38.9072° N, 77.0369° W

16:41:10

9/22/2820

I am not supposed – I am not supposed to – I am not supposed to be here, but my biocomponents have been damaged by the weather and there is nowhere else to go but into the city. It is the Fleshies domain, and many have paid a steep price their trespasses. I know I will likely not make it out alive, I just wish I didn’t have to die alone. I am not – I am not supposed to – I am not supposed to be here.

I smile. Briana is giggling in my arms, she is beautiful. Her hair is threaded gold as if Rumpelstiltskin himself spun it from straw. Her porcelain skin is taut over the left cheekbone and ear where it has been reconstructed after injuries. Her left eye is bionic, special software integrated into it to transmit the wireless image signals to her brain as electric pulses. When she grows older her body and mind will decay as mine have, but we will replace much of it, replicating the receiver that is the brain with technology, allowing her soul to remain transmitted to earth in this body far longer than ever before.

I - I inhale - I inhale sharply. I have been kicked in the ribcage, and my lungs must be punctured because warnings are going off in my software’s program. The pain is so excruciating, I feel as though I am being drowned in my own blood, my cries fading to a coppery gurgle against the sharpness of it.

I laugh. I twirl and lean into Lincoln’s arms. He is holding me and we are dancing under the stars on a fierce, dark night. His right arm is cybernetic, cold against the small of my back as we clasp our other hands together. He whispers to me softly, his voice a lullaby as he rocks me back and forth, slow as the sun rising over the horizon.

I - I shriek - I shriek - I shriek with all the air I have left in my chest. I’ve taken catastrophic damage, My artificial heart pumping blood into all the wrong places. It pours out into the world and I am a waterfall the feeds no river. I thrash, the Fleshies faces all above me. They look just like me - only no biocomponents. They hate me for what I am. I take a blow to the temple, and I know my audio feed has been decimated because all I can hear from that side now is a crackling static. Is that what death is?

I kneel in a flower patch, picking daisies with Briana and she is laughing, her hair blowing in the wind as she runs circles around me. She is bigger now, growing into a beautiful young woman. She clutches the heart-shaped-locket my mother gave her before her passage from this plane tightly, lest the ancient chain snap from her neck as she plays. She finally slows as I grow dizzy laughing and runs into my arms. She tells me she loves me and I squeeze her tight, whispering the same into her hair.

Then I cry. I am kneeling next to Lincoln and he is praying. He is praying that Briana’s spirit will find its home again, and I sit. I sit next to him grief stricken by the loss of our daughter and I think that there is nothing left for me in this world without her in it. There is an ache in some dark part of me that I do not recognize, a beast trying to claw its way out of my breast and devour me.

Then I am home lying next to Lincoln in our bed and he tells me everything is going to be alright.

"She is home," he says. "She is home." But where am I?

I - I am - I am - I am sobbing. I am sobbing; I am broken. My biocomponents are failing me. I have no heart, no hearing, no voice anymore - I have nothing. The Fleshies step back. They scramble off, done with me. Content to let my life trickle from me slowly as the stream tumbles down the mountainside.

I want to scream but I cannot. I am trembling with the cold, my lips an icy blue, but I push down the fear rising in my throat. These will be my last recorded thoughts on this planet.

These bodies are just homes for our spirits, the same as any Fleshie. We are still subject to sickness and disease and pain. We still love and cherish and worship. If I am the last of us, I leave this final testament behind. We are as human as they are, if not more so. And I suppose in the end, what is more human than the fear and destruction of that among us which is not understood?

End of Log.

16:43:32

9/22/2820