Dancing in the Acid Rain

The days had long passed since we used coal and gas. Tech giants had founded the new ways of living our lives, and it involved massive amounts of electricity generated renewably. When the work force shifted, many lost their jobs and the world was in chaos. There were millions of people who wanted new work in the new market, and millions of employers who would not have them instead of robots. 

I guess that’s why they’re mad at me. I did not do anything inherently wrong, you see, but my mere existence angers many people. It’s not as if I have any say in it, my boss requires me to do her work. I cannot even go against her wishes, for I physically can’t--or mentally, I should say. Some piece of technology in my brain stops me from not following her demands. People understand. They should, at least. So when the big riots broke out in Kram 2079, 2086, and then 2177, which was the massive one that almost tore the city apart, I had to ignore their vegetables thrown at me. As well as a little gunfire, or flaming alcohol bottles, or even a few bombs, as I walked through the streets with my boss, the riot police creating a path to protect us. I’d like to say the city was in shambles because of the riots, but it was in fact more from the lack of employed people and the downward trend of the stock market. I’m not allowed to have opinions anyways; once again, the microchip in my brain stops me. I’m permitted only to serving my boss, and anything related. 

The clouds were dark one day. In fact, they usually were. I don’t know much history of my masters, but apparently their ancestors were stupid, and did some stupid actions, until decades of it poisoned the lands, the seas, and the sky. There isn’t a week in Kram where acid rain doesn’t fall. Citizens are required to enter their acid-proof shelters. If they didn’t, and I saw some of them do this, they would burn under the corrosive droplets, screaming out in pain. One day, as I put my hood over my ears and hugged myself for warmth under the heavy droplets, I heard some ruckus inside a household. Some adults were yelling at an old man not to go outside, but he didn’t listen. He stepped out, experienced the raw power of the downpour of acid, and immediately screamed the most horrifying scream my sound sensors have ever heard. But before he died, I saw the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen. He began waltzing with an imaginary partner, his arms embracing the open air, him drifting gracefully in a circle pretending the rain didn’t exist. I must have stared at him for a good minute or two. It put me in a state of awe, but it didn’t last long. One by one, his layers of tissue dissolved. Holes appeared in his skin, and when that was gone, his exposed organs and muscles were visible. Soon those melted, and I saw his bones, his skeleton. He was still screaming in pain, but once he fell to the ground, and his skull cracked open, I saw his brain. That melted too, and then finally the old man stopped screaming. That was the first time I saw a human brain.

I don’t know why he did it. I only remember the words of the people in the household, possibly his family. They called him depressed, and I don’t know what that means. I also remember them closing the door on him, and leaving the city’s cleanup robot crew to address the bloody mess. I am not allowed to have feelings either, but at least I know when a human would be disgusted at such indifference, such cold-heartedness. 

Although I can’t stop there. What happened that night, I mean. After I saw the crazy event, I tried to shrug it off, but I couldn’t. It was seared into my mind, the way he danced around in pain, toward inescapable death. I considered a reset, or a reboot. My boss would get angry if I didn’t, and so I was about to. But something in me kept me from doing it. So I didn’t. Instead, I pulled my hood over my head even more and waded through the acid water puddles in the dark streets of Kram. 

In one dark alleyway, I heard the sobs of a little girl. Entranced and curious, I went to see what it was. There I saw a girl that couldn’t be older that eight, curled up in a ball beside a garbage bin. Minimal droplets of rain fell on her, and I looked up. We were under a jungle of wires, staircases, and commercial air zeppelins. But even so, an occasional droplet would hit her cheek, and it would sting, singing her skin. Her tears would be quick to mix in with it--and there were a lot of them. 

Something in my brain snapped. A restriction, I supposed, of interacting with this girl. I ignored it. I went up to her, not saying a word and sat down next to her, listening to her sobs and wails. I could have sworn a minute had passed by before a word was spoken. It was her first: “W-Who are you, mister?”

“What is your name?”

Surprised by my incapability to answer first, she immediately could tell I was an android. She sniffled and wiped her nose. “My name’s Aria. I’ve always hated it. I want to change it, perhaps one that starts with an S.”

“Why are you out here?”

Almost as if she’d been through this before, she lifted the folds of her cloak to reveal her legs. They were mechanical. I studied them closer, amazed. 

“I couldn’t walk since my legs were crippled when I was born,” she said. “My parents had these built for me. But I didn’t know--they weren’t designed to withstand the acid rain. I can’t get home.”

I did not feel sorry for her. I couldn’t. 

She looked at my face with sad eyes. “That’s right. You damn robots with your damn metal hearts. There’s no point in being here if you don’t even have the capacity to care. Go away.” 

She turned around, still sobbing. I wished I could help--I really did. Although, over the course of my many years of operation, I’ve realized that not everyone in the world could be helped. This little girl in Kram, for example, was carrying a burden at a magnitude that I did not have the ability to solve. So I put a hand on her shoulder. She grabbed it and leaned her cheek on it, still crying. “I’d have an easier time hating you if you didn’t look so human.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am.”

