| June: Rebirth |
|
| 10:34pm 05/04/2003 |
| |
I don't really know how old I am. I only really started to perceive time after I had already been worked on for some time. Even then, days and weeks didn't have much meaning to me, since I had nothing to compare them to. I think, though, that it was at least a year after my first awareness of sounds having meaning that April came back for me.
The morning came and passed normally. Some of the lab assistants, the ones who had been born like me but never left, seemed to know something was coming. I had no idea, until the lights snapped out. They came back a moment later with the sickly glow of emergency power. The monitors stayed off. There were sounds of confusion from the hallway. Dr. Mehta locked the door. The voices in the hallway became more insistent, and were punctuated with sounds of gunfire and explosions. I asked Dr. Mehta what was happening, but she claimed not to know. She was listening to something on her earpiece, so I think she did.
The door started to slide open with a grinding noise. Dr. Mehta and the orderlies tried to barricade it, but they were not fast enough. The orderlies dropped, blood exploding out their backs, and April came in. She turned to face me, and she smiled for just a moment. The right side of her face was spidered with fresh scars. "You're still here. Thank God." She pointed her gun at Dr. Mehta.
"April! No!" I stood in front of Dr. Mehta. "What are you doing?"
"Ending this."
"But she-"
"You don't understand. She's as bad as the rest of them. Worse, because she's capable of knowing better. She deserves to die. She has to, to make it stop."
Dr. Mehta flattened herself against one of the cabinets. I could see her eyes fill with tears, but she didn't say anything in her own defense.
I stayed in the way. "No."
April stayed still for a moment. "Fine. She can take her chances. Come with me."
I went with her, and we left Dr. Mehta curled up in the corner of the lab. I don't see how she could have gotten out.
April lead me out to the hallway. It was quiet by then. There were bodies on the floor, but the fighting had moved on.
We ran, April dragging me by the hand, until we came to the docks. I'd never been that far from the labs before, but I was too frightened to object. April pushed me into one of the waiting ships, one of the few that were still intact. There were men and women there. They pointed weapons at us when we walked in, but they knew April and relaxed.
"This is my sister, June," she told them.
A young man looked around behind her. "You said you had two sisters."
"May's dead. I found her in the morgue. Her buyer backed out, and they pressed her into a break so they could study it."
Part of me was surprised, but part of me had known she hadn't just been sent away. A few more people came back in, one or two dragging refugees like April had brought me. Finally, it must have been enough, because they closed the doors and began to lift off.
Some of the passengers pressed to the monitors to watch us leave. I didn't have the energy to press through them, but I caught the bright glowing colors of destruction on the edges of the monitors. By the time we made it to a ghost point, the institute was nothing more than embers and ashes.
We didn't leave anything for them to rebuild with. That was the point. They say we malfunctioned, or that we were made wrong, but it's not true. It's just that you can't make people and treat them like things. |
|
| |
|
Post |
| |
| June: On revenge and rescue |
|
| 11:15pm 05/04/2003 |
| |
When the ship came out of ghost space, we all scattered. There was no question we would be hunted for what we had done. We're not people to them, so taking our freedom and stopping them from continuing on was wrong in their eyes. Some of them think we never had a right to exist in the first place, and those that do think we should have stayed in our place. We had to do it this way - nothing else would have stopped them from taking us back.
The attack made the news. I saw reports about how homicidal androids overran a scientific station and massacred the scientists. Propganda. The only innocents there were the ones rescued. I felt a little bad about Dr. Mehta. I told April that she cried when April left.
"That didn't stop her from letting them sell me. Do you think she didn't know?"
"She wouldn't have hurt any of us."
"She let them kill May. She saw my specs. She knew. She may have chosen to be blind, but it was right there for her to see. I didn't spare her for her sake, I spared her for you."
"But she..."
"June, look at my face. That was what happened where she let them send me. I didn't get this escaping. I got it doing exactly what I was meant for. He wanted something he could break, but would keep coming back -- something that would have no choice. I was his third purchase, just the first one to see what was happening and do something about it. Once, maybe she could have not known, but a third time? How could she not know she was making me to be killed an inch at a time?"
"But... you weren't killed. What if she made you stronger on purpose?"
That stopped her for a moment, but only for a moment. "June, honey, they all had to die, and all the records had to be destroyed. It was the only way to be sure this can never happen again. If she wanted it to stop, then she got what she wanted. If she didn't, then she deserved to die. It's ok."
I could see she was right. "Ok."
"Besides, I got to rescue you, and that's good thing. I didn't need revenge, I just needed to know my sister is going to be all right."
"Am I going to be all right?"
"You'll see." |
|
| |
|
Post |
| |
| June: Always alone |
|
| 11:38pm 05/04/2003 |
| |
April showed me how to be free. It's harder than it seems. I had her to lean on, which helped, but she had become so angry.
I lost her, too, though.
They did not stop hunting us. The initial fervor died down and other news took the headlines, but there were always the few remaining hunters. There were people who used to make a living hunting AI's who had done too good of a job. We were just more quarry for them. Most of them didn't even know we're not machines. Some of them wouldn't have cared if they knew.
We had one who got too close to us. He had a file on April, from the man she had killed to escape. We could not seem to lose him. Finally, April decided we had to separate.
"You'll be ok on your own. He'll follow me. He doesn't have any proof of what you are, and I'm the one with the price on my head."
"No! I can't leave you! You're-"
She hit me then. She'd never done that before. "You don't belong to me, June. And you can't depend on me. You have to be able to depend on yourself. That's what being a person means."
I placed my hand to my cheek. "But who am I without you?"
"You'll still always be my sister. But you need to be yourself. Take care of yourself. Remember the code phrases we set up. If we ever find a sanctuary, someone will post them on the public webs. We'll see each other then."
I let her go. I hope she got away, but I have no way of knowing.
I just have to depend on myself. |
|
| |
|
Post |
| |
|
|