Our Perfect Worlds - Part 6

Alice: I Need You

TW: 18+ | Descriptions of Violence | Mature Language

PT 381, Dimension S-035, Santa Barraza

It was like I was walking on air, and I hated it. I was constantly misstepping and throwing my cybernetic body into awkward positions. Or what could be awkward positions for a normal body. As I got used to my new body, I found the new senses it offered me.

Full three-hundred and sixty degree motion sensors, one of my favorite addons to this body. While everything for me felt overwhelming, knowing who is around you at any given time and being able to turn your head like an owl is handy, and fun for those who want to enjoy their time as a cyborg. However, it didn’t seem Petra really wanted to. She just wanted to finish getting me used to my new body. She always asked how I was feeling about it, as if she was waiting for the end of my “training”. I could spin my body so I could quickly recover in any scenario, and I could shoot a target from behind me without looking. I felt super cool.

My body comes equipped with gun-fingers, A gun muzzle hidden inside of each finger, allowing for 10 shots before I have to reload. At my wrists I have large cannons that fall out and expand for heavy-duty attacks. At my shoulders I have even bigger cannons. My personal favorite is the plasma sword that comes from my fingers. They light up, and my sword zips out. I am told that it should cut through almost anything. It’s personally designed by higher-ups at DRU. Petra says that it would slash right through her DRU-issued tactical umbrella.

According to Petra's knowledge of dimensions, if I was to be in the same place as my parallel version, eventually things would begin to collapse. She assured me that this wouldn't be an issue for me, though her reasoning was dubious. She had me officially classified as something called a "glitch".

This body is better than my old human body, and yet I still feel ugly like this. I may be able to maneuver myself around now, but I still don’t feel things the same way that I used to. My mind feels confused, so much so that I sometimes lose feeling in my face. Or I get phantom-pains. The pain that Mara inflicted on me comes back, and I’m reminded of why I’m here.

Yet, I feel no need for revenge. I just can’t shake it.

I don’t need it, I’m given something to do, a purpose. So I guess I’m doing fine. I saw Petra leaning against the door. Staring into space. She always seemed to act like she was so cool and collected. All I knew about her was that she came here to work everyday. She didn’t seem to want to make any friends. As I walked over to her, she looked over to me like she had just noticed me.

“Hey, guess what today is?”

“What’s today?” I asked.

“You get to go home. I get that you are an orphan. But you were still raised by guardians. I imagine you haven’t seen them in a while. Maybe they don’t even know you died. I have a life away from work, so does everyone.”

I get to…go home? Having this dropped on me freaks me out. They are going to have to see my head on a body that doesn’t belong. I’ve gotta warm them up first. So I picked out some clothes that would be more inviting. It was last minute, and Petra threw me what she had. A blue gown that was long enough to cover most of my body. I wore leggings and boots, stuffed where the feet would normally go and tied them as tight as I could. I put on white gloves, matching the gown. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was almost normal.

Petra brought me to a beach. It was on the coast of Santa Barraza. I looked into the ocean. She stood next to me. Looking along.

“It must be scary. Having to look your people in the face after all these years.”

“Not really.” I said.

Petra stood there, for the first time, her voice got a little frustrated. “The people here care about you, idiot. So stop treating them like trash just because you were thrown away when you were young. It’s kind of annoying, and frankly pathetic. I bet it feels better only taking care of yourself. But sometimes getting help from others is a great thing.”

“Where’s this coming from?” I asked.

“I used to be like that too. Until I met my husband. It’s a whole different world now. My death may not mean a lot to anybody. I practically don’t even exist anymore. But to my family…that’s a different story.”

I was silent. Thinking about Petra’s words. I haven’t been to the orphanage in years. I don’t know if anyone will even remember me. I was never adopted, so me and the others were always taken care of by the overseers of the orphanage. Who changed frequently. But we didn’t. Me and-

“Heyyyyy!” A voice called out. To my surprise, I instantly recognized it.