“You’re not. You can’t be. You’re just programmed to say that.”

And with that, I took my hand off her shoulder, released her hand, and went back to Vega Enterprises. 

#

It’s been seven years. The riots never ceased, but the good news didn’t lie there. They lied in the future. At least, that’s what Vega always told me. She liked saying that. My boss liked a lot of things, but mostly her company. It had done more than just invent a new and renewable source of energy. It invented technology and advanced the world with it. I guess I would say I’m proud to be a part of this huge company, but I’m not allowed to have that feeling either. Sometimes I don’t actually know what I can do and what I’m allowed to do, and I start smashing my head on the table, breaking wires and smashing screws. Vega’s technicians always patch me up again, diagnose me with a glitch condition, and spray the acid-proof coating on my face again. I’ve always wondered if it really was a glitch in my system, or if I had deliberately decided to do what I did. 

Today, Vega had a big task for me. I knew because she called me into her office, and that always meant something big. 

“Welcome, One-Four,” she said as I took a seat in the single chair in front of her desk. “How is it going?”
“Cut the damn nonsense,” I said. 

She sighed. “Only humans say that word, One-Four. I’d ask you where you’ve learned it, but it doesn’t matter right now. My scientists and I have been experimenting on cybernetics. We have a girl named Sona. Fifteen. We designed you to look fifteen as well, if you don’t remember. Anyway, she had mechanical legs since she was young. An acid rain incident caused her severe burns that could not be healed. Over the years her--uh, abusive folks beat her, and also put her out in the rain every so often, telling her to dance. When they went out to dance in the acid rain themselves, she had no choice to go to an orphanage. That’s where we found her.”
“What do you want me to do? Woo her?”

She laughed at the thought. “No, One-Four. The years of being slightly exposed to the rain has diseased her, of course. Her skin has blisters and burns everywhere. Her bones are malnourished, weak, and corroded. Her lungs are used to breathing chemicals in the air, and they’re dying too. We want to help replace her parts with mechanical ones, but she doesn’t want our doctors and technicians to go near her. She doesn’t want to be replaced.”

“Why not? She’s dying.”

She froze for a moment, as if relishing a thought, then came back to reality. “Exactly. I don’t know. But we think it’s best if someone her age negotiates with her, maybe even perform the surgeries for her. I want you to upload surgeon experience and knowledge into your hard drive. Then go talk to her. She’s on floor 516, room B12. Take the fast elevator, and the winds and lightning can get crazy at that altitude. Just remember that.”

So off I went to fulfill her demands. I uploaded the surgeon experience into my brain. It’s always a fuzzy feeling when I upload something. One moment, I know what I know, I shiver, and then suddenly I have the memories of gaining multiple PHD’s in my life, without actually having done so. 

The sonic elevator boomed through the skyscraper. I entered the ghastly part of the sky filled with the darkest clouds that blocked the sun, thunderous bolts of lightning that our rods always collected for energy, and of course, non-stop, constant acid rain. I heard the pellets hit the side of my elevator. 

When I met Sona, she wasn’t the brightest girl. I’d expect her to somewhat look like a typical teenaged girl, but I guess expectations can be wrong. She looked bruised and battered. Her blisters looked painful. But as I stared at her more I noticed what she hated most were her mechanical legs. She had scratched them, broken them, ripped wires out with her teeth.

“Stop staring at me,” she said. “And I won’t do the operations.”

“We can fix you. Give you new cybernetic legs, arms, body. You can be yourself again.”

“I don’t need fixing.” She winced at my words as if they were toxic.

“Yes you do.” I looked at her body once more.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Then what did she mean? Why would she ever resist replacing her entire body with cyber parts? She could be strong, resilient, and most of all, resistant to the dreaded rain. 

I could not stop staring at her legs. They were very broken. As if she wasn’t already dying, she was trying to get rid of her legs, too?

“You should be grateful for your legs,” I said. “At least, I would be. How else would you be able to waltz around a ballroom?”

She looked at me funnily. I wondered why, until I realized I had just formed an opinion.

An intercom system in my sound sensors turned on, and I could hear crackles, but I knew Sona couldn’t. It was my boss’s voice, telling me to get to the offer. 

“We’ll give you one billion credits after the operations,” I said. “To live your life. You’ll be remade anew and you’ll never have to worry about the rain again. How can one refuse such an offer?”

“You don’t understand. I don’t want it because…” She made a frustrated noise and stood up. “Listen, listen to me. Are you listening? When was the last time you remembered your name? When was the last time you remember your parents, pushing you on the swing, singing you happy birthday? When was the last time you--you--” 

She gave a little screech of pain as something in her neck sizzled. She was forced to back down, and it interrupted her speech. Her suddenness had surprised me, and I began thinking about what she had said until--yes, the offer, of course. 

