Sunshine. The wind in the trees. The smell of the sea. Those were her most precious things about life. And yet every day she swears they are real. Or maybe at one point.
Bot she really prays it is so...
Looking at a black ceiling did not help calm her daydreams. Sometimes the thought that her daydreams might be real hurt more than the ceiling that sealed the city in.
Is it even possible to miss something that she never experienced? What was that word called again?
"Hiaeth? Or was it Fernweh? I can't remember."
She looked up, righting herself onto her side to see her friend positioned just across from her head. A blue-faced robot with a look of puzzlement on his screen looked back at her from his position on his mattress.
"Since when did you become a dictionary?" she drilled him
"Since we went to the library and read the whole dictionary. It might as well be considered downloaded." a smirk animated on his face. Swanito loved being a know-it-all
Helping herself up onto her own mattress she stretched her own robotic limbs. Time for her teasing. "You just love one-uping me, don't you? Feeling bad about daydreaming on the rooftops all day so you decided to do something about it?"
"Might as well tease you when you are the one joining me. What are you daydreaming about anyway? Outside?"
She shrugged her shoulders in defeat "Outside."
He looked puzzled "Do you want to be an outsider?"
Her face blushed red as it always does when that thought was mentioned. She looked away as if trying to admire the dull concrete apartments "N... no I am way too timid for Clementine's gang. What can I do? Grow a garden for them?"
Swanito sat up to face her "Hey, don't be like that. You are a wealth of value. Yeah, you have your flaws but your compassion and heart are just like them."
"With talk like that why don't you join them?" she asked.
He paused a moment "let's just say that I don't want to be an "outsider".
Her eyebrow went up a couple of pixels "you don't want to be seen as another weirdo?"
He didn't reply, he only looked away. Beryl could almost feel the sweat marks on his face. "And to think you encouraged me" she wined "wouldn't being a weirdo be nothing compared to finding a way outside? Isn't there more to life than just turning on one day and living the same life day in and day out?"
"Hey we have good days here, we just celebrated Jacobs's new bar last week."
"I get you, but if you haven't noticed we are not getting any younger. We barely have spare parts for everyone here, some robots are opting to choose just to sit for the majority of the rest of their lives. Not to mention, it does not sound like we will get a chance to get a shipment of child frames for expecting parents anytime soon."
"Beryl, I am sorry I didn't mean to..."
Before Swanito could answer the two were interrupted.
"Beryl! That doesn't sound like chores."
The two robots froze, and embarrassment set in. Timidly, but most importantly carefully, they leaned to look over the edge of the roof and three figures squeezed into narrow streets below. There stood the slum's most prominent bots of the seekers of wisdom. The Guardian of the slums, a master of tai chi and steadiness, Zbalizar, master of meditation and thoughtfulness...
And her husband...
"Hi honey..."
"Hi Pastor Whitney!" Swanito greeted, shame nowhere to be seen.
YOU ARE READING
Automatic Heritage
FanfictionBeryl's daydreams tend to nag at her nowadays. As a resident of the slums of a sealed city, she seems to be one of the few who thinks it is worth thinking about the outside. But why, why does this thought seem so ingrained in her code when a majorit...
