Number One Fan

Chapter 11: Servitude

"Cade! Hurry up and get in here!" The voice screeched from the nearby intercom panel on the wall. As usual, the pitch was scornful and demanding. 

To Cade, his master's vocal cords—when in operation—perfectly replicated that annoying noise styrofoam made when rubbed up against another piece of styrofoam, just horrible. Full of venom and hatred. He cringed every time she spoke. She didn't seem to have the ability to whisper. Or shut up.

"I'm coming, damn!" After he was sure the channel was closed, Cade conveyed to the little communicator that he was positive his Mother could no longer hear him. He grabbed his serving tray from the workbench in the garage and ran up the stairs. Everything had to be presented as if his Mother were a queen and he was the foolish jester or butler. It was humiliating. 

Their home was an old lighthouse that had been restored(kind of.) With a seamless, never-ending spiral staircase running up the side of the wall like one of those massive fancy palaces, but unlike a mansion, where things were designed and meticulously integrated in a way that meant elegance and class, the rooms in the tower were haphazardly placed at random intervals on the side walls as the stairs continued to ascend to the highest level, the eccentric floor plan only in existence because they needed another room, so they blew out a wall, and built one in whatever spot was open. The place was the farthest thing from being up to code. Leaky pipes, fluctuating power system causing blackouts left and right, barely any windows with a good view, and all of that was being held together by eroded bricks and wood that threatened to collapse at any moment if they were nudged the wrong way by even the slightest gust of wind.

Cade would be out of breath climbing these stairs if he had lungs.... and if he had any sense of self-worth, he would've jumped off the side of the tower years ago. Cade continued to stumble up the stairs. His motors didn't work so well anymore sometimes, so he struggled every now and then, finally entering the laboratory with the tray, cursing his mother silently for positioning herself on the highest story. But suppose that was only fitting for her, a room elevated as high as her ego, that fit the bill. She'd always claimed to be the 'best mechanic in the world.' Of course, that might very well be true, especially considering that this moon's population was a mere 2,000 souls. She just happened to be the only mechanic on it who completed her work with results that were mildly above subpar. Thereby making her(technically) the best mechanic in the world. Even if she couldn't find a way to color-match all of his body parts so that he didn't look like Frankenstein. 

 'Mother' was not a very pleasant fox to be around. Cade could remember the first day of his activation. Her bright white lab coat and elbow-length rubber gloves were burned into his memory, written into his programming. He saw them as talismans, equipped with ungodly powers she used to do her evil bidding—a true witch. That's the day his torture began.

 "Ah, finally! What took you so long, C-2?" The woman asked impatiently as Cade entered her workshop. She refused to look up from her microscope as she soldered a chipboard underneath it. 

Cade decided not to respond to that inquiry. He just set the tray on the desk, removed the lid to reveal what was under it, and stepped back. The fact that she chose not to grant him the simple privilege of eye contact—in an effort to continuously remind him that he was less than her—was exactly the type of disrespect Cade had come to get used to. He would not waste his power cell on her. 

"Hello? Is your auditory processor broken again?" The woman asked when Cade refused to answer to the name 'C-2.'

 "Cade... I told you my name is Cade."

"You have no name. You have a model number. Nothing more," Mother replied coldly. She continued soldering her wires as she grabbed the object of importance off the serving tray, "Now... let's see what the damage is, shall we?" She chuckled evilly as she lifted the result of Cade's findings from his day out in the market; she examined it, and within five seconds of looking at it, she'd determined that it was completely useless. "Wait—No, this won't do at all. This silicon processor is no good! I told you to get something with no impurities from the market!" Mother finally granted Cade the eye contact he was longing for by glaring at him. The processor was locked inside her fist as she shook it at her household robot.