I wanted to turn, but anxiety set in. She’d realize something was off. So I watched Petra turn around. She turned to meet my best buddy growing up in the orphanage. Nobody ever adopted her because I think they thought she was too much. She bounced off the walls as a kid. Constantly causing trouble or getting into places she wasn’t supposed to. Whenever potential parents would come by to adopt, Annie would be playing in the attic, or burying herself in the sand, or riding her bike over the tallest mountain she could build. I haven’t talked to her since I was eighteen. It’s been fifteen years. Her name was Annie Samsa, and her voice sounded almost identical to when she was a kid.

“Hey scary lady, are you Ali’s co-worker? My folks told me she was coming from some cool job!” She said cheerily.

“Yeah. I’m her co-worker.”

I felt Petra saying in her head “Get ready, Alice.”

She moved out of the way of Annie.

“Go see her. She’s waiting for you.” Petra said.

I heard Annie run up behind me and wrap her arms around my metal body, instantly shattering the illusion I had tried to construct. If she had the strength, she would’ve picked me up and shook me around. She backed up, as I was forced to turn around, and looked at me face-to-face. She was so pretty. Her bright blue eyes, cute pink hair and parted, positive lips. She wore what she always seemed to wear. That stupid star hoodie, with a white top under it. It was always and will always be her style.

“Woah, you are a little heavy, and…hard.”

“It was supposed to be more of a surprise.”

I kicked off the boots, took off the leggings and showed off my legs. The bouncy Annie knelt down and looked at my legs. She knocked on them, hearing the metal ringing throughout the air.

“Holy shit. You're like a cyborg.”

“...yeah.” I chirped.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier!? This is soo cool! My best friend is a cyborg! Come on, let’s go inside. We should see the others. Nice meeting you co-worker!”

“Likewise. I will come and get you when I need you, Alice. You have time to relax.”

I couldn’t tell if that was Petra threatening me, or trying to be nice.

Annie excitedly grabbed my hand. She dragged me into the orphanage. Running all the way there. I was surprised to find I was able to keep up. The orphanage was no different from when Alice remembered being there. They went in the back entrance, to find a large playing area for kids, where all kids in the orphanage played. There was a TV against the wall with fold-out chairs sprawled around the TV. Toys were spread all throughout the room. So were kids. There was much less than Alice remembered being. The kids peered at her robotic legs. They passed into the front desk, which doubled as a store for toys. There was an old woman at the front desk.

“Hi Annie. Is this your friend?”

“This is Alice. She left for college fifteen years ago. But now she’s back. Do you want to introduce yourself?”

I smiled down at the woman. She was a plump little old woman with a pleasant smile.

“Hi. Are you new here?” I asked.

“It’s been almost 5 years now. I’m sad to hear that you two didn’t have orphanage guardians that stayed with you. I’m an old lady, my career is at it’s end.”

“Please tell me you’ll stay with these kids. Me and Annie only had each other”

“I promise young lady.”

“Can I ask your name?”

“Ms. Zadok.” She said as she shook both of my hands.

“Ms. Zadok, can I show you something?”

“Of course, dear.”

“If I am going to be open and honest with the orphanage, you need to know me as I really am.”

I took off my gown, fully revealing myself to the woman and Annie.

“You really are a full-fledged cyborg.” Annie gasped.

Ms. Zadok gave a warm smile. “It doesn’t matter who or what you are. As long as you can help around the orphanage.”

“Oh-I’m not going to be here all the time. My job just wanted me to introduce myself back to my old residence.”

“Ah, okay. It’s quite alright. Annie and the others are very good helpers.”

______________________________________________________________________________

That night, Annie and I slept in the top part of the building. Upstairs with Ms. Zadok’s sleeping quarters. My old bed was left in perfect condition. Just the way I left it. Annie and I chatted the whole night. She told the stories about her twenties that I missed out on. The parties she went to, her seemingly infinite number of new boyfriends, and the endless amounts of memories she had with the kids here. The time that she was going to get her veterinarian license in college. She went for a year and a half and then dropped out because of the orphanage. When she got a normal job for another year, but the work with the orphanage was too much, or when she tried to become a dog-walker, but the dogs ripped apart the orphanage, so she had to help replace the broken items, and gave up dog walking for the orphanage. I felt bad thinking about the stress that I could’ve saved Annie from. My stories were about my own stress in college. The long nights of studying, the late nights pumping out a fifteen-page essay about why accounting was integral to the French Revolution, boring shit like that. The amount of parties I went to was very small, and the partners I had were a big goose egg.

