Chapter 2
The day's events were still stuck in my mind as I walked to my old hover that night. I looked down at my new purple gloves – what that man had given me by breaking down in front of the shop was more than I could've ever asked for. Because of him, I had met the Prince of Magix, one of the most powerful people in the dimension (as Magix is the magic center of the universe), and talked to him as if I wasn't just a "lower-class citizen." As I reached the older-model vehicle, my thoughts shifted to that of telling my android (and, ironically, best friend) Digit of the day's proceedings – man, would she be upset that she had decided to stay sleeping in my hover on such an exciting day!
I pulled the driver's side door to my hover open and sat in the comfortable seat; Digit, meanwhile, was fast asleep in the passenger's seat, curled up into a small ball. As she slept, she snored softly. This, consequently, brought a small smile to my face and caused a small chuckle to escape my lips.
I shook her tiny shoulders, as I too was very excited to tell her of the day's proceedings. "Digit...Digit, wake up," I whispered softly into her ear, "I have a something to tell you!"
"Five more minutes..." She yelled, swatting my hand away in the process.
"Fine, then I guess you don't want to know how I met the Prince, now, do you?" With that, her light blue eyes opened and sparkled with curiosity. "You met the Prince?" A small yawn escaped her lips as she tried to comprehend the situation. I let another small laugh escape my lips, as she looked at me with a newfound inquisitiveness.
"Yep." I showed her the small lifeless android in my hands. At this, Digit looked confused. "It's name it Laui," I explained to my small friend. "The Prince needed someone to fix her. Apparently, she malfunctions every time she tries to reboot. Let me show you." Leaning closer to Digit, I quickly opened the royal android and typed a reboot code. The lifeless body stirred to life yet again, only to fall onto the floor of my stationary hover.
"What did the Prince look like?" Digit said, her eyes leaving the motionless android just inches from her head. "Was he as handsome as he is on TV?"
"Man, and I thought you were 'Full of Logic'" I mocked her, using her own words against her while making little quotation signs with my fingers.
"I certainly am, all eight pounds, seven-point-nine ounces of me! So, was he?" I rolled my eyes at Digit, knowing she wouldn't give up until I gave her an answer.
"Yeah, sure - whatever floats your boat, Digit. Anyway, we have to get going home or else my stepmother will yell at me." I started the car and it made a noise only contesting with Digit's now seemingly everlasting questions about my encounter with Prince Timmy. I steered the hover out of the parking lot and turned right, heading towards the place I had now deemed "my prison," for lack of a better, more suitable term.
"Tech? Are you sure about that?" Digit said, staring down at her built-in wrist computer. A bunch of blinking dots littered the screen, coming closer to the center point with every second that passed. "The Magix Police are following us." She announced looking up at me. "They're heading right this way." I, for a minute, couldn't think why they'd be coming this way, until I realized what time it was. As of two minutes ago, it was now twelve o'clock, also known as the cyborg curfew – some inane law the city made up "to keep troublesome cyborgs away from the 'normal' townspeople in Magix late at night." Put into simple terms: "to keep pesky nobodies (cyborgs) who are assumed 'dangerous' because they are 'different' from disturbing the 'normal' townspeople of Magix." If caught, however, we can get in a lot of trouble, and considering I am never on my stepmother's good side (that is, if she has one) to start with, I don't think getting in trouble with the law would be a wise decision.
"Ok," I said after a minute of thinking about our situation, "we are going to have to make a run for it." I gripped the steering wheel tightly, turning the ignition key and placing my foot on the gas petal. "Get ready." I said narrowing my eyes at the passenger next to me.
"They will be here in exactly 16...15...14...13...12..." Digit announced and I started to hear sirens. "Go Tech! Hurry!"
I floored the petal and the hover sped out into the dimly-lit street. "Happy?" My voice was screaming just to contest with the noise of the engine. I saw Digit crinkle her nose and slowly nod her head.
"We are going 45mph…now 62." Digit told me, looking back at the blue and red lights quickly approaching. "76...Tech, you're going too fast. Slow down!" She whimpered from the seat.
"How do you expect to get out o-" I suddenly saw we weren't on the road anymore, and let go of the gas for the brake petal, pushing twice as hard. "Brace yourself!" I yelled at Digit. Then, realizing what would most likely happen next, I let go of the wheel and grabbed onto Digit and Laui, holding onto them for dear life.
Covering the both of their robot bodies, I felt a sudden jolt throughout my whole body. As this happened, a memory flooded my mind, one that I had only previously remembered in my dreams. This was the same type of jolt, the same suddenness and severity, but everything was completely crushed and surrounded by rubble. In that memory, I could only feel a horrible sensation of being buried alive until the debris was lifted from my body. I could recall being lifted from the car to safety before everything went suddenly black as the night itself.
