I smiled. “Hi.”
She opened the cabinet and pulled out a toothbrush. She looked at it for a second, frowned, sighed, and shrugged.
I laughed. “What are you doing with that?” I asked her.
“The heater we have is being weird. It thinks it needs to be cleaned,” she explained. She turned to leave the room and, I followed.
“Whose toothbrush?” I asked.
“Cameron’s,” she smiled mischievously. “But he won’t mind.”
I laughed. We walked outside and toward the tent where Cassandra kept all her heaters, computers, tools, and whatever else she happened to be working on. We passed the house where Michael was being kept, and I quickly looked away.
“You haven’t gotten any closer to figuring out how to, you know, de-perfect people?” I asked her tentatively.
Cassandra sighed. “A little bit.” We reached the tent, and she sat down at a table where various heaters and parts lay scattered around. “All I can think of is that it’s like breaking through a series of walls; everything gets clearer the more walls you break down.” Cassandra pulled the back of a heater off and started scrubbing with the toothbrush. “It can come naturally like it did with you and the others. Rebellious thoughts and refusal to accept certain things can cause the walls to break, but I think those walls can also be forced to collapse, I just don’t know how yet.”
Walls. The idea made sense. Things did start to get clearer gradually. “But how could you force it?” I asked.
Cassandra shrugged. “That’s the tough part,” she said. “From what we’ve learned about other flaweds’ experiences, it could be caused by trauma, a certain memory suddenly activated; things like that,” she explained.
I had tried to activate Michael’s memory many times. I told him about things he had done, things Jessica and I had done. I had even hoped that just my presence there would help him remember, but nothing had happened. I closed my eyes, aware of a sudden urge to cry.
“Thanks Cassandra,” I said with a smile and turned to leave. The cold hit me hard as I left the tent, and tears pricked the corners of my eyes. This time I didn’t try to stop them or brush them away. I just let one slowly trickle down my cheek.
I saw Jessica hurrying my way, a bright smile on her face, and I tried to quickly hide my tears, not wanting to dampen her mood.
“Drew, I need to tell you something about Kyle and I, so we were sitting...” she trailed off. “Drew, are you okay?” Her smile was gone, her voice edged with concern.
I shrugged. “I’m okay,” I told her quietly.
She shook her head. “No you’re not. You’re crying.”
I shrugged again. “I was just talking to Cassandra about curing the perfected.”
“Michael...” Jessica said quietly.
I nodded.
Jessica’s eyes widened. She covered her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry Drew,” she said suddenly. “I’ve been going on and on about Kyle and me, not even realizing how much that must hurt you, with Michael.” She swallowed. “Oh, Drew, I’m so sorry.” Now Jessica looked near tears.
I shook my head. “No, it’s not your fault. You deserve to be happy with Kyle, you don’t need to stop talking about it or anything,” I told her.
Jessica leaned over to hug me. I hugged her back and let one more tear escape. “You know, God will take care of all this.” Jessica told me. “You just need to have faith in that.”
I pulled out of her hug, and we started walking. “I don’t know about that,” I said quickly.
Jessica stopped and looked at me. “What?” she asked, a frown slowly seeping into her expression.
I shook my head, suddenly angry. “How do you know that God even cares about me?” I asked her, my voice coming out more accusatory than I had intended. “Why would He take Michael away from me if He cared?”
Jessica stared at me, shocked. “Drew, you don’t mean that,” she said slowly.
“Yeah, actually I think I do,” I told her. “I pray about things, and nothing happens. I pray so hard, I think I might die. I pray over and over again, so many times...” My voice was rising. “And Michael’s still in there, a robot,” I cried. “He stares at me like I’m nothing to him! Nothing.” Jessica’s expression looked hurt.
“God cares about you Drew. Terrible things happen, but He always has a plan.”
