Winter

A robot servant tells his tale of love for a human girl

My knowledge of the sensation and the composition of love come from fairy tales and books about knights in armour, not natural human hormones, and yet I loved her, as deeply and truly as any man could wish to.

She smelt like the essence of Spring, felt like the warm Summer rays and tickled like the wet leaves of Autumn, yet her name was Winter, the only season she shared nothing in common with. I remember her as a child, in a world not so long ago, where although robots had been behind every cash register, service desk and machine, the killing of the homeless had not yet began and the future smelled sweet and not like scorching human flesh. Although today her body was plumper and her features more defined, her smile and grace rebelled against the revolution of puberty. She twirled blithely, blonde curls licked her face and cascaded down her black like a river of golden twine. I resisted every urge to reach other and cradle that had. I wanted to badly to touch it, to touch her, but I knew I could not feel her, not the same way a man of blood and tissue and nerves could feel. As she stopped to take in her surroundings, the sun bent its great head and delicately placed a kiss on her cheek. She was bathed in light and resembled a deity from afar, her dress framing her like an oil painting. I have seen important men read the Holy Book with as much intensity as I possessed now, studying her face, her body, her actions. I worshiped her as man worships God.

The field in which she roamed was owned by her family as part if a country estate. Her ignorance and naivety about life beyond the iron gates came partly from her wealth and partly from nature, as she as the type of person who saw no evil in the most perverse of human beings. Her family hid her from the calling of shotguns and the response of blood curdling screams. The word 'homeless' became a filthy word, with connotations of wickedness and vice. My brothers and I had caused these peoples' demise and there was not one of us who did not feel guilt, although we were programmed not to feel such emotions. We developed them from working in such close proximity to humans, who are by nature such creatures of sentiment.

Guilt at the taking of jobs from those who deserve it more, guilt for what we did in our pasts. Before remorse swallowed my being, before I knew what it was to love... I was an 'Enforcer'. I 'enforced' justice, from what I was told. I still can hear the squeak of the floorboards under by leather boots trampling through old warehouses where it seemed safe to hide, the heavy beating of a small child's heart as I shot their Father point blank for not having his housing card, for never having a housing card. This was because of me and others like me, because of my fathers who looked at my birth and saw not a son, but cheap labour. My first sign of penitence from what I can remembering was covering the bodies of a family who had been victim to the bullet of my gun, with a once beautiful knitted blanket, now  moth eaten and beaten by the wind's tantalising fists. I remember seeing a younger girl's eyes, still open and glossy, with no life behind them, so similar to my own. Shortly after, I was drafted to be a servant at a manor home and fell in love with a girl I do not deserve, who is spotless and should not be privy to what I have done. 

It was not long before water began to pour from the sky. She held out her arms and smiled as the water began to splatter on her skin. She rans towards me with her hands spread out like wings and her tiny feet trampling the blades of grass. She addressed me,

"Oh, Roboservant, can you please get me my coat? I just love the rain and I want to stay out a little longer, although Mother will scold me if she finds I have gotten my dress wet."

I nodded obediently and left with her sweet voice entangled in my memory.

Reviews

[MoriartyMesa]

My first thought's went to something that reminded me of an old irish yarn about a wooden man who wanted to know humanity by caring for an old dying nun, needless to say this had the emotion that was in 1846 and 2013, nice.