The Interviewer slumped forward, and exhaled. 

 "Would you like a glass of water? Anything to make you comfortable.” 

 “No, No. It’s alright.” She paused. “Where should I start?” 

"From when it all began, I guess”  

“Oh ...yeah. I suppose so. Before Luke’s -”, she bit her lip. “I get it”. Mrs. Wezner dabbed the tears from her eyes. The interviewer fished a pen from his pocket and clicked the “ON” button of the recorder, and placed it on the desk.  

Mr. Wezner cringed. Her breathing quickened as she inched away. The interviewer instantly took it away. “Sorry about that. My apologies.”, he spoke modestly. She nodded.  

“I suppose it was around the start of 1980, the spring break, when Luke’s father got him his first computer. It was an odd-looking thing, curious at the sight. He had always been flaunting those tech catalogues, boasting about the coming of some new technological revolution, new-era nonsense. That’s what they told him at work, anyways. I on the other hand believed none of it. But Luke was so ecstatic....’’ 

Her throat swelled, and her voice shivered. Like it pained her to speak further. But she continued.  

“He would never let anyone touch it, would spend time with it all day. He would type queer messages, and laugh at the automated replies. It almost felt like an actual conversation. It would also help him with his homework, interesting facts, stuff like that. They were...... inseparable.” Mrs.Wezner winced at that word. 

“How old was he, then?”, the interviewer added, interrupting his vigorous scribbling. 

“Five”  

His brows furrowed, but only for an instant.

“Yes, I know it’s ridiculous but what can we say, his happiness was all we cared for.”  

“Alright, nevertheless, when did the symptoms first start?”  

She snorted. “Symptoms? That’s what you call them?”  

“For lack of a better word – yes.” 

“Well, the initial years were fabulous. His performance at school was praiseworthy – straight A’s mostly. But as time passed on, he became less...receptive. I know that doesn’t make any sense but....that’s exactly what I think it was – some sort of delay in his reactions, in catching words and phrases. Lagging and glitching, too slow to respond. As if his entire system was buffering – I mean like a computer system.”, She covered her mouth and suppressed a sob. 

“You mean – a certain zombie-ness?” 

Mrs. Wezner stared at him. “Kind of. “The interviewer wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. _When did it get so hot in here?_ His throat felt abnormally dry, and he gulped a glass of water down in one-go. Mrs. Wezner did the same, then got ready to continue. The interviewer thought he heard a deep, pulsating groan somewhere in the rooms. He ignored the noise and flicked his pen.  

“There were bags under his eyes now. And he barely bathed – but never smelled. His presence felt distant, somehow. Like a mannequin – something that’s there but not actually there at the same time. “, she shook her head, “I don’t know how to describe that, the feeling was crazy. He would lock himself in his room, surrounded by all those devices-” 

“I’m sorry, devices?”  

“Yeah....he had salvaged some video games from the hardware store and a couple more computers from the dump. I have no idea how he got them to work. The same dark, ominous blackish colour. And the light from their screens – a senile blue; that ...made the happiness drain out of me. It was maddening. Then there was that sound – a rhythmic drumming, dragging....” 

The interviewer looked around. The noise, that same freaky noise she's talking about..... it’s louder now. Can’t she hear it ? He loosened his collars that were now damp with sweat. His head felt hazy as the twilight outside seeped into the room, painting their faces pale blue.  

“How was his performance at school?” 

“Terrible, not good at all,” she shook her head. “His grades dropped drastically, and his teachers always had some complaint when I went to pick him up. Once at Boys’ Camp – he screamed at the instructor when asked to fill up the water. He curled up on the ground, his hands against his ears and his chin on his ankles – bawling, ‘How do you expect me to do that? Explain it to me – Give me lucid instructions, step-by-step – GIVE ME AN ALGORITHM FOR GOD’S SAKE”  

“And what about his friends?”  

“Not good either. They stopped visiting him entirely after that. Not that they’d been congenial anyways. They’d often say his skin felt -’metallic’ like the light didn’t reflect off it exactly like it should. And stuff like his voice sounded more monotonous, what was the word - ‘robotic’. I wish I'd seen it back then. Even his hair were becoming sparse, like he was balding”. 

She cried out, then controlled herself, ending with whimpering.  

“What did his father say about this?’  

“He just shook it off as puberty”, she said, almost scornfully.  

The interviewer slumped back, eyeing the woman carefully. “I suppose I’m done with all the background information. If you don’t mind, can you please tell us about what happened that day? If you’re alright....” 

Mrs. Wezner was taken aback. She adjusted her shoulders. “Oh... Okay, I suppose”, she whispered, surprised.  