I shook my head in frustration. “I’m not even human.” I barely whispered. “So why would He care?” I turned and ran, not wanting to hear Jessica’s response and not wanting to see the look of hurt that I knew was etched on her face.
Chapter Eight
I heard crying, and it took me a moment to realize that it was Jessica. It was getting louder. It had been a few days since our fight, and we hadn’t really talked a whole lot since then.
I stood up. “Jessica?” I called down the hallway. I left the game room and started walking. Where was she? I heard footsteps and then a door opening. The bathroom. I followed the noise and knocked on the bathroom door. “Jessica?”
The door swung open. Jessica was leaning against the counter, grabbing a handful of tissues to wipe her eyes. She looked up when the door opened, her eyes red and puffy.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, suddenly afraid.
She sniffed and wiped a tear off her cheek. “Kyle’s gone,” she said quietly.
“What?” I asked, not sure what she meant.
She shook her head, starting to cry again. “He went out this morning with some of his friends.” She stopped for a minute to catch her breath. “They were just getting food.” She started crying again, and I took a step forward to hug her. She kept talking into my shoulder. “He was the only one who didn’t make it back. The creators—I don’t know how they found him, but they did.” Her body shook slightly, and I hugged her tighter. “They’ll kill him, Drew,” she sobbed.
I closed my eyes. Yes. I knew. “Jessica, I’m so sorry,” I said quietly, still hugging her. She only cried harder.
* * * *
Half an hour later, we sat at the table in the game room talking. Cassandra, Beatrix, Cameron, Jessica, and I. Jessica’s eyes were still red from crying, and all the others looked upset and tired.
“We need to get him back,” Jessica said for the hundredth time.
Cassandra shook her head wearily. “Jessica, we can’t,” she said sadly. “We can’t afford to right now. They’re expecting us to come back for him.”
“But he’ll die!” Jessica cried, her eyes starting to tear up again.
Cassandra started rubbing her forehead, looking upset. Beatrix glanced my way, and we exchanged looks.
“Kyle will have to stay put for the time being,” Cameron explained. “Maybe in a few days we can get a plan together and rescue him, but not this very second.”
A tear escaped Jessica’s eye. “But he doesn’t have that long,” she said quietly. “He’s flawed; he’s of no use to them. They’ll just get rid of him.”
“They might want him alive to get information about the flawed,” Beatrix said truthfully. “It means he’s probably not going to be living under nice circumstances, but he’ll be alive,” she said.
Jessica flinched slightly, and then she closed her eyes. “I can’t just not do anything,” she said. “Please...”
“In a few days we’ll get him,” Cameron told her. “I’m sorry.”
A half-sigh, half-sob escaped Jessica’s throat as Cassandra, Beatrix, and Cameron got up from their seats. Beatrix walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said and then they all left.
The room was quiet once the others had gone, and we just sat there for a few seconds, saying nothing.
“We’ll find a way to get him back,” I said quietly after a long pause. “We’ll get a plan and—”
“No,” Jessica interrupted me, looking up. “Don’t you understand, we can’t wait.” She looked at me with her brown, pleading eyes. “Don’t you remember how fast they perfected Michael? It was a few hours! And he wa
s gone!” She was crying again. “I can’t let them hurt Kyle.”
I sighed. “Like Beatrix said, he’s an important source of information,” I explained.
“You wouldn’t just sit here and do nothing if it was Michael who had been taken away,” Jessica cried, her eyes boring into mine accusingly.
I stared at her for a moment. Her hands gripped the table that was varnished so brightly, her reflection shone on the wood, as if not only one Jessica, but two were staring me down.
No. I probably wouldn’t have just sat around and waited for a plan. I would’ve wanted to go right away. I knew that running in there without a plan was too great a risk. But Jessica wasn’t willing to see that. Because she was in love. I knew how that felt. The hardest part was that I understood exactly how she felt. I knew what it was like to lose that person. I knew all too well. I knew what it felt like to be helpless and dangling, unsure whether everything was going to turn out all right.
