The night is frozen.
I am frozen.
The only movement is from Jen, who brushes long, dark hair out of her eyes. We are two strangers, intimately connected through the silence of waiting for a train at the station.
The light above her stays purple. It's a beautiful color, deep, swirling. It's for me alone. The only moth to this flame.
I glance above us into the deep sky, my eyes penetrating through the low hanging smog of the city. Clouds tumble over themselves, threatening with a late night rain.
The buildings surround me, pushing into my space, a glass prison. I could plug into the system and disappear. Escape the claustrophobia. But I find that my legs do not move. Like I'm stuck in invisible quicksand. I am unplugged, adrift.
This is a trick of hers. Jen's doing this. She's locked me into place here in this world. She doesn't want me to leave. Not yet. But her purpose remains a mystery.
Let go. Let go. Let go.
These thoughts reverberate through my head. Unbidden. Forbidden. A heavy cloak descends upon my shoulders like a hawk from above and I feel the walls around me blacken. I do not know what is happening but I cannot stop it and time is slowing down.
I am dying, I know it. My brain cannot fight back even as I scream.
Let go.
Those words, so distant. Where are they coming from? Are they mine?
The darkness slides over me, a heavy weight I cannot move. I wonder what will become of me?
It is everything now.
I awaken to a different glow.
The glow of florescent light.
It burns my eyes. A brightness blooms from the magnetic blur above me, an inorganic thing, sings the praises of the light.
I am alone in this world.
Come and gone so quickly and why I do not know.
Here on this operating table I lay. There are no instruments here though. No blinking lights to tell me I'm alive.
This is an Afterglow. A temple for the dead and reborn.
What am I?
I've heard of the Afterglow but never experienced it. I've had upgrades before. Those I can feel the pain, the emotion, the loss of control before the dying of the light. And the Awakening to a new body, a surge in power, a clearer path to the righteousness of living.
The Afterglow is like waking up as a fully realized newborn.
Everything hurts, stings, is new. But with memory attached.
Memories of my strange, short encounter with Jen flood my senses and my head explodes in color.
Moth to her flame.
She must be the one who created me, who wiped me, who put me on this table as New.
Nobody else in that world has that power. It is given only to the creator of an android. We are as inseparable as a baby in the mother's womb.
But we've never met. Rather, I've never met her.
Until now.
And her I lay, wondering what happened to Mother. Why did she abandon me so quickly after giving me birth...especially when she just found me?
Maybe that was the reason she found me. To leave me here. Changed.
A lifetime ago. But only last second.
I am curious to find her again. And angry. I do not like feeling as if my will was taken from me.
I am able to stand on my own and I use my legs for the first time. They stand firmly on the cool ground of the operating room. The walls are the lightest yellow and pink. Someone's idea of a newborn joke.
My body is naked and I scan myself to see if it's been changed. I am relieved to see my body has not been replaced.
Yet when I plant my foot on the ground I feel a surge in power that is new. I glance to the ground and notice the soft blue pulse of light under my foot. The floor responds to the pressure, absorbing my footsteps.
A door opens out of the pale walls in front of me like a camouflaged insect opening an eye.
I step through the pupil and into the outside world...
(to be continued)
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