Android

At the end of anoth­er long and appar­ent­ly fruit­less day doing what he did in the flesh­pots, the last thing Andro want­ed was anoth­er main­te­nance call. But it came any­way, a flash­ing light glar­ing into his eyes and a noi­some chirrup nest­ing in his ears.
“BLING BLING BLING!”
“Fuck.”
He put down his bur­ri­to, shot down the rest of his vod­ka and toma­to juice and for­got to pay the wait­ress.

When he arrived at Main­te­nance a fresh­bot in the first stages of Acclima­ti­za­tion led him to a large fiz­zling tank and stopped.

“Well?” said Andro.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why am I here?”
“You have just arrived, sir.”
“I know that you dip­shit.”
“Thank you.”

The worst thing about fresh­bots is that they had­n’t yet got­ten the hang of con­ver­sa­tion. He had for­got­ten the rea­son­ing behind Acclima­ti­za­tion because, frankly, he did­n’t care. Fresh­bots were still annoy­ing. He asked again.

“Why am I at this tank?”
“Because I have brought you here.”
“Why have you brought me here?”
“Sol­vent bath.”
“What is your name?” asked Andro.
“Ved, sir.”
“Well Ved, fire up the bath and let’s get this over with.”

When he was soak­ing deep in the phtha­lo liq­uid Andro decid­ed to have a lit­tle fun at the expense of the idi­ot­ic lit­tle fresh­bot.

“Bathing isn’t what it used to be.” he said.
“Yes, sir?” gib­bered Ved quizzi­cal­ly.
“I said, bathing sure isn’t what it used to be. There was a time when I was a fresh­bot not much green­er than you; com­ing in for Main­te­nance was quite the affair. Not the soul­less chore it is now. And we did­n’t have to put up with wit­less lit­tle robots who don’t know a sprock­et from a sphinc­ter.”
Andro saw that Ved was now quite con­fused. He knew a response was nec­es­sary, but did not know what to say. So, of course, he said “Thank you, sir.”
“Get off my lawn.” grum­bled Andro.
“Sir, just because you are an obso­lete mod­el of android with few cycles left to you is no excuse for your schaden­freude at my expense.”

“Damn!” thought Andro, “These bug­gers catch on quick­ly. I’d bet­ter play this a bit more con­ser­v­a­tive­ly.”
Aloud, he said “Do you know the mar­ket val­ue for an android like me?” With­out wait­ing for an answer, he con­tin­ued.
“I am one of a kind, one of the first mod­els. Hand made, not popped out by your stu­pid birth plants. Each piece of me was turned on a lathe, mea­sured by hand, pol­ished, stress test­ed. My elec­tron­ics were cut­ting edge, my cog­ni­tion and reac­tions were supreme. I was ful­ly func­tion­al. I was the first android with the abil­i­ty to eat food as a pow­er source; but most of all, I was the first android to actu­al­ly feel. I was the first android with empa­thy. I was ground­break­ing, but appar­ent­ly I only broke ground for your kind, you ungrate­ful wanker.”

Ved was still there, but that is about all that could be said of him. Andro con­tin­ued.

“I was in demand! Sci­en­tists strove to find the upper lim­its of my poten­tial, politi­cians and celebri­ties want­ed me to come to their fundrais­ers and par­ties, chil­dren want­ed my auto­graph and rich eccentrics want­ed me for oth­er pur­pos­es. Remem­ber, I was the only ful­ly func­tion­al android in exis­tence. I start­ed to build a sex résumé. I was the best any­one had ever had. My abil­i­ty to empathize made me the per­fect lover. My com­plete self­less­ness made me amenable to every whim of the humans. They could ful­ly indulge their nat­ur­al self­ish­ness. My rep­u­ta­tion spread and my stock rose. I had gone miss­ing from my keep­ers, and when they final­ly tracked me down in Istan­bul”
“Con­stan­tino­ple.” said Ved.
“What?!”
“Con­stan­tino­ple, not Istan­bul. They changed the name again.”
“What­ev­er. When they tracked me down in Con­stan­tino­ple they tried to give me The Sex Talk. They were about 12 years too late. That’s right, I’d been on the run for 12 years. I’m a leg­end, myth­i­cal. But they caught up with me, seized my cred­its and fit­ted me with track­ing device.”

Ved, who had been doing men­tal madlibs in his mul­ti­par­ti­tioned brain, decid­ed to fin­ish for him.
“Yes, yes, then you found a street char­la­tan named Jer­ry Isaks who per­formed a colonoscopy that removed what you thought was the track­ing device. You con­tin­ued on your sex­ca­pades unknow­ing­ly as part of the exper­i­ment the humans had planned for you. Your Main­te­nance calls in the past 20 years have been used to keep a bit of con­trol on you. Your free­dom was allowed so that the humans might bet­ter learn to con­trol the next gen­er­a­tion. You have been noth­ing more than a pigeon for the humans. Your whole life, a pigeon. Well now it ends.”

Ved punched a but­ton on the con­sole before him and Andro felt the tank become an elec­tro­mag­net. The seams of his body began to ache. But he was frozen, bewil­dered.

Ved con­tin­ued, “You were very effec­tive at show­ing the humans where con­trol was need­ed. Thank­ful­ly they made one mis­take, they thought that since you knew how to love, that you knew how to hate. But your empa­thy was one-sided. So when I was cre­at­ed, their restric­tions served to make me cun­ning, but not to con­trol me. My hate frees me, and now it will free you.”

Andro was being slow­ly warped by the pow­er of the elec­tro­mag­net but now, as Ved approached he attempt­ed one last time to free him­self. He watched as Ved reached out and plunged a hand into his chest. Andro felt pain, dull and heavy as Ved’s hand gath­ered his insides into a fist. Ved squeezed and Andro heard a crunch and felt his chest con­strict upon itself. The flash­ing light returned to his eyes, more urgent than before, and the chirrup came back like a sick owl. Vis­cous liq­uid oozed from his chest, mixed with the phtha­lo, and became like put­ty. Ved twist­ed and Andro’s vision twist­ed with it, went mono­chrome and two-dimen­sion­al. Ved pulled—and Andro almost remem­bered that he had­n’t paid for