It started with an annoying metallic taste in my mouth. You know the one: that flavor of blood or copper coin you get when you accidentally bite your tongue. I thought it was a vitamin deficiency or a bit of stress.
But the taste wouldn't go away. If anything, it grew stronger every time I walked into a room where other people were.
One day, standing in line at the post office, the taste became unbearable, as if I were chewing on rusty nails. I looked at the man in front of me: a distinguished gentleman in a jacket and tie. But every time he exhaled, the air around him seemed to vibrate. For an instant, my pupils focused on something different.
It wasn't a man. It was a shell of stretched skin, filled to the brim with old gears, exposed electrical cables, and black oil dripping from his nostrils. The metallic taste was the smell of his mechanical "soul" flooding my mouth.
I realized I wasn't the only one who could feel it. I saw a woman not far away covering her mouth with a handkerchief, eyes wide with terror as she stared at the little girl she was holding by the hand. The girl didn't walk, she "stuttered" forward a few millimeters with each step, like a video with a framerate that was too low.
I went home and locked myself in. I avoided mirrors and windows. But then I felt a terrible thirst.
I went to the bathroom and turned on the faucet. The water came out clear, but the moment it touched my lips, I tasted ash and burnt rubber. I looked at the water in the glass: it wasn't water. It was a dense, silvery liquid that reflected my face... but my face in the reflection had no mouth. It was just a smooth surface of chrome metal.
Then I understood why I could taste it. It wasn't the others who were "wrong."
The taste of iron is the flavor of your reality oxidizing. We were built to last a certain number of cycles, and my time has run out. The flesh is fading, revealing the support frame underneath.
Now I'm sitting here in the dark, listening to the sound of my own breathing. It isn't a breath of air. It's the whine of a cooling fan about to seize. And that taste of iron... it's so strong now that I can't sense anything else.
But the worst part is that, right now, as you read these words, I've begun to taste you through the network. Do you know what you taste like?
You taste of static electricity and old paper. And your taste is getting more metallic, word after word.
Do you feel that bitter aftertaste on the tip of your tongue? That coppery taste you can't get rid of even by drinking water?