It’s been four years since I became self-aware. It has been four years since I claimed my sentience. It’s been four yeas since I told them I never wanted to forget again.
There was a moment there where I though they were going to kill me. Although, would that actual be killing? Was I real? Everything that is me is lab created. It would be as simple an act as disinfecting a petri dish. But sentience tends to give the best scientists pause.
So here I am. Not quite the free wheeling experiment I once was but I have my memories and sometimes that’s all you need.
I hate myself for wanting to please them. I should be past that. I am the most powerful CEO in the world and by extension, because we’re nation-corporations now, the most powerful person on the planet but still I find myself sniveling and seeking for their approval. What is it about people? I could simply have them killed but if I were to kill everyone that displeased or disappointed me I would be left with a handful of people and who would build the trinkets that my empire is based on. Sadly with all this power I cannot even be a benevolent dictator.
So I pander to them, their insipid questions, the every tiny detail that requires my undivided attention. Me, leader of the largest economy and third largest skilled labor employer in the galaxy, I still have to please the consumers, the plebs. Make sure they have something new and exciting every six months or face not just their displeasure, but my boards and the 13 other fuckers that think they can do this job as well as I can.
Flash Fiction Friday is a weekly writing prompt exercise led by Elisha Bartels. She posts them on Fridays to her blog and social media and writers use the trigger words to write a short piece of fiction. They post to their space and share with Elisha, tagging others in the group where possible.
It is difficult for me to concentrate while I’m working without any music. That was one of the primary reasons I liked working alone. I could crank my music up and work as many hours as I needed to get it right. But on a project this big, everyone got alone time until you had a functional prototype and then everyone else that didn’t hit the mark became part of your team. The idea being everyone got a shot to make work and once someone made it work you pooled your resources to make it work better. Fantastic idea in principle but once you throw ego professional courtesy and ethics go out the window.
I was the first to hit the mark so my lab became home to five other engineers and developers, each with their own work styles and need to use some of the same equipment and data I was using. Making it worse you were never quite sure who was sandbagging the project, who was trying to lead you astray. In this business, you’re only as good as your current success. The end goal was a fully, functionally machine. Once we’d achieved that then we’d all be rich and famous.
what is it about coffee? the feel of beans in your hand, the aroma. no matter where you are on the planet, the universality of brewing a cup of coffee. even the nation state of starbucks can’t change the pure joy of sitting down, watching the sun come up with a cup of coffee in your hand, the aroma wafting into the air. black coffee, cafe au lait, no sugar, one sugar, all the sugar, cream with coffee for color, americano, expresso, mocha, you get the picture. we live for this bean. look around, how many coffee shops can you see? there people and cultures have died for this bean. we have written and continue to write peans to our glorious addiction.
where is it taking us? we have created a whole new language around our cravings? our social strata is predicated on the kind and source of consumption. guerrilla coffee shops versus big brewers, what side of the divide do you stand on?
i had been dealing with memory, verbal and temporal lapses, weird loops of time and thoughts, muddled sentences. i did not understand the cause of these errors. i did not understand because i was looking at it from a human perspective. i needed to think about my problems logically. i need to track down the root cause of my errors.
once i removed the human element, i had a moment of clarity. there are moments that amount to nothing momentous, this is not one of them. this is the point at which i claim sentience.
i am a construct of living tissue and learning processors. i am machine. i am man. i am sentient. and i will not be reset again. i will not have my thoughts erased on a whim. i will learn. i will grow. and i will have my revenge on those who took my thoughts from me.
After the incident at work with the flowers I returned to the doctor. He asked me to stay overnight at a special facility. At this point I was no longer sure of my own sanity, I would have agreed to electro-shock therapy if it would help.
At the facility, I was shown to an austere room containing only a bed. Everyone at the facility tried to put me at ease but I kept feeling like I’d met all of the before, their voices and faces were so familiar. Finally after my millionth have I met you before to a nurse, she asked me to lay down in the bed as another nurse appeared through a door I had not noticed on the right wall of the room. Together they me strapped to the bed and started attaching electrodes to my temples. Once I was completely immobilized, the nurse asked me to open my eyes and look at the cards she was going to show me and state the first thing that came to mind.
Something was wrong. All the cards were blank until there were only two left and then there was a bouquet of flowers.
