My Life as a Robot

by GottaLoveCall

XJ9's life didn't start the day that Brad broke into her room and dragged her outside. No, it started years before that in a laboratory under a bright light. Yet, everyone seems to forget about the events that lead up to that encounter. A set of cute prequel stories about XJ9 being activated and growing up before the cartoon starts.

21. Chapter 20

XJ9 had fallen into a fitful sleep with all the questions rolling around in her mind. The most prominent question being, 'What was a robot?' When she woke up in the morning, her thoughts rattled around in her mind as she got up out of bed and stretched. She walked around her room, looking over all the glowing screens with all the people and their little homes spread out across them. She shook her head and tried not to think much about it. She didn't want to think about it for some reason as it made something in her chest twist and hurt.

She opted instead to watch a little old lady slowly cross the street. The woman slowly took a step forward and picked up her cane as well. Step by step, she slowly moved on, and XJ9 found that twisty thing in her chest hurt a little again. It twisted painfully when the poor woman dropped her purse, and she almost fell trying to pick it up. Every part of her suddenly wanted to dash out of the house and down the road to wherever this old lady was. She would carry the woman's purse and help her cross the street.

Then the little lady wouldn't be trudging along so slowly and sadly. XJ9 thought about her mom for a moment and imagined her being old, she didn't know how old her mom was, and the thought made her sad. Hopefully, whatever fight thing she had to do would be over by then, and she could help her mom cross the street. Yes, yes, she would. She would go outside and go for a nice walk and help every little old lady cross the road.

The twisting in her chest stopped at that thought, and as the old lady reached the other side. She waved goodbye to the woman as she walked out of the vision of the screen. If she didn't want to go outside before, XJ9 really wanted to go out now. She wasn't entirely sure why she suddenly had a giant urge to help people, but now she was excited to do so. She looked over the other screens and watched more people walk across different streets.

All of the people were so different in how they did so. A mom held her kids' hands as they walked across one, while a teenager with headphones banged his head to the music and crossed with them. On another street, two older people crossed together and an ice cream truck, as her brain identified it as, was parked on the side and giving sweet treats to the children. A street where a policeman was riding his horse on, a road where kids were playing hockey on the concrete, and a place where motorcyclists raced down the street.

She smiled at all the people and how all of them went about their day differently. She couldn't wait to join them out there, oh she could already imagine all the fun they would have together. Hockey looked fun, and the ice cream must've been good as the children all looked so, please. She wondered if they had ice cream in their house. With an ice cream hunt in her mid, XJ9 left her room running and quickly skidded to a stop. She carefully and slowly made her way down the stairs before taking off again towards the kitchen.

She had been in there once and knew from her learning flashcards that the kitchen was supposed to have food. So she ran in there and looked all around in the cupboards and everywhere else. Eventually, she opened the fridge and looked over all of the food. She shook a jar of pickles while she was in there, and giddy watched them all float around in the liquid. She stuffed it back in there after a few minutes and then opened the freezer.

The freezer was colder than the fridge, that's what she noticed immediately. There were layers of thin ice and so many cool things inside. She fumbled around with a cold container of something and enjoyed watching the frost melt off of it in her hands. Needless to say, when Wakeman came down to the kitchen to have some coffee and saw that everything in the freezer had melted because a particular little bot liked the frost, she wasn't very amused.

Author's Note- Sorry this chapter isn't that long and it was posted later on Sunday than usual. I have a job now and today I had a morning to the afternoon shift. Thanks for reading and please leave a review they're really good for keeping my motivation up.