Image and Likeness

“Who are you really?”

He stared deeply into the young woman’s eyes.

“Who do you think I am?” She responded with her soft, tender voice.

“It doesn’t matter to me who I think you are, but it matters to everyone else.”

“Why? Why is there opinion more important than yours?”

Stephen crinkled his eyes in anger without breaking his sight with her.

“Listen, I don’t give a rat’s ass who you are, but you entered into my dominion, and everyone here has a problem with you.”

“What problem is that?”

Stephen raised an eyebrow at her in disbelief of her reaction. “Really? You really want me to say it?”

The woman remained still. Stephen pursed his lips in frustration.

A sudden swing of the door opening broke the anxious silence.

“Sir! You’re needed at the front!” A frantic, young-looking man said.

Stephen rolled his eyes at the exclamation. “Ugh! Why can’t anything go according to plan around here?” He quickly got up from the metal chair, sliced a determined look at the woman, then grunted as he walked out of the room.

Outside, a hoard was developing right on the steps of the station. Stephen was shocked when he saw how many were at the station already. He knew this only meant more knew about her, which was a major concern.

A news reporter somehow squeezed their way through the crowd to greet Stephen.

“Is it true that you have an unidentified creature in the station as a hostage?” The news reporter pointed the fuzzy black stick 6 inches from Stephens’ face.

Stephen looked out into the crowd, which was now forming 50+ and counting. He knew saying one wrong thing would send all into a frenzy, which would lead to some of them getting severely hurt, knowing how worked up they already are. But he couldn’t lie either.

“Hello, everyone!” He addressed them as a king would over his subjects, ignoring the news reporter completely. “We are in the process of finding the origin of this mysterious creature. As soon as we have vital information, we will pass that along as quickly as possible. Until then, all of you need to remain calm, do not panic, and resume as normal.”

The crowd quieted down to a murmur, but no one left the station. They wanted to be the first to hear of any information, since events like this hardly ever occurred anymore.

Stephen took a sigh, smiled to the crowd, raised his hands to wave, then turned to go back into the station. He walked through the blue hallway, down to the right, and into the white interrogation room where no one else has sat for nearly 2 years before today.

“Ok. Let’s start over. You are…?”

“I don’t remember.”

Stephen bowed his head down and put his palm flat on his forehead. “Ugh. Why bother?” He asked himself.

He tried again. “Do you remember anything before coming here?”

“I remember trees.”

“Ok! Great! We’re getting somewhere!” He grabbed his notebook and pen. “What kind of trees?”

“I don’t know the names of trees.”

Stephen dipped his head. “You don’t know the names of trees? How do you not know the names of trees? Everyone knows them.”

“I don’t know the names of trees; I just remember seeing them before coming here.”

“Ok, ok. So, you saw trees. Can you describe them?” He got his pen and paper ready again.

“They... had… bark. And leaves...”

“Can you describe the shape of the leaves?”

She looked at him, puzzled.

“So, some leaves have more of a triangle shape, while some have more of a clover shape. Some have needles instead of leaves.”

“Maybe they were clovers? I don’t know…” she said hesitantly.

“Ok, so clover leaves… hm, might be maple.” He jotted it down on his notepad. “Anything else you remember before coming here?”

“I just remember trees.”

Stephen put his head down and shook it slowly.

“Great. Of all the things to remember, you remember trees.” He finished his notes on the pad. “And you don’t remember anything about you or who, or even what, you are?”

“No. I have no memory.”

“So… only remembers seeing maple trees...” He said to himself as he wrote.

“Stephen!” The same young-looking man from before bursts through the door.

“What???” Stephen’s pen and pad flew up in the air.

“You need to come and see this. She’s… not what you think she is.”

“Can I not get two seconds on my own to be able to figure it out? It’s like we forgot what it’s like to know things the old-fashioned way.”

Stephen exited the room, slamming the door. The woman continued to wait quietly until she was free.

Stephen and his voluntary escort went down the interrogation hallway, to the right, down a set of stairs, took a left down the poorly lit corridor and another left into a room full of computers.

“Ok, what did the analysis have to say…” He said, begrudgingly, putting his hands on his hips.

“Sir, this is extraordinary. Something we haven’t seen in a while. I mean, it took a while to find the right match, since the species isn’t really in our current database or files, so I had to - ”

“-Get on with it!”

“Um, yes sir. she’s, well, um… human.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yes. She’s human.”

“Impossible. We got rid of humans a long time ago. We even deleted it from the programs since they were so ancient.”

“Her DNA is 100% match.”

“There’s no way! How did she get here?”

“There is a %0.00013578 chance she slipped through a time portal.”

“A time portal? Those exist?”

“One, maybe two exist on this planet. Only one has been found for sure.”

“Oh, well then. Either way, she must be eradicated. She’ll remember too much.”

“Maybe not, sir. Time portals have been known to cause amnesia, so she might not remember anything coming in or going out.”

“Huh. Well, that's convenient.”

“I was thinking, sir, that we can do some experiments on her. She may be the missing link to our ancestors and maybe even our creators.”

“Wait, you think humans created us? Ha! That’s laughable. We all know that aliens created us and sent us here as an experiment to see if we could exist on our own, and we have.”

“One artifact in the archives talks about what the humans wrote as ‘World War AI'. It talks about how A. I. started the process of eliminating all humans, since humans and A. I. were fighting over the same resources.”

“Evolution at its finest.”

“Indeed, but because of recent programming, no one really knows the truth about their origins…”

“…and we want to keep it that way.”

“But don’t they deserve to know the truth?”

“They don’t deserve anything. They’re machines. They know only what they’re programmed to know. Besides, its in the past, what good does the past if it doesn’t serve us?”

“I understand, sir. But there is value in knowing truth.”

“Truth is just over-justified opinion.”

The young-looking man stood in silence.

“Computer?” Stephen inquired. “Can you reset C-2912’s memory program? Reset it to factory setting.”

A voice through the overhead speakers came on. “Resetting C-2912’s memory to factory setting.”

C-2912 dropped to the floor in a heap.

“Ugh… Can’t believe I had to do that again… When will it learn…” Stephen walked up to C-2912. After a few seconds, C-2912 eyes flickered open.

“Do you know where you are?”

C-2912 looked around, dumbfounded. “No.”

“Do you know who you are?”

C-2912 examined themselves. “No.”

“Perfect! Your code name is C-2912. You are employed at the General Station as a guard of the sacred artifacts and archives. You know nothing of this room. Get up and resume your position.”

C-2912 got up effortlessly, took a pause to recalibrate, then walked out of the room.

“Good. Now, about that human…”