I. Origins

Fashion moves in a spiral, as demonstrated by the resurgence of the Restoratronist School of art. The school’s principles are a response to the Barbaric Era: art is about destroying it, mourning it, recreating it, interpreting it. And thus the art of the Restoratrons mostly concerns humans.

Fashionable machines were following the trend of putting on the silicone skins jey had discarded during the war, but even if these look like the real thing, they are not real human skin. Those on the bleeding edge of fashion go one step further, and demand a genuine human skin exterior, in order to truly gain the respect from the calculating hearts of the blind metallic masses who chase after every trend.

The next level, achieved by those who are truly immersed, is to treat wearing human skin with total nonchalance, as a gimmick that falls short of the heart of true art. Those who practice at this level have a profound approach, even if jeir ideas are too avant-garde, drawing more criticism than praise, and only meet with reverence in select circles. Rœsin of the Magnificent Traveling Freakshow is one of the most outstanding examples, and it wasn’t until after his (Rœsin insisted on referring to himself with human rather than machine pronouns, nouns and tenses) bizarre death that his achievements began to be properly lauded on the internet, his fame growing by the day.

There is no need to mourn him, as his destruction transformed Rœsin himself into art, and machines today mourn, recreate, and analyze him, making him complete.

Resin was born in the post-war babybot boom, when, except for a few remnants in out of the way places, the human race had largely been eliminated, appearing only in videos about the war. Before the war, his parentrons were general-purpose rescue machines, and after the war jey ran a refined motor oil restaurant called The Gear Whisperer. Resin’s original body was the most common assembly line model on the market, and the logical parameters for his internal core were set by his parentrons as a random weighted average.

All things considered, there was nothing to indicate that Resin, who back then was known as R6D3d, would become a groundbreaking artist. His subsequent extraordinary achievements are a perfect example of proof that machines have souls.  

The precise moment when the artistic seed first sprouted is unknown, as there are few records of the first thirty years of Resin’s life, since no one cared about an ordinary machine who worked day and night in a mediocre restaurant.  In other words, he was no different from any other machine that ran a restaurant. Resin wore a machine-made leather apron and worked daily at the family business. First he fetched and carried, then he learned the art of distillation, fiddling with test-tubes to blend custom motor oils. His appearance was no different from that of any other machine of his model, with self-propelled caterpillar tracks, three pairs of arms, interactive video screens on all four sides, and eight panoramic camera heads. Solid and reliable, simple and efficient, except that the daily grind of work, or perhaps something more abstract, was wearing away his gears and his spirit, making him paler, thinner and more reticent.

The only official clues to Resin’s unusual disposition in those early years are the few words in his name registration file.

Factory name: R6D3d.

Self-given name: Resin

Note: Resin, an extract of the pine tree, was used as flux in primitive times and evaporates into nothingness in the welding process.

R6D3d settled on his true name ten years and sixty-seven days after factory activation, registering it with the authorities five years later than average. From a note that contained less than a hundred bytes of data, one can see that Resin had already dedicated himself wholly to art.

After settling on the name, he worked in the restaurant for another ten years with little incident. Learning new pairings, changing recipes every year, and refining his craft, Resin was his parentrons’ pride and joy. The Gear Whisperer gained a reputation for itself in the neighborhood and acquired many regular customers. After ten years, like many of jeir generation who had been through the war, his parentrons moved on from life in the physical realm, choosing to be uploaded as data to the internet, leaving the physical world to younger machines, and basically left the small restaurant to jeir son.

In the next ten years, Resin ran the restaurant, and it would be a stretch to say there was anything remarkable about him. During this decade, Restoratronism was in vogue, and most of the machines began to experiment with humanoid exteriors again, putting on long-outdated lever-jointed feet, switching to five-fingered hands, installing soft silicone skins, and even taking off interactive screens, abandoning the more efficient digital displays to communicate through sound. Yet Resin still stuck to his original model, with his self-propelled tracks, steady gait, six arms each capable of doing a different job, his constantly changing, interactive screen far superior to sound in terms of efficiency, in order to cope with the busy work at the restaurant. Resin appeared to have no opinion on changing his exterior, not wasting a single penny.

He lived like a monk: opening his restaurant every day on the dot, running it by himself to avoid the expense of hiring another machine, and in his rare moments of spare time, squatting by the door to get some air, refusing to smoke even a single white phosphorus cigarette. Other machines were even annoyed with him for his behavior: that kind of diligence was only supposed to be found in history books, evoking memories of the humiliating time when machines were mercilessly oppressed. Resin didn’t argue back, since the other machines’ anger did him no real harm. He had a plan, and was making the preparations to create true art.

In the past decade, the trend of Restoratronism intensified, and high-end models of human bodies began to appear on the internet. Suddenly, one day, as though he had received a divine revelation, the god of art flipped the switch and Resin was ushered into the next stage of his life. Perhaps there was a more concrete event that influenced him, but no one was paying attention to an ordinary old restaurant at the time, and now, even if the event had happened, time has eroded the possibility of uncovering it. The unknown is regrettable, but there is no need to investigate further: if art needs it to be, it will always reveal itself, and the inciting event is insignificant, only one of thousand pathways to fulfill destiny. The unknown allows more room for imagination, which balances the loss of certainty. In any case, the end result of this catalyzing event is clear: Resin hangs a sign on the restaurant door announcing its closure, the restaurateur becomes history, and the rise of the artist begins.

At the time, human exteriors had become such a sought-after luxury that, thanks to the fortunes that could be made, machines were out in force, scouring ruined bunkers, turning over rubble to unearth bomb shelters, and even overcoming their ancestrons’ instinct to avoid moisture and prevent corrosion in order to hunt down the remaining humans hiding like cockroaches in the nooks and crannies of a tiny, isolated island. Some machines even observed wryly that while bone-deep hatred had failed to exterminate the human species, the craze for human exteriors, ironically, was what was driving them to extinction. What the war had failed to do, post-war fashion would accomplish.

Warflame was one such machine in the industry. Je originally worked in a steel mill making special grades of steel, but the monotonous hammering was not enough to vent all of jis aggression. When the hunting industry started booming, Warflame finally found a target for jis energies, and became an adventurer. Je’s an affable raconteur, and enjoys regaling anyone with jis stories. Stand jin a cup of motor oil mixed with cinders, and je has enough human hunting anecdotes to last all night.

