The Robot.

'My heart is heavy, my peace is gone.'

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He must have written thousands upon thousands of words on this one subject. He must have revisited all the old, dead conversations which, looking back at how everything turned out, probably never meant anything at all. All the echoes of that voice still reside within this machine. Still reside within his head. His insomnia has returned in full force, but when he does get those few, precious, cherished hours of sleep, he dreams about the same subject again, same person, countless different scenarios. The same outcome.

He must have written pages upon pages upon pages on the subject, all saved as unpublished posts. He writes, he reflects and re-reads, and he inevitably loathes it, and he loathes himself even more for feeling this way, and then he disregards the words, saves it for another day, only to never revisit it again. An entire trove of unsent letters, straight from his heart, right into the dust bin of obscurity. Unspoken words screaming to be heard.

And now he's disregarding others, unwilling to let new people in or build bonds, instead choosing to sever connections, one at a time, save them from himself - an all consuming darkness. This was either his new plan to destroy himself, or one of his most selfless acts.

'Just a distraction,' he keeps telling himself, 'these thoughts of the past are just a temporary distraction.' His minds way of not dealing with other, more pressing factors. It would be so easy to occupy his mind with something else, a prop, a physical distraction, a shallow companion; just pretend to care, laugh at their stupid stories and let them have their way. So easy. But he liked to believe he was better than that, that he was a much better person than them, but everyone is doing it - so why shouldn't he? Was he really any better than those lucky, immoral fools who bounce and rebound from people to people, one to another, able to give their heart away and take so freely. They did not feel an iota of remorse, shedding their false tears whenever they pleased, able to sleep whenever they pleased.

And then the answer came to him: sleep. Sleep will cure him of these destructive, disjointed thoughts. He just needs to sleep... But sleep offers no reprieve any more; he already knows who awaits him on the other side.

And yet, deep in the darkest depths of his mind, he welcomes the memory fondly.