G. Wright - Broken Things

Finally he’d found someone that could help him. Josh nodded, and allowed himself to be led back to the table and sat down. The man took the other seat across from him, resting his arms on the table. He wore a name tag that read Michael Hoskins. “Do you even know where you are? Do you know who you are?”

He nodded. “My name is Josh Norton. I’m at Kidsmith.”

“And do you know what we do here?”

“You make and sell kids.”

“Yes, we do sell kids, but we don’t make them here anymore. We refurbish models that can be fixed, and we scrap those that we can’t.”

Josh sat up. “You can fix me?”

“Perhaps. Tomorrow we have you scheduled for an exam. If we can fix you, we’ll replace what we can, wipe your memory, and resell you. If we can’t, well, hopefully we can recover a few usable parts, and dispose of the rest.”

“But if you can fix me, why not just let me go home?”

“Your parents… I mean, your owners, were contacted. They aren’t interested in fixing you, and you’re out of warranty. You’re malfunctioning badly. Everything is shutting down, and now it looks like it’s affecting your motor skills, or the programs that allow you to control your movements. If it’s the program, you could have bad sectors in your drive. The bottom line is it may not be worth our time to even try to fix you. You’re so scarred up that I doubt we could give you away. I don’t know if we could even recoup our costs. You’re just too badly broken.

“Besides, if your parents could have you fixed, don’t you think they would’ve?” he continued, “And furthermore, they probably were the ones that did this to you, am I right?”

“No, they never hurt me. I was in an accident.”

“Nine times out of ten a machine in your condition has suffered heavy abuse at the hands of its owner. Maybe you don’t remember or maybe you don’t want to tell me about it. That’s okay, I don’t care. Regardless, your damage is severe enough that I’m hoping we can recover a few good parts from you.”

“Please let me just talk to them,” Josh begged.

Michael Hoskins laughed dryly. “Not going to happen. You’re just another abandoned kid. We help people that have problems with machines, every day. Sometimes we get our hands on defective ones, just like you, and sometimes we fix them for owners that want their machines fixed. Your parents are not interested. Nobody wants an old mistreated kid that crashes every ten minutes.

“Your Ram is probably still good,” he went on, “You’re not that old of a machine, maybe only five years, I’m guessing. Your motherboard and circuitry are probably okay. Your memories are garbage. There’s nothing there to save, nor any reason to.”

The kid shook his head, feeling tears run down his cheeks. “I don’t want to die!”

“Is this not getting through to you? You don’t die. You’re a machine. You are soulless. There’s no Heaven or Hell waiting for you. When I unplug your power supply it’s lights out, and as far as you’re concerned, it’ll be as though you never existed.” He let out a deep sigh and leaned back. “Look kid, this day’s about over, I’m tired, hungry, and want to go home myself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that he stood up and walked out the door.

Josh sat there for a while, thinking. His odds of getting fixed sounded slim, and even if he did, they would take away his identity. His only hope rested with his parents. He had to contact them somehow. He walked over and flopped down on the cot, covering his eyes with his arms.

He had nothing to do but think, think about his parents, how he’d been treated, and if they were robots too. He had plenty to think about, but no definite answers. He would die never knowing, and that felt unbearable. They planned to dissect him like an alien and rip his insides out. Worse, he had nothing to look forward too. He was pretty sure that the man was right. God didn’t have a place for robots in Heaven.

“God?” he prayed aloud, “If you’re there, if you can hear me at all, please get me out of here. Send me an angel. I don’t want to die…”

James Hamilton had spent more of his life at Kidsmith than outside of it. He’d been with them through their rise and fall, and hoped to be there when they once more reached prominence. He’d begun as an engineer, and stopped his corporate climb at Engineering Manager. He’d managed to father two children before such things became impossible. They were grown and in other parts of the world. He hadn’t spoken to his oldest son in fifteen years.

Many had come and gone, but James remained. He often referred to all of the children Kidsmith had sent out the door as his own. That would’ve made him the father of over one million boys and girls, and with the exception of the occasional twins, no two looked alike. He’d even owned a couple over the years. His current one was getting a bit run down. He kept tampering with her though, and changing her personality. It drove his wife crazy.

These days though, it felt as though the company had become infertile too. Children didn’t walk out these doors, at least not the new ones. Few of the older models did either. Nowadays, he didn’t spend much time working with the kids. He spent his days behind a desk dealing with work orders. Sometimes it felt like a daily struggle just to stay employed. As he neared completion of his day, Tamara Hart popped her head into his office.

“You about out of here?” she asked.

“He set down his pen and stretched. “Hey Tammy, I think so. I’ve done enough damage for the day. How about you?”

“I’m as good as gone,” Tamara said, “I had to drive into the Boise Mountains. My whole day was shot.”

“Well at least you got out of the office, that’s better than my day.”

“Yeah maybe, if I didn’t have my own stack of paperwork. Did you see what I brought in?”

“No. What did you get?”

She leaned against his door frame and smiled. “It’s not a kid. I found some type of adult android. Check it out before you leave. I had them put it in your workshop.”

“An adult? What was it doing in the mountains?”

“I don’t know, but it’s in bad shape. It looks as though it’s about thirty years old or so. Most of the living tissue is gone, but I bet you could get it going again. Maybe it’s an old butler android.”

James pushed his chair back and stood up. “It could be something from the Mountain Home Air Force base. Maybe they lost one.”

“I don’t know, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You can tell me in the morning.”

“You’ve got me interested now. I think I’ll swing by there.”

“See you tomorrow.”

He waved as Tamara disappeared down the hall. He grabbed his coat and kicked his door shut. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly seven in the evening. His wife would have supper ready. He really wanted to see that android. He made a mental note to come back and lock his office, but his mind crumpled the note and threw it away not five steps from the door.

The other offices were already locked for the night. It seemed any more he was always the last one out. It didn’t bother him, this place felt as much as home to him as his real one. Some people thought it a bit creepy at night, but not him. He knew these halls almost intimately. There weren’t any ghosts here, but if there were they probably knew him all too well.

He found Tamara’s present on his workbench. It smelled something terrible. He covered his mouth as he approached. “Well what do we have here?”

It took him a minute to determine that the thing’s gender was male. Sometimes if you knew the gender it gave you a clue as to the android’s function. There were few roles for adult androids. All of its hair had fallen out, and its flesh stretched across its skull like a mummified cadaver.