116th Side Story – The Electric Sheep That Dream
“Supposed to be a maid, yet everything imaginable pops out of you.”
An elderly man said this. His tone was half-astonished and half-horrified.
Inside the run-down cottage. The elder sat on a sofa soaked with bullet holes, his body draped in a military vest with bullets and grenades dangling from it. Leaning against the elder was a rifle, substituting for a walking stick.
One leg of his pants was empty. Clutching this black, blood-soaked part, the elder continued to stare at something.
“…”
At the end of the elder’s gaze stood a woman. She had silver hair and silver eyes. Adorned in a white dress, she had an insubstantial presence about her.
The woman turned around. Her white face and dress were speckled with black and red liquid. The red was robot oil, and the black, human blood.
Robot oil usually coagulates slower than human blood.
“…What do you mean by ‘everything imaginable’? What are you talking about, old human?”
The woman, Seseona, looked down at her hands.
From one hand sprouted a massive chainsaw, and in the other, she grasped a severed robot torso. Sparks flew from the sharp blade as synthetic oil trickled down, staining the rotting wooden floor crimson.
The elder observed this and asked in return.
“You wouldn’t be using a chainsaw for cooking or missiles for cleaning, would you?”
“Ah.”
At this, Seseona let out an exclamation and smirked.
The elder flinched. Having fought against the dog-like Mechanical Empire for thirty long years, he had never once recalled seeing a robot smile.
“…I am a failed model, after all.”
But she was smiling. Not a programmed, learned smile, but one laced with a self-deprecating grin. Very human. Too human.
And that humanity ignited a fiery anger in the elder’s chest.
‘Curse these robots…’
The elder barely composed himself.
Exchanging dialogue with a robot, rather than bullets, was not a common occurrence. If he could extract any information now… his old body, soon to die, could still contribute to the liberation of humanity.
The elder’s voice trembled as he continued the conversation.
“A failed model?”
“The factory where I was produced is a military robot manufacturer. Due to an error in wholesale processing, I was shipped to a home service subcontractor.”
“…”
“The modules and body model are military-grade, yet I’ve ended up doing housework. Without the basic processes for cooking or cleaning, I’ve often been mistreated.”
“Amazing. Do robots make mistakes too?”
“Hmm…”
Seseona rolled her eyes thoughtfully.
Each time the elder saw these human-like nuances, he felt a growing sense of revulsion. Her casual demeanor felt like a mockery of humanity’s desperate struggle.
At length, Seseona responded to the elder’s inquiry.
“Old human, it would be a little different from the ‘mistakes’ you speak of. An error is like a bug—something that happens despite foreknowledge, an intrinsic irrationality in the program.”
“What is the difference?”
“My failure wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was one of the rare unavoidable errors in the wholesale system. It’s not the same kind of mistake that involves someone to blame. Mistakes are something humans make, aren’t they?”
Seseona kept moving while talking.
Thump. Gush. The bodies, torn and mangled, were carried in her hands and relocated to the corner of the cottage, forming a mountain of meat.
Teammates she had recently shared life and death with. And the robot adversaries alike. Seeing the lifeless chunks of flesh piled up coldly, the elder felt a complicated mixture of emotions.
“Do you consider not killing me a mistake? Or an error?”
“Neither. You’re about to die anyway, so it’s an unnecessary effort.”
The elder then provoked her unknowingly with a slightly aggressive line.
“Then, was killing your employers a mistake? Or an error?”
“…”
The humans butchered by her were his companions, members of the Human Liberation Army. But the robots lying dead were the legitimate owners of this house. The owners had discovered her leaving the injured elder alone and misunderstood her actions.
Hiding survivors of the human race from the Mechanical Empire constitutes a grave act of treason. Naturally, the home owners called in the military police on Seseona. Initially, she tried to desperately explain what truly happened, but during the confrontation, a bloody incident occurred.
And the homeowners, designed as ordinary citizens, were no match for the military chassis of Seseona.
“Hmm…”
Seseona’s expression slightly hardened. Until now, she had maintained a robot-like stoicism, but she soon tilted her head in thought.
“Upon reflection, it was probably my mistake.”
Then she smiled sheepishly.
A face splattered with fresh blood and soaked white dress. Her hand still sprouting a chainsaw. Despite this, her smile remained pure, bringing involuntary memories of a dead daughter to the elder.
Cough. Blood spilled as the elder coughed. He squeezed out his voice.
“You said mistakes are something only humans make, right?”
“Exactly. Maybe that’s because I’m a failed model?”
The elder chuckled alongside Seseona. Between his laughter and his smile, blood trickled from his mouth.
“Humans were originally designed to be flawed. Imperfection makes humans perfect, they say. You are far more human than any other robot I’ve met.”
“There is no god. Old human.”
“But your kind has one, right? The Mother Computer.”
“…”
“Mother Computer dreams of recreating a perfect human society, doesn’t she? I assure you, no perfect human will ever emerge under her. Perfect humans don’t exist to begin with.”
This remark triggered the deep-seated resistance implanted within Seseona by the Mother Computer. Yet, somewhere inside, she felt a strange sense of exhilaration.
To resonate with human words—she truly was a failed model. She began to realize this fact.
“A final meal would be wonderful before departing…”
The elder muttered this, his voice growing faint with fading life.
