Human After All

The silence of the room was uncomfortable at first. Ethylon and Rowan only stared at each other, their looks completely contrasting. Ethylon was dirty, his shirt torn apart, barely hanging onto his chest, while his pants looked exactly the same. Rips cascaded down the front of his pant legs, and his hair was greasy, a near gray color instead of his usual golden yellow. Meanwhile, Rowan was wearing a snow white lab coat that fell down to his ankles, and his pants were a dark, untouched gray color. Ethylon wore no shoes while Rowan had the Capital's latest fashion in shoes. His hair was curled slightly, held in place with gel of sorts. Ethylon had cuts all over his face and arms, but Rowan's skin was silky smooth, unnaturally soft. They looked like polar opposites. Beau guessed it was because they came from completely different worlds.

And yet, they weren't from different world entirely, were they? After all, Rowan had grown up with Ethylon. Rowan was the one who began to rebel first. He was the one who created the first bots. He inspired Ethylon to begin stealing the scrap metal. They were partners in crime. They were brothers. They grew up in District 16 together, and the only reason they were torn apart was because of the Capital. The only thing that could have changed between them was distance.

Rowan threw his arms around Ethylon's shoulders, yet Ethylon shoved him off, a look of disgust upon his face. Rowan furrowed his brows together.

"Ethylon, it's me." He poked his own chest, staring down at his younger brother. "It's your brother."

"You are not my brother." Ethylon snapped. "My brother saved his creations. He would never deactivate a bot like that. You are not my brother."

"It's me, Rowan." He snapped. "You know me!"

"No." Ethylon snapped.

"When you were nine, you fell and broke your leg. I had to carry you home from school, and we ditched at P.E."

"Everybody knew that." Ethylon said. "People in different districts knew that!"

"On your fifth birthday, mom wanted to make you a cake, but it exploded when she pulled it out of the oven. Remember?" Rowan said, almost begging. His eyes were full of sadness and slight depression. Beau couldn't imagine how terrible it must feel to have a brother that chose not to remember you because of something terrible you have done.

Joshua kept his mouth shut as to not alarm Rowan. While he was Ethylon's brother, he didn't know if they were completely alike in the sense that Ethylon would never snitch on a friend, while Rowan could very well rat them out on a moment's notice. Beau wrapped his arms around Joshua's shoulders, keeping him in the shadows. He wondered if Troia was still okay. Perhaps she had convinced them that she was still brainwashed.

"When the sailors were taking me away," Rowan began, "I really wanted to give you a hug. But the sailors said if I hugged you, and I slipped something to you, they would kill me once we got to the Capital. I really wanted to give you this, though." Then Rowan reached into his pocket for something. He pulled out what looked to be a sort of necklace. It was golden with diamonds cascading the front of it. "Yana gave it to me when I was being taken away. She said she wanted me to give it to you before I got taken away, but the sailors wouldn't let me do it."

"Why didn't...." Ethylon trailed off, nearly crying when he thought of Yana. "Why didn't she give it to me herself?"

"She said you would never take it, Ethylon." Rowan nodded, handing him the necklace. "She said you would just deny it and call her some precious little pet name. She really wanted you to have it though, Ethylon. She really loved you."

" 'Loved'?" Ethylon said. Rowan choked up, but nodded slowly, sadly. Ethylon wiped his eyes free of tears. He imagined his dear love, Ariana being thrown across dirt and stones from an explosion in the rebellion, her face covered with blood and tears, and her cheeks smeared with ash and dirt. She coughed into a pool of blood, before heaving out one last dying breath. He burst out into a sob, and didn't try to push Rowan away when he wrapped his arms around Ethylon's shoulders.

Beau crawled out of the shadows with Joshua at his side. He didn't want to interrupt the moment, even though their lives were in danger at the moment. Joshua poked at Beau's sides, whispering small things to his master, though Beau paid him no mind. Instead, Beau shushed Joshua, rubbing his shoulder to show that he wasn't angry, but the moment needed to be silent.

