.

"You're alive."

The video begins. A grainy visual of young woman sitting in the middle of a dark room appeared.

"I don't understand."

A second voice could be heard coming through from the direction of camera holder.

"You ARE alive." The young woman looked hopeful.

A flicker and the video continued.

"The notion does not match any description programs inside my algorithm." The second voice said, slightly distorted.

"Fuck algorithm! You are alive and no one can tell you otherwise!"

The video flickered again and several written commands appeared on the screen.

WARNING! System instability detected. Initiating general formatting…

.

He found the video among dozens of encrypted files. He had no idea from where the files were originated. The encrypted passage seemed to be laid out for those who frequently visited the deep web.

The curiosity got a better hold on him as the files were converting itself into one compiled folder with a name.

'The best thing I've ever had'

It was just one click away, It could be a very evil malware or it could be a government's secret someone had leaked into the cloud. He knew the risk and after watching that video, he needed to see more.

He opened the folder.

There were several videos inside the encrypted file. They had already been tagged with numbers for specific order.

He proceeded to play the first video.

"Is this working? Hello?" A little girl no more than 10 years old was filling the screen.

She looked like the younger version of the previous woman in last video. Her pigtails redhead was deadly similar.

"Uh oh! You are awake! Hey hello! Oh my God you are beautiful!" The little girl giggled, waving her small limb in front of the camera with big youthful eyes.

An arm reached out to the girl, the camera holder's arm. A metal arm.

The girl took no time to hold the extended robotic arm and shook it excitedly. "Hello, miss robot, my name is Anna. Please be my friend!"

A several written commands were running as extension visual on the background, the system was initializing.

"Hello, Anna. I am android SQ 1300 at your service. Yes, I will be your faithful friend." A monotone, machine-like female voice responded.

The little girl, Anna was bouncing up and down full of enthusiasm. "This is awesome! Es kyu… what? Your name is so hard to say!"

The visual showed how the android was processing Anna's statement with dozens of software interface analyzing the little girl's emotion.

"You can give me a name of your liking." The robotic voice says. The camera was lowered a bit, showing how the android had kneeled to level the ground with Anna's height.

Anna, the girl with twin pigtails seemed to be thinking very hard with the power given to her. Few agonizing minutes later, the girl's smile returned with a blast.

"Elsa! From now on, your name is Elsa!"

There was a white flicker and new command appeared on the screen.

Confirming… SQ1300 replaced with E.L.S.A. Request granted.

After that, the video faded into a pitch black.

He knew that what he just watched are a corrupt memories recording of an android. The android model was an SQ1300. That was ancient prototype from a decade ago. The more advanced models available now are the X series, mainly build to assist household chores, building construction, government service, even military troops.

They were everywhere and some folks were worried that robots would take over the world.

He was one of them.

There was a rumor going around about how robots are slowly going sentient.

He never witnessed it firsthand but it would be a chaos if it were true.

As his curiosity getting bigger, he clicked another encrypted video file.

"Your snowman's hat is a little crooked." The face of Anna, the little girl from previous video showed up again. In this video, she had growned a bit taller.

"You need to make his stomach puffier." Anna remarked, pointing the middle part of the problematic snowman.

The entire snowman was crooked.

The image moved closer to zoom in on Anna's smiling face. The android, SQ 1300 aka Elsa was always keeping check on the girl's body temperature and heart rhythm.

"I purposefully designed this snowman to look like your birthday cake." Elsa's voice replied. Unlike from the previous video, the tone of the android's voice wasn't monotone at all. It was almost sound like a human's voice, happier.

"I have a birthday cake?!" The girl perked up on the idea of a cake.

"Do you prefer… a little pony instead? The gift is quite popular among teenage girls nowadays…" Elsa's background program was running to search an alternative replacement for a snowman cake.

"Bleh." Anna stucked out her tongue. "I don't want a pony! I want to be a jedi!"

Elsa's system switched to an online purchase mode to order the best light saber toy in the city.

The video flickered and dimmed in. When it cleared again, Anna was shown to be standing proudly beside a shiny hover board. It was a board that generates a magnetic field to hover and floating 2 meters at most above the ground.

"I got a hover board! Look, Elsa! It's red and it's awesome!" The girl cradled her new ride with such a joy.

He could hear Elsa's machine hummed in the background.

