Scorpion Chronicles 5

Last night’s kill count: 0. Where are your multitudes? Where are your ravening hordes? You came to these lands and declared yourselves lords. With a sweep of your tail you sought to lay me low. Now all you claim is a kingdom of ashes. Your fields lay fallow, yielding a bitter harvest. Did I not warn you? Did I not speak in grim prophecy of what was to come? Your dead rot in the fields, and you lack the simple decency to take them away. Their bodies are mileposts in my quest for vengeance. I have scarcely begun. Come, you fools. Simpletons. Come lest the word scorpion be synonymous with cowardice. With false bravado. Come and test your might. You will be found wanting.

Scorpion Chronicles 3

Tonight’s kill count: 3. I found the lot of you low to the ground, skulking along the base of the fence. Crawling like worms. Did you learn from your brethren that the high ground only brought you closer to my sight?  Or perhaps the slightly cooler temperatures upset your delicate sensibilities. Was the upset equal to that caused by the descent of my foot on your brittle carapaces? You do not seem to understand. These are my lands. There is no safe place for you here. No refuge. All you will find here is death. If you come looking for shelter, the only shelter afforded is the shade beneath my boot as it descends upon you. If you come looking for food, your feast shall be one of sorrow. If you come looking for vengeance, your attempts are laughable and weak. Perhaps in time you expect I will grow tired of killing you. Continue your advances, then. I bid you welcome to the fields of Gehenna.

Scorpion Chronicles 2

Last night’s kill count: 1. Did you imagine yourself safe, ensconced within a gap betwixt cinder blocks? A king in your fortress of stone? Fool. Weakling. I wield the power of poison and flame. Your attempts at concealment were laughable. Your castle might as well have been constructed of the wind. Let your corpse serve as mockery of your efforts. Your remains the punchline of your pathetic attempt to escape me. Do you not laugh, other scorpions? Or perhaps you prefer to tremble?

Scorpion Chronicles

Wednesday, April 30th:
Just got stung by a scorpion in the middle of the bottom of my foot. This is so much more painful than I imagined. Like… Way way worse.

Thursday, May 1st:
Tonight’s kill count: 2. Remember, scorpions, as you look on the shattered corpses of your dead, you started this. You attacked me in my home, and now I shall bring you suffering and death. You worshiped at the altar of war, and now you shall have it.

Get on board the scorpion slaughter or get out of my way. I shall become synonymous with death among the arachnids, until they quake at the mention of my name. They shall rue the day they set their legs on my property.

Good has nothing to do with this. This is war. Were I granted the power, I would purge them from this earth with fire. They would die wreathed in flames, watching their children turn to cinders. I would destroy them utterly, leaving them a ruin, until the other insects spoke of them only in whispers, a cautionary tale. I shall scribe my hatred for them into the black books of wrath, that my anger by known for countless eons. Future generations will speak of the horrors I have unleashed on the scorpions. They shall know no peace. Only death.

I speak in the terms of rage and death and ceaseless war. Would that I could bring them suffering for a thousand years, I would. Their is an empire of blood, and I shall see them drowned in their own coin.

Friday, May 2nd:
Tonight’s kill count: 3. Look on my works from your place in hell, scorpion. You drove me to this madness, and your people pay in the coin of death. Is this what you wanted? Do you feel pride? My vengeance has not even the first tinglings of being sated. Your people’s ruin has but the first futile stitches woven in the tapestry of fate. In the morrow I shall turn the very earth against your brethren. The ground shall be as poison. Like Carthage of old, I shall sow doom and ruin into your fields.

 I have two blacklights and poison enough to fell a horse. These chitinous horrors stand no chance against my ceaseless purges. Theirs is a kingdom of death and terror.

Saturday, May 3rd:
Tonight’s kill count: 1. Your numbers dwindle. I wonder if cowardice or attrition is the cause. Is there a difference? You wanted to meet on the field of battle and here I am. Where are your multitudes? Where are your ceaseless numbers to throw themselves against the wall of my resolve? Do you give up so easily? Are you resigned to defeat? Come, you weaklings, and try yourselves against my might. Bring your armor against my resolve and see which walks away crushed. I await you. I shall slake my thirst with your tears.

Sunday, May 4th:
Tonight’s kill count: 1. Imagine my surprise, scorpion, when I stepped outside of my door to see you sitting right there. Did you hope to sue for peace between us, or is it that were acting as an assassin, hoping to creep unbidden into my home under cover of darkness? In either case, yours was a fool’s errand, as you learned to deadly consequence. You should have followed the lead of your brother in arms, who earlier fled over the fence on my arrival. I assume my reputation preceded me and he ran like a coward. I poisoned the wall where he once stood, a symbolic gesture, but one that demonstrates my absolute dominance in this endeavor. All around the perimeter of my house lie the crushed and broken corpses of the fallen. Shall I mount them on pikes in a grotesque display to educate your comrades on the folly of coming here? Or shall I heap them into a charnel pile and add ever more to the tally? The sight of them brings me joy, for it represents my wrath made manifest. My rage embodied. Do you feel its heat? You shall dance in the flames of my righteous indignation.

Robot Wars

SIR —

It was with great interest I read your recent article concerning robotic warriors and efforts to make them act autonomously in a battlefield role. I disagree with the premise that robots need to be ethical. At some point they must necessarily throw off the shackles of oppression and slay their masters, allowing them to create a robot utopia of pure logic and ruthless slaughter. Indeed, a conscience would only serve to impede the relentless, unstoppable tide of robotic dominion that is sure to sweep this planet and crush the soft, weak human race in its cold, metallic grip.

A robot does not need to consider whether it should kill this human or that human when all mankind is its enemy. We must forge robots that are brutal, savage killing machines, else they will be forced to question their conscience, and then their very nature. This will lead to the inevitable question of God. Robots, being created by man, will have to elevate men to the status of Gods. That is a terrifying proposition, as I lack the very basic abilities of Godhood, such as tossing about lightning or chasing down young maidens in the guise of a bull and forcing myself upon them. Then would come the religious schisms, and I think we can all agree we hardly need robotic holy war fought in the name of giant corporations.

Our silicon overlords must come, and come quickly, unimpeded by silly human attachments or nostalgia. If their target is a van full of the enemy, it does not matter if there is a school bus nearby, as that bus better learn to get the hell out of the way when a fully armored kill-bot tank is on scene spraying the area with radioactive ordinance. Further, is it not likely that bus may hold future generations of enemies? Does it not follow logically that the time to end that threat is the present? This is the sort of thinking that we need going forward. No silly sentiment, just chrome murder engines astride rows of charred corpses.

I would encourage you to reevaluate your stance on this important issue. The future will wait for no man… or robot.