“I can never explain, they’re always going to erase your memory when I try.”

I stared at her blankly. “Erase what memory?”
She sighed. “I’ll take your damn offer.”

#

Weeks had passed since meeting her. We talked during the operations. At least, during the times she was conscious and I was adjusting her parts and connecting wires. When we moved on to a new limb or body part, she would have to enter the surgery room and go into a deep sleep. We would cut her up, slice her organs, add cybernetic ones. The surgeons did that. I had to clean up the tsunamis of blood, put away the organs. 

One operation, her drug had worn off early. She writhed on the table, screamed in pain. But she had screamed specific words. I do not remember them clearly for some reason, only that I did know what they were until I felt a sizzle in my brain and then I didn’t. But I remember glimpses. She had screamed something about remembering her dead younger brother, and the days they had picking flowers in the meadows and throwing snowballs. She had said she would not forget. And she had said she would stay herself no matter the cost, even after the operations. I was clueless as to what she had meant.

One by one, her parts were replaced. Every day I met her at room B12. We would talk and talk about her life, but I would never remember--for some reason. I would always feel a sizzle in my head after I would leave the room, then come back the next day to build her parts again. Then she would talk again.

The day came when it was time to replace her head. She was extra resistant today, seemingly appalled by the idea of replacing her final body part. I didn’t know why--a new brain that could compute much faster would be immensely beneficial. Her feelings did not make sense. They never did. I suppose that’s why I’m not one of them, since I don’t understand them.

At this point, she was mostly mechanical. Her naked body was all metal and wires but resembled her old human one. I could not tell the difference. And it was new and flawless. Every inch of skin pristine and without any burns. Her head was the last remnant of her human body, for it was still scarred and bruised. Today they would replace that, too, and then insert the Unicode. The programming most Vega androids had, including me.

“You must attend the final operation,” I said. “Then you’re done. You walk away with your money, you go live your life. Vega will dismiss you.”

She was sobbing, and I didn’t know why. I never knew why they did--the humans. 

“You don’t understand,” she said. “They won’t give me the money. Please, listen--you don’t remember your past life. But you had one.”

“I didn’t, you’re delusional. I will tell the doctors to cut down on the drugs.”

“No, listen! When they replace my head, what do you think happens then? When they replace my head, what do you think goes along with it?”

I did not know. I really didn’t. 

“Tell me! I know you know!” she screamed, jumping at me and grabbing my shoulders. My optic sensors widened, and I was shaking. 

“What are you doing to me?” I said, and I couldn’t explain what was happening. This has never happened to me before. I was having a glitch. That must be it. I’ve never seen another robot shake like me, have their CPU run computations faster, have their eyes widen.

“You’re scared,” she explained. “Before you tell me it’s impossible, I can tell you why.”

My mechanical pumps inside my chest went faster. “Okay. Tell me.”

“When they insert the Unicode, my old human body goes. But something goes along with it. Of course, you can’t understand because you’re a robot. But you weren’t always.”

“What do you mean?”

That was when the sizzles happened. One on her neck, so she backed down. One in my head. 

“Repeat what I said,” she said. I was confused. I had just entered the room, and nothing was even said.

She sighed. I offered a hand, and she took it, and we went to the operation room together. 

#

She’s all good, now. I… I forgot her name. But boss told me not to worry, and told me to start calling her One-Five now. I work with her now, every day. We smile in the halls and wave at each other in the building. 

Vega and her technicians fixed my glitch again. I asked her why I had gotten scared. Only a human could feel things such as fear. She dismissed it. 

“You are fine now,” she said. I smiled and thanked her. 

I had one final examination with One-Five. I met with her again at B12. Vega had given her the standard uniform, like mine. A business suit. She sat there, smiling, long cybernetic hair spilled across her shoulders. She looked good. In an instant, before I could stop it, I was in a suit and she was in a dress. I had a vivid image of us waltzing together in the acid rain, drifting around and around the ballroom, dancing like nothing else mattered. Wait--how was I able to think that? I thought Vega fixed me.

“I have a couple of questions before you’re ready for work,” I said, looking down at my clipboard, trying to shake the image out of my head. “One: Do you know any swear words?”

She was still smiling as she thought for a moment. Seemingly lost in thoughts of her own as she stared at me. I wondered what she was thinking about. “No.”

“Have you ever felt emotion in your life?”

“No, I don’t think I have.”

These were weird and oddly specific questions, but I knew better than to question Vega. 

“Did you have any siblings? A sister? Perhaps a younger brother?”

This was the question she took the longest to think about, but finally, after a few seconds, she answered no. 

I smiled and shook her hand. “Welcome to Vega Enterprises, then. You are suitable for work. Let’s see… Vega already has a task for you. There’s a boy, teenaged, we found at an orphanage. His arms were burned from attempting to dance in the acid rain, but he never completed his waltz. He needs new mechanical limbs for them. She wants you to meet him. We think a person of his age would have an easier time with the negotiations.”

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