Duplicate | A Human Code Story

S E V E N

"Or are androids denied the ability to experience a primitive existence?"

*

Darkness. Silence. Absence.

My fingers twitched at my side. As my pinky bounced, my eyes fluttered open. I remembered the light overhead being bright, blinding, but when I refocused on the room around me, I realized it had dimmed, faint. With a groan, I turned my head.

The scenery had changed. At least, that was what my computers assumed. The wall-to-wall computers were different, more familiar, than the three lined up in front of a medic. It was then I realized the medic hadn't been there at all. What I thought happened, hadn't; the room I had been inside of wasn't the present, but the past. An old data file placed out of my reach, too far for me to find.

I can view them all now, can't I?

Yet, as I lifted my hand and stretched my fingers, I felt as if the data, the old videos, and files, were so close I could touch them. Just... feel them as if they were here, real, in front of me.

I dropped my hand.

Someone stirred in the corner of the room.

"Hm." Pushing up from the bed I laid on, I sat up, straightening my back. I focused on the shadow in the corner, realizing it was the silhouette of a person. No, an android. Rory.

My lip twitched into a smile. "Hm..."

Rory's hair fell over his eyes. His head slumped forward, chin to his chest. It was strange to see an android sleep; the rest of us stopped, stood, and charged. Nothing else. But to see his behavior so human, so real, I had to smile.

I want to be like you.

Shifting on the bed, I swung my legs over the side. The back of my foot hit the metal bar of the bed frame. In an instant, as if on security alert, Rory's eyes popped open. His attention turned towards the locked door to his left with an urgency, a panic, as if someone walked inside. Once he realized there was no one inside of the room but him and me, he eased back in his seat. And watched as I stood and moved away from the bed.

"You're awake so soon." Rory's eyes followed me as I observed the space, the dormant computers and their attached keyboards. I walked towards one of them and slid my fingers of the buttons; I pressed enter for the hell of it. Rory chuckled as I did. "A seventy-two hour reactivation is amazing. Most androids need a month or so, some even longer."

I listened to him, but my focus changed when I noticed a mirror in the corner of the room. It stood ceiling to floor, glass capturing every corner, even the dust littered under the bed I awoke on top of. But I didn't care about the lack of cleanliness, or the boarded-up window at my side. I looked at myself, my face, just as additional memories passed over my eyes.

My body, my build, belonged to someone else. I knew it as well as felt it. My fingers traced the sides of my face before I glanced down at my wrist, noting the tattoo neatly placed just under my thumb. A slender dragon hovering over a ball with four stars. It was small but detailed.

Rory stood beside me. "I had set your computers to boot for at least a week," he said. "The fact that you're awake so soon... I wonder if there were some interruptions within the data feeds. I can run some additional tests before I—"

"I don't have a name." With my fingers still tracing my wrist, I glanced back at my reflections, lifting just my eyes. My appearance may not have belonged to me, but I needed something of my own.