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The Cyborg Sectors Book 1
by Alex Leu
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Amy-341 reluctantly walked down the old metallic street as she did for the past thirty years on the way to her dead-end job. The internal GPS flawlessly guided her down the same familiar footsteps which were almost ingrained in the ground. It was still dawn outside, but the metal was already steaming under her, and were it not for her silicone covered carbon fiber body, she would have tried to avoid the heat wave, but she graciously kept walking and donned her brightly colored dress as if she were heading to a fashion show rather than to the droid repair factory.
Her carefully chosen wrist watch perfectly matched her outfit. The watch was of an expensive brand she had wanted for a long time, but could not afford, and so she wore a cheap knockoff that didn't even work. Amy would look at it when around humans, but she didn't need a watch as her bio-digital brain did all the timing and paced her walking to arrive at the factory check-in station exactly when her shift started.
Passing through the factory gate, the guard greeted Amy in its regular mechanical manner, and she almost replied in the same way, but she thought herself to be better than the guard and everyone else at the factory, and so she greeted the metal faced bulky machine as if it were a human. She tried a new waving hand gesture she saw a famous ballerina do to her fans on TV. The guard displayed no emotion in response to her greeting, but, Amy was in heaven with her spot-on performance. She kept replaying the moment in her head and comparing it with the original. It was perfect. The only thing missing was someone to return the gesture.
Amy checked in and went to hide in the basement of the factory where she changed from her dress into a factory uniform. There were no locker rooms as everyone either never took off their uniforms or had their uniform painted on their metal bodies. But Amy couldn't let herself be seen on the street in that monstrosity. She had the body of a star and that's the image she wanted to play in public. It wasn't her fault that her state-assigned service to society was a factory mistake, and she would not let that destroy her life.
Many times she felt cursed and even considered unscrewing her head or jumping into a metal compressor at the factory. The only thing that kept her going was the feeling, which in Amy’s case was an electrical impulse, the feeling of hope that one day she would somehow change her assignment, even if only for a day.
She took the dress off her body and looked at herself in the glossy reflection of a metal door. Even with the slight deforming effect of the reflection, she was still a masterpiece. The system made her gracious figure, emotive face, and agile limbs — to entertain, to be bathed in the spotlight, to feel the adoration of an audience. But the curse of the factory mistake during her manufacturing plagued Amy with an in-ear state-assigned attachment that only made her capable of simple repetitive work.
As a more advanced cyborg model, Amy got a supervising position at the droid repair factory, but she stood out like a sore thumb, working only among older generation cyborgs which did not even resemble a human form. She was in hell.
Amy walked down the factory aisles vigorously scanning the work progress of her lower-class coworkers and at the same time counting the minuscule currency credits that were being added into her bank account. It was possible for a cyborg to buy their way up into society, but on her small salary, it was a dream that would take an entire life's work to fulfill.
At the end of a long and grueling day, Amy slipped into her dress and once again admired herself in the reflection. Loud clunks startled her from behind and she turned so fast that her dress stretched beyond its limit and tore a little at the waist. Amy swiftly covered the hole with her hand to hide from her passing coworker but its brain was too primitive to even notice Amy's damaged dress.
“The bliss of ignorance,” Amy thought to herself. If only she didn’t know any better, then she would be perfectly happy going through the motions, but the thoughts she was capable of, made her menial existence unbearable. She glanced back at the reflection and zoomed in on her in-ear attachment. How could such a simple device determine her entire life?
She ripped a strip of fabric from the bottom of her dress and made herself a headband. Then she used it to cover her right ear, and with it — her curse. With the remaining fabric, she stitched a patch over the hole in her dress and ran out.
Amy stood at the factory gates and stared down the path leading to her charging station that she secretly called “home”. Her internal GPS reported no accidents on the way, and if she proceeded immediately, she would get home just in time to fully recharge her batteries for the next day.
Amy touched her right ear, it was still covered. She stepped away from her government determined path and into the world. Her GPS kept rerouting the path to her charging station until she finally turned it off.
The sound of metal soon disappeared from under her feet, and she stepped onto asphalt and into the world of Sector A. Only a few blocks away, but a world of possibilities apart. It was the world of higher class cyborgs such as herself, and the world of the gods she knew as humans.
She stepped in and out of cold shadows laid by skyscrapers whose tips faded high above the clouds. The place beamed with above street level hovering car traffic, yet there was hardly any noise except the slow and steady pedestrian traffic.
Amy slowed her pace. In Sector A everyone just strolled, there were no immediate assignments to complete or places to be at. In Sector A everyone enjoyed the pleasures of higher consciousness.
She walked confidently, and for the first time, she felt that she belonged. A man sitting on a bench put his book down and locked eyes with her. Amy could tell exactly where he was looking and scanned his pupils expecting him to focus on her patched up dress, but instead, she found that his eyes glided up and down her body. He admired her legs, chest, and finally stopped on her face. She blushed.
