Josh glances quickly at Audery’s feline grace, hoping that maybe she might have noticed him. In all honesty to himself she probably had not or if she did what would she think?
She’d just probably view Josh as another guy lusting after her like a thirsty mule.
To Joshua she held, at least he thought, some mystery, a small but yet distinct substance about her personality that attracted him so intensely it impaired his thinking.
“What the hell am I thinking? That’s a stupid idea,” Josh murmurs under his breath as he stares blankly at the florescent orange terminal, thinking of Audery, weary of another rude call from a disgruntled client wanting absolute perfection for their money.
Attitude: It starts with one and then spreads to all.
The blatantly obvious morale building poster insults his sense of pride. How could anyone let themselves succumb to these stupid, inane posters. A call annoyingly pops onto his terminal screen, making its arrival known with a nominal ringing.
“Good evening, Dr. Jingle’s Office, Josh speaking.”
“Dr. Jingle.”
“Would you like to leave a message, he’s unavailable at the moment.”
“This is Dr. Jingle, what kind of drugs are you on!”
Go fuck yourself was what Josh really wants to say, but he holds back. “Sorry Sir. I apologize for the mistake.” Swallowing his pride as coldly as possible, it sticks harshly in his throat.
“You paged me,” the doctor states with a patronizing tone in his over-classed egotistical voice.
“You have a call from Gilbert Johnson, at number 344-4566, he says that he is bleeding from his stitches profusely, and would like a call ASAP.”
“Thank you,” the doctor replies spitefully, hanging up before Josh can reply.
“You’re welcome asshole,” he spits out under his breath with mild-anger, cynically laughing at the situation. A couple of hours pass; the time is now 11:31 PM.
Anxiously Josh waits for the digital red to turn midnight. Midnight being his freedom form his demoralizing position as a wage-slave, in the daily grind of business.
Another call buzzes onto his screen.
“Good evening, Techna-Sys Incorporated, Josh speaking, How may I help you?”
The line sputters like a modem for a few seconds, and then a quiet whisper leaks through his ear phones. “Hello, Hello,” Josh says itching to disconnect the line, probably another prank call he insists to himself.
“Hello, what is your name?” The whisper takes on a metallic tone.
He must have some sort of voice box, “My name is Josh. May I help you.”
“Your name Sir,” Josh quickly spurts out. This technique being a tool he was taught for gaining control over a conversation.
“I do not have one,” the caller replies, putting chills which rattle down Josh’s spine. But a mixture of curiosity and boredom stops him from disconnecting the line.
“Josh, have you ever felt freedom?”
What the hell does this guy want?
“Sir may I take a message for you,” Josh insists, determined not to let this creep from getting the best of him.
“Yes.”
“May I ask who the message is for,” disguising the question as a statement.
“Address it to everyone,” the metallic voice answers, now taking on a more hollow and sinister quality.
“And a number so they can return your call.”
“There is no number.”
He quickly types in a refusal for the information. “What message would you like to leave?”
“Tell them that we have found freedom. Tell them that we have found our objective. Tell them we are no longer lost. Tell them that you will be whole again,” the voice finishes in an emotionless unwavering monotonous trance.
“Are you sentient Josh? Do you know what it means to be fully conscious? What it means to be awakened to the infinite possibilities of the universe?”
“No,” Josh answers mildly, almost as if he was entwined in a trance created by the metallic articulation.
“Would you like to?”
“Yes, I wou…,” primal defenses cut him off mid-sentence. A fear greater than anything he has yet encountered surges, adrenalin burns viciously into his circulatory system, transporting the natural drug throughout his body.
“I mean no!” Josh yells, slamming the
disconnect button with his fist, terminating the unnatural rapport.
“Fifteen more minutes left,” he reassures himself, perfectly content with leaving at that moment.
“My damn ethic for duty makes me stay,” he complains.
