The Story of My Life
Chapter 5
"Cale?" I gasped. I stepped away from him, wondering if this was some sort of cruel hoax or that my mind was playing tricks on me.
Gero was quiet, watching the scene in a detached manner from a shadowed corner. Jenny had heard me and I heard her walking toward me. Cale sat still, his pale face looking me over, but showing no emotion. His eyes were cold, as if he refused to acknowledge me. Myself, well, I was in shock. I'm sure my mouth must have been hanging open stupidly. Jenny appeared at my side and she too looked down at Cale, his huddled form shivering slightly.
"Kill them or I'll kill you," Gero finally said. "I have other test subjects I can use in place of you."
I looked at him angrily, I remember. It seemed unthinkable then that I would have to kill Cale. He was like a brother; he was close to me. I didn't want to do that. Like I said, he reminded me of myself at his age. I wanted to help him get through life the way that Kyle had helped me. Yeah, maybe Cale did join the gang and maybe gangs are supposed to be vicious, but I really didn't feel like going through all that bullshit anymore. The whole point of me going through with these operations and tests was to be able to be free from the gang. This way, I would be free, I could lead a normal life and the people who wanted out of the gang could disperse and lead their own lived 24-7 and never have to deal with a gang ever again if they chose not to. Maybe I was being a little too idealistic, but I was desperate. My only thoughts were to get away from it all and if I could help Cale and a few of the others that really didn't belong in a gang, were too young to be messed up by that kind of life, then hey, another plus. I didn't want to go through all of this, concentrating on liberating us all only to kill the guy who was like family to me. I wanted to get away from the life of killing and being ruthless. Little did I know what Gero intended me for…
"Sorry Cale," Jenny said before she punched his stomach. He doubled over in pain and a moan escaped his lips.
"What are you doing," I cried as I grabbed her arm to stop her next punch. "That's Cale! He's our friend, don't you remember him?"
She stopped and looked at me in the same cold manner as Cale had. "I know, but it's either him or us. I choose us, Bobby. Besides, by not killing him, you're only preserving his life by a day at the most. Look at him. He's too weak to even get out of here on his own even if he managed to get out of those chains. You're doing him more of a favor by killing him now and getting it over with. Otherwise, Dr. Gero is just either going to do it himself or he'll get one of his other test subjects that he's talking about to do it."
Cale was being strangely silent all this time. I kept expecting him to say something in defense of himself. He seemed so against me, I didn't even care if he shouted obscenities at me, as long as he said something. He seemed to sense that his silence was unnerving me. He slowly opened his mouth and revealed that he no longer had a tongue, but still his eyes were cold. His eyes showed that he had been in dark places, had seen too many disturbing things at his young age. It was as if those eyes belonged to a hardened criminal, no love or hope to be found anywhere within them, only hate.
I turned angrily to Gero. "You didn't have to do that! What good did it do anyway?"
"I didn't do it," he replied coolly. "It's been a long time since you've seen anyone you used to know. A lot can happen in a year." It's true. A lot can happen in a year. That brought me right back to wishing to see my kid. Even if I could only look through a window to see it, I would have been happy.
Jenny killed Cale swiftly, probably more for my sake than for Cale's. She killed one of the others there and I killed the remaining two with many reservations. That whole event was a test planned by Dr. Gero. He wanted to see our level of eagerness to kill, or at least our feelings about it. I must say, it really shocked me to see how easily Jenny went through with it. I understand her logic, but I wasn't able to go through with it with the ease she seemed to possess.
Afterwards, Gero led us back to the lab, denying my requests to finally go see my daughter. That pissed me off to no end. How could he deny me the right to see my daughter? If I was stable enough to go out and kill someone, then I was stable enough to go and see my family. He never let me out though and I've always resented him for it.
"He lied," Jenny whispered to me as we were going to bed later that night. "He was right that he didn't cut Cale's tongue off himself, but he sure as hell had a lot to do with it."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"We did it, basically. I remember. You were the one who cut out his tongue, but Gero was giving us orders. It was a while ago. He was trying out new chemicals in our systems…it was to get rid of our thoughts…even our memories."
I had nothing to say. I looked at her in disbelief.
"It's true," she urged. "I remember because it didn't work as well on me for some reason. I don't know what he's trying to do, but I have a feeling that whatever it is, it isn't good. Why would he want us to forget who we are? I mean, at first it worked, but slowly it wore off and I was myself again…of course, I wasn't stupid enough to let him know. You on the other hand, it didn't wear off of you as soon as it had for me. You haven't been yourself for a long time now."
I shook my head. "You're wrong."
"No, I'm not. Recently, yes, you have been okay. Maybe you just don't remember, but I swear you've been acting…I don't know, like an android."
We looked at each other for almost a full minute. It was hard for me to believe, but that was exactly it…Gero was making us into androids, this wasn't some sort of experiment. I don't know why I didn't seem to understand that before then. All the clues were there, I could have figured it all out on my own, but I didn't. I think I panicked then. If I couldn't remember parts of my life, like what Jenny was talking about, then what would stop him from completely controlling our minds? What would stop him from making us demolish a whole city with the energy that he had been teaching us to use? These ideas troubled me whenever I was in my normal state.
By that time, I was nearly complete. All that was left was for a few more metal plates to be put in and wires to be connected to them. Somehow, through all of that, I had mostly retained my thoughts. After the incident with Cale, Gero knew that whatever potion he had put in to get rid of my memory hadn't worked. He did it again and I went through another period where I wasn't myself. It always wore off and I would go for longer and longer periods of time where Gero wouldn't know that I wasn't his perfect little android. I would go into those induced sleeps to have wires moved or fixed fearing that when I woke up I would never again remember who I was or that I had a family on the outside waiting for me. Thankfully, those fears were never realized, even that last time where the last piece of equipment was implanted into my body.
