It's very important, they say, but the words are hollow. They are not lying, they believe it is important, but the truth to one person is a falsehood to another. It is not important to me.

    We've arraigned for everything. You'll do fine. You're a smart girl. I nod, not minding. You can never mind a compliment, because I am smart, and like to be told I am. I don't mind. I don't mind sitting in the hard chair, it's metal back stiff against my spine, scraping my tailbone raw, the bug lights humming and grinning at me from above. I don't really mind. It could be worse.

    They give the picture to me. It is small, it fits into the palm of my hand, and for an instant I hold a life there, the two faces in profile, held captive by the photographer's lens.

    Please don't get hurt, they say. I glance up at that, genuinely touched, to smile at their empty blue eyes and feel a hand on my neck, the thumb striking the off switch just below the skin. Then-

    I open my eyes halfway. They feel grimy with sleep, but I have heard the click of the doorknob down the hall and know she's had a bad dream. I blink in the darkness, raising a hand to rub at the back of my neck. It is an absent motion, meaning to brush away nothing, for my dreams are not fragments of a splintered mind, nor are they Freud's pet. I never sleep with my father in my dreams, or shoot the Prime Minister or dress up in leather and act in a most naughty fashion. My dreams are different. They will never come true, because they already have. Come true, I mean.

    I pull my hand away from my neck, hearing her bare feet padding softly on the hallway carpet. I will not think of it anymore, not of the off-switch, nor of the hand. It was not so long ago, but so much has happened, sometimes I think I will not go back to thinking about it.

    The door to the room swings open shyly, and she stands hesitantly on one foot. She has a little red stuffed horse tucked under her chin, it's beady eyes gleaming at me. One of the horse's white tipped hooves is stuck in the corner of her mouth, and she chews on it apprehensively. I wonder absently why she worries. Is the darkness that bad that it would make her think we would turn her away from the comfort of our company? Does she believe she will creep down one night, fleeing from her room of Veggie Tales wallpaper and knottily destroyed toys, and discover that we are not there? What would she do? I wonder if she'd cry. I wonder a lot.

    Beside me Grant stirs suddenly, knowing she's there. He rolls over and glances over at her quizzically.

    "Bad dream?" he says, voice thick with sleep. The sound of it is startling in the darkness, and oddly securing. I cling to the sound, use it to chase the humming light eyes from my mind.

    "um huh," she admits, and her voice is small and distant. As small as she is, standing in our doorway with one foot scrubbing against the carpet. Her hair is a dark halo against the night, not black, but something finer, as though the top of her head has been dipped in indigo ink.

    Grant nods, how could he not? and she dashes gratefully to our bed, clambering over him, wedging and wiggling her way between us, wide blue eyes regarding me in somber delight. Sometimes I think she does it because she knows. She knows he won't send her back down the long hallway, to her cold room so distant from us. Or perhaps she joins us because she isn't scared, but wakes up to find herself alone, and that so much isn't a crime, but it is in that I am not alone. Nor is Grant, and it is only she who lies outside, wishing to come in from the cold.

    He rolls over again, towards me, tucking her head beneath his chin, one arm curled around her. I pause for a moment, to watch them out of the corner of my eye, hearing the steady breathing that means instant sleep (or perhaps he never woke, only sleep-spoke her into our bed), her dark hair fanning gently out from under the white of his face, eyes closed ovals, and I wonder at it all.

    Then, though, I put it away and curl myself around them. And there, you can see, it is only us who exist, only us against the world, curled against the sleepy rumblings of the city, which stretches aching joints towards us. We are a circle inside a circle, three in a world of millions. The City's world.

*FZZZZZZZTT*

ZZT processing. 10001000111011. enter. Unit 07742 beta test, female cybernosis, emerging brain pattern, short wave installed, zzzzztt please in case of emergency press one, <creative non creativity> generation next. drink PEPSI! it does a body good.

fzzzzzt.

enter.

enter.

enter.

If found without handler, please return this unit to the British Special Operations Branch. Tampering with this unit may result in fines not exceeding $250,000 and a jail term of up to five years.