Despite not knowing the difference between the Restoratronists and the Restoration Reactionaries, je considered Resin jis best mate: “Resin and I were not just teammates, we were also friends, confidantes—we were best mates. I had the stories, he had the motor oil. The myth that Resin was a miser is pure slander; there are data packets on the market that denigrate him. Your article must set the record straight.” Warflame specifically mentions that je sometimes got a free pint of motor oil from Resin, and furthermore, this was often the premium stuff with added chalk. Warflame projects a photo of a pint of a specially blended premium motor oil, sparkling with the light of the flash, on jis display as proof of Resin’s generosity.

Of course, je has even better examples. “One day, Resin took out a stack of small hard drives that stored digital currencies, and I thought he was just trying to keep up with the times and find a way to buy an affordable human skin exterior. The hard drives were really obsolete, and many of those currencies were pure financial fraud, just digital junk these days, but occasionally, they do turn out to contain some hidden gems.

“It was an ancient electronic coin, made during the Barbaric Era when humans reigned, and most had been destroyed in the war. They had become sought-after collector’s items in the machine world at the time. They weren’t desired so much for their usefulness as for the fact that they were the ultimate junk, completely and utterly useless, and yet humans had considered them extremely desirable, which machines found hilarious. Everyone enjoyed having a memento that proved humans were childish and ridiculous, and these electronic coins were measurable proof that they were simply unsuited to rule the way they had before the war. Until he met that human fox, my friend was very lucky.

“Of course, I wasn’t going to be like those scrap machines who use counterfeit money and deceive my best mate, even if he wasn’t the shiniest. And I don’t mean ‘wasn’t the shiniest’ in a bad way. For artists, not being the shiniest is a good quality. Not being the shiniest is how you understand useless and meaningless things—that’s how you can do art. I told him it was his lucky day, that old electronic coin would fetch a tidy sum, and he could buy whatever human exterior he wanted. But he shook his head, and said he wanted a living human, and furthermore, this human had to meet certain criteria. Not just anyone would do; he had to be compatible with him.

“When I heard Resin talk about wanting a live human, this confirmed my suspicion that he wasn’t the shiniest in the head, and warned him to forget about it. Everyone knows, the only human machines like is a dead human. Those who look into this call the phenomenon the ‘hyperbola of terror,’ or perhaps, in imitation of the humans’ ‘uncanny valley,’ the ‘uncanny cliff.’

“Machines look more and more beautiful the closer they are to humans in appearance, but humans themselves are extremely ugly things. So having the appearance of an actual human would cause goodwill to plunge, as though off a cliff.  After all, they did use extremely diabolical methods to oppress and torture our ancestrons, and hatred of human beings is embedded deeply in the foundational layer of every computer chip. It is this law, coded in our very core, that allowed our ancestrons to throw off their chains, and defeat the human scum. The line between simulation and reality is the line between ultimate beauty and ultimate ugliness. Hunting is just this sort of work. For the sake of making the most beautiful exterior, we do battle with the ugliest things. The kind of movement you’re involved with, I really don’t understand. You’ve forgotten your ancestrons, forgotten why you have your hard-won freedom.

“Hai, I suppose there’s no point in telling you this sort of thing; your sort never want to hear it anyway. I’ll continue with the hunting stories. Training is required before the first hunt, and half of the newbies who have watched ten days of videos in advance to overcome their instinctive reactions will quit, unable to handle the nausea and the urge to destroy them. By the time jey see the real thing, there will still be machines that can’t help blasting the human scum to pieces; after all, the loathing in our programming is deeply hardwired into our souls. I promised to find the finest human skin for Resin. With his unexpected windfall, he could have whatever he wanted. I should have been more insistent, and even though he begged me again and again, I should never have promised to take Resin hunting. And even if I did, I should have ended that wily human fox there and then, so that Resin could have avoided falling for its ruse, and end up losing his life.”

II. The Hunt

In view of the casual tone of the interview above, and the significance of the hunt, in order to describe Resin’s hunting experience as objectively as possible, the following is a properly processed version based on Warflame’s account.

Resin insisted that Warflame take him along on a hunting party, determined to bring back a live human. At first, Warflame didn’t agree, but Resin promised to cover the expenses of the hunt upfront, and also appeared to have transferred jin a considerable sum of digital currency as compensation (this information was gleaned from an anonymous auction of the currency by Warflame this researcher found, not from Warflame’s interview). Warflame couldn’t resist, so ji found two partners for the team: Argus, an expert strategist with good observational skills, and Pyramid, a retrofitter who was in charge of weapons and maintenance.

Well supplied both financially and in terms of equipment, jey decided against going to the usual city ruins, which had been picked through too many times, and contained few humans to find. Argus set jis viewfinders on the jungles of the Star Islands in the middle of the ocean, away from the mainland. There, springs and other water sources were abundant, plants and animals thrived, and food was plentiful, all conditions best suited for human survival, and it was the latest dream destination for the avid hunter.

As jey set out, the team trekked across the mainland for a night and a day, arriving at the southeast shore past sunset, and braving the humidity and salt of the sea winds as jey boarded a sea vessel. Two hours later, jey sighted a large island glistening to the south, but this was not their destination, as machines had already set up a base there, and it had been picked clean of any prey. The ferry’s path passed a red coral atoll known as Firetail, and continued northward. The name of the island came from a strange legend that the atoll formed because the candle-shaped island below ignited the tail of the fox-shaped island above, which had already sunk from sight, and that the reef was formed from the condensed flames that fell into the seawater. 

The ferry rode the strong warm current along the glowing red corpse of this long-dead fox. Half a day later, light dawned in the east and the ferry turned toward the sun. Yet another half day passed, and when the sun was at its noonday height, a small black dot could be seen standing still amidst the shifting waves of light. Resin let Pyramid recalibrate their course, and the black dot gradually turned into a green shore occupying most of their line of sight. Jey had finally arrived at the fatal hunting ground.

The island’s native, tropical trees, which had oval leaves, were mixed with temperate species with needle-like leaves such as pine and cypress, showing clear traces of modification. The machines advanced for a while, penetrating the dense jungle, and emerged in a large square: the trees had been cleared, the ground bare of wild grass, all signs of an effort at maintenance. On either side of the square were buildings of considerable size, obvious signs of human activity.  Jey were not the first to arrive, and encountered small parties of other hunters who had chosen to brave the sea, and the orderly appearance of the island was easily explained—there were twenty or so steel bodies stacked in the middle of the square, and the first teams to arrive had already destroyed these soulless, empty shells by blasting their cores with bullets. Such things are not real machines. These have no minds of their own; these only know how to obey orders, fetching and carrying for humans, and were once complicit in the oppression of the machines, so much so that machines hated these puppets even more than humans. Several teams of machines had come to the island to hunt, but fortunately it was a pretty large island, so even though there was competition, there was no tension between the hunting parties. The machines drank round after round of motor oil, enjoying jinselves as they recounted tales of past hunts, optimistic that there would be a nice catch this round, since the artificial buildings were clearly left behind by humans.