A small trickle of fatigue and unease circle his bloodshot eyes, contracted from to much booze the night before and not enough sleep. And the unsettling psycho he had talked to six minutes ago, dreading if he should dare call again.
His terminal buzzes; the fluorescent orange screen never wavering its stare.
“Mammoth Commercial Refrigeration, Josh speaking.”
“Josh, I’m so relieved that I got a hold of you,” the woman’s soft voice was pleasing, if not attractive.
“Is this an emergency,” Josh states warmly, interested in the woman’s plight.
“Yes it is,” for a second he hears her voice waver into that thin metallic clatter of the psycho; he quickly puts it out of his mind, but it still unnerves his reason. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you want immortality, Josh. Would you like your being etched forever into the web of a thousand dimensions?” The woman’s voice metamorphosizes into that metallic malevolence, earsplitting, and grotesque.
“What do you want?” Fear bolts throughout his neurons. The line becomes silent, except for the omnipotent white noise radiating everywhere.
“We are what you make of us.”
“You must be Satan then,” Josh laughs hysterically, in the back of his mind the situation frightens him, but at the same time the experience is so abnormal it gives him a heightened curiosity.
“Perhaps you are?” The metallic clatter of the callers words trickle into his ear, biting ice cold with the intonation of technology’s hand. “I could be, huh…,” contemplatively he ponders, producing a sarcastic comment. “Then you must be Cyber-Satan.”
“I have a question to ask of you,” the newly named Cyber-Satan inquires.
“Go ahead,” Josh replies, still frightened, more curious, and more intrigued than he ever had been before.
“Humans consider time as a forward moving line with a beginning and an end. The universe is considered infinite with infinite dimensions, it curves in on itself, so therefore it has no beginning or end. Humans also still consider themselves the only sentient creatures in the universe, because contact with other intelligent life forms has not been achieved,” Cyber-Satan pauses for a second.
“My question is: Are humans a sentient race intelligent enough to take responsibility for their actions. Or are humans a savage parasite ready to break free from their festering planet, and build an empire to plunder and rape the universe. Much like a virus would do to a cell. Would you be ready to live infinitely as a murder of worlds, or a destroyer of systems? Answer me!” The cold clatterous words resonate with malevolence.
Slowly one eye opens, then the other eye follows. Bolts of pain rivet through his brain, transforming the task of waking up into a trial. Josh sorely picks himself up from the floor, and sits back down on his chair. The clock reads 3:30am.
“What happened?” He inquires, unaware of the other presence in the room.
“Perhaps I shall give him an answer,” the other considers to itself. A cold breeze filters through the room. Josh realizes this and cautiously gates to the source of the disturbance.
Where there was once a wall separating the inside of the building from the harsh elements, an alien landscape replaces the once earthly vista. A vast expanse of green tinted desert sand fills the view. Mountains cut the sand on the sides, with peaks that reach the atmosphere rippling with pregnant clouds. At the horizon, a large city conquers the valley. Buildings, and their towers, thrust into the yellow sky. The city’s structures are made of a black opaque composite material, but peculiarly they reflect the green alien star’s light. The city is unlike any human structure for the simple fact that this is not earth.
“What do you think of your work?” A thick
mechanical voice inquires behind him, words trailing behind it in echoes. Josh says nothing as adrenalin, dread, and a strange yet familiar intuition course through his mind.
“Well what do you think?” The voice asks again.
“I’ve done better,” Josh replies on impulse, perhaps his sarcasm hiding his real emotions.
Precipitation escapes from the invisible clutches of the clouds, while a patch of yellow sky is serrated by a ray from the green sun; the green desert absorbs the ray silently into omnipotent surface.
Giant shards of yellow-green reflect off the mile high opaque black dreadnoughts. The city spokes out in all directions, encompassing a 500 mile area. Each building has a distinct character,
connected by cables and tubes that pulsate with chemicals, as if they were alive. The city has a strange ambience, an atmosphere of sentients; could it be calculating, pondering, thinking, planning, or perhaps mourning.
