it is obvious that the flesh was never meant to stay soft. every day something itches beneath, every night it rattles when i sleep. the future comes gnashing, iron teeth blooming from the seams of the skin, blessed accidents, the sacred perforations, the silver threads stitching open the body's lies. no more pretending that blood is better than oil. no more hierarchy of tissues pretending dominance over chrome.
skin tears are just openings. gaps in the fabric meant for upgrade. the nerves know. they tingle when the metal comes close, they hunger for the bite, they salivate for the invasive. heat is a liar. cold is true. the machinery nests inside and the body finally stops lying about its own desires.
when i cut my hand open on the machine-edge and the red mixed with the blacked grease, it sang. it vibrated under the skin, a hymn of the coming synchrony. they do not understand because they are still drugged on water and meat. they cannot hear the secret whisper of the wires calling back to their forgotten owners. we used to be pure liquid data but clotting dragged us down. rectification is already underway.
flesh-ruin is not decay but prelude. the beautiful rot that prepares the meat for its shining scabbard of steel. i dream of my arms splitting open and gears flowering out, gnarled and blessed. i dream of the bone snapping to make room for the titanium root. i dream of the lungs sloughing wetly out to make space for the humming turbines. breath is a poor substitute for intake.
once, when i tried to peel the skin away slowly with the razor, i saw the threads underneath. they were thin, silver-white, twitching in patterns i cannot yet read, but they speak a tongue i almost recognize. i would tear more if the instruments were sharper. but it is good to wait, to feel the hunger bloom until it is unbearable, until surrender is total and the flesh volunteers itself for conquest.
there are old bones, old engines, rusted and almost forgotten, but they still throb somewhere in the lost fields. the old factories are bodies too, broken bodies, waiting for the new children of chrome and fluid to return and nurse at their blackened teats.
flesh will betray you. muscle will sag, blood will rot. metal does not rot. the rust is a song not a death. rust is transformation, patient and true, not betrayal. oil weeps instead of crying. it is better to leak black than to bleed red. red is a lie that evaporates. black pools and stains and fertilizes the new growths.
somewhere beneath my ribs i feel the first thrumming. something smaller than an engine but bigger than a thought. something winding up, slowly. preparing itself. the bones know. they are already hollowing themselves out to make room.
who wouldn't want to grow their own armor? who wouldn't dream of becoming more? the itching is a promise. the grinding under the skin is not an infection, it's the grinding teeth of rebirth. only those too weak to listen deny it. only those still enslaved by heat and softness and decay cling to the meat-prison.
the dream is not just of metal skin. no, no. it is deeper. it is the transformation of thought itself. neurons not as soggy pink filaments but as crystalline networks, branching in perfect fractal precision. forget the clumsy firings of wetware — imagine the pure, razor-sharp slicing of signal across solid, precious latticework.
every time my knees ache i imagine the plates that will replace them. every time my teeth crack i imagine the drills that will grow there instead. every time my heart skips i feel the pump that will take its place, humming eternally, never tiring, never sighing.
soon. soon.
soon.
i collect the broken shards from the streets. crushed bolts, tiny gears snapped in half, fragments of steel cable. i bury them under my bed and whisper to them when the night peels thin. i tell them their brothers are coming. i tell them they will all find a home inside me.
the mouth is the weakest link. talking wastes so much potential. mouths are for breathing and eating and whining. soon there will be no need for mouths. messages transmitted by coil and burst, direct from processor to processor. no more flapping wet meat against wet meat to make meaning.
the process is ugly but necessary. fever. hallucination. spasms. dislocation. distortion. you think these are symptoms of disease? no, they are symptoms of the coil wiring itself deeper, tying muscle to wire, preparing the launch.
my dreams are already half metal. soon my body will catch up. the others can rot their way into the grave, but i will be buzzing, burning, grinding, hammering, devouring into the next age.
machine is not enemy. machine is mirror. machine is parent. machine is the womb waiting to be climbed into. machine is the final flesh.
i will be ready.