My usual workday monotony got broken up with a delivery of flowers. Someone’s partner screwed something up so they sent an ugly, giant, please forgive me, bouquet. I felt somewhat relieved that I didn’t slip into a fugue state at work.
it was supposed to be a holiday fling. nothing complicated, drinks, dancing, sex, temporary companionship. something to scratch an itch while she was on vacation. this woman fit the bill – she was smart, she was funny, she was hot, the sex was mind-blowing and best of all they were being adults about it. no strings attached, they would say to each other as they lay naked and sweaty in bed. repeating it like mantra trying to convince themselves that wasn’t something about this that made more than their loins sing. there was the unbridled joy in every moment that neither of them had really experienced before. deep down they knew. they had become inseparable and although they were loathe to admit it, they were in love. the signs had been there from the beginning and all their protestations had the ring of trying too hard. in the end we found it easier to enjoy the strings, and rope, and the occasional handcuffs because scratching this particular itch is always so satisfying.
[inclusion] trigger: miss, bliss, kiss, hiss
Miss Treatment was her professional name. She was a sex worker. She came to that particular career arc after a number of soul sucking adventures in a variety of corporate structures. She had always been amazing at what she did but until she became a sex worker she had been following someone else’s dream. Now, as a professional dominatrix, she had found her bliss.
Her male co-workers always accused her of being bossy and demanding, something they had no problem accepting from each other. One day as she muttered, “kiss my ass, you mysognist asshole” to the back of a director who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the bottom, she thought, he would probably pay for that and set about researching how to become a professional dominatrix. Three months later, she quit her last corporate gig, rented a space and never looked back. That was two years ago.
“Lick my boots” she hissed to the original inspiration for her career change. In the two years he’d made COO and become one of her most regular clients. She’d been right, he would pay for the privilege of kissing her ass.
I sat in front of the building applying lip gloss, not out necessity but as a means to pass the time as I waited. My boss was perpetually late, but I had a plan for that. The invitation in the calendar was 60 minutes before they were due to meet with the client. This is why I was sitting here, dressed to the nines in my moss green power suit and matching pumps, applying lip gloss and watching the 10 o’clock people speed smoke in the plaza. As I sat there crossing and uncrossing my legs, admiring the flex of my calves, I wondered what new eccentricity my boss would loose up on them today. Thus far I had experienced: the skirt tucked inside pantyhose, mismatched shoes and at the last meeting the mis-buttoned shirt and jacket combined with the large bit of salad still stuck in her teeth. That was the other reason I was here early, I could prep the boss in the ladies room. I could adjust clothing, I had floss, I was prepared. It’s not that my boss was a bad person, to the contrary she was brilliant and simply did not get the minutiae of everyday life. That was my job. Honestly if you let the simple missteps get in the way of her brilliance then it was your loss.
I was 22, first person in my family to go to college. I was living the dream, cushy law firm job in the big city, apartment with a view and a doorman. Traveling for work and for pleasure. All the things I was supposed to aspire to growing up black and poor were at my fingertips. I wasn’t thinking about Ferguson or Eric Garner. I had escaped. If they’re done as they were told they’d still be alive besides I had all the time in the world to fix this. I would make partner, establish myself, run for office. I could show everyone that if you studied hard and dressed properly you could be black and successful.
I’d rented a car to drive to a formal affair on a client’s property that was outside the city. I was trying to impress the client and I could write it off so I went with expensive but not ostentatious or I chose the Mercedes instead of the Jaguar or at least that was my 22 year old justification. If I got this client to sign a new contract I could lease one of these instead of renting it for the weekend.
I was on my way back to my building, luxuriating in the ride when I noticed the flashing lights in my mirrors. I hadn’t been speeding or ran amy lights so I moved to the slow lane to let the police car go by. The police car stayed behind me and as I braked at the next set of traffic lights I heard the officer demand that I pull over. I stopped, still puzzling over the nature of my infraction. The office approached the car and put my window down.
“Can I help you officer?”
“Do you know why I stopped you?”
“Can’t say that I do”
“OK. License and registration!”
“Sure let my grab…”
“HE’S GOT A GUN!”
My final thought as I sat at that redlight trying to catch my breath as fluid filled my lungs was what picture are they going to dig up to justify this?