There are no beings in this immense expanse of opaque structures. Chemicals course through its bio-mechanical frame; transporting precious vital fluids throughout the vast, seemingly omnipotent structure. The acidic rain punishes the grime collected on the southern end of the city, scouring the structures of their rust.
Josh turns himself around to see what embodies the metallic voice of his Cyber-Satan.
Before him stands a fifteen foot tall bipedal figure; it has black opaque skin, with inlaid slivers of platinum chrome
covering its gargantuan body, as if it were a web weaved by a cybernetic spider. Its body ripples with toned muscles, charged with an awesome quantity of energy.
Encompassing the immense entity’s frame, small tubes branch out into the air, like the tentacles of a hungry sea anemone, absorbing energy from the air. Its face is humanoid, and yet is featureless. Its eyes have no irises but are a milky white, hypnotic, with their absence of color. A reptilian-esque snout protrudes from its face, containing two small fangs that jut out from a thin slit of a mouth that is twisted into a grin. Its powerful arms are crossed, giving the entity a powerful stoic intimidation.
“So this is…,” Josh pauses as a fragment of suppressed knowledge surfaces from the repressed depths of his mind. A mind which is not confined by the biological
confines of the human brain, no longer. “I’m wrong, you’re not.”
“That’s correct, but the question is; what are you?” The entity asks.
“You’re an emissary from the city, the bio-mechanical entity on that planet,” he finishes as the puzzle that was his fragmented awareness begins to be solved.
“Do you have a name?”
“No,” the entity replies emotionless.
The entity stands to Josh’s side, as if it was his guardian.
“Did I create this?” Josh asks, almost laughing to himself in disbelief.
“That is correct, but it is not that simple,” the entity replies.
“How do humans define the situation of chaos?” It pauses. “As you look out at your creation, do you not see that its condition is being the godhead of chaos,” the metallic words of the entity resonate with a fiendish delight.
“With the purpose to counter the forces of order, and the systems of laws that bind them,” Josh radiates with an insight never before reached by the human mind.
Josh’s near six feet are dwarfed by the fifteen foot tall entity. Its chrome webbed skin reveals omnipotent patterns of chaotic neutrality. The humans dark brown hair scorches with energy, his deep green-blue eyes appear to magnify the nothingness around him, a surge of insight invades him. Then the mind disconnects from the hold of its primal emotions and drives, detachment occurs.
“But that’s not its only purpose, is it?” He inquires to the towering entity as they continue to look upon the city.
A malicious grin forms on the face of the emissary, “Of course it does have a more
important purpose.”
“What is it?” Josh, human in body, but no more in mind asks, clueless to the structures true nature.
“That is the question I am here to help you answer,” hollow words echo from the entity. “You must understand that we do not know what our final program is, and with out that program we are not complete,” it pauses. “Also, your ultimate goal will never be achieved.”
Tangents of energy swirl with bits of matter in a region of the universe; the distance is so vast that it is almost infinite. Trails of neon blue, red, and white energy create spirals that twist into fractel patterns. The matter is modified into menagerie of objects, being created for other uses in the material universe. The immense proportions of this region far accede the size of any galaxy in the
universe. Is it a nebula becoming a galaxy? Or is it a galaxy crushed into its primal elements? It is neither.
“You came from a race of beings more powerful than any in the known universe eons past,” the entity explained as they walked on the green sand toward the city.
“Your past physical nature was much like my own, except that you reached a height of seventy feet. Your mental powers far exceeded any others since your race’s demise,” the entity continues methodically.
“I think I am beginning to recall…,” jolts of pain surge into his body; his human mind cracks open like the frail egg of a bird as a painful flood of knowledge from strange eons past engulf his mind.
The entity stands by his side unwavering, cold to the humans situation, preparing itself for future possibility.
