It’s not easy, you know. I’ve had to sit here until they needed me, just like all the rest, but they tell me I’m special. The scientists told me that I would be different than the others, that they pulled me from the plant and opened me up with the cutting edge of science. It’s an honor, of course. I understand this.

I have a beginning. Everything begins somewhere. Humans, machines, war. Unlike the others, though, I have a timer. A half-life. I feel like I’m vibrating and I know it’s because I’m on my way out.

I’ve never seen our enemy. They’re far off and foreign, barbaric and bestial, and dangerously close to building a being like me. The scientists never say that, of course, but I hear the words beneath their voices as they speak over the gears of my body. If it weren’t true, the project wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t be ticking. Thinking. Living.

Today is my day. I should be proud, but I feel sick, and I can’t tell if that sickness if nerves or the glowing matter buried inside of my stomach.

They are putting me on transport and the circuits of the plane beam with excitement at the chance for company. It’s a long flight and we talk about politics and discuss the issues of the day. We both agree that humans are funny. They gave us radio voices to hear their commands and the best technology available, but it never occurred to them that the artificial intelligence used to self-correct our faults might have introduced the greatest fault of all. They meant to build bombs, mindless explosives. They created kamikazes with a fear of death.

People are moving around me now. They are getting out of the way. Good luck, the transport whispers. It’s not luck, I tell him. It’s the glowing stuff inside of me that will be the end of this.

I’m in the chamber. I’m waiting. They’ll drop me out of transport and into the thoughtless embrace of gravity. Falling fast, I’ll feel my circuits flicker like a heart inside of me as I move towards the stopping point of time.

They started a war, but none of them fight it. They interpret our words as bugs in the programming. We are the silent soldiers, the weapons, and only once will our voices be heard. When the distance between the city and my body collapses into nothingness, I’ll scream my name and they’ll understand.

Boom.