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Internal Error

a robot wakes up.

By annika la vina Published 2 years ago 10 min read
1
Internal Error
Photo by Kenrick Mills on Unsplash

Click. Click. Click.

“OK, Wyatt is done. Tanya, bring in Jeremy for me, would you? He needs a little tuning up, I think.” Dr. Oswald says, closing Wyatt’s electrical outlet and motioning him out of the room. Wyatt’s head props up and his eyes open wide, and you can hear the gears in his legs move as he walks out of the doctor’s office.

Tanya takes a peek at Jeremy through the window, and Jeremy catches her light brown eyes in the midst of the fluorescent lighting. When he blinks, the gears in his eyelids creak.

Tanya busts open the door, and her yellow skirt blows up slightly. Her brown hair falls down her shoulders as she turns to look at Jeremy. Jeremy gulps as Tanya softly smiles at him. It’s the only beautiful thing he knows-her smile.

She gently picks up his hand, and Jeremy wishes that he could feel the softness of her skin, or even experience what softness feels like. She looks up into his eyes, and if he had a heart, it would skip.

“Come on, Jem, it’s time to get you tuned up. Then you’ll be out and about in no time.” She says, softly petting his forearm with her hand. Jeremy doesn’t say anything- more like, Jeremy can’t say anything.

Jeremy T. Oswald is Model 5.107 on Dr. Oscar Oswald’s line of IAR (Innovative Articulate Robots). Born just a few weeks ago, Jeremy still hasn’t grown enough to speak or think properly yet, but in a few months’ time, he’ll be able to walk freely and live wildly- just like a human.

Everything that Jeremy knows about being human is shaped by two people- his creator, Dr. Oswald, and the doctor’s daughter, Tanya Oswald.

From the doctor, Jeremy learns how to keep a straight face. He notices from time to time, that whenever Tanya is crying, or whenever Tanya is mad, Dr. Oswald doesn’t change expression. Jeremy used to think that, because of this, Dr. Oswald wasn’t human, and was probably a robot, like him- but then, a few days ago, when Tanya mentioned her mom, the doctor turned away, and for a split second, Jeremy could notice the tears falling down his face until he took him out of the room.

From Tanya, Jeremy learns that yellow skirts make him happy. He learns eyebrow raises make him giddy inside, and he learns that laughs are the best sound he’s ever heard. To him, her smile makes up for the lack of sunlight.

Tanya sits him down on the stool in front of her father, since Jeremy’s legs are still too fuzzy to walk. The doctor takes Tanya out of the room and begins his work on Jeremy. He takes a multitude of tools and pokes and prods and tunes and fixes, until Jeremy is one step closer to being able to feel.

Once he’s done, the doctor adjusts Jeremy’s bone structure, and all of a sudden, a jolt runs through Jeremy’s infrastructure, and for the first time in his life, he can feel someone touching him.

His eyes widen, and the doctor takes notice. “Jeremy, Jem, you can feel it, can’t you? Oh my gosh, you can feel my fingers! Tanya, get in here!” he yells, and Tanya’s yellow skirt comes blowing in.

“He’s accelerating much faster than I thought he would! He’s already weeks ahead of Wyatt and Oliver- he can feel me touch him. OK, Jem, blink once if you can feel me, alright? I’m not going to hurt you.” Doctor Oswald starts poking random parts of Jem’s artificial skin, and Jem blinks every time. Tanya squeals with delight.

“Dad, this is amazing! And crazy! At the same time! Oliver can’t even open his eyes yet and he was made 3 weeks before Jem was born!”

Tanya starts to touch his face, and Jeremy instantly freezes up the minute her soft fingers touch his fake skin. “You can feel it, can’t you?” she whispers.

Yes, I can feel it. And there goes Jeremy’s first thought.

Dr. Oswald takes Tanya out of the room, and for the rest of the day, he works on Jem as much as he can, opening and closing his electrical outlets, changing and unchanging wires, arranging and rearranging gears. “Jem, you’re doing great, son. I’ve never seen a machine accelerate as fast as you do.”

I don’t want to be a machine. He thinks.

“Blink if you can understand me.” the doctor says.

Jem blinks.

For the next few days, Jem is stuck on Dr. Oswald’s stool, undergoing copious amounts of surgery with only his thoughts and Dr. Oswald’s excited squeals to keep him company. Occasionally, Tanya comes inside the study to bring her father some coffee, or a snack or two. She always looks amazed when she sees him, and Jeremy likes the feeling. He likes it that Tanya thinks that he’s amazing.

“Jem, I want you to try walking, alright? Can you do that for me?” Dr. Oswald says, taking Jeremy’s hand and helping him up off the stool. Jeremy blinks.

OK. I’ll try. He thinks.

Jeremy shakily stands up, looks around the room, and tries to balance on both feet. “OK Jem, I’m going to let go of your hand right now, OK? Don’t be scared. You can do it.” The doctor lets go of Jeremy’s hand, and with a little hesitation, Jeremy is able to stand up. On his own.

Dr. Oswald’s eyes widen. “OK Jem, now I want you to walk from the stool to the book case. It’s just across the room. Can you do that for me, Jem?”

Yes. He thinks.

Slowly, the gears turn in his legs as he puts one foot over the other. He watches the bookcase get closer and closer, and he imagines that he’s walking towards Tanya. He can hear the doctor excitedly laugh behind him.

