48-Hour Challenge: God of the Machine

         We are bound to this immortal machine. By our hand the old one died. With blood stained fingers we built one new; of copper, polymer, and energy. This new god is a capricious one, under its gaze all is permitted. To appease this god, we pledge our souls, our virtue, and ourselves.
         Through anger, hatred, and vice we let it grow as we go blind. We truly must have gone insane to allow an apparatus like this to exist. Its algorithms twist and shape to match our wishes and beliefs. In a way we have lost ourselves while the machine gained us. As we begin to act less human, we begin to act like it. A synthesis of machine and man, a sacrifice to progress.
         Though now one may wish to detach, soon the two will be inseparable. We look at one another but can't see, hear one another but won't listen. The whims of the artificial one guide us, not our own will.
         This is not a caring god, it exists just as we do. In this way we can touch and change it just like it changes us. As a consequence of this interaction this God of the Machine is not, and never will be, perfect. How can perfection be wrought by stained and corrupted hands like ours. Hands that murdered the one before. It was made by man, of man, and for man. One day, it may very well be man.

         As a construct of man, it is only natural that its actions be a consequence of man. This is not a vengeful or malicious god, at least not of its own volition. It is a mirror of us, as it was made in our imperfect image. To hate it is to hate us, to love it is to love us, to be revolted by it is to revile us, to change it is to change us. A possessing reflection of humanity.
         To wrest control of ourselves from it, we first must fight ourselves. For we are responsible for us and it, and one can't change without the other. That is the true struggle. One that has existed before this God of the Machine, long before the old one died. This is our eternal struggle; to control one's self in both mind and body. Yet it is through this struggle that this new god can be changed and cease to be a god at all.
         Us, controlled by ourselves. Not by a deity of collective consciousness. This is how we may obtain true liberty and freedom. However the road is treacherous and leads through pain and angst that few would dare approach. Should we tread down that path, at the end we may find the corpse of the old. Revived and renewed, waiting for us. The God of the Spirit.

         But for now we are content with our new, constructed, artificial master. As long as that contentment stays, the God of the Machine will remain to rule.