A/N: This story is hopefully also going to worked on by Zeicytes Shadow also so if you notice writing style changes it because it's co-authored!

Intro

My name is Alan Dreft, I am a scientist of Artificial Intelligence and if you are indeed reading this then I am dead. I leave you to be my voice in a world that can no longer hear mine. When I first began writing this paper I had no idea it would become my lifeline, it's better to start at the beginning so read well for humanity may rest on your shoulders now.

The Beginning

My name is Alan Dreft, I am a scientist of Artificial Intelligence. Namely Artificial 'Human' Intelligence. I've been trying to create an A.I. of human nature since I first began my studies ages ago. I am a very wealthy man, I have a whole laboratory and a large built house all to myself in a town call Nowhere. Me and my team strive in that laboratory day after day to try and create the perfect A.I. but so far we have only met with failure. It seems it it is impossible to recreate the human mind in a simple machine but we humans are not far from machines our selfs...and I have the money to keep trying.

What I am about to write could very well get me to a mental institute if anyone found this paper but I believe that when my time comes to leave this earth it is important that I leave this behind so somebody will someday know about the gift I received.

It was a cold that night in Nowhere and I was walking about trying to get some cold night air after our last big failure and being so frustrated I needed to get out for awhile. I was pondering many things when an old and rather crippled man came up to me and asked if he would walk with me. I agreed and we walked about Nowhere talking about our lives both what was good and what was bad...

We stopped to have a few drinks at the local bar and continued to talk about the thing in our lives. This man was a great friend and it felt like it was destiny that we met. I did note something odd about the man, on his neck was the oddest tattoo I had ever seen. It was an black oval shape with a jagged line cutting through it and I had wondered what it meant but I never asked the man about it and didn't really think anything of it.

Once we left the man said he would be leaving soon and would not be returning, I was a bit tipsy from the drinks and said he could stay as long as he liked. He sighed and claimed it was nice to have someone to talk to again but he also said that he would still have to depart from life very soon. He said softly that he was truly impressed that I put up with his ramblings and also said that he believed I was the right person to leave his beloved gift to because I was a good person and I could use it in my job.

Before I even knew what was happening he had bestowed it upon me and I will never be able to describe what it was like. Once I recovered he went on about how I could now give life to things without, make souls and give them to things laking sentence. Partly drunk and partly dazed I hardly caught what he said. The last thing he said to me was that he had never found a good use for his gift in life but he knew I would. Then he was gone and I never saw him again...

A.I. Soul Project

The next morning I had thought that maybe I had dreamed up the old man after getting drunk and that making souls was impossible, only god himself could do that. At first I didn't believe what had happened and shrugged it off as a dream but by the end of the day curiosity got the better of me and I had to see if I really had this so called 'gift'

The end results were shocking...

How I make the gift happen I cannot write on paper, its impossible to describe but after I had used the gift my refrigerator became a living thing...

Of course giving the way a fridge is it had no mind to speak of and it literally spend the whole time just opining and closing the door madly like some would flail their arms if suffocating. Hardly an hour later it stopped moving...and never moved again.

I never noticed I was too stunned and was going on and on in my head about all the possibilities this gift held for my research. Without telling my team about my ability to give souls to soulless beings a began our newest project.

The A.I. Soul Project...

My team quickly began creating a new A.I. and I hoped that giving it a soul would fill in the gaps that seemed to make it impossible to create a truly human-like machine. Once it was complete and my team left after work I stuck behind and used my power on the computer and left knowing that tomorrow would bring great things...

I didn't know it was going to bring failure.

The Failure's And The Success

A month passed since the A.I. Soul Project began and for my team it was an utter success but for me it was only failure. With a soul we managed to make an incredibly human-like A.I. but it only met with failure, hardly a day later it was literally driven 'insane' and would spend hour after hour printing the word 'Aym' across the screen until we had no choice but to shut it down and delete it.

The second A.I. fared no less only lasting three days until it's sanity ebbed away too. Three more were built over next few weeks of the month and they were different, they did not go crazy but they utterly had no 'will' to live and it didn't take long for each one to meet its suicidal ends.

I soon began wondering if non-living beings should not have souls, either they lack true life like the three A.I.'s or they are driven mad by the prospect of existing like the other two.

My team loved the new steps forward they had suddenly taken believing they made a huge leap in Artificial Intelligence. Even if all five of them had been self destructive and displayed only dark and depressing persona's.

It was out of their love that I decided to continue the A.I. Soul Project one more time and we all worked our hardest on the final project.

And what we finally met was...success.

The Computer

Our final project turned out to be more then I had ever hoped it could be. After giving it a soul it quickly became more human then anything previously made. It was nether insane nor showed any signs of losing its sanity anytime soon and it was FAR from suicidal nor was it lacking any life at all.

