Magic at Midnight

by Lyssa Chiavari

  A strange thought came to Pin then. Had she ever drunk water before?

  She suddenly felt out of place. She wanted to be back in the library, amid the familiar smell of books. Then she thought of Lisa and ached some more.

  “If I were a robot, why would you be chasing me?” she asked.

  Gennaro glanced at her with a trained eye but then looked back to the fire, opening his own warm bottle of water.

  “I guess you’re too young to understand. The robots are the reason why everything’s destroyed now. My father… he designed them, most of them, and now I have to deactivate them all.”

  “Deactivate? You mean kill?”

  Gennaro laughed.

  “You can’t kill a robot. They’re not alive to begin with.”

  Pin tensed. She turned her face away from Gen. If this man was planning to destroy all robots, then what about Lisa? Was he the reason why there were no more robots in the city?

  Pin couldn’t fathom how robots could be destructive. Lisa was helpful—albeit a little annoying—but she always tried to keep Pin safe. She kept the library in good condition, even though no one visited.

  But then, Lisa was the only robot she ever knew.

  “But if there are fewer robots now, do you really have to deactivate them all?”

  Gen slammed his bottle on the table. He growled between his teeth and rose from his chair.

  “If I don’t deactivate them, they’ll kill us all!” He stamped his feet as he paced around the cramped room. “It’s a miracle me and Mum have survived this long. And you’re here too, which means there must be other survivors. If we can destroy all the robots, the world can go back to normal.”

  He kicked a pile of empty boxes. A water bottle had fallen to the floor. Pin stooped to pick it up, not wanting to meet Gen’s eyes. He took a few deep breaths before combing his hand through his gray hair.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, and he returned to the untidy kitchen. The silence filled with a clink of plates and the rustle of packaging.

  Pin frowned. What if there were other robots that were evil? It wouldn’t be too hard to believe; after all, throughout history there had been humans who were good and those who were bad. Maybe robots were the same.

  Confusion crippled her thoughts. She slumped back into the chair and closed her eyes, picturing the library and Lisa and all her books around her, words streaming from pages. She tried to remember the words of the physiology book she had read that morning, but she only saw blank pages.

  A clatter startled her from her reverie. Two plates were set upon the table and both had a strange, gray mush on them. The fire had shrunk in the hearth.

  “Sorry, this is all we have. Eat up,” said Gen.

  Another strange thought popped into Pin’s mind. Had she ever eaten food in her life, either?

  She stared at the plate for some time while Gen ate his mush with little enthusiasm. “Go on,” he said.

  Pin took the plate to her lap and held up the gray sludge with a fork. It took a long time for her to place it inside her mouth, and once she did, it felt cold and strange. As if it should not have been there. She tried to chew, realizing she’d never chewed anything before, and she didn’t know what to do from there. So, doing what she thought best, Pin spat it back out onto the plate. Gen raised his eyebrows.

  “I guess they have better food where you’re from, then?” He chuckled and took the plate from her. “Well, if you’re not going to eat it, I’d better save it for Mum.”

  Pin watched the plate as it was taken away from her. Another question formed in the crevices of her mind, flickering in and out like the flames that were dying in front of her.

  ♛

  Pin awoke beneath a pile of leaves. She was tired of the waiting. Maybe Gen had forgotten about her. Maybe he changed his mind, she thought.

  No, that’s stupid. He would find her. She had to be patient. Pin wasn’t sure what was worse: the miserable waiting, or the knife still stuck in her side.

  Misty clouds swathed the moon, casting muted light over dead tree stumps. Wind whipped around Pin and a terrible feeling suffocated her. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, and tried to remember the night before.

  ♛

  She had lain on a comfortable couch with a blanket over her and a cushion to rest her head on. Moonlight spread into the room through a dirty window, scattering dappled silver light across the furniture.

  No matter what she did that night, sleep would not take her. Pin fidgeted, turned, and twisted till she fell to the floor in a heap. Gen had gone to his room, and his old mother snored from hers. Pin had kept a wary eye on the woman’s door that evening.

  A looming sense of confusion settled heavily in her mind. The fire had died and Pin was left to fight with her thoughts. Lisa could have explained everything with clarity, but Lisa was no longer by her side.

  Fed up of not being able to sleep, Pin rose from the floor. She paced several times around the kitchen, around the couch, her steps as light as feathers, till she grew weary of her course and changed direction. She crept past both bedroom doors and heard snores from within. A third door, with cracked white paint, had a lock below the metal handle. One tap on the brass, however, and the door creaked open. She stepped through.

  Several flashes winked at Pin through the darkness. She flicked the switch on the left and a single bulb flooded the room with sterile, white light. Dozens of knives and guns lined the walls of the small room. Pin surveyed each artifact and wondered what its purpose was. She’d never seen such a vast array of weapons. An uneasy feeling snaked its way through her. Messy piles of papers and newspaper clippings were strewn across two narrow, wooden benches. Pin tried to read over one before the door creaked open once more.

  Gennaro’s heavy feet padded into the room. His eyes were bloodshot and wide, the shadow beneath them darker.

