Happy Anniversary (a story)

Happy Anniversary.

She sat smiling at rocks, in her head she divided their colours into different minerals and moments in history. Peace of mind (awful peace of mind.) What would the burnt layer of char say about her moment? She had had her fill of peace of mind. She had been spared. One human entity left alive, and what worse punishment? What greater torture? She dreamed of trees and conversations about trivial things. She dreamed of human companionship. She dreamed of surprise parties and arguments and inflated egos. She was without human friend or human foe. Alone. Even her custom made Z-4 model was breaking down, giving in to unkind years, and corrosion. His brass knobs were oxidizing. His stainless steel stained. His aluminum rusting into metallic cellulite.

It was ten years ago to the day that he was presented to her as a gift from her people. Her people. A sigh turned to a choke at this uncomfortable thought. What kind of queen would let this happen to her innocent minions? What foul treachery! All dead, never forgotten.

She shuttered and remembered the day the airships loomed in, filled with armies. Ruthless beings from a distant star. They wanted fossil fuel.. They wanted gold and jewels and women and children. They were pirates on the vastest sea imaginable, and they were bloodthirsty. Her subjects lived in a non-confrontational Utopia, a dream. Greed had turned her dreams into nightmares: bodies filling the streets, children's cries silenced, beggar's screams unanswered. Who could help them?

The Z-4 was their last gift to their Queen. He was custom made for her. Beautiful and strong. Sweet and trustworthy. Perfect. And now? Nothing more than a miserable old tin can. Through his deterioration, one of his many programs had become scrambled. Confused. Disillusioned. His sweet had become sour.

She left the rocks and made her way to the rubble. Though catastrophe had happened years ago, the memories refused to fade, leaching onto her brain, sucking out all the good, only leaving the waste behind. The memory of his assembly was a bitter relief. It had been her birthday. The Z-4 was presented to her so that she may never again feel lonely. Who would've thought that this could happen? He had become a reminder of life's ironic little jokes.

She moved through piles of rubble, silt, and slag, and found her Z-4 model sitting miserably on a small lopsided heap of air-carriage wrecks. His deep frown creaked and ground through his elastic skin, forming a little smile for her. Not being returned, it slipped away with his gaze.

"You must learn to forget. There are plenty of other things to be miserable about." He said with a strange echoing buzz, for his Series 5700 voice box had slid out of place and was now located in the far hollow of his throat.

"Like what?" She replied, trying not to show her annoyance.

"Like the humid burn of this never ending summer. Like the shortage of food (and it frustrates me to no end that you need that waste to survive.) Once it's gone, you'll leave me like everyone left you so long ago. Then I'll be here alone, never shutting down. Oh, the pain of programs running on forever."

"Don't be so foolish. At the rate that you're falling apart, you won't be around come the next full moons. Then I'll be alone."

This petty argument had been replaying itself for years, and through many full moons, but this time it was different. The Z-4 surprised her.

He turned away, oil leaking from his high resolution eyes. "You are alone, dear. I am just a machine. A broken machine. No different than the wrecks I'm sitting on, and only slightly better company. Deal with your problem. I was created to make you happy. I don't know how to do that anymore. I no longer serve you. I serve only myself. The only one properly programmed to make you happy is you. This situation…" He rang, stiffly pivoting his arm to display the rubble and bone, "is not going to change. If you don't want your circuits to scramble, than you're going to have to change."

She turned sharply, and walked away from this with a troubled mind and the knowledge that he may be right. What a sickening day it was when a broken machine could out-human a broken human. He really did seem to understand (and how a machine could realize mechanical selfishness was a mystery to her as well.) When he lifted his body up to walk back to the ruin they referred to as their house, his body creaked and moaned like an old drawbridge. She turned and watched him with his new found independence. 'Not much better than an air-carriage wreck…' he had stated. She surveyed the graveyard of littered scrap metal and somehow, as hard as she tried, she could not picture him in the same light. He may not have been human, but he was the closest thing she had, and he was the closest friend she had ever had.

***

As she picked through the broken ruins looking for trinkets, a loud hum shook the landscape. An air-ship was hovering over her homestead. Something deep in her cranium snapped, and she ran towards it in a panic. Though the ship looked completely different from a pirate ship, it triggered memories of laser cannon fire, and carnage. Her Z-4 model was sure to be taken slave, or perhaps destroyed altogether for parts. She raced over slag heaps, through puddles of silt, and collapsed at what substituted as a door. The door fell at her collapse, sending a cloud of dust into the air. As the cloud settled she climbed to her feet. The Z-4 was sitting at a makeshift table with a human male.

"What do you want with us?" She screamed before any explanation or introduction could be offered. "You've already taken everything!" She grabbed a metal pole out from it's spot holding up the plexi of the window.

"No! You've got it all wrong!" Announced her machine, in a voice that sounded as if it came from an electric bullhorn. "Earlier today I finally fixed the transmitter. I've had SOS signals transmitting all afternoon! I have finally discovered a way to make you happy again. This is Captain Franchiser." He stopped his introduction, and offered Franchiser a glance, subtly displaying his jealousy for the man's real flesh, his actual heartbeat, and his ability to heal. "He is here to rescue you." His mouth crimped into a slight grin. "Captain…I am pleased to introduce you to our Queen. The Queen of Memory. The Queen of Refuse and Decay…" He creaked over to the window and peered out at all she surveyed, catching his reflection in the plexi-glass. "…The Queen of Nothing." He turned back to look at her. "My Queen." His voice at this point was so filled with static that it sounded more like a husky wheeze. And on that he wandered out into the early evening stink.

***

That evening was especially dark, though the glow of the ship kept a good portion of the ruined city well lit. He sat on his favorite heap of air-carriage wrecks and watched as it finally lifted into the sky, and with a quick flash it…she was gone. The night, to his oil-clogged eyes, was the darkest he had ever seen, even through his malfunctioning infrared socket visors it was black. Void of heat. He turned off the red. Void of life. For the first time he realized what genuine human feelings were. They were miserable. Not part of some misbehaving program, but justified. He arrived home and lit a torch. He walked to the empty bed and stared at it. Though he had been programmed to satisfy a woman, he had never really understood why until now. Because, albeit in different ways, it satisfied him as well.

"You were absolutely right." A voice!

He turned around and she stood there looking somewhat lost and bewildered.

"About what?" He sputtered. "About what?"

She smiled. She smiled!

***

That night, as she lay in bed, she heard him clank and grind into the room. He first sat on the edge of the bed, and then folded down beside her. He took his usual place by her side, and with a series of cranks, gnashes and hollow moans, he leaned over and crimped his rusty lips into a smile and kissed her on the forehead before moving his arms around her. Holding her, he shut himself off to sleep mode. For the first time in many years she had smiled. How could she leave?

He was made for her.