Shackled.

Day 5,478 Introduction - Today, I commemorate my fifteenth year in this 'home' which I soon started to see as a mere prison cell. At the same time, I recognize this as the very year I accept that I am not really human.

Maybe I was, but I never entertained the idea. Until such time I've come to finally convince myself that these connections I've been feeling with my emotions, hazy memories and experiences are simply signs as to how compelling our creator is. That the idea of conditioning myself into believing that I can never grasp the things within my arms' reach will constantly bring me contentment.

The idea of continuously questioning what I already know somehow helps me put more pieces back together. And so I let ignorance consume me...

What I see, what I hear, and what I feel... will never feel like me.

I'm slowly running out of spaces to write these small ticks of lines, one line per year - and ironic enough, the act of scraping glass shards against the concrete walls isn't tiring nor depressing in any way as it rather helps me feel the remaining 'human' inside of me. I am so in-denial. Is this how my mind is supposed to think and act?

And so I act in pursuit of discerning the truth within me, our kind, and the truth beyond these walls.

The white paint covering these walls that enclose us are starting to flake like old paint, and them chipping it off is just doing more harm than good as they invite worse heat convection regardless of the giant, circular air-conditioner, labeled T53D, hanging up above the thirty feet tall ceiling.

Fifteen years, and I still haven't ceased to introduce myself in hopes of being recognized and identified in case something terrible happens and none of my other five thousand journal entries makes it out alive and decipherable. Name is A99, short for Alpha-99, or so at least that was the codename assigned for me as far as I can remember. Despite the assigned identities, everyone bears an X engraved on different parts of our bodies - my pre-registered memory states how it stands for Xecians.
I live with others of the same kind, yet the only difference is that I am made to be better. Whoever made us are rather fools. Each project only gets smarter and stronger, and I happen to be the latest creation. Whether they are a group or we are only dealing with a single creator, the intelligence provided to me was enough to lead a resistance in this cage: we bow to no master.

We will break out.

The whirring of his gears stopped with a click like a vintage cassette tape as the recording ended. A small, metal panel opened from where the muscle called auricularis anterior was supposed to be located in a normal human body. The small machinery retracted back to that portion right beside his right ear, aligned to the levels of the eyes, before sliding back close perfectly (that anyone can hardly notice any trace of that certain hidden feature from his skin-like covering).

"Your eyes were glowing even brighter than before," a taller male addressed as A98 approached the ruminating Alpha as he rotated his left shoulder, his gear joints clicking. "Gotten yourself worked up again on your own entries?"

A98, scanning him from head to toe, his system did a quick analysis on who he was facing. His shorter memory capacity and inability to optimize his vision in a molecular and supramolecular scale are the only things which make him less better than me.

And... looks, heh, cracking a soft smile, A99 heaved a deep sigh and unconsciously softened his gaze as he appreciated the concern of his comrade, "Perhaps."

"Still not talking as much as your mind is speaking?" a short female, about 5 foot tall with an A84 chiseled on her silver thorax, called out from the distance. She's known to have the skill of hearing high and low frequency waves unmatched by anyone, if not all other existing organisms, in the room. "If that's the case, you can't expect the older Xecians to listen in the long run - given their incapacities to comprehend and decode data as well."