The Disparate One

Chapter 16

The room was spacious and organized. It was softly lit by the blinded windows on one side of the bedroom, like the others. On the opposite side of the windows were pictures. Upon taking a closer look, each one was a picture from different places around the world. Some were portraits of strangers. The rest were nature, food, and etcetera. Though, only one had a picture of a hospital. All had the same white wooden frame, contrasting the black wall.

Ray stepped away for a few when he began to notice how these pictures were organized. They were grouped, shaped like a circle. Near them were maps. He found a globe on the robot's desk, half of it was facing the sunlight. Next to it was a pot of plant with a white flower standing still. It almost looked fake until he touched it.

Ray turned to the robot whose body slouched next to the headboard. There were sounds of clinking, it came from the robot who, Ray just discovered, was playing with a pair of marbles.

"I fancy how you decorate your room," Ray broke the silence.

The clinking stopped. The robot straightened his posture then looked at the teen over his shoulder.

"Hmm..." the machine uttered.

Ray swallowed. The robot wasn't Oxford. He couldn't just say to himself that he'll be alright as usual. Remembering his recent interaction with Oxford in the living room, he could tell even Oxford himself had no idea. Ray remained standing, doing another glance, until his eyes halted at the pictures again.

"Did you take those?"

"I wish..." said the robot, shaking his head noiselessly. There was a pause of silence.

"Listen... " Ray suddenly sat on the edge of the bed with a safe distance, "I assume something is bothering you recently? Did I break a rule? Perhaps I said something wrong?"

The robot secretly let out a tiny smile when he began to hear the level of concern from the other's voice. He shook his head No as his answer but it barely did anything to change the atmosphere.

Ray decided to take a different approach.

"What did you mean by 'I wish'?"

The robot looked over his shoulder before finally standing up. He walked by his desk where he placed the marbles onto a small bowl before stopping at the wall of pictures. The slim shadows of his ears cast over at one particular portrait at his head-level. It had a family in it.

Ray raised himself and joined the robot, standing close in silence. He tucked his hands into his pockets when something dawned on him which he didn't notice earlier. These weren't pictures taken by a photographer, each one had a trace of being ripped on their edges just before the frame. Immediately, his eyes frowned, and stepped closer to the robot.

Ray's mind put the pieces of the puzzle together when the robot's voice whispered "Oxford doesn't want them to know about us." Then he gazed back at the frames.

"You... haven't seen the outside world, have you?" Ray asked quietly despite hearing those foreign female voices again from the walls.

"Oh believe me I have!" the robot answered enthusiastically, "But..." he looked away, "I regretted it after."

Ray peered when the robot returned to his spot in the bed, this time without the marbles. He looked at the shaded windows, hearing the muffled honks of the flowing traffic below. He had forgotten when was the last time these windows had no curtains on. With that said, he began telling a story of that one time when he escaped the penthouse.

He was alone at the time, on the living room floor, staring at the windows where the rain knocked and thunder boomed through the grey sky. He slid his fingers together with the droplets cascading down the glass pane when he had a daring idea. After years of reading other people's works and watching strangers on the square tv, he finally had the sudden courage to do the one thing that he had been waiting to do for nearly a decade.