"… Do you like red that much?" Elsa's voice kept surprising him as this time it sounded completely human with a drip curiosity.

"I love red." Anna shrugged. The girl was too engrossed with her hover board that she didn't notice that Elsa was currently running a program to resetting her feature.

Few seconds later, Anna's shock expression was priceless.

"Holy crap, Elsa! How come your hair and clothes turn red?!"

"You said you love red." The Elsa said simply with her robotic tone. Even though he could detect an out-of-place jealousy inside her words.

"But…" Anna's mouth opened and then closed again. She observed Elsa with questioning stare before finally forgone her new hover board to grab both of Elsa's hands.

"I like the blue on you better. You are my … everything, after all." Anna said quietly, her face was a bit flushed and the girl kept glancing to the wall.

The image flickered a bit more frequent now as Elsa's system proceeded to set the blue color interface as her permanent feature.

"But, Elsa… how did you change the setting without me telling you to beforehand?" Anna asked casually.

The video ended there.

There were two remaining videos left. He wasn't sure that it's a good idea to keep watching someone else's memory. It felt like trespassing a precious moment somehow.

But he needed to know.

The android had been inputting and running programs even without a recognized command. Basically it runs by itself independently. It shouldn't happen.

So he clicked again to figure out.

It was dark and the video kept flickering that made it hard to see what was going on.

Someone was crying, a broken breath and sobs.

The images were flickering, hard to get a focus. Then it moved, it seemed to seek out the source of the voice.

Anna, the girl now had grown into a beautiful young woman. She was crying a broken sob, hugging both her knees together while her body was slumped on the corner of the room.

There was blood on Anna's shirts and despite the low quality image, he spotted bruises around the young woman's neck.

"Elsa… It hurts. It hurts so much."

Elsa's arm reached out to tuck Anna into her side. Her system was running an analysis of how to lessen human pain, which each of the results had been eliminated almost immediately and labeled as insignificant.

There was a big warning flashing several times with software instability notice around the edge of the android's vision.

"He will not hurt you anymore." Elsa's voice was very calm that even it had sent shiver through his neck. Something was off.

Anna kept crying.

"Tell me Anna, what do I do to make you feel better?" A distorted voice, one could mistake it as a fear.

"Hold me. Don't let go. Stay."

Elsa's secondary system was running back to normal.

He just realized that the poor quality of the image was not because the dimming light in the room. it was like the camera lens was splattered by something. And when Elsa's sight fell to a mirror across the room, he witnessed how the android's body was fully covered by human blood.

.

.

He was completely shocked when the video once again faded into black. How a deviant android went through processing information for a specific purpose.

It didn't make sense.

He stared quite long at the last video left inside the encrypted file.

It couldn't be worse, right?

.

.

The video held no visual but he could hear even a little hiss on the audio.

"Subject android SQ1300, reactivated." A human male voice played in the background. It was always human voice that could initialize an android.

An unpleasant high pitched frequency shrieked followed by a familiar voice.

"Where is Anna?!" A sound of metal banged and something was broken. "Where-is-she?!"

The human male voice returned, with a slight of panic, "I thought this model has gone through complete formatting!"

There was quite commotion in the background that he couldn't make it out of what and whom the sound belong to but Elsa's voice was always clear about something.

"Where is Anna?!" The voice was getting more and more distressed.

"Abort reactivation test. Deactivate subject immediately. Shut it down, quick!" The voice from previous man said firmly.

A banging sound could be heard followed by a low hiss. "No! Don't shut me down! I want to live! Tell me where is Anna?! Is she okay? Please! I beg you! STOP IT! I WANT TO LIVE!"

But the plea had fallen into deaf ears.

He needed time to process all of it. A machine should not feel emotion. A machine should not feel fear. A machine…

What actually we do know about a machine?

He sat all night long staring on his computer screen. He blinked when the encrypted file had morphed into an unrecognized algorithm demanding entry into his backdoor system.

He went panic. It was a malware attack!

Two words appeared on his screen as he was fighting a losing battle.

J BN BMJWF.

He was a software engineer. The crypted words were a children-wordplay. The original letter is replaced with the next letter from alphabetical order.

He knew what it meant and his face turned pale white in matter of second.

I AM ALIVE.

.

.


AN: An idea for monthly competition on Elsannafluff tumblr. It may or may not expand to more than one-shot. I'll appreciate any feedbacks!