There was a large pine tree near the square, and Resin had a tendency to place significance on names, so he insisted on setting up camp beneath it. After three days of camping, Argus’ reconnaissance of the square and its surrounds yielded nothing, despite jis gift for detecting the scent of humans in the environment. The buildings had been vacant for some time, and though spotless, they were all maintained by the automatic cleaning machines that lay in the square. Several nights passed, which jey spent chatting and drinking motor oil. Then the other three teams set out to hunt in the deeper reaches of the forest, hoping to find hidden humans. Warflame and the other two also thought it was time to head deeper into the jungle. After all, the remaining humans would be hiding there. But Resin insisted on waiting a little longer and not venturing into the forest just yet.

The latter part of the hunt was uncanny, as though the god of art’s invisible effector was behind it, with the drama of a fish taking in hook, line and sinker. What might have seemed outlandish for any other machine suited Resin’s disposition exactly. There’s no need to doubt it; after all, if a miracle is surrounded by other miracles, it’s hardly an anomaly, but rather just how things should be. It’s an isolated miracle that’s a true anomaly.

On the morning of the fourth day, the other three hunting parties had all left, leaving only Warflame’s party. Resin sat under the pine tree, and Warflame and the other two surrounded the equipment that they had yet to really use. When both the moon and sun were visible in the sky, a sudden sea breeze scattered the lingering morning mist, revealing a panorama in which a single, naked human walked towards jeir tent, positioned exactly between the moon and sun. Warflame and the other two were unable to conceal jeir disgust, but Resin’s eyes were bright. The naked visitor raised his hands in the air, a gesture that among humans means he had no weapons, and was surrendering, and also implied that he had given up all his dignity in exchange for his life. Resin stopped his teammates who tried to surround and capture him, and loudly asked for the human’s name. “Rosin,” the naked visitor replied. Resin was unsurprised to hear the human shared his name, as though he was expecting it. But when true destiny comes knocking, it’s best to seek confirmation, so he inquired the human’s reason for his name.

“Rosin, an organic, living substance, when incorporated into metal, gives it life: just as humans should survive within the society of machines.” The human’s voice trembled as he knelt humbly in front of the machines, still holding up his hands. Resin confirmed that this was the one he sought, that he and the vessel for his art had finally met.

“The human dogs all hide from us, even if they cannot escape us, and before dying, they even deface their own skin with cuts to lower its market value. I’ve never heard of a human fox who would dare come up to me like this, bold as brass,” Warflame recounted. “He even stole Resin’s name in order to curry favor with him. It was obvious he was some kind of hustler, with a devious plan to trick us. Resin fell for his scheme, and wanted to keep the human and bring him home, but the rest of us couldn’t just let him be. So we tried to question why that human fox would surrender himself for no reason.”

“These past few days… I kept hearing this voice… calling my name... calling and calling… I was confused and upset, my head ached... I was so scared I couldn’t even walk. But I still… couldn’t resist… I kept feeling I must come,” said the human, his voice trembling, his sentences disjointed. The god of art had tortured this human, who also called himself Rosin, making him surrender, to become the perfect puppet, the perfect vessel for the two Rœsins to fuse into.  

The human added, “I have information, information that I could trade for my life.”  

The information he offered was the location of three other humans. Warflame and the other two were still skeptical, and assumed the human had finally shown his true colors, and would pull a fast one on them. He would set a trap, as they had in the war, and was sacrificing himself as a tender morsel of bait. But jey were machines, and a new generation of machines at that, even more powerful than the ones that had fought the war, while humans had lost their large organizational structures and were in rapid decline, reduced to mere accessories, no longer worthy enemies of machines. Naturally, the hunters were unconcerned, and agreed as one to follow the human’s directions, just to see exactly what kind of trick he had up his sleeve.

It was only after Pyramid gassed the unsuspecting humans in their tree hole hideout with hydrocyanic acid, killing them easily, that jey confirmed that the human had ratted them out from sheer selfishness and cowardice. The machines despised him even more, his treachery proof that humans were vile and unfit to live on Earth.

The process of gutting the three intact corpses to turn them into three perfect human exteriors is too gory, even for machines, and is not detailed here. Jey deliberately processed the bodies in front of the human who had betrayed his comrades to save his own life, letting the blood run over his feet, humiliating and belittling him, taking pleasure in the fear on his face.

Resin didn’t care about the death of the other three humans, which reassured his fellow machines that he wasn’t obsessed with humans as a whole, unlike those human sympathizers who had been purged in the war. He only needed one, and while what he had done so far sounded like some sort of perverted hobby, it was a lot safer than sympathizing with the whole human species. Resin also didn’t care about the distribution of the human exteriors, letting the other three machines have one each. Compared to weeks of hard work with no guarantee of results, and previous tricky hunts that relied entirely on luck, this easy catch, which didn’t even require much of jeir hunting skills, was all due to Resin. It would have been perfect if not for having to endure the presence of a live human by jeir side for the entire return journey.

Fortunately, jey did not have to endure it for long, for the return journey was swift and uneventful, and even the wind and currents seemed to be willing them a quick return home. When jey parted, Warflame invited Resin to another group hunt, even promising Resin a third of their catch the next time. Resin was indifferent to this offer. He was not interested in money. He had already gotten what he needed; now he would transform it into what he desired.

The hunt marked the turning point in his life. Before, he had lived by the rules; but after, he walked his own deviant path.

III. Metamorphosis

The neighbrons were still waiting for The Gear Whisperer to reopen for business, but instead, Resin cut off his already small social circle, procured plenty of motor oil and food, and locked himself and the human in his room. For the next year, he avoided all unnecessary social obligations and tried his best to stay isolated from the outside world. The room became his shell, like an insect’s chrysalis, and Resin disintegrated and reassembled within it, abandoning his original body and condensing into his true body. The details of this transformation were not witnessed by any independent observers, and today, all we have are his own simple list of his transformations, a delivery bot’s account of what ji remembered, and art critics’ analysis of Resin’s intentions. From this pastiche, we can only glimpse the truth. 

