Dreams of Mechanical Butterflies

Malls weren’t designed with escapee-androids in mind.

           At least, this one wasn’t. There’s a metal-detector blocking every exit, and the exits are all being watched by guards with grim expressions that don’t quite match the cheerful, holiday songs echoing through the mall.

I duck into a random store and pretend to be interested in their array of holiday-themed soaps. The sharp, spicy scent of gingerbread is overpowering. Glancing over my shoulder, I watch as two technicians from the lab rush past the store without even looking inside. I recognize both of them. My fingers clench tightly around a bar of emerald-green soap sprinkled with fake, crimson cranberries.

“Did you need help finding anything, sir?”

The saleswoman materialized out of thin-air, wearing a garish, red-striped-white sweater and a lopsided Santa hat.

I blink.

“Looking for a gift for someone?” she asks, electric-green eyes glittering with amusement. “Don’t worry, you’re not the first person to come in today looking a little lost.”

“Oh no,” I say quickly, shaking my head. “I’m not… I don’t need any help. Thank you.”

“Of course! Just let me know if you change your mind,” she sings, cheerfully. “My name’s Holly.”

I wonder if that’s some holiday-themed humor or if Holly’s her real name. Maybe the store asks their employees to go by seasonal names around this time of year. There’s no way for me to know; I’ve never been in a store before.

“Nice to meet you, Holly,” I say, glancing towards the doorway. The technicians have yet to reappear. “I’m, uh…”

I don’t have a name; they never gave me one. How do I introduce myself? My eyes flicker over to a nearby display and search the bubble-bath labels for a name.

“Sage,” I say. “My name’s Sage.”

“Nice to meet you, Sage! Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“I will. Thanks.”

           As soon as she’s gone, I toss the bar of soap back onto the counter and leave; my hands are now covered in pastel-green powder, and I grimace, trying to wipe the residue off on my pants. There has to be a way out of here that doesn’t involve a metal-detector. I scan the map of the mall, in my mind, finding a fire-escape on the far side of the food-court. That’s one of the most crowded places in the mall. How can I make it through without being seen?

Another store catches my eye.

           There are a lot of people in here, but none from the lab. Groups of humans, young and old, sorting through racks of clothes. There’s more music in here, but it’s mostly drowned out by bell-like laughter and loud chattering. I look for something to wear that’s not the bleak, hospital-white outfit from the lab. I decide on a pair of black jeans, a light-gray sweater, and a scarf, purple and interwoven with shining, silver threads. The scarf is soft, like cool water, against my skin. I cover my bare feet with a pair of comfy, black sneakers.

My old clothes go into a nearby trash can.

“Hello,” I say quietly, approaching the register. “I’d like to, uh… wear these out. If that’s okay?”

“That’s fine,” the man says, nodding. He doesn’t look up from his phone to meet my eyes until the last possible second. “Let me ring you up.”

While he’s scanning the tag on my sleeve, my eyes drift over to a long, black coat. It looks warm and comfortable, like the blankets they kept in the lab’s medical-wing probably were.

“This too.”

He raises his eyebrows, but nods. He scans the coat and asks me how I want to pay; his tone is bored, I decide, after I’ve compared it to millions of sound-recordings in my head. I pull some bills out of the wallet I swiped from one of the techs.

“Keep the change,” I say quickly. “Happy holidays.”

Slipping the long coat on, I head for the food court.

           Time to make my escape. If I can manage to wind my way through this sea of plastic tables and spindly chairs with metal legs without being caught, I am free. More or less. I recognize some of the scents around me. Cinnamon, because of the day some of the techs brought cinnamon-buns, glazed with frosting, into the office. I recognize the bitter scent of coffee for similar reasons.

           Most people don’t look up as I slip across the court. Their eyes are glued to one of the countless screens suspended above them, on which they’re watching sports or the news or never-ending sequences of ads.

When I see my face on one of the screens, my mouth falls open.

“Oh no…” I breathe.

Could I make it, if I ran, to the fire-escape? I’m only about a fourth of the way across the food court, and there are screens everywhere with my photo plastered to them. Splashed across the monitors, like paint on a blank canvas. They have my name listed as “Sage”, like I told the woman back at the store with the colorful soaps. They have my age listed as twenty, which I guess suits my appearance well enough.

I need a new hiding spot.

There’s a storage room in the bookstore, at the very back, that hardly anyone ever goes into. I know it’s rarely-used because I can see how many times employees swipe into the room per day; this information is not readily available to the public, so I got it through somewhat questionable methods.

           This is where I’m hiding now, after hacking the swipe card system to get inside. Silently, I shift piles of heavy books, moving them around so that they conceal me from sight. Whenever one of the piles teeters a little, threatens to topple over, I feel like my artificial-heart will beat out through my chest.

“Hey, Brad!” someone shouts, and I shut my eyes tight. “Go check the backroom. They’re putting the whole mall on lockdown till closing, looking for some thief.”

