The first time Iko was reminded of how she wasn't human was when her friends started having kids. It was reminder everything inside her was wiring and steel. It was easy to pretend with that though. There were humans who couldn't have kids, there were humans who didn't want kids. She was just like them, still a person. Kids were annoying if you had to be around them all the time anyways. This way she got to do the fun things, buying tiny clothes, going to parks, holidays. No, she didn't need kids. She could still be just like everyone else.
The second time she remembered was when her friends hair started going grey at the top. She could still pretend. Humans had hair dye. Her hair was already blue, it was obviously dyed. Afterall she was human. Humans didn't have blue hair. Well they did, just not in the same way they had brown hair, , or blonde hair, or red hair, or black hair. Black was the colour she had decided her hair was. Without the dye that was.
The third time was at a museum of the Lunar revolution. The display of her was almost entirely about the glitch in her chip. There was also things about her internal workings, but Cinder had that too. It was the intense study of her personality, exactly how it worked, how it could be fixed. A break down of how her emotions were actually her programming responding to how they best believed you were supposed to feel if you were… human. It was a study on how she wasn't real. They didn't mention anything else. They didn't even list her as Iko, the sign read 1k0-7731, then in a paragraph underneath she was referred to as a program commonly referred to a Iko. A reminder there were more of her.
The fourth time was while looking in a mirror. She was standing next to Cinder, as well as Cinder and Kai's daughter. She no longer looked the same age as Cinder, no that time had long past. It was the fact that she no longer looked the same age as Cinder and Kai's daughter either. She looked younger, maybe only by a couple of years, certainly younger though. Her face dropped a bit. Here she was, looking younger than a little girl. A little girl whose parents had asked for her help choosing out her first pair of shoes. She was older both of her parents, and she looked nineteen. She was supposed to look old, and she didn't.
Then there was the most horrible time,
The com came at three AM.
Empress Linh Cinder passed away of natural causes at two fifty five AM.
Suddenly a news feed came up,
Last surviving veteran of the Lunar revolution dead at age 95.
She felt herself sobbing.
There were no tears,
No hyperventilation,
But stars, everything hurt,
She couldn't even feel pain but everything hurt.
She wished that she could shut down. Finally die.
Finally stop looking young and feeling old.
Stop wandering through the Rampion in the middle of the night, wishing she could hear someone laughing.
Stop being a glitch.
But she never could.
She would always just be a computer,
With a million reminders, she could never be human.
AN: Carin: Hi I'm Carin, you might know that if you've read my stuff for Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger, but this is my first Lunar Chronicles fanfic, um hope you enjoyed,anyways,bye.
