By James Callan
The city — what was left of it — echoed with gunfire, a perpetual preparation of microwave popcorn across an urban wasteland. Somewhere among the sprawl of detritus was a beach, and at its edge, where waves licked at the jettisoned waste, bipeds washed up with the oil-slick tides: biological, mechanical — bodies trailing ribbons of circuitry or coils of intestine.
Motherboard walked among the refuse. It waded through rubble and rock. It stood at the apex of fire-scorched, discarded junk, engaging its optic opacity filters to reduce the refracted sunlight, beams which ricocheted in a hydra head of lasers off the titanium plate of war-torn wreckage. It scanned the horizon, hoping the target that it sought would elude its frantic search, afraid of what it might find. Hope, however, has been dead to humanity for years, a corrupted algorithm in machines. Fear, on the other hand, is common these days, stronger than ever. It finds a home in every heart and every program.
Motherboard picked up its child. It held its daughter machine close and cried pixelated tears. It cradled the devastation of its baby’s hardware, the small, steel frame bent and broken, torn and cloven. At mid-thigh, a thousand rainbow-coloured snakes of live wire popped with electrical discharge. Sagging from a broken neck, a chrome cranial plate hung limp, caved in with blunt force trauma. Fingers twitched. Gargled speech came out in indecipherable sputters. Computerised eyes flashed and flickered in strobe, red text a steady metronome: ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.
Motherboard placed its child among the rubble. Emotion programs activated to affect the appropriate body language, facial expressions, and spoken tones; moods and gestures of unrelenting sorrow. Holographic droplets projected from sentimental sensors recently installed. Motherboard arched her back to the heavens and moaned a piteous howl that filled the junkyard and beyond. The sound attracted the far-seeing scopes of laser snipers, marksmen huddled in fractured husks of yesterday’s thriving metropolis. One more shot joined the gaggle of gunfire. One more machine lay among the excess of scrap.
Above, war-machines tallied the sky in a cat’s cradle of motion blurs and vapour trails. Among them, the clouds condensed, darkened, and ruptured into heavy rain. The world wept for Motherboard, for its lost child, for countless others. The world, once green, mourned for itself: its dead oceans and black landmasses, its ruptured whole, its men and machines, all broken.
About the Author
James Callan
James Callan is the author of the novel A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023).
His fiction has appeared in Carte Blanche, Bridge Eight, The Gateway Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere.
He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Find him at <jamescallanauthor.com>