I went into that final induced sleep. That sleep lasted for three months. Gero put in the last equipment he wanted in me, moved things around, and made some last finishing touches. When I awoke, I didn't remember anything at all. I couldn't access anything in my mind that had anything to do with my past life. As of the moment I woke up, my mind essentially belonged to Dr. Gero.
Dr. Gero had been right, he had worked the metal extensively through my body. I don't know what is metal and what is human. I like the way my body turned out though. I'm much faster than I used to be when I was a human. The machines contained in my body don't make a hint of noise.
My eyes have changed, though. They are still a light blue, but now they are unnatural, most likely the only thing that might give away the fact that I'm not human…well, at least by just looking at me. These eyes that I have, they are almost a signature of Dr. Gero, just like the red ribbon that is sewed onto my clothes. They aren't real, they're some sort of bionic material and the name is too long me for to bother with right now. I've never been one to get into technical stuff. My eyes see so much more than what a human can see. If I just want to see what humans see, I can do that. Attack mode lets me be aware of everything around me. I can zoom in to see something closer, as one might do with a camera. My eyes also pick up infrared. I have night vision and many other capabilities. I can assess anything I look at. It's almost as if I can think with my eyes, if you can understand that.
I went on for a few more weeks of what I call my true activation without having all of my memories present, but slowly, they started to come back. Flashes of Rachel's face and some of our more intimate moments would appear in my mind. I would see her sitting in front of the TV, or looking down at her stomach, smiling at me. I would hear her laughing and sometimes I could even remember how she used to smell and how she felt when I held her. The memories startled me because they were so jumbled and incoherent. Remember, I thought I was an android and had not been human.
It must be confusing to you, whoever is reading this. I'm sure that maybe you can't keep up with all the times that I was activated or deactivated or how stable my mind was in those times. The thing is, it was not a stable time and it was difficult for me to cope with it. Being deactivated and reactivated so many times and never really knowing who you are when you recover your senses is quite a shock.
Anyway, I would see Rachel. I remember wondering who that girl was, why did she seem so familiar? At that time, though, I was detached. I wasn't actually concerned with who she was, it was just a passing thought. I didn't care about her. I saw her and wondered why I was thinking about her when in fact to my knowledge I had never seen her before in my life. I was mainly concerned with whatever Dr. Gero told me to do. He always wanted me sparring with 18 so that we could become good fighters. Our knowledge for whatever technique we wanted to use was there already, but he wanted us to know what being in a real combat was like when our knowledge was put to the test.
He was created another android, Android 19. This one was fat and completely made of metal and wires. There was nothing human inside of 19. Dr. Gero was also making improvements to another android, one previously created called Android 16. We never really knew what he was created for until we released him. Those two androids had much less power than we had and still have. Dr. Gero thought he found a way to get around 16's clumsiness by giving Android 19 the ability to store energy from ki being thrown at him. We helped with the creation of Android 19, actually. We weren't enlisted to help the doctor, but when we weren't training we would sit and watch him as he worked on the new android and we handed him tools or held wires while he worked. It was during those times when I wasn't active that the memories would suddenly appear in my mind.
One of those nights spent secluded in the lab helping Dr. Gero was the night that I ruined Dr. Gero's plans for us. That night I had a particularly long string of memories washing over me and suddenly something inside of me clicked. I became aware of what was going on and this time, I not only understood the memories that had been haunting me for the past few weeks, but I also had memories of all that lost time from the other lapses in my memory. I understood everything. But with that understanding came anger. I wanted to get out of the lab and see Rachel. The second I remembered everything, I snapped and tried in desperately and helplessly to escape from the lab. Eighteen apparently had been hiding the fact that she too had regained her memories, though how long ago that was, I don't know. She got up from the chair she had been sitting on and punched Dr. Gero, temporarily keeping him from hindering our escape. Unfortunately, we underestimated him. While she had knocked the wind out of him, that didn't stop him from pulling out a little black remote out of his pocket. I turned around to see how far behind he was to assess how long I had before he tried to stop us. I saw that little remote in his hand and I wondered what he was doing with it. He aimed it in our general direction as he held his side and he pressed a red button. My limbs froze and then there was darkness.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Okay, I don't know if you noticed or not, but this chapter is kind of shorter than the others. The reason for that is…I don't really have one other than the fact that I couldn't think of what else to write. I wanted to end the chapter where I did, but I couldn't think of things to add in between. Anyway, just a heads up, unless I get a great burst of creativity that makes me write more than what I'm planning, there will only be 2 more chapters to this story. After that, if it's before I get out of school, you'll have to wait until the middle of June or maybe even July before I start on the parallel story.
TO ALL READERS!
I want your opinion, please e-mail me or leave a review to answer this: Do you want me to write this story making the changes needed for a Future 17 story or do you want me to continue this one or both. If I write the Future 17 one, it's going to be darker and depending if I put in all the stuff I've been thinking about putting in, I might have to post it on another site for being too graphic. But I might tone it down to an R story. I don't know. The ending for this story is basically going to be and ending, it won't really leave an opportunity for a sequel and if I continue the story it would take place a while after the ending of this story. If you want me to continue the story, then you have to give me ideas for what you want me to do, but don't worry, since you don't know the ending I'll remind you again *hopefully if I remember* in the last chapter.
TO PEOPLE ON MY MAILING LIST
I need you guys to keep updating your e-mail and sign up for the mailing list again when you change your e-mail. I know a lot of you have changed them, don't worry I do it too ;) but I've been getting a lot of my updates sent back to me because there is no address for me to send them to anymore. So, if you want to know when I update, you have to sign up again. Thanks!
That's all from me, see ya!
~Lady Branwen~