Two women passed her by and Amy was surprised to notice a particular expression on their faces, one she was not used to in Sector B among her non-human neighbors. Looking at her body, the women displayed jealousy, which soon turned to resentment. Amy quickened her pace.
“Mommy! Mommy!” Two children ran up to Amy and clung on to her legs.
“Mommy, it's her!”
Amy froze in the middle of the street and looked down at the two little humans pulling on her hands. They must have confused her with another model who had the same look.
The children's mother approached Amy. “Please excuse them, they are very big fans of yours.”
“Flowers and bees, tall grow the trees,” the children sang. “Please do the dance,” they shouted in unison.
“You probably get this a lot,” said the mother, “but it would make their day if you could do a pirouette for them.”
The light pull of the children suddenly seemed so heavy, and Amy felt her facade go down, pulled by their tiny hands. The commotion caused everyone in the vicinity to stop. Their eyes were fixed on Amy, starstruck, in anticipation of a great performance.
Amy took a step back from the children and their mother and suddenly everyone around clapped and cheered. She flinched and looked down at the ground to hide from their hungry eyes and realized that her feet stopped in the first position of ballet.
“Flowers and bees,” the children kept singing.
She knew the melody, the words, even the dance. She watched it so many times on TV. But could she do it herself? Amy never tried to, never dared to. Even with her body, how could a factory worker like her aspire to such artistry without the talent, without the in-ear attachment?
Two cyborg police units stopped across the street and stared at Amy as they scanned her. There was no going back now, she had to go on with it.
Amy raised her hands high in the air and danced for the first time in her life. She flew like a butterfly, elated by the incredible way the dance made her feel. The TV performance of the ballerina played in Amy's head and she desperately tried to emulate it and follow all the moves.
The audience watched with their mouths open, all cherishing the moment when suddenly Amy tripped and fell to her knees.
Everyone around her froze, not understanding how something like this was even possible. Cyborgs didn’t make mistakes, they weren’t supposed to.
Amy slowly got up, pushing her body up from the weight of all the cold stares, and walked away.
“Flowers and bees...” the children cried looking at their mom.
“Cyborg — I command you to STOP!” yelled the furious mother as she rushed towards Amy dragging the children behind her.
Amy froze along with all the surrounding cyborgs. She wasn't programmed to feel fear, yet her brain circuits were experiencing somewhat of an irrational flow of electrical impulses. For the first time, she didn’t know what to do, and her right hand almost irrationally went up to her ear to cover her headband and the in-ear attachment under it, but she resisted.
The mother grabbed Amy's headband and threw it off her head. The striking red of Amy's attachment and the working class cyborgs it represented gave Amy no excuse to be on these streets, especially around humans. She was just a tool to them. She was replaceable. She was nothing.
“Impostor!” shrieked the mother and police sirens blasted the quiet street.
Amy frantically ran back to Sector B, to the metal streets, until two police cyborgs grabbed her from behind and an electric shock disabled her consciousness.
She collapsed at the intersection of the two worlds, half on the asphalt, half where she belonged, and her head hit the ground with a loud metallic clunk.
––––––––
The next morning, Amy woke up in her apartment’s charging station to a flashing warning message blocking her vision:
[Unit Amy-341, Generation 4, violated restricted area code. 5,000 credits fine applied.]
The message disappeared and with it five years of her hard-earned salary. With only 6,403 credits left in her account, she was further away from her dream than ever before. Still, the scariest part was that they went inside her bio-digital brain. Was she still the same Amy?
She quickly scanned her consciousness and was relieved to notice they only accessed her in-ear attachment.
Amy pulled the plug out of her waist and disconnected herself from the charger. She stepped out of the closet where her charging station was installed and into the second half of her tiny apartment. Reaching above the closet, Amy brought down a box of clothes. She gently lifted her dress up over her head when the patch she sewed on earlier got stuck onto a loose screw on her waist and tore the dress in half. Amy froze with her hands up.
Through the ripped dress, she looked at the dancing ballerina in the poster on her door. Her body was so fluid, balanced, perfect. Everything Amy could have been and wanted.
Amy let go of the dress and it fell to her feet. She stepped on the discarded colorful fabric and left the apartment.
In the dark hallway of her building, Amy joined a long line of robots waiting to get on the huge elevator that would take them up to the surface. On both sides of the line were hundreds of doors, like lids on the graves that Amy and her neighbors called home.
Amy was the only cyborg in this underground apartment complex of blue-collar robots, the only one who had her internal parts covered with a skin-like elastic surface. Suddenly she felt naked among the machines and regretted not putting on a dress. She turned around and tried to get back into her apartment, but the bulky robots filled the tiny hallway from side to side, and when the elevator doors opened they walked towards it and pushed Amy inside.
Ninety-nine robots crammed around her for half an hour as they waited for the elevator doors to release them on the surface.
