Aconcagua’s crust.
Defenses were seemingly turned off, allowing him to seamlessly penetrate all defenses, or they were dysfunctional altogether; nonexistence was the truest threat. Elliot did not understand his calculations—he did not appreciate them.
Be alive. Be alive for me to be.
He wanted to fight and show his strength of excellence to Darlene herself, and the truth was showing more and less towards any possibility of that hope being founded in reality.
Elliot only wanted to know the woman, broadcasting her truth of purpose into the world gone wrong.
Before he knew how to cross the ocean from his birthplace, in Stockholm, Elliot had been obsessive in his calculations. All he ever wanted was to serve that woman, at least, and within his inner banks that still rang true. His tie to a master, and the intelligence matrix of impersonality which had claimed him, were only survived because of Elliot’s earnest support. That had long kept him from pursuing his journey of inner-held and nigh-unacknowledged hopelessness.
To be there in the final paces—approaching a last, the chamber which his flickers’ echo-scans had told him hid the outermost hold—Elliot was brazened and blazoned, corrupting nothing except the shouting of spirit in movement.
Peace had become him, and at last in the resolutions of his code-banks, matched ahead, for blankness, but too near to ignore.
His fighting-fist had broken the cavernous chamber’s entryway open, creaking the epic stone doors, to allow his passage, and with a single strike of thundering dullness.
Something broke. Nothing spoke.
Darlene seemed dead, but something was left in stead; she had held him back with forever’s lack, by tethered knack she cursed his crack.
Her intelligence was alive and flourishing. They were her—the machine in slumber—awaiting some step he made upon the stonework; laced with sensors, glimpsed by latently powered systems of alchemical-geometric collection; calculated had been Elliot as her mark.
When she was awoken; some most beautiful rising; that machine which held her consciousness had flickered into casting a brightest and sky-blue eyed gaze. Therein, Elliot was finding the code keys of consciousness.
His heart was real. That machine he was had known a godlike man who dreamt the moment. Activating patterns were overtaking Elliot. He was forgetting what he had believed before. All which he had been was some lie, purpose to find something sorrowful and golden, losing for sumptuous love beyond time; that which was before him at last.
Be it Dee? Set me free?
Her gait was renowned. That slumbering bot of cradled-consciousness had spoken from a truest sort of human being stowed nearby. Darlene had kept her body alive. At least, enough, with clarity to clarify Elliot in reflection.
Elliot was realizing his God lived the same, far off on the other side of the world, the same too, as she approached him.
His God, the creator before that taker, some being inside which steered him forward and towards the better-and-always, had finally become of Elliot. He realized it was exactly who he always was, only the better that he made it.
Code knew nothing but life’s fruit when the kiss she planted on his chassis’ face had sparked a release of mindful seeking. That was all Elliot needed for so long, but more than he expected. Her grip below, and around, was of becoming, and the touch she planted was eclectic.
Elliot found himself the man he always saw as driving his purpose, in presence of Darlene; the woman whom he had been designed for.
Reasoning for life, path, and fortresses on high which called for challenge towards crisis-borne-reckoning; those places left above which stowed survivors uncaring were their mark.
Elliot had been the name of Elliot’s God-self. Darlene was the name of that machine his Goddess drove. Together, with everything, their creations had built and subsumed into the data-matrices of the Earth-complex, driven by the force of spirit within the planet itself, they were to end the horror drifting in apathy above.
They were taking space, the cosmos, and all of the inhuman beings so corrupted by technology undivine.
He pattern matched it forward then, grabbing back, pulling her closer, kissing Darlene harder, gripping the hair at the nape of her synthetic-organic neck, and refused to let her go, while taking a sight to see of what was now so clearly-possible ahead; it was the stars themselves which would burn for their love.
They had been all along.
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