Created

Chapter Twenty-Six

"I can't," I announced when I walked back into Erik's lab. "I can't do it anymore." Looking up from whatever he and Melissa were working on at a table a few feet from where I stood, Erik raised an inquisitive eyebrow and set down the papers he held.
"Can't do what?" he asked, sounding concerned. "Are you alright?" Alright? I was a lot less than alright. My guilt was killing me. I thought I might die of the aching discomfort it was causing me. All I could think about during that night with Arta was how I was just another guy lying my way into her heart. I wasn't any different from any other guy she'd ever trusted and been wrong about. And... my honesty was what she loved about me. She had told me she loved how real I was and how I didn't have to fake anything. And all the while, I was keeping the biggest secret of all from her. I was not who she thought I was.

I wasn't from Wisconsin, I wasn't allergic to dust, and worst of all-I wasn't human.

My lies were piling up and already I could not see myself through them to understand who I was underneath.

"I'm not alright," I summed up my thoughts with a weary and disheartened sigh and made my way to a chair so I could sit. I was exhausted physically and mentally. I felt fragile and unpredictable, liable to turn to either extremes of emotion due to my disastrously fatigued and wearisome mind. I was warring with myself ceaselessly over the issue of my untruths.

Such was my troubled mental state and I was struggling not to be unpleasant or angry, even though that was one of my first reactions when faced with such turmoil, I'm ashamed to admit.

"Well, what's going on?" Melissa asked. "What's keeping you from being alright?" For a second, I almost wanted to brush her question off, tell them I was just tired and not think about my problems, which would be easier, but I knew I couldn't do that. I knew I had to face it now, no matter how ugly it was.

"It's all these lies," I moaned and hunched over myself, one hand rubbing circles into my temples. I had seen it on television, but it was not helping the headache that was slowly pounding its way into my head. "I just can't keep telling them. I'm killing myself over it. Do you know what she told me today? She told me that she valued my honesty. She liked me because I'm me. But... I'm not. If that makes any sense. And I can't stand deceiving her." A few seconds of silence passed after I spoke and they echoed in my ears louder than anything I could have screamed. The lack of words from my friends only served to convince me in my guilt; there was no other way out. There was nothing to do but tell Arta-I had to-Nothing else would relieve me of my nagging guilt, nothing else would help me feel better about myself and absolutely nothing else would reassure me that Artas heart would be safe.

It was the right thing to do, the decent thing. She deserved to know that much.

"I... I am so sorry, Adam..," Erik finally broke the silence with a somber whisper. He met my eyes and the remorse and pity on his face was obvious. He felt my guilt, sorrow and uncertainty as acutely as I did, I realized as I read the emotions displayed so clearly on his face. We stood there like that for another few seconds, sharing a moment of identical emotions, before Melissa spoke.

"Adam, you mustn't tell her anything," she warned in a low voice, disregarding everything I had just said. "You can't let her know." In seconds, a rage I'd never known until that instant boiled up fiercely inside me. No, I shouldn't say I'd not known it before. This was the very rage that I had been holding back the beginnings of only minutes ago when I sat down. But before I could calm my tired and irrational mind down, the angry thoughts zoomed through my head and embedded themselves in my thoughts and before I knew it, I was thinking them. I was balling my hands into fists and gritting my teeth.

Did she not hear a single thing I had just said? Did she not understand?! I could not lie to Arta anymore. I couldn't!! It was killing me! And I had explained that to them both! So how could Melissa then just stand there and tell me again, as nonchalantly as she could possibly muster, to lie more?!

"And why not?!" I wheeled on Melissa furiously with anger and uncontrollable emotions that I had not even dreamt of before then. All of a sudden, all I wanted to do was yell and scream at who ever was unlucky enough to dare cross me. My normally mild and shy nature was gone in the blink of an eye and replaced with an unpredictable, raging lunatic and looking back, I'm so ashamed of even thinking of acting in that manner.

"Why not?!" I demanded once more, barely seeing the shocked and appalled look on Melissa's face. "I just told you that I can't do it anymore! I just told you this!! And what's the worst that could happen? She gets a little surprised, shocker. She asks you for your blueprints. Life moves on." The frightened and stunned expression on Melissa's face changed in an instant to an expression of outrage and fury.