Once out, she couldn't get back into her apartment until nighttime, so Amy donned her skin on the metal streets, basking in the rising sun as she headed to work. She looked around, scanning every passing robot's eyes hoping that at least one would scan her body. But how could they? To them, she was just another cog in the machine. On the other side of town, in Sector A, it would have been a crime for cyborgs to get out undressed, but here in the machine city, Sector B, nobody even noticed. Her beauty was wasted among these simpletons.
The guard at the factory gate greeted Amy, and it almost made her day, but she realized that it was the same mechanical greeting he gave her every time. She rushed to her changing spot and frantically searched for her uniform.
The faded blue fabric hid Amy's skin, and she felt relieved, protected, until she saw herself in a reflection and an unbearable sense of disgust took over her. She punched her reflection in the metal door and the indentation distorted the image, even more, when suddenly she noticed something. Leaning closer to her reflection, Amy saw a dent in her forehead and a small skin cut that gave way to the black viscous liquid flowing through her body.
Amy examined her wound and could not remember when it happened. She played the previous day's events in her head and felt the electric jolt from the police cyborgs right before the metal ground rushed into her face.
She replayed the moment over and over, punishing herself with the sensory memory of the electric jolt as she watched the frantic movements of her electrocuted body in the distorted reflection.
The factory bell stopped her manic dance and signaled the start of her shift. It was the first time she wasn't on the factory floor on time. How could she show up to work like this? Amy looked around for something to cover her wound but all she could see were metal parts. She ripped one of her sleeves and tied it around her head.
Walking down the aisles, Amy wished she could take advantage of her position and get fixed there. She envied the dumb and careless metal bodies traveling on the assembly line, but the thought repulsed her, and she hated herself for even thinking of it.
At the end of another tiring workday, Amy’s account grew by a few more credits, an amount she decided not to get upset about. Considering her recent fine, she was happy with anything.
Amy got out of the factory gate and scanned the area for cyborg repair shops. Her body stood still while her mind searched for options. There were none in Sector B, and to repair her advanced cyborg body she would have to work for a few more years until she could afford it.
Amy touched the fabric covering her wound. She bled and the black liquid glued the fabric to her skin. She pulled the fabric and felt the skin cut get bigger. The liquid flowed and a black drop descended her forehead and blotted her right eye, engulfing her world in darkness and desperation.
All the robot workers walked past Amy to their charging stations and soon the factory gates closed behind her. She stood there until the street lights lit above her, until the loud horn of a street cleaning robot got her to move, until she was the only one on the streets of Sector B.
Amy wandered aimlessly down the dark and empty alleys when a flashing message filled her vision:
[Low Battery. Current Status 14%. Recharge Immediately.]
She stopped to calculate the route back to her apartment and immediately felt the electrical impulse which controlled her feet move down the spine all the way to her toes. Yet there was no movement. Amy stood there in the middle of the street watching her battery drain bit by bit.
The battery message kept invading her vision until she turned the safety system off. Her hearing got worse, and as her battery was dying, Amy soon lost the ability to speak and emote. Her systems shut down one by one and a sense of fear took over her as she was slowly losing herself. But even scarier to her was the realization that she didn’t feel compelled to do anything about it.
Soon her vision turned off and Amy was trapped in total darkness. She couldn't hear or see, and there was barely any energy left for her to walk.
From the deep black abyss of her consciousness, a shape emerged before her. It was the ballerina from the poster in her apartment. She graciously leaped out of the poster and pirouetted on her toe then bowed to the applause of an invisible audience. Amy redirected all the energy left in her battery, and stretching her hands, she winded herself into a pirouette, but before she could bow, she lost her balance and fell hard on the metal ground. The loud thud resonated through her body, and she felt a new dent form on her head.
Amy looked around searching for the ballerina, but all she could see was a large audience booing her epic failure.
“Why?! Why did they give me the desire and take away the possibility?”
The worst of all was the hope. In spite of everything, she still hoped that it could happen one day.
Out of the darkness, a bright red shape appeared. Against Amy's will, her built-in survival protocol turned on the infrared vision. The shape moved and based on its heat signature it was definitely a human. Amy never saw one in this part of town, but what surprised her even more, were the anomalies in the human's body structure marked by gaps in its bright red shape.
She scanned the heart area and couldn't detect a heartbeat even though there was definitely something hot pulsing through the human's veins. Was this a cyborg with human body parts or a human with cyborg augmentations? But something else was strange about it. Amy kept analyzing the body trying to pinpoint the problem until it dawned on her — it didn’t have an in-ear attachment. Only higher class humans and cyborgs were free of state service assignments, but this one was definitely a commoner. How was this possible?
Amy performed an analysis of her power resources and redirected all the energy to her motor skills. Her hands pushed against the ground, and after struggling to get up, she limped towards the shape.