I hope that Brad isn’t the most thorough of employees. As quietly as I can, I drape my coat over myself, hoping to resemble a pile of books covered in a blanket. A human-shaped pile of books, covered in a blanket for no apparent reason.

Great plan.

The sound of Brad’s footsteps makes me inhale sharply, and I reach up to cover my mouth before remembering that I don’t have to breathe. Brad opens the door, talking on the phone; I detect the device as he approaches.

“So, here I am at work, minding my own business,” he’s narrating. “I mean, I work in the bookstore, so it’s usually pretty quiet in here. Then, I find out they’ve locked the whole mall down to look for some thief? Now, my boss is having me check the backroom, just to see if the dude’s in here-”

I can hear him moving about the room, doing a perfunctory, little search as he goes. It sounds like he’s just picking up the odd book every few seconds, as though he expects the “thief” to spring out from underneath one of them.

“I mean, who the hell would hide in the bookstore?” he laughs, and then I hear the tumbling sound of books falling over. “Uh oh, not good…”

“Brad!” someone yells from the front of the store. “Find anything?”

“Nope! Dude’s not here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah!” Brad shouts, then lowers his voice to continue speaking into his phone. “Alright, guys, I gotta go. See you later.”

He pulls the door shut behind him as he goes; the sound of the door slamming, heavy and clanging and final, is comforting.

Until I remember that I’m stuck in this locked-room till the mall’s closing, that the people from the lab are still looking for me, and that someone might double-check this room at some point. I am trapped here, like a spider under a water-glass.

I pull my legs up to hug them to my chest, sighing into my boneless kneecaps.

It’s dark in this room, but my night-vision setting is enabled. I read about six books in the span of two hours before I realize that I could try and trick the people following me into thinking I’ve left the mall.

           First, I send an anonymous tip stating that I saw the "thief" at a nearby train-station. Then, I use one of the tech’s credit card information, obtained through some more questionable methods, to purchase a ticket for a trip to a neighboring city.

I’m well-aware now that I’ve broken a few laws during my escape. Still, if your password is “PASSWORD”, it's hard to feel bad for you.

Anyway, according to the ticket I bought using the guy’s card, the "thief" would have departed the station around 5:20 PM; it is now 5:45 PM, and they’re probably searching the station.

I consider making a fake social media account to let people know of a sighting of the thief from someone allegedly on the train, but I decide against it. Less is more.

Every time I hear footsteps, I shudder.

I won’t go back to the lab.

By the time it’s safe to leave the room, it’s three in the morning.

           I’ve disabled all the cameras in the mall, showing the night-guards recycled footage with altered timestamps to keep them from being suspicious. Then, I slip out of the storage-room; the bookstore is completely dark around me, cloaked in hazy, violet shadows, and eerily quiet.

I head for the food court.

           The mall itself is locked, so most of the stores’ doors are still open. I walk past a candy-store and remember when one of the techs brought a white, paper bag of homemade candies to work once; she shared them with the other employees at the lab. Obviously, no one offered me one: I’m an android that can eat without malfunctioning but does not need to.

I’ve never tasted candy before.

I fill my very own bag with candies: technicolor jelly-candies in the shapes of animals and insects; saltwater-taffy of varying pastel, Easter-egg colors; and round, chocolate truffles. Then I slip a bill into the cash-register and duck out of the store.

I find myself lingering in the mall. There’s no immediate threat of danger, of being found, so I wander from store to store in search of things to take. I won’t take enough to raise suspicions. Just enough, and I'll slip money into the cash registers as I go. I move into a music-store and slip a silver harmonica into one of the large pockets of my coat. I emerge from a department store with a new pair of heart-shaped, gold-rimmed sunglasses with black lenses. And, somehow, I end up leaving a toy-store with a teddy-bear; he has dark, brown fur and friendly, amber eyes, and I name him Sebastian.

I make myself an ice-cream cone in the food court, using all the different flavors and piling the ice-cream on until the cone feels heavy in my hand. Cotton-candy is my favorite. I jump over the counter at the cinema, grab a red-striped-white, cardboard container, and fill it with fluffy popcorn that smells like butter.

Finally, I climb the fire-escape and emerge on the mall’s roof.

           From up here, I can see the entire city. All the pretty lights glitter against the blue, velvet night, like fireflies caught in spiderweb-mesh. For a few minutes, Sebastian and I sit on the roof in companionable silence, watching the view. My legs swing back and forth from where they’re draped over the edge of the building. I munch on popcorn and read the book of poems I smuggled out of the mall.

I should get going.

I climb down from the ledge, then slip down the fire-escape and into the city. Wander down cobblestone-streets glowing with neon pink and blue signs that read “Exit” and “No Vacancy” and “24/7 Diner”. I can walk over forty-eight hours without malfunctioning, so I will walk all through the night. When morning comes, I will be out of the city. Far away from it.

When I feel coolness on my face, like the lightest brush of fingertips, I look up.

I’ve never seen the snow before.