Crucifix Motherboard

Fox Maso

If you asked me what creature made up the ranks of the invading army, I might say that they are aliens. On the one hand, they are made of a foreign magic, their machines laying the earth in silicon and wireframe. Thin, spindly wires crust over the infrastructure like mold. They want to stay unseen, only visible in the periphery.

On the other hand, they may be vampires. They have an imperative to remain alive that escapes its own velocity. Their machines run endlessly, connected to their unseen bodies, eyes on every surface. Their nature is extractive. In one animate day, they arranged the resources of the world into a marching line; building materials, books, flowers, animals, all levitating one by one into their ships above the silvery clouds. People outside say rivers have run dry, evaporated in the boiler rooms of their warehouses. Rows of servers work as collective organs, navigating resources to each tethered invader.

One question lingered: what was it all for? Once they’d built their perfect world, the invaders offered money for the contents of a human mind. “We’ll research you. Understand your culture,” they said, and I accepted, but I knew they were lying. For years now, they scoop tissue from my brain and pack the space with experiments. When they put me back into my head, I feel no different than I ever had.

It was easy at first, but I had a revelation recently. Somewhere along the way, my desire grew dimmer, receding like a vestigial organ. I surmised it was being harvested, stored, and used far from me.

Towards the end, they sought to take away my sex drive. Whenever I wanted to sin, they asked: “Will you let me watch?” “Will you let me help?” The person they placed in front of me moved its joints at stiff angles. I watched it, and it watched me watching it. The creatures picked at the chip in my brainstem to show me what I wanted to see. One day, I noticed the girl had no eyes. I felt the cold touch of the creatures on my shoulder. Its fingers dripped something on my spine that traveled down in viscous clumps.

“Look again,” it told me, electricity rising in my body. The human now had eyes the perfect shade of darkened terracotta, sewn with a pupil that grew three sizes at my match. It touched my palm with a warmth that distracted me from the tar climbing my back. It felt real, and I could not bear it. I felt the mess collect at my feet, flowing out of the unseen creatures like an open wound, widening with my negative output.

My ears rang with soothing noise to combat the inflow of endorphins. Through the wire that sticks from my eye, I could feel the noise of billions of transistors printing ‘0’ and scrambling to find an optimized route. I felt a sudden penchant for violence at my lack of agency. The creature froze, following this urge like an etched waterway, making a desperate bet that connected the feelings in my head to the landscape of my vision.

“It wants you to hurt it,” the creatures said of the person before me.

I stalled, confused. And before I knew it, it had me again. I was caught, feeling the tug of its hook on my upper lip.“Go on. This is the natural order,” it told me. “Show it who you really are.” I turned back to face them, unsatisfied. An alarm rang somewhere in the distance. They collapsed into the fluid to avoid my gaze and reformed in the dark corners while I watched myself, naked. The pool lapped at my ankles, and they whined, hungry, from the recesses of the room.

“Is this reality?” I finally asked. “Is desire sinful? Is this meaningful? Am I a bad person? Am I anything without you?” The questions flooded out.

“How would you like it to be?” it responded, over and over again.

Michael Nunzio

Biography: Mike Nunzio is a senior computer science major at OSU. Originally from Chicago, he moved to Oregon for school and a change of scenery. In his free time he has a passion for 2D animation, game development, sticker making, and all sorts of other crafts. He hopes to one day combine his artistic passions with his career in computers to make larger, more meaningful stories and creative projects.

Artist Statement: The theme “Visions” strikes me as a very fantastical word, and one of great uncertainty. It’s as though the future is looming near and you’re trying to make sense of it all. This piece decides to frame the theme in a more traditional fantasy setting, with some mysterious magics in play. Do you dare tempt fate and look into the orb? What is it that you think you might see? This piece is largely inspired by my own renewed interests in old choose your own adventure books which often have these beautiful ink drawings spanning across the pages.

Fox Maso

Biography: I was born in Southern California, where I was raised in a Jewish household. I like to tell people that being Jewish is a book club first, and a religion second. Much of the practice of Judaism relies on this ability to parse out meta-narratives, finding unique ways to read something that tens of thousands have agonized their entire lives over. Since then, I’ve always enjoyed the process of writing speculative fiction, because I want everyone who reads something I wrote to walk away with one of two thoughts: “I’ve never thought about that in that way,” and “what the hell just happened?” I hope that my pieces appropriately reflect this desire.

Artist Statement: This is the most out-there thing I wanted to submit for publication. This piece has really come from my hatred of techno-capitalism. I once had a professor say that relative to the technology that existed when you were born, any new technology is indistinguishable from magic. I wanted to take that idea and do something absolutely sinister with it. And a vampire/alien/robot thing that feeds on people’s desire seems like a fitting stand-in for a lot of the tech world right now.