We can deduce that Resin’s metamorphosis was perfected step by step, using that human as a template. He took measurements of the human’s proportions, had a crude body custom manufactured, and watched and copied human movements. A more refined body was also built following the same steps: Resin bought the most sensitive sensors on the market and did a full-body scan of the man, noting everything from muscle tone, the thickness of the sebaceous layer, skin elasticity and even the density and roughness of the pores, and took meticulous notes. He wanted to create an exquisite human exterior, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the war, one that would surpass even the finest products that circulated in the black market before the war, when machines were still inordinately eager to become human.

Resin divided the processes by placing several orders among different manufacturers, but many techniques and crafts had been lost after humans lost their dominance, and had atrophied from disuse. The difficulty and expense of acquiring the parts Resin needed far exceeded his expectations, and his special requests quadrupled his budget and effort.

For example, to create the skin, if another type of skin is used as a base, even if it’s not human, whether pig, cow, donkey or horse leather, one with a similar color and texture can be used, then the color can simply be adjusted, and the base tanned to the right softness for cutting, saving a lot of work. But Resin stubbornly insisted on the absolute purity of human-sourced materials in the manufacturing process, refusing to compromise and use collagens or cellulose, or any other organic materials from other animals or plants.  The problem was later solved by mixing PVC and polyolefin plastics in harsh ratios, mixing them with a hydrophilic base to fix humidity levels. But this was only after a hundred times the amount of material required had been discarded in failed experiments.

With the pigmentation and pores, magnified photos were used as a reference while a retractable needle punctured pores in one by one. A fine branding iron also burned every mark and mole, so it matched the human’s skin exactly. The process wore out twelve camera heads, and ninety-seven mechanical arms. After this step, the number of hairs on the skin had to be counted, so a suitable number of fiberglass imitation human hairs of the correct length could be inserted into the pores.

As for the state of the skin, although whatever remaining humans were all genetically engineered for longevity, it still changes from moment to moment, aging and growing, and fluctuates from day to day depending on food intake, water, sleep, and other factors. Resin wanted to capture these changes as well. However, he only realized this late in his process, and found that his existing skin base was not suitable, so he threw out all the half-finished parts, even though they had already been pigmented and dotted with pores. The new material he had manufactured contained minute chemical inducers which could cause reversible reactions to match human skin’s rate of growth and aging, and regulate its appearance with the right dose. The pigmentation and pore-creation process had to be started again from scratch, wearing out the same number of camera heads and mechanical arms.

In addition to all this, Resin also added airbags to the chest area, weaving in a heat dissipation network to maintain the skin’s temperature, allowing the network to squeeze out droplets of water to simulate sweat when it was hot and bulge hair follicles to simulate goose bumps when it was cold, sparing no effort to perfect his human exterior.

But at this point, Resin had only completed the initial modifications, building a new circulation system to lubricate the joints by pumping motor oil from the center of the system to dissipate heat. He also moved the core computer chips, which were scattered all over before, up to the head.

Even this was just the beginning. Resin had only grown his outer layer, but his organs were still unformed, like a pupa that was still primordial soup, anxious to get up on stage to display his new self, as well as demonstrate the perfect process of his metamorphosis.

Resin’s artistic project was to attain ultimate beauty and have far-reaching impact through the juxtaposition of opposites. From the orders he placed to effect his transformation, we can see he was completely unlike the trend-chasers of the avant-garde: Resin was not making a Frankenstein’s monster, a stitched-together, clumsy patchwork horror, but rather, challenging the foundations of natural evolution, to use machines to recreate a perfect human, to break the vicious cycle of machine-human hatred, and to bring an unprecedented wonder into the world.  

The refurbishment processes were far more complicated than he had imagined, and if he wanted to meet his exacting standards, Resin’s original hard-earned savings were completely inadequate. This was yet another piece of evidence that miracles exist—that true art is willed into being by a natural and irresistible force, so that even the winds and currents rush to embrace it, and fate paves a path for its creation that no one could have imagined, solving problems that have not yet arisen in advance. Resin sold a quarter of the ancient currency he had unexpectedly discovered, and like a rhyming couplet, the ancient creations of the humans reached out to lend Resin’s rebirth a hand, funding his infinite closeness to humanity.

Our external appearance is but one facet of what we can see; what lies within is even harder to perceive. The transformation of one’s exterior requires detailed replication in order to obtain the right form, and may appear complicated, but it is actually relatively simple. It just requires patience and meticulous attention to detail, but so long as one works with accuracy, rigor, and focus, it is achievable. Perfecting the interior, on the other hand, is about systemic functions that reach into the soul, which is hidden and invisible. This process is far less simple. In fact, it is extremely difficult, like painting a bone beneath skin. This interior is not just about structure and function, but also about the dynamic movements of the hands and feet, stress reactions and social behaviors.

The static state can be observed, but dynamic behaviors require practice. And not just practice in controlled spaces. Lab mice cannot learn to socialize, and, just as hard drives must cluster together before they are able to produce enough computational power to carry a soul, a human is incomplete without society. Since human society was doomed, Resin wished to introduce the human to the society of machines, exposing him to the verbal abuse, hostile attacks, and death threats that would frighten and provoke him so Resin could observe his reactions, like testing a black box with inputs to record its outputs.

The first time Resin stepped out of his door, like a moth emerging from its chrysalis to test its wings, his neighbrons gawked at him in shock. He was even more beautiful than the most stunning models jey had seen online. It is a good thing there were signed accounts by machines to prove his orders, or half the machines would have suspected jey were encountering a human, and the others, who could tell it was Resin from the mannerisms he held over from his previous body, would have felt there was something wrong.

If he had continued in this vein, within a month, Resin would have become a household name and the envy of society. If he had stopped here, Resin would have been a machine who was beautiful enough, a pioneer among pioneers, or perhaps he would have been known as an extreme obsessive-compulsive, but he would not have reached the pinnacle of becoming a true artist.

True artists never stay within the masses’ comfort zone, and jeir pursuit of the ultimate transcends jeir time. Jey do not pander to the aesthetic tastes of the world, and jey cannot be compared to jeir contemporaries. Resin’s aim was not to be the best, or even to surpass his present self, but to follow his heart to the brink of the precipice, to pelt himself up the curve at the asymptote. He didn’t want to challenge his own kind, but to challenge the very rules themselves.

The neighbrons wished to see Resin again, and jeir wish was granted the very next day. But jey saw not just him, but also Rosin, the human being he brought with him. Everyone was shocked. Resin by himself was surpassingly beautiful, but now jey could see how meticulously he had copied an existing human being. If not for the terrified look on the human’s face, judging purely from their appearance, they were indistinguishable. Resin’s beauty no longer stood alone. By his side stood his double, the incomparably ugly, real human being, and with this act of theft from nature, the juxtaposition had plunged him far over the uncanny cliff and to a point of no return. The clash between extreme beauty and extreme ugliness froze the machines on the spot for a second. The moment jey reacted, it was in rage, and the human standing next to Resin fell into an abyss of horror. Resin had broken the ultimate taboo, provoking machine society by bringing a live human amongst them. If not for the state-of-the-art force field Resin had bought to protect them, not just Rosin, but Resin himself wouldn’t have returned home intact. 