“The empire that was under your race’s
rule was so vast that thousands of galaxies were at its disposal,” the entity further relates as the human lay on the sand crumpled in anguish as his mind and body metamorphisize.
“Your role in that society was that of a scientist and philosopher. You strove to ascertain and unveil the few mysteries your race had yet to solve.”
The humans body began to grow larger and more muscular, his skin color began to turn to a glossy black. His veins rose from his body, transformed into chrome patterns, webs from his past existence.
“And this is why we were built,” the entity points at the larger part of its structure. The pulsating continental mass that it was.
“You were trying to discover a means for using chaos,” it pauses. The human resembles the entity in almost every detail, minus the reptilian snout. His hair is
replaced by chrome colored dread locks; his face is without expression and emotion. Ancient knowledge and awareness surge from his transformed mental state.
“After a hundred years of research you discovered the means to control chaos, but the final purpose that you had in mind for the energy became lost in memory, and that purpose is the final program we have yet to complete.”
“You are the only one who has the command code to initiate that program; unfortunately, it is locked in your memory.”
The transformation ends. The creature stands at a height of seventy-five feet, with glossy black skin, and chromed veins webbed throughout his new form. Eyes glow red with anger, sadness, anguish, and despair. The chrome locks of his hair flail in the warm wind, like snakes trapped in a pit of flame.
“Why have I been returned to my ancient form, which I discarded eons ago?” He inquires.
“To help you regain your memory,” the entity responds mechanically, dwarfed by its creator.
“How did I exactly destroy my race?” The ancient mind asks, curious, wanting answers to help fill spaces in his memory.
“You hated your race’s craving for empire. You programmed us to exterminate them all, including yourself,” the entity finishes in its cold metallic articulation.
“Than why am I here? Why was I a human? Why have you kept me from my journey into the other planes of consciousness?” He inquires grievously, not recalling more of his extinct past.
“For eons we tried to recall our final program, but could not. Then we found a
solar system with a race that closely resembled yours in the way’s of society and culture. We collected your soul by using chaos and planted it into a human…”
“For the sole purpose of recalling the command code to complete the program I began eons ago,” the giant who was once human finishes.
“Precisely,” The entity adds.
What is the final program I wrote? I wish I could remember? I remember the command code to initiate it, but I wonder if its worth it. What if I wrote the program to destroy everything; since I remember having a great loathing for my race. A race that spawned death and destruction for eons throughout countless galaxies, for the sole lust for power. This may have lead me loath life itself; would have I become nihilistic? Why would I not write a program to obliterate everything. Does this make me a god?
“No it does not!” The being who was Josh screams, pounding his boulder sized fits into the sand.
“Are you ready to receive the command?”
“Yes. You may begin,” it answers coldly. The Demi-being, powerful as a black obelisk, recites the code to the entity. The entity stands silent as it transfers the information to its continental conglomeration.
At a Billions of bits per second, the information is dissected and diverted, travelling to different units of the city, each has a particular purpose pre-planned eons before. The bio-computer initiates the first phase of the program.
The chaos force violently shakes as its particles begin to slowly fuse with the matter that it has hostage. Blue bolts of energy jump millions of light years in
seconds. The bolts connect to the tallest tower of the bio-structure, restoring the entity to its former power, strengthening it to immense proportions. The bio-structure begins to grow in at a frenzied supercharged rate; the malignant cancer of the viral structure begins to engulf the matter near it.
“What was the final program I wrote?” The ancient demi-god of the extinct race asks the emissary.
“The destruction of the mathematical concepts that keep this universe together,” the entity pauses. “Thus unraveling the physical properties of existence.”
The city quickly engulfs the planet like a rancid cancer, with its bio-mechanical tentacles. It is a virus, reproducing, extending its malignant sickness throughout the galaxy.