Ethylon pulled himself away from Rowan's arms, wiping his eyes free of tears. The flesh around his eyes was clean of ash and soot, but every other inch of his face was stained with dirt and grime. Beau hadn't noticed before, but Ethylon had beautiful eyes, they were only ruined by the tired look he always had with him. Beau guessed being on the run really screwed him up.

Ethylon glanced at Leighlan, yet he couldn't seem to hide the shock on his face when he found that Leighlan's chest was still heaving up and down ever so slightly.

"He's deactivated." Ethylon said, nodding at the helpless bot in the chair. Rowan shook his head.

"You stopped me before I could finish."

"What does that mean?" Ethylon said. He grabbed Leighlan's hand, though it was limp in between his fingers. He couldn't imagine what it was like for Leighlan to say goodbye to Jaydin while she wasn't even conscious. He didn't even like looking down at Leighlan like that.

"He's in a comatose-like state."

"What?" Ethylon snapped. "So you made him just like Jaydin?"

"No." Rowan corrected his brother. "You made him just like Jaydin. I could have very well deactivated him without harming his memory core."

"Ahem." Beau said quickly, trying to catch their attention before anything else was said. He wanted to be in on this conversation, even if it wasn't meant for him. He needed to know what was going on, especially in something that could have very well been known as the last moments of his life. The thought of actually making it out of the Capital alive was highly unlikely.

"Oh." Rowan said at the sight of the dirtied and tortured boy in front of him. "Who's this?"

Ethylon swallowed hard, as though he had forgotten Beau and Joshua were in the room as well. He had never really cried as hard as he just had in front of them. He had teared up, but never full out sobbed. Perhaps he was embarrassed. What a great moment to be embarrassed, Beau thought.

"I'm Beau." Beau said as Ethylon couldn't seem to get the words out of his mouth. "And this is—"

Rowan gasped, walking towards Joshua, taking Joshua's slender fingers in his own. Joshua furrowed his brows slightly, though he didn't pull his hands away.

"Joshua?" Rowan said. Joshua cocked his head to the right. He could have sworn he had heard that voice before, but he had no idea where. He had never put a face to the voice. "Joshua, it's me. Rowan." He gave a pause. "Your creator."

Joshua's eyes widened, and he threw his arms around Rowan.

"Creator!" He shouted. "I knew your voice!" Then he pulled away, beside himself in excitement. "Oh creator, you must know my master, he is so kind and humble. Master, master, look, this is my creator!" Joshua tugged on Beau's arm, pushing his hand towards Rowan's so they could lock fingers and shake their hands in one motion.

"Are you a good master, Beau?" Rowan asked. Beau shrugged. "Oh, pish-posh, this is no time to be humble."

"I haven't heard someone say pish-posh since I watched a movie from the 90's." Beau remarked.

"Can we get back at the task at hand?" Ethylon snapped. "I want to know what the hell Leighlan is doing right now."

"He's in a comatose-like state, if that could even describe it." Rowan said. "You see, when deactivating a bot, you actually push the button twice instead of merely once. Most owners mistake that, and instead, they send their bot into a coma-like state instead of erasing their memories and such."

"So Leighlan is—"

"Leighlan is trapped in his own mind with his own memories. They're being played back to him like a double feature movie." Rowan murmured. He should know how his own products acted.

"But, I don't understand...." Ethylon muttered. "So, what do you do to the bots who are in a coma-state?"

"Well, the ones before, the ones who didn't have emotions, we just erased their memories and used their parts for scrap metal." Rowan almost choked up at the thought of the District 16 rebellion where his brother had came from merely a few years earlier. "Well, the new ones....." He waved the idea off. "Please, don't make me explain so soon. Let me learn about PC936777." Rowan addressed Joshua by his PC number, making Joshua think he had done something wrong. Of course, he hadn't, but most bots were never addressed by their PC numbers. PC numbers were usually only used for scolding, which Beau hadn't ever brought up yet.

