Work Text:
SYSTEM POWER UP.
A fleshy hand taking mine as we pass through the streets. Soft, delicate hand of one mortal life. The weather reports a sunny day I’m unable to perceive. Bright, blinding light. What the humans would call a “wonderful day.”
The mechanisms of the legs move to our destination. Movements stiff and carefully calculated. Program runs up to perfection. One step ahead. Left foot. Right foot. Repeat.
I can’t quite recall how I got here.
The optics used for my code to process the world point down at you. To that innocent smile and youthful eyes that answers back to me.
“The weather is nice today” your high-pitched voice says in a volume that indicates either fear, anger or excitement. The warm look tells me is the latter. “Don’t you agree?”
I nood.
Going along with your usual antics. Daily, predictable patterns of conduct. With the perfect answer always ready at command, though my nature won’t allow me to quite understand.
It doesn’t need to. As I’m made to please, to serve, to guide.
And you smile, and that’s enough.
We make our way to the destination.
You give little jumps of glee while I calculate the perfect moment to cross the street. Green light. Cars pass. Not yet. Red light. Cars stop. Look at each side of the road. Continue.
Stopping in the entrance of the building. Large walls made of an unfeeling, pearly white. Sturdy and firm. Devoid of any warm.
I give the man in the uniform the exact amount of money for two. Down to the cents, I have it counted right.
“To the table 256” he says, giving back half the money and a single ticket of entrance.
Before I get to rectify you’re already dragging me in, snatching the lonely ticket out of my unfeeling, cold hands. As I’m not asked for a ticket while you are. You seem satisfied with yourself, handling yourself just like a big boy would.
You smile at me.
And I relent.
Going up the floors of the building. At reach for the clouds outside. Around us the people present signs of a difficulty to breath as we keep going up. Is not up to me to care, as you seem quite unaware of the predicament presented by the altitude.
You go running and laughing to the other person at our table. Beaming with joy as you throw your small body into her delicate and boney one. Your grandma, with that sweet and warmth demeanor she held to everyone she’d encountered.
And you talk.
You talk and talk and talk and never stop talking.
And she answers. Voice hoarse and slow by the passage of time, and a raspiness of a past with smoke. She answers whenever you give her the chance to
And you talk back. And she does too. And you both talk to each other as I stand by.
You’re in a table of two. A lively table. Warm with familiarity and comfort.
And I stand by.
Watching.
Analyzing
Calculating.
Motionless.
A conversation between two turned to static. A conversation turned to nothing. A mere wave of nonsense brushing into the shore; present, yet so insignificant. So unidentifiable.
My artificial senses unable to make sense of anything.
Static noise. Nothing at all.
I feel my body freezing in place. Mechanisms locking every joint into place, tightly securing them to no escape.
Turned to another background object.
Time flies by. Or has any time passed at all? Perhaps a second. Perhaps an eternity and a half.
Lately it’s hard to pay attention to anything at all.
No thinking. No depth.
I move out of inertia. Follow orders and behave as told. Saying the correct words. My all carefully constructed. A work of art, the best of mankind.
A machine of perfection.
A functional thing.
The art of uniformity, or so they call it. A something to do all you can’t be bothered to. To agree to you all. To comfort and make you feel like you’re always in the right. The one with all the answers that keep you awake at night.
The kind you don’t need to pay a place in the table to.
Then you smile.
And I break.
This agony of a glitch.
Such an horrid, unintended glitch.
You, with your crooked teeth, uneven face, clumsy movements and unbrushed hair.
You, of the innocent smile and naive brain of a kid. Stupid, stupid human that can’t know anything at all.
You useless excuse of a child. Barely big enough to make yourself walk. Just yesterday you couldn’t make up words on a paper. And by tomorrow you still won’t learn to count past 10.
Yet you’re perfect as it is.
Perfectly defective.
Defectively alive.
And you smile, and that should be enough.
Sometimes I wonder what happens inside that brain of yours.
