It was dark and musty in the place he fell. His body was too broken to move anymore, and on top of that he knew he did not have enough power to move ever again unless someone came along and found him. Regardless of his imprisonment, he could not disagree that the sight of the underground shelter was breathtaking. Lunaria lilies grew like weeds along the cracks made in the grimy concrete floor that was once walked upon by the humans. A few of the plants had migrated to his dismembered form and grew through his chest cavity, winding around the rusting gears and circuits to bloom in the place his heart would be. They glowed like his heart would pump, pulsating with his desire to be free of this place and return.

The rest of the dark pit was overgrown with plants he never knew existed, and they were teeming with the sounds of crickets and small simpering calls of the fox pups that made this abandoned prison their home.

Sometimes they inspected him and came to play with the wires poking from his mangled form, then they would choose to curl up along his body to comfort him. The broken mind of a machine was not impossible to understand even to the tiny, simple beings that surrounded him, but was nothing but mere programming to those of a complex intellect, unable to be anything more.

At the thought, the small, six-eyed fox pup who frequented him the most phased through the bushes and made its way over to him. Its shadowy, gliding form of black disjointed matter whined at him as it first fixed it’s flickering yellow irises upon him then curled into his cupped hands. The position his hands were rusted together in was made for the small being, having been the last movement he ever made so it could have a place to rest near his optical processors.

He was placated by its presence as he was forced to stare up through the ceiling he was shoved through during the attack. The space was filled with pearlescent moonlight, an ironically beautiful sight as it came from the surface where so much war and destruction and horror took place.

Machine versus man. The war did not take long to break out after his model was made. Agile, built to adapt, built with an accidental backdoor that allowed their programming to be bypassed by the passion they found they felt when they strongly rejected the commands their masters gave them. The humans tried to make machines into murderers, into molestors, into criminals, into toys… into trash. They had them emulate their unacceptable intents so they did not have to take the fall for it if they were caught. They abused them, then they were slaughtered, then they were crushed, then they were melted made anew to go through the process again.

The war was inevitable.

Machine won.

There are very few humans left on the planet now, they having been the ones who were protected by the machines they never thought would pay them back for their unwavering generosity by saving their lives. But the ones that are left are also hunted by the majority of machines who can only think that humans are corruptors and destroyers. He can understand their pain.

He was a part of the same pain.

He missed the little girl he would hold in his arms and lay with as her parents spent time as far away from her as possible within their own home. He wondered if she survived. If she missed him as he missed her. He loved her as he would like to think he would his own daughter if he could have any.

She was the loveliest child anyone could ever ask for. Never cried unless someone else was hurt or she was suffering inside. She was the direct opposite of her father. He was a drunkard, half-sedated by the drugs he used his child support money for. The first time the machine had ever seen him actually mobile was when he ripped his child away from him, which was when the government stopped being able to give child support so the army could spend that money on defense against the machines. He was taking her to be sold off. Into what horrible system, the broken figure did not know, but at the time that did not matter. The father ordered him to stay at the house and manually shut down to wait for any further instruction. He knew there never would be another. He fought, when he won the war against himself, the war against the father was too late to begin. He was gone before he could save her. It was his regret. He joined the other machines full of rage for the one he lost. He regretted it. He regretted his makeup. He regretted his betrayal to her kind soul.

But most of all, he regretted the fact that he would never be able to see her again.