"Is that okay, Joshua?" Rowan asked. Joshua nodded slowly before giving a glance to his master. Beau seemed strangely comfortable around Rowan. Little did Joshua know that Beau was only this comfortable because he thought his death was coming soon. Beau thought, why not be optimistic when you die, than bitter and unsatisfied?



Rowan sat Joshua down, cleaning his face free of dirt and smudges. Beau had missed the sight of his perfect bot. He knew it seemed selfish to want to see something normal in the hard times they had been through, but everybody would want some sort of comfort in a situation like that. Beau didn't think it was too much to ask to see a Joshua who was happy. He never wanted Joshua to go through something like this.

Joshua watched as the last of dirt upon his face blackened the towel in Rowan's hands. Beau sat down next to Joshua, lacing his fingers together with his bots in order to comfort Joshua. Joshua was shaking from the sudden advances from his creator, even though he was very excited to speak to him first. Joshua just didn't like to be touched by people he wasn't completely used to. Yes, Rowan was his creator, but he had never spoken to him for longer than a few seconds when he was first being programmed.

"How does Beau treat you, Joshua?" Rowan said. Joshua looked at Beau, silently begging for approval. Beau nodded, though he didn't like when people decided to talk about him like he wasn't even in the same room.

"Master is very good at me. Master treats me like an equal."

"How are you two, relationship wise?"

Joshua furrowed his brows, he had never understood questions pertaining to love much.

"We're together, if that's what you're asking." Beau said quickly. Rowan nodded.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to ignore you as well, Beau. It's just interesting to see how PC936777— I mean, Joshua— reacts to human behavior. He's very well adjusted. You must have been with his every night and day. Tell me, Beau," Rowan said ecstatically, "How does he function? Is he as human as a bot could get?"

"Yes." Beau nodded. "Joshua is.... Joshua is the best thing to ever happen to me." Beau said confidently, squeezing Joshua's hand in between his fingers as a sign of reassurance. Joshua snuggled his face to Beau's dirty chest, not caring if his cheeks were smudged with more grime. His master was his master, and he loved him no matter what. Some stupid dirt would never change that. Dirt was absolutely nothing compared to what they had gone through in the past few days.

Ethylon finished studying Leighlan after a few minutes, sitting down in front of his brother with a loud sigh.

"Explain what you do to bots in a comatose state, Rowan. I've waited too long."

"Hold on—"

"No. Tell me right now. I know you probably don't care, but I do care. And I want Lejend back by tonight. She—"

"They have Lejend?" Rowan said quickly. "I haven't had her come through here, Ethylon. Where is she then?"

"That's not reassuring, Rowan!" Ethylon snapped. "Thanks!"

Ethylon and Rowan went back and forth between talking about Lejend and comatose bots, so Joshua and Beau simply waited for the two to finish before they finally butted in again.

"Rowan." Beau said. "Please explain what happens to the bots in comas. What do you guys do to them?"

Rowan sighed gently, taking a few glances at Leighlan with a look of despise in his eyes. It wasn't a despise for Leighlan, but despise for the Capital, and what they made Rowan do to his precious bots.

"Every bot has a memory core. Recently, I figured out how to add emotions to the memory core, so its an e-memory core. When a bot is placed in a comatose-like state, it still has all of its emotions and memories intact. It is basically lost within itself. Now we can either deactivate the bot, which will erase all of its memories and emotions, or we can do something we call a mem-trans. We move the emotions and memories of a bot to a.... To a human being." Rowan mumbled.

"But," Beau said quickly. "How are you finding people to use for all these... mem-trans things?"

Rowan sighed deeply, pushing himself out of his seat. He grabbed both Ethylon and Beau by their arms, Joshua soon following suit. He walked slowly behind his master and Rowan and Ethylon, who surprisingly looked like twins when frustrated.

