I AM NOT A ROBOT

Twenty Four or 'American Beauty'

My entire mind stops at my metal hand and ends at my metal hand. It didn't hurt because it was metal. I could vault in and out of windows and take down bots and fire a gun because my hand didn't hurt.

   I find myself almost wanting it to have hurt, and maybe when I stop wanting to  scream, I'll figure out that it was just a mental episode of hallucination. And my hand is as warm and breakable and fleshy and pink as anybody's.

   I think about the research I did at the library all that time ago. About robots that bleed, can feel pain. It was something to do with tiny mini-bots, acting as cells, that found homes inside the artificial skin. Like putting pressure-activated mini-bots in tofu.

   My throat starts to hurt from crying. I wonder if they've got mini-bots in my neck, too.

   How much of me is metal?

   My mind instantly goes to the kind of music, and I manage to stop crying. Ordinarily, I'd laugh. And I do. I must look like a lunatic.

   But my brain went to make a joke. Out of all the things, my brain went to make a joke. That's not robotic. I may not be human, but I have a helluva lot of humanity.

   I don't know how, but it's comforted the hell out me that I chose to make a joke about heavy metal music upon a question of if I'm a robot or a cyborg or something.

   "The girl's insane." That's Bella. She sounds wary.

   Maybe I am. I don't mind. I don't mind having a metal hand. Maybe I am insane. But I kind of like it if it means I stop wanting to have no hand at all.

   I hadn't noticed Eli hugging me, but I suddenly do, and I realize that I'm on the ground. He's on the ground, too, kneeling and holding me. I must still be shaking, because he's holding me tight. Like if he lets go, so will I, in more ways than one.

   "I'm okay," I assure him, but my eyes are squeezed shut and I realize that I am actually quaking. My voice holds light that makes him freeze with a bewildering confusion. "I'm okay, really."

   Eli pushes me up so I'm sitting directly on the ground. The grass is a soft pillow beneath me. He puts both hands on the side of my head, and shakes, leaning an ear to it and pretending to listen.

   I laugh.

   "I don't hear a screw loose," Eli glances above my head, and I know it's towards Salt. He looks back down at me. "Now, as far as I know, metal doesn't crack. You know when you wake up from sleeping on a chair, and you stretch your neck, and it cracks, almost?"

   I can't remember.

   "Well, we're gonna try that now. First, with this arm," he's so calm and not shaking at all as he puts his hand out for my metal hand. He takes it in his like it's warm. And then twists it in such an unnatural way that goes all the way up to my shoulder. A loud clunk comes from it.

   I smile. Eli grins.

   Then it drops as he looks up above my head again. "You owe her an explanation, Sam. And you better start giving it quick or I'll force it out of you." He looks back down at me again, and his voice is back to its' normal calming. "If that's okay with you?" I nod. And it turns back. "So start speaking, ass-hat."

   I was human for around three minutes after I was born. Then they noticed my arm was...off. My mother died during the birth. They obviously wanted to make sure I wouldn't end up the same way. I lived without an arm from my elbow down for the first two years of my life. Then they could do some magic work on it. And metal-armed baby Aaran was created.