MACHINE

14. A Map of Where and When I'll Die

The next morning, after Kane ran off, we were greeted in the early hours of the morning by a weak knock on the door. Ezra woke up suddenly, poised like a startled animal. He carefully picked up a gun next to his bed and walked quickly but silently towards the door, opening it slowly. The shape of a person flopped into the warehouse as soon as the knob of the door was turned. Laying on his face, still as a wax statue, was a young woman with a mass of blonde curly hair.

One of her legs was shot through, she had a large bleeding gash on the back of her head, and her body was covered in baton bruises. She held a paper package in her hand.

I approached the stiff figure and knelt beside her, turning her over. The front half of her body was similarly bruised to the back. Her large green eyes were wide open, like a doll's. I checked her wrist, and discovered (without surprise on my part) that she had no pulse. "She's dead." I said to Ezra.She must've died seconds after reaching our door, likely from blood loss.

The others came down the stairs to see what had happened. Ezra found a small pin on her cardigan that marked her as part of the rebellion and held it up for the others to see.

"She must be from another division." Said Ezra. "Another city."

Jed nodded. "Whatever she brought us must be too valuable to entrust to radio or internet communications."

I gently slipped the package away from under her stiff fingers and ripped it open. I turned the package over into my palm and shook it. A tiny red computer chip, about a centimetre long in both height and width, fell into my palm.

"A computer chip." I murmured, turning it over softly in my hand.

Rada gasped. "This must be the info we requested about the lab!"

Rada took the chip out of my hands. "We can download this into your mainframe!" She said. "This is perfect!"

I nodded softly, then sat on a chair while Rada stood behind me, popping open the metal casing on the back of my head, removing a memory chip, and replacing it with the new chip.

A sharp pain came from the spot where Rada inserted the chip, and when the throbbing began to fade what felt like a dim memory slowly appeared in my mind's eye.

"I see it." I said amazedly. "The blueprints."

"Yes!" Said Rada excitedly.

"When do we leave?" I asked. I had the image of the blueprints floating in my head, and along with it, a message. "YY28 in the lab". That was Lucas' product number.

"Hold your horses." Ezra said, resting his hand on my shoulder, which I shrugged off. "We need to make some preparations. We'll leave in a couple of days."

I nodded tensely, then returned to my usual spot on the couch. There was a window in front of it, and I liked to sit and stare at the moon, and imagine all the places the moonlight reached beyond and above me.

I stewed in anticipation, sitting there and wishing the minutes and hours until I could see Lucas again would rush past faster than normal.

He was the only thing left in the world for me. The people around me, although it didn't seem like it to them, had so much. They had their bodies, their lives, eachother. All I had was Lucas.

Recently I started to think more and more about the nature of consciousness and life. I began to think that I wasn't really me, and that Lucas wasn't really Lucas. Is what makes up a human their memories, their thoughts, their personality? Or is it their flesh? Am I just a robot installed with all of my real self's memories, acting like him because I think I am him? What if the real me is still alive and I'm just a copy of him?

These thoughts lead to nothing except a feeling of emptiness and fear. Fear that I was already dead, and that my memories were living on in a shell of myself.

The stars and moon shone dimly beyond my window and I desperately wanted to escape to some far off land. A world I had only read about, a world where freedom and self autonomy was a human right.