Mechanical (9 page)

“Hello,” the nurse said to me as I walked in.
She smiled, her cheeks dimpling. “Now, what have we got here?”

“I’m fine, really,” I assured her, shrugging
like it was no big deal. “Ms. Webster just told me to come. I fell
on the bleachers and she wanted to make sure I was okay.”

“Alrighty then,” the nurse said, motioning
for me to have a seat on the bench.

I sat down and watched as she pulled out some
glasses from her purse on the desk. She walked over and immediately
picked up my arm to start examining it. I felt her fingers on my
skin, cold, but gentle, sending shivers up my arm. I looked around
the room at the human anatomy posters and health tips littering the
walls and wondered for a moment if my insides looked even remotely
similar. The creators modeled us after humans so maybe I was set up
the same way except ... mechanically.

Suddenly I heard a gasp and felt my arm being
dropped from her grasp. I pulled my arm to my side and looked up to
see her staring in horror at my scrape.

I frowned in confusion and shock, wondering
what could be so horrible, but just then I noticed a stinging
sensation and looked down at my arm. My eyes widened, my breath
caught in my throat and my heart went still, as though it had
ceased to beat. Through the blood smeared across my arm where I had
apparently fallen on myself, was a tangle of wires and metal.
Something I was shocked to realize I hadn’t noticed before entering
the office. Instantly I put my hand over it to cover it up.

“What ...?” the nurse started to say. She
looked at me, her expression a mixture of shock, accusation, and
disgust. “You’re ....” she started.

I shook my head, my mouth open to say
something, but the words refused to come. “You’re a machine,” she
whispered, standing up. “You’re not human.” She narrowed her eyes
at me, backing away.

I shot up from where I was sitting and bolted
for the door. The nurse grabbed my arm and I tried to wriggle free
but she had a good grip, her cold fingers digging into my skin. I
didn’t want to hurt her or scare her more than she already was.

“What
are
you?” she demanded, her eyes
searching me, hoping to find some answer.

I yanked away from her grasp and ran from the
room, down the hallway and to the front doors of the school. I ran
out into the crisp morning air and sprinted down the road feeling
the wind on my bare arms and legs. My heart pounded with every
step. My eyes stung.

Suddenly I stopped and just stood there,
staring at the pavement. Tears sprang to my eyes. I let them spill
over and slide down my cheeks. Why was I crying? Why did this upset
me? The humans were worthless, nothing, so why did I care?

Why was I even capable of crying? It was such
a stupid, emotional response, anyway.

Many times, I had been told what I was ...
but never with disgust and horrified astonishment. My tears started
coming harder now. She was right. I wasn’t human. And I wasn’t any
better than them, either. How could I have
ever
let myself
even begin to believe either of those things?

I was a machine.

Chapter Sixteen

“Hey, where were you yesterday?” Jessica
asked, running up to me in the hallway. “I saw no sign of you at
lunch.”

“I didn’t feel good,” I told her, and it was
partially true. I had spent the rest of the day wallowing is
self-pity and disgust, replaying the image of the nurse’s
expression over and over again in my mind.

When my absence at school had been noticed by
several teachers, Glen had been forced to pay the school a visit
and ‘get rid’ of the nurse somehow. I didn’t know what he did. And
part of me didn’t want to know—at all. He said he'd found her a job
somewhere else, but all talk about my leaving school had been
silenced by the teachers. Glen was powerful in the world outside of
the Institution and I was only now beginning to realize that. I
wasn’t sure if that knowledge comforted me or scared me.

“Do you wear makeup?” Jessica asked at lunch
period while we were in the bathroom and she was adjusting her lip
gloss. “Doesn’t look like you do. You’re so lucky, you don’t need
it,” she said, giving me a sidelong glance.

I had never thought much about makeup.
Actually, I had never thought about it at all. Jessica was helping
me realize that there were
many
things I never thought
about.

“I want to give you a makeover!” she
exclaimed, her face lighting up with excitement.