  “What are you doing here? You’re wasting the light.” His finger hovered over the switch.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” Pin turned back to examine the walls. “You have a lot of knives.”

  Gen sighed and rubbed his face before settling down on a high stool.

  “It’s not always easy to tell what to take when I go hunting. I’d rather dismantle the robots the neat way, you know, through their activation box.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than Pin. It was as if the presence of another person was a key that opened his locked mind. “But it’s not always easy to find. Plus, if they’re fighting back, it’s usually quicker to hack at the main connection.” He pointed to his neck. “Or just go straight to pulling wires out. Depends on how advanced the bots are.”

  Pin nodded as the facts came together slowly, forming a messy puzzle.

  “Activation box?” she asked.

  “It’s not always obvious. Some bots have the box behind their heads—others, over here.” He pointed to his chest. “Although the newer robots didn’t even have a box. Bot Corp used to control their products from some kind of remote machine. Took me months trying to find the company’s mainframe to shut it down. Had to burn all the robots in the end as well, just to make sure.”

  Pin imagined the blaze engulfing several hundreds of robots, many probably not knowing what was happening. She thought of Lisa’s silver face melting in the heat. Gen spoke of robots as if they were only made of metal and wires, but they couldn’t be only that. Lisa had kept her company all these months, more than any human had ever done. Lisa was lively and alert, even if her wheels didn’t work as well as they used to.

  Pin wondered about her friend trapped in the vines, hoping Lisa had managed to free herself. She clasped her shaking hands together.

  “These are my father’s old files.” Gen pointed to boxes of tattered folders beneath the wooden benches. “He was a pioneer in his field, but that didn’t stop him from being a lousy father.”

  He pulled out a faded green folder and blew the dust off it before slapping it on the bench. Loose papers spilled out, containing diagrams, equati
ons, and angry red scribbles. “These ones are finished.” He separated the papers and left a pile within the folder. “And I still have to find these bots, but I haven’t had a chance to look through the notes. There were so many to begin with.”

  “Did you have to teach yourself this?” asked Pin as she flicked through the pages.

  “I never had my father’s flare for inventing,” he said, wrinkles deepening as he frowned.

  One page caught Pin’s eyes. In fact, she was sure she had just seen her own brown eyes staring back at her. Snapping the file shut, she smiled at Gen.

  “I think,” she said, reminding herself to tell the truth, “I’m going to lie down now.”

  Gen nodded, allowing her to exit first. He glanced back at the file before flicking the light off and locking the door behind them.

  Back on the couch, Pin lay frozen on her side. She couldn’t sleep. How could she when she was so sure that her own picture was on Gen’s hit list? But that didn’t make any sense—she was a girl.

  A human girl.

  A real person.

  Wasn’t she?

  ♛

  Pin couldn’t hear Gen’s snoring. Taking her chances, she rose once more, wincing as the couch springs groaned. She tiptoed to the third white door, biting her lip. Those eyes could not have been hers; she had to see the drawing once more.

  Almost of its own accord, the door drifted open.

  The light bulb was on.

  There, on the high stool, sat Gen, intently reading the paper Pin had spent all night thinking about.

  “So you came back to haunt us.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Pin. She was more aware of the knives in the room, shining from their hooks like the eyes of predators waiting for their prey.

  “No, I didn’t either. But it looks like you were my father’s pride and joy. His best invention.” He tossed the paper to the floor. It wasn’t just one paper, but a thick bundle of sheets stapled together. Pin picked it up gingerly and scanned through the pages.

  Her own face stared straight back at her, but she looked much neater: perfectly drawn short, dark hair; a pointed caramel face with blushing cheeks; and sweet brown eyes. Pin was a drawing with precise measurements, numbers and arrows scribbled all around her.

  A red circle was drawn over her chest with a question mark.

  “It all makes sense now.” Gen paced around the small room.

  “It does?”

  He stopped and glared at her.

  “My last week in my parents’ house.” Gen motioned around him. “I was leaving for university. We were having dinner and someone knocked on the door. Dad opened it. A woman with a cooler box in her hands stood on our steps. She pleaded with him, begging him to help her. He let her in. His food went cold on his plate because he didn’t eat that evening. He barely ate for the rest of the week.”

  Gen sat back down on the stool and crossed his arms. “He didn’t bother seeing me off before I left London. He never visited me when at university, three years of it. He barely said anything to me whenever I came home. He was too busy,” he said, nodding toward the stapled sheets of paper. “Too busy making you.

  “That woman had lost her daughter in a car accident and the girl became braindead. But she stole her daughter’s heart from the hospital and came running to my father that same day to build her another little girl.

  “I didn’t know what it was at the time. Dad kept the project a complete secret. You can imagine why—think of the court cases,” he said before laughing. There was no smile on his face. “You weren’t just any old android. Dad pushed himself to create a new species of technology. A cyborg.”

  Pin wondered what a cyborg was—there weren’t any books on them in the library—but kept listening, completely entranced by her mysterious past.

  “A cyborg: the ‘enhanced’ race of human beings. Human-like thoughts and emotions, but with a mechanical body that’s impervious to disease.” Gen stared at her, his eyes boring into her own. His gaze kept her rooted to the spot. “You’ve got a human heart pumping blood through your body. You might be able to feel, as the most advanced type of Artificial Intelligence, but that doesn’t make you human. Clearly, this woman didn’t love you enough like her own daughter to keep you.”

