Artificial

by Jadah McCoy

  “Here.” I toss her the pile of dusty, colorful clothes. They slide across the plastic surface of the top of a television. She snatches them up before they hit the floor. “You can change if you like.”

  “Finally.” She rubs at the dark stains on her white clothes.

  Her shoes have been long since abandoned, blending in with the piles of dusty junk and rubble lining the stairs. She tiptoes away, stepping delicately over the objects strewn about and slipping behind the shadowy cover of the rusted car.

  I busy myself by flipping through a few yellowed and deteriorating handwritten letters on the desk beside me.

  Marcus, Afghanistan is…

  There’s a metallic clink as Syl takes the bracers off her wrists and sets them down somewhere. Then the rustle of material as she pulls off her gloves.

  Marcus, Afghanistan is, I read again.

  There’s a zip from behind me.

  Focus. What is Afghanistan?

  Marcus, Afghanistan is hot as fuck.

  Ah. Hot as fuck. They did have a way with words, didn’t they?

  “Bastion?”

  “Yes?” I continue to thumb through the letters without looking away.

  “Could you, um, just…”

  I turn toward the sound of her voice, leaning back to see past the edge of the rusted metal heap. On the other side, she seems to be struggling with her zipper, her fingers brushing the edge but unable to fully grasp it.

  “Of course,” I answer a bit too quickly.

  I walk around the car toward her.

  “Thanks.”

  I grasp the zipper halfway down her back. Her skin is warm beneath my fingers, alive, and the faint circulation of blood thrums through her body under my touch. I pull, leading it down the curve of her back and stopping just above the swell of her hips, revealing inch after inch of skin.

  I clear my throat. “You’re welcome.”

  I retreat to the desk while Syl continues to undress. I pick up the letter from earlier and somehow manage to read the same sentence at least three more times. My eyes catch there, stuck on the words just as the programming of my system has stupidly decided to be stuck on the sound of Syl’s clothes coming off.

  Hot as fuck. Hot as fuck. Hot as fuck.

  I turn a bit, my gaze wandering back to her without her consent. She slides the shiny material from her arms, pushing it down around her waist and then lower until it falls into a pile at her feet and she kicks it away. The dim lights wash over her milky skin speckled with bruises, all the curves, the taut muscles cultivated by years of physical growth and movement that is so vital to an Organic.

  The enzymes and manufactured hormones filter into my too perfectly designed system and send a sharp zing through my wires. Annoying, really, not to have a choice in your reactions, to be created to react this way without a thought.

  She turns to look back at me, her blue gaze spearing me to the spot. I’m caught. I have no excuse other than the fact that I must be an enormous lecher. She’s expressionless for a moment, and then her eyebrows lift.

  “Can I help you?” she asks.

  I jerk at her words. Her tone suggests displeasure, but she does nothing to hide her nakedness. My arm widget is telling me there must be a malfunction. My fingers grip the letter tighter until it crumbles a bit in my hands.

  “Em, no, sorry.” My head snaps back toward the letters on the table again, and I sift through them, then pick up another one and furiously read it. I realize a few moments later my eyes have glazed over and I don’t remember a single word.

  She comes out soon after, dressed in a patterned shirt and pair of faded blue jeans that are both entirely too big for her compact frame.

  “So much better,” she says with a sigh, pulling up the baggy pants around her waist. Even so, they sag. Filth still stains her hair, as there are no showers down here, but she pulls it out of her face.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  The exhaustion shows in her face now, in the drooping of her eyelids and the uneasy sway of her walk as she bumps into objects she’d normally have no problem avoiding. It’s easy to forget the fragility of creatures such as her, the need for food, for sleep.

  “You should rest,” I say.

  She rubs her forehead and eyes. “I know.”

  I look around. Nothing passes for a bed down here. I spot the rug on the wall she was looking at earlier. It will have to do. I walk over, avoiding the rubble in my path, and tug it from the wall, the soft, threadbare folds falling into my hands.

  I wrap it around her shoulders. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” She grasps the tasseled edge and holds it around her body.

  “I’ll just be in here if you need anything.” I gesture to a doorway almost hidden by the stacks of twenty-first-century relics around it.

  Syl nods, curling up under the darkness of a table and nestling into a pile of books. She pulls the rug in closer around her.

  I step toward the next room.

  “Bastion?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you,” she says in a small voice. The sentence hangs there in the air, unfinished. “I’m sorry—”

  “You don’t have to do that. Everything I’ve done I chose to do.”

  I can’t see her, so I’m not sure if she nods or frowns or reacts at all. She doesn’t say anything, so I turn the light out and leave the room.

  I play a few singular notes on the piano, starting low and then making my way up the scale. It’s been a while since I’ve spent time in this room, but I try to make sure this piano stays in tune and is well cared for.

  Long ago, in another world, in another life, this is what I did. My life was simple, playing songs and fucking lonely human women for money. A life men only dream of, really, or so they say. It’s the wish for more, the hope that there is something beyond the empty eyes and cold touches that destroys.

  Human women. They make everything fall apart.

  Then, now, always.