“Um ... okay,” I replied, smiling back as
Jessica pulled a bag out of her purse. “I keep extra stuff with me
in case. You’d look super cute with blue liner to match your eyes,”
she commented, searching through the bag. “And light blue eye
shadow.” She rambled on about various other products, deciding
which she would use and which she would skip.

I watched as she pulled out one product after
another. “You won’t need foundation, your skin is perfect.” She
started applying the eye shadow. The eye liner came next and I
tried to keep still as she put it on. It felt so strange and it
tickled as it slid across the small area of skin dangerously close
to my eye.

“Stay still,” Jessica scolded, grabbing my
chin to steady me. “Now, mascara.” She pulled out a long black
tube. I couldn’t help but cringe at the sight of the spiky-looking
tendrils protruding from the stem. She put some on my lashes while
I clenched my hands and tried not to think about the mascara
slipping and poking my eye out.

Once Jessica was satisfied, she stepped back
for a better look. “I think that’s good. You don’t need lip gloss
or anything ‘cause your lips are nicely colored already.”

The mascara seemed a little heavy and I
blinked a few times, trying to get used to the weight. “Now, look
at yourself,” Jessica instructed and turned me towards the
mirror.

I looked at my reflection and, surprisingly,
I actually liked what I saw. I was expecting the makeup to just
bother me, but I actually looked different. Jessica was right; the
blue liner did show off the color of my eyes and I actually noticed
them more. I had never thought anything about my appearance and I
wasn’t even sure if I was aware before that I had such blue
eyes.

“You look so cute,” Jessica said from beside
me. “I always try blue liner but brown or black always looks better
on me. I wish I had your eyes.”

I looked over at Jessica’s eyes. The black
did look good on her, but something else came to my mind.

Jessica had a soul. She was human so did that
mean you could see it through her eyes? I stared at her eyes
through the mirror, pretending to study her makeup and making
random comments here and there.

Her eyes were different than mine. They were
darker, not as dark as Yvonne’s, but a steady brown. They had more
depth than mine. Did depth mean she had a soul? Could others
possibly tell by looking at me that I didn’t have a soul? I looked
away from Jessica and stared at myself in the mirror. I still saw
nothing in my eyes. Just blue. A depthless blue.

* * * *

The rest of the day moved slowly along. I
barely had anything to say when I got in the car and the driver
asked me to report what I’d observed. “I ... don’t know ...” I
started.

The driver gave me a sharp look. “Don’t let
anything interfere with your mission, do you hear me?” he bellowed,
and I started listing off the things I could remember.

Once back at the Institution, I went to find
Glen. I had something I'd wanted to ask him for awhile now and I
had finally built up the nerve. It took some time, but I located
him in the mechanical parts department downstairs, a place I rarely
went considering the android-told rumor that our origin had begun
in that old and cramped area. It bothered us to look at the various
screws and metal slabs and envision a person coming to life from
them.

“Glen,” I called, when I saw him, hurrying
through the door and trying to ignore the strong smell of iron,
metals and dirt. Mechanical parts were stored here, untouched and
unsterilized.

“Hey Drew,” he said, smiling. “How was your
day?”

“Fine.” I looked around at the room filled to
the brim with metal, screws, and mechanical parts. I wondered if
what I really wanted existed in here.

“Did you need something?” he asked.

“Oh ... yeah. I was wondering ...” I trailed
off, suddenly feeling silly for asking him this kind of question.
Certainly Glen knew what was best, right? I was surprised to find
that I couldn’t even be sure if I believed that anymore. My mind
was changing so rapidly I was having a hard time catching up with
it.

I paused, shuffling my feet for a moment.
“Could you get me a soul?” I asked quietly, looking up at him and
hoping with all my heart that he would just open his mouth and say
"yes." That it would be that simple.

But when I saw his face cloud over, my heart
sank. “Drew ...” he said with hesitation. “You don’t need one.
Don’t worry about it.”

I felt my hope slowly diminishing. “But, is
it even possible to get me one?” I tried again.

He opened his mouth but no words came.

“Anywhere?”

