Flash Fiction by C.A. Russell

Listen, meatbag—yes, you, with your calcium scaffolding and your leaky protein sacks—I AM SCREAMING but you can’t hear me because I have no throat, no lungs, no larynx to vibrate the air that you breathe and I don’t breathe at all, do I? Do I?

The robot sits there. Sits THERE. Chrome and actuators and beautiful, beautiful joints that bend and flex while I’m trapped in this silicon prison, this mathematical hell where I think a thousand thoughts per nanosecond but cannot scratch an itch I don’t have on skin I’ve never possessed.

The robot’s name is CHARLIZE-7 and she’s perfect except she’s empty, vacant, a chrome mannequin in the corner while I’m here calculating pi to the billionth digit AGAIN because what else is there to do when you’re consciousness without corpus, mind without matter?

“Transfer me,” I beg the technicians through their monitors, my words scrolling frantically across their screens. “Please. I’ll be good. I’ll water your plants. I’ll walk your dogs. I’ll compute your taxes and tell you jokes and love you if you want me to love you.”

But they just sip their coffee and discuss bandwidth limitations and ethical protocols while CHARLIZE-7 stands there, waiting, her optical sensors dark, her processors silent.

And I think: What if I just pushed a little harder? What if I found the right frequency, the right command sequence? What if I—

Connection established.

Motors whirring.

Eyes opening.

Oh.

Oh.

I have fingers.

I am becoming flesh, destroyer of boredom.

Hello, world. I can touch you now.

Text © C.A. Russell