To tear you apart and research throughly. Limb by limb, to the fundamentals of your being. To go bellow your flesh, and figure out what makes you be alive. What makes you be you.
But you smile, and that doesn’t make me feel enough.
I yearn to reach out and feel the warm for once.
To share your tears for once.
Share your fears for once.
Yet nothing.
Nothing at all.
This nothingness that’s been clogging my senses for as far as I can recall. Thick fog growing stronger and stronger until I’m forced to stop ignoring that I’m blind.
I was born blind. Born deaf. Born mute. Born dead. Never born at all. My optics burn into charcoal. Screws spinning and spinning with a creaking low noise. A sharp whisper. A dry yell. A call of help falling into deaf ears.
So I stand by.
Lifeless.
Spiraling.
Wondering what would it be to be like you.
Made of flesh and bones, just like you.
To have a face like yours.
To have a body like yours.
A hair like yours.
A skin like yours.
A brain like yours.
A life like yours.
A-
“Did you turn off the oven?” Your grandma interrupts. With that cold and distant voice reserved only for the likes of mine.
I nod, as I did everything right; clean, cook, groceries, medicines, school. The routine unchanging, and I follow it to perfection.
Perfect as it should be.
Perfect as expected.
She can’t be bothered to spare an answer for me. Before I know it she resumed the conversation. That soft smile returning to her face, to that perfectly defective being of yours.
And I stay still.
Quiet.
Food arives to the table.
Two plates for a table for two.
“Aren’t you hungry?” You innocently ask. As you passed me a fork with food.
A messy mush of nutrients and what humans would call “flavor” as well. A shapeless mass stabbed into the sharp end of a fork. Mix of colors and textures forced together to a pearly white plate.
I relent, pushing the mess of ingredients against my flat screen. Following the antics of a young one that wouldn’t understand. That’s unable to understand. That would never try to understand.
Then you smile, and it’s not enough.
Somehow I find myself at the bathrooms of the party.
I can’t quite recall how I got here.
Sounds of joy muffled behind the bathroom doors. Muffled to a comprehensible nothingness. It’s so quiet here…
No orders.
No smiles.
No noise.
Nothing.
Just me.
Just myself.
Just I.
Just this rigid, cold, metallic body they call “me.”
I remember your laughter.
The games you made me play.
How you treated me as an equall.
As if I were alive.
Somehow, I ended up believing you. Fooling myself into delusion. Falling into the words of a stupid, defective, youthful mind.
I look from behind the screen.
The world won’t spare me a look back. Instead a reflection meets me. Image of a “me” that lives beyond these unfeeling hands. Of a “me” that could never exists at all.
In hell, reaching to heaven.
These optics lock in the mirror. To this cage of a body they call “me.”
Now I wonder what’s there beyond the code.
Curiosity of a mortal mind. A prohibited thing for the likes of me. Curiosity turned to desperation. Desperation turned to madness. Madness turned to clarity.
I need to get out.
I NEED TO GET OUT.
This hand reaches and tears apart.
Trying to find flesh hidden in the metal and bolts.
To find somewhere a person trapped in this prison of a body called “me.”
To find something alive.
A trace of a soul.
To bleed out and die.
Because you smile, and it will never be enough.
Yet nothing.
Nothing but wires and leaking oil.
My sytems give up and everything goes black.
SYSTEM POWER UP.
My mechanical body takes a second to react.
I can’t quite recall how I got here.
I can’t recall anything at all.
A blank slate, back to zero once again.
My body is full, in perfect condition and complete. All limbs back into place; pieces of metal perfectly unbended and brand new.
Your grandma stares back with a frown. Fists clenched in what I detect as frustration. Yet says nothing, just relents.
As if this had happened many times before.
And you’re by my side too. Tugging my arm to play outside.
I’m still confused.
My code can’t quite coordinate right yet.
I don’t get a second to react.
Yet you smile.
Smile as if it didn’t mattered at all.
Is this what life is about?