  The comment didn’t sting Pin. She didn’t care about this woman any longer, this supposed mother. When she tried to remember her smiling face, she only saw Lisa’s.

  “Dad missed my graduation, but I guess that time it wasn’t his fault. He was sick. He was already ill, and this final project pushed him too far,” said Gen, blinking back tears. “I held his hand when I got to the hospital, but it was already cold.”

  Tears trickled down his worn face. He wiped them away and rose to survey the back wall. His picked a knife with serrated edges on both sides, turning it over in his hands.

  The blade glinted in the light.

  The stapled papers fell.

  Pin ran back to the living room and scanned it in a panic.

  “I’m not a cyborg, I’m a girl, a real girl!” She grabbed a water bottle, twisting the cap free. “Look, I can prove it!”

  The bottle opened, water sloshing inside, and Pin held it against her open mouth. Gen froze as he watched her. She hesitated, never having done this before, but brought the bottle to her lips and poured. The water collected in her throat until she had no choice but to spit it back out, spraying all over the couch and Gen.

  “You little—”

  Pin never heard the rest of the insult; she was already running. There was no time to apologize. She slammed several times into the back door, wood splintering, until the door came off its hinges. It smashed against the ground and she scrambled over the damage, running out into the clear morning air.

  Sunlight burst across the horizon and painted the streets golden. Pin skidded down the road and turned into streets at random till the towering structure of Big Ben loomed overhead. She sprinted toward the broken bridge, her bones aching—though now she knew they weren’t bones.

  A fragment of concrete caught her foot and Pin tripped, scraping her elbows on the ground. She dragged herself up, ignoring the large ditch below, and kept going. Gen’s pounding steps couldn’t be heard, but Pin didn’t wait for them to catch up with her.

  She ran on till she reached the familiar sight of the abandoned high street. Pin skidded as she saw the bakery, panting hard. She darted around the corner to the cul-de-sac, finding Lisa still swaddled with vines. Relief nearly buckled Pin at her knees as she tried pulling vines away. The robot slowly powered up. When Lisa’s battery bulb blinked red on her chest plate, a worrying thought grew inside Pin.

  “Pinterry, you came back.”

  “And you’re still stuck,” said Pin. She tore the smaller vines, but the large ones were too thick to pull apart.

  “I could not pull myself free. I am a library assistant, Pinterry, not a workbot. I have nothing sharp to cut through these vines.”

  Pin thought of the knife that Gen carried but shook it from her mind. She had to find another way to cut through the thickest, most tangled vines.

  “Pinterry, where have you been? I waited quite a while,” said Lisa.

  Pin hoped Lisa had been as relieved to see her as she was to see Lisa. She slumped back on the ground in frustration. The vines were just too strong to break through.

  “Two in one. Guess the day just gets better and better.”

  Pin turned in time to see Gen plunging forward with the knife. She darted to the side, hoping the knife would cut the knot of plants instead.

  But Lisa had leapt in front of Pin, working herself free just enough to shield Pin from Gen.

  And Lisa’s battery box bled its black fluid, a thick trail seeping onto the green vines.

  Pin screamed. Lisa staggered back and collapsed onto Pin’s leg, vines ripping apart from the force of her fall. Pin flung the knife to the side and tried to stop the battery from leaking. Black fluid stained her hands and warm tears s
treamed down her face.

  Lisa’s mouth faded into a strange peach color.

  “Lisa,” Pin cried. The robot’s eyes had pinprick circles of green that flickered as they sought Pin before fading into black.

  “She’s just a robot,” said Gen.

  Pin grew furious. “She’s not just a robot! She’s my friend.”

  Gen grabbed the knife from the ground. He hesitated a moment and Pin jerked herself free, the metal of Lisa’s screws catching her skin. The silicone tore, but no blood escaped from the superficial wound. Only metal bones were bared.

  Pin saw her bones, but before she could get away, Gen drove the knife into her. She cried out and limped away, grunts and groans escaping from her lips. And as her small frame struggled to turn the corner of the street, Gennaro was stunned into silence, the guilt of murder flitting through his tired conscience.

  ♛

  Quite sure the knife would do no more harm than it already had, Pin pulled it out from her side. The pain had dissolved into a numb throb and only the screech of metal scraping against metal remained. Pin was all metal inside. Had Lisa known of her true identity? Why had Lisa hidden it from her?

  Maybe, thought Pin, she stuck around just to protect me. A terrible longing for her friend burned inside, but Pin felt she could cry no more.

  She was a scientific miracle in an empty world. A messy patchwork of human and robot, though she belonged to neither.

  Darkness enveloped her. Pin remembered a time when her life felt infinite. Infinite, but slow. And now those endless days leaked out of her, drop by drop, draining from her side.

  The sun rose once more and Pin felt it was her last. She gazed upon the glorious golden circle rising from a red sky into blue. Cool silence calmed her as rosy light spread across the stumps of trees that stretched out in front of her.