Artificial

by Jadah McCoy

  “Be my guest. You can have it if you can reach it.”

  I’m only infinitesimally surprised when she strikes. She’s faster than I expected and curls her hand around the blade, capturing it in what I find to be a death grip. My hands close around her lower arms, applying pressure to pry the blade from her grasp. Her organic flesh can’t match my mechanical strength, but still she pushes back against me. Still squeezing, I press her against the table until her spine bends at an unnatural angle.

  Michelo hasn’t moved from his crouched position. “Children, please,” he says, distracted.

  “You said I could keep it if I got it,” Syl says through gritted teeth.

  “Maybe I’m not such a bad liar after all.”

  Apparently unamused, she twists her wrist in my grasp and angles the blade up, slicing the inside of my hand and hitting steel frame. I gasp and release her. The pain isn’t unbearable, but self-preservation is preprogrammed into my wiring.

  “Dammit! Fine!”

  She flees, and the chime above the shop door tinkles in the next room, signaling her departure from the building. I inspect the wound. It’s a clean cut, the faux skin repaired with ease.

  Michelo stands up and pushes his goggles onto the top of his forehead, his hair bunching beneath it. “Remember what I said about cleaning the litter box? Even cute little stray kittens shit.”

  He’s right. A human running around with his sculpting knife—which could be traced back to either of us. A shitstorm waiting to happen. She can leave, but that tool-turned-weapon can’t.

  I run after her. My frame is lightweight, fast, won’t get tired like an Organic body. It doesn’t take me long to catch up with her. She’s scaling a short wall when I see her. I give chase, my shoes slapping against puddles and stone, speeding by blank, uninterested glances of other androids. I’m gaining on her.

  I grip the top of the shoulder-height wall, then throw myself over. I land with a scuffle of shoes and turn left into an alleyway. Suddenly she’s there beside me, her body pressed tightly against a wall in the shadows, hands raised overhead and ready to stab. My reflexes take over, and I slam my body into hers. The breath leaves her chest with a soft wheeze.

  I grapple with her, shackling her wrists against the wall. I wrench her hands, and she releases the blade with a pained cry. It clatters to the ground. She jerks her knee up, a strong blow landing in my groin region. I smile and cock my head. That might work if I had even a fraction of the pain receptors an Organic male has.

  I use my whole body to stop her from struggling, and still she squirms against my weight pressing her to the wall.

  “Get off me.” She twists her hands in my grasp.

  “Only if you promise not to try to slice me open again.”

  “If I had that knife, I would be happy to gut you right here.”

  My eyebrows rise. I am impressed with her vitriol. “Now that’s not very nice, is it? Unluckily for you, I don’t have guts. I can be put back together. You can’t.”

  She stops struggling against me, relaxing under my grip.

  “Just let me go, you asshole.”

  “Fine. Just don’t run away.”

  She rolls her eyes. I loosen my grasp and step away. She jerks her arms forward, placing both hands on my chest and pushing as hard as she can. I stumble a bit, not much, and she glares at me while rubbing her wrists. I can see from here they’re red. But she doesn’t run. That’s something.

  Looking to my left, I kick the blade out of her reach.

  “Let me go,” she says again. She means it in a different way this time.

  “I can let you go, but not with that weapon.”

  “Fine.”

  She turns on her heel and continues walking down the alley, a slight limp in her gait.

  And that’s it. End of story. She turns the corner, and I don’t ever see her again. I have no idea what happened to her, whether she lived or died. Each night I wander the same slum streets, see the same clients. But I always wonder what might have happened if I had just said…

  “Wait!”

  Syl turns. “What now?”

  “I can take you there, to the meat market,” I tell her.

  Her hard expression softens into confusion. “Why would you do that?”

  I see them in my head, crammed into cages, wearing rags, sores on their bodies, eyes swollen shut. Children. Old, hunched ones. All of them. That is what it is to be Organic in this world.

  I shrug. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because I’m human. Because I threatened you. Because you don’t even know me,” she says.