That’s why it hurt me so much to tell her the truth. To tell her that risking the other’s lives wasn’t fair. To tell her the things I wish someone had told me when I was too blind to see it for myself.
“I’m sorry Jessica,” I told her. “I’m sorry.”
Chapter Nine
Seclusion is a funny thing. It tends to make you pay attention to details. It forces you to study the things you once took for granted. The little things. The things you pass by every day but you never really see. I had been living in the woods for about a month now, and I had noticed how many things I would just stop and watch. Such as my gaze wandering to a tiny leaf dangling precariously on a tree branch, it’s every twitch, it’s every vein, color, and size until it would finally flutter to the ground and disappear into the mass of others just like it. How a bird seemed something special and unique when before it was nothing, but just another bird. How a forest would seem silent at first glance, but when you looked again you saw that it was teeming with life. The little things that you needed to slow down to actually see.
I had never really been in a forest before. Not like this. I had run through them. But that didn’t really count.
I looked up at the fading night sky, the stars twinkling faintly as if saying goodbye and I wondered what time it was. I had wandered out here in the early hours of the morning, and by now it must have been five or six in the morning.
A dark blue was slowly seeping into the blackness of the night, leading the way to morning. I hugged my large coat tighter around me and let out a breath of air and watched it slowly fade away.
For a second I let myself think of Michael. He would’ve liked it out here. He liked simple things. Little things like holding my hand and smiling. He didn’t need to give me roses or presents to let me know how he felt. I already knew.
I turned my attention to the moon that was slowly sinking down toward the horizon. I didn’t want to think about Michael anymore. The moon shone bright and beautiful. Perfect. Are we supposed to be perfect like you? I wondered. My mind wandered to the perfected and how they could be cured. My head hurt. I felt as if I had gone through every possibility and found nothing. I wanted to kick something. Anything.
I sighed instead. Calm down, Drew. I told myself. Take a step back. I thought for a moment. Simple. Make it simple. How are robots controlled? Computers? Did we have programming? I widened my eyes. Did we? Did they? The new ones? I remember Yvonne telling me how the newer androids were programmed...
Suddenly I heard noises. I turned. I saw a figure in the darkness about twenty feet ahead, and I was about to instinctively run when I heard the voice. “Drew!” Beatrix called. “Drew!”
Something hit me in the chest. A bad feeling. The anxiety in her voice.
Something was wrong.
I ran toward Beatrix through the darkness. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.
She grabbed my arm and tugged me along. “It’s Jessica,” she said. “She’s gone. She must have run away. We can’t find her. We thought you had gone, too.”
I stopped. “She’s gone?” I echoed. To find Kyle?
Beatrix nodded, looking distressed. “Was she out here with you?” she asked, her voice hopeful.
I shook my head. “She was sleeping in the tent when I left,” I said.
Beatrix let out a sigh of frustration. “She’s gone to find Kyle.”
“But how?” I cried. “Alone?”
Even in the dark I could see the look of sadness on Beatrix’s face. “Alone,” she answered. “There’s nobody else missing.”
No. The word swirled through my mind. She couldn’t go alone. It was too dangerous. She couldn’t have ... but she did.
I reached out to touch Beatrix’s arm. “We have to stop her,” I said quietly, looking up to meet her eyes.
She frowned slightly. A sad frown. “Drew...” She started to slowly shake her head. “By now she must be there already, and you know we can’t go right now.”
I let out a frustrated sigh and started rubbing my forehead where a headache had suddenly appeared. “Well then, what do we do?” I asked quietly, although I already knew the answer. We wouldn’t do anything. We would wait. Going in to try to save Jessica would be a suicide mission, and everybody knew that.
Beatrix was silent for a moment. “Maybe we can get her back before they ... perfect her,” she said quietly, a small hopeful smile on her lips.
I shook my head. No. I was tired of lying to myself. About Michael. About everything. “No,” I said. “She’s gone.”