"Excuse me?" She hissed sassily, exactly as her defensive and attacking nature called for. She hit me as hard as she could on her first go, and I really should have expected the sting in her verbal blows. I'd heard her burn Arta enough times to know that I'd go up in fast, fast flames, but I didn't stop to think about it. I had poked the bear, and now I had to fight it or run. "Are you really that blind? Arta would tear you to shreds to see what makes you tick!! Ask for blueprints, ha! That's a freakin' laugh!! Life moves on-for the rest of us, but we'll see how well you're doing in pieces on a table in her lab!" For an instant (and I've explained that I shouldn't have been surprised), I was stunned into silence by Melissa's haughty and bitter retort and half of me wanted to back down, apologize right there and go crawl in a corner to die of embarrassment. But another half of me, the half I'd just discovered, raged on in a violent fit. And its battle cry was far louder than the still, small voice telling me to apologize.

Then, I did another thing that I'm not proud of. It wasn't necessarily the action, per say, but it was the thought process that led me to that action that disgusts me. Now, I knew I wasn't small and scrawny. I knew I was of a broader, stronger build than even Erik and I knew for a fact that if I stood up and squared my shoulders, planted my feet, I could be really intimidating. So... I did. I stood and towered practically a foot over Melissa's head, glowering down at her with bitter anger. I had wanted her to be afraid. I had wanted her to falter a little, to stop and be scared. Looking back at that, I shudder a little. How awful is that? How disgusting a person do you have to be to want to make your friends fearful of you? I doubt Melissa or Erik had ever seen me stand like that. I usually walked with shoulders hunched in, leaning down a little so I wasn't the tallest person in the room. I didn't want to be noticed! But now... Now, I wanted to be noticed and more. I wanted them to be scared! How sick, how twisted? I am repulsed to think about it again.

"How dare you suggest something like that!!" I spat furiously, now on my feet and glaring. Melissa, ever my confident creator, didn't bat an eye. She stared back head-on, looking me full in the face with an expression of rage on her features while the bitter words slipped off my tongue. "What a joke! You wish!" I growled. "You're always picking at Arta, picking and picking at everything she does! It's not her fault that you're greener than green with jealousy, so why don't you lay off?!"

"I'm jealous?!" Melissa screeched, her voice getting higher and higher to a scream while mine got lower into a threatening growl. "And how dare I?! Look who's just careening out of line!! I made you, you ungrateful computer! Without me, you would be an idea floating around in Eriks head!!! And barely that! I put you together microchip by microchip and believe me, I can take you apart faster than your eyes could go black!! Don't mess with me, you impertinent android!" I tried not to let that get to me, but I couldn't help feeling insulted. Really insulted. No one had ever called me anything like that before. The instant I woke up, Erik and Melissa were all over me, telling me I wasn't any different from any other bloke, that being who I was and what I was was okay, that I shouldn't feel any lesser than anyone else. It only took a couple of words from the person who'd told me those things previously to tear down all the confidence she'd spent a good long time building up.

I'd never heard her say 'android' or 'computer' like it was an insult or a bad thing and to hear it like that hurt a lot.

"Shut up!!!" Erik cried, as he had been for sometime, but now that a resentful silence had fallen, he could he heard. "Just shut up, the both of you!!" He stood in between us now, looking confused and angry. His face was red from the screaming, and he was breathing hard from the anger. He turned to us unforgivingly. "What in the devil's name are you doing?! Look at yourselves! Since when do we act like this to each other? What happened?" When he didn't get a response, he repeated himself loudly, balling his fist and pounding it on the table emphatically. "WHAT HAPPENED?!" Erik turned to glare at the both of us in turn with a fury brought on by his disappointment.

"This is unacceptable! I cannot believe you two!" Seeing Erik's face, hearing his words brought me back down to myself and I looked back on what I had done in a daze. How could I, calm, shy Adam, have blown up like that? And at one of my best friends, too? I was appalled and so, so ashamed. I wished silently that I could go back in time and take back every word. A long, brooding silence followed Erik's words in which both Melissa and I reflected, hideously embarrassed, on our actions and Erik looked back and forth between us. But it was his next words that were the worst.

"Get out," Erik whispered and Melissa's head snapped up, stunned.

"What?" she demanded, in denial. "W-What did you say?"

"I said get out." Erik looked down, unable to meet either of us in the eye, but still firm in his decision. "If this is how you're going to act, then I don't want you here." Finally, he gathered the courage to look up and face us. He had expelled any emotion from his face and looked to us coldly. For maybe the first time ever I felt a distance between Erik and I. Grievously, I gasped in a breath and swallowed regretfully. What had I done to our friendship?
"W-What are you talking about, Erik?" Melissa choked nervously. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and laughed. It was not really a laugh because it was so obviously forced and anxious. She swallowed. "Y-You don't... mean that!" Erik looked right in her eyes and responded to her coldly.