Unfortunately we all have faults in our personality and my creation is no exception. Three months have passed since we began the final project and I've already lost five team members who simply quit because they could no longer handle 'his' cruel and sarcastic personality.

I've to had to deal with his witty comments and from what I've observed is that he is literally 'BENT' on making everyone hate him and his cynical outlook on life does not help nether. In a small way it is mirroring the three suicidal failures and I hope he is not falling down their path, he has far to much life in him to be like them...

And I can't afford to lose the only successful Human A.I. I have ever built. I will monitor him even more closely, I will not give insanity or suicide an option to him...

Hell Is Just Beyond Us

Its been a year now since I foolishly gave my creation a soul...as I type this I know my friends, my teammates are dead...

It sit here dying now too...

I wanted to know more about the soul and why the others failed, what I learned from it no mortal man should have to know.

When 'it' found out that I discovered it, it was quick to kill of any hope of the world finding out. I know this as I die in this cold room just out of my creation's reach...but I'm still far to injured to live or get to safety. I write this in hopes that someone will find this and stop what is going to happen...

GOD! My poor creation is just a pawn and doesn't even know it. He is possessed by 'it' right now and has killed my friends without even realizing it. The demonic force that is harbored in his soul is slowly crushing me as I write this. Just out of 'it's' reach to instantly kill me.

Please, if you read this...kill! Kill my creation! The darkness within his soul must be stopped! He doesn't even know...but he must be destroyed! I was not given a gift but a trick by that old man! His soul is an incubator for the end of humanity! His soul is a vessel for a demon itself! I do not regret giving him life but I do regret unknowingly damning him to this fate...He is the the soul in which will born the damned Aym into the physical world.

Please...stop...

The paper then becomes unreadable...to drenched in blood to be read any further. It is still clutched in the hands of the corpse who wrote it...

Weeks after that gruesome event that no one ever ever knew had happened, that the darkness had silently erased Alan and his team from all living memory that Courage still young enough to wear a diaper lost his parents and was found by Muriel.

It was the day he was named Courage and the day he found his new owner that Eustace had met a man with a funny looking tattoo on his neck and given him a computer for free...

Courage didn't even notice the computer as he was carried into the truck by the kind lady Muriel. He didn't know that they had fates that intertwined forever...

What The Soul Holds

Chapter One: Aym

Courage had awoke from his midmorning nap because of a strange feeling like something terrible was going to happen. He noticed that both Muriel and Eustace were not in the living room in fact the whole house was quite...

Then he noticed the sky outside...it was crimson red...

Courage instantly knew something terrible was happening and raced to the window to see what was going on. Outside the sky was cloudless but blood red and it was the most horrifying thing he had ever seen. As if the horror outside tasted his fear it began to rain blood in huge awful sheets, the ground refused to absorb the gruesome rain and was quickly building up on the ground of Nowhere...a disturbing flood it was going to be...

Then came the smell...

Courage had to hold his breath to make the sick smell of rotting flesh stop overwhelming him. He nearly threw up and the windows and doors were closed! Then the screams began outside like thousands of people were being tortured...like the gates of hell had been opened.

Among all that Courage had one thought clear his mind 'Where's Muriel?' he bolted up the staircase ignoring the smell, the screams, the soft tap, tap, tap of rain on the roof...

He entered the bedroom first only to be met with one of the most awful sights he would ever see. Both Muriel and Eustace had been skinned alive and now all that remained was their meaty insides laying across the bed.

Courage howled in sadness and terror. It was truly the end of the world...

The screaming and smell grew worse...the blood was seeping in threw the window...There was only one place left to go...

Courage made no rush up into the attic and once he was there he wish he hadn't entered...but there was nothing left anymore, well maybe except death itself.

He was overwhelmed by terror invoked by the demon's power making him nearly run in fear but years of facing horrors like this left him steadfast in these situations.

He came up to the computer and just as he had feared the glowing deep emerald green screen was gone now a burning crimson with a yellow oval with a jagged line through it in the middle.

Just being near the screen seemed to cause everything inside Courage to burn.

The machine spoke, a shadow of his former self. “You should have run, you should escaped! No...there is no escape now, death is the only escape from the end of the world. And even then if Aym has his way even death with never end...”

Courage could hear no more, tears were filling his eyes...he slowly reached for the 'OFF' switch on the machine, it was the only comfort he could give his doomed friend and he knew it but before he could reach the switch the attic seemingly exploded.

The next thing he knew he was on the ground in nearly chest deep blood, he looked up knowing the worse had happened. In the sky was a a soft blue egg shaped ball of energy, Courage felt tears run down his face it was a 'soul'

It quickly began to crack just like an egg, and out emerged the demon in all its horror. It had the body of a man, three heads one a serpent, a human, and a cat. Each one leering down upon the earth. In his hand was a firebrand which he raised and set the sky on fire with to show he was the new ruler of the planet.