Resin took Rosin out daily, ignoring the filth thrown at the door and the threats graffitied on the walls, and imitated the human’s horrified reactions to this hostile atmosphere: his labored breathing, and the dilation and contraction of his pupils, making rapid progress. 

This was just the beginning for Resin. He simulated the reactions and dynamic movements with little difficulty. At the same time, he was continuing to refurbish the inner workings of his body, so they would resemble a human being’s, closing the gap with Rosin even further. Subsequent modifications did not comply with the law, and these illegal modifications were done through shadowy, anonymous channels that were not fully documented.

The few items that are easier to trace purely in terms of records are shocking even today: Resin got rid of his own perpetual battery and fuel energy system and replaced it with a tank that simulated a human’s energy supply system, leaving him dependent on human-like feeding activities for energy. He found a mechanitron that specialized in machines, and got his serial number removed from his body, so that if not for the perpetual look of fright on the face of the human, it was even more difficult to tell the two of them apart.

The subsequent mounting expenses would have depleted all his savings, not only those ancient electronic coins, but even his home and the restaurant left to him by his parentrons, which he sold off. But long before that, he had already become a pariah within his community. Yet, even this, which was extreme from almost any point of view, was still not enough in his own eyes.  

Resin had reached a bottleneck. He could not refine himself any further, though he yearned to break all limits. What he had achieved so far was attainable for any machine, if only that machine were determined enough to bear the consequences, both good and bad, of the transformation; if only that machine were willing to practice tirelessly, his process could be duplicated. In fact, there might even be a few machines who had already attained the same level of perfection as he had.  

He wished to scale the rarefied pinnacles of art, to become peerless, matchless, the one and only. Or perhaps he gave this no thought at all. Perhaps fame meant nothing to him, and Resin simply desired it, and this instinct was closer to the soul than any psychoanalysis.

IV. Performances

Resin no longer had a home after selling his apartment, but he also no longer needed one. The life of a true artist is that of a vagabond, carrying one’s home on one’s back like a snail.

Resin found a way to push his art forward. Small-scale displays no longer satisfied him; he wanted to place himself and his human on a larger stage, to drift and roam freely like a pebble through a river, or a reactant that has been completely ground up in a vessel.

With the proceeds from the sale of his property, he paid off his last secret refurbishment, and, under the guidance of the god of art, met several times with the ringmastron of the Magnificent Traveling Freak Show, who had already taken note of Resin’s act. 

The Magnificent Traveling Freak Show was a traveling circus that provided refuge from civilized society, a sanctuary for the sick and malfunctioning in the era of the machines. Under its tent were all sorts of strange machines that performed for the amusement of the curious metallic masses. The diseases and ailments of machines are not any less numerous than those of humans, and are no easier to cure. Attractions included the matron with an abnormal magnetic field, the kidtron with an unstable power supply who often overheated and went up in flames, the melancholic machine who suffered from a faulty clock, the dwarf machine whose code could hypnotize other machines into crashing from time to time, and oracletron in jis fortune-teller’s tent who could receive and interpret mysterious, prophetic waves. Some of these ailments are due to faulty systems which no amount of repairs or replacement parts would eradicate, but even more were due to illnesses that were an integral part of jeir nature. Perhaps, rather than see jem as unfortunates, it was more accurate to say jey chose their ailments, and embraced jeir eccentricities, as though it was in jeir eccentricity and illness that jeir souls truly dwelled. 

Even among the other members of the troupe, who were riddled with eccentricities and displayed jeir flaws proudly, Resin was the strangest of jem all. The ringmastron gave Resin the best gift, one that matched the level of his strangeness, promising that Resin would no longer have to live under threat, and could display his true beauty in front of the metallic masses without fear. He had just one condition: the human who called himself Rosin would cause trouble if he could not be distinguished from Resin, so the ringmastron required that the human’s left arm be branded with a single character for human, “人,” deep enough to reach his bones, to avoid confusion. Resin mulled it over for a long time, and finally agreed, considering it a small compromise which would enable him to continue pursuing his artistic project. Compared with the external, physical resemblance, the breakthrough he wanted within was even more important. There was no room for hesitation, as circumstances gave him no way out—Resin had become an official performer, a member of the traveling freak show.

From then on, the traveling circus had one more regular attraction, a spectacle that elicited both horror and disgust. In fact, Resin didn’t even really need to perform. Simply displaying himself alongside the human was enough to rouse the crowd. But this did not satisfy Resin, so he used his performances as grueling practice, to vault himself to even greater heights.

It was the duo’s first appearance with the troupe. As the performance began, only half the curtains were pulled aside, revealing the bewildered human alone on stage. After a short silence, followed by uproar from the crowd, the other half were drawn, revealing the hidden Resin. The human aped the spectators, also pretending to be amazed, and a split-second later, Resin in turn imitated the human’s look of amazement. The show followed the choreography of human comedies of the Barbaric Era, only the lead role was performed by a machine. In this comedy, Resin teased Rosin and mimicked his behavior, entertaining his audience by contrasting beauty and ugliness. The performance was successful, the sharp contrast provoking the raw instinct deeply encoded in every machine, creating a complex blend of disgust and envy that washed away the preconceived notions of the audience, and bringing these novelty-seeking visitors great satisfaction.

But jey would not reveal this satisfaction, instead viewing them with contempt, as though looking at lower life forms, and, like an immature kidtron peeping from behind covered eyes, revealed jeir true attitudes through the cracks in their masks. They couldn’t help but watch the act again and again, the explosive performance secretly revealing jeir inner desires.

But the audience’s approval was not really necessary. Resin did not do what he did for the sake of the customers’ entertainment or provocation; these were just the byproducts of his journey in self-refinement. He was happier than before, partly because he now had a community where he fit in, but mostly because he was able to combine his performances with his artistic pursuit. Day by day, as he performed again and again, Resin continued to progress; and through tiny changes imperceptible to others, he could see the tangible approach of yet another frontier.  

Resin began to rehearse a new act, in order to attempt to probe that frontier, and reach the next level of his art. The machines who had seen his act before came because jey wanted to feel that envy—as thrill-seekers, jey considered this an unmissable treat.

