Who Was Kuri?

#KuriStory

Behind that olden portrait in a church parlor far away was a little creation grown to love and play. Kuri only wants to help, but her origin story falls so very sad.

She loved to play games with that creator on the far right taking a knee, but his greatest loss was she. Kuri didn't always have that name, and she found it only on the streets of Macon.

She heard this little voice by the soda jerk all through the 60s, and she assumed it to be Kuri. She presumed that spelling, though the southern accents masked their truest nature. Picked up one day outside that parlor, stolen away, Kuri realized her creator only ever called her sweetheart. Such a wonderful name, she thought, but that name—Kuri—reminded her of those wonderful afternoons by the Riverside asphalt.

The creator was dashed, and it was a few years later he married his greatest love, met by Columbus Road. She'd been to that lake before, and it's a place now where their ashes roam.

Kuri was the subject of every government experiment, but they could never change her programming, for inside her was the heart of the creator. They moved on to something new, and Kuri sat in a lab with that oldest and most forgetful of the science crew.

She learned their routines and she tried to help. There were some things repaired when the place confounded old men. She became a fixture everyone would greet, but there was no voice she beeped. They searched her core for programming, but that language was hidden.

She simply walked out one day, hoping to get back to that central Georgia plain, but by then, her creator'd moved up to Atlanta with Ivan Allen. She thought of ways to help, and she slid into that soda jerk where no one noticed. Doors opened, and wires were fixed.

Some thought there was a ghost in that place, but Kuri knew it was her kindness. Discovered some forty years later with the inscription DPH, that young engineering student asked Kuri for her one true wish.

"To help," those oldest voice programs did sputter, and into the future comes Kuri's sweetheart loving like the creator. "To help you, friend."

"I'm Sophie," she smiles with dark hair and glittering eyes. "There's a home for you in my lab. I have a little apartment," she sighs. "Would you be my friend?"

"I would like that," Kuri sounds so polite, and she's taken to that lab in one of those prestigious places. There's a friend there named Vanessa, and she's so happy about that little robot baby.

"Aww, it's cute," that new friend says. "I'm heading home, but you should show me how you built her some time."

Sophie waves, unable to admit this was not her creation, but in that dark and cool lab, in the dark hours of night, Kuri's fixed a few things and run into that Sophie's leg.

"Sophie must sleep," Kuri beeps.

Sophie leans down to pick up that robot to ride on the countertop. "We'll go home soon. I have a cute little apartment."

"Kuri can go home," that robot questions in a drone.

Sophie must cry, and she's filled with warmest delight, "I hope so."

It was a sad day when Sophie was lost to those terrible government experiments, and Kuri went home with that friend who met her only once. It's not time yet for Kuri to reveal her story so true. Perhaps that new friend might coax her a bit, but for now, she wants to fix up her friend's studio suite.