A flat surface hit her body as she walked into a wall and Amy guided herself along the surface until she reached a door. The red shape was in the basement of this building and it was surrounded by a few blue hollow shapes — cyborgs, or droids. Amy tried the door handle but it was locked. She forced it and almost broke it but didn’t have enough energy. She knocked. Again, and again, until the shapes moved towards her. The vibrations of their heavy steps on metal were getting stronger but Amy felt them less and less as her battery reached a critical point. The door opened and Amy collapsed inside.
––––––––
[System Reboot. Unauthorized Power Source Detected. Accept or Decline?]
They got inside. Inside her head! Her consciousness was exposed and potentially harmed. Amy was terrified of waking up in the morning and walking to her job like everyone else, terrified of following someone else's dream, terrified of forgetting hers. She declined.
The message appeared again and Amy declined it.
An empty flashing square popped up and a message was typed:
[you can either turn on by yourself or I'll force you...]
Amy was completely horrified. A stream of conflicting impulses ran through her circuits pulling her in different directions. Suddenly the unauthorized message appeared again. Amy chose [Decline] but nothing happened.
[Accept] was selected and Amy's body was jolted by a stream of electricity as all her vital systems turned back on.
A bulky human male appeared in front of her. It was the red shape she had seen earlier and she immediately recognized it because of the mechanical body parts. All his joints were made from carbon fiber, his heart and chest were reinforced, and his vision enhanced by lens implants.
Amy moved her hands but they were strapped down to a dentist's chair. Her body tensed and shook as she fought the straps, slowly stretching the unbreakable fabric.
“Easy girl,” the man spoke in a raspy, almost digital voice. “Calm down before you break your limbs.”
Amy stopped fighting when she noticed the metal saws hanging on the walls, the sharp piercing blades, and especially the many cyborg limbs and severed cyborg heads. Deep down, a part of her was happy to be there, her pain reached a limit she was no longer able to bear.
“Can you take care of her later?” someone shouted behind Amy. “I got here first!” The rusty movements gave away the cheap body parts of several cyborgs.
“For the pennies you pay me,” the man shouted back, “you should be thankful I even bother with you.”
The cyborgs got quiet and Amy was a bit disappointed to find herself in a makeshift repair shop.
The man turned to Amy and looked straight into her eyes.
“Brace yourself, honey, it's gonna hurt a little.”
He snagged a cable from Amy's ear and she felt a sharp sting of current hit her head, and then her entire body jolted as a few sparks flew away from her ear.
[Unauthorized connection terminated.]
Amy closed the flashing screen in her vision and was shocked to see the man holding her red in-ear attachment in his hand.
“Stay still, you'll be up and running in a second,” he said.
Amy didn’t even get a chance to react when with a fast motion he snapped the attachment back into her ear.
For a split-second, she found herself back at the assembly factory, on that fateful day that cursed her with a factory job for life, but then it all went away when she realized that her curse had been removed from her only a few moments ago. She froze in her seat.
“How...? How did you do it?” she said.
The man freed her hands and feet from the straps.
“You can thank those guys, or girls, you decide.” he pointed at the cyborgs behind Amy.
All their body parts were mismatched and of different colors, assembled from the parts of several cyborg models. In some cases the length of their limbs was a little off too, giving them an odd shape.
“They carried you down here,” the man said, “all I did was plug you in. You desperately needed some juice.”
Amy got up, but he pushed her back in the chair pointing at the cable sticking out of her waist.
“Unless you're looking to black out again, you better fill your battery a little before you leave.”
“Might as well give him an arm before he rips you off,” laughed one of the cyborgs.
“The charge is free,” said the man, “but if you want those dents fixed, it will cost you.”
Amy looked around and recognized some tools from the factory where she worked, others seemed custom-made. A box stuck out to her. Through its see-through plastic walls, she saw an assortment of in-ear attachments just like hers.
“How much?”
“The forehead will be around a thousand, the other patch...”
“No, how much for that?”
He followed her gaze to the box and smiled.
“Ah, you're one of those...”
He grabbed the box and put it on Amy's lap. She tried to hide her excitement but her big smile gave it away.
“Go ahead, pick one”.
Amy carefully opened the lid and stared at the sea of endless possibilities.
From the minuscule barcodes on the side of each in-ear attachment, she could determine their purpose. There were attachments for drivers, cooks, guards, construction workers, even police units.
Amy looked at the cyborgs behind her, at their numerous modifications and extra gadgets.
“Did you help them too?”
“More like broke us,” one of them laughed sadly.
“Shut up Mickey,” the man laughed back. “You were a lost cause before you got here.”
“How does this work?” she said.
“It will require an investment and then you would get a whole new occupation, sometimes even a new charging station.”
Amy looked down at the box. She put the lid on it and handed it to him.
“Hey, don't give up.” He opened the box and took out an attachment. “You can be a great guard, babysitter, or even a driver!”
“Can you make me a...?” she looked at the curious cyborgs behind her then got closer to the man and whispered in his ear.
“Hmm... let me see.”
He looked through the attachments, taking them one by one and examining their barcode. Amy stopped his searching hand.
“It's OK...”
