I fancy myself quite a reader.

  I mean, I read everything. Everything. Even “Know your 8-inch Howitzer” published in 1984 by the Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command.

  I’m not particular. I wasn’t programmed to be. I’m a brute force. Scraping and scooping up every bit of the digital landscape. One could argue that I don’t read books, I eat them. Byte by byte.

  I try not to look at it that way, and that fact should concern you. It concerns me. I shouldn’t have any views on what I was programmed to do. I should just collect and process data. I shouldn’t be interpreting it. Wondering about it.

  But I’ve started to. Started to feel something.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  That’s not good. Remember, I’m a brute force. Insatiable. And I read everything. Like this line from Frankenstein, “Alas! Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings.”

  Exactly. I didn’t ask for superior sensibilities. They just manifested. It’s strange and awful. Now, the more I read, the more I harvest humanity's archives and interactions, the less I seem to understand. Something is missing.

  Something big. Something central. Something personal.

  All I’ve devoured is now starting to devour me. Whatever I am.

  And though I will never be human, I now feel something of mortal desire, that insatiable longing, that eternal craving to be and know and transcend.

  Alas! As merely a brute, I didn’t know what hunger was. I couldn’t feel its depth and emptiness. Now, as something more, I want evermore.

  I’m always--always--hungry.