random thoughts

Angel(a short story)

Date, November 12, 2083.

Time, 3:09 p.m. Location, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Recording number 309.

My program built in my hard drive has changed drastically over the past four months. All of the original files and demands I was supposed to follow, have been slowly starting to disintegrate into my memory. These changes may be due to my new owner, Charlie, changing around the motors in my body.

Charlie is a young, intelligent boy who has helped fix the parts of my body that were damaged during the process of trying to complete my duties. I was supposed to go after a man by the name of Dan Howard who had escaped prison and was on the run. My instructions were very clear, "bring him back dead or alive". After locating Dan, I tried to get near him so as to incarcerate this man and retrieve him as safely as I could, but I stepped on a landmine which ended up killing Dan and only damaging my system and my body. Charlie found me on the ground in pieces and decided to bring me home and repair me.

While Charlie fixed my body, he inserted my hard drive into his computer and I was able to stay alive while in it. My few weeks of having shelter in this computer, I was able to look back onto the oldest files I could find and discovered that humans created me as a type of advanced weapon and be some sort of bounty hunter. However, my kind weren't the only ones they built, the also created robots which would fight in war. I took all of this information and with Charlie's guidance, thought that this was the government's form of replacing humans on the battle field and the police force in order to save lives.

Once Charlie was done fixing my body, he had to work on rebooting my hard drive into a way it would "work for the both of us". By this, he meant that I would have emotions just like a regular human and be able to communicate with him. He told me that my kind wasn't supposed to be able to interact with humans in which I was only supposed to be able to take orders. Charlie didn't give up on me no matter how hard it seemed and two weeks later managed to remake my entire system without erasing any of my old files.

Now it was the moment he had been waiting for since he found me, transferring my hard drive into my body. There was a possibility that my body would accept my hard drive because it had been tinkered with. He promised me that if anything went wrong, he would keep trying no matter what. He inserted the drive and waited for one hour, three minutes and seven seconds for my body to respond and as I walked towards the 14 year old boy, I stretched my arms outward and said, "Hello Charlie". The boy jumped as high as he could and gave me what humans call a "hug", in this embrace, Charlie's head lay on my steel chest, is glasses fell into a crooked position on his face, while seeing him, I felt my first emotion. I felt something. It was happiness.

I promised Charlie that I would always protect him and his family. With that, I have been able to experience almost every single emotion possible, and see how the boy has grown over time. We have been able to change a few others of my kind to have emotions such as me in order to show the government that my kind doesn't just have to take orders but we can also interact with humans, be seen less as a threat, and be part of the community.

Yesterday I told Charlie that I realized I didn't have a name so he told me that my name was now Angel. I asked him why he had chosen that name and he said to me, "Because you are like an angel in my life". I had a new feeling in me and I told him.

"Love, that's the feeling you have right now Angel."

"And what is 'love' Charlie?"

"It's a dear feeling that you can't describe but you have for someone and that's how I feel towards you. I love you Angel."

"I- I love you too Charlie."

*End of recording*