i n [B] o x . // acata.

[abandonware]

Proposal: Leave a message. |
text | audio | video

art 西

Comments

[abandonware]

[So much grief, she thinks, listening. Everywhere she went, almost everyone she met carried it, and each mention of it is another stone pressed down on her.

She doesn't believe she has a future. She doesn't think she ever did.

The thought had never even occurred to her, so focused on day to day, hour to hour, each moment of life she spent simply existing. But he thinks she does. Maybe that was another difference, between androids and humans.

She's quiet for a long time.]

What about you?

[She sounds so tired.]

What about your future?

[extirpator]

[ what a pointless question.

he leans back against his headboard. sits on the question for a bit, something of a tired breath escaping him. he comes to the same answer he always will, and always does: ]

Yonah was my future.

[ a nine year old boy, standing at his mother's tombstone. in his arms, there is an apple cheeked infant. she understands nothing, but when he is at risk of crying, at risk of bursting into tears, she cries too.

she cries for him.

in that moment, he realizes that she is the only one who ever will. she is all that remains. ]

There is nothing left for me.

I'm fine with that.

[ there's a silence, heavy with a feeling he can't quite describe. ]

But as long as I'm still alive, I need a reason to exist. So that reason is in all of you, now.

[abandonware]

For someone who doesn't think he has a future, you're really concerned about everyone else's.

[It's not said defensively, for once. Simply curious. It's not as if she doesn't recognize this — similarly, she had long lost her purpose and so found it in someone else.

She wondered if this "Yonah" would look at him the same way Number 4 looked at her. Worried, sympathetic. Not realizing how doomed she was.]

...Who's Yonah?

[extirpator]

Sometimes that's more of a reason to care.

[ yonah.

the word resounds in his mind like a weight, slowly drifting to the bottom of his stomach. yonah. yonah. yonah. say it enough and everything begins to fade to black. what a pitiful chant.

the silence is longer than it should be, before he speaks again. ]

She's my little sister.

[ his eyes flutter shut. there's another pause. ]

For a long time, she was the only thing ever mattered.

...But it's pointless to think about. We're all stuck here anyways.

[abandonware]

[A sister. She thinks of the machine children in Pascal's village that had called her that, and feels her eyes frost over. Only humans deserved siblings, she thinks. There was no point in machines or androids pretending to have that sort of connection.

Still, something twinges in her chest at the thought.]

Why's it pointless? She could show up. Not the first time that would've happened.