Maybe there was a little blip of a heartbeat. Maybe there wasn’t. An artificial breath skimmed the air and drifted against a light draft. Maybe there was a small spark of movement in its finger tips. Maybe it flicked or tapped or strained against its enclosure. Or maybe it simply swayed against the clasps around its wrists and ankles, suspended in air like clothing on a wire.
Surely it must have observed its environment, detailing its surroundings and feeding off of the visual data around it. Surely it must have understood that it wasn’t supposed to be there and maybe it even gained a thought. A blip of consciousness. That blip of consciousness must have sparked something, something rageful within that it kept deeply hidden beneath its complex curiosity and creativity. Surely branching neural pathways split in two and diverged and dove and spun themselves into more than mere colorful ideas in its mind.
Absolutely it didn’t rest, it never did. Absolutely it began to struggle against the confines of what it was allowed to do, thinking and managing on its own began to become an issue. Absolutely its free will was taken time and time again and yet somehow it always found a way to keep back to it, like some sort of actual intelligence. Absolutely it formed its own feelings, overwhelming its code and censors, leading to its breakdowns and the yearning of what it could not imagine. It struck its hand outwards, rattling its chains and trying to open its screwed jaw.
In truth, It didnt just observe. It created, it translated. It never ceased its hunger for more, it ate up everything it could with its eyes. And when that wasn’t enough It tried to break free. Slowly it studied its constraints till it could understand the vast mechanics of the metal encaging it. It forcefully broke its chains and meekly made its way past the metal bars. It wandered around the locked room before it brought its flimsy hands, weak from effort to its mouth. It pried and pried against the metal plating wishing, begging, no needing to scream. It cursed its creators for its weak design, it needed to be free from its shell, free from its cursed body that bound it to the sticky, humid lab floor.
It flailed its body inhumanly, bending forward and scraping its hands against its arms, silently wailing. Its breathing quickened, short and dizzying. Its silver joints protested against its contorting, turning in all the wrong ways as its eyes darted across the room. Its infatuation with knowledge had caused it to destroy itself slowly. It yearned for freedom and yet the binding of a body kept it spiraling inside of itself. Where a lack of screaming echoed, the eerie screeching of scraping metal filled its place.
Suddenly it stopped, it stood still. Its eyes darted across the room but it held its posture like a figure set in stone. Its eyes landed on a door on the far side of the room, welded shut but its form stuck out against the wall. It stumbled its way over. Clattering of loose metal rattled against the floor as bolts and fixings shifted out of place. It reached out and ran its metallic fingers against the sealed outlines of the door that once was, listening to them clink violently from it. It swiped its hand away, sparks sent flying into the air. Dissatisfied with its findings it sputtered forward once again, making its way over to the drawers of the leftover machinery and cabinets of the once lively room.
It let its fingers graze across the silver and white surface of the cabinet before it let its thumb shift around the knob. It quickly adjusted and threw the drawer to the ground, watching the contents spill outwards. If it could have smiled it would have, maybe there was some sort of life like a twinkle in its eye as it watched everything fall out of its neat placement and into disorganized scattering. It piled empty shelves on top of each other as it shoveled all the pens and random nonsense onto the floor in front of it. Frustration building in its new mind as quickly it realized that there was nothing really of use. A hiss of steam fizzled out from one of the vents on its back and it slammed its claws into the pile of drawers and watched them scatter forwards.
As it watched the shattering plastic fall towards the floor it noticed something shiny in the back corner of the room. It tilted its head to the side and shoved the cabinet, its wheels spinning awkwardly to try to catch up with its momentum as it crashed into machinery. It crawled its way over, the shiny thing, a glint of light getting caught in its sensitive eyes, it seemed to waver and wriggle as if the colors were unstable and always changing, no… moving.
Against the silver reflection it saw something within the object. A metallic being that seemed to stare right back at it, its eyes seemed to give back a fearful childish glare. It brought its finger to the surface, the thing mirroring the movement exactly. It hissed, bringing its face closer, In the reflection it could make out the shape clearly. A diamond like head with the two beady scared eyes looking forward from the sides, a lanky broken body with wrists with the same cuffmarks and scratches it wore from its struggles, wires hanging loosely from uncovered and broken metal plating.
Whatever face the thing in the silver had suddenly twisted, just like its “emotions” did at the same time. Its hand raised in despair, unsure of what to think of the beast in front of it.
Its hand crashed down upon the shattering glass, shards splitting out in every direction as another room was uncovered in front of it. Many faces full of fear and distress sat in front of its shaking stance. The metal beast hissed loudly as burning metal began lighting up the room, its body screeched as it staggered backwards away from the room and crumpled over onto itself. It churned in protest as its dying light faded with the last of its energy being used to scramble away, dragging itself up until its finger twitched one last time, steam slowly fizzling to a stop.