(I told you this was going to get a little shady, I don't know if this is the big, super strong thing or something, but I'll leave you with a warning anyway.)
It was November when everything fell apart.
It started with an accident in the mines beneath the park, and ended up causing a disaster of epic proportions, there were fires, earthquakes, attractions falling apart, buildings collapsing and several people starting to fight over strange purple gems.
Stu could do nothing but watch from the top of the ramp his team had put him on, he was getting ready for a new show and all he needed was the signal to start.
But the signal never came, instead all he could hear on his audio receivers were the horrible screams of his team.
"Jake be careful!" a short, robust man shouted in vain, as a barrel of fuel detonated, blowing the so-called Jake to pieces.
"JAKE! NO!" the man shouted again desperately.
"MIKE FORGET IT AND RUN!" Fred screamed, the poor guy was not in his best moment, a column had fallen on his legs leaving him trapped.
"FRED, I WON'T LEAVE WITHOUT YOU!" that man called Mike rushed to try to help his partner out of the predicament he was in.
To his bad luck those strange gems that began to sprout from the floor made another barrel roll towards some nearby flames causing a new explosion.
pieces of metal and debris flew out like shrapnel all over the place, where sadly a piece of metal ended up separating poor Mike from his head.
"JAKE!" screamed poor Fred when he saw his friend die before his eyes, perhaps it was the shock that did not let him see that his situation was not better either.
A piece of shrapnel ended up sticking into his ribs causing him to start bleeding out until he finally succumbed from blood loss.
Stu watched from his place on high without doing anything, but what could he do after all, he was just a machine without free will, just a bunch of cables and cold steel.
One last explosion was finally the straw that broke the camel's back.
It threw a piece of the mysterious mineral directly towards Stu, getting stuck in his jacket and causing him to start falling down the ramp.
It was at that moment that the mysterious radiation of the gem took effect on the acrobat robot, something inside its software changed, something… unnatural that shouldn't exist in it, sensations that shouldn't be there or be possible to program.
It was at that moment that the mysterious radiation of the gem took effect on the acrobat robot, something inside its software changed, something… unnatural that shouldn't exist in it, sensations that shouldn't be there or be possible to program.
"W-W-What now?!, I d-didn't h-hear the s-s-signal!" he shouted to a team that no longer existed.
He quickly regained control over his balance and proceeded to accelerate fully, taking the ramp and jumping off it into the sky where he proceeded to do several somersaults to end with an almost perfect landing since he skidded a little when he arrived, but it was part of the job.
"Wow! Y-Y-You saw that was i-i-incredible, but I think m-m-maybe my auditory sensors need a-a-a-tuning, I d-didn't h-hear the signal b-b-before st-starting" he said laughing ironically as if someone had played a practical joke on him.
"Guys?" he said as his laughter turned into intrigue since there was no answer, he always heard his team commenting something after each stunt.
A couple of seconds passed that felt like an eternity before he realized that it was the first time he had said words like those to them, or at least the first time he said them in that order, those phrases were never programmed into his system.
It was at that moment that he noticed all the chaos around him, his work area was not the cleanest area but it was never in that state, there was fire spreading everywhere, several collapsed structures, pieces of debris everywhere. But what the F#$%& had happened in the place.
"G-G-Guys!" he began to scream with a feeling that was strange to him, in fact the concept of feeling was in itself an anomaly, a feeling that could be described as concern.
"Mike there y-y-you are" he said walking to the decapitated body of one of his team members and holding his head in his hands.
"Hey Mike, wha-wha-what happened here, buddy? H-h-hey, answer me."
"Oh, sure, your head came off. We just have to put it back in place and that's it, ri-ri-rigtht?"
A memory crossed his robotic mind, the time when his own head had come off after a failed stunt.
"Wow, that crash was bad. I hope the memory unit wasn't damaged, because his voice box was surely affected," said Jake.
"Don't worry, Stu is very resistant. Just a few small adjustments and he'll be as good as new, ready to roll again," replied Fred in an optimistic tone.
"It's at times like these that you're thankful Stu is a robot," said Mike. "Can you imagine if he had been a person like us? It's impossible to survive."
Impossible to survive, the phrase repeated itself over and over in his head, does that mean that Mike had died?
In itself the concept of death was not one that was in his data bank, but he had heard the word many times, not only from his team but from many others, always with a connotation that something was coming to an end and that living beings could not return from that state under normal circumstances, so it was not very difficult to assimilate the concept, of course Mike's death was not normal at all, but it was not time for technicalities.
"GUYS!" He began to scream frantically with an emotion that could only be described as desperation, it was the first time since they turned him on that he felt something like that and it was simply horrible, this thing of emotions was something new for him and he did not know how to handle them, he felt as if at any moment his wheel was going to come off its axis and he would end up crashing against the floor.
Every moment that passed, the hope of finding a member of his team was reduced to zero.
"Fred!" he said when he found what he believed was the leader of his technical team, sadly what he saw left him paralyzed, his friend was pale and did not move, his legs were trapped under a pile of rubble and he rested on a huge puddle of red liquid, he held his friend's body in his hands, and felt it as cold as himself.
Being a robot it was natural for his body to be cold to the touch, but he remembered all those times when many people had touched him, his team, Mrs. Pam, Sam, the park manager, the investors and even many of his fans who wanted to shake his hand and, in all cases, there was always a feeling of warmth to the touch. His friend's body lacked that sensation.
He continued his search for a while longer until he came across what was left of Jake, his last hope of finding one of his friends still 'working' had ended.
At that moment the sky turned black and a storm broke out over the ruins that used to be the park, it was like those movies that he and the boys used to watch, although he didn't watch them himself, they only used to play them when he was recharging his camera and they had nothing better to do than wait for his battery to charge, it always starts to rain when things go wrong.
He fixed his gaze on a puddle and glimpsed his reflection in it, it was the first time since those strange feelings surfaced that he saw himself, robots like the one that were supposed to be seen by the public had a color system built into their eyes with the function of representing the non-existent mood they were supposed to be feeling.
Yellow was for joy, enthusiasm, confidence...
Red for anger, frustration, rage...
And blue for sadness, fear, anxiety...
He looked at himself and saw that blue color in his eye along with a little oil dripping from it.
The storm put out all the fires in the area and finally he could see what was left of his show, except for the small two-story building where he and his team worked and one of its ramps that was still standing upright by a miracle, only rubble remained.
No more children's laughter, people chanting his name, his friends preparing him for the show and occasionally giving him a compliment as if he could really understand them, there was no one, for the first time perhaps since he was built, he was alone.
The blue color of his eye would accompany him almost completely for the rest of his existence.