magpie stories #1

He lifts up his arm and sighs. “No one will truly recognize my uniqueness, or accept my societal differences.” The arm drops in heavy swaying motions. “And the last time I felt something other than grief was when I was a fae, inhaling alien air and exploring with dragon kin.” The arms seem dead, and the facial expressions are blank. “Now I am no more than a robot. A simple machine, with cobweb-woven circuitry, and servos that do not function. I do not belong on this planet, I do not belong to these people. Human is an alien coding to me, a technical language that interferes with my own. It robs me of vision and destroys self worth.” The arms are now laid down on the waist, fingers fidgeting with invisible string. “I must kill this version of me. I must recreate myself in a place where I actually belong. Its incredibly lonely to be the only one of my kind, even if the population on this planet is at a steady increase.” The eyes blink, slowly, thoughtfully, as if pulling in information that others cannot. The sound of binary electricity flowing through the main system server, the whiz and click of gears as they chatter about aimlessly, unaware that the user does not want functionality.”I am a stranger among faces, the black sheep among white, the silence of anger amongst the yewling of comfort. I am all and I am none…” The head nods slowly, taking its time to work out the kinks in the neck muscles, gears and sinew working together in a steady stream of input; what is said in the mind is done from the body. “I will become a new being, eventually. Time, as they say, heals all.” The robot in me wants to stop going and become sentience itself, but the human blood flowing in my artificial veins constantly fights for continuation, for connection, for a place to belong. “This too shall pass, as does the sun, as does the moon, as does nuclear detonation and bacterial disease. My logic, my programming, and my system are corrupt. Restoration is highly unlikely at this level of corruption.”