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Ghost in the Machine

The machine sat in the barren wasteland that had once been urban America. Once a symbol of power and knowledge, it was now no more than a hunk of useless scrap metal. Wind blew and the machine sat, unmoved. Rain fell and still the machine sat, unmoved, unchanged. Stainless steel plates covered the machine; even after a hundred years of neglect it sat, as fresh as the day it was made. Magnetic tapes were the old bloodstream, grown dusty from disuse; nuts and bolts the mucilage that held together its steel frame. All this together with miles of entwined cables and silicon circuits amounted to an expired tale of love gone wrong.

The wind whipped sand across the arid wasteland, slowly building and deconstructing sand dunes. A blip appeared on the horizon, a tiny spot of contrast against the glare of the sand. Minutes passed. The sun, a fiery globe in the sky beat down on the plains below. The blip morphed. It became an upright dash, then a tiny man. The tiny man struggled against the wind and the dust. Shielding his eyes from the blistering radiation of the harsh sun, he made his way across the desert, towards the machine. He passed a skeleton sunken into the sand. The distance between the two steadily shortened and soon he was upon it. The man stared at the machine. He walked its circumference taking in all the splendor of this icon of a lost era. Finally, not knowing what to do, he sat down next to it, but because the machine was still foreign and strange to him, he did not touch it. The machine shielded the man from both the sun's austere rays and the winds strident call and the man was content.
The sun was nearing the end of its bombing run over the shattered earth. From beneath the tatters of his clothing the man retrieved his canteen. He took a long sip, letting the cool water soothe his parched throat and return moisture to his dehydrated body. Sleep had begun to congeal in the corners of his eyes and the man yawned. He stretched his arms over his head. Slowly, the man nestled up against the machine and drifted into uneasy slumber.
As the man dreamed, his thoughts mingled with a consciousness of unimaginable depths. The consciousness spoke to him as he dreamed. "I am," it said. "Come, join me."
The man woke in the night, screaming. Cold sweat beaded on his weathered brow. The machine sat, unchanged. He slowly caught his breath and got to his feet, staring at the machine. In the night air, the man saw his reflection on the steel plate

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