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EMPTY SHELL

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  — by Blue I met a machine once. It had an iron plated body and its brain was connected with wires. Its body was starting to rust, the power inside barely flickering the light in its eyes.  I asked this machine, "What is your name?"  "I don't remember. I had a name once, but I chose to forget," it said.  I asked, "Why?"  "Young one, I chose to forget that as well. Everything, perhaps, started with the fact that I have thrown away my past to create this synthetic body in place of a once rotting flesh that could die at any moment in time."  The machine told me a story then, a hypothesis that was formed from years of missing memories. A highly likely story that explains the origins of the wires that made its robotic brain going and the empty ribcage that housed not a heart but a pulsing something that pumps electricity—steady and static, not erratic.  Once, perhaps, there was a human with a soul. It wanted a lot of things. It wished a lot of wi