G. Wright - Broken Things

Her ponderings on creation were disturbed by a knock on the garage door. Only Neil came in that way, the sneaky little thing. Cody wouldn’t answer the door once asleep, but he placed value on the boy. She stretched, putting on one of Cody’s extra-large BSU jerseys, and made her way to the door.

She opened it to find him alone. He brushed past her with barely a nod.

“Where’s Josh?” she asked, “Did you get the parts?”

“What? No. He wouldn’t go through with it. We went our separate ways.”

Angel tried to catch his eye, but he made his way to the living room and flopped onto the couch, grabbing the remote.

“Well did he find a way home?”

“I don’t know what he did,” he said as he turned on the TV, “We didn’t see eye to eye.”

“Did you just ditch him?”

“I said we went our separate ways. I don’t care where he went, okay?”

“Fine. Whatever.” From her brief encounter with him, that didn’t sound like Josh at all, unless he found someone else to help him. The problem was that she didn’t trust Neil. She’d heard him bragging about how he acquired his parts. Josh didn’t seem like the kid who could do that. In a way, that made her feel better. She didn’t want to see the innocence erased from his eyes.

What am I thinking? She walked down the hallway toward Cody’s room. She needed a little perspective. Josh was an android, it wouldn’t be innocence. It was ignorance. Still, wasn’t that sacred in children? Even robot ones? We’re all built with purpose , she reminded herself.

She walked into the spare bedroom. It held more of Cody’s clutter, mainly computer parts, and it was where he worked. Yet she had easy access to the closet. Of all the room, it held some importance to her.

Angel hated the closet. She hated what it represented, and she knew it was her future. Her hand shook as she reached for the knob. She didn’t want to open it but she needed the reminder. Her mind, her programming, reminded her of her purpose. Her purpose left her fulfilled. It gave her existence meaning. If she ignored it, what would she have left?

“You can do this,” she said softly. She turned the handle and flipped on the light.

The contents always made her shudder. Six pairs of beautiful but empty eyes stared back at her. Despite the lack of life these women were her sisters. All were adult with the appearance of age between twenty to thirty. They were six women that had preceded her, all of which Cody had grown tired of. They weren’t broken, only powered off. They’d served their purpose, one similar to hers. Every now and then Cody would bring one out and power her on for whatever fantasy he wanted played out. But he never left them on for long.

She stepped in with them, touching their cheeks one by one. She knew all of their names. The one closest to the door was Megan. She’d shared the house with them when Angel had first arrived. Within the week, he had her shut down and put in here. Next to Megan rested Jodi. Jodi had fiery red hair and freckles everywhere. There was Alexis, the blond with the beautiful blue eyes.

She pushed in deeper, gently squeezing between the other women: Laura, Jenny, and Michelle. She’d never spent more than a night with any of them, as they relived their purpose for one more night. She felt their soft flesh press against her own, imagining what it would be like to one day join them.

They didn’t deserve this, but it was their purpose. They were there for when they were needed. They didn’t exist otherwise. She knew it wouldn’t be long before she shared this… this tomb. Cody wanted her less and less. She already suspected he was looking into another purchase.

Technically all seven of them were as immortal as the humans. They would be around forever, if taken care of. Yet here they were, spending eternity turned off, living in a dreamless sleep, waiting on the whim of one man.

Angel reached between the girls in front and pulled the door closed far enough that she could barely see a trim of light breaking the almost absolute darkness. This is what their eyes saw. Day after day of darkness.

Lonely darkness.

She couldn’t take it anymore. She stumbled from their midst and out, her knees suddenly weak and trembling, her lungs fighting for air. I would rather be dead than share their fate.

If she wanted to, she could turn all of them on, but what would they do? None of them saw beyond their design. She couldn’t offer them anything, they couldn’t go anywhere else. She hurried from the room, pausing just long enough to make sure that Cody still slept, and headed for the kitchen.

Cody kept plenty of notes on his androids. He had spiral notebooks containing all of their information. She found it right where she knew it would be, on the kitchen counter next to his wallet and car keys. She flipped to the last entry, that of Josh. As she suspected, his registration and serial numbers were recorded, along with a couple of brief notes on planned modifications.

Angel had spent countless hours working with Cody, and had picked up a thing or two of her own. He had worked for Kidsmith at one time, and still had access to things that were unavailable to the general public. As quietly as she could, she dug through a box of old magazines and discarded electronics until she found an old Kidsmith tablet that she was sure Cody wouldn’t miss.

She entered her own registration number into the tablet and allowed network access to her system. Everything about her spilled out across the screen. It listed her previous owners and a diagnostic of her current condition. As expected, everything was working fine. In fact, with Cody’s modifications, she exceeded her factory set-up.

With a swipe of her finger she had access to her personality traits. Using this, Cody could make her act however he wanted her to. For the first time she saw herself how Cody saw her. The traits really didn’t matter, she could be whatever he wanted. It implied that she was just a toy.

I shouldn’t be so surprised, she thought, why would I think that I’m anything more? But in truth she had thought just that, she had begun to believe that maybe there was something beyond her purpose (spelled out on the tablet: ‘ Pleasure Thing ’), like maybe she had a destiny, a sense of belonging in the world.

What if I just erase it all? If I strip away everything it says I am, if I make myself a blank slate, what would happen? Would it be an android lobotomy? The option was there. Her finger hovered over it, tantalized by the thought. I’d be my own person then .

No. That wasn’t an option. Maybe one day. Even changing a few of her traits seemed tempting, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Was it any different than wiping her mind clean? It belittled her life experiences, made them trivial. This is who I am. This is me. Instead she opened up another program, one that Cody had written.

It instantly wiped out her registration number. She didn’t feel any different, but for what she intended, she needed her freedom. Next she entered Josh’s number into the tablet and pinged his location.

It pulled up a map showing his exact location. He was across the city, but she could be there, even on foot, in an hour or two.

She quickly changed her shirt, threw on a pair of jeans and shoes and grabbed a backpack. She had a few outfits that Cody had let her order online, but very little in this house belonged to her. In the bathroom she had a drawer of beauty supplies, but she suppressed the urge to get them. She dropped the tablet into the backpack and slipped out into the garage. She lifted up the garage door as quietly as possible, and found herself outside.

The world seemed so vast, so empty. Her legs trembled, forcing her to stop and catch her breath. This is ridiculous. I’ve just left the house. What if someone saw her? They would know immediately, they had to; there was no way she could pass for human. She could feel the house calling her back, back to its safety. Maybe she could ask Cody for help. He would understand.