  Get to know an Organic like a person, in a culture where they’re captured and bred as pets. The idea is almost laughable. I didn’t know they could string together more than a few intelligible words beyond basic instinct before I met Syl.

  And it is that which bothers me.

  “You can either accept my offer of help or you can wander the streets until you’re captured. Those are your only options.” I reach down to collect the sculpting knife.

  She purses her lips and crosses her arms, cocking a hip to the side in an entirely too feminine display.

  “Fine. I accept,” she says, as though she’s the one doing me a favor.

  Naturally, I’ve avoided one shitstorm and strolled into the eye of yet another.

  Syl

  he meat market doesn’t even begin setting up until dusk. That doesn’t make the daylong wait any easier. It’s dangerous for humans, Bastion says. Organics.

  Every moment I’m stuck in this place doing nothing is another moment David could be starving, bleeding, or even dying. Just the name—meat market—causes waves of nausea to roil in my stomach. I don’t doubt the place is as awful as I imagine it to be.

  Nights creep by sleeplessly in the Sanctuary—it seems so far away now, as though in another world—but that doesn’t compare to the dragging of daylight across the ground. I keep glancing out the windows, but the shadows never seem to move.

  I eat when my body allows it. The piercing ache of cramps and bruises doesn’t help. Instead, I pass the time by inspecting the food Bastion brought to me last night, reading the labels of one after another again and again.

  Imitation chicken. Recycled edible plastic crackers. Freeze-dried tuna. Vegetables in cryogenic fluid. Almonds—I eat these because they’re the only thing that actually sounds edible.

  I gave up trying to understand the food labels after encountering ingredients such as “ribofloxacodene” and “genetically enhanced chicken puree.” Whatever that is.

  After that, I dig around for items that might work as weapons. No luck. There is nothing—no knives—which I don’t think is a coincidence after this morning—no sharp objects, nothing I could use to sharpen a blunt object.

  Every once in a while someone enters Michelo’s shop, and I hide downstairs. Bastion comes and goes as he pleases, disappearing to some unknown place for hours at a time. Michelo continues working on the creepy, dead-yet-still-alive man, and never stops to rest or sleep. Both of them watch me pace with thinly veiled amusement. I ignore them.

  They’re robots. I doubt they know what it’s like to care for someone and fear for that person’s life. I’m glad they can find humor in the pain of others.

  I just need to find Serge, Lucca, and David, and then I can get them out of this place. As for me… I don’t know what will happen.

  Finally, a red glow blinds me through the windows. Night sets in, spreading like a pandemic across the sky.

  Signs turn on, filling the air with a buzz and lighting the streets in effervescent blue. From the downstairs window, I can see the bottom half of people lined up down the street. The line winds from around the corner into an open door framed by a red strobe light. I place my hand on the wall; a deep thrumming weaves through the building like a heartbeat.

  I close my eyes, letting it shiver through my body.

  “Put this on.”

  I jump, sucking in a sharp br
eath, and turn to face Bastion. He fixes blue eyes on me, and I fidget beneath their weight. They’re too blue, manufactured blue, and they glow with bright electricity. I don’t like to look at them for very long.

  He holds out a black hooded jacket to me. I take it from his perfectly sculpted hands and shrug it on. It’s much too large. He still has his trench coat on, but he’s pushed the hood over his head. His wild mane of hair flows out around the hood in rebellion.

  “If you aren’t ready, we can go tomorrow night,” he says in his strange accent.

  He’s joking. The robot jokes. It’s scary how much he seems like a real person. His hands have the texture of real skin. His thoughts seem to be unique and independent. He looks at me, and I can tell that he sees me. I stare at him, forcing my lips to curl into a smile. I’m sure it looks more like a grimace.

  “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  I follow him up the stairs and out of the shop. We say nothing to Michelo, and Michelo says nothing to us. He’s so engrossed in his work I wonder if he even notices us leaving.

