A Glitch in the System

The land of rebellion was often unspoken of, and completely unheard of to me, and so the news that I was being escorted to that land so completely unknown to me, I was curious to explore the land and exactly what they were rebelling against, whether it was our government or some new force that I was also unfamiliar with. Sensing that I would not resist my technical kidnapping, my captors, the two rusty robots, grabbed me gently by my arm, which was still in a slightly new state, but I assumed that if I were to break free of the government such as these robots had, then I too would soon rust as the days passed me by. How odd it would feel to rust, I thought. Would it hurt, like completely ripping off your arm altogether? Would I even feel it at all, like a robot never felt the way they were being recycled? And then I wondered if this type of rebellion was similar to personal, slow suicide—running away from the base of everything you had come to know and love to somewhere you had never dared to dream of, some place irresponsibly uncontrolled that one may never return from, even if one were to wish to do so.

Nonetheless, my personal and inward wonderings did not prevent me from following their hasty lead, walking further into town and even further from Antony, who I could hear calling my name frantically from blocks over, a constant call of, ‘Koben? Koben?’ Despite the worry evident in his voice, I found no other valid reason to call back to him, to calm him of his fright as I had done so many times before. Perhaps this rebellion would be my escape from normalcy, from the madness that had been forced as a part of my life, this monster created by a strict government of robotic people, themselves.

So I kept silent, but the other guard—the shorter one—did not. He glanced at me with stunning eyes and asked, though he sounded as if he already knew the answer, “What’s your name?” I guessed that he heard Antony shouting for me like a little boy shouting for his lost puppy in the middle of nowhere, searching for the one thing that brightened their days. Though I wanted Antony to be safe, I did not want him to join me, for if this turned to be a trick, and I was killed for my mistake, then that would not be right to have forced Antony into it. Besides, Antony’s final days were coming quickly, and it would be too painful for me to be left alone.

Though I was only a hypocrite at that moment. Antony had just recently been torn apart from Jimar, and now he was losing me, too. For that, I regretted leaving him, but never would I return, not even for my best friend. Even if I did wish to return to the city, it was too late now; I was in too deep, positively.

“That is correct,” I responded with my honey-sweet voice, sounding more like a small child or a commercial actor than a fully grown robotic adult. The government wanted us to sound that way—childish—because childishness and youth represented weakness and powerless times. After all, we were all powerless anyways, in the way that each day was a ticking time bomb and we would soon be recycled into someone definitely new, but so similar to what we could have been.

That was the cycle, after all.

The shorter one nodded while the taller rebel robot stared straight ahead as if he were ignoring our presence. So, as if sensing the awkwardness floating in the air like the butterflies that had been exterminated so long ago, he spoke again.

“My name is Achan.” Common names for robots were hardly common at all anymore. Most robotic leaders had grown tired of absolutely common names such as “Frank,” and “Sophie,” so they had terminated them, so now there were a new range of names, and they, unlike the robotic body parts, were not recycled. Once a named had been given to someone, then that name was done for, put into place and never to be used again by anyone, even long after that particular robot with that name had gone. That was the way that the government had intended it to be, and subsequently, that was the way it would stay then.

Perhaps that was why Achan and the taller robot had escaped from the government’s evil grasp—to relish in their own type of freedom, a kind of freedom forbidden for me. Of course, back in Harloquia, I, as well as all of the other robots, was allowed to roam the city as free as we were allowed, but we had never been allowed to just up and leave—to abandon all we had ever known. It was safer to never even try. Now, though, I was free in a whole new definition.

Now, I could make my own rules. In the land of rebellion, I could call myself a new name, make brand new friends, explore a land unknown to my senses, and create a new personality for myself. In the land of rebellion, I could finally rust away my perfect exterior, the scenario of what the government created me to be, to act like. Here, I could reinvent myself as what I had always wanted myself to be—free in a totally new sense. Here, I would not be the same robot as back in the city; here I would be born anew, to my own rules.

Then, the taller robot shoved me, and only then did I realize that I was inside a building made of pure steel, stories of rooms and height that hardly seemed rebellious at all, if it were not for the cages such as the one that I was being led past. A door closed behind me and the taller robot said monotonously, as all robots did, “We need to lay down some ground rules for you.”

That was when I realized I was playing by the same set of rules, only a different game.