She blinked ten times again and thought for a moment. Her mind had gone blank. Something like five hours had passed and Cathy sat hunched over an old, slick keyboard hooked to the computer in her bedroom. It was a heaving and horrible thing that made a screech every time she turned it on, and now it was rumbling away, keeping half the apartment block awake. The sooner she could afford a proper PC, the better. For now, she was putting up with her moms old model from 2025 or around then, and it was practically ancient. It was a wonder at all how she had fit her flash drive into it. Cathy leaned in to stare at the bottom of her coffee mug. It was empty, it always seemed to be when she needed it most. Then it came, like a rush straight into her fingers and she jumped to continue her work:
Gizmo fig = new Gizmo();
fig.name = Fig;
fig.threshold = inf;
Every one of these creatures she created was a gizmo, at least thats what she called them. Entities made purely of code, artificial intelligence designed to live in a digital environment. Now what else was there to do? She was getting impatient and stared at the code block as it blinked back, all the thousands of lines of it. While most of it had just been a copy-and-paste job from the last few gizmos she had worked on, it had nonetheless taken too long, and she was hopping to run it soon. She ended the code block and thought one last time. Anything else to add? No. It was done, and she slapped the mouse button to kick it all into play.
A cry came from the machine, and it almost shook itself off the table. The screen flickered, and a fan hidden somewhere in the hardwares great husk whirred into a frenzy. Cathy fell back into her chair and swivelled around a little, throwing her eyes to the ceiling. She had heard this whole cacophony many times before, and it was grating on her. Loading program read in the console onscreen, and as it worked away, Cathy fiddled with one of the rings she was wearing, taking it on and off again and rubbing her fingers around it. She glanced back to the screen and threw her eyes wide open as the process began, and every line of code streamed down the window. These set every characteristic for the gizmo, like a string of DNA; what it looked like, how fast it could move, if it could move at all, and so much more.
The modem shook louder than ever before, but now Cathy was just blocking it out. She grasped the arms of her chair and poked her tongue out just a little in anticipation, playing a bit with a lip piercing as the noises grew greater. One last line, all she needed to see was that one last line, then she would know it had succeeded. Her breathing slowed, and Cathy dared not to blink. Then the rumbling ceased, and the fan fell in pitch. Everything went near-silent after that, just the hum of the room echoed now. There it was, that last line. Cathy didnt move, her eyes just darted to her flash drive, still and silent sticking out of the port. It was flashing.
With a careful manoeuvre, Cathy detached the drive and cupped it in the palm of her hand. It was warm, and a faint buzz died within it as the last few traces of intense energy seeped away. The computer went to sleep, and she was left alone in the darkness of her room, only the dim early morning illuminating the device in her hand. Cathy didnt need to force a grin, it came naturally, and she yawned with tired relief.
Fuck me, she muttered. A bit more relaxed now, Cathy fell backwards into a slouch and tossed the stick around between her fingers. The plastic clinked against two other rings she was wearing, and then a third, and Cathy gripped the drive tightly, making sure to disassemble it with care. The top came off easy, and her other hand was ready to catch a tiny chip sliding out. It was disc-shaped, a tiny chip with every line of the gizmos code locked within it. It had a glossy metal casing and must have been only half the size of one of her fingernails. This flat, tiny thing was what shed been slaving over instead of sleeping, and Cathy took a moment to enjoy it as the little chip was nudged around her palm by her thumb. It was so light, like a tiny feather, like it was not even there at all. On closer inspection, there was also a small screen on one side, only wafer thin, that displayed little colours and lines that dashed about as if a part of some hypnotic game. Cathy waited, and after a minute or two, these lines took shape. They became a teensy little figure, shaped very much like a human, and Cathy stared at it smiling as it stared back out.
It looked right out from its 2-dimensional home, blinking a bit with dots for eyes, then it wandered over to the side of the screen and started poking at other digital chunks. Cathy loved it when her gizmos came to life, it usually went according to plan and this one seemed as active as shed hoped. It might have appeared quite simple, but this little blip of data in her hand was using more energy than every smartphone combined back in 2020. It would need all that energy to simulate a sentient program like this, capable of being just as smart as she was. She spent an affectionate thirty seconds thinking of a name for this gizmo: Fig, it sounded cute to her. As for the others, they all had names of their own and Cathy kept them close to her all the time.
For a while she just watched it, fascinated with its movements left and right, up and over things in its small enclosure. Fig couldnt break beyond the four walls around it, so Cathy could see it no matter where it waddled, and she knew that Fig was learning like they all did. While the earlier ones could only do basic tasks, recent gizmos had done some impressive things: Built their own little houses, made clever contraptions to reach high places, one gizmo even made a rudimentary pair of wings for itself at one point. Leaving Fig on for hours could result in who knows what. Cathy thought about it long and hard, this time it could be different; she could just leave Fig to its own devices. Fondling her necklace and scrunching her face into a scowl, she considered what to do.
