Mechanical Heart

A lot of people passed me by as I lingered by the entrance to the Dark Room, probably wondering why I was this close to the strange correction chamber without going insane. With my ragged clothes, unkempt hair, and cardboard box full of scrapped and stolen machine parts, many people have either written me off as deranged, homeless, or a criminal. Honestly, the speculation is rather valid.

You see, I've lived many lives. So many that I could no longer use a conventional number system, instead relying on the erratic notations carved into my skin and my belongings, each signaling a single life cycle-- or, that's the closest I can come to rationalizing why I have those scars. Those things can cause a person to question everything about me, which I can understand quite well. Despite that statement, I can safely say I'm not immortal. Well, at least my body isn't. I wish I knew why I was like this.

I look down, keeping my eyes on the heart-shaped locket resting on my chest, above my tattered leather jacket. I had to keep this close to me, I just knew it. As I sat down, content with the mechanical scraps I had gathered without truly understanding why, I got the strange feeling that someone was watching me. Who would want to watch me of all people?

The door to the Dark Room opened loudly. People were screaming from inside. Perhaps a riot? I knew I should have been panicked, I knew that this was a bad situation, but I wasn't upset in the slightest. I just looked up quietly, peering over my shoulder to find a large man looming over me. Oh. He might kill me.

"Miss, I'm gonna need you to get up. This is a dangerous place to stay in overnight." He held a hand out, as if to help me up. But something inside me said that he was only going to hurt me. Probably the same thing that told me to keep collecting scrap...the strange nagging in my brain. Despite the now loudly sounding alarms in my head, I took the man's hand.

"A few things. One, it's mister. I am male, whether I look like it or not. Two, what is going on in there?" I was rather pleased that he left my scraps alone, especially refusing to look at them or acknowledge they were there. However, he leaned into me and whispered in my ear.

"Partheneas, leave the poor child alone."

Something inside of me bristled with anger, but I couldn't understand why. I was never Partheneas. Who the hell was that? However, I felt my throat closing, almost as if I could no longer speak. The officer, or I assumed that's what the man was, continued to walk with me. He wasn't interested in answering any questions, that much I could tell immediately.

We walked past the statue of Vanderen Almighty, put in place to honor an old historical figure (or so I assumed). I don't know, but something about it made me want to stop in front of it, just like the last 17 times I had passed it this week. But this time, it was stronger than before. Almost as if I needed to go there to survive...

In a rather irrational decision, I twisted free from the stranger's grasp, rushing to the silver and bronze statue and kneeling underneath it. Immediately, I felt as if my locket were being drawn to it, even closer than I was now. I was drawn to this...automaton.

Automaton! How did I not notice? Is that why I needed the parts? But that doesn't explain why I need it so badly. What about it is so important to me? A hand gripped me tightly, pulling against the near-magnetic current that kept me glued to the ground at my feet. For five minutes I waited, wondering what it would take to pull me away, before the inevitable happened.

The officer was angry at me, absolutely disgusted with me for even imagining that I could escape him. Perhaps I was going to The Dark Room. The locket warmed up, almost as if it was burning a hole into me, trying to kill me before this man took me. Of course it was. I was tempted to take the cursed thing off, especially because of the strange urges and whisperings I have had ever since it came on. It could be one of those controller devices that the Waykeeper faction had decided to use to force civilians into submission when their methods of brute force didn't work.

But I have had this since birth, a parent's gift to me. Of course it had to be this way. But pointless reflection was not the name of the game here. I was going to die, having not done anything with my life but scavenge for spare parts. I looked up, feeling the burning stop. No, it didn't stop, since I could still see the smoke curling from my clothes and now my skin. However, I couldn't feel it anymore...I couldn't feel anything anymore.

"You have to go. I will be fine in another body."

"Who the hell are you? And besides, this one's mine. I go when I want, not when you do."

The voice said nothing to me, but I knew instantly. This explained everything. The ramblings, the burning, the automaton, the scarring, the parts...I was being led by a spirit. It possessed the locket, didn't it?

"You could say. I am not a spirit, but a mechanical conscience."

"Okay, dumb that down for me. Are you the automaton?"

"No, I am not. I am the mind of a robotics professor from an earlier time. From...a better time."

"What do you want from me? Why do you haunt the locket?"

"So that someone could bring me to a mechanical shell, so I could truly live forever. That man...he wants to kill me forever."

I was in absolute awe at the statement, but my eyes were drawn still to the man that decided to attack me. He had me on the ground now, a piece of lumber from a recent explosion was his weapon as he tried to beat me down. I could see that I was bleeding, but I still couldn't feel a thing. It was a natural assumption that I was dying, or at least critically injured from the amount of the stuff pooled around me. But I wasn't fading away or something like that. Nothing serious was happening, was it?

It was only then that I realized that I was seeing myself in third person. Okay, so it's an out of body experience. Strange. Does that mean I'm already dead?

The attacker took off my locket, opening it. Strangely enough, the picture was no longer of my grandparents, but of two little children. His, probably. Was this a defense mechanism? I watched as the man wavered for a few seconds before pulling out a handgun and repeatedly shooting the dainty locket and killing the spirit inside. It felt as if I had been shot alongside them, all of the pain I knew I should have felt sooner cascading over me.

That was my final image.