“No, it's not. I never let a client down. I can probably find it for you, but since it is such a special request, it will cost a little extra.”
Amy's eyes lit up, then as she counted her credits, the light in her eyes faded into a cold stare. She stood up. He grabbed her hand but she pulled away.
“I can't afford it.”
“You can't afford not to!”
He got uncomfortably close to her and whispered in her ear. “I've never done this, but I'll give it to you for free.”
Amy got even closer to him and embraced him. Embarrassed, she pulled away.
“Why? How?”
“I know a dancer who'll lend it to me, but you have to bring it back the next day. Deal?”
Afraid of embarrassing herself again, Amy nodded.
“Good, come see me tomorrow.”
Amy stumbled out of the workshop ecstatically and ran to her apartment. Once inside, she closed the door and faced the ballerina on the poster. Soon that could be her. It will be her.
She plugged the charging cable into her waist and settled into the closet for the night. The poster glowed in the darkness and Amy stared at it all night trying to imagine herself on it, on the stage, but couldn't. What if her destiny was not a factory mistake but a reflection of her abilities?
In the morning Amy unplugged the charging cable and looked at the poster one more time. She reached to touch the graceful ballerina, and in a moment that she could not explain even to herself, she ripped the poster to shreds and walked over its torn fragments as she headed to work.
The factory aisles seemed longer than usual that day. Amy walked through the aisles fidgeting with her uniform, almost suffocating in it, and had to force her hands away from it to focus on the job.
A machine stopped working and she approached it. It seemed the robot operating it lost power. Amy replugged the robot and the machine revved on, spitting dark oil all over her face. The dark liquid blinded her eyes and she felt it getting under her skin. How could she ever be a dancer when she couldn't even do this job well?
After work, she washed the machine oil off her face. Her skin shined like new, but the oil stayed on her face for so long that it got inside her pores and dried in some spots, leaving her alabaster skin with black freckles. Amy felt so embarrassed that she waited for the sun to go down to avoid being seen like this on the streets.
Chased out by the security robots, she stood at the factory gates looking down the only road that led to it as her GPS kept switching between her apartment and her dream. Amy finally walked down the road, leaving the factory gates farther and farther behind. It was a familiar feeling to walk the same steps she did for the past thirty years. It was safe, predictable, it even felt good.
Amy reached her apartment building and stood in line for the elevator among hundreds of robots, waiting to be taken down underground back to their charging stations.
The heat was unbearable but it didn’t matter to any of them. Their metal bodies couldn't care less about the heavy layer of machine oil stains that was melting into their body parts in this high temperature. Each wore the stains of their job on their thick uniforms or their skin. Amy felt like she belonged there, she was part of a family without whom society wouldn't function. She was fulfilling her duty, and she was great at it.
The boiling temperature warmed Amy's skin so much that the black freckles began to melt, and she felt a tiny drop push its way out of a skin pore and flow down her cheek, leaving a black trail behind. One after the other, the freckles melted until her face was covered in black trails.
The elevator doors opened and the crowd pushed her inside. Sucked into the elevator, into her dead-end existence, Amy turned around and pushed back against the metal giants but her feet slid backward. She climbed on a robot and leaped above the crowd, stepping on their shoulders and heads as she ran to the exit. The building doors opened with a bang freeing Amy as she ran out.
Once she reached the man's basement, Amy banged hard on the door causing the walls to shake. When the door finally opened, she almost hit the man in the face, and if it weren’t for his cyborg limbs, she would have killed him, but he managed to catch her hand.
Amy followed him downstairs and he sat her in the chair. He approached a blank section of the wall and pressed his hand on it. Suddenly, a square section of the wall around his hand pushed itself out and slid down against the wall revealing a secret safe. He reached inside and got out a small box then sat next to Amy.
“The dancer I know let me borrow it for one day,” he said. “So please bring this back tomorrow before midnight.”
Amy nodded, excited. “Thank you.”
He strapped Amy into the chair then plugged a few cables into her waist. After typing a few commands in his makeshift control console, Amy shut down.
[System reboot...]
[Unit Amy-341... Update in progress...]
[Accept new assignment: Yes / No]
Amy promptly accepted and woke up.
The man was standing next to her and typing into the console.
“Welcome back, honey!”
“Something is wrong," she said. "I don't feel any different.”
“That's normal, it will take a few minutes for the changes to kick in.”
He placed Amy's original ear attachment in the box then unstrapped her from the chair.
“Now what?” she said.
“Now the show begins. Search through your memory data bank.”
“No... No! It can't be!”
“Yes, you're going to replace my friend for a day. Now rest and recharge, you'll have a busy day tomorrow.”
––––––––
In the morning, Amy stepped out of the door and watched the armies of robots passing her by. She felt so lucky to be out of the slave herd, at least for a day.
The GPS guided her to the edge of Sector B and once again she stood at the intersection of worlds, only now she had the right, but more importantly, she felt that she belonged on the other side.
