On Broken Wings
by Richard Ong
The rain poured relentlessly outside. The drumming of its liquid fingers played an incessant cacophony of sounds — loud, soft, loud and soft. I turned down the volume before it shattered the delicate crystal between my ears. I had at least that much control over certain parts of my body. I sometimes wish I had more.
“Hold my hands!”
Like fluids. Fluids were always important.
“Please, Tessie. Don’t let go!”
People were especially expressive when fluids flowed from their eyes.
“Don’t let go!”
When they were alone.
“My wings are burning! We’re going down! Hold on!”
Abandoned, like so much trash.
Three hours ago, the stadium burned after it was struck by lightning during an electrical storm. She was attending a concert with her parents. I was supposed to protect her from harm. I failed. All I could do was lift the burning timber that pinned her to the ground.
It was all I could do, but I could not save her.
I should have been grateful that I still had some mobility. I should have been grateful I had not been discarded by my owners.
After the crash.
When my wings failed to fly.
“Now flex those fingers, Ariel, and tell me how you feel.”
“I feel nothing. Except that I am broken.”
“Define ‘broken’, Ariel.”
In spite of the effort, I forced my spinal motors to raise my head and tilt it slightly to my left. The ocular computer behind my eyes painted the holo-image of a man in his early forties with short dark hair and pale brown eyes. Analysis of the chiseled but rough contour of his skin indicated a prolong dehydration of the epidermal tissue. Flakes of organic residue littered its surface.
“Skin care, Dr. Redmond. You need to apply some to your skin. As you age, the brittleness of the epidermal layer will eventually form permanent cracks and grooves on your face. You should take care of yourself while you’re still young.”
Dr. Redmond suddenly looked up and stared into my eyes. Then his face cracked into a smile and he took off his glasses. “Never mind about me, ‘Pinocchio,’ I want to know how you feel.”
“Machines don’t feel, Dr. Redmond. We only function as programmed. We mimic human behaviors to please our patrons. We are ‘Pinocchio’, as you put it. Puppets on a string.”
“Dammit, Ariel, I made you to be different, and you know it!” Dr. Redmond stood up and took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket. He lit a stick and inhaled deeply. I switched to thermal imaging and the temperature dropped two degrees from my body.
“Your lungs can still be saved, Dr. Redmond. But you have to quit. You have to quit now.”
Dr. Redmond turned around with a grimace on his face. He looked at the charred tip of his cigarette and frowned. He turned and extinguished the stick on an overflowing porcelain ash tray on the work table where I lay.
“There! Satisfied?”
“Thank you.”
“Do I get to live another year?” He finally smiled.
“It all depends on you.”
“And so we get back to my original question: How do you feel?”
I looked down the length of my torso, past the shredded gown and the lacerated skin underneath. No, it’s only silicone. Not skin. I had to remember that. I was nothing like them.
The curved, skeletal metal of my thumb gave off a faint winding noise as it gently rested over the curled steel of my other four fingers. I stared at the stark contrast between the light, delicate silicone covering of my arm and the exposed motors of my hand.
The heat of the flames from the domed stadium fire melted the thin veil of my false humanity. I could still remember the look on her tiny face when she fell. Her fear told me everything I needed to know and remember about who and what I was.
“I am a machine. I can function only as I have been programmed to.”
“That’s nonsense, Ariel. Utter nonsense, you hear me?” Dr. Redmond exploded. His face was contorted and deep fissure lines appeared on his forehead. “I created you to be better, much better than that.”
“My personality matrix is determined by what Knix Robotics has encoded for the host.”
“And I anticipated that you would’ve superseded that by now.” Dr. Redmond grabbed my right arm and squeezed just above the tattered remnants of my “skin.”
“This is but the shell.” I looked at my servomotors which continued to flex and curl the skeletal metal; to open and close the steel tendrils of my hand.