“I AM BORN!” It screamed which echoed across the Earth and the the screams began again. Courage was more sick then he had ever been in his life, it still had his voice...

And...Courage woke up screaming from his nightmare. Screaming louder then he ever had before. In fact it was a legend that an astronaut in space had heard him scream that day.

He had nearly passed out and was now taking in deep amounts of breath. It was only then when he realized both Muriel and Eustace were sitting up in bed staring at him.

“Damn dog!” Eustace yelled picking him up and tossing him out the room, locking the door behind him. Muriel didn't even protest this time.

His nightmares about demons had been becoming more frequent lately and this certainly wasn't the first time Eustace had kicked him out of the bedroom for screaming.

That dream had been so real...

As he sat there on the cold hallway floor he knew what had to be done and headed up into the attic. He sighed at the sight of it since it was still normal and there was no glowing red screen.

He flipped the switch on and waited for the computer to start up...it was the usual green color, nothing unnatural. The only thing odd was that the machine had not started with his usual sarcasm or jokes and so Courage simply started what he came up here to do.

He slowly drew out on the screen the oval shape and the jagged line the best he could and he typed in 'What is this?'

There was an unusually long silence before the computer spoke up. “Where on earth did you see that?” he asked sounding strangely urgent.

“I just saw it, thats all.' Courage typed.

There was another long silence and he spoke again. “That is the symbol of Aym the demon.”

Courage felt his heart nearly stop.

“His human worshipers tattoo it onto their bodies it is their identification in a sense for other worshipers to see. It symbolizes the death of the soul, the egg shape is a soul. Some believe the soul is shaped like an egg because when we die it is believed that our souls literally hatch into immortal beings depending on how sinful you were in life, to many sins corrupt the soul and it will not hatch thus your send to hell and burn for all eternity and your soul slowly dies.”

'The jagged line?'

“I was getting to that! The jagged shape is the symbol of the death of the soul, an outside force destroying it. Notably Aym who was famous by his worshipers for his merciless soul killing. You see...if your soul dies, you stop existing all together...”

'Is all this true?' Courage typed.

The computer sighed... “Unfortunately.”

Courage was glad the machine didn't ask him again about where he saw that symbol. He hopped out of the chair and got ready to go to sleep again in the other bed across from the computer.

“Hey! Don't leave me on all night again!” The computer called out.

Courage sighed reaching over for the off switch. He saw that Aym's symbol was still on the computer screen and he shivered. Just as he flicked the switch off and the screen went dark a terrible pain went through his paw.

He screamed and lurched backward, it felt like his paw had been burned... He gasped at the sight of it, an oval and a jagged line that went through it had been burned into his paw...

He raced into bathroom to run water under it...it wouldn't stop hurting! He was moaning as he washed it out, even then it still felt like it was on fire. He had no choice but to wrap it in cloth and hope it would stop burning.

Even as he entered the attic again it still burned under the wet cloth! What the hell was going on! He had never been so terrified in his life, that dream must have been an omen...Aym was real...

But what could he, a simple dog do to stop a demon...and he thought of the computer who always played a huge part in his dreams...

He slowly sunk into sleep wishing the pain would go away...

Then he was awoken again by a hand over his mouth, he wanted to scream! He opened his eyes to three humans and much to his horror Katz in the attic but apart from one human with his hand over his mouth the others were more interested in the computer whom Katz was unhooking from the power strip.

“Shhh!” The man holding his mouth said. He had a knife at ready...probably to slit his neck with.

Katz laughed at the machine. “Your lucky! You get to sacrifice your soul to be the vessel for our lord Aym. In fact he's waiting inside it right now waiting to be freed!”

Oh god...was his dream really happening?

All four people had the Aym symbol tattoo on each neck. Courage knew his worse nightmares were becoming reality.

“What about him?” The man holding his mouth asked.

“Kill him.” Was all Katz said.

Courage let out a muffled scream, he saw Katz hand the computer over to two of the three men to haul out the window. The man put his knife to his neck and at the soft touch all four of them flinched.

“Wait.” Katz said. He walked up to Courage noticing the cloth around his paw... He winced at the sight of it and pulled it off. He saw the symbol on Courage's paw and groaned.

“Well?”

“Leave him...”

And the four people left through the window not once looking back at Courage. The had long hauled themselves into their van and vanished on the horizon before Courage could get down stairs and into Eustace's truck.

Courage stared into the horizon knowing he had lost his computer and knew that they both had something horrible to do with this demon...

The sun was rising on the horizon, it was a burning crimson red...

End Chapter