Blog post by Jonas Sezpessy

 Mechanical Woes

The heavy metal door of science facility 9-b came crashing down. The mechanical hum, and the beeping of devices, which before had seemed deafening, were now no louder than a pin drop. Past the broken door, a man walked through the dust. His footsteps lacked the warmth of flesh, instead they contained the cold clanking of metal and the whirring of mechanical joints.

As he walked through the facility, he took no notice of the rooms he passed, rooms filled with strange devices, beings grown in tubes, or the odd hybrid animals. The man was only concerned with the last room at the end of the hall. The one labeled “Bio-Mechanics.” The room brought back painful memories, but it had been a long time since he had possessed the ability to cry.

Finally, he reached the room at the end of the hall, the room at the end, the very first room the facility had used. The door opened even though the man had done nothing. Then an old, welcoming voice said, “come in C-1.0.” So C-1.0 walked through the door.

To others, the darkness inside the room would have seemed frightening, but not for C-1.0, this is how he had been made, and this is where he had been made.

In the middle of the room, with his back turned, and tinkering with an old watch, sat a little old man. His hair was messy and gray, and he had a long unkempt beard. When C-1.0 entered, he turned around, looked up, put on a sad little smile and said, “Hello.” 

Rage was the only response that C-1.0 had in response to such a greeting. How could this man, this monster who had taken everything from him, greet him so casually? C-1.0, in his silent, mechanical fury, lunged at the old man, but was stopped by some invisible, mechanical device.

“I know you’re here to kill me--I know--and with good reason too, but in the last moments of my life, I just want someone to talk to, and you deserve an explanation.” 

There was a tired quality to the old man’s voice, as though he had just given up on some long-term goal. Being held in place by some invisible force, C-1.0 could only listen to the old man go on: “I’ve spent a long time on this earth; I spent my early years furiously studying robotics. I never thought about love or anything like that. By the time I was in my late forties and had my doctorate, most of life had completely passed me by. Then, during one research program, I met a beautiful young woman. We fell in love and got married. A year later, we had a daughter, but my wife died shortly after in a car accident.” There was a pain behind his words, but it was the kind of pain that one has had a long time to deal with. He continued, “All I had left was my daughter, but when she turned ten, she got sick and began to slowly fade away and die.”

As he was talking, the old man went around the room, tinkering with several devices. During this time, C-1.0 had slowly been regaining the ability to move, but he wanted to hear more so that he could understand why he had been hurt in such a way. 

The old man, now experiencing a much newer pain, began to struggle as he explained, “I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my little girl, but all I knew was robotics. So I designed a mechanical body for her, but I had no funding. I turned to the army. I told them I could design a supersoldier for them. They agreed and set up this facility for me to work in. I had the funding, but I couldn’t just put my daughter in an untested robot body, so I used soldiers. Amputees, cancer patients, anyone who was sick and desperate. Many died during the procedure, those that survived couldn’t bear the memory of the pain. So I had to get rid of the memory.”

C-1.0 wasn’t sure what he was hearing. 

The old man explained, “ You were one of those people, an amputee that the army thought could be repurposed. You were the first person to survive the operation, but your mind had been warped by the memory, so I had to remove your memory or the army would stop funding. That’s who you are C-1.0.”

Never in all his short memory had C-1.0 wanted to cry more. Even when he first realized that he was not just a machine but also a man, and that he was supposed to have memories, had he been this upset.

“The facility had grown around me, and my daughter’s condition was getting worse. We had managed to get rid of the pain, but the survival rate was only fifty-two percent. I was desperate and attempted the operation. That was six hours ago. I failed. Now this facility, this monument to the lengths I was willing to go to, is nothing but a horror show. So I’m getting rid of it all, the facility, me, everything!”

Suddenly, a hatch opened up at C-1.0’s feet and he fell in. When he got to the bottom, the old man yelled down, “I’m sorry for everything, Clark! When this is over, don’t let life pass you by!”

Ten seconds later, the facility and everything in it exploded.