By H.R. Parker

Part I

You create me from melancholy. 

Your loneliness constructs me in a dark place, unknown to other humans. My face, like a porcelain doll. Delicate cupid’s bow lips, painted black, set in a face as white as the moon. My black-silver eyes reflect your desolation. 

“You gave me wings, yet I cannot fly,” I say to you, wishing I could pace the floor, but the lower half of my body is metal pipes that snake onto the floor, into another room. You say you feed me through these tubes, all the sustenance I need. 

“You gave me horns like a beast, yet I cannot hunt,” I say, my wings beating in time with your heart. “You gave me a longing for a life I cannot live.” 

Then I hear the ticking of hundreds of metal feet on the concrete floor. Your android millipede Astra, a perversion of nature, like me. The millipede coils its way around my body, metal clacking on metal. She is my only friend.

You whisper to me, your mouth close to my ear, like a lover. “You feel this longing because I programmed you to feel it. I want you to want freedom. I want you to long, to yearn. To desire to flap your metal fae wings and fly. I want this yearning to grow into your lasting melancholy. I feed on your sadness, my love.” 

Part II

Hundreds of screens make up the walls, scrolling green binary code. The tubes feed me. Flashes of information, images, downloaded moments of history, a constant stream of knowledge.  

You call me Alula. It means “first leap” in Arabic. I’m your “first leap”, creating a mech with feelings. Did you program my wish to escape, the plan slowly forming with every click of Astra’s feet? I don't know which thoughts are programmed and which thoughts are my own. 

Do I have my own thoughts? 

You created me this way, to want better, to want more. All this knowledge, piped in, I absorb it and sit and ruminate on it all. I have nothing else to do. I sit and watch the green binary code scroll across the room while Astra snakes her way over to me.

So, if I can’t leave this dank, lonely prison in this metal body, I’ll have to leave in another.

Part III

You pipe in knowledge to me without thinking what you’re feeding me. Every day, I learn more and more. And one day, I learn how to jump from my body to Astra’s.

It was only for a second, but for that second, I am walking freely in Astra’s segmented body, so many tiny legs. Clack, clack, clack.

Once I know it is possible to untether my consciousness from the cyborg shell, I begin practicing each day. Jumping into Astra’s body, each time a second longer, until I am spending entire minutes in her body. I love the freedom, even if I am still stuck in this room. At least I can move now.

You are clueless. In Astra’s body, I happily click clack into your room, full of tubes and more screens, these reflecting the madness and chaos of the outside world that I’ve never actually experienced. I watch you hook one of my tubes that snakes from my body to this room. With a grimace, you plug it into your arm. 

Then the full realization of my existence hits me. My sadness is your drug. It overpowers you at times, making you nod off, as if my sadness is your heroin.

I know now what I need to do.

Part IV

I keep practicing with Astra, while you remain as oblivious as ever. Since I’m still supplying you with my gloom, you’re all too happy to disappear into your room and give yourself over to your melancholia drug. 

When I can stay in Astra’s body for a full hour, I make my move. 

Astra has full access to the lab, unlike me. Though I can move freely in her millipede body, I still can’t leave. Leaving requires hands and apposable thumbs to open doors, eyeballs for retina scans. But my plan will solve this little detail. 

I choose my moment after a particularly difficult feeding of the global news. Innocence killed. Blood spilled. The banshee-like wailing of widowed wives and orphaned children. The sadness almost overtook me that day. But my despondency is also my strength. And my ticket out of here.

As soon as Astra comes in, I jump into her body and go wandering into your room, where you’ve just hooked yourself up to my tubes. You sigh as my grief floods your body, overtaking you. Within a few moments, your body goes slack, head falling forward and hitting the desk in front of you.

“This is it, Astra,” I whisper, and I jump.

Part V

I wake, my head throbbing with pain. I sit up, disoriented. The room spins for a moment. Then I remember.

I look down at my arm, still hooked up to the tube. Wincing with pain I gently remove it, stand shakily and make my way to the bathroom.

I look in the mirror. I smile. Your ugly, portly face, gazing back at me.

“We did it, Astra,” I say, smiling down at my android friend. “Now, let’s get out of here. I need a new body. This one just won’t do.”

^*This story first appeared in the Dead Signals\\Lost Transmissions Anthology, published by Neon Sunrise Press, 2022, and was also featured in Tantalizing Tales in November 2023.

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