Winged Memories
The Golden Ostrich
"I knew you would find him. As soon as the black MegaDeus rose up from the ground, I was certain that my darling was coming home." Mrs. Rockefeller looked up at me from her chair on the veranda, her ancient face lit with artificial sunlight. Sitting in a brass cage at her side was Sunny. "Thank you, Mr. Negotiator, and to Miss. Wayneright as well."
"You're welcome, ma'am."
"I will have the payment wired to your account," Mrs. Rockefeller said and I nodded.
"We'll be on our way then."
"Good bye."
"Good bye."
"You never told me if Schwarzwald's letter was true or not," Dorothy said in the car.
"I told you they were just the words of a lunatic."
"But you never said if he was right. Just because he is not of sound mind doesn't mean he's necessarily wrong."
I glanced over at her, her face watching me with an air of innocent curiosity.
"I'm just as much of a human as everyone else in this city. The fact that I pilot Big O doesn't make me any sort of god."
"But…everyone in this city is not human."
Mrs. Rockefeller closed her eyes as the dome begins to darken.
"I am glad you saw this through with me, Sunny. I wanted to have you here when these old memories finally put themselves to rest."
The bird adjusted his wings and murmured in his coarse voice.
"My dearest…we will not see it again. We will not have to live through what is coming."
"The end?"
"No. The beginning."
Her eyes did not open again.
I reasoned later that Schwarzwald was keeping Sunny in one of the rooms of that decrepit old factory…the ceiling was knocked away when I called for Big O, and the bird escaped into the rain. His fear of the MegaDeus must have forced him to return home without question. Or perhaps he knew that Mrs. Rockefeller was dying. At any rate, he was found at her side two days later by an old friend…Sunny was as devoid of life as his doting companion.
"Dorothy…when you said that everyone is not human, did you mean to imply that Schwarzwald was speaking the truth?" I watched her, balancing a few feet away on the railing of the roof.
"No, Roger. You're no god…you're a louse."
"And nothing more?"
"Even I am more than I appear."
"Yes, that's true."
"Roger? Does that make me the same as you?"
"In a sense. You're not so different as I thought."
The wind flirted with her skirt for a moment as she considered this in silence.
"There's nothing wrong with being different from me, Dorothy." She looked at me for the first time. I reached out and took her hand.
"Just because there's oil beneath this skin rather than blood doesn't mean you are any less of a person."
"Thank you for that…I will always remember it, just as I will always remember you, Roger Smith."
We have come to terms.
author's note: hmmm...was the ending too predictable? Well hell, something has to be familiar when you've got giant robots running around and insane memory-mongers kidnapping birds to pry into their brains. Please R thank you for reading! =D