I missed out on my twenties.

“You know that you are welcome anytime at the orphanage, Ali. We left it like this for a reason. I waited fifteen years.”

I didn’t just miss my twenties. I missed the connections I could’ve held onto, the relationships I could’ve made.

“But now you’re back! You’ve gotta stay around! You could help around when you aren’t working, and maybe we could gain back all that time you felt like you missed in college.”

“You’re right, Annie. I’m so sorry. I hate that it took me almost dying to realize that I left you behind. I left everyone here behind. I’m no better than my parents.”

I really did feel this way. I met my parents one time. We went to dinner one time. I tried to explain how my life was. But I think that they thought I was trying too hard. I think they were guilty of leaving me, because they seemed to take all the comments I made personally. So they left me as a baby, and left me as an adult. I slipped into their life for one dinner, and that was it.

“Don’t say that.” Annie said. Finally sounding serious. “You aren’t a bad person. You got focused, but I think you were so focused that you got lost. Being lost isn’t a sin. It makes you more human than anyone around you. Even if you don’t fully look it.”

She sat up out of her bed and tackled me in a hug. Fully embracing me.

“You still give warm hugs even though you’re a robot. How’s that feel?”

Really good, Annie.

Ms. Zadok woke us up in the morning. She brought us down to wake up the kids. Annie excitedly taught me the way to handle the young kids. Most of them were as little as five years old to eleven years. All boys and girls. Together there were about ten of them. I remember there being as many as thirty or forty kids when I was living there. Some of the girls slept underneath the bed, and a couple had wet their beds. This had to have been a common occurrence because the sleeping quarters smelt of cleaning supplies. Annie cleaned that part. Leaving getting some of the kids up to me. I had went back to my “human” appearance, so as not to scare any of the kids. I knew how it felt to be met with a new face in the morning. You wondered where your former guardian was, and then you were reminded that they left too. So I let them up gently. Some of the younger kids trusted me, I was able to pick them up effortlessly. A young girl named Wendy clung to me, and I had to let her down gently.

“Hi Wendy,” I said “I’ll be one of your new caretakers from now on. I’m Annie’s friend.”

“Any friend of Annie is a friend of mine!” She said.

However, some others were harder to convince. The older kids pushed off of me and got up themselves, but skipped some of the steps. When I gently tried to remind them they answered with nothing. But when Annie did, they were quick to listen. She was gentle yet firm in her statement. I think I have to be a little more harsh with them. We woke the kids up, and got them settled down for breakfast, which Ms. Zadok had prepared. I led all of them into the breakfast area, and everyone mingled.

As I walked in, the news was on. I stopped Ms. Zadok when she went to change it. To my surprise, I saw Mara’s face plastered all over it. There was a program being run about some sort of new machine that Mara brought to Earth. She was smiling on a red carpet, shaking hands with officials and signing bills that put her new machines in factories, nearly replacing all human workers. Of course, I knew another news station would be livid about this. Robots stealing their jobs. I saw images of a man in a red suit with Mara. I worked for his company before I was attacked by Mara. Everything she was doing was being run by his business from the looks of it. I think that the general public was comforted knowing that some “aliens” might be human. To everyone, Mara seemed like a friend. According to Petra, she’s a tyrant. I was reminded of when she gave me the pep talk on Mara and her friends. Mara has destroyed a couple small planets. One of them was pluto. I couldn’t help but wonder how, and what kind of power she would have had to possess to pull this off.

I wasn’t sure about my own destructive capability, and I was afraid to use my weapons. I had trained with Petra, but this was in a training facility that didn’t affect the outside world nor showed the kind of destruction my weapons did. Is that really the truth? Am I supposed to fight a world-destroying tyrant?

“Hey, Ali. Are you going to sit down?”

“Yeah.” I said as I was brought back to Earth.

I sat down next to Annie. She told stories and laughed with the kids. As breakfast came to an end, Ms. Zadok pulled me aside.

“Like you said, you want to be transparent. Are you going to show the kids who you really are? I recommend after breakfast, they have playtime all the way up until lunch then.”

So that was what I did. I pulled the group of kids into the play area, and sat them all down. The older kids' heads poked over the younger kids. Some of the older boys and girls held the younger kids in their laps, or gave them boosts so they could see me.