I woke up an hour later – I could tell this because of the diagnostics running across my vision, reminding me about what had happened. Telling Digit about my encounter with the Prince. The police chase. Me holding the two androids tightly to my chest. The crash. As I thought about the last memory, still fuzzy in my mind, an internal voice, cold and unknowingly callous in sound, reverberated throughout my entire being. Rebooting in 5...4...3...2...1...Time past since shutdown: 62 minutes. 62 minutes without waking up. What could have gone on in those 3,720 seconds, I could have feared none worse than what she saw before me when I gained the courage to look around where I was. Opening my eyes, I saw myself in the one place I wished more than anything I was not at in that particular moment, the one place I could only ever try to flee from, but never succeed in doing so – my stepmother's home.
"Home again." I mumbled contemptuously under my breath as I glanced around at my room. It was always a small room, yet before my stepfather passed away, it seemed to be my perfect space, filled with just enough to keep it comfortable. Now, however, it had been stripped down to only the bare necessities – a bed made of damp, unstable wood and a mattress my "mother" had told me I was "lucky to have," along with my two only luxuries – a small window next to my makeshift bed and a small box, in which I have hidden my most precious items from her evil clutches. The room I had once treasured became a daily reminder of my oppression, and once I had left, it was the one thing I thought I would never see again.
"Of course," I muttered as the creaking of the unfinished steps that led to the room I was now in started, then became increasingly louder (by .294 decibels) with each step.
"Hey. Mother would like to see you." The voice came from the top of the staircase that led to my room (or, should I say, prison cell). Its owner was my somewhat – nice stepsister, who I had also thought I would never see again.
"Bea, what happened?" A head popped up from the steps as she slowly walked into the room; her light-brown hair bounced lightly as she ascended up the steps before coming into the near-barren room.
She glanced down the staircase, as if to watch that she was not followed, then looked at me with sympathy written on her face. "You got in an accident." She paused, looking down the staircase, as if to watch that she was not followed or being watched. She added quickly, "go talk to mother before she finds I've talked to you."
I tried to stand, but the throbbing my lower back was unbearable. I think I also broke my metal foot. That will probably cost at least two, three, maybe even four month's pay, to fix. Ugh, could this day get any worse?
Seeing me in pain, Bea rushed over to my side and draped an arm around my shoulder to help me get to the living room. She looked at me with her warm hazel eyes, saying in a soft whisper, "Need help, sis?" I nodded, smiling slightly at her remark. She always considered me to be part of the family, even though stepmother and Gigi didn't; she was one of the only things that made me smile.
I cringed at the thought of this, for I couldn't have imagined such an outcome when I was brought into my stepparent's home – everything back then was fine. Stepmother didn't really care about me, so she let me do whatever I wanted, stepfather always seemed to be extra careful and protected me from harm, Gigi usually ignored me, and Bea soon became my closest friend. But of course, when I started middle school in Magix everyone treated me differently because I was a cyborg. That's when I got the idea of wearing gloves to conceal my right hand – it, along with my foot (though because I wore shoes that covered my prosthetic foot up, I only really ever worried about my hand), were the only real, tell-tale signs of my being a cyborg.
The problem with this, however, was that as I continued to go to school, no one still ever came up and talked to me, nor myself to them, as I was too afraid of what they would think of me. I soon became lonely, so, with some quick thinking and some extra pieces of metal from my stepfather's long-forgotten inventions, I built Digit. She had the makeup of an android, yet one key part I had installed in her thinking it would not work, but did – a personality chip, also one of my stepfather's inventions (giving my worry as to its ability credibility), which gave her human-like emotions – sadness, anger, happiness, excitement, and most profoundly, curiosity – as well as a unique personality. He gave it to me just before he died – it was so sudden, not even the doctors saw it coming. I remember that day, one of the only ones on which I could feel sadness, one day where my human emotions had overcome the lack of emotions of the cyborg part of my brain. It was then that they became evil – telling me what to do, yelling at me as if I was a lower-class, inept slave, rather than a person. Only Bea stayed kind, and she thus became one of my greatest allies and one of my best friends (with only Digit to contest with).
My arm around Bea's shoulder and dread in my mind, I started hobbling towards the living room thinking about the face I wished I would never see again. The face I dreaded every day and every night for the last half of my life. The one face that could make my life as miserable as thought humanly possible, then turn it upside down once more, just for pleasure – the face of my stepmother.