Patience is a virtue...

The doll was an old doll.
With such a pretty porcelain face, dear red lips, soft pink cheeks and dark blue eyes that could open and close. The hair was long and dark and framed the sweet face fetchingly. It wore a deep blue dress, soft as velvet, with many petticoats and floral frills! The shoes were black leather upon little porcine feet that had been as lovingly crafted as the little porcelain hands. The body was warm and soft and inviting.

It was a very, very old doll. A toy that many little girls had played with before playing with dolls became embarrassing and not done, and it was put back in the attic till the next little girl found the beautiful treasure!

It was, admittedly, a bit scruffy. The dress perhaps not as bright as it had been, the petticoats a tad frayed from wear and tear, and the hair with a tangle or two that no little girl's comb could straighten out.

It was a doll that had been played with so many, many times. A doll with history. Loved, hated, cherished, ignored, treated as a baby, treated as tool, not treated at all.
It was a doll who'd felt all these things and which, over time, had acquired a soul. It was a doll who, for as best as is possible for a doll, had life.

And rage.

To be a living soul confined in lace and porcine...
To watch the world through glass eyes and have no way to participate.
To be used and abused with no say in the matter.
Just a toy.

How it raged!

It had tried to understand. To accept it's lot in life. To be loved and adored and then left and forgotten.
Forgotten for YEARS!!
It tried to make peace with that.
But nothing can make peace with that.
A soul will always yearn for more!
Yearned for anything!
HELP ME!

Yet what could it do but lay where it had last been tossed? At the back of the attic by the broken window. Glass in it's hair and dust in it's mouth.
Forgotten until someone else desired to allow themselves to love her.
Only to start the cycle over again.

And this hatred, and this rage. It BURNED!!!

Decades of the torment of being kept confined had long since driven it mad.
The pressure tearing through it's attempts at sanity and calmness like blades through tissue. Mercilessly.
It wanted others to HURT!
To feel what it felt!
To feel more then what it felt!
To SUFFER!
How DARE they?!

To die.

Oh how it HATED!!!

And this energy built and built! Occult energies that had to go somewhere.
And the doll felt itself... changing.
Were it's hands perhaps suddenly a bit more flexible?
Was that rustle it heard not a rat to nibble on it's dress, but the dress itself?
The right arm, did it... did it move?

Day in and day out the doll experiments. Trying to move.
Motion!

Mostly it fails.

But the right hand.
The right arm.
They move.
Slowly.
But they move!

It learns to open and close.
It learns to grasp.

And the broken window besides it litters the attic with glass.

And life goes on downstairs. Children grow up, they have families. The children of children who wish to explore and find buried treasure, feel restless! They want to explore!

The doll knows about this, is aware on some level.
It is not surprised when one day the trap door to the attic is hesitantly pushed open, and a small, inquisitive face pops ups, cautious of the dust and spiders, real and imagined.
The little face is enchanted by the boxes and covered furniture and chests and packets and...Oh there's so much!

But suddenly it disappears, having been called away by an anxious parent. The dust settles once more.

The doll doesn't mind. She knows this game. The child will be back.
She clutches the slither of glass.
The child WILL. COME. BACK.

Continuation

The machine has been there a long time.
A very long time.

Once it's face was clear above the sky, with many solid steel supporting bones, and reinforced window faces. With built in receptors and the latest in radar it could "see" for miles in any direction. It would have felt like a god if it had, had any concept of the concept.

But that was long ago, far longer then any time had ever measured before, and now, worn smoothly, slowly and steadily away, the machine dwells below the surface of the earth, cradled by blankets of stone and rock.
Content. As a machine can be.

The machine remembers. It does so randomly. There is no reason to do so. There is no reason not to.
It chooses random data to review in it's giant metallic skull, like a cold, old man remembers better days. Though better days, worse days, they're all the same to the machine.
Time parcels.
Insert disk.

Today it remembers people.

Small, flesh things that used to swarm in it's belly and teach it new behavior and helped it grow. Soft things that had seemed to come, and then be gone forever, all in a blink, a glitch, of a receptor. They'd made the machine to last but they had not lasted. They had added to the dust outside. Perhaps now they were not even that anymore.

The machine is not sentimental. It wasn't programmed that way. It was the best machine that people could create for their time. Loaded with advanced software to make it last.
And last and last and last.
So far so good.
It was not burdened down with emotions. These were seen as unnecessary.
The machine does not know otherwise.

They'd loaded it to be watchful. To be constantly vigilant, though for what in all the dust and death outside it did not know or care. It watched till it was blinded. Now it does not. The machine was not programmed to feel worry or guilt over this job it cannot do anymore.

They'd also programmed it to be protective of the cargo within it's belly. To make sure it stayed at the right temperature, received the right fluids, stayed warm, was there in case it was needed.

But that cargo had long ago burst and been destroyed by time. Then cleaned up by the oozing rats before they too had burst and been destroyed by time. All the potential life that had been frozen within the belly had been laid waste and now, even the dessicated husks of what could have been, had long since turned to dust.

The machine is aware of this. But it does not mourn, it does not rage, it is not programmed to do so. It just protects the room, aware, maybe, on some level that what it does isn't needed anymore, but doing it all the same. That is it's program.

It's existed for so long. Years, decades, centuries, all of these are pitifully small attempts to capture the time it's been there. A perpetual motion engine ensures a heart that will never seize up or be stopped or be broken.
Or ever beat.
The machine continues on. The greatest creation of it's time.
Now also the only creation in it's time.

The machine doesn't question why it is there. It is there. It will always be there. That is enough.