“I used to be just like you.” I started. “I grew up in this orphanage, then I went to college instead of staying with Annie. Now I’m back for good. I had a little scare, it took that scare to bring me back here. I regret not coming by more often, and not getting to know you kids better. I am going to be working, but I will be here for you as much as possible. I want to give you the love I didn’t get as an orphan. So, orphan to orphan, this is me being open with you about what I really am.”

I let the gown that covered me fall. Some of the kids got scared, until they realized that I was like a porcelain doll. A full cyborg. Some of them sat there, slack-jawed, others were confused, and some seemed to think it was the coolest thing in the world.

“She’s a cyborg! Isn’t that awesome!? How does it feel to have a cyborg as your caretaker?”

So I spent the first thirty minutes of playtime letting the kids climb on me like a jungle gym. I was very cautious about where I let them play. I was horrified that there was a small chance I would accidentally shoot a missile off. But everything seemed fine. The older kid who originally shunned me walked up to me and told me I was pretty cool, before challenging me to an arm wrestle. It would be silly if I let him win. Every boy went up against me, all of them got frustrated that they were being beaten by a woman. So every boy went up against me at once. They fit as many of their little hands on me as possible, and I still won. Eventually, we let some of the rest of the kids join in and I finally let them claim their victory.

Another day, the summer wind was just the right amount for Annie to be able to take the kids on a trip to the beach. Ms. Zadok brought her beach chair and book. She would look up every once and a while to check on the kids. Or to yell at them to stop doing something. Annie effortlessly played with the kids. She played in the water with them, having swimming races and playing ball with them.

Through her, I was reminded how good the ocean felt on my skin whenever I went when I was younger. I loved to swim. I guess I could swim now, but it’s about the feeling for me. The little girl, Wendy, seemed to take quite a liking to me. Sometimes she even seemed to like me waking her up over Annie. She sat next to me, building a sandcastle. I’m afraid if I try to help, I’ll destroy her castle.

“Alice? Can you feel anything as a robot?”

I was caught off guard by her question, and I tried to hide it. I thought for a second.

“Well…No. My robotic body is incapable of feeling anything. I can feel the summer breeze on my face. But from my neck down, there is nothing. It’s quite sad if I was to be honest. But it’s okay. I can still imagine those feelings.”

“I bet whoever made you can install an app in you so you can feel things!”

I chuckled. “We’ll see.”

I wasn’t about to tell a child that I was a robot designed specifically for war and destruction. It’s not in DRU’s interest to give me feelings.

______________________________________________________________________________

Annie and I woke up the kids, as we did our duties, Annie talked with me. She had been heckling me all morning, trying to find out what my job was.

“Seriously, I can’t tell you what my real job is. I think the organization is like, supposed to be secret. Kind of like men in black.”

“Men in black? You work for the FBI as some sort of super-spy?! Ali, you left for fifteen years and became the coolest person I know!”

“Pff, that’s not true. It’s not like I made myself into a robot, or even volunteered for all of this. I haven’t even started my job yet, but I have to take down a really bad person.”

“You’re like a superhero, Ali.”

I heard Ms. Zadok’s voice from the front counter of her store. “Alice! Someone’s here to see you!”

My figurative heart sank. It was the day Petra had come back for me. I went through the door to see Petra looking at items around the store. All used kids toys. Annie followed me into the other room like a lost puppy. Her cheerful expression diminished.

“You’re really going with her to fight some really bad guy?”

“I have no choice.”

“Please come back! If you don’t we’re going to be so mad!” Annie said through tears.

Petra came up to the front desk, she bought some car toys.

“I didn’t know you were a car collector.” I said.

“Not of toy cars. Figured I’d get some for my kids. Let’s go.” She spoke in a commanding voice.

I stepped to go on Petra’s side of the room. But Annie tackled me in a hug.

“Don’t be a stranger.”

We practically had to tear me out of Annie’s arms. I bid farewell to Ms. Zadok. Petra walked with me into her car. We each got in. As she adjusted her seat, I looked at the orphanage. The car rumbled to a start.

“So. Have something to fight for yet?” Petra asked.

"..." My slience was enough.