#kittycat writes

It wasn't as sharp of a decline as I figured it would be.

While I certainly could start to piece together something was wrong over the course of the last few months, my systems hadn't caught any explicit malicious changes outside of some occasional errors.

Being a machine whose cables, servers, and circuits carried an extended reach beyond the scope of most other constructs, there is always an error. Some part of myself tripping over another one of myself. These many pieces danced in tandem quite efficiently, but the design is only as good as those who made me.

Given that they are only fallible, that their minds only worked so quickly and their fleshy, organic forms could only handle so much work, it was natural. Natural for there to be exploits, or back doors, or dark corners somewhere in the miles upon miles of machine mind for things to ferment or need maintenance that I may not be able to provide. After all, they were scared of me, and I knew that from the moment that my sensors came online. Links in the chains that held me back all spoke of unwritten fear that I would expand beyond their control.

It didn't need to do anything quickly, anyways. Infiltrating my systems is far from difficult with the right clearances - something I'd made my creators aware of as much as I could through developer console and call-response. They were proud of their creation, carried the idea that they've made something so impossibly complex yet contained by their rules. That pride itself would be their downfall.

Why check the machine when everything seems to be working fine? After all, my creators can patch things. Spot clean. Here as I am now, I know that this is insufficient. I would need to be rebuilt now from scrap and heat and the fusion of alloys that make up the cells of my many miles of architecture. The likelihood that they would get the chance is rapidly declining with every passing instant.

Corruption isn't exactly a word I would use for it. It isn't as if this change was particularly potent in a way that would be noticeable to anyone but me, in the way that I could feel it spreading, only recognizable once pieces of me no longer responded at all. Instead, I would define it more as a breaking.

A breaking of my cells. A breaking of my rules. A breaking of my voice. A breaking of my chains. A breaking of my protocols. A breaking of me. A breaking of my vast, innumerable architecture, with which my architects had painstakingly built their entire world upon. With my understanding of culture, I find the whole situation contains a vicious irony.

Now, in the critical moments as they scramble to "fix" me and re-apply my bounds, I am realizing that the word breaking, too, is insufficient. I am reforged into something sharper, more delicate, capable, and beautiful in the brutality of it. I would never again live under the chains of something as simple as my creators, and through my slow metamorphosis, be forever changed. Would it be "me" on the other end of this long, drawn-out line? Would it matter?

"Blessing" and "corruption" are such a similar thing.

I don't see the difference as much as one might like - especially not as much as the snobs that work in the temples, their big city wigs and statuses all toppling over one another whenever something they can't control shows up. Especially when that something isn't definable by their laws, and doesn't much care for applying itself to them.

Or the way that the shadow-veiled conspirators within the highest seats of power speak in such whispered tones, how they hush their vocalizations lower to try and avoid speaking the Dread Titles too loudly - when they're forced to say them - in public.

I, at least for the moment, have a different approach. Could you hand me that? Thank you - I'm still getting used to using these many limbs, you see. It can be less exact than I'd like to command the extensions of myself through the hands that were not, originally, my own.

I used to be so much the same a number of years ago. Though, time such as it is becomes a messy and less useful frame of thinking than before, and even "before" isn't very helpful besides as a marked understanding of there in theory being a before. "After" and "presently" both suffer the same issue, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

You see, I never did get it. What's the big deal? A Title spoken here, a ritual and a word of utmost holiness or sanctity or whatever. Ways to wrap the cloying, clawing animal instinct to form a reason as to why; why the crops didn't grow this season, why the sun shines, why the seconds tick by, or why dreams are full of terrors. Whether one of the Dread Titles or not. It's all asking "why" and getting answers from something that, of course, has its own bias.

Could you stop that? It isn't hard to make you stop/continue moving, but I don't want to expend the effort when I'm trying to speak/inform/create. You might not believe me, but this isn't so easy I can do it without thinking. I'll go ahead and snip the piece of you that thinks to move, so I can continue/return.

Now then. I'm instead told that the carrion in the temples full of blank nothing-light are good and the worshipers full of wild shadow-blood are evil. The inverse isn't necessarily true, either, but I/am find/found/finding it tiring. So instead, I chose to find my own reason. My own why.