  The air outside is cool and laced with the scent of oil, plastic, and metal. I’m glad for the jacket, as goose bumps probably aren’t in an android’s programming. I follow Bastion in silence, taking in everything around us. We weave through the overcrowded streets, pushing through droves of people. It’s easy to be overwhelmed here—all the lights, the sounds, the lack of space to even breathe.

  This place is like a cruel mockery of what could have been. Everywhere there are buildings as tall as the stars, shining like beacons, rainbow gems lighting up the night. I see in them the skeleton of rusted metal, the ghost of shattered glass and ivy. Above us, a metal track rattles and hums as a tram passes across it. I see the tramcar doors pried open, handprints of blood written across the spiderwebbed glass like warnings, like makeshift history books.

  I wander too close to the shadows as we navigate the streets. There’s rustling within the dark corners. In my head, I see it: the stink of acid, the grabbing appendages of the Cull slicing into my flesh, its scream of triumph drowning out my own screams of pain. Something moves in the darkness, and I stumble away, my heart ready to burst out of my chest. Two people step away from the lightless corner—a man and a woman. They give me strange looks of calculation as I walk away, glancing back at me as though I’m an algorithm that can be solved.

  They aren’t here. The Cull aren’t a part of this world. People traverse the lightless paths without a second thought. It seems like a dream, or maybe a nightmare—a different kind of nightmare than the one I was living before.

  The alleys open up to a spacious area. The ground is made of slabs of opalescent white stone and glowing orbs, so bright they’re almost floodlights illuminating the area. Their hot beams point at a pit in the middle of the square, causing sweat to pool at the small of my back.

  People crowd around the pit, making it hard to see. There are women with heavy jewelry and plastic-looking hair. They glance at me with apathetic neon eyes—greens, yellows, reds. Strange markings scrawl across their bodies like roadmaps. Men with circular chain links attached to their belts tuck themselves away from everyone else. The clinking of their adornments resonates through the quiet conversations.

  A mural on the wall beside us catches my attention. Depicted on it is a robot, all metal, no fake flesh or obvious gender. A rope circles its neck. Not a rope, a noose. Death to Glitches, it reads.

  “What is that?” I whisper to Bastion, gesturing to the drawing on the wall.

  He glances over at it. For a split second, a look of distaste clouds his eyes, and then it’s gone as quickly as it appeared.

  “Those who have developed human emotions will be executed,” he answers. “They are called Glitches.”

  Sanders’s story from so long ago comes to my mind. His voice fills my head: Our ancestors didn’t believe their creations—their androids—to be capable of emotion, thought, ideas. But they were wrong. Something had changed while they slept.

  Bastion’s jaw and shoulders tighten. The silence between us is pregnant, and I decide not to press him. His entire demeanor screams of anger, but only for a moment. I watch as he melts, his taut face returning to its normal placid mask. He turns his back on the mural, walking into the crowd, and I have no choice but to follow him.

  “Where do they keep…?”

  Then I see it. I recognize the mask as it floats along in the crowd in front of me: too bright eyes, apple cheeks, fake smile. All attached to a slim black suit and dress shoes. My heart stutters. That face stared down at me the night I was taken from Elite, the last time I saw David, Serge, and Lucca. The night everything changed.

  Bastion looks at me, a question in the furrow of his brow.

  “I know that mask,” I tell him.

  He follows the trajectory of my gaze. Recognition lights his face, and he ducks his chin, settling deeper into the hood. He reaches up and pulls my hood farther over my face.

  “You better hope that mask doesn’t know your face,” he says.

  The masked suit saunters through the crowd. Like a school of fish when a marshgator approaches, they part for him, making themselves as small as possible. My body vibrates with hatred.

  “The last thing I saw before I was taken was a mask just like that.”

  “Yes, well, that mask is the last thing many people see. I don’t plan on being one of those people tonight, so I’ll thank you kindly to not do anything rash.”

  We’re closer to the stage now, and an awful smell wafts over the area, casting a foul pall over the pit. No one else seems bothered by it. I recognize the smell, though. It’s rot, decay, sickness, human filth. It’s a smell I know quite well by now.

