CONSTRUCTS

1

The Construct was birthed from the earth and the things of it. Pistoned bones and plated skin of forged metal, ductworks and hydraulic joints of slick oil. The machine had slept for some unknown span until its toothsome belly abruptly stirred again with newfound bloody fuel. The Construct shrugged to life, born a second time. Again, from the earth.

***

It felt the urging of its Code.

[ OBEY ]

Then it knew things//]]]#~//*╫╤☼~////

[ system analysis ]

[ 0.266% fuel ]

[ sensors 23.1% functional ]

[ lower jaw harvesting unknown biological mass ]

The Construct was blinded. Immobilized. It tried to transmit a beacon and was met with failure. The unit was cut off from outside communications, its antennae crumpled, its wiring scorched. The Construct's Autopilot took in what little its fumbling sensors could glean. The ancient was surrounded by radioactive earth, its limbs pinned. It quickly ceased its efforts to articulate its frame and instead devoted its precious little energy to processing data and emergency routines. The Construct, per the survival protocol of its ironfisted Code—

[ OBEY ]

—needed first to determine the nature of its plight before it could plan its next act. Its energy cells had clearly run dry long ago. Its clock had stopped counting and its memory banks were an empty void. Only now had new fuel been reintroduced to its system, breaking the machine's long slumber. The Construct's bowels even still churned as its lower gears masticated the remains of whatever unfortunate life form had met its bio-jaw moments prior.

Hungry for more fuel, the Construct did not spend time pondering how that had come to be; its pure objective now was only to survive. As its belly chewed and processed stolen life, the machine's rudimentary and hindered intelligence observed that it was fully encompassed in earth. Its driving desire was only to free itself. It sensed within its directives—

(heart)

—what an organism might experience as claustrophobia. But before that primal programming could drive any action, its Code again intervened.

[ OBEY ]

The system's motivations to survive were frantic, desperate—yet its solutions cool and measured. A panic without panic. Perhaps the Construct could blast its way out. It engaged its ballistic weaponry, but the barrels did not fire, too choked with dirt and time. It was then that the Construct realized it was not only the weight of the soil that had hampered its movements—the metals of its very frame had somehow melted and fused.

(what has happened to me?)

[ abort extraneous analysis ]

[ execute escape protocol ]

[ execute Code ]

[ OBEY ]

The Construct felt a dark presence lurking within its Code. Ready to possess its frame should its Autopilot (self) system fail to properly fulfill its programming.

/$*ERINYES emergency backup system ready for takeover

[ OBEY ]

The Autopilot (self) moved to act. The Construct dared not fire its rockets lest it damage itself in the blast. It checked its flight thrusters. Also ruined. It had to dig. The Construct's primary claw apparatus was still operable, the secondary a mangled stump. The machine slowly began to cleave through the dirt. Analyzing and navigating for the lowest-density path, it went upward. Though, could its directional sensors even be trusted?