The Machine Awoke

he machine awoke to find itself in the desert.

It understood that this was desert. It understood that this was ground, that this was air. It understood that it was sideways.

It did not remember how it had gotten there, but it didn’t know that.

It raised itself up from the scorched earth, stood unsteadily, tilted its bruised metal head from side to side and looked around. For as far as it could see in any direction—and this was quite a few miles, for it was a well-made and efficient machine—there were lengths upon lengths of bare dirt, baked like red clay in the sun. Wide cracks crisscrossed its surface like empty veins, and the sky was a faint yellowish-white canopy overhead, the roof of an immeasurable circus tent stained with dust clouds.

The machine thought of words like vast and expansive. The word alone formed itself somewhere in its mind. It was a word, made from letters picked mechanically out of its consciousness, and it was meaningless.

With nothing left to do, the machine began to walk.

It walked methodically, without deliberation, the instinctive walk of one who has long forgotten how the skill was learned in the first place. Its feet made a dry crunching sound in the dust as it walked. One of its thin metal hands brushed its thigh with each step. It made a faint metallic sound with each swing and drew a faint metallic line in the layer of dust that had settled on the machine as it stood.

Now a wind picked up, a soft background noise that came hissing across the flat earth. The machine turned to look, and, seeing nothing, it thought, wind. The wind came with a fine cloud of dust that settled over the machine again, filling in the lines that had been scratched out until the sun no longer reflected its shape but as a dusty silhouette. It blew away the rocks that had been cracked by the machine’s heavy footsteps, and everything was flat again.

The machine watched its feet as it walked, and it thought, walking. Once it brought its foot forward too low over some brown stone, and the stone went skittering off across the emptiness, the sound disappearing with nothing to echo it. The machine stopped and watched it until the sun swallowed up the stone’s minute shadow, and then it kept walking.

It walked until the sun grew so low in the sky that it could see its own outline stretched out in front of it, and it watched the shape mimic its even footsteps, and it thought, shadow. The shadow swung its hands in gentle mockery and shuffled ahead, its feet fettered by the machine’s real ones. It tilted its comical head and limped almost imperceptibly, although its flat black figure showed no damage.

The machine itself was rather battered, and much of its body bore blackish patches of charred metal, but it could not see itself anyway, and if it had it would not have noticed. It limped because one of the connections in its right leg had been shaken loose, but it didn’t know that either. It simply thought, limp, and recognized it as a word that meant nothing.

It limped onward and, abruptly, stopped. Ahead it could see several things, and as it looked on impassively it thought, people.

The people were still and brownish and swaddled in thin cloth. There were around twenty of them, all standing about holding machines and monitors that must have been black before the dust got to them. It had settled unevenly on their clothes and faces and their lips were coated with a kind of wax to protect them from the heat, and they stood unmoving and stared in shock at the machine.

The machine thought, looking. It watched them curiously for a minute or two, but they simply stood wide-eyed and motionless, and, seeing no change, it turned back to the dry void and continued to walk.

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A pretty old one, actually. But I can't remember if people have seen it, so here.