Fickle

prologue

A smile creeps onto my face slowly as I look at the scene before me. On the floor is a giant lump of the once living man. His pale white face stained with horror. His mouth is hung open as if he was begging to be spared. Why should he be spared? He did something horrible. But he will soon be gone. He will soon be forgotten. Even by myself. I will remember his face perhaps, but I will cease to care.

His perfectly white lab coat is red and he sleeps eternally in a pool of his own blood. I cannot help but laugh as I look around at the rest of the bodies around me, all adults, all scientist. I laugh as the flames rise, and laboratory crumbles around me. My sibling are all gone. These wretched people killed them. But now, they cannot kill anyone else. This place will imprison no one! This place will be forgotten. No one else will have to suffer.

I stop smiling when I notice I am leaking. I feel my cheeks and I can feel water. Am I crying? Am I sad? I am feeling emotions. I am alive. I am not some simple machine. I am alive. I may not function like normal life but I am alive. I look human, I act human, and while I may not be human, I am alive! The smile and the laughter come back quickly. I smile and I laugh for a long time. I do not keep track. I do not care. I am alive! I can feel what other feel. That is all that matters.

I glance down at the pitiful man on the ground. "I am alive! That is true no matter what you say."

The flames make crackling noises as if laughing with me. Laughing at these people who reaped what they had sown. The fire eats at the air as it destroys this research facility and all is data. I will not ever get my siblings back, but at least no more will be created just just to be used and killed and called lifeless. It is not my programming that tells me I am alive. It is my life, my birth, and my emotions that tell me I am alive. I don't care what others may say or what they have said. What has been done here by these people was horrendous, and I am without a doubt alive.

I start running with a grin across my face, my hair in the wind, and my thoughts flying across the sky. I need a name! I can't use the one they gave me. My own name. A unique name, that shows I am alive. A name that will tell people I am alive, and not some lifeless machine.

I shout to the sky without looking back at my previous prison behind me, which is now full of death. "I am Fickle. I am alive!"