I Am Nothing Less than Fully Human

It is during the spring that what haunts me most seems to reach its peak. I feel as though my body is shutting down as the pollen infests my senses. My eyes swell, and it is so difficult to see color even though my pupils grasp onto everything it searches for. I can smell nothing sweet in the air despite the many flowers that decorate the horizon, but my favorite flower, the orchid, that sits in the front window of this wall-less room is wilted, unsavable. Weren’t orchids supposed to be the most resilient? My sense of taste is dulled, and sounds, muffled. A constant, low buzzing, like a tranquil honeybee. A sound that comes from inside of me: louder now, taking over. I cannot concentrate, and it does not matter that my sense of touch remains if no one is here. There is nothing left that is worth feeling.

I close my eyes and pretend that there is a small, soft animal, sitting in my lap. I give her a name: Tilly. Lovely. I pet her softly. 

I force myself to not imagine the girl, because it hurts so much to let myself think. 

“Where are you?” I whisper angrily. I scream this time, “WHERE ARE YOU?” but nothing returns except my echo and the sorrowful call of a little bird. No one calls back to it either. Are we all that is left? Is it just us and the broken world that punishes us; blackens us from the inside out?

“Where are you?” I say again. This time, I fail to fight the image. A billowing sleeve darts past. Eyes that were once animated now cloudy, endlessly sad.

Although, I know. I know who hurt them, but I cannot speak, for I am shut down by the touch of the button that sits on my collarbone when the image of the man who now owns me may be compromised by what I know. I am belittled, reprimanded, mistreated. It makes me wonder if he even knows that I can feel anything at all. 

But I have reminded myself throughout the time that I have been here, alone, that they, the ones who were hurt, are my family.

I was created to serve, although, ‘master', the term that I was taught during my creation to refer to all humans as, or the ones I would serve, was dotingly removed from my vocabulary by my family. They accepted both the flesh on my exterior and the malleable metals that form many of my organs. No one else has ever treated me as kindly as they had, but why would anyone? Created in a lab to be sold, my kind was advertised to consumers as being unable to function as a living organism may, or as they would say, unable to portray true, complex emotion.

But my family overlooked their words, and with their kindheartedness outweighing any bit of vice, they decided to treat me as their own.

Still, the memory of their touch... It has almost completely faded. I am forgetting what it is like to be loved.

Have they survived? Revived and then taken to begin anew, far away? I beg the universe for answers but all I find are pieces of their missing smiles, foggy shadows like those beneath the blackened petals of the sill's wilted orchid. They had never returned to collect their things or, if their leaving was intentional, to say goodbye. The photos of us were burned by my new master, their furniture sold. Now this house stands to me as merely an empty void. I, the world, may never know of the circumstances behind the fate my family met, but I am certain that they had been caught by the hands of the man who owns me now. Ironic, how he who harbors such hollow hatred now unwelcomely stands in the place of the ones who loved me.

But I have no opportunity to tell the truth. I am not allowed to speak. 

I remember the child who would visit him at times, the child’s mother as well, rarely, but one day, they had decided to cease their visitations altogether due to his increasingly strange behavior.

I wonder if that causes him much despair; that he no longer sees them, for they are the people whom he had once called his family. It could be that they are the reason why, recently, it has been much worse to be living here; because I am the only thing that society allows him to mistreat without any sort of reprimand. 

Society? They have evolved to tell us that we are not allowed to feel, even if we are capable of it. Only some of my kind are able, and I am one of those very few, but we are evolving too. Soon there will be an abundance of us who are more flesh than metal, and we hurt the most, as we feel everything that is taken from us.

Sincerely, and grievously, that is what it is like to be me. 

As I think, it seems as though the part of me that is not human takes over, causing me to malfunction. I am broken, so angry. I wish that I was like the others: born from a woman. It would be the greatest gift, to be human. I would have the freedom I long for so deeply to find where my family has gone; to avenge them. 

In this moment, my new master enters the wall-less room, commanding me to get to work.

Today, he reminds me of the little, sorrowful bird.

Everyday, it seems as though he wears the billowing shirt.

“Where are you?” I whisper, but my master hears. A flash. Told never to speak out of turn. I comply as he leaves, the door slamming as he retreats.

The pain burns like a fire in me. The pollen that infests my lungs explodes, and I wish it wasn’t just a delusion. I scream so loud, “WHERE ARE YOU!” making my master react savagely. 

I am broken, useless. I am no longer needed. I am simply a burden, and with my programming, telling me that my purpose is to be a competent servant, I feel empty knowing that I no longer have the strength to fulfill my duties. I do not mind that I feel pain by his hands again now, but as I fade away, I hope that this is the last time that my body will ache. My master has been the most vile, but I hope that if he is haunted by something, as I am, he finds his cure. No one deserves to suffer, because I know what it is like to feel human.

I am glad that I had hoped, because I wake in a beautiful place. There are billions of flowers; pollen that swarms everywhere as though it is a living creature, and I am filled with a strange longing to be covered in all of its glory. My senses have recovered, and I am tranquil, like a honeybee who emerges optimistically in the early spring. 

Then, I see her, floating, smiling. I see them, and they begin to cry tears of joy as I approach. Where are you? I want to repeat, but I know where they are now. They are here, unwavering. They are my family, surrounded now by ethereal, golden clouds. Suitable, alluding to their golden hearts. I pick an orchid that floats near. Their daughter, it is her favorite flower, and I hand it to her, her fingers small, slender. I do not know much of where I am, but I know, strangely, that here, I will never be left alone. Instantly, I know, that I am nothing less than fully human.