  The crowd shifts, undulating like water, and something to the far right of the stage catches my attention. Thick bars secure tramcar-sized cages to the wall. Inside the cages are… people. Not the strange mechanical people who surround me.

  My people.

  They wallow in waste, the source of the foul smell. Beyond the pleasant hum of conversation, their cries pierce my heart. Their pleading for freedom and help, their cries of pain. So many people press together in the cage I can’t see how they even manage to breathe. It’s a mass of writhing and moaning, matted and bloodied human bodies.

  “What is this?” I say under my breath.

  Bastion watches me. His gaze is unapologetic.

  “This is the meat market, Syl. You wanted me to bring you here to find your friend. If he’s alive, he’s in there.”

  My voice shakes with fury. “How can you do this? They’re people!”

  Bastion’s hand closes over my mouth. He’s just trying to shut me up, but I bare my teeth, ready to bite him. He presses in closer to me, hiding me from view and ducking his head farther beneath his hood. I try to pull away, confused.

  The mask glimmers into view, its reflection brilliant beneath the light of the orbs. It floats behind Bastion, the suited shoulders brushing his back and pushing him closer to me. The masked face tilts in our direction. Bastion’s hand slips from my face.

  “Is everything all right?” the mask asks. I remember that voice. Surgeon General had the same voice—mechanical, inhuman. Panic washes over me, and my heart is beating so hard it might burst. “Elevated voices suggest that you are experiencing a malfunction. If there is a glitch in your system, it will need to be dealt with.”

  Bastion turns on his heel and faces the mask, hood hiding everything but the bottom half of his face. He takes a half step in front of me, almost hiding me from the mask’s view.

  “Officer, there is no malfunction. We were simply mocking the humans.” Bastion’s voice is a perfect monotone.

  Slowly, so slowly, the mask tilts its head from one shoulder all the way to the other, toward where I am standing. Bastion is as still as a stone, motionless in only the way an inanimate object can be. He’s not even breathing. He doesn’t need to.

  I hold my breath, too. My skin tingles as the eyes behin
d the mask fall on me.

  “What is your model?” He’s addressing me.

  My lungs might burst from the lack of oxygen. I try to keep my lips from trembling, my voice from breaking. “I am model 5Y1, officer.”

  He says nothing for a moment.

  “I have not heard of a model 5Y1. Show me your information port.”

  Information port. Information port. Shit.

  Beside me, Bastion tenses. It’s the only visible sign of his nervousness.

  There’s the pressure of the metal ports in my wrist and neck. I don’t have much choice when it comes to what I can show him that might pass for an “information port.” Either I get it wrong and die right here, right now, or I get it right and probably still die, but later. After I’ve had a chance to help my friends.

  My fingers tremble as I pull down my hood, settling it around my shoulders. I turn and brush my hair to the side, revealing the metal hole implanted in my neck a few days ago. My fisted hands shake in my hair as I await the verdict. Do I pass for an android or not?

  “I apologize for the inconvenience. Please return to the festivities,” the mask says and then turns on his heel and walks away.

  My stagnant breath blows out in a puff of used-up air, and the blackness in my vision clears after a few breaths. I release my fistful of hair.

  Bastion brushes my hair to the side again. His fingers aren’t cold against my skin, but they aren’t warm, either. He inspects the port at the base of my neck, prodding at the places where the metal meets flesh. It doesn’t hurt, but I can’t help shying away from his touch.

  “Why do you have this?”

  I shrug. “Call him back over and ask.”

  He narrows his eyes at me. “Lucky for us that you do.”

  Yes, lucky. So lucky. Shards of memory shatter through my brain—the weight of the iron bars around my wrists, the red blood dripping off the table as my insides were cut open, the cords wrapped around me in that cold, cold tank. I can’t think of anyone luckier.

  I ignore Bastion’s comment. I know he didn’t mean anything by it. He couldn’t possibly know.