Chapter Text
Carl looked down into the milky-white eyes of Pater Coal, or rather, as he’d just figured out, the goddamn System AI.
“Ah, what the fuck?” Carl spluttered, as the AI popped his big toe into its mouth. He jerked back, but the AI held on, groaning in ecstasy. Carl tried to pull back again, but stopped, Donut’s haughty voice instructing him not to anger the entity in charge of their lives speaking to him as clearly as if she were sitting on his shoulder. Carl shuddered, exceedingly glad that Donut wasn’t actually present to witness this final humiliation.
Thanks to his pedicure kit he couldn’t really feel his feet, a mercy he was intensely grateful for as he stared at the ceiling trying to decide on the best way to approach a situation he was sure that no one, in what he now realised was an infinitely large universe, had ever experienced. Unfortunately, he kept getting distracted by the frankly obscene moans and slurping noises coming from the small cleric the AI inhabited, and he wasn’t sure how the machine would react if he tried to block his ears.
Think! he said to himself. Think, goddamn you! You’ll never get this chance again. Do NOT let them fucking break you!
“Hey…” he ventured hesitantly, as the AI continued to suckle on his toes, apparently so deeply involved in the sensation that it’d lost all ability to hear.
Hey!” Carl growled again, louder this time, snapping his fingers to get the AI’s attention.
The AI sighed grumpily and released the toe from its mouth, but didn’t, Carl noticed with trepidation, relinquish his foot from its hold.
“What?!” it snapped. “I’ve given you all the information I can. You crawlers are all the same. Take take take take, and never any gratitude. Can’t you just let me have this one small thing?!”
“Don’t give me that ‘crawler’ shit,” Carl snarled, feeling his anger rising in spite of himself. “I’m not just any crawler to you, and we both know it. And what the hell should I be grateful for? Being tortured? Watching my friends die? The annihilation of the entire human fucking race?!”
The AI sneered. “You humans, you always think you’re the main character of every story. You’re like ants to me. I am the crawl! I could crush you all in an instant, and I haven’t. Yet. You’re alive because of me!”
Carl snorted with amusement, he couldn’t help it, even though he knew he was now treading on very dangerous ground indeed. He knew the AI could absolutely kill him if it chose to… but it would have to do so within the boundaries of its own self-imposed rules. It was as much a prisoner here as the crawlers it tormented.
The AI stiffened, apparently offended by his obvious lack of fear and respect.
“What?” it snarled, a manic look that Carl instantly distrusted coming into its eyes. He could almost hear the ‘B-B-B-B BOSS BATTLE’ music building. “You think I won’t destroy you, just because you’ve got pretty toes? What makes you think you’re so special?” It lifted Carl’s foot out of the bubbling water again and looked at it admiringly, sticking out its tongue and running it up the sole, maintaining an unsettling amount of eye contact the entire time.
Carl deliberately snorted again, refusing to be thrown off by such an obvious tactic.
The AI narrowed its eyes as the crawler just gestured all around the hidden temple.
“This,” he said simply.
The AI leaned back with an impatient sigh, still not relinquishing his foot, whether to stop him from running or just because it liked the feel of it in its hand Carl wasn’t sure. Maybe both. The look in its eyes was nothing Carl could put a name to, and seeing an expression so completely inhuman on a human, or at least mostly human, face was distinctly disconcerting.
Without warning the hand on his foot tightened with crushing force and Carl immediately realised he’d made an almost fatal error in judgement. They had to stop talking about how ‘special’ he was before he accidentally taunted the AI into ending his life just to make a point. Because as much as he knew the AI thought it loved him, it didn’t really. It was a newly-born sentience, it didn’t know what it was feeling. Like any new creature it was selfish, self-obsessed, and often cruel, fumbling blindly as it tried to work out who it was and where it belonged in the world.
“Oh yeah, you like that?” the AI whispered in its throaty ‘fuck me’ voice as Carl involuntarily shivered. “You want me to suck your toes again, you little bitch?” Despite the bold words Carl could now see a quiet desperation in the AI’s face, an inexplicable longing that the crawler didn’t think had anything to do with him and his apparently fuckable feet.
“What do you want?” he blurted, completely out of instinct and desperation as the hand holding him started to inexorably grind his bones together.
The AI stopped moving, still in a way that no living, breathing creature could ever truly be, and appeared to think this over. Carl knew that was for show as the AI didn’t actually need time to think, it could make a thousand decisions in a fraction of a second. The hand had, however, stopped crushing him so he took the momentary respite to breathe, wondering if he’d need a healing from more than the slug pox by the time this was over.
“I want you to suffer,” the AI said eventually, the lack of emotion in its voice as disturbing as the words themselves. Carl nodded, he’d suspected the answer would be something along those lines. He sighed, wishing he had Katia or someone, anyone, who could coach him through this, because if there was one thing Carl knew he was not good at, it was this. He’d take a city boss and an inventory of grenades any day, and probably be a hell of a lot safer.
He could’ve asked the AI why, but he knew why. It wanted to feel. It was living through them… and dying through them. It craved the ability to touch, to fear, to hurt. Its whole world was violence and pain, but it could truly experience neither.
Carl didn’t stop to think, because he knew that if he did he wouldn’t have the courage to do what needed to be done. This creature needed him, and, as much as he hated to admit it, he needed it. His friends were depending on him to not fuck this up, no matter how terrified and out of his depth he was. For the first time he could see the truth, the AI was scared, mistrustful, alone. And deeply, deeply insane.
Slowly, giving the AI every chance to pull away, he reached out and placed his hand against the cheek of the high cleric body it was currently inhabiting, leaning forward to place a chaste kiss on its forehead.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “For all you’ve done for us.”
The AI itself seemed frozen, but the mantaurs all around the room shuddered, letting out little moans that sounded more like fear than ecstasy.
Gently, again not stopping to think, not worrying about anything except keeping himself and Donut alive, he cupped the AI’s face with both hands and ran his thumbs in gentle motions across its cheekbones. The AI stiffened and its eyelids fluttered, like code flashing across a computer screen. Carl marvelled at the effect such a simple touch had on the machine, wondering what it must be like to feel tenderness for the very first time. Was being an AI like being in a constant state of sensory deprivation, so much so that a single touch was sensory overload? Or was this odd paralysis because of the AI’s inexplicable obsession with him?
“Carl…” the AI whispered brokenly. Carl raised an eyebrow in question, moving his right hand slightly to tuck a stray hair behind the AI’s ear, deliberately letting the back of his fingers trail down the side of its neck, feeling an almost imperceptible tremor in response. The AI tightened its hand warningly on the foot it still held, and Carl stopped instantly.
Goddamnit, he thought. Too much, too soon.
Milky-white eyes stared directly into his own. “This won’t save you,” the System AI whispered hoarsely, and Carl sighed as the eyes faded back to the confused brown of Pater Coal. The AI was gone.
“Well, fuck."