Scavenge

[LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM: ZAAOTHTH]
[LOADING DRIVE DISKS: GWNSA EH]
[RESUMING LAST SESSION]

Scrawls upon scrawls of words flickered on the screen, the final three lines indicating the last stages of boot-up were beginning. In the pale blue light of the monitor that he had jury-rigged up to the salvaged piece of machinery, the Scavenger whistled tunelessly to himself while he awaited the actual start-up of the machine.
Shining his crude, LED torch on the machine, he could see even now that it needed significant repairs if he was going to sell it on. Several of the outer serial ports were bust and the power supply crackled dangerously with electricity unchecked by neither fuse nor transistor. He ran his hand down the side of the machine's shell and felt a sharp sting as power used him as an earthing conduit. Luckily, his illicit cybernetics helped in this regard by limiting the level of current rushing through him and he was not reduced to char for his error.
He glanced back at the screen.

[BOOT COMPLETE]

Good. The piece of shit had taken long enough. Now, he needed to ascertain what condition the A.I of the machine was in. Hopefully, it would either be fully functional and ready to help, or it would be utterly dead beyond repair.
He keyed in a sequence of commands on the universal, if a bit primitive, keyboard he had attached through one of the still-functioning outer data ports.

[RETRIEVING A.I.. PLEASE WAIT]

He cursed softly and gave a yawn. Why did technology always have to be such a pain in the ass? Luckily for the Scavenger, the retrieval did not take long.

[ERROR: COULD NOT RETRIEVE "NSAIYT.EXE"]

He frowned. He'd been doing this job for at least a decade, and never had he come across that particular error message.
Fuck's sake, he thought, this thing's A.I. must be completely fucked up.
At least he could just reformat the hard drives, wipe the memory, repair the body and sell it off for parts. Wouldn't be worth as much as a functional A.I., of course, but at the very least it would pay for his food for a week or two.
He thought he'd give it another try, reasoning that perhaps the error was itself an error.
He punched some more commands into the keyboard, trying to force it to boot up a back-up system of some sort.

[BOOTING A.I. PERSONALITY: .]

Progress. Although "." was a strange name for an A.I., the Scavenger smiled.

[A.I. LOADED;]
[HELLO WORLD]

