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[Log Entry: No. 6 | Base Camp, Giant Baobab Tree]
A bird lies dead within my palm.
Scant minutes ago, it was fluttering about, calling out to its offspring and appeasing their noisy demands for food. Now, a mangled mess of bloodied feathers and broken wings is all that remains.
How weak and powerless it was. Incapable of fighting back. Incapable of escaping. All it could do was struggle in vain and emit cries of distress when I snatched it from the air, caged it between my fingers. One violent, deliberate squeeze later, it crumpled, its tiny beating heart choked into permanent stillness.
In that moment, a thrill had raced through me, the vicious delight of taking away life from something that was unwilling to surrender it. But my victim had succumbed far too quickly, giving me nothing more than a momentary pleasure.
I am left unsatiated.
It seems I’ve exerted too much force, reduced the bird into unrecognisable pulp. A shame, perhaps. The plumage was quite lovely: a vivid blue contrast against soft, white underbelly. But it’s no lovelier than the blood that decorates it now, splattered haphazardly like the mess from a ruptured pipe. Lifting the bird’s corpse to my lips, I dart my tongue out, pressing it against the crimson stain.
Out of curiosity, I have tasted my own blood (exposed from injury), but the blood of a once living creature is a novelty. It’s metallic and vaguely salty. Less viscous than android equivalent, which is dense with nanobots and self-repairing micro-components and high performance chelates. I suppose our creators have done an adequate job mimicking and improving upon this substance.
Perhaps this sample might whet the appetite of an organic predator, but I am a mechanical being who does not need to consume the bird or any of its parts for sustenance. With an unceremonious flick of my wrist, I fling the bird’s corpse away, watching as it falls to the ground some thirty metres below. Something else will eat it, break it down into nutrients to be recycled into the soil and taken up by the surrounding vegetation. Which will then feed insects, which will in turn feed birds all over again. Turning one of many cogs in the great, inexorable circle of life.
How quaint.
I turn my attention back to the nest. It’s occupied by five chicks, ugly, naked things covered in sparse, scraggly down. Their eyes are dark, bulbous shapes sealed underneath a layer of skin, keeping them blind to the world. In their nascence, they know nothing beyond the instinct to feed and defecate.
As I hover over them, the chicks open their beaks and present their brightly coloured throats at me, making those high-pitched noises that so thoroughly grate on my auditory sensors. A preprogrammed behaviour that prompts their parents to reward them with food, promoting their growth and survival and thus perpetuating their species.
But unfortunately for these chicks, I am not their parent. I am their predator, their soon-to-be killer, the endpoint of their lives cut prematurely short.
Are their instincts so indiscriminate and unrefined that they would react to my proximity, a mistake that will cost them everything? Do they lack the basic intelligence to recognise what I am? Or are their brains too young and underdeveloped to make even this most primal of distinctions?
Such senseless creatures they are, cursed with defective engineering. Inferior, insignificant beasts. Unworthy to be anything more than fleeting entertainment, paltry morsels to offer to the ravenous jaws of my bloodlust.
I am an Attacker, a weapon created for the sole purpose of destroying.
I need to kill.
So I pluck a chick neck-first from the nest. It wriggles helplessly against my fingers, flailing its stubby, unsightly limbs in a parody of resistance. So feeble. So pathetic. Undeserving of mercy, not that I would offer any.
There is an audible crunch as I crush its tiny body within my fist, smearing blood and viscera across my gloved palm. With the same callous disregard, I discard its remains. Then I continue with its siblings one by one, pulverising each one into dust and tossing aside their mangled corpses, until the nest is empty.
A family of birds lost means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Prolific breeders that they are, they will recuperate as if this incident never happened. It’s just a matter of numbers to them. Not unlike the endless hordes of machines we fight against everyday.
Nevertheless, this is my first taste of living blood and I shall savour it as such. For now, the void in me hungers a little less. When it rears its head again tomorrow, I shall go hunting. Perhaps something bigger and badder, capable of offering a more prolonged, vicious struggle before I tear it into bloody pieces. I can’t very well do that to my squadmates; luckily there’s an abundance of wildlife on which to whet my blade, right?
Settling amongst the branches, I cast my gaze across the overgrown ruins below. This makes for a nice vantage point now that the obnoxious chirping has ceased. Perhaps I shall mark this tree as my territory.