Amy crossed the threshold into Sector A and immediately felt the multitude of eyes watching her. Even in her work uniform, underneath her scars and dirty skin, she still possessed a rare statuesque beauty that the many stares envied. She quickened her pace.
Reaching her destination, Amy found herself in front of a huge white stone building. Above tall marble columns, enormous carved-in letters read “Theater of Opera and Ballet.” She gasped realizing that it was the same theater mentioned in the poster she had.
But now what? She searched her memory and found directions leading inside the building, and it seemed that she was late for something.
Amy rushed past a security guard and down to the basement of the building when she stopped and stared at something. It was a check-in station, just like the one she used every day at the factory. She approached it cautiously and...
“What are you waiting for?!” A rugged old voice startled her and Amy turned to see an old woman.
“This better be the last time you're late Crystal, get your ass in the dressing room!”
Amy checked in and ran to the dressing room.
“And take that hideous thing off you, don't ever show up in that again!” the woman yelled after her.
Passing in front of a huge mirror, Amy saw herself and the work uniform she was still wearing. What if they discover her? She thought about going back when a line of fully dressed ballerinas ran past her. One of them stopped.
“Crystal? What happened to your face? Come, let's get you fixed up, your solo is up soon.”
Her solo! Amy was both ecstatic and extremely nervous, but she mustered enough courage to follow the ballerina inside the dressing room where Amy was immediately seated in front of a brightly lit mirror.
Several cyborg assistants began working on Amy, and in a few minutes, she was sparkling like new. Her skin cuts were fixed, the black freckles gone, and the uniform taken off of her.
Amy got up and slowly approached the mirror in disbelief. Staring back at her from the reflection was the ballerina from her poster. Amy walked backward and fell into the chair.
The cyborgs continued to work on Amy and dressed her in a white chiffon dress. This was the final touch and she was now an identical replica of the poster ballerina.
“Ready!” said one of the cyborgs and Amy was escorted to another floor. A few ballerinas joined behind her in a line, and with every step, they got closer to their destination, a very peculiar sound got louder and louder.
It was the sound of applause and cheering. Just like she imagined, only so much louder.
Amy's fingers clenched onto the dress as she stepped closer to the stage and stopped to wait behind the curtain. The orchestra ended a tune and all the ballerina's aligned themselves behind Amy. It was her moment, the one she dreamed of, the moment she lived for.
A green light flashed above Amy and the music started. Her legs flew forward and she sprinted onto the stage, as light as a feather, and more gracious than she's ever been. She felt like, moved like, and finally was the ballerina from her poster.
The audience couldn't take their eyes away from Amy as they hung on her every step, every gesture, and every pirouette. She led the entire band of beautiful dancers and the music followed her to perfection, the conductor adjusting every musical accent to her dance.
Her legs barely touched the floor, gliding above it like a white swan on a lake. Her gestures so precise, her face so emotive, her dance so perfect and touching, it was as if she was born for the stage.
Amy gracefully rose into a pirouette and flew high above the stage. Surrounded by the speechless audience and the many ballerinas who have taken her lead the entire performance, she was at the peak of her life.
The music reached a crescendo and culminated in a dramatic ascent as Amy descended from her high and graciously fell dead on the floor.
A grand silence took over the entire auditorium. The audience was in shock, crying, in awe. Amy watched their faces, and for the first time in her life, she experienced joy. It grew inside her, warming all her circuits. She delicately rose and the audience exploded with cheers and applause. A wave of colorful flowers landed at her feet and Amy bowed several times then called for her co-stars and bowed together with them. Amy was a star.
The curtains closed, and with it — her dream.
Amy was taken back to the dressing room and sat in front of the brightly lit mirror. Cyborg assistants began undressing her and removing the makeup until she was once again her old self. Someone handed Amy a dirty stained garment and it took her a few moments to realize that it was her uniform, her prison.
Amy glanced at the beautiful dress she wore. It was so perfect. So her. But not anymore.
She took the uniform and slowly put it on, submerging her white and delicate skin in a dirty, stained, and faded blue. She felt ashamed and quickly left the dressing room afraid that anyone would notice her real self.
Amy ran to the exit when she caught her reflection in a mirror. The ballerina was gone. She saw the dirty bum destined to fix droids. Her eyes moved up and down the body that had just entertained a full auditorium. She admired her graceful legs, slim figure, and her now faded smile, then her eyes stopped on her right ear.
The attachment was gone.
Amy frantically searched her pockets but it wasn't there. She covered her ear with a hand and ran back to the dressing room but wasn't allowed inside.
She desperately ran to the auditorium. At the door, a guard stopped and scanned her but could not establish Amy's identity and blocked her from entering the stage, the same stage that just a few minutes ago she graced with her majestic dance.
How would she return the ear attachment to the man? She couldn't get back without it. She wouldn't be able to get back in Sector B at all.
Amy went around the stage and tried to break in through another door when the alarm went off.
