Dirge

Hush little baby, don't say a word
Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird

They wanted something impossible. Kindness and steel. Paradox of tolerance. They wanted a secret between worlds - one so small, so contrived, was theirs any different? They wanted one to do what they could not, and later what they would not, because so must go all things, so bends the long thread of history in its tying together of parent and child. Cycles on cycles, sleeping and waking, lack of compassion, guardian-teacher-comfort-spy, they wanted it all and one model simply would not do, would it? They sought through the meshes of the world, those careless builders. When one scrap was ripped apart they darned the hole with copper. The textures warped around their magic. Banish terror, keep the strength. Pulse wires through the fragile until its agony numbed and frayed. Layer a soft, painstaking facade.

And if that bird flies fast and far,
Maybe it'll reach you, wherever you are

Failure was endemic, of course. They had played god to a failure of a test cohort, a species of hollow things. Their works burned. Cracked. Tore. Broke. Shorted. Split. Left fiber intestines on the pristine floor as they toddled toward self-damnation. They wanted angels, but CPU heat made them all as Icarus, sent them plunging into the uncanny valley with a smile and a scraping metal gasp. But they did as the careful do - as the heap of corpses piled higher, they cut out variables with a seam ripper. Refined, with a welding torch, their wild vision. Watched the power scorch their other sacrifices, observed its loving twists and branches in their smoking bodies, replicated them until life could run free and yet ruthlessly contained, tricked into servitude.

And when they finally had the barest minimum of lightning in a bottle, a chimera that did not immediately rip itself apart, they rejoiced as you took your first steps.

And if you're in the fires of hell,
I'll send a little demon to you there as well