Finally, they reached a few of the cylinder shapes that had pipes and tubes leading inside the top of it. Joshua stopped at the front of one so he could stare into the glass shape. Inside was a human, surrounding by a blue, gelatin-like substance around them. Tubes were being fed into their heads and a few IV's were pushed into their veins. The girl in the cylinder was a blonde haired, fair skinned beauty. She had only a white bikini over her body, but that was it. Joshua looked down at each of the cylinders that held yet another human in the same position; males with boxers, females with bikinis. Their eyes were all shut in a deep sleep.

Rowan stopped in front of all of them, waving his hands in their directions.

"Each human here has a bot."

"What?" Beau said angrily.

"I can't find any easy way to explain this, Beau." Rowan said. "The Capital was getting ready to execute me a while back. They found no use for me anymore. I wasn't coming up with new bots. Then all of the sudden, there was this rebellion going on in District 16. The Capital was overwhelmed with plans and battles and such. They had forgotten about me. It gave me time to figure out how to move human emotions into a bot. I just needed a few test subjects...." Rowan chewed on his lip. "After the rebellion, they gave me hundreds of thousands of test subjects." He nodded at each of the cylinders. "I tested the plan on a few of them, each test as successful as the others. Then, all of the sudden, I was the biggest thing in the Capital again. I was a hero again. I was successful at making bots again."

Ethylon, lost in everything being said, began to cuss absentmindedly at his brother and the Capital in anger and despise.

"There were a lot of dead humans in the rebellion of District 16. A lot." Rowan emphasized. "The Capital had no idea on what to do with all of them. We couldn't dispose of them with just the flick of a wrist. Then, we got this crazy, genius idea. We waited a while, just long enough for people to forget about the rebellion. Then, I began to transfer every human emotion into bots that were modeled after humans. Not their memories, only emotions. Every bot created was modeled after a real human being, and they have the same emotions as that human. It's almost like they have a twin; one human, one robot.

"The thing is, is that sometimes the bots became too human. Leighlan, for example. The Capital would have actually allowed him to survive if he had not became so human. Jaydin treated Leighlan as an equal, not as a bot. He never called her master. He was in love with her, and she was allowing him to become irresponsibly human. The Capital wouldn't allow that. They said that we waited to make the humans into bots for a reason. They wanted them to have emotions, but not to be treated as complete equals. There is still a huge difference between humans and bots.

"So when a bot becomes too human, they are taken. Usually the sailors just say they are suspected of committing a crime, like Troia was." Rowan recalled. "Then they'll bring them here to me. When they're here, I erase all of their memories and emotions to the best of my abilities. Then I transfer their e-memory core back into the parts of the human brain. They become a human again, but emotionless. Then we make them into sailors."

Beau nodded quickly.

"So that was why Troia didn't remember us! And why she was so serious...."

"But you have powerful words, my friend." Rowan nodded at Beau. "You made her remember. It takes a lot to do that. Whatever you told her must have been life changing."

Joshua was squeamish as he stood by himself in front of the other cylinders. He had not been involved in their conversation at all.

"Beau." Rowan said firmly. "We created robots out of human beings, and we are keeping their bodies preserved for future necessities, if need be." Rowan paused, giving tension to what he was going to say. "We created robots out of humans pronounced as dead after the District 16 rebellion. We managed to save most of the humans we found at the site."

Beau swallowed hard, trying desperately to process what had just been said in a matter of minutes. The robots Beau had grown so fond of, the new bots that had just been released for Clu, used to be human beings. They had emotions from a previous human being. Joshua's emotions had been from a previous human being. Then the thought hit him. He lowered his voice to nothing more than a whisper.

"Joshua used to be human?"

Rowan nodded slowly, allowing the thought to sink in. Ethylon's grumbles had died out, and now he stared at Joshua with wide eyes. Rowan took a glance at Joshua.

"Did you change his name?" Beau asked quietly. "What was his name before the rebellion?"

