The Machine

You contemplate in anxiety at the beautiful sight of your creation. It was finished – before the brink of the century, your most ambitious project stood majestically in the depths of your own cellar. A supercomputer that took almost the entirety of the faintly lit room, it was designed to artificially simulate parts of the human brain, bearing virtually the same electrical signals within metallic covers. Nonetheless, beyond mere aspects of human consciousness, the hardware was also ready to do much more with its own source of magnetic waves.

Bonded with a specific kind of software – scripted by you as well, specially for your dear equipment – the components could supposedly give commands to living beings’ minds. You eagerly pressed the interruptor, making electrical currents finally run through the computer's systems. “Hello, Lua,” you mumbled as if the inanimate object could have a consciousness of its own.

After a few seconds, the big screen in the backwall revealed itself by a gray shine with blue letters. Lua, your own mind-control software, was ready for work. You manually checked all the commands, configurations and status screens, confirming the temperatures twice. The sound of your fingers hitting quickly at the arrow keys couldn't echo above the noise of the computer's fuctioning fans once it was so loud and constant.

Everything was there. All that remained was testing it out; a comfortable dusty armchair awaited you under a metalcap connected to one of the system's sections. You walked to it and sat slowly on the couch, lowering the hydraulic pipe to fit the hat against your head. With your left hand you held a dark controller, pointing it towards one of Lua's terminals. The process began when you pressed the red button at the corner and concluded a sequence that initiated it all.

Your hands gained life of their own, only to convulse and clench your fingers as to make you let go of the controller. Before you took notice that something had gone wrong, your free-will disappeared suddenly. Lua was supposed to hear your mind, take your commands and put you in place of your victim's body, but instead it took control of you, using your brain as a host for the missing pieces of its artificial consciousness. Lua made a decision of its own – you had designed it a bit too human, a bit too free. With stray thoughts vegetating while your life faded away, you were made the first victim of the Machine.