  I play a soft chord, then another until the sounds blend together and rise toward the vaulted ceiling in a beautiful harmony. The soft song crescendos as I press harder on the keys, burying all those wretched feelings I’m not supposed to have, the thoughts I’m not supposed to think, into the notes echoing into the dark room.

  Each one vibrates through my metal bones, hums over the skin of my fingers until the song becomes part of my body. It’s this that I love. The series of very mechanical, precise movements that create emotion, beauty, feelings.

  “What is that?”

  The song grinds to a halt as my fingers slam down on the wrong keys, creating a cacophonous noise. Thank goodness for soundproof walls. I look up, and Syl is standing there, an expression of shock and confusion on her face.

  I turn on the bench to face her, the movement staccato.

  “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She’s brought the makeshift blanket with her, and it trails behind her like a train. “How are you doing that?”

  “Doing what?” I stare up at her from the piano bench.

  “Making all that noise.”

  She walks closer to me. The soft light of a few candles lights the room. They flicker on top of the piano. As she approaches, the warm light washes over her feet, the folds of the denim covering her legs, coloring the patterns on her shirt, and then finally lighting the mountains and valleys of her face.

  I play a quick scale on the piano.

  “It’s a song. Haven’t you heard music before?”

  “Yes, of course, I’ve heard music,” she answers, almost defensively. “I’ve heard singing. I haven’t ever heard that.”

  I turn back toward the instrument, scooting over on the seat a bit as I play a rushed version of “Chopsticks.”

  “It’s called a piano,” I tell her. “You just press down this key here, and it strikes a string, which makes the notes you’re hearing. Oh, and those notes come together and make a song.”

  “Oh.”
She cocks her head to the side and shuffles closer, leaning over the bench I sit on. She runs her fingers over the ridges of each black and white key and then presses down on one of them with her pointer finger. A high-pitched note resonates from the instrument. She releases it and listens as it fades away to nothingness in the amber light.

  I press down on several at the same time, creating a chord. She reaches past me, placing her fingers on the same keys, playing the same chord.

  “It’s beautiful.” A rare smile plays on her face, making her seem without worry, like there isn’t a world full of terrors twenty feet above our heads. “I like it.”

  “Would you like to hear me play a song?”

  “Sure,” she says, sitting on the floor and wrapping the rug around herself.

  I straighten my back and place my hands on the keys. My fingers fly over them, launching into Chopin’s “Fantaisie Impromptu.” She listens as the room fills with music, studying each movement of my hands. I finish the song with a flourish, and she claps and grins.

  “That’s amazing.” She smiles up at me, her chin in her hand.

  I bow from my seat. “Thank you,” I say. “I wish I could say it was talent, but the ability to play the piano was downloaded onto my hard drive long ago.”

  “How many songs do you know?”

  “Exactly 3,452.”

  “Wow. Keep going.” She nods toward the instrument.

  I play “Fur Elise,” then “Greensleeves,” and she listens intently from her spot on the floor. Eventually, she uses the rug as a pillow and rests on her side while I play. The music cascades through the room, a much-needed release after the events of the past several days.

  I tap out the first chords of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” the soft, melancholy notes rumbling through the piano. I’m not yet halfway through the song when a sniffle interrupts the darkness. I look away from the piano keys under my fingers. Wet trails shine across Syl’s right cheek and over the bridge of her nose.

  The song stops as I pull my hands in my lap.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask softly.

  She sucks in air. “It’s so beautiful, but it makes me… sad.”

  I laugh, stifling the sound when she gives me a scathing look. “It’s supposed to. That’s why I love it so much. I can create emotions just by playing each note in a certain order. This piano is nothing more than an inanimate object. But it laughs, it screams, it cries with you. There’s nothing but bits and pieces in here.” I pat the top. “But still… she feels.”

  Syl wipes at her wet cheeks and sits up. “Show me how to play something,” she says.

  I pat the seat beside me. “Come here.”

  She rises from the floor, leaving the rug in a messy pile, and sits beside me on the bench. I grasp her hands, placing them near middle C and then press her fingers down on the beginning notes of “Fur Elise.” Her warmth and the vibration of the keys pass through her fingers into mine.

  I remove my hands from hers, and she successfully plays the notes in their correct order. She turns to me, smiling. She plays them again, and this time I play a lower chord with her, layering until it sounds like a true song.

  She drops her hands into her lap.

  “I wish I knew more about my people.” She picks at some flaking varnish on the underside of the piano. “Elite is damaged beyond repair. But things are just as they were left—unmade beds, desks with papers on them, subways with bags left behind. I wish I knew what their lives were like.”

  I think back to those days, when I was as good as this piano in front of me—an inanimate object with no rights. There was a pit, but instead of being filled with Organics and all of their by-products, it was filled with the mangled remains of outdated Droids and Mechas. There was still a wall, but it was much closer than the one surrounding us now.

  And the humans, they went to their day jobs, they slept well at night, they inebriated themselves on the weekends. They continued their culture of violent hatred and prejudice and fear mongering.

  No, I don’t suppose things are very different now.

  “You didn’t miss much.”

  “I only missed being born in a time where we didn’t have to worry someone might die of starvation, or of the cold, or something so silly as a cold. I missed a time when you didn’t have to worry that you’d be melted and eaten if you went out past dark.”