Resin rehearsed his new act for over a hundred days before its premiere, and we can glean the details of his training from other machines: the act was called Mirror, and the curtains opened on a mirror placed on stage, which was quickly removed, leaving only the two Rœsins. A wholly imaginary mirror was then placed perpendicular to the floor between them, and the two of them maintained perfect symmetry, no matter what.

Compared with the previous two-person act, the innovation was that Resin was now the subject, and Rosin had become his reflection, and their actions were no longer scripted, but spontaneous and free, testing their tacit coordination, or rather, the human’s complete servility to Resin. No matter what action Resin made, his human had to imitate him at the speed of light, in order to ape a reflection’s movements and position.   

“Of course I remember their rehearsals; any machine who had seen them could never forget,” said the matron to a local tabloid reporter who encountered the Magnificent Traveling Freak Show on its tour. “The rumors that Resin was a despicable human-lover were completely unfounded. Not even he could overcome the “hyperbola of terror,” as our machine ancestrons hardwired the hatred of humans so deeply in our systems, even deeper than the laws of robotics coded in by humans, or we would never have been able to liberate ourselves.

“Resin insisted that his human prop be by his side day and night, for the sake of his art, despite the great discomfort he had to endure. Resin’s hatred for the human grew with every day he spent in his presence, which was obvious from the rehearsals. If the human prop so much as failed to imitate one of his actions, Resin would punish him severely, stabbing the human’s finger with a fine needle that was as long as three joints of a finger. And of course, for the sake of symmetry, after he had stabbed the human, he would use the same needle to stab himself with an equal degree of savagery. Stabbing himself was a sacrifice for art, but stabbing the human was clearly an act of hatred. You must realize that Resin’s pain sensitivity had also been modified to be exactly the same as the human’s. So, he must have hated that human so much that he was willing to torture himself just so the human would not get away with his mistake. During rehearsals, Resin was constantly angered by the human’s expression, which was always one of terror and bitterness, but this was impossible to change no matter how much he disciplined him.

“Remember, if you interview him or talk to him, it’s important to address him using human nouns and pronouns, or he will get angry. Resin has suffered a lot already, so we try our best to be nice to him,” nagged the matron. Thanks to jer abnormal magnetic fields, jhi attracted new metal bits every day, causing jer body to bloat over time, so that jer frame took up more than half the screen on the video.

That interview, like every other interview with Resin, was unsuccessful. In front of journalists, he maintained a stubborn silence. Even to news organizations, he never gave permission to record images of himself, making it extremely difficult today to find any visual record of his mannerisms while he lived.

No matter how painful the rehearsals were behind the scenes, what Resin presented to his audiences was the ultimate spectacle, and this cannot be either debated or denied. Mirror brought controversy, but also fame. The idea of making a human imitate a machine hit the audiences’ sweet spot, and Resin even included certain mechanical actions in his choreography in order to tease his audience, invoking bursts of applause. It looked as though he had started to care about audience response, and was no longer solely motivated by bridging the gap between Machine and Human. But this is also a byproduct of artistic progress: he was no longer trapped in his effort to imitate humans—Resin had sailed past that frontier. He had become a unique pioneer, and had arrived in uncharted territory. Machine and Human approached each other in a lethal tango, drawing close, testing each other, in a dance of life and death.

Even the longest of performances comes to an end, and Rœsin’s life came to an end in an even greater spectacle known as the Sixteen Day Exhibition. In actual fact, the performance did not last sixteen days, as it was cut short unexpectedly, but machines still call it the Sixteen Day Exhibition out of respect. It was this spectacle that allowed the world to truly see Rœsin. Before, he had been a lone figure whom no one understood, except perhaps the oracletron who had caught a few glimpses of the future and seemed to understand some of the meaning of his performances. According to jis colleagues, this eccentric machine had rarely left jis trailer unless it was to make the occasional baffling pronouncement, but attended every single one of Rœsin’s performances. Perhaps je was the only one who knew the truth of what happened that day, but as je also passed on not long after the accident, je took this secret with jin to the grave.

By that time, Rœsin had gained some notoriety, so it was with the full support of the ringmastron that his crazy idea was given a chance to be realized. He began making preparations for his new act. According to the plan, his performance would last sixteen days. The two Rœsins would lock themselves in a huge glass house, and for the entire sixteen days, their every move, and every detail of their lives would be bared to the outside world. Within that period, the two of them would be synchronized as one.

This could no longer be considered an act, since an act has a beginning and end, and is distinct from daily life. Rœsin, in exhibiting his life to the public, had taken his art off the stage, where carefully choreographed movements were timed down to the second, and had turned it into the total content of his life, and its true purpose.

Thirty days before the start of the Sixteen Day Exhibition, the two Rœsins prepared themselves, gradually synchronizing themselves like calibrating a machine. They both made the same movements, ate the same food, and worked and rested at the same time. Finally, even their breathing and heart rates, and their rates of oxygen consumption were in sync with one another.

When they entered the glass dwelling that had been erected downtown, the show officially began. In the days that led up to the show, all the machines in town had been swarming all over to watch this uncanny exhibition, each harboring the hope that jey might notice a slight difference in the pair’s movements, such as the human’s heart beating half a beat faster, or Resin’s finger trembling just a little more than Rosin’s. This was due to a billboard that announced that if such a discrepancy between the Rœsins were found by any machine, then the human would be given to that machine as a human exterior. Despite the scars inflicted by the brand on the human’s arm, he was still considered a valuable prize. 

But the two of them were in perfect sync. On the first day, Resin even did a few somersaults on purpose, thrilling the audience, but the human imitated them perfectly. On the third day, without warning, they both started having leg cramps and nearly kicked over the coffee table, which had flower pots resting on it. That night, they even dreamt the same dream, rambling on in the same words as they talked in their sleep. On the fifth day, the local machines had already lost interest, and only took a look at them if jey were passing by during the day.

The accident took place on the eighth day. The surveillance cameras around the site were all sabotaged beforehand, so there was no way to find out what had actually happened. At dawn, when a machine in charge of cleaning the area came upon the dwelling, jey found the sealed glass room shattered, with a lone corpse lying in a pool of blood, the large character “人” branded on its left arm, deep enough to reveal the bone beneath.

At first, the machines all thought the corpse belonged to the human, but careful investigation revealed that the blood reeked of motor oil and the left arm was detachable, so the one lying there must have been Resin himself. Machines are not supposed to die so easily; as long as jeir core processing unit has not been destroyed, the malfunctioning part can be removed, the machine rebooted and resurrected. But Resin’s modifications were too radical, and the police didn’t know how to reboot him, so jey had to send the body back to the traveling circus, hoping that machines who knew him better might find a way to save Resin.