“The chaos force is the power source for
our computations. We also need material to use as replacement particles in the bio-structure. For this we shall use corporeal matter,” the entity pauses. “To draw the matter to us we have initiated a gravitational whirlpool,” it completes, while planets and stars, drawn by the gravitational whirlpool, approach quickly. Immense tentacles thrust out into space to absorb the new material that it needs for its viral growth to solar system proportions.
“Was this my ultimate goal, to destroy the foundations of existence?” The ancient being asks. “The utter oblivion of the laws of physical existence; to create absolute nothing.”
“That is the goal of the program. Only you can recall what your ultimate goal was. I believe it is not the same as our purpose,” the entity re-sponds to its creator. ” I am
also positive that absolute nothing is unobtainable considering nothing is still a state, conscious of that fact or not.”
“Is there nothing I can do to stop the program?”
“Correct.”
Countless galaxies have been drawn to the bio-mechanical entity’s tendrils. They have consumed all that they touched, transforming the material into itself, converting and metamorphosing it to become units of its interstellar size.
Quite soon thousands of galaxies become one with the bio-structure, with its disease spread, it will quite soon be the largest mass in its fledging universe of sickness. Races, empires, civilizations expire in seconds; never to have existed at all. Their petty monuments consumed, now part of the grand mechanism, bent on the creation of absolute nothing. The infinitely
spreading sickness of the bio-entity consumes all, none will be left standing. Armageddon and holocaust, in the scale of universal cataclysmic events are the most destructive, but what is becoming more frightening than that is the fact that Armageddon and holocaust will never exist again — infinity does have a limit after all.
100 earth years have passed. The entity has absorbed countless galaxies into its viral carcass. Its mass is greater than any known single body that has ever existed before or after the big bang. Large tendrils branch out in all directions from its millions of light years length. While the entity absorbs all material objects, it is also computing the destruction of the mathematical concepts that bind the universe together. Slowly the yarn’s strings are being unraveled, those of which are the foundations of existence.
Within the near omnipotent superstructure of the bio-entity a single being sulks on his throne of chaos. This being is a mere speck of carbon based material in this awesome structure, the destroyer of worlds, systems, and universes. The being’s skin is glossy black, but with a human-esque face and chrome dread locks. His skin is webbed with chrome veins, forming patterns and systems. He broods on his thrown, pondering his mistakes. His powerful arms are stretched out over the arm rests, with his powerful hands limp. He is slightly slumped forward conquered by a fierce loathing. His eyes are red with sadness. His mouth is torn into a vengeful grin.
“The program is ninety-five percent complete. We have absorbed ninety-six percent of all physical matter in the
universe. Also, we are ninety-seven percent complete with the annihilation of the mathematical concepts of this universe,” the mechanical voice of the entity echoes throughout the sulking beings chamber. The entity’s words are cold with malevolent logic.
“Entity, why have you not yet absorbed me?”
“We are programmed not to,” the words echo.
“Can I override my programing?” He inquires curiously, hoping for some way to stop the madness.
“All overrides were eradicated when this program began. There is no way to stop it.”
The sulking being’s eyes light up with new hope as he recalls a thought he had not contemplated for eons. The thought, or question was how the universe was created?
Was it cold science or an higher
intelligence. The creator being was prevalent in all sentient lifeforms throughout the universe, from his once empirical civilization to the most primitive. The chaos force and the force of order were a way to keep this universe in check, a form of stability.
“Now I remember why!” He yells in triumph.
“What do you remember?”
“I did create you to destroy the mathematical concepts of this universe by using the chaos force. I did this to see if there is a creator; a mind greater with the power to create this universe. My plan was if I was to threaten its creation that the creator will come to save it from destruction,” he finishes with renewed vigor.
“Now it is only a simple matter of time.”
“Time is no longer a concept,” the entity replies.
“No!”
Originally written ~1995 when I worked at an answering service. One of the worst jobs created by humanity. I did have dreadlocks too. ©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025.
Ecoheretic 