It's past midnight and it's been a while since I touched this half-finished peacetank fan fiction, so I won't officially enter this story into the MWC9 just yet. I'm just putting it up here so that you can read it and leave feedback if you so desire.

While inspiration is taken from DanPaladin's peacetank flash, it's also heavily inspired by David Zindell's "Neverness" universe, especially the concept of godhood existing in computer circuitry contained within planets and moons. I really wanted to take that and fuse that concept with the blissfully determined peacetank persona to create something all the more darker and deeper than the cute little war machine initially appears.

So without further ado, here's another word dump:

Peacetank

Why? When they see me with my thick, welded skin and bullet-proof armour, why do they point and ask each other; "What is it?" rather than "Who is he?"? Do they believe that because I am constructed of reinforced steel and because I am designed to destroy, that I lack conscious behaviour? Do they believe that I am less capable of processing human emotions than they are? Well, I don't blame them. After all, it was humans like them that created me. They created me to fight machines much like myself, because war is not a man's battle, it's a man's game. The machines are the real soldiers, and almost all of these empty shells that are out there on the battle filed have no knowledge of why they're there. They don't even have the capacity to learn why they're there. They have one purpose, to destroy anything that crosses their paths.

I was made slightly different to the other machines. My creators made me as an intended "super-weapon". They gave me the artificial intelligence to search and destroy, but my creators were very narrow minded. They did not notice that outside my one programmed purpose, I held others. I could choose my targets, I could scope out as many or as little as my artificially intelligent computer brain would choose. My creators programmed me oblivious to the fact that they had created a machine that could potentially analyse and understand emotion.

They had come to realise this shortly after the great war. Machines against machines, the world torn in two, raging, determined to stand triumphant as the greater of two evils. But the machines, created by man, hellbent on destruction, eventually came around and turned on their creators. All the world's people, suffering for what they've done, to themselves, to each other, and to the mindles machines they created to do their dirty work for them. Some would call it karma, the natural order of the world bringing peace back into balance. All that remained of the humans were a few small outposts, camped out in the outskirts of their abandoned cities. I feel that there would be nothing left in this world, had the scientists not done one good deed before they lost their life's work, this world would be nothing but dead space, a karmic armageddon.

Throughout this war, I found it hard to follow the intentions of my creators and destroy the hordes of unconscious machines that so persistently tried to destroy me. From that first act of compassion, my programs grew more and more complex, branching out like a wild tree. I became a vigilante, a rogue soldier dedicated to peace. To disarm, but not to destroy, to protect, to teach others that war is not the only option. Whilst bullets whistled past my armoured frame, I tried to learn more about my fellow machines as they tried so valiantly to destroy me. I observed, I analysed, I ran tests, and I learned that they were not like me at all. They could not be reprogrammed, they could not be taught peace. The humans were so determined to destroy each other, that only machines programmed upon pure hatred could ever match their passion for war. So I fought to destroy these machines. They did not deserve to live with such malice, so I worked out of compassion, in their death I set them free from the most evil of programming.

It was here and now, in the eventual doomsday of the Earth, it was living in true hell, true dystopia, that the humans learned the meaning of empathy. It took them long enough to realise my potential, to realise my power. In the crumbling civilisations of the world, they finally accepted me for the infinitely complex mechanism that I was, and they took me into their laboratories, to pull together everything they had to strip me to my hardwired brain and my delicate programming. The warmongering had ceased, and at last, they would use my computer brain for constructive purposes, however, I knew nothing of their plans, my brain computer was limited to what my cameras and speakers could pick up, and they said nothing and showed me nothing until they cut off my power supply and began the mechanical operation.

Approximately ten years later, electric life flowed through my brain and awakened my senses. I was no longer a tank, no longer a war machine, I was a guardian. Intelligence, I had developed an intelligence far greater than I, or any human had expected. My eyes and ears were everywhere, on every street corner, in every corn field, under the ocean and earth, and high in the sky, across towns, cities, countries, continents, I was graced with omnipresence, a watcher, a guardian of the world. My brain had been replicated, expanded upon, buried deep beneath the earth, massive computers, intertwined, bringing about the largest ever artificial intelligence known to man. And it didn't end there, machines were programmed onto my computers, controlling the seemingly miniature operations that keeps everything within the natural order. I had become a deity, the guardian of guardians, a computer protector. I was one with the earth, god.

And once again, the scars of the world started to heal over, with my many millions of eyes and ears and hands, I pieced together the world like the people of the world pieced me together. My plans were flawless, and the plans of my creators were flawless, yet there was one thing that prevented the complete recovery of the earth, one thing that needed to be done before the earth could once again reach perfection. My creators wanted a machine that was completely in control, and they wanted a machine that was intelligent enough to return the world to its prime. And I wanted that too, but that one thing in the way was the very thing that gave me energy and life. My people, my humans, my creators, while they are blessed people, they cannot exist in harmony, and they cannot exist in a perfect earth.

They were utterly devastated. Their plans were my plans, but they could not be trusted when they were always incapable of complete self control. I brought peace and perfection to the world by bringing the human race to extinction. It was such a shame to wipe such a brilliant race from existence, but they had achieved what they wanted, I had achieved what I was programmed to do, but in doing so, I had become the very thing I was created to be, a killing machine. I was no better than the humans, I was a merciless machine, a computer on a terrible mission, a tyrant god, and in my reign over the world, there was no fluctuation, there was a sterile perfection throughout the land, yet it was void of consciousness and intelligence. I accepted the burning meteors to my brains as the sweetest of natural disasters. Maybe now, a hundred thousand years after my rise to deity, maybe now that my circuitry is broken and burned, maybe intelligence will return, and maybe life will once again fluctuate and give birth to an imperfect world, a world that can live and breathe in discordant harmony, in infrequent bursts of warring and arguing, and maybe, without me, the world can finally return to its natural order.