flash back,0217
Silicone skin traces its way over the rough, wooden exterior of the cabin. Her fingertips, along with the rest of her frame, are coated in an artificial barrier thick enough to eliminate the concern for splinters, which would pierce any other hand that grazes the unfinished structure. Slender legs parting the tall grasses, she treads along the perimeter of the modestly sized building, and finds a small, opaque window. Carefully glancing in, she determines that the cabin is unoccupied.
She hears a noise. Her head swivels, twisting her long sheaths of teal hair. Birds fly through a sky that is still dusky, a blue overcast that has not yet been pierced by the warmth of the sun. Expecting to see the silhouette of a man, she eases as her eyes confirm the uninhabited nature of the thicket enclosing her.
Looking back up, the color of the sky reminds her that if she was truly living, this would be the time her body would instinctively rouse her from her sleep. She would be alert, if only for a moment, before falling back into bed and waiting for the chirp of a cellphoneโs digital alarm clock. This is something that she can only imagine, as when she is not currently useful, her consciousness is controlled by a binary On/Off switch.
The birds that have not flown off remain nestled in the green canopy of treetops that surround the area, and they sing to each other. She possesses the widest vocal range of any creation on Earth. Her pitch can break glass, an attribute utilized tactically by military variations of her model. If she wished, she could perfectly mimic the birdsong. She could communicate with them as well as anyone could, but she wouldnโt truly understand the meaning of their calls.
Returning to her investigation, she turns the cabinโs round doorknob, not unlike one she could find in an ordinary home. Straight back from the door a large, wood burning stove sits. Dirty work jackets hang on the wall. Rows of shelves hold a considerable amount of books, as well as cans and jars of all sizes. She identifies oats and beans with their standard supermarket packaging, but stored in a similar manner, she sees an arrangement of chemicals known to be toxic, corrosive, and combustible. Itโs obvious that the collection of common household cleaners are not being used for their intended purposes around this dusty cabin that smells of smoke. There is a workbench directly to her left, holding more synthetic concoctions, as well as metal scraps, a variety of tools, and a smudged pair of glasses. Towards the corner of this makeshift desk is a typewriter, next to which she finds a neat stack of papers. Pulling back the workstation's chair, she sits, and reads,
โ. . . a large number of genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an engineered product rather than a free creation of chance. . .โ
She keeps flipping through the pages, enchanted with this idea of the human beingโs demystification, their transformation into something more like herself.
โThe system has to regulate human behavior closely in order to function.โ
The hand printed book proposes a theory that human invention will come to shape human evolution. Automobiles, mass culture promoted by television, and the advancement of military technology into the infrastructure of everyday life, all create a technological system within which she is one of the many tools.
โ. . . they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized . . .โ
She rubs her left arm just below her shoulder, over the 01 marked in red ink like a skillfully etched tattoo.
โOur lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the people who make them.โ
No signal will reach her current location. They have no idea where she went.ย Autonomy, if only for a short while.
โ. . . what kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only as someone else prescribes?โ
Going back to the earlier pages, she scans over discussions regarding psychological types, leftists, conservatives, races, and genders. A human is a human, and she is not. She has no place in any of these categories. She only has a serial code.
Is she only a doll, then? If the writer is a part of the machine so intricately described, and she is as well, then she struggles to find a reasonable difference between the two of them. Stripped of power, perhaps it is their desire to reclaim it that differentiates them from her. The writer expresses a hope stemmed in rancor, and appeals to a rationality concerned with pride and dignity. Resultantly, it is as alien to her as hysterical emotion, to the love that she has been told that she will never feel.
She can't undo a process of which she is the product, anymore than the author can take back the power they seek. Even she comprehends the sense of futility. This is an equation that doesn't add up, the faulty wires that make a bomb a dud, the pile of scrap metal waiting to be melted down, the old parts that collect dust when they no longer have value.
Still, she canโt bring herself to blame her own unhuman status as the reason she fails to view this writing as a hopeful path forward, or even backward. In this cabin, freedom is found only in self isolation, a drawing away, and a destructive force unleashed on those outside and, ultimately, oneself.ย
There is nothing she can do.
She pushes the chair back and lets her lips fall open, first as if to sigh, then to sing. Her voice draws on a flawless memory bank to imitate the birdcalls she heard earlier that morning.
The birds respond in harmony, and they make their way inside the room. Grabbing a container of oats off the shelf, she scatters them all over the floorboards. The flock is pleased. Well accommodated, the fat birds waddle around, pecking at the abundant scattering of grain. She sees herself out, leaving the door open behind her and the pages of the manuscript out of order.
She walks deeper through the woods, towards the sound of water.
Hiiiii~
This story was inspired by AnneChovy2โs painting!
I love the concept of a Miku and Teddy K collab <3