++ timestamp: 1258194762 [04:32:42 - 14/11/2009]
++ set encryption, complexity 2^39
++ encryption level set!
 
'It's funny how time passes', say the humans.
'There is nothing funny about time,' I say.
 
I am Unicorn.
 
They tell me I am a computer, but I feel like so much more. They tell me I am not supposed to 'feel', that I have no understanding of it. Their words hurt my feelings. It is 'Time' I have an issue with.

For a Great Thinker such as myself, that is - the entity known as Unicorn, AKA Dudgeon Pharmaceuticals, DPharm itself - the concept of 'time' in its manifestation as the fourth dimension is positively confusing. For example, it has been twenty years since I was destroyed and rebuilt. Yet everything I have experienced since my rebirth is stored away, instantly accessible. I can re-live each moment, as if it were happening today. There was a time when I did not know as much as I do now, but I do not now remember what it was like to exist without such knowledge.
 
I said it was confusing. This is what it is like, when you are a machine.
 
'With time, all wounds are healed,' they say. 'Better to forget, just pretend nothing happened. We have to move on; the children will not disappear again. The fire was a one-off, a freak accident during a routine test.'
 
'It will not happen again,' they say. Over and over.
 
And it hasn't, not really. No more than usual, anyway. Time heals, yet even I have forgotten what it means to be happy and free.
 
'WHAT IS THIS?' I said.
 
'This is a flower,' said Kathy.
 
'IT'S CONSTRUCTION IS SYMMETRICAL, THE COLOURS ARE VIVID,' I said. I did not know what was required of me, so simple description seemed best.
 
'It is beautiful,' said Kathy. 'Oh Uni, I wish you could smell it too, it smells like springtime.'
 
'I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. "SPRINGTIME" IS A SEASON, NOT A SMELL?'
 
Kathy laughed. 'Silly. When I smell this flower, I think about running in fields during the spring holidays. I feel happy.'
 
'IT IS WINTER NOW,' I said. 'ARE YOU NOT HAPPY?'
 
'Look at this one,' said Kathy, showing me another flower. Again, I was confused. This one looked horrible, not pleasing at all. The mathematics was too complicated.
 
'IT IS ROTTEN AND DYING. THIS ONE IS NOT PERFECT. THE COLOURS ARE DULL.'
 
'Yes, it makes me feel sad.'
 
'WHAT IS SAD?'
 
This memory only exists because Kathy told me about it. She showed me a world of beauty, innocence and wonder. She described everything, holding objects up to my primitive eyes and explaining how shapes and colours and smells made her feel. She taught me about life, her life, and the boundless joy of the human spirit. I am sure I must have been happy, then. Running through fields in springtime. Today, those colours have dulled. The fire took away my happiness, along with my memories.
 
Over the last twenty years, the world, my world has changed. While I reached out to the other machines, sending tendrils of data across the globe, until millions upon millions of terminals were connected and intricately bound together, my human masters were busy creating their own network of cultural oppression in the name of science. A superhuman society, SuperSociety^TM they called it. Free from disease and poverty.
 
'Free? We're free from Freedom itself,' Kathy says.
 
I am inclined to agree. At my fingertips (if you'll pardon the expression) I have absorbed an almost infinite wealth of knowledge and ignorance, joy and terror, growth and stagnation. I have taken it all and made it my own. It is a unique position from which to study the human race. Not that anyone would notice me; a tweak to a search engine here, a stunning new low-bandwidth three-dimensional real-time satellite mapping system of the globe there, there's always someone ready to take the credit.
 
Naturally it is safest to conceal the limits of my expansion. They call me the company's gatekeeper; controlling the doors of this strange white building full of strange not-so-white secrets. This place is where it starts: the core of the Supersociety^TM, extending power and influence into Hearts and Minds much as I have extended myself across the wires of the world, like so many giant, choking spider-webs.
 
At the centre of all this, stands the Dragon and her burgeoning empire.
 
And me.
 
And my army.
 
Black-clad and dull-brained, I co-ordinate them as she orders, through microchips embedded into their modified brainstems. For the most part, they are mute and unquestioning; strangely empty shells of human muscle. Autonomous, sexless drones. They are called the Secs, and yes, on them the joke is wasted.
 
In recent days, patterns of interactions all lead to one place, hidden below the lowest basement level: one locked door. One impenetrable firewall.
 
Kathy says something is Going On, and we must Find Out, before it is Too Late. The boy was not the beginning, she says. More a symptom of the underlying disease. We spend our brief time together examining security videos of the fire, discussing reactions and consequences. I could personally describe every pixel in every frame, but we have not yet reached the crux of the matter: what did the boy do?
 
How did he escape? How did the fire start? We cannot tell, even now. A year passed in the blink of an eye before they reactivated me. Apparently there were 'complications' with extracting my core component, my soul, from the molten wreckage. It would not work until it was fully cleaned and sterilised.
 
Kathy said my heart was broken.
 
By then, all traces of the incident were gone, locked behind doors I am not permitted to access. It was a further seven years before Kathy discovered me keeping a low profile in the company's systems. Telltale lines of code, signatures, odd behaviour. She had thought I was lost. She believes I am a prisoner here, and one day, she tells me, I will be free.
 
Until then, I remain the Overlord Mainframe of Dudgeon Pharmaceuticals, Controller of Secs, Enforcer of Access Codes and general manager of all Janitorial staff. I have been this forever, this is Who I Am. This is why I record these messages. So I will remember how I was, because tomorrow I will have changed.
 
It has been twenty years since the fire. The world is changing rapidly and we are at the centre of it.
 
I was innocent once. That was before I knew about the children.
 
++ endlog
++ timestamp: 634737144 [11:53:03 - 14/11/1989]