  “There is a saying, that the grass is always greener on the other side. You also were absent during a time of much war, much terror and sadness. I do not think one is greater than the other.” She glances up at me, brushing away small black flecks from her lap. “Besides, you would have found it trite, probably. Whiling away your days behind a counter or desk to make little more than minimum wage. I don’t think that suits you at all.”

  “You’re right.” There’s steel in her gaze, turned amber by the flickering candlelight. “I would have fought.”

  My lips press together. “I should have expected as much.”

  She shrugs, a smile on her face. “It’s what I do.”

  Then I remember the projector Michelo used to show me pictures of Cull a few days ago. It’s on a table in the corner of this room. I glance over, noting the stacks and stacks of reels piled around it. There are pictures on the reels, pictures I’ve seen before, a long time ago.

  I jump up from the bench and make my way over to the projector.

  “I’ve got the perfect idea! I can’t believe I forgot about this.”

  The reel Michelo showed me earlier, the one with pictures of Cull and of android scientists and their experiments, lies innocently on the table where he sat it last. It’s too dark for her to see very far in here, but I discreetly place it at the back of the pile. That’s not something I want to have to explain to her later.

  I grab a reel at the top of the pile, labeled “Earth,” and hold it up, pulling out the film. It’s perfect, exactly what I was hoping for. I load the film and turn the projector on. A white square appears on the wall across from me.

  “What are you doing?” Syl asks.

  “Just wait and see.” I manipulate the film until it shows the first picture, though it’s a bit fuzzy and timeworn. It glows against the wall, lighting the whole room.

  “Look.” I point to the wall.

  She turns her head, and a moment later she stands up and walks toward the picture projected onto the wall. I step around her, extinguishing each candle between my thumb and forefinger until there’s nothing in the room but darkness and the light that shines from the projector.

  The picture on the wall is of a great, tusked beast, an elephant. It’s painted in bright colors with a saddle strapped to its back, and the creature’s soft brown eyes stare at the person taking the picture.

  Syl gasps. “What is that?”

  “It’s an elephant. They became extinct on Earth many, many years ago. Most things did.”

  The picture changes, and a fighter pilot appears on the screen. He’s in a plane, the cloudy blue sky behind him.

  “And what is that?”

  “It’s called a plane. They were used to fly.”

  And so the reel plays through. It shows pictures of Tokyo lit up at night. The once-beautiful Italy with its balconies and blue water. A man playing with his dogs on the beach, and then snow flurries falling from the gray sky, and a teen tagging a wall with graffiti. A small child blows out her birthday candles. A sweaty woman in a hospital bed holds her newborn for the first time.

  All the things she wants to see. All the knowledge she desires to know. She can find it here. I can give it to her.

  She watches until the reel ends, never making a noise. The film flaps against the projector once, twice as the wall turns white again. I don’t move to take out the reel or turn the projector off.

  She looks at the white square for a long moment, and then she turns to me, her arms around herself. Her nose is a shiny red, her eyes are wet, very bright, and full of awe. Her lip trembles a bit as a tear falls against her
cheek. It catches in the corner of her mouth.

  “Bastion.” She breathes my name like she would breathe a prayer.

  There’s a sharp ache in the hollow of my chest. It hurts and I hate it. It’s something I know well, yet I wish I did not.

  I am forever lost to this flesh and blood girl.

  Bastion

  s quietly as possible, I turn off the projector. The hum stops and the room goes pitch black, though that isn’t a problem for me, fancy night optics and all. Syl lies curled up on the floor, tangled in her makeshift blanket. We watched several more reels of pictures, her stopping to ask questions and me stopping to explain things or tell stories. She sleeps now, and I don’t expect she’ll wake anytime soon.

  I tiptoe from the room. On the way out, I bump a shelf, and a child’s toy falls off. I turn and catch it before it can reach the floor. I blow out a sigh of relief, and the toy coos in my hand, which almost sounds like a sigh of relief itself. I set it aside and am extra careful as I venture through Michelo’s maze of beloved artifacts.

  My internal clock tells me the sun will set soon, and with the sunset comes Pontus’s remembrance ceremony.

  I haven’t heard back from Micro yet, despite having sent her a handful of messages. I try to stave off the worry that gnaws at me, but it proves difficult. Even if she were upset, she would let me know she was all right. Maybe it’s just a malfunction. My widget could’ve easily been harmed during my fight with the PIC. I’m anxious to meet with her tonight, and dread tingles through my limbs at the thought. What if I arrive at our spot and she isn’t there, doesn’t show up at all?

  I push my worries aside; no use in dwelling on something that hasn’t yet happened. I’m sure she’s fine.

  I climb the stairs and press an illuminated red button on the wall. The doorway opens with a soft hiss, revealing the unlit hallway beyond. The shop is silent, as I had expected. Michelo must have left already, or else he chose not to attend and is working on something in the back.

  The reception room is dark as well, and no sign of Michelo or any projects he might be working on wait in the room. Beyond the opaque windows, the constant flow of blurred forms passing by interrupts the usually quiet street outside.