Machinery
An original short story by LadyRivka
A/N: This was supposed to be my final assignment for my Creative Writing class, so go easy. I was forced to do this! LOL -Rivka
Kina looked out into the terraformed garden from her seat in the back row of Ms. Hochenbergers class. It was so boring sometimes, learning all of those math equations. Like she was supposed to remember that the two sides of a right triangle, when squared, is the sum of the square of the hypotenuse. She knew she was slow, and taken to daydreaming, especially since she and her family had arrived on Mars a few months prior. The new terraforming project was wonderful; it had created a paradise rarely seen on Earth. Kina looked out into the lush apple orchards outside her math class window, wanting to taste the fruit that she hadnt had since she was on Earth.
"KINA!" boomed Ms. Hochenberger, her hand slapping against her desk. "Please, for the love of God, pay attention when you're in my class! You're going to need geometry one day. I know you don't believe me but, YOU WILL."
"Whatever," sighed Kina, her bright blue eyes still concentrating on the apple orchards.
"KINA KIKAI!" The teacher roared, somewhat monotonously, into Kinas ears. "You had damn well better learn to pay attention in class, or you're going to be in a whole boatload of trouble! I wouldn't be surprised if you flunked the eighth grade, myself!"
Kina looked up at the teacher, blue eyes unblinking, long strawberry-blonde ponytails swaying with her head. "Yes, maam."
"Honestly, Miss Kikai, I don't know how you keep up!" Ms. Hochenberger sighed, walking dejectedly towards the front of the class again. "Okay, tonight's homework assignment is pages 431-435, and you'd better do all of it!" The bell rang and everyone left class in an unusually orderly stampede.
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Kina stood out by her locker while everyone else stood in line for the cafeteria. Surely they'd be serving the same old mushy slop they always did. Kina stuck out her tongue in disgust just thinking about it. How everyone else could eat that, and find it delicious, shed never know. But, then again, she's only been on Mars for a few months. She probably wasn't used to the cuisine yet.
She dug a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich out of her backpack and started to eat while she watched everyone else line up, monotonously, to eat the cafeteria gruel. She wondered what the draw was towards that gruel. Shed had it before, and it tasted awful, like motor oil or something vague that she never had eaten on Earth before.
Then the bell rang and Kina, stuffing the sandwich into her mouth, raced to her English class.
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"Now," stated Mr. Capek monotonously, "who can find the dependent clause in this sentence: My brother, who is a baseball player, won the state championships." He stared in Kinas direction; however, the girl was staring out the window again, admiring the scenery of the newly terraformed Martian surface.
"Kina??"
No answer.
"MISS KIKAI, WOULD YOU PLEASE PAY ATTENTION IN CLASS?"
"Umm...uhh...sorry. What was the question again?" The whole class giggled.
"Did you not hear my sentence?"
"I think so, something about baseball." Kinas chin collapsed into her hand again.
"Sometimes you can be such a pain in the...." Mr. Capek trailed off as he marched towards the front of the room and scribbled the assignment down on the blackboard.
The bell rang again and Kina sighed.
__
It was like that for Kina ever since she arrived on Mars with her parents. Trouble with school. Trouble making friends. Trouble with everything.
She tried on more than one occasion to say "hi" to the popular girls in the hallway, but they ignored her, walking by her in an oddly mechanical fashion while talking about who dated whom and which shade of eye shadow looked best on a redhead or something like that. Usually Kina just sank into the floor, not wanting to be noticed. But in her heart of hearts, she did want to be noticed. She wanted to be like the others, she wanted to fit in.
This particular day, she dawdled home, trying not to think about anything but her objective. She knew her father would be home working on one of his crazy projects; he only worked part-time at Syrtis University and spent the rest of his time in the Kikais basement doing God-knew-what. When Kina asked her father what he was doing, he said it was secret, and that if anyone on Mars found out, especially Kina, everything would run amok.
Kina opened the door to her house and grabbed a pouch of chocolate milk and started drinking it rather slowly. She watched in amazement out the window as people, appearing to be near death, stumbled into the open storm doors of their basement. She saw her father kindly take them in.
What's going on? thought Kina, still sipping her milk.
She had to know. She just had to.
So she ran down to the main entrance of the basement, punched in the access code she saw her father punch in many a time, and ran down the stairs.
What she saw there was amazing.
The people she saw come in were no longer people; they were decapitated heads sitting upon tables connected to metal and wire bodies coated with plasticine skins.
"DAD! What are you doing?"
"KINA! Don't look at me! Don't look!" Mr. Kikai covered his face with his hands, as if he were pushing back the stresses of the outside.
"Why not?"
"This project was supposed to be secret. This is why were on Mars, Kina. This is why. I have to help with the cybernetics project up here. Were the only humans, Kina. Me, you and your mother. Everyone else on Mars is an android."
Kina gasped. This is why school had been so difficult. This is why no one talked to her. They sensed she was different, that she was an actual human.
"Now go away, sweetie, and don't tell anyone you know!" Mr. Kikai shut the basement door.
___
Kina couldn't sleep that night. She lay in her bed, hunched over, repeating to herself the mantra of "I am a machine! I am a machine! Dammit, I'm a machine! I get out of this body and my dad won't care...neither will anyone else.... I am a machine...."
She nervously got up out of bed, her legs taking on a life of their own, an odd mechanical rigor. She waddled into her parents bedroom, looking for the thing to end all of this.
She looked through the drawers next to the bed. Nothing. She looked in the dresser. Nothing. She got up and climbed into the closet.
And there she found it. Her grandfathers heirloom .45 pistol. And her father was stupid enough to keep it loaded.
She checked the gun for bullets. There were four left in there. Thank God for that.
She walked over to her parents bed, looking coldly over their sleeping faces. These were the people who had given her life, who had raised her, who had loved her unconditionally. But she didn't care now. They had to die. They were too human, like herself. They had to be eliminated.
First she neared her fathers head with the .45, gripping the trigger. She let it go, and a bullet fired directly into his skull, freeing a sea of bright red arterial blood onto the bed.
Kina found herself unable to cry. She just smirked and repeated, "I, too, am a machine. A perfect machine. More so than any android!"
Next, her mother. Her sleepy blue eyes woke up to find her daughter pointing a gun at her. A loud pistol shot, a pain in her head, and all grew dark for her.
Kina smirked. "Maybe I am too perfect. This whole planet's in danger must self-destruct!"
With that, she hesitantly put the gun to her head and shot. All was purest nothingness. She was one of the few machines that had successfully deactivated herself.
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Word spread on Mars AND Earth about the tragedy of the junior-high student who went insane after finding out her family was the only real human one on the whole of Mars. A double homicide and a suicide. Not very pretty.
From then on, the Martian government prohibited all non-silicon-based lifeforms on the surface of Mars. And both the Martian androids and the Earth-dwelling humans were pleased greatly, because of the fear instilled in their hearts, one for the other. But they would not fight each other, for they might lose what little sanity they had left in the first place.
FIN
