public humiliation time!

sometimes i get fucked up and morbid and it leads to me writing whiny-ass pieces in lectures instead of taking notes. i'm sure it looks like i'm taking really fucking good notes, though. anyway here's the piece i wrote in Knowledge-Based Systems today while Dr. Kollingbaum was talking about backward chaining in Jess (awkward); it's called "doll", and it's about biohacking, in the sense of the word that i don't use. assume it's set at some unknown time in the future, like most of my crap. and ignore the wangst; it spills out into the text editor so that it doesn't stay in my head. i'm not actually this emo in real life.


doll
i am a morbid, morbid motherfucker
Lepht Anonym 30.11.09
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He can't sleep without his doll. That's fucked up, and he knows it. Close to necrophilia, closer to obsession or maniacal grief. It's just a doll now; no more sentience, no more talk, but he still needs it. He talks to it sometimes anyway, even though it won't hear. Those fuckers. He still tells it he loves it, gives it those little showers of kisses it used to laugh at. It says nothing. It sits.

Those fuckers. He's almost traced them, doesn't know any more how much time and money he's invested in making the contacts to do it and bribing the ISP and trading the guy upstairs drugs to teach him how to work the black wares. It's become all he knows, and it won't make the doll into a sentient being again, but it will make him feel better. Sometimes, like the doll itself, he doesn't feel anything at all.

He kisses its cheek, thirteen years' habit, as he climbs out of bed - it sits up in reaction to his absence, his stomach doing its familiar barrel roll before he tells himself for the thousandth time that that's just the basic functionality of the shell activating. Looks into its slack face to make sure. Sees its dead eyes and turns away sick to the screen. Almost there. Almost there. Those fuckers.

Do they even know? Do they ever feel guilty? Do they give a fuck that they killed the only person he depended on?

Of course they know. They do it for fun. And why should they care? It wasn't their love. They didn't technically murder anyone. They just threw some commands to a botnet drone that happened to sit inside his partner's favourite coffee shop. They didn't even manually spread the infection. Just programmers, showing the world their skills. Clever programmers proving the weaknesses in modern technology. Those fuckers.

He turns back to the bed. It's still sitting there; the urge to smash it rises again, throw the lightweight shell out of the window and watch it be crushed by the trains below or fried on the rails, but he can't move his limbs. It still looks like his life partner. It's still wearing a medical bracelet and the T-shirt that smells like cigarettes long gone. Like it could light up any minute, speak again, make one of their stupid injokes or yell "Psych!" and start cackling. Its head lolls. The deep blue eyes stare at the whirls on its blanket.

He doesn't know what he'll do when the trace completes. He knows it won't be legal. He cradles the doll's limp torso tight.

[EOF]