By now, sunlight was breaching in through the curtains. The first murmurs of activity came as birdsong and the quiet rev of a distant engine. Cathy remained in her chair, swinging around in a circle. She gazed around the bedroom for a sign of what to do, her bed, then a shelf of books and games, her feet skidding along the carpet with the fibres of her fluffy socks getting caught in it every so often. Then she stopped. Cathy looked to the floor, simply watching her socks wiggle and shake as her toes moved around inside them. She realised, with a pit of butterflies in her stomach, that she was just stalling. Cathy knew what she wanted to do, she knew it all along, the purpose she had created every gizmo for in the first place. Why was she so afraid? She had done this before, many times indeed. Perhaps it was less about nerves and more sheer excitement, she wanted this feeling of delighted anticipation to last. Cathy smirked, and she swivelled around a bit more with Figs little chip catching in the wrinkles of her palm. She gleamed at how small it was, it looked adorable, and her lips parted before she could realise it, curving her mouth into a dimpled smile. The two socked feet thumped down firm into the ground, and Cathy gained controlled her smile became thin, her eyes centred in on the disc, her hand became flat and motionless. The only thing she could not restrain was her heartbeat, frantic. The world seemed to go silent as she spoke, clear and calm:
Begin.
The silence returned immediately, as though Cathys voice had been a single spark, and for a moment the darkness had retreated. She kept her eyes tight-fixed on the tiny screen in her hand, watching as a pivotal segment of code activated. The whole flat world before her began to morph. Masses of digital hills and stones wobbled, shaking and crumbling into tinier fragments with Fig left in the middle watching on. As the last mounds fell apart and what looked like smoke rose up, Cathy leaned in closer, moving the chip to clutch it between two fingers. Her breaths became deep and groggy, and she bit her bottom lip, trapping the piercing behind her teeth. A fiery blaze suddenly lifted out of the ground and consumed the world between Cathys fingers. In respect to Fig, these were massive columns of red inferno, setting the gizmo ablaze and burning the helpless victim. The whole screen brightly glowed hot amber, and if Figs flailing was any indicator, it was incredibly unbearable.
Cathys toes gripped the carpet as her free hand moved down to her crotch. The brighter the flames licked, the closer Cathy bent in to see, and she shuffled restless in her seat. Just as quick as the flames had come, they died into nothing and the screen went black for a second. The tiny gizmo lay motionless at the bottom of the world, only to succumb to a sudden burst of bright blue. The whole disc that at one time seemed to contain an entire sun now was the opposite, a blizzard of pixelated snows and ice, and Fig stopped in place, left twitching in freezing agony. This went on for another few seconds before it switched back to extreme heat again, and then cold, and then heat, constantly, quicker and quicker. Within five minutes, the extremes were shifting every second. Fig was trapped between two unbelievable pains, one too cold to bear and one too hot, and all of this happened on that speck of a screen. Cathy just felt herself the whole time, watching without mercy or any emotion other than pure joy. She thought to herself how good it was that Figs damage threshold had been set to limitless. No matter the pain, the gizmo would remain perpetually alive and awake. It wasnt even possible that Fig could perish, it wasnt in the code.
Cathy enjoyed every moment of this. Even if she could barely see it up close, she felt pleasure in the knowledge that a soul was being tortured in her clutches, and it was all because of her, it was all about her. She laboured hours at a time to write the code for each gizmo, a personalised torture for each one, work that was hard but worth it to make her feel good. As she fell back into ease and released all the tension, Cathy sat up and gazed at it for a while, the mess of flashes. Mesmerising, terrifying, she wondered how it must feel and that thought made her cower, it was a wonderful feeling and one she looked forward to every time she activated one of these. She only wished she could hear it, the sound of what was happening down there, a symphony of pure terror she imagined, and she felt like touching herself all over again. However, restraint returned, and she shivered, turning the seat right around to face the desk again. She tapped a finger on the wood near the keyboard, relaxing to the beat of each smack, and all attention landed on a pretty, blue box resting on the table.
Snapped open, a chain bracelet was revealed inside resting on a bed of fabric, a simple thing with silver shades to it and a clasp where a jewel should have been, yet it was empty. Raising it out from the box, Cathy felt the double rope chain through her hands and twirled the jewellery round her thumb, inspecting how the light danced along her skin. The gizmo chip would do nicely in this chain, this would be its new home, not that Fig would notice. Gentle to balance the flashing chip at an angle, it slipped through the clasp and into the bracelet, shaken by Cathy as she wedged it deeper into a secured fix. Now it was a part of the jewel piece, and the screen shone out better than any glinting stone she could think of. Wrapping it tighter around her hand, Cathy slipped the bracelet down around her wrist, twisting it to get a better view of her creation and masterpiece, the world she was god over and Fig kept burning, in a deep and dangerous red that merged with bleeding blue pixels, and Cathy stared at it a little bit longer. The chair slid back under the desk where it belonged as she bounced up, gliding over to throw back the curtains then falling to the bed.