“And this,” Dr. Redmond reached out to touch my forehead with his free hand, then moved down to place his palm above my left breast. “And this, is where the real Ariel lives and breathes ever since you woke up from the berthing capsule nine months ago. Knix Robotics may have supplied you with the basic encoding matrix, but I gave you life and the ability to grow beyond your basic programming. And so I ask you again: how do you feel?”
“Broken.”
“Why?”
I stopped curling my fingers and sat up. I swung around and lowered my legs to dangle them loosely against the side of the work table. I looked at my creator and said, “I failed to save her. She was my charge.”
“So now you feel guilty. Inadequate. Useless. Am I wrong?”
“Broken. My wings failed to deploy. And now she is dead. Burned by the fire.”
“Your wings did deploy, Ariel. Telemetry confirmed that when it happened. But the fire in the stadium was too hot. Your wings were ablaze and the heat burned off the feathers, melted the ribbing underneath. It wasn’t your fault. You did everything possible to save the child.”
“Tear ducts.”
“What?” Dr. Redmond looked at me as if for the first time, clearly not comprehending what I just said. I struggled to keep my body from shaking and firmly gripped the underside of the table. I sensed my steel, skinless fingers warp the metal underneath.
“Give me tear ducts, Dr. Redmond. You asked me how I feel. I wish I could tell you that I am sad. I wish I could tell you that I feel guilty of losing my charge. I wish I could tell you that. I miss her. But my emotional sub-matrix is encoded to mimic human expression. And none of it is real.”
|
“When my charge was alive, I could make her happy by giving her a smile. I could make her pout and feel sad when I told her she was wrong and looked at her with a stern face. I sometimes stroked her delicate hair and hugged her to make her feel loved. She liked that very much, I could tell.
“But none of this is real. It is nothing but a simulation.
“Her parents paid for a guardian to look after her. To love her. To teach her how to be good. All these are programmed into my matrix.
“But they did not teach me how to cry when I failed to save her in the fire.”
“And so you want to have tear ducts built into your eyes,” said Dr. Redmond. “But why, Ariel? What good will this do now?”
“Her funeral is on Monday.”
“Yes... so it is.”
“I want to be there when they freeze her remains in the mausoleum. I want her to know that I really cared for her. I want to give her something that has not been predetermined by the matrix. I want to... I want to offer her something that is only mine to give.”
“Oh, Ariel,” Dr. Redmond touched my chin and gently lifted my face to look into my eyes. “My Pinocchio. You are the best of all my creations and you have made me very proud.”
* * *
Monday came. The ceremony was simple, involving only ten people. Little Tessie lay peacefully in her silk-cushioned capsule. Her eyes were closed and lips pursed almost in defiance of her death. Her long, blonde hair was tied in the manner that she always wore it, with pink ribbons on each side. She was dressed in a long, pink gown — the same one she always liked to wear for bedtime.
Her parents were the first to give her the flowers. They were among the last ones to leave the chamber. Dr. Redmond hung back for a few seconds and looked up high at the domed ceiling. He nodded and smiled before finally leaving the viewing chamber.
The mausoleum lights went dim as Dr. Redmond stepped out of the room and closed the heavy wooden doors behind him.
The echoes that reverberated within the large chamber from the sound of the closing doors rang on my auditory sensors like a signal for me to act.
With my brand-new wings, I glided twenty feet down to the center of the chamber where Little Tessie lay peacefully in her capsule. Feathers floated in the air, carelessly loosed during my flight. I retracted the wings and they folded easily on my back. I walked towards the capsule and placed both hands onto the glass that separated my former charge from the damaging effects of the air around me.
I tried to think of something meaningful to say, but nothing came from my programming. Humans always had something good to say to their loved ones. Angels could only look on and try to understand what it’s like to be human.
And so I did the only thing I could do.
Tears flowed down my cheeks. Droplets of fluid glistened on the glass window, blurring the image of the sleeping child underneath.
“I love you, Tessie. My little sweetheart.”
I wished I could mean it.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Ong
