Sitting on the long leather sofa bed, staring at the ceiling. Bare wooden beams. A cobweb trembled as a breeze from the window swept through it. This place was dusty, and smelled of weird hippie incense. Ugh. Didn’t want to be here, but a court order is an order I guess. One session. Two hours. That’s all I had to get through. Wish they’d just let slit my damn throat. Wasn’t the first time. Won’t be the last.
“You can talk or not, but talking makes the time go faster.”
Turning my head to face the coiffed psychiatrist, I wrinkled my nose and snarled as sunlight hit me right in the face.
“Fuck! Don’t you have curtains or something?”
She laughed. “Sunlight helps. Produces Vitamin D, which will help your depression.”
“It sure doesn’t fucking feel like it.” Sitting up a bit, I combed tense fingers through my tangled curls. She was right though, talking might be more interesting than staring at the damn awful décor in here. Why did everything have to be maple wood and white plastic? Staring back up at the beams, breathing in deeply. We were going to get all deep and meaningful in here, but I could avoid getting punched in the face by the sun.
“So, Kharl. I want to know why you tried to kill yourself.” Out came a slim, silver tablet computer from her ribcage. “I’m recording this session as dictated by law.” Sun shone through her blond hair as she bent over toward me, placing a small pebble shaped microphone on the table next to my head. She glanced at me, her eyes were cold as glass. The red light flickered on inside her iris as she started the video feed. Live streamed too? Probably to the court officers. Were any human psych officers left? Doubtful. Why pay a human when you could make a droid do it for free, right? It’s not like people enjoy their jobs. Not many people had a reason to work any more. With the advent of cell printing, hunger and poverty were a thing of the past. We could be comfortable in our misery. A comfortable cocoon of technology, wrapped around us like a smothering blanket. You never have to want for anything again, as long as you let the Core look after you, watching your every move. Like an all-seeing eye in the sky.
“You want to know why, do you now? What do you care, you’re a pile of metal.” I glared at the android, who just sat there smiling like a dopey doll. I’ve had better conversations with dogs.
“We care about your well being, Kharl.” She replied in a cool, calm voice. The kind you use to calm a crying child. She tilted her tech-skinned head at me, blinking. The AI in these things was getting so human. Creepy though. People just let these machines walk around like people, and treated them like children. Droids could pop your head off with a quick twist, I’d seen it happen. Terrifying arms with the power of a wild beast. But you’re not in danger, no. Or that’s what they told the Twelve, anyway. Any rogue element is simply a malfunction. Or even the work of terrorists. That was me, by the way. I’m an enemy of the state. Or soon will be. I smirked at the psych-bot.
“Fine.” If I was being forced to be here, I’d tell them what they wanted to hear. After that, they’d have to turn me loose. As much as I wanted to glare right through the droid, I continued my ceiling watching. No point in showing that much expression to her head cam, anyway. Just another bit of information for the Core to file away about me.
“I’m depressed, like you said.”
“What is it that depresses you about your life, Kharl? We want for nothing, thanks to Sky Corporation.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, trying to think of a believable excuse. Mental illness was for the most part, eradicated in the population, but only in third gen. I was second gen and still a ‘flawed’ human. Meaning I wasn’t genetically screened before birth. I had scars, I got ill. Science hadn’t got that far yet. I was born to parents alive before the Collapse. The droid made a minute twitch; orders being received. Instructions might be a better word. Someone was yanking the puppet strings. Kharl, too dangerous to talk to mere humans. The ever recording eyes focused on me again.