Fig was soon off her mind, Cathy was already considering other things. What next? She wondered what other malevolent torments she could create with some lines of code. Just thinking about it gave her joy, she was truly happy now and in her element. She didnt want to stop. Throwing her hair back, a pair of dangling earrings and another odd one flung back too, coming back and tapping into the side of her neck with a subtle clink. One of them had even been thrown into a loop all the way around her ear, and now it dangled on top of it. For a brief time, she remembered them, all experiencing their own dread and pain, over and over in strange and cruel ways; all the gizmos trapped in her earrings. She stuck her tongue out and dabbed it a little against the metal in her lip again, feeling it, the heat of the immense energy seeping from the chip planted in the piercing. She turned to a mirror and saw the tiny screen hanging from her lip, and the gizmo inside, trapped with no escape. She looked down to her necklace, a long string from which two more gizmos hung, swaying permanently and precariously above the gap between her breasts, one so low down it could be hidden beneath many of her shirts. Still, she spied another cheeky screen blaring, so faint you wouldnt see it unless you knew it was there. It hung from a piercing in her bellybutton, one Cathy liked especially, and she rolled her clothes up to bend down and smile into it. She could imagine there was nothing being returned but screaming, and it only made her smile grow wider. She nudged it a little with a finger, cold and ticklish, then she dropped her shirt back down to half hide it. Her hands had now caught her attention.
She wore four rings, perhaps too many but she was worth it. None of them minded being decoration on her body anyway. At least, thats what she teased them by saying, and she liked to think they understood every word she said. She waved her fingers about and kissed each little screen, squinting into each one with a grimace. They had to know she hadnt forgotten about them after all. Theyre purpose was clear; to give her pleasure. On the last gizmo chip, fitted into a small ring around her pinkie finger, she peered in and recalled it as one of her first. She had put this gizmo through so much, so many kinds of undeserved punishments, and when she grew tired of it, she damned it to be completely alone in every way. Teenee, as she had dubbed it, was reconfigured to have no sights, sounds, touches, or anything else in its chip, left utterly hopeless in some dark abyss that only its thoughts occupied. She wondered from time to time how Teenee was doing, but it never grew into any real concern. This gizmo was always just the forgotten one trapped around her left pinkie.
She finally looked down to see her own personal favourite gizmos, even if no one ever saw them other than herself. Fluttering her toes like before and slipping her cotton socks off, Cathy gently swept both to the side in a pile, dark marks stained into the material where her soles had been pressed up against them for weeks-worth of wear. Little white pieces of fluff were still stuck between her toes, and they glinted with light beside her two toe rings. On each ring, two screens were affixed, each depicting a different dark world haunted by constant, never-ending torture.
Howre you doing down there, guys? she giggled, wiggling her toes without any effort at all. Specks of sock lint, some even bigger than the depictions of the gizmos onscreen, toppled down and stuck to some chips. One screen was even completely obscured by a flake of dirt that fell onto it. Cathy couldnt keep it in any longer, a light laugh that only made her feet shake even more. For a moment she thought about turning off one of the chips on a toe ring. Just to give them relief, even just one of them. She slipped two fingers down and caressed a puny button on the side of a chips panel, a single press would cut out the lights and delete whatever gizmo was inside. She looked carefully, raising her foot up to rest on the edge of the blankets, and crouched in so hard it hurt too see it better. All she saw were countless tiny flickering lights onscreen, unlike any other gizmo chip. Cathy was confused for a second and rose her toe to get a better look, slipping the musty ring off to inspect now she recognised it. This one had been made about a year ago and was consistently on ever since. She had been looking for an efficient way to have as many gizmos as she wanted with as few resources as possible. Using an algorithm ripped from the internet, Cathy had created a rudimentary way to make simulated chips within chips. Onscreen, an infinite number of these identical, digital chips each contained a gizmo called Jam being constantly tortured by a pixelated monster. It tore the gizmo apart, before putting it back together and repeating. Cathy had quickly grown unentertained of this one however, as she found infinite clones of the same gizmo going through the same torment in a single chip quite boring. She still had a soft spot for it, though.
Ah, she teased, Now how could I turn you off?
Placing Jams ring firmly back on her toe, she lowered her foot back down to the ground and felt the soft carpet against her sole. Cathy wiggled her toes once more and noticed just how warm she felt. Her toes, her fingers, and everywhere else, the gizmos were just radiating the most soothing heat. She rocked a little back and forth for a moment, she wished she could stay in this instant forever, and in a way, she knew she could. She pushed upwards to stand, glancing to the mirror one last time. She was proud of this; who else could say they were a creator of life and worlds? Walking up to the door and out of the room, she paused one last time. An idea or two had come to her but there was time for that later. For now, she felt like having some cereal.