"If that’s alright with you.....”  

“No, It’s perfectly alright, That's why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why any of this is happening right now. But I appreciate the concern.” She forced a weak smile. “So.....that day huh?”  

“I came back from my night-shift that morning to find that throbbing noise resounding in the house. Blue light flared from the floor above me – Luke's room. It could only mean one thing – he had skipped school and was back on his devices. That is where I drew the line – I was infuriated! I thundered up the stairs and down the hallway only to find a note hanging down the doorknob -  

RECONFIGURING

Confused, I overlooked it and stormed into his room – ready to rain Hell on him, but... I screamed instead.  

Luke was bald. His head – shaven smooth, eerily smooth. ‘Metallic’, the word popped in my head, and I felt it echo. I clasped my hands.....Had he been like this before? I couldn’t remember.... And in his hand, he was holding a manual, some sort of a step-by-step guide to installing a computer. 

I don’t know what exploded inside of me that I rushed to his side and hugged him. Tight and firm – All that worry and concern that had been restrained in me finally overwhelmed my thoughts. That thing was wrecking my baby... 

Except, he didn’t hug back. His hands remained suspended, almost catatonic.  

And that was when I heard it. Low at first, barely audible amidst that constant rhythmic beating emanating from somewhere in the room. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so I craned my ears – pressing them against his body. My jaw dropped and gulped a lump down my throat. Dread shot up my spine when the possibility confirmed itself. 

I instantly let go of him and stepped back. He continued to stare at me with those same vacant, hollow eyes. Nothing but blankness and void of everything humane on his catatonic face. Slowly, I approached the door, my eyes locked on him, and when I was almost out of that deafening room...I made a run for it. Out of the house, up the road – straight to the police station. And that was the last time I saw him. “  

She was weeping now, not holding back the tears. Spasmodic, frantic weeping.  

“But what did you hear?”, the interviewer barged in her trail of sobs, impatient. The sweltering heat, that bluish hue, the haziness......they were becoming too much for him now.  

Mrs. Wezner, grabbing a tissue, mumbled, “There was crackling sound as if of bare wires, and a constant hum of static. And behind all of that – where his heart should have been – there was a faint, repetitive beeping.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

Usually, the interviewer would have broken into a fit of laughter at that statement. Probably even called her deranged or mad, or at least blamed her bad hearing. But the heat was getting unbearable now. There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t give just to be out of that house. On the porch, he could hear blaring crickets, a hooting owl, the sputter of an old incandescent lamp-post, and curious clicking sounds from critters.  

But that was all outside this furnace. Here, he was cornered against this flooding blue, the dripping heat and the invariable pulsing sound.  

He glanced at his watch. How long had I been here? Is it already night? He couldn’t remember. His glasses were beginning to fog. He took them off and wiped the lenses with his shirt. Putting them on, he glanced around.  

Where was the woman?

It wasn’t until then that he realised just how tantalizing his surroundings had become. The room was an awful blue and seemed to stretch to infinity beyond the shadows. The walls were crumbling, leaking with moisture and some gelatinous gunk. He shot up from his seat. 

That noise... I've heard it somewhere before...

He felt dizzy, his insides recoiling as if he had been turned upside-down. Stumbling into the hallway, he leaned against a wall to regain his balance. The floor was vibrating underneath his feet, in synchrony with that pounding.

How the heck do I get out...

The sound was far too loud now - booming and pounding. He cast a glance behind his shoulder towards a doorway with a note hanging on the knob.

Reconfiguring, he thought.

Involuntarily, he stepped inside and noticed a smaller opening. A crawlspace - with monstrous blue light streaking its edges. 

That's where the throbbing was coming from. 

He needed to run, escape the hellhole of a house. 

But he had to look - just one glance...

One tiny sneak peek.

He pushed the door open and climbed inside. The light was blinding as he managed to shovel himself through the dank passage. Soon, an opening appeared and he jumped down it into a clearing.

There.... at the centre...

Was a CPU, its dashboard flung open and inside - a gruesome sight that made the interviewer hold back vomit. 

The CPU had fleshy tendrils instead of wires, bright red and bulging, a shambled mess of veins and vessels. Oily goo leaked down its surface and oozed into the ground, only to be sucked up again by the arteries. And in the midst of them, all was a swollen heart - beating rhythmically and dilating and contracting and pumping that slimy mass into the walls of the house... and into the computers.

The entire house was alive...

So were the computers.

And at the foot of the CPU lay a metallic frame of a robot, humanoid with all appendages - arms, hands, and all - with a feeble, low beeping flickering inside of him.

Roughly around the size of a teenage boy.

.    .    .