Occasionally it would stop and examine this tree, or that bush, or that squirrel. The squirrels were interesting, if not too terribly tasty. Plus, the front of the beast's edifice was now stained with gore from when the creature popped unexpectedly... not like rocks at all.

The beast knew it should have a purpose, but just what that purpose was... well, no one had etched it anywhere in the creature. Unless the purpose of the creature was to search for a purpose. If that was the case then the job was done, and the creature could get on with... with... damn.

After a while the beast came to a road, a great stretch of soft stone. The creature would talk to the road, but realized it had no language. Aside from a fat load of internal dialog, peppered with yearnings for purpose, it had no means of communicating. This only lead to more internal discourse. After several fruitless minutes of staring at the road, the creature slowly turned and moseyed down the road. A loud, asphalt rendering mosey, but a mosey none the less. It was a mosey that was born out of pondering...

The humming of on coming traffic brought the beast to a stop. The car was cruising down the road a goodly clip, but skidded to a stop within a few seconds of seeing the stone colossus. The creature lumbered forward to not talk with the car... but a great screeching of tires and the car went back the way it came, leaving only a large loud cloud of incinerated rubber. The creature didn't talk to the cloud either.

The next car appeared a few minutes later, but deftly swerved outside the creature's reach, and after that no more cars came. The creature lumbered on.

In less than an hour the creature had come across a city. The city seemed like an appropriate place for the creature to go, and it was pleased. Or at least it thought it should be pleased. Not wanting to foster more internal dialog, it decided not care if it were pleased.

The city was rich with rock. Large stone buildings made of nice sturdy rock. Glorious rock. And stone. And concrete.

Maybe the purpose of the creature was to reproduce, the creature thought. It moseyed up to a building and started to work away with persistent hammer-like blows. Slowly but surely parts of the building fell away to reveal a crude creature-like form. The creature was rapt in duty. Each of these blocks of stone and metal could contained many children, possibly even four or more, and there were so many buildings. It was only up to the beast to free his trapped children.

After a while some people came up and threw things at him - grenades, bullets, and some large explosive things that blackened his hide. After the initial shock of their appearance the creature quickly forgot about them - it had it's purpose now. It hammered and sculpted with huge blocky fists. The people continued to hammer at the creature in turn, but their hearts must not have been in it, since they soon gave up. At least the large explosive things had gotten the squirrel gore off the creature's chest.

The creature worked steadfast, refining his children more and more. Until they looked as identical to himself as they could. A couple of the children he had to give up on; the human's hammering had damaged them, made them too small to be of a regular creature's size. Time flew past quickly, and soon the city was nothing but rubble and a large cleared out square where the creature piled his children. The creature stepped back, and prepared for the glorious moment when his children would rise up and assume a life of their own.

The creature paused.

Now was the time to instruct them to live.

Damn.

The creature sat and stared silently at his children.