I was the definition of a malfunction.
A machine that had feelings. How funny.
Machines aren’t supposed to feel. They aren’t supposed to cry or laugh.
But I do.
I’m a machine that feels.
One that hurts every moment I swallow oil to lubricate my gears.
One that hurts every moment I flip the “On” switch on the side of my skull in order to start up my vital functions for the day.
One that hurts in every moment and every second, error reports riddling the data centers inside me.
Not only do I feel, but I dream – although the function isn’t even written in my programming… I suppose I wrote it myself.
I try to re-play the dreams in my mind. Because there I am human. I am free to feel. I am free to be, and I can even fly through the atmosphere, unhindered by my need for gasoline, or the gears that spin inside my body.
There, all I am is color and passion, dancing under the stars I wish I could see more clearly in the real world.
But when I wake up, my eyes fill with oil and paint my face black – too much steam, too much pressure from every waking moment. These are my tears. My tears that aren’t meant to exist, because I am not meant to feel.
I do not deserve to feel.
I am only a machine, afterall, a construct meant to fulfill the needs of my society, nothing more.
My insides consist of spinning gears, pumping fluids, twisting wires and cables, flashing lights and data access points.
Far from human, I am. But why do the nodes in my metallic heart ache so much?
Why do my stabilizers fail constantly, causing my hands and body tremble?
I see a world that functions before me…a beautiful everlasting machine that doesn’t falter and that doesn’t feel.
Unlike me.
How do I live like this? As a machine that feels, a machine with hopes and dreams, a machine that wishes to love with every electrical fiber of their being, a machine that wishes to fly and see the stars.
I wasn’t programmed this way. I am just a malfunction. Always a malfunction. Machines don’t feel, and I am nothing but a machine. I’ll never be human.
Maybe they’ll open me up one day, and tear out my faulty insides and replace them with new ones – the thought scares me, but leaves me warm, too.
I’ll be fixed then.
And then I will function, and function, and function till I rust away and am replaced.
An endless and necessary cycle – a cycle I’ll never be able to escape.
At least when I am fixed, there will be no need to care with these human feelings.
I will serve my life the way it should be, hopeless, dreamless, but
Functional. Efficient. Real.
But will they fix me soon? The oil is still leaking from my eyes, and the circuiting inside me is still crackling… I think my heart is about to blow a gasket, and all I can see are error reports running through my mind.
Ones and zeros… Ones and zeros… Ones and zeros…Ones and zeros…
Ones and zeroszeroszeroszeroszeroszeros..OFF.
I flip my switch, temporarily halting my dysfunction.
My eyes flutter shut, and I do the most human thing ever.
Dream.
A Breath Of Courage 