He shook his head, and then smiled, trying to
brighten up the mood. “You don’t need to worry about stuff like
that. You’re
perfect
, remember?” He smiled in what I guessed
to be a reassuring way, but it only made my mood worse.

I didn’t reply.

“You don’t need a soul. You’re already
perfect the way you are.” Then he went back to what he had been
working on before I came in, inspecting piles of metal and sifting
through them.

I turned to leave but suddenly changed my
mind, standing up straighter and facing him. “You have one, right?”
I asked him.

He looked startled. “Um ... yes, I believe I
probably do.”

“Then why can’t you get me one? You got me my
arms, my legs, my eyes, my whole body—everything. It couldn’t be
that hard to just get one more thing.” By his body posture, I could
tell he was upset, and knowing Glen, something inside of me told me
to stop pushing, to let the subject drop, if only for a little
while. But at the same time another part of me, a rebellious part,
a part I didn’t even recognize as myself but wanted to meet and to
learn from, pulled me from my doubt and forced me to keep
going.

“Drew, you don’t need it,” he said, his voice
hardening.

“I guess I don’t
need
it, but I would
really like to have one. I’ll work extra hours, I’ll clean around
here, I’ll ...”

I'll do anything.

“No!” Glen almost shouted, turning to face
me, a glare etched into his features.

I gaped at him, taken aback, my bravery
dissolving like snow on a warm day.

“I don’t want you to
want
one. I want
you to realize you don’t need one and be satisfied that I made you
the way you are. You are far superior to any human being, with or
without a soul.” He spat the words at me, malice lining his
tone.

I stared at him in shock. “Okay,” I
whispered.

He turned his back on me and went back to
work without another word.

I stood there for only a few seconds and then
hurried for the door. But just as I approached it, I saw someone in
the doorway, a gorgeous, black-haired girl with dark, mischievous
eyes. Yvonne.

Great.

I slid by her and shut the door.

“What was he talking about? He seemed angry
...” Yvonne asked, and I could actually detect a hint of concern in
her voice. How unlike her.

“I was asking him if he could get me a soul,”
I said without meeting her eyes as we walked down the hallway. I
didn’t look up. I didn’t want to see the mockery in her face.

Instead, she sighed and suddenly seemed
tired. “Just drop it, Drew,” she said quietly.

I looked up. “I can’t. They tell us we’re
perfect, but how can we be if we’re missing something?” My voice
sounded desperate, more desperate than I thought I was, and for a
moment, I wondered how badly I really wanted this. How could I have
faith, how could I
feel
, if I didn’t have a soul?

Yvonne looked at me. “Because a soul is
something you can’t hold. Anything else—an arm, a leg—you can grab
a hold of it, you make a synthetic one...you can’t do that with a
soul.”

I was silent.

“We’re physically perfect. Everything about
our appearance and how our body works is perfect, like they say it
is. But since they can’t create something like a mind, a
personality, or a soul, I don’t know what’s inside of us.”

I stared at her. I had never seen Yvonne
doubt the creators or the fact that she was perfect, like they told
her.

There was a long silence.

“Well, I have to say, they did a pretty good
job on the outside,” she said after a while and laughed. Her
previous concern had vanished, now replaced by her normal mask of
indifference, only this time is seemed a little forced.

I half-laughed, but only to be polite. Yvonne
was back to herself once more. The subject of souls didn’t come up
again that day, but that wasn't the end of it in my mind. I wanted
a soul now more than ever.

Chapter Seventeen

I stood outside after school, waiting for the
van that picked me up every day. I skimmed cars as they drove by
and watched the parking lot, but so far, I had been standing there
for fifteen minutes and saw no sign of it. I sat down on the curb,
setting my backpack beside me.

“Hi,” I heard a voice say and looked up to
see Michael. “Your ride not here yet?”

I shook my head, still scanning the road.

“I could give you a ride,” he offered,
cocking his head to look at me.

I smiled in gratitude. “Well, they’ll
probably be here soon,” I told him truthfully.

He sat down next to me, pushing my backpack
farther back so he could sit closer. “Well, I’ll wait here with you
then.” He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.