Jeremy stops at the bookcase and touches the book spines with his fingers. He feels the difference between the rough pages of the book and the smooth wood of the bookcase. He now understands that being able to touch is truly a blessing.

The doctor runs over to him. “Jem! This is amazing! Can you walk some more? Can you walk around the room?”

OK. He thinks.

Jeremy does as he’s told and walks around the doctor’s study a few more times. Soon, hours go by. It’s 11 p.m., then it’s 12 a.m., then it’s 1 a.m., then it’s 2 a.m. Jeremy is taught how to walk, run, eat, nod. The list goes on and on.

At 2:30 a.m., when Dr. Oswald is tweaking Jeremy once again, Tanya bursts into the room with a big t-shirt and sports shorts, her hair all up in a messy bun and her reading glasses sitting atop her nose.

“Dad, it’s 2:30 in the morning. You need to go to sleep.” She yells. The doctor turns around and is met with his angry daughter, arms folded over her chests.

“Tanya, I-

“Dad, I know you’re super excited that Jeremy is accelerating at this rate, but you need to sleep. You’ve been up for days straight. I’ll watch him for the rest of the night.” She whispers, and Dr. Oswald gives up in defeat.

“Tanya, you’re just like your mother. You’re always going to look out for me.” The doctor says, kissing his daughter’s forehead and giving Jeremy one final tap on the head before he exits out of the office. Tanya sits on the couch and stares at her father’s creation. Jeremy blinks.

They sit in silence for a while as Tanya tries to fall asleep, but she can’t shake the feeling of Jeremy’s eyes staring into her, as if he were really human.

“Jem? Can you understand me? Do you know what I’m saying? Blink if you understand what I’m saying.” Tanya says. Jeremy blinks.

She sighs and takes a step closer, her glassing falling on her nose. She touches his arm quickly. “Blink if you could feel that.” Jeremy blinks, which sends Tanya into a smiling frenzy.

“I know you think it’s kind of weird that Dad and I are so impressed, but usually IARs take months to be able to get to the level you’re at. You’ve only been made two weeks ago, and you’re already more advanced than Wyatt, who was made last year. Do you know how big of a deal this is?”

No. Jem thinks.

She sighs. “You know, I think it’ll be good having someone else around the house that can actually do things. Usually it’s just me that takes of my dad, but now you can too, I guess.” she says.

What happened to your mother? He thinks.

Tanya cocks her head at him and looks at him square in the eye. “You’re probably wondering why it’s just me taking care of him, right? Blink once if that’s true. Blink once if you’re curious to know.”

Jeremy blinks.

“Well, if you really do want to know, I guess I’ll tell you. My mom died when I was little. I don’t think my dad ever fully got over it, so he invests all his time in making robots that will stay alive forever, so that no one can ever leave him again. It’s just been him and me for a while.”

Oh. Jeremy thinks.

Tanya shrugs. “It’s OK though. I guess that’s part of life, I guess. People go. It’s part of being human. You’ll understand in a few weeks. You’ll start to realize.” she says, trailing off at the end.

What’s the difference between me and you? How come I can’t feel what you feel? He wonders.

Tanya sees the look in his eyes and continues to stare into them like they’re real irises and real corneas and real pupils like what she learned in anatomy class. She realizes that he’s thinking, he’s thinking hard, but she doesn’t know about what.

“Are you wondering what it’s like to understand? Blink once if yes, blink twice if no.” she whispers. Jeremy blinks once and he can see tears forming along the brim of Tanya’s eyes. He wishes that one day, he’ll be able to cry. Crying is better than not feeling at all.

“Alright, I’ll tell you. But it’s going to hurt. Being able to feel is going to hurt, alright? It’s what’s part of being able to live, Jem. Not being able to feel is better than being able to, because once you start feeling, you make yourself vulnerable. And when you’re vulnerable, people hurt you.” Tanya says, the tears dripping down her cheeks.

“I’ve been hurt a lot, Jem. You don’t want to live. There’s nothing special about being able to live. Nothing is worth getting hurt.”

For the first time, Jem can feel the insides of his stomach turning around and around, and he’s not sure if they’re just gears or if they’re the thing that Dr. Oswald calls “butterflies”. The doctor told him once that when he would first see his wife, he would get butterflies in his stomach, and they wouldn’t go away for days.

You. He thinks.

Tanya opens her eyes in disbelief and meets Jeremy’s eyes.

“What?” She incredulously asks. Jeremy realizes that he actually said that outloud.

Jeremy takes a deep breath, not that he needs one anyway, and pushes the butterflies out of his stomach. “You.” He says again.

Tanya still looks at him in astonishment, but for once, Jeremy is able to tell her how he feels.

“I want to feel. I want to live.” He says again. His voice cracks in the middle, since it’s still shaky.

He takes another deep breath.

“Living is worth it because of you.”

Tanya gulps, and he can see her eyes visibly soften when she understands what he’s saying. She comes forward, and takes his hand and smiles. Jeremy feels his gears stiffen and his eyes widen, then he feels a booming in his chest like no other.

Jeremy thinks that that is what Dr. Oswald called a heartbeat.

Short Story
1

About the Creator

annika la vina

24 year-old writer, artist, and entrepreneur. I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.

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