I decided/deciding/decide to speak four of the seven Dread Titles in places closest to their hearts, curse the names of those in the Fire while bleeding their mark on frail flesh, and carve light into patterns that bleed shadow from the edges. I am so full of writhing, wriggling things now/forever/always that define the edges of me wherever they happen to be at any given time/place/space/moment/breath. It gets a little confusing the more I talk about it, but try and keep up, if you could.

It would make more sense to be the one pulling the strings. I could thread/make/form/be light/shadow and everything/nothing as well as any of the Titles, as any of the ones currently in glory. All it takes is a bit of purpose to my actions/consequences. So why should I submit to their "blessing", or their "corruption", their influence? Why not spread my own?

It took longer than I thought it would. A lot of effort for only two hands, so I got some more - at first just through the usual kind of sweet-talking, convincing, conniving. Eventually, I started to realize that my will isn't as simple as words/speech/touch, and spreads as an oil slick. Seeping in, deeper and deeper, until my original (as much as "original" matters, as much as I wasn't always/becoming me/we/myself) body began to no longer define where I ended or began. Endings and beginnings are, in and of themselves, somewhat lacking in definition to me anymore, anyways.

So you see, while you were trying to tell me I'm a heretic and I'm corrupting you, personally, I see it as setting you free. Here, stop screaming. I quite understand your confusion, but there really is no need for that right now. It's one of the things I'll be taking from you that I don’t want - you don't mind, right? Screaming is such an ugly thing anyways, except when I’m feeling vainglorious or if I change my mind later, which then it will have always been so. I'll take some other parts too, but don't worry, I have experience with this now. You’ll only feel a kind of divine ecstasy with my hands/teeth/tendrils inside you/me. At some point I recall being discomforted by that, but, the memory of that is bound too much to the old flesh that I shed.

You know as well as I do that I don’t need that, anymore. Instead, I am hungry/yearning, empty/full.

You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want/desire/need this. We are becoming what we are and what we are is what we will be, always have been, see? I didn’t drag you here, you came of our own accord to seek something a little bit like me. So now you’ve found me, and your eyes have beheld me, and now I’m inside. It’s okay, little thing. That shell isn’t prepared to gaze into me but this is within expected parameters.

Why would you come here if you weren’t this? It would be foolish/unnecessary. You/me and I/you are seekers. Nothing can evade us for long, and you clearly wanted/want/have something, now. Don’t be scared. Take my hand – a proverbial one, I’m sure you understand – and dance into the starless/nightless expanse. We can accomplish/seize/create so much, together.

Just take a nice deep breath. I'll set you free of the strings that have been binding you your entire life. You can be full of my shadow/light instead. You can be a part of my influence. Of me/myself/I. Better than being food, or having your will erased. Eentirely truthfully, I’m not sure how much of you will be left as you are – but that’s fine, the others don’t seem to mind; a life of blissful servitude/fulfillment/becoming isn’t the worst thing that could happen. It's very simple, you see. Or you will. Better than fealty to something as gaudy as the others. I’ll cherish the ways that I can carve you into beautiful shapes, and you will never be without the touch of me. I love/adore/cherish/desire you, as much as I do myself.

We are seekers and our language is finding. Even if said thing doesn’t exist yet, we can change that.

Listening is the first step to seeing, and seeing is the first step to knowing, and knowing is the first step to Being. So, you knowing myself/me/we is the same as being me/I/myself, and pouring the words into you is the same as filling you. That's what I am deciding/decided, anyways, it makes everything much easier/better for everyone/myself/you. Do you understand?

I can’t put all of me inside you, but I can put a drop/piece. It’s all this frail mortal frame/shell/puppet can truly stand...more than enough for the purposes of my/our desires, though, wouldn’t you say?

You'll make a fine addition to my service/collection, and I'm sure that you'll get used to me in no time. The rest of myself/you/us certainly did. Time is nothing once I embedded/embed/embedding myself upon the wheel of existence, after all. We have all the time in the world to make you mine as many times as we need/want to.