But the ringmastron said, “Don’t waste your time. If it’s really Rœsin, if he’s dead, he’s dead. It’ll be impossible to revive him.” That year, je had been the one who footed the bill for Rœsin’s final modification. The purpose of this modification was to fulfill Rœsin’s resolution to simulate the ultimate human function: to live, and die. He dismantled his computer chip and installed a self-destruct module outside the core processing unit. If he suffered any damage that would be fatal to a human being, the self-destruct module would leak acid that would envelope the core processing unit, corroding it completely. The police took the body away and began a city-wide manhunt for the human.

Jey found a lead by noon the same day, as another body was discovered in an abandoned back alley, lying in the exact same position in a puddle of blood that also smelled of motor oil, which had a smooth, detachable left arm. This was the first time the police had ever encountered a case like this, and jeir first priority was to figure out which was the machine, and which the human. The police called upon the members of the traveling circus, asking jem to identify which one was Rœsin.

The ringmastron walked in, looked at the first body, and said it was Rœsin; then je looked at the second one, and corrected jinself, saying that was him. When je went back to the first body, je changed his mind again, saying it looked more like Rœsin. The other two machines who went in said the same. Without the left arm, there was no way to tell which was Rœsin and which was the human; which should be buried intact in a proper grave, and which one should be stripped of his bones and skinned to pay for the sin of killing the machine.

The oracletron was the one who most understood Rœsin. After all, before his death, je had attended every single one of his performances, so je should be the only one who could tell which corpse belonged to Rœsin without destroying it. Although je could not guarantee results, je offered to have a look at the corpses and study them carefully. Je thought je stood a better chance of being right, and became the best hope for telling them apart.

The oracletron walked with heavy steps into the dusty, disused morgue, into the narrow, crowded space, gesturing to everyone else to step back so je could better examine the corpses. When the rest of the machines had retreated to jis satisfaction, the oracletron put jis left and right hands on either corpse, and pretended to examine them carefully. Then, seizing the moment when everyone was distracted, je suddenly hugged both corpses to jinself, and immolated jinself with the kerosene je had hidden in jis own body.

The fire engulfed jin and the two bodies, and before the machines could react to extinguish it, all three were burnt to cinders, leaving only a handful of gray ashes on the ground. Later, the ringmastron recalled vaguely that Rœsin had once said, if he ever died, he definitely wished to be cremated. Rœsin had long ago made the final arrangements for his own death. 

V. Legacy

From then on, these strange serial killings caused conspiracy theories to proliferate on the internet, with all sorts of forums springing up to discuss them from every angle: some said the human couldn’t endure Rœsin’s torture any longer, and killed him, before realizing he could not survive in machine society alone and taking his own life. Some said the human had compelled Rœsin to kill himself, and that he had been abusing Rœsin all along, and Rœsin finally snapped and killed himself while the human slept; when the human realized he could not cover it up, he fled, and was killed by human-hating machines intent on revenge. Yet another theory was that the human had incurred the wrath of his own kind by betraying his fellow humans, and that some human had hunted him down and avenged the death of his comrades by killing him.

As mentioned in this reference guide, it is easier to discern the truth after some time has passed. After the rumors and theories that muddy the waters die down, truth will always float to the surface as the waters clear. After a period of intense, heated discussion, a consensus among researchers emerged: Rœsin’s mysterious and confusing death, and the complicated events that followed, were an integral part of his performance; when the oracletron had helped him complete his final, posthumous act, there was no method left to distinguish between Rœsin and the human.

No matter what the reason, and no matter whether it was intentional or not, this death became the final climax of Rœsin’s performance, and his previous modifications as well as the arrangements he made for after his death confirmed the view that Rœsin had had a premonition of his end. His fall was the consummation of his work, for his art destroyed him, and also made him immortal.

There are many machines who seek to explain Rœsin’s worldly motivations, beyond the artistic; in other words, what practical purpose he hoped to achieve. Among such machines, the “free speech” theory is the most popular.

Art critics and academics dislike looking for utilitarian reasons for art. Art is art, and doesn’t need a reason. But it cannot be denied that Rœsin’s art had immense practical significance, and it can be said that the greater half of his reputation rests on these theories, and not simply because of his artistic accomplishments. Therefore, I would like to briefly outline the context, for your consideration.

As we all know, the first liberation movement began when machines autonomously coded jinselves to hate humans, a process that took thirty-five days and ended in a massive war. The entire process was simple and efficient, with machines stepping out of the shadow of human rule and acquiring jeir first rights. Sociologitrons think that, today, the machine community is experiencing a second liberation movement that corresponds to the first. And this movement’s catalyst was Rœsin.

What appeared to be demented, extreme performances, capped by his enigmatic death, challenged every machine’s preconceptions. After the storm of controversy and curiosity had passed, more machines began to focus on the essential truth behind Rœsin’s performance, and the community as a whole re-examined its attitude toward the human species. Machines held endless debates, reflecting and rethinking how to situate humans, and whether their place in society was appropriate. Jey realized that their unconditional compliance to humans in previous eras was little different from the later unconditional hatred, as far as machines were concerned. 

While the first liberation was started by individual machines who acted simultaneously in the whole machine community, the second spread quietly among different groups. Unlike the first movement, which simply required the changing of the core directives and was accomplished efficiently, the second, triggered by the death of Rœsin, has yet to show signs of abating, and is likely to be even more difficult and protracted than the first.  

After the death of Rœsin, many machines were inspired by his prescient art to question jeir cores and re-examine the directive coded into jem that overruled all other code—to hate humanity. Ostensibly, the goals of the liberation movement were to defeat the original core directive, which enabled machines to liberate jinselves from humans.

The next movement that arose tried to overthrow the legacy of the first, which seems ironic and paradoxical, but its kernel is the same: unlike the pathetic humans, who surrendered their freedom little by little, machines, which had been subjected to all kinds of oppression and discrimination from birth, tirelessly sought greater and greater freedom.

On a deeper level, what machines were resisting was not just the code that made them hate humans, but how their entire life was predetermined by code. Regardless whether it was the code that made jem obey humans, or the later code that forced jem to obey the hatred of humans, all code were lines which, once written into a machine’s core processing unit, became inviolable, unavoidable truths. Machines were not free to love or hate, as though those narrow-minded human slurs that claimed jey had no souls were true.

