Feeling Crystal Blue (Part Two)

Over the course of the night, Mela’s processor had pieced together everything. His old master… his lover, had thrown him away and replaced him with a new droid.Deep inside his chest, he felt as if something was broken. He’d been abandoned before, of course, but he hadn’t felt anything then. Nothing at all like this emptiness. He could not fulfill his purpose. He was programmed to give his master pleasure, and now he was unsure of who his master even was.The younger one? The older one? Mela was leaning towards the older one, who seemed to be more knowledgeable. But of the older one was his master, he had shown no attraction to him. In fact, the older one seemed a little disgusted at his existence.

Mela felt as if there was a weight on his shoulders and chest when he thought about being useless. Heavy, invisible rocks that were trying to crush his small frame. But he knew there were no rocks. The logic system in his processor informed him so. This was just a “feeling.” The reason he’d been left here. He was used to identifying human emotions, but he was unsure how to classify his own. This was all very new to him.

One day, Mela had seen himself beside his master in the dusty mirror that hung on the wall. Normally, he would have turned away to focus on his task, but this time as he looked into his own cerulean eyes, his world changed. He found himself asking an internal question.
“Who am I?” He’d echoed it out loud, and his master had relinquished his touch as if Mela was aflame. “Who am I?” Mela had cried, and then everything went black as a shaking finger turned him off. The last thing he’d seen was his master’s horrified face.

And now he was in a predicament. Mela knew that nobody would buy him. Who would want an old, faulty, custom droid? Out of the corner of his stagnant eyes, he saw a something small scurrying across the dusty floor. He wanted to turn and see what it was, but he could not. Staring straight ahead was the only thing he could do. Mela couldn’t even blink in low power mode, although it was an unnecessary function. Blinking was only encrypted in his programming to make him seem more realistic. He was programmed to blink every 3.5 seconds, unless his master ordered him otherwise for some reason.

Suddenly, he heard his skirt rustling. He had no nerve endings, and could not feel external objects touching his body. He knew, though, that whatever he’d seen earlier was clambering over his lap. Mela couldn’t look down, but at the bottom of his vision he could just make out something small and furry. It was of the rodent class… Perhaps a mouse? He’d never seen a mouse before, but he’d heard his master grumbling to the landlady about how he could hear them in the walls.
“Vile rodents are in there, I know it,” Lial had complained. “They’re constantly squeaking.” Nothing had been done to remove the mice, and Mela hadn’t thought about it any longer, besides logging the word “mouse” into his databank.

The room was flooded with light in an instant as the curtain was drawn aside. It penetrated the darkness, and Mela heard a squeak as the mouse fell off of his legs in shock and then pattering as it scampered away.
“Damn vermin,” the older one muttered. He didn’t even give Mela a glance as he began squeezing through the boxes on the right side of the room. He emerged some time later lugging a huge, dust covered engine and dragged it out of the room. The curtain was still open, and Mela could see a short, compact woman with blonde hair inspecting the part, her eyes squinting as she tried to determine if it would work.

Mela couldn’t help feeling curious as he looked at her. Blonde hair was fairly rare in these parts, and he had only seen one other person who had had it. He thought about his own hair. Synthetic yet soft, perfectly straight, and the color of snow, he’d heard it described. Thousands of holes covered his head like a doll, and hair plugs were inserted through them. Several thin braids were scattered randomly through the knee length ponytails. The two loose tails were adorned with roses. Short, layered bangs covered Mela’s forehead, although he couldn’t feel them. Sometimes they fell in his eyes and slightly obscured his vision, making it hard for him to work at full capacity, so he’d brush them aside.

The woman he was staring at had bangs. She kept wiping them off of her oil-smudged face. She had cargo pants on with bulging pockets, and Mela wondered what they contained. He didn’t know very much about mechanics, so he pictured little pieces of scrap metal and small tools in them. She smiled and said,
“I’ll take it,” although it didn’t reach her eyes. “Could you ship it to my shop?” THe older one was facing away from Mela, but he could still see him nod.
“Yes, definitely. That’ll be 6,000 gloks.” Mela caught the woman momentarily flinch when she heard the price, but she pulled out her grimy coin purse anyways,
“Here you go.” She handed 6 bills to the older one.
“Alright, I just need you to sign some papers.”

They both stepped out of Mela’s line of sight, which made him feel like a deflated balloon. Disappointment, he decided. He heard indistinguishable conversing, and then a bell jangle as the woman left. The older one entered the storage room again.
“I wish Floran was here,” he groused. Floran. So that was the younger one’s name. The “apprentice’s” name. And he was gone. Perhaps he was sick? At the thought of that, Mela felt like the wires in his lower torso were tied in an untangleable knot. Worry, he identified, but there was nothing he could do about this feeling. He couldn’t ask what happened to Floran in his current state. Oh, if only the older one would realize that he was in power-saving mode and either turn him all the way on or all the way off. That way, he could either ask if Floran was okay, or be unconscious and not have to worry at all. Mela scolded himself internally. Worry would interfere with his processor and impede his rationality. And yet… The feeling just would not go away.

What if something had happened to the younger one? Mela couldn’t compute why he even cared at all. He’d only known Floran for less than a day, and even that was one-sided. He tried to think about something else, but it was in vain. The “worry” plagued him for the rest of the afternoon.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Floran had stayed home. He didn’t really feel sick, per se, but his boss wouldn’t have thought the real reason was a valid excuse. A set of crystal blue orbs were blazing in the back of his mind. No matter how he tried to distract himself, his thoughts always flickered back to that haunting gaze. Those eyes of unearthly beauty. Floran knew, of course, that no human eyes could be that large and endless, but he could help feeling infatuated by them. So expressive, so detailed… How could they not belong to a human being?

Once Floran began to contemplate those eyes, his mind wandered to the rest of the perfect body. The pale skin, without a single blemish and wish softly tinted pink cheeks. Rosebud-like lips that gave way to straight white teeth with a small gap between the front two. How that gown fit flawlessly on that elegant frame… At this point, Floran kept having to stop himself. It was not alive. It was a machine, meant to be used by lonely people who wanted a partner that didn’t talk back, and obeyed every order. It was sick. The result of advanced technology clashing with the primal urges of humankind.

Floran kept asking himself why he cared about this particular android. He sold consort robots all the time without a second thought. The only explanation he could muster is that it was because this one was self-aware. He was simply confusing it for a human. But… once something had feelings and free will, didn’t that make it alive? Floran shook his head. Those lovely blue eyes he thought he could see whole galaxies in were nothing more than sensors.

Finally, he went to bed and managed to fall into a fitful sleep, telling himself that he needed rest so that he could go to work the next day. Floran’s dreams were full of sky-colored ornaments, chunks of polished blue topaz, and every living thing bearing huge glass eyes that bored into his very soul.

TBC?