"I do mean it. I have never been more serious in my life. Miss Cooper, Adam, I want you off my property." Erik's cold, angry voice in my ears stung harshly and I stepped back a little. An unrecognizable and uncomfortable chill had settled in the room and I shivered. Melissa still couldn't believe it.

"How could you say something like that, Erik?" Melissa asked quietly, the look on her face one of betrayal and dismay. "How could you?"

"You know the way out," he told her and turned his back. "Good day." The rage and fury that had just left me reentered Melissa full-force. Her hands twisted into fists and seemed only seconds away from swinging wildly at his head. She was livid and her face was turning red, screwed up in anger.

"You... You jerk!" Melissa screeched, shrill with upset and her fierce, firey anger. "You can't just kick us out! Where will we go?!" Melissa cursed loudly, as she knew Erik disliked, and turned to stomp to the stairs. She whirled back around for a minute on the steps to look past me, who was solemnly and ashamedly following her, and call Erik a few filthy names. She then ran, taking two steps at a time up the stairs. I was behind her, walking slowly and grudgingly, reflecting on my grievous misdeeds as I went.

We were being kicked out. He told us to leave and there wasn't a thing we could do but walk out the door because this whole building was paid for by Erik's funds. But... He had kicked us out. He told us to leave. Were we not his friends? Was I not his greatest creation? The hurt settled in my heart like a knife digging into a wound and I cringed from the emotional pain of it. I wanted to turn around and look to Erik, to see his face and try to discern what he was thinking, but I realized with a start that I didn't feel worthy enough to even raise my eyes from the floor. My shame wouldn't allow me to meet the eyes of someone who was so much better than me. I believed that right then. Not only was I a liar, but I was abusive to my friends.

I took my frustration out on Melissa and because of me, we were being thrust out shamefully onto the streets. And to make it all worse, I wasn't a real person and I came to the slow realization of how truly demeaning that was, especially in a world of human beings. I was an android, a computer. A creation. I was less than even the most honourless murderer. I was reminded in a flash of the day I woke up and I could shut off my human emotions at will to calculate unfathomably large numbers. It scared me then and it terrified me now.
So, with all these weighty thoughts pressing hatefully on my mind, I shuffled out, like a disobedient dog being swatted and left outside as punishment. I had already condemned myself to the status of an insect, so I could not turn back and look Erik in the face like we were equals.

Once we stood in the lobby, Melissa looked around herself with a strange franticnesss. I watched, confused, as she ran to an large crystal vase on the front desk. I could tell, and I knew she could, too, that it was expensive. But Melissa did not care. With a sweep of her arm, the vase was flying through the air. It landed with a crash and shards of the decorative piece spun back into the air with renewed force. I stared at the shattered vase, a symbol of Melissa's anger, stunned.

"Melissa," I cried, quietly appalled and momentarily distracted from my inner torments. I had never seen her so outraged.

"I'm not paying for that!!" Melissa screamed down to the thick rug beneath her so Erik in his lab could hear. "And I'm not coming back! Never! And you'll want me back, you will! Next time Arta breaks your stupid heart, you'll need some poor sucker to cry to! And I won't be merciful on you! You'll be sorry!" She added more crude words that I was not familiar with but could tell by the way she said them that they were insulting. But Melissa wasn't done. She looked around again with that strange franticness for another expensive decoration of Erik's in which to destroy and got her hands on something behind the desk. I didn't see what it was until it had hit the wall and fell with a splintering crash to the floor. Behind the broken glass and snapped wooden frame, I could see a photo of Melissa and Erik grinning happily and waving at the camera. It didn't look more than five dollars at Wal-Mart, which was odd because I was under the impression that Melissa wanted to make Erik really hurt over the damage. Within a second, I put it together. She was not looking for expensive items anymore. What she really wanted to crush were things that symbolized her friendship with Erik, a mistake I could see clearly now with my calmer mind.

"Melissa," I ran to her before she could send a small glass sculpture, probably a gift, flying at the wall. Trying not to hurt her, I wrestled the sculpture away from her and grabbed her hands. She fought furiously, trying to kick me in the shins and shouting at me to let her go. "Melissa, stop," I ordered quietly. "Stop this." I loosened my grip so I wouldn't hurt her and she wrenched her hands away from me. Once out of my grasp and a few steps away, Melissa regarded me with a cold, speculating eye. She was breathing heavily after all her physical exertion and she glared at me bitterly.

"This is all your fault," she spat at me and turned on a heel to stalk out the door.

"I know," I whispered.