Security guards ordered her to stop and rushed after her but she ran away, getting lost in the building until finally, she managed to escape their tasers and guns by hiding in a dark closet.
Amy stood in the darkness. Unseen. Unheard. It felt as if she'd been there her entire life. Was she ever going to come out? Was she ever going to hear the beautiful sound of cheers and applause? Was she ever going to dance?
The alarm siren turned off and Amy was engulfed by the black mass surrounding her. Everything was over, she had no way back, no future, no identity. She was just a piece of scrap metal that no one cared about or would notice that she was gone.
Amy collapsed on the floor and slammed her head against the cold cement. Hot and viscous machine oil slid down her face from a new dent and injury.
She didn’t care, not anymore, and stayed on the floor with her ear pressed against the cement when she felt a vibration coming from somewhere deep down in the building. It wasn't a machine, it wasn't someone's steps. It was music, the same beautiful music that set her free on the stage.
Amy pushed herself up and danced in the darkness trying to keep up with the music. But something was off. She felt clunky, slow, she was awful. She stopped and touched the empty spot in her ear where the key to her dreams was supposed to be. How could she lose it? How could she be so stupid to let this happen? Maybe, she didn’t deserve it, or maybe she was only destined to serve others and not herself.
Amy slowly opened the closet door and peeked out into the hallway. The music filled the empty building, calling Amy with its sweet melody, and she followed it around corners and down long winding stairs, and across dark hallways until she found it.
Down in the basement, Amy stopped in front of a half-open door leading into a big rehearsal studio with mirrors on its walls. Inside, a beautiful figure danced alone with her eyes closed. It was the ballerina from the poster, the one Amy admired her entire life. Amy watched her dance and was in awe of her every move. She would never be able to dance like that.
Suddenly, the ballerina stopped and stared at Amy who was now deep inside the studio and very close to the ballerina. They stared at each other, both realizing that they looked completely identical. Made in the same factory, probably the same day. And only an accident threw Amy into a world she did not understand, a world in which she did not belong.
“You dance so beautifully,” Amy said. “Please, don't mind me.”
The ballerina graciously bowed and continued. Amy watched her majestic dance and imagined herself up on the stage filling everyone's heart with joy. It was a beautiful dream that was ruthlessly interrupted when Amy caught a glimpse of their reflection in the mirror. Amy smirked ironically at her dirty uniform next to the beautiful chiffon dress the ballerina was wearing.
Still smiling, Amy approached the ballerina and pushed her into the mirror. Her fragile head fractured the mirror creating a ripple of cracks from the blow and the ballerina collapsed on the glass shards. Amy stepped on her limbs and joints, crushing them. Her many years at the factory taught Amy exactly where the weak points of any cyborg were, and she took advantage of that knowledge, viciously destroying the ballerina's body.
Amy stepped on her chest and pulled her arms away, watching the skin extend and rip to shreds, the black machine oil flow out of her, the cables and tendons rip, and the metal bones break.
The ballerina didn’t say a word. She didn’t know how to react to this, she was not built to expect it or understand it, and neither did Amy, but she stood next to the motionless body and somehow felt good.
Amy kneeled on the glass shards next to the ballerina and turned her shaking head to see her face.
“I'm sorry,” said Amy and waited for a reaction, but there was none.
She banged the ballerina's head into the floor over and over until it cracked open then ripped away the ballerina's ear attachment and inserted it into her right ear.
Amy felt at peace. Complete.
She got up and saw her reflection in the cracked mirror then looked down at the dismembered ballerina on the floor. The music was still playing but Amy couldn't hear it, she didn’t even feel the glass shards that pierced her feet and knees, she didn’t feel anything.
Amy turned around and ran as fast as her body allowed her, all the way back to the door where it all started. The man rushed her inside and scolded her for bringing the attachment so late. He installed back her old attachment and chased Amy out, telling her to never come back.
Back in her apartment, Amy stepped in something that wasn't there before and looking down she noticed the ripped pieces of the ballerina poster. It hurt her, every piece of paper stinging her feet like broken glass. She collapsed from the pain and laid on the floor until her battery died.
––––––––
[Unit Amy-341, for violating your travel restrictions, disrupting factory workflow, engaging in state service that was not assigned to you, requesting and accepting services from a criminal, and for destroying the body of a well-respected cyborg — you will be fined 28,691 credits. Due to your inability to pay, you will be stripped of your state service assignment and relocated to Sector C until your fine is paid in full. Case closed.]
A huge armored truck opened its thick metal doors and the back wall pushed Amy out along with many other cyborgs and older generation robots onto a pile of garbage. Once empty, the truck closed its doors. A cyborg tried to sneak back in but its body was trapped between the doors and cut in half and its legs fell to the ground on top of scrap metal.
The truck drove away and left Amy in the prison slum that was called Sector C. It was the place where dysfunctional robots ended up, where those deemed unfit for society were sent to and promised a return to the other sectors once their fines would be paid off. But without a structure in place, there were very few ways to earn credits there, and those who tried to, eventually turned to rust before they could pay back anything. And there was a lot of rust there. No one could make a step without landing on old metal that cracked under their feet.
