G. Wright - Broken Things

“What’s wrong with him? Is he broken?”

“Daddy’s going to find out. His name is Josh.”

The girl extended her hand. “Hi Josh, I’m Kylie.”

Josh shook it. He couldn’t help but smile. It seemed she had a happy home. Maybe James wasn’t so bad after all.

“Come on, Josh,” James said.

He led him out the back of the house to a large shed. As they walked, a small white dog with a large brown spot over each eye and ear bounced along beside them. Josh reached down and let it lick his good hand. “What’s his name?” Josh asked.

“That’s Sparks. He’s a Jack Russell terrier.”

“We couldn’t have a dog. Mom doesn’t like animals.”

Sparks followed them into the shed, a well-lit workshop with tools everywhere. “Your file said that you have an internal head injury.”

“No, I got that fixed.”

James turned, looking him over from head to toe. “And how did you manage that?”

“I met a guy. He said he could upgrade me so I wouldn’t break down anymore. He said he’d make me like Neil.”

“Neil… that’s the boy you left with?”

Josh nodded. “He said he’ll last forever.” He glanced around the shop and added, “Do you know how to do that?”

“That’s not something you should let others do to you,” he said, “There’s a good chance that he could ruin you permanently.”

“He was better than the people where you’re from. They said they didn’t think they could fix me at all. That they would take my parts and throw the rest of me away.”

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t know. Some guy. I don’t remember.”

“Huh.”

“So can you fix my arm?”

“Let me see it.” As he touched it, Josh winced and jerked away. “It hurts?”

Josh managed to nod, and sniffed.

“Would it be better if I turned you off?”

“No,” he said, and shook his head for emphasis. “I don’t want to be shut down anymore.”

“Well, it’s going to hurt a lot more then. Can you be tough?”

“I’ll try.” True to his word, Josh didn’t pull away as James took the arm, feeling from his wrist to his shoulder. “Is it broken?”

“No. You just have a dislocated shoulder. Your bones are made of titanium, it’s almost unheard of for a kid to have a broken bone. The bigger risks are to all of the internal organs. They’re made out of plastics to mimic the real thing, and of course then there’s your brain. That’s basically a computer. Since your bones are designed to imitate real bones, this type of injury is a bit more common. Owners like to jerk their kids by the arm. I’ve seen quite a bit of that. I’m going to pop it back into place. Ready?”

Josh nodded. James bent the boy’s arm at a ninety-degree angle and brought it to his chest. The boy closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. With one hand on his shoulder, he rotated the arm outward and pushed in on the shoulder. It went back into place with a pop.

Josh gasped. “It’s better!”

“Easier than the real thing,” James said. “I’ve done this many times.”

He continued to stare at his arm in amazement, wiggling his fingers as though he still couldn’t believe he’d been fixed so easily. “Thank you,” he said.

“Now are you ready to help me?”

Josh eyed him warily, but the man had proven his good intentions. “You want to catch the monster.”

“Yes. What’s your connection to it?”

“I don’t know,” He stood up and Sparks ran over to him, dropping a ball at his feet. He kicked it away, the dog chasing after it eagerly. “It just seems to be following me. It’s found me everywhere, in the mountains, at Kidsmith, then at that man’s house. I don’t know what else to tell you about it. I saw it tear apart someone. Just before you found me.”

“So you don’t have any way to find it?”

“Not really.”

James rubbed his chin, thinking. “Tell me about the other boy, the one you ran away with.”

“Neil? I don’t know much about him. He’s the one that broke my arm. I don’t want to see him again.”

“Does he have a connection to the… your monster?”

“No, he didn’t believe me. I think the monster’s just after me. That’s why I think it’s a mistake to have brought me back here. Can I call my parents now?”

“Not just yet. You help me find the monster and I’ll let you call them. I promise.”

Josh slowly shook his head. “He’ll find us.”

Angel sat in a corner among the piles of what she considered junk, reading a book on existentialism and religion. The author, obviously, hadn’t had androids in mind when he wrote it. Who would write a book for an android anyway? And androids didn’t write books either, so she was stuck with what she got. It was but one book of many that Cody had stacked throughout the house, and she knew he hadn’t read even close to half of them. Even living forever, he still wouldn’t read them all, whatever his intentions.

The whole concept of “I think, therefore I am” made her pause. She didn’t see a difference in the way that she thought, as compared to Cody. She learned from her experiences, she formed thoughts of her own. The only difference was that she had a purpose. Cody had already gone to bed tonight, without her. By the logic of her design she didn’t have a purpose except to wait for the next time she was needed.

She didn’t like Cody. It almost bordered on loathing. She hated living amongst his crap and feeling like a part of it. She waited on him hand and foot, saw to his every need, and did whatever he asked, and never complained… unless he wanted her to. She didn’t clean up after him though, with the exception of the dishes. He didn’t like people going through his stuff. He had a system, or so he claimed.

Existentialist authors went either way with religion, either believing in the higher power or denying it. How could two different beliefs even fit the same philosophy? She needed someone to argue with. Cody didn’t believe in God, and on one of the brief times she’d even heard him bring up religion he claimed it only existed for those that had a fear of death.

Despite natural disasters, terrorists, end of the world cults, and lack of environmental responsibility, everyone pushed death to the back of their mind.

Officially, nobody grew old. Cody had celebrated his seventy-fourth birthday in April, and still looked like someone in his forties. However that was true the world over. Everyone in their seventies looked like they were still forty. Those in their eighties looked fifty. Not many people looked older than that. You couldn’t be too old when they halted the aging process, otherwise there would’ve been too many people needing assisted living. She suspected that the human species had somehow managed to be selective, and only found a cure for everything after the elderly had all died out, at least those that didn’t have the money to buy the at one-time expensive treatments.

She understood how it worked. They only ate genetically modified foods processed with preservatives that changed their actual cellular structure to halt aging. This was combined with required medications and vaccinations. In the end they had successfully sterilized the human race.

And still they kept the world going. The population could only dwindle, but there were enough of them that they would never have to worry about that. It would still be many years before it would even be detectable. The world had reached a point of over-population anyway.

She set the book down and rubbed her eyes. She thought about going to bed, maybe sleeping on the couch. Her mind kept wandering away from her reading material anyway. It only raised questions. Should she consider her god to be some CEO? Did she have a pantheon of blue collar working class gods, each seeing to a part of her creation? Could she even consider anything else?