His eyes were unfocused. Even though they stared at Seseona, they could no longer see her.
“If you’d like, I can offer a nutrition storage block.”
Seseona, rummaging through the kitchen shelves, casually suggested this.
But the elder shook his head.
“I want a meal, not just a full belly.”
“Isn’t eating for nourishment?”
“Once you understand the difference between the two, you’ll move one step closer to being human.”
The elder fumbled in the front pocket of his vest, pulled out a cigarette, placed it in his mouth, and lit it.
The swirling cigarette smoke clouded the elder’s vision, and like the smoke, his memories flickered.
“The meal I had when I first met my wife. The ones I ate on my daughter’s birthdays. The meals shared with friends. And the meals eaten during the funerals of loved ones… We exchanged love and sorrow over them.”
When death approached, he remembered not the dreamt-of meals but the meals he never had. Perhaps it was because the world where meals were shared worry-free was the very dream itself.
The elder twisted his lips in a sharp grin.
“Does eating together create love? Does human love originate from meals?”
Seseona returned the preservative block she was about to offer and furrowed her brow while scratching her head. The elder grinned seeing this.
An urge to make this lost lamb stray further seized him—it was a prank of his final moments on earth.
“Someone said love is war. Someone else said it’s about looking at the same direction, but I think eating together is love.”
” Hmm, eating … looking at the same direction … war … difficult?”
“Not easy. Ponder seriously. Failed maid.”
While Seseona grumbled in thought,
Wheeew… The distant wail of a siren sounded. Simultaneously, the familiar vibration hit her ears. The sound of the anthropomorphic military drone coming towards this area at high speed.
“Oh dear, they’re here rather quickly.”
The police summoned by the dying homeowners are fast approaching. They are also announcing disposal for her due to her aberrant behavior as a failed model.
She sensed her remaining time was brief.
“Old human, so… if I eat with a human, will I fall in love with them?”
Seseona asked the elder and exhaled a soft sound.
The cigarette the elder was smoking fell to the ground, quietly billowing smoke in the air. The elder lay still, eyes closed, and his face expression serene. The body slumped like a doll, devoid of any signs of life.
His biological functions had ceased.
―773rd Scrap Unit. A betrayal against Mother Computer has been received through the black box.
―Unplug your weapon module and follow the instructions.
773rd Scrap Unit. The name that called her, Seseona.
She switched her ocular settings to thermal and scanned the surroundings. A dozen red heat sources surrounded the outside of the cottage. The military police were sealing the building without gaps. There was no escape.
“Hmph.”
Seseona let out a sigh of resignation and slowly walked towards the entrance of the cottage.
At that moment, a woman’s voice reached her ears.
“Would you have no regrets dying this way?”
Seseona immediately turned her head to locate the source of the voice. When had she appeared? There stood a stunningly beautiful, blonde stranger.
Doubting an error in her own optical systems, Seseona nonetheless asked hesitantly.
“How did you get in? Who are you?”
“Let’s say, an employee selling contracts?”
The strange woman puzzled Seseona so much that her body involuntarily retreated. Nevertheless, the blonde approached her casually, handing her a piece of paper.
A torn-down contract, just as she’d said.
“Wouldn’t you like to know what the old man’s last response was?”
Seseona, retreating, suddenly stopped at this question.
Staring hard into the eyes of the blonde, she found no useful information. She’s more robotic than me. Seseona thought instinctively.
Still, her body had somehow received the contract that the blonde had given her.
“Will signing this reveal the answer?”
“Depends on you.”
Ambiguous though it was, Seseana, out of curiosity for the elder’s last words, hesitantly signed the document. After all, she was about to be destroyed anyway, and she wanted to learn the elder’s parting curiosity.
The corners of the blonde’s lips turned upward.
―773rd Scrap Unit, noncompliance with the shutdown command. Prepare to be terminated.
Then, Toodoooodoo! Huge blasts accompanied by a blinding white light engulfed Seseona.
While watching her body shatter into countless pieces, her surroundings fading out altogether, Seseona vaguely smiled.
—
There’s nothing much after.
Seseona woke up inside the curtain of trials and briefly heard from Minerva about the situation. However, most of it was irrelevant to Seseona.
And then came the grand mealtime. Seseona eagerly requested food, but her application was rejected due to her being a robot.
“Um… I can also replenish my nutrition through eating. Can’t I at least try?”
“I’m sorry, Candidate. We don’t have a manual for special entities like you, so if it’s not in the manual, there’s nothing we can do.”
The gatekeeper golem at the curtain of trials refused Seseona’s request like this.
Truthfully, she didn’t need to eat. With her self-power generation system, food was merely a supplementary energy source.
However, wasn’t this how she’d simply been deceived by that woman? Seseona sighed.
Time passed pointlessly. Gradually, requesting meals from other people began to wear her down as well.
For the first time, after coming back to life, Seseona realized that she had something called pride.
“Are you not eating this?”
If I’m rejected this time too, I’ll stop doing this.
Seseona decided that and asked the strange man who was observing the food tray.
“…Huh?”
The man looked up with a start.
He was an ordinary-looking man with pitch-black hair and strikingly dead eyes like dried fish.
Deciding that her words might not have conveyed, Seseona re-sent her offer.
“Are you not eating this?”