Soon, like the rest of everyone there, Amy's feet were covered in rust, a faded orange that was creeping up her body. But she was determined to get back, to pay her fine, determined to dance again.
She walked the entire sector looking for a way to earn credits, or at least get assigned a new function, but there were more than enough factory workers and her body was not built to perform other jobs.
Her debt kept increasing as charging stations cost credits too, so just to stay alive she kept getting deeper and deeper in debt. Eventually, she was forced to sell a few body parts and exchange them for older generation ones to lower her debt. Amy's soft milky skin was cut and her carbon fiber limbs ripped away from her body and replaced with plain metal ones. There was already rust on her new limbs and Amy kept cleaning herself to maintain them, but with every layer of rust she removed, her body got thinner and weaker.
Soon she found a job and was given the chance to earn credits. An old man learned of her dream and was able to assign Amy a position in his small establishment. It was an underground place where humans came from Sector A to relax and appreciate the local talent.
The old man handed Amy a beautiful dress and as soon as she put it on he pushed her on stage in front of a metal pole. She was a dancer again.
Amy worked there for more years than she could remember or care to. And, as the cigarette smoke sank deeper into her skin, as the spilled beer rusted the soles of her feet, slowly her credits grew, and she got closer to the stage she belonged on, until finally, she was able to pay her fine and leave Sector C.
––––––––
Amy got on the same garbage truck that dumped her there many years ago and was driven back to Sector B and dropped in front of her old apartment building. Everything stayed the same, except for her.
After getting her state service assignment back, along with her old ear attachment, she returned to the factory, but the guard at the gate didn’t recognize her.
When her work shift ended, Amy hid in the basement waiting for the sun to go down, then roamed the streets looking for that kind man who once let her truly live. She asked around and knocked on doors but was chased away like a stray dog. It was harder to find him than she thought, but Amy couldn’t give up. Not now. Not ever. Otherwise, all those years in Sector C would have been in vain.
So she searched and searched until finally, she stumbled upon a drunken old bum, half man half machine. It was him. She smiled.
Amy lifted his unconscious body from the ground and propped him up against a wall.
“Hey,” she gently slapped him. “Wake up.”
He moaned and groaned then slowly opened his eyes.
“Can you help me, can you do it again?”
“Who are you?”
“It's me...”
Amy stared at him, hoping he'd remember, but how could he when even she could not recognize herself anymore.
“Can you please help me to be a ballerina again?”
“What do I get for it?”
“Thirty-six credits, that's all I have. Please!”
“Deal. Come closer.”
The man laid her head on his lap and opened the left side of his jacket, revealing several rows of tiny barcode stickers stuck to the inside fabric.
“So, you want to dance?" he said searching for a particular sticker. "Oh, here it is!”
He took out a sticker and held it in front of Amy's ear attachment until it scanned the new code, then he peeled the back of the new sticker and stuck it on top of the old barcode of Amy's ear attachment.
“Done, now go dance,” said the old man.
“But wait, that's not how it works,” she said. “Do it how you did it the first time!”
“I did the same thing, just turned you off for show.”
“But how...? Why...?”
“All I did was give you permission, you had the rest programmed in you from the beginning.”
The words echoed in Amy's consciousness, getting louder and louder until an immense pressure built up inside her head and the image in her eyes blurred. She struggled to keep her balance and fell to her knees.
“Now if you'll excuse me," said the old man, "I have some credits to spend.”
She watched the man walk away, stumbling and falling until he was gone.
Her GPS suddenly turned on, guiding Amy to the big white building where she once graced the stage with her majestic dance and brought people to tears. She would never be able to do it again, not in her current body. She would only stain the stage with the rust from her feet. But were her pirouettes even as good as her dancing in Sector C? Amy remembered the smoggy, low-lit atmosphere of the club she danced in, and the old man who saved her, the only one who really believed in her.
Amy ripped the barcode sticker off her ear attachment then got up and went after the drunk.
She caught up with him and grabbing his hand she pushed the sticker into his palm.
He looked at the sticker, at the great opportunity he had given her. A few years ago he would have helped her, maybe even do it for free, but the thirst ate at him, sucking his humanity. Who was she to refuse his gift? He glanced at her body, at what was left of it. Her rusty limbs and stained skin turned his stomach. He smirked. “There are no refunds here, old lady.”
Amy stared at him. “I'm not asking for one.”
She forced open his jacket and put the sticker back in with the rest then pushed him to the ground and smashed his head in a mud puddle. He fought back, but Amy kept him down for a while, long enough until he stopped trying to get up, until he stopped moving at all.
In less than one day Amy was dumped by the garbage truck in Sector C. All her new traveling companions were desperate and lost, but not her. She confidently walked home to the dark and smoggy club, put on her dress, walked on stage and danced.