Chapter Ten
“Michael,” I said. “Jessica, your sister, she’s gone,” I told him. I watched his face, which was partly obscured by shadows.
“I don’t have a sister,” he said impatiently.
I closed my eyes, trying to find the patience I needed. I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came. What could I say? I’d already said everything I could think of. I’d said everything I could imagine. And it wasn’t enough. Instead, I just sat there, staring at my hands in my lap. I leaned back from my kneeling position to sit on the ground, feeling the cold of the cement floor seep through my jeans and into my skin. I felt like crying, but I was all cried out. There were no more tears left inside me. Just disappointment, sorrow, despair; emptiness.
I sensed Michael shifting in his cell.
“You’re in pain,” he said slowly.
I looked up, my eyes meeting his.
“But there’s nothing wrong with you,” he added. “You’re not hurt, but you’re hurting.” His eyebrows furrowed in robotic puzzlement.
I swallowed and nodded. “Yes. I am,” I replied, feeling intrigued by his sudden interest and confusion.
Michael stared at me for a moment, his eyes narrowed as if trying to decipher a strange code. “Why?” he finally asked.
Why. What a good question. Because everything that used to matter to me had somehow been torn away, pushed away, or taken away, and there was nothing left to hold on to. That was why. But how did you explain sorrow to someone who doesn’t understand emotions?
“Because somebody hurt me,” I told Michael quietly, thinking of Glen and the creators; the masterminds behind this new world. Because ultimately it wasn’t Michael who hurt me by forgetting, it was the creators who took away his life, his choice. My life, my choice.
“But why would they hurt you?” he asked.
I was quiet for a minute. Why did they hurt me? I didn’t even know myself. Maybe because they were so hungry for the idea of a perfect world, so caught up in their plans for a rebirth, that they didn’t even realize the people they crushed along their way.
“I don’t really know,” was the answer I finally settled on.
Michael made a thoughtful sound. “Were they humans?” he asked, as if he already knew the answer. Of course they were humans, only humans could make mistakes like that, he must have been thinking. I could see it in his eyes.
I nodded. “Yes. They were once.”
Michael half-smiled in a knowing way. “Yeah. Humans are
like that.”
For some reason I felt like Michael had just connected with me. As if he had realized that perfected or flawed, neither of us were truly human any longer.
“Humans have no right to hurt the perfected,” he started telling me. “They’re insignificant and don’t mean nearly as much as the perfected do.” I could hear the superiority in his voice and see it in his eyes as well. He hated the humans. Just like the creators wanted him to.
What a perfect android.
“But don’t worry.” He turned to me as if to console me, and I was surprised by his sudden opening up toward me. “The humans aren’t worth your pain.” His dark eyes bore into mine with a gaze that he must have meant to be consoling, but it only worried me.
I stared at Michael for what seemed like an eternity, torn between staying there and agreeing with him or turning to leave. I desperately wanted to agree, to say that he was right, because in doing so, Michael would turn to trusting me again and more than anything, I wanted his trust. His trust was just one step closer to where we had been, and something inside of me ached with the longing for that.
But I knew he was wrong. I knew he had been brainwashed, turned into something that he wasn’t. And no matter how hard I struggled against that reality, I couldn’t get up the nerve to tell Michael he was right and see the sparkle in his eyes.
“No, Michael,” I said sadly, not wanting to shatter these few moments of harmony, but knowing there was nothing else I could do. “They weren’t just humans.”
He watched me.
“They were the creators,” I barely whispered. And then I turned, not wanting to see his face change from the most I had seen of Michael in weeks, back to the cold, hard android that I knew would never change.
Chapter Eleven
Marian watched me from across the room. Our eyes hadn’t met yet, but I could tell she saw me. I felt her gaze resting on me. I propped my elbow up on the table and leaned my head against my hand, watching whatever happened to be passing by outside the window.
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