More Than a Machine

Olium

this one is LONNNG borin sorry /////////////////////

  Theo was not running the home completely on his own. He also had a wife named Barb.

  Barb was just as welcoming as her husband, and she had no trouble putting 642 to work. She gave him jobs to do here and there. Little things that would keep him busy, and things that were easy enough to do despite the young man only having one arm.

  Besides 642, the home currently had three other patients: an elderly man with a lung condition named Gerald, a teenage boy named Hunter with some anger issues and no small amount of trauma, and a middle-aged man named Dean with both a drinking problem and broken leg. This home took in all sorts of troubled people.

  A total of six days had passed by since 642's arrival. 642 wasn't exactly loving it, but he wasn't hating it either. The property was beautiful and Theo and Barb were good people, and this place was more pleasant than the hospital.

  Still, 642 could feel himself slipping into a deeper and deeper state of gloom. He was unable to get around much without help, and being confined to his wheelchair was something he still wasn't willing to accept. He saw no hope for the future if it was only going to continue on like this.

  Barb put him to work setting the table for dinner every night. 642 had never set a table before, but he learned and adapted to the task quickly, and felt proud of himself for learning a normal, everyday human thing. He liked to think that it was making him more human, too, despite only being half of one.

  On the sixth night at dinner, Hunter, who was nice enough when something wasn't angering him, brought up 642's crash in the lake.

  "Do you remember any of it?" He asked. "It was the loudest noise I've ever heard. What kind of plane was it?"

  642 thought back for a moment. "It was a military vessel. Like, not quite battleship sized but bigger than a cruiser. I don't even know what the model was."

  The more he thought about it, the more the whole event felt so far away. Even his life in the Facility felt like a distant memory. In reality it had only been a few months. But now... now it was like a different lifetime.

  642 had done so much since then. He'd lost so much, too. Every day he was reminded, not by anyone around him but merely by himself, about how much he couldn't do. He still wasn't ready to accept the fact that he'd lost an arm, an eye, and a leg all at once. It just wasn't fair.

  "..I have no idea what a 'cruiser' is," Hunter muttered, and he poked at the mashed potatoes on his plate.

  "Military, eh?" The elderly man, Gerald, eyed 642 with new interest. Gerald hadn't spoken to 642 at all in the past six days. He'd ignored all of 642's attempts at conversation. "So you're military."

  "I was," 642 gave a small nod. "Maybe I still am. I don't know."

  He'd like to say he was done with fighting. But he was built for it, and sometimes he felt like he still needed to be fighting for something. To fulfill his purpose. He didn't like it. In addition, he had a constant reminder in the form of the tattoo on the back of his neck. It would always be there, branding him as 6-4-2, The Clone.

  "I was in the army when I was around your age," Gerald mused. "Did my time and then went home and took over my dad's furniture business. Never liked the army."

  "Neither did I," 642 said with a sigh.

  "I wouldn't either," Dean, who'd been quiet during the meal until now, decided to comment. "Especially if I came out of it looking like you do."