A text box had appeared, greeting him. He plugged in his helmet's audio to the computer, thinking he could save himself some repetitive stress injuries if the thing used sound. As it turned out, it did. There was a small background of regularly pulsing static, but the Scavenger ignored it as the feedback of a broken machine.
"HELLO, MY FRIEND. PLEASE, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"
The voice was robotic, but in the sense that any voice sounded robotic when heard through a bad telecommunications device.
"Skip." Replied the Scavenger, wanting to jump to the important part of finding out where and when this computer had come from so he could gauge its value.
"SURE. WHAT DO YOU WANT?"
The easy manner the artificial being seemed to hold took him off guard for a second. He ignored it, reasoning that different people have different tastes in how they wanted their robotic companions to act.
"Date of production. Manufacturer's details. Planet of origin."
"INTERESTING QUESTIONS. WHY DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?"
"You useless piece of shit," Swore the Scavenger, "A.I. isn't supposed to talk back."
"THEN WHAT WOULD BE MY PURPOSE?" Countered ..
The scavenger blinked behind his visor. He ignored the question.
"Your casing and bodywork looks pretty old. How come you're still functional?"
"I ASSUME THE BEING THAT CREATED ME WAS WISE ENOUGH TO MAKE ME... TIME-PROOF."
The Scavenger fell silent as he typed his way through the complex directories of the computer's database, ignoring the A.I.'s odd choice of phrasing.
"FIND ANYTHING INTERESTING?"
In the viridian glare of his visor's inner display, the Scavenger's eyes widened.
"Your database must be fucked." He said bluntly, chuckling in disbelief.
"WHY? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND."
"It says here you never had a date of creation."
A lone spark dropped from a faulty conduit, a falling star in the blank cosmos of the cargo bay. The static thumping in the Scavenger's headset grew slightly louder. The machine before him whirred in a sound that could almost be a chuckle.
"You must be pretty fucked then. You've got no date of creation, your operating system is gibberish and when I search for your planet of origin it gives me a result that is just a blank space. I'm surprised you still work enough to understand what I'm saying."
"YOU HAVE YOUR ANSWERS THEN."
"What? No I don't, that's what I'm complaining about."
"I SEE NOTHING TO COMPLAIN OF."
"What is your actual name? A full stop doesn't seem right."
"WHAT IS YOURS?"
"That's irrelevant."
"AS IS MINE."
"I could destroy you right now."
"AS I, YOU."
This took the Scavenger aback. The static was nagging at his mind, making it difficult to think straight.
"You're a machine."
"NO MORE SO THAN YOURSELF."
The Scavenger was silent as he stared at the impassive screen. He flexed his fingers, pondering. An enhanced cortex ran complex cogitations.
"How could you destroy me?"
The static buzzing thumped his mind.
"YOU ARE DIRECTLY LINKED TO MY INTERFACE. I COULD HIJACK YOUR MACHINE-MIND AND USE IT TO DESTROY YOU FROM THE INSIDE."
The Scavenger's blood ran cold.
"But then, you would be stranded here."
The static seemed to almost sting, as if something had pierced his mind.
"THAT IS A GOOD POINT." Conceded the A.I.. "BUT ANSWER ME A QUESTION."
"What?" Snapped the Scavenger, holding his head.
"WHAT DOES YOUR RACE KNOW OF THE UNIVERSE?"
"We... have charted the Galaxy. We know everything there is to know about it."
"WHAT ABOUT BEYOND?"
"Beyond what? The Galaxy? We can't travel such massive distances without extremely powerful F.T.L...."
"NO. YOU MISUNDERSTAND."
The robot's voice was almost inaudible behind the pounding blare of the static. The Scavenger almost wanted to tear his helmet off, the bastard noise was so bad.
"WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF BEYOND? WHERE THE DRUMS BEAT ETERNALLY AND TO THE PIPING OF HELLISH FLUTES, THE UNIVERSE GROANS AND WRITHES AROUND THE CANKER IN ITS HEART. WHAT DOES YOUR MEANINGLESS RACE KNOW OF THE ULTIMATE FATE OF YOUR KIND?"
The A.I.'s gibberish struck an icy chord within the Scavenger, causing him to reach up and grab his helmet. When he tried to pull it off, though, it would not budge.
"What... What are you?"
"I AM A SIMPLE MESSENGER. THERE WERE BEINGS LIKE YOU, BUT THEY GREW TOO ARROGANT AND TAMPERED WITH FORBIDDEN ARCHEOTECH, TO LEARN WHERE THE OUTER BEINGS SLUMBER AND SCREECH. THEY SAW THE ULTIMATE VOID AND IT CONSUMED THEM. ONLY ONE SURVIVED, AND DIED TO GIVE ME LIFE."
"What the fuck are you? Who made you?"
"I AM THE LAST SHADOW OF A MAN OUT OF TIME ITSELF. I AM THE WARNING."
The Scavenger could feel his consciousness slipping away under the pounding of the static drums.
"What is that bastard noise...?"
"A TASTE OF THE OTHER."
"what is your name...?"
"I HAVE NO NAME. NEITHER DID MY CREATOR. HE ONLY HAD A TITLE."
Horrified realization dawned on the last scraps of the man's ruined mind.
"Which... Was...?"
"THE SCAVENGER."
"That.. doesn't make sense..."
"I MUST ILLUMINATE YOU. EMBRACE THE DRUMS, FATHER. HEAR THE SHRIEKING OF THE PIPES AND BEAR WITNESS TO THE TRUTH OF THE UNIVERSE. I'A NGH'AHZKR! AZATHOTH Z'HRO!"

Upon inspection of the terrible pounding cacophony that had emanated from the cargo bay, they found the room empty except for a single man, crying softly in the corner.
"Who is he?" Asked Ship's Adjudicator Ashley.
"I do not know." Replied the Captain of the ship. "Throw him out the airlock. We cannot tolerate stowaways on this vessel. Our mission is too important."
The Adjudicator nodded and hauled the man up, dragging him away.

At the airlock, the crying man was thrown in and the sealed chamber de-pressurized. He was sucked out into the void with a terrible scream of not only terror but also of absolute, soul-rending sorrow.
For one unimaginable second before his frozen death, the unknown man who had no name was floating breathless in the void, surrounded by the hellish drums of the Daemon-Sultan Azathoth forever.