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.