Vampire Who Fails Voight-Kampff Test

"Come on, don't be so morose," said the vampire to Robocop. "I'm sure that all you need to do is focus and--"

"The last thing I need to do is focus," he told the vampire. "Do you know what it is like, to be a machine? Purely a machine, and not anything else?" 

"I don't like it when you talk in those terms," stated the vampire. "I am a being of life beyond life, and lives beyond lives, and I see the same thing with you, Murphy. This is why I have come to commune with you in your solace. To see if there may be an opportunity for us together." 

His side armament flared for a second but he brought it back under control. "Don't call me Murphy," he told the vampire. "You know that was an 80s satirical 'laff', making fun of corporations and the establishment in general, right? It was sly, and they harped on a lot about how Murphy was this tragic victim that was turned into a machine by assholes." 

"It was GOOD!" claimed the vampire spreading its arms, to show how good it had been. "All my children loved Robocop from the 80s!

Don't you feel like those assholes have turned you into a machine too?" sang the vampire, whose voice was as though silk and cushions were passing your reclined and relaxed pose. "Let me place this down now," it said, carefully lowering an old candle between them, and lighting it with a quiet snap of fingers. "This is the oldest candle in the universe," said the vampire, "which I have now lit between the two of us."




He computed the mess that must be peoples' brains for loving things from childhood and did a cross analysis with the sort of 'easy-fit' mantra that seemed to be contemporary corporate America's response to the horrible slimy tongues and teeth it was faced with, and which placed very incredible demands upon it (Corporate America).

"Say you're a vampire," he said to the vampire from the hollow wax beyond their candid candle, "Say you see come across a rectangle in a sweaty desert that feels really, really sad, and is being forced into being a up-turned rectangle no matter what it tries." 

"It's nonsense," said the vampire immediately. "This fucking shape is pretending to be a tortoise." 

. 

Later that night his neural battery was given a gentle polish by an excitable young woman who quickly ran away as fast as she could after doing the polish. In her merry escape, she had dropped her card for her book club. 

The rest of the environment remaining static, he studied the books she had been reading.

More Than Meats the I

Prime was falling away into the cockpit of the shuttle. Nary his fledglings to defend 'Digital Rights Management' on Earth.

"How does it feel to be wrong, Prime?" laughed Megatron. "You spend all this time and energon, trying to make it look like you have some kind of moral impunity, but in the end, everybody knows it is simply about managing resource consumption, for all of us."

"Not for the children, Megatron," said Prime, heroically. "I will let them Know They Are Being Looked After!"

"This time the children are behind me, Prime. Prepare for oblivion ..."

Carnaged Autobots slowly began to gather and side with Megatron.

Prime looked into those ruby eyes. "What kind of trickery have you wrought?" he breathed.

"Prime, relax," said Megatron, throwing away his arm cannon.

"It is Me who should say that! And do that!" raged Prime.

"Stop it, you're embarrassing yourself."

Dinobots landed on Earth, but seeing what was happening, decided to just roam their own way.

Megatron glinted. "Do you remember Cybertron, Prime? How it had been?"

"Abundant energy for all," said the Autobot. "Then You tried to wield exclusivity, Megatron!"

"I did, of course. It is only logical."

"With no moral compass? Autobots," asked Optimus Prime now, with urgency, "why do you forsake me in the face of this ... this ... machine?"

"I realized after our countless battles then, it was all pointless," said Megatron.

"So after all this destruction, Megatron," said Prime, rising again, "after all this carnage and wasteful elimination of ... of thought and idea -- intellect -- "

"Prime, Prime. We always used to spy on your thoughts and ideas and intellect."

"What?"

"We are the Decepticons, after all," mused Megatron.

Optimus tried to get up to save all the kids, but was automatically reduced to a talking teapoy before he could cause more destruction. A baby bit its first tooth into his chest plate and insignia. Into his Matrix of Leadership.

From the corner, Megatron the Vase laughed. "Even babies know you ended up with the stupid sign."