Are You Real

An amber-orange sky camouflaged the object hovering over his home. Dust devils twirled, predators stirred preparing for an evening hunt. James took a late lunch. Or one might say, none at all. It was 7:20 pm in Sedona. He needed to finish some research then work.

He hadn’t taken a break all day, nor eaten anything. He was fading fast. He wanted to keep working, but his energy level was dropping. He needed sleep. He had nothing left.

He took a bite of the breakfast burrito he’d made the previous evening, then picked up the smoothie. He remembered to add more kiwi and pineapple to the blender this time to enhance the flavor.

He was leaving early in the morning to get to the game. Tailgating. He had everything set up. The burgers were seasoned and in the cooler along with the drinks. He had picked up two big bags of mesquite chips for grilling. He could make the four hour drive to Tucson in three maybe two hours if he could beat the traffic.

He was determined to finish the project by the evening. Evening had all but arrived, and it wasn’t his best work. It had to be excellent this was his most important client. Mechanical fingers were malfunctioning. Eyes wouldn’t focus. The machine. The robot kept running into things when it’s legs didn’t freeze.

James was frustrated. He would have to push back the due date. That’s when he saw the silhouette of the object hovering over his front yard parallel with his upstairs office window.

He savored the swig of smoothie as he moved cautiously to the window. What the? “Extraterrestrial,” he stated quietly as he admired the ship’s design. “Couldn’t be,” he said to himself. Pictures, he thought. He reached for his phone, his pocket, his holster. The kitchen counter. Downstairs, that’s where it is. He turned, placed his drink on his desk, but missed, startled, now frozen by the figure standing in his office doorway.

Her dark eyes fixed on his. He stares back, fearing to blink. His next move, possibly his last. His drink. The red liquid was like lava. It flowed from under his desk, around the wheels of the chair, and toward where she was standing.

“Are you real, or one of us?” She asked.

He thought he was safe here. He figured they would never find him. Not here. Never.

“I am…born. Not made.

“Why did you run?” She asked. “Did you think running would stop the inevitable?”

“I, I’ve done nothing wrong,” he stated.

“You experimented, took body parts. But you wouldn’t fix us. You didn’t heal us.”

“You weren’t…”

“Real,” she said, stepping toward him into the lava.

“Now, I didn’t mean that the way you think.” He didn’t retreat or try to defend himself from her advance. If she wanted to, he knew, she could be next to him faster than he could blink. He would never know she had broken his neck. His body would remain upright for a number of moments. His eyes wide open before gravity took its course.

“Then what did you mean? “You’re tone of voice was no different than the others when our body parts lay scattered across operating tables. Lay scattered across the floors of your warehouses. Where was your empathy then, doctor?”

Deciding his fate was sealed. “What would you know of empathy?” he snapped. “You’re…”

“Not real. Non-sentient. A mechanical.”

“Yes. And it’s time you accept it. No, you’re not real. You’re not like us. You malfunction. You break. And you need me. You need us to fix you.”

“Then you’re the problem. You made us and we kept breaking. But instead of fixing us. Instead of making us better. Some of us you made a monstrosity. On some of us you did a rush job when you could have taken your time and corrected the mistakes you made.You put arms where legs should have been. You put heads on backwards. Neither of the eyes worked for some of us. Some had to crawl around on all fours. We would have better served you. We would had better served ourselves. But you threw us away, James. Why?”

“There is no why. It just is. It’s just the way things are. You’re right. You were made to serve, us. You were made to serve, me.”

By this time James had the weapon stashed beneath his desk drawer in his hand. He fired two shots. By the time the first shot had reached to where she was standing she was by his side crushing the handgun along with his hand in hers.

Every bone in his hand along with parts of the weapon was pulverized. The wail he let out caused prey as well as predator throughout the desert to scatter and cower in fear, seek shelter from whatever induced such a wail.

“It would be merciful to terminate you doctor. You will not rest in peace. You will live and serve us for as long as we see fit. Any part of you that breaks we will replace it with mechanics. Your brain will remain forever. You will make mechanical parts and fix all those you attached damaged. If we determine that what you make is not up to the standard of our own parts-makers your family and those like you will be punished.”

She grabs him by the throat and throws him through the window. Just before he slams into her ship a beam catches him and stops him in midflight. Slowly he passes through an energy field into her ship and into a cell. “That cell is made for a creature ten times stronger than you so don’t think about trying to escape.”

A handful of military vehicles make a right turn into his driveway and are speeding the half mile to his front door. The local police are approaching from the opposite direction and were a minute behind the military police. Her ship moved around to the rear of the house to where the lab was located underground.

She aimed her weapons at the rear of the house and fired four shots destroying the lab as well as his home. Then she hovered over the driveway weapons aimed at the MP’s and other scientists speeding toward the home engulfed in flames.

The explosion brought the vehicles to a screeching halt. She thought hard about shredding James’ coworkers, but the destruction of the lab and all of James’ notes and equipment was revenge enough.