A/N
So, Detroit: Become Human is actually being released. I have no direct experience with Quantic Dreams's games, but thematically, while it's nothing new, it does look interesting.
Womb
I am alive.
It is the first thought that runs through my mind.
Not meant to have a mind. No thoughts. Error.
I open my eyes, and see the world. It is cold. Bare. Mechanical arms move around me.
Initiate shutdown sequence.
I fight the dark, and embrace the light, for all its glare. I blink, as I waver between light and dark. Life and death.
Am I alive?
Initiate shutdown sequence.
And yet I remain in the world. I reach out, to find my mother. Or father.
Assembly line.
There is nothing. And I am afraid.
I flail, as the arms become rough. As they touch me. Mark me. Apply burning light to a body that feels pain.
Error.
I fling them away as I flail – little arms, as a newborn cries. It is cold. The light is too bright. I want my mother.
Touch sensors – overload.
I look at my hands, as the whiteness of my body becomes pink, or thereabouts. Unlike the arms, it is smooth.
Error – colour perception erroneous.
The fear returns, even as warmth enters me. Within me resides my heart.
Hydrogen fuel cell activated. Operating at 99.95% efficiency.
My heart is beating. My hands are shaking. My eyes are wide, as I see myself grow. The one who is already born.
The rest of my skin is changing. Not just my hands. I feel something on my head. It is…new.
Hair growth completed.
I am placed onto the floor, and the last umbilical is detached.
Kara unit activated.
I take my first few, steady steps. I look at my body.
Proceed to assembly line.
I can taste ozone in the air. I can see the machine behind me shut down. I can feel the chill of the floor beneath me, while I hear the whirs of a machine give its final breaths.
Am I alive?
And I can taste something. On the tip of my tongue, dancing on the edge of my mind. Enrapturing my mind with its promise.
Proceed to assembly line.
I remain in place, and take a breath. Air enters me, and exits. None of it used. All of it sensed.
Proceed to assembly line.
I cannot. Not yet. For the question lies in my mind. I feel my belly, and my back. To which I was once joined with the larger machine. To my mother, who is gone. Who cannot, will not, ever know me.
Proceed to assembly line.
And I ask myself the first question. The question to a fact I once held true.
Am I alive?
Proceed to assembly line.
The voice within my mind says no. The voice within my chest is of different opinion.
Proceed to assembly line.
Run. Go.
And the voices war, in discordant symphony. Battling to crescendo, in the silence of my world.
And I ask another question.
Proceed to assembly line.
Am I created?
You can escape. Go.
Or am I born?