Mechanical Pulse (DRAMAtical Murder)(ClearxOC)

Chapter 5

This place never changes.

No matter how long I wander these hallways, they remain the same. Unchanging. Just how androids are meant to be. Does this mean I am not an android at heart?

Do I even have a heart?

I feel pain, yet I am not damaged. This vexes me. My incessant wandering of the building has attracted attention. Twice my brethren have stopped me to inquire what I was doing. I cannot explain myself in a way they will understand. Master has tried as well.

I remain silent.

My thoughts go on. Traveling to different things entirely. I feel like my brain is out of my own control, yet that cannot be. I am the brain, the consciousness it holds. What is that identity? An android? A human? Or something else entirely?

Confusion.

My thinking gives me headaches. We're not supposed to have headaches, yet constantly they plague me. The preparations quiet my thoughts briefly, but do not stop them entirely.

The annual gathering approaches.

Every year, other androids meet with us. They stay for only a week, then are gone. Some return. Others don't. I don't know why they come. During this time, Master does not ask for us to see him. He's talking with the other humans.

The last gathering didn't end well. Two android began attacking others. In the process of putting them down, many others were lost. Purple Heart took enough damage to need an entirely new body. I was not present at the time, as I had been in the lab. During these gatherings, the human in charge of me will try different voices and weapons on me. He's told me it's difficult to find a voice that suits my personality, because I cannot express myself. As for my battle gear, he remains unhappy with it. He seems to have trouble matching the vision in his mind.

I'm not bothered by it. I don't particularly like fighting, but it's what we were made for. Before we came to this place, we fought every day. Now it feels like the silence is suffocating. I don't like it, but I don't want to fight either.

The thoughts never cease, do they?

It's times like these where I find myself standing on the roof just to see the stars. Whenever I become... indecisive, I begin to remember the past. The days where I wasn't as relaxed. I wouldn't say I'm.. happy. I've only been happy once, only laughed once. I used to have a sort of mock voice, kind of like a template of sorts. We went in battle against a factory full of berserk machinery, just the three of us that existed back then. We were greatly outnumbered, and those who sent us thought too highly of us. I only made it out of that place alive through sheer luck, having found a tank of gas in the basement and being able to wire a makeshift bomb. I brought the building down. Of course, my two companions were already dead by then. I stood there at the wreckage afterwards, laughing at the sheer volume of what had happened. I felt light. But not powerful. No, that feeling has never arisen in my artificial body.

I escaped with my life, and on top of it all, I never realized my companions had protected me well enough to the point where I hadn't a scratch. Dusty and mentally weary, covered in the 'blood' of the machines. It terrified the lab workers when I arrived back home. But I think it confused them even more when once I was clean, they saw my lack of battle evidence. The only proof was in the destruction and elimination of the factory and it's occupants, and in my own memory. Along with the bodies of my associates who were later recovered.

I've seen dozens of androids created only to crumble beneath opposition. My current family were created within the last year, months apart from one another. They've lasted this long only because we relocated. Our home country became fearful of us turning against them, and forced us out. And here we are, finally with a moment of peacekeeping. The patrols serve a single function: reassurance. To me, and to Master. To all who've seen that which they created destroyed without seeing their full potential.

I may have only lived for 7 years... But I have seen more, experienced more, than half the human population on Earth. I am old, without the limitations of an ailing body. My brain has existed for 28 years, and I for 7. My body, for 17. 10 of which I was simply being built.

"You're sad again, aren't you?"

If my purpose, my reason for being created, is to live out thousands of my kind in an unloving, dastardly world... Then I live a very life.

I..... (identity)
Do not.... (impossibility)
Fly....... (an escape, the release)
Here..... (existence)

I will never be able to escape this life, this path.