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The square bustled with traffic. Humans, cyborgs, coming and leaving, all moving around a low red brick fence and the old cyborg sitting on it.
Mack sat and waited for his energy levels to balance out throughout his body. He beat his own time record in getting to the square and every circuit in his body knew that it was the last time he would do that. The faint light in his chest blinked less and less, the red in the small bulb was almost colorless. But it still blinked, and as long as it did, Mack had a chance to make his last wish come true.
He held on to the metal rose in his hands as if it was life itself, afraid to drop it, afraid he was still in the virtual network, and that this moment wasn’t real.
For years he waited for the one, and now that he was so close, he couldn’t stop worrying about whether he was ready to meet her, but mostly, that it was possibly too late. The thought gnarled at him, like rust eating into his body, and he sat on the fence afraid to leave, but even more afraid to stay, as he waited for the moment when she would come out of the crowd and he would finally get to gift his rose.
Among all the thoughts plowing through his circuits, hope was the one that held everything together, the one that held him in place. Hope was all he had left when the crowd thinned out and he was among the last few in the square.
Mack stood up and looked around. Only the regulars were there.
He walked around the fountain fence in case she couldn’t see him from where she was standing. But what if she did see him and decided to leave? The question tortured Mack until he circled back to his original spot. She wasn’t there.
Mack looked towards Sector A one last time, no one was coming or leaving. He sighed then turned and walked away.
With every step, the energy in him was draining faster than he was using it. Slowly his grip lost power and the rose fell out of his hand into a puddle of red rusty water.
Mack kept on walking, lost in thoughts, in his direction, lost as he had never been before.
Every step he took was a mystery because Mack couldn’t understand if he was walking toward something or away from it. “Home”. A goal that kept trying to get the attention of his slowly fading consciousness. But what was home? Did he even have one? And did it have the same meaning humans gave it?
Mack reached his small metal box trailer and stood in front of it. That was no home. The thing looked like a prison cell. A storage unit where he was told to spend the time when he wasn’t needed at his job.
He opened the door and walked in, there was one more thing he had to do before it was OK to leave this reality forever.
Mack picked up a hammer, and a nail, and immediately felt a little better as he thought about completing his magnum opus of pain.
He kneeled in the corner in front of the only few remaining spots on the wall and realized in terror that he was missing his raw material.
The hammer and nail dropped from his hands and Mack rushed out of the trailer retracing his steps, hoping to find the only thing left that he still cared about.
His legs were occasionally losing power, and he fell a few times, adding even more scratches to his weathered face and body. But he didn’t care. A quick rerouting of energy gave him all the power he needed to make just one more step towards his failed dream.