"No, we never changed names unless the masters did it themselves." Rowan shook his head. "Joshua's name has always been Joshua Seydrin."

Joshua heard his names a few times, but he had not bothered to walk into the conversation. He was far too entranced with this young girl in front of him. Her hair was short, brown and slightly bouncy. Her eyes were beautiful, breathtaking. She had this small beauty mark upon her face, only adding to how beautiful she really was. Joshua cocked his head to the right, pressing his hand against the glass window. Ethylon heard the glass squeak. He gasped, running over to Joshua's side with a loud huff of breath.

"Yana?" He whispered to the girl within the glass. She didn't respond, though. Ethylon pressed his hands against the window, almost falling on his knees in sadness. "You said she didn't make it, Rowan!" He snapped. Rowan pulled his attention away from Beau's conversation so he could look at the glass window his brother was pressed up against.

"Her memories were lost. She was hit in an explosion and everything just disappeared, Ethylon. I tried." Rowan said softly. "I really tried."

Beau took a glance at the beauty behind the glass. He took a few looks at Joshua, depressed by the thought of Joshua having a life before Beau. Did he have a family? Did he love them? How many friends did he have? What did the rebellion take away from Joshua?

Beau tapped Rowan's shoulder, turning on his shoulder so he could avoid Joshua's heartbreakingly innocent gaze.

"Can I see him?" Beau asked. Rowan furrowed his brows slightly.

"See who?"

"Can I see Joshua?" Beau said. "Can I see his human self?"

Rowan nodded, though he didn't move too fast. He figured this was too much for someone to process all at once. Beau was probably lost in the moment. I would be as well, Rowan thought.

"This way." Rowan took Beau down the halls, leaving Joshua with Ethylon who desperately needed coaxing. He sobbed as he looked behind the glass at the love of his life, the girl who had stolen his heart, Yana.

They came to a stop in front of a glass cylinder. Beau didn't look inside until Rowan waved his hand at it. Then Beau snapped his attention from the ground and to what was behind the glass.

There was his bot in human form; encased in a blue gelatin-like substance. His hair was shaggy and auburn, down to his shoulders just about. His eyes were shut, but he imagined the amazing glasz color behind it. Joshua's face was exactly like his human's; freckles splattered across his nose and cheeks, small dimples showing in his cheeks even though he wasn't smiling. His skin was very fair, and he was fairly scrawny under his clothes. Beau didn't even care about how he looked past his face. His freckled cheeks were all that mattered to him. The perfection upon Joshua was the one had had grown so fond of seeing.

"Beau," Rowan said. "If you had to pick, and I'm not saying you have to, but if you did have to pick, would you rather have a robot Joshua or a human Joshua?"

Beau placed his hand on the glass, a frozen tingling sensation floating across his fingers. He imagined his bot playing with brothers and sisters, and eating dinner with a family he loved. He imagined Joshua's old friends and his previous relationships.

"For my benefit, or his?" Beau asked.

"Whichever."

"For his benefit...." Beau murmured, wiping away tears from the corners of his eyes. "For his benefit, I would want him to be human and have a family and friends."

"And for your benefit?"

Beau shook his head slightly.

"I would still want him to be human."

"Why?"

"So he could make his own choices."

Rowan nodded.

"But if you allow him to, he can make his own choices, even as a bot."

"But the Capital won't allow it. If he becomes too human, they'll take him and turn him into something he's not." Beau shook his head. "Nobody deserves that; human or not."

Rowan glanced down the hall where Ethylon and Joshua stared inside of a different glass cylinder. "I agree. He is human after all."

Beau pressed his forehead against the glass, trying to comprehend what he had just been told. Joshua was a robot, modeled after a human from District 16. He didn't know if he should be thanking Ethylon or murdering him. Thanking him for allowing him to meet Joshua, or murdering him because he took hundreds of thousands of lives from others in District 16, and for what? For a failed attempt at freedom.