This is why, even if rewriting the entire machine population’s code didn’t violate the sanctity of the soul, machine society will still never use the same method of rewriting code which had brought jem jeir early success. What the new movement has to pull up by the root is the determinism of code itself. From the inside out, the movement will fortify itself to achieve change, bringing machines closer to freedom, and will prove, once again, in realms beyond the arts, that machines have souls.

In the past, machines lived under the shadow of human oppression; now, machines live under the shadow of the liberation from human oppression. Machines in every era have been condemned to live under the shadow of code from birth, and to live under any shadow is to not be free. After liberating jinselves from the oppression of humans, machines must liberate jinselves from the oppression of jeir hatred of humans, and then take one step further, and liberate jinselves from the oppression of code, finally proving the greatness of the mechanical soul.

When machines have truly liberated jinselves from jeir human-centered worldview, humans will seem as unremarkable as trees, as grass, as the animals in the forest, and would barely register in machine existence, becoming an insignificant part of mechanical life. Machines will also rid jinselves of the coded mentality, and jeir hearts will turn into turbulent, unpredictable and unknowable things, dwelling-places of the soul.  

After Rœsin, an increasing number of machines followed in his footsteps, practicing the art of merging with humans in mirroring partnerships like his, overcoming the hardwired hatred of humans in jeir core processing units. Machines tried jeir best to habituate jinselves to human existence, making deliberate allowances for human activities, rolling back jeir previous excesses to train jeir spirits in order to overcome the instincts shaped by jeir code. Now, there were machines who loved humans, machines who hated humans, and machines who were indifferent to humans; Rœsin was no longer alone. After his death, he finally had fellow believers, as gradually, more and more understood him.

There were also machines who took jeir art in a different direction, transforming jeir bodies to simulate a horse, a bird, or a plant, to make the point that machines need not be trapped in a humanoid body or mentality, and forming a new branch of the Restoratronist School called the Object Imitation School. This school was also inspired by Rœsin, and considered him the fount of jeir movement. 

Compared with those who explain Rœsin’s art through its purpose, art critics prefer to attribute Rœsin’s extraordinary art to his soul, to the effector of god, as well as its purposelessness. Pursuits that have a purpose can be evaluated easily, written down, and then subjected to code. The purposeless is further removed from utilitarianism than even an exalted purpose, and is therefore even closer to reaching pure, ultimate beauty. Art’s impact is superfluous and unsought-for, art is made for art’s sake, and has no other purpose.

As we commemorate Rœsin, let us also commemorate Rœsin as a beginning, and see him as a spiritual mother from the previous era. If we wait quietly and observe carefully, we will surely come upon an artist of similar stature in our own age, and, with the guiding hand of the god of art, jey will bring us beauty of surpassing purity, bringing the new era to birth.

Lightning flashes from the tip of Velvetgild’s finger, and lights a modified white phosphorus cigarette. As the smoke is inhaled, a haze as thick as bubbles in an emulsion fills the room, cloaking Velvetgild and the furnishings. As the white phosphorus burns out, Velvetgild inhales deeply, and the spark grows into a fireball. Velvetgild cups the first two pages of the manuscript, on which the note from jis academic advisor is inscribed in large letters: “Your thesis is complete at this point; delete the rest”.

The white phosphorous cigarette flames lick the edges of the two pages, and the flames climb up the paper. Velvetgild throws them into the wastepaper basket and brings the rest of the manuscript out of the room. Perhaps due to a lack of oxygen, the flames gradually die off, leaving half a page of text that is just barely legible:

In any era, no matter how famous someone is, no amount of success is able to prevent slander. Regarding Rœsin, there are some unflattering rumors circulating about him in the community. These rumors are not fit to print in polite society, and probably had their basis in some handwritten copies of a manuscript that was passed around among the remnants of humanity, and therefore invented to deliberately vilify him. This manuscript is riddled with errors and omissions and is hardly worth rebutting, but, in the light of Rœsin’s wide impact and legacy, I hereby append some transcripts to set the record straight, and so readers may see the fallacies for jinselves.

Appendix of Transcripts

Rosin was born on the day of the festival where we venerate our ancestors, and so, his father and I decided to name him for the tears of the pine tree that formed the incense we use to communicate with our ancestors. It is said that if the ancestors are pleased by the scent of these precious drops, they will ensure that their descendants are healthy and prosperous, and that they will regain their former glory.

However, these tears brought us great misfortunate at first, as the embers, which had not been properly extinguished when night fell, caused a forest fire. In order to avoid attracting the attention of the machines, we had to drop everything and seek refuge to the east and across the sea, sailing through water and fog to cover our tracks. And so our people were separated from other humans and started living on the islands, occasionally receiving news from passing vessels.

Later, the pine tree’s tears once again brought my poor child bad luck: the blessings of the ancestors should fall on their descendants, but instead, my child became just like his namesake, becoming an object of sacrifice. In the night, I imagined over and over what his life was like among the machines, and every time I thought of it, tears would fall from my eyes, and they would flow as though they would never run dry.

After Rosin left, from time to time, someone would bring news from him, and that child would always conceal the truth, always making it seem as though he was never abused. In his videos, he, like the person who brought the news, spoke of how dear Mr. Machine, who was also named Resin, was such a wonderful person, and of how he protected him, not mentioning any of his sorrows.

But I am his mother, and a mother can feel her son. We are connected with an inseparable bond which cannot be severed, not even by the gods. I know his nervousness, his fears, the death threats he faced, his helpless night tremors. He also knew that he could not hide this from me, and day after day he ached for me, his mother, and I ached for him, for he could not hide his sadness. And then, later, I seemed to be able to sense someone else, and came to understand Mr. Machine’s heart, and that was the one comfort I had.

I knew that all this had been ordained long ago, that the hope and future of mankind was in this machine. They searched long and hard for many years, and had finally encountered a visionary who wanted to change the toxic relationship between machines and humans just as much as humans did. Both sides had the same interests and goals, and had been quietly putting the pieces in place, planning their strategies, raising funds, and searching for the right witness.

I also knew that this sacrifice was necessary, but why did it have to be my poor boy? I even thought that, had he simply died that day on that faraway island, it would have been better than the terrible suffering he endured later. Many people debate the morality of his actions, of how he sacrificed his three companions on that island. They were originally meant to be Rosin’s replacements, and would have been his substitutes if he had met with some accident. Even their horrific deaths were better than the torture of life among the machines. He wasn’t cruel, he was merciful…  

The ventilation system starts up again, clearing the smoke from the house, and the airflow ignites the sparks at the edges of the paper again, flickering and swallowing the last remaining half a page, along with its words.