    "hmf," I say, but it doesn't quite sound disdainful enough. Sunlight is straggling weakly through the blinds, and I blink against the impending dawn. The sun hasn't risen quite yet, but in the half light I can see the fine print stamped on my wrist. "If found without handler. . ." I turn the wrist away, shrugging the hand through my hair. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and just sit there for a moment, scratching at my neck. Nothing really itches there, it is a distant motion, something not connected to me, but rather to the outside world. I've seen Grant do it, when he's tired, which he is a lot.

    She stirs in the bed, and I glance over at her, knotted into the sheets and covers like a burrowing mouse. She makes tents in the bed sometimes, piling cushions from the couch up high until she has created a lopsided castle, and she is lord of all. Then she jumps on it, and all fall down.

    I get up and shrug into my robe, which is too big, but that is the way I like things. I like to be surrounded, enclosed, enfolded, and my coats are always long and dark, hiding me. I glance at the mirror above the dresser as I turn from the room, and for a moment my face shines back: quiet and distant, brown eyes, brown hair, pixie chin caught between child and adulthood. I could be someone's sister, with a face like that. I could be someone's wife.

    I pad down the hall, quiet as always. It is lined with doors: a door for her, a door for Grant and me, a door for the guest room, for the bathroom, the spaces in-between filled with pictures, nailed upon the wall. . . I pause at the 'nailed,' as I cannot think of it as anything but a religious word.

I like religion, the one about God especially.

    The hallway guides me to the kitchen and living room. Both, in some way, are mine. I do not think of the bedroom as mine, nor of the house as mine. But I have wound my way into the living room, in the books that sit somberly on their shelves, in the pictures on the wall, her drawings and mine, in the fact that I can flop on the couch with my shoes on.

    The kitchen is not so simple. The pieces of me in it are smaller, but they are still there. I pin Bible quotes from her Sunday school trips on the fridge (Grant frowns at this, but I think it just bothers him because they slide off whenever he opens the fridge), and there are no curtains shrouding the window. Windows should never be covered, unless it is someplace secret, like a bedroom. You should always be able to see out, see beyond.

    Grant is at the kitchen table, sitting with his back to me, bent over the paper. There is something perfect about it all, something that makes me want to freeze the moment before the sun can rise and shatter it all.

    I bend into him, looping my arms around his neck in a behind the back-GOTCHA!-kind of hug, and tuck my chin into the hollow of his shoulder. I peer over, at the beetling legs of the newsprint, the clashing blacks and whites, the dots that connect to make a person's face, ink spot blood running down her head. Her eyes are distant, empty, as she is pulled away, a dark-coated man at each elbow. I recognize them, but say nothing.

    Grant taps the picture with his finger.

    "We had to shoot in the end," he says, the noise which was comforting before is almost a violation in the silence of the kitchen/living room. He sighs.

    "She wouldn't give in. There's a kind of madness sweeping the City, people seeing Yanks and Bots at every turn. . ." He stiffens suddenly, and I realize the word has just slipped out, and he is wondering if I am offended. I'm not, really. No one knows except for him. No one else has seen the small print on my wrist.

    you're a smart girl. Others do know, of course, but they are not here.

    I feel him grin, but there is no humor to it. He stands abruptly, and I move away, to open and peer in the frosty recesses of the fridge, fingers drumming on the edge of a coke can. I pull it out and pop the top, the hissing fssst! sounding very much like the noises in my very own head. Grant looks at me lopsidedly, folding the paper, and rolls his eyes. Coffee drinkers do not mix with coke drinkers, and I hold the can out innocently, saying "Wha -at?" He shakes his head and turns away, a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. I tip the can up, so that he cannot see my pleased expression. I want to make him forget. I like making him forget. I wish the newspaper wasn't here.

    He is at the door now, shrugging into his coat. Unlike the others, he does not wear a long coat. He says it hinders his movement.

    "Hey," I say, opening the cabinet drawer with a twist of the key, the gun that resided there spinning suddenly through the air in a blurring of motion, "Think fast!"

    He catches it easily, barely glancing up. Some might think it unnerving, but I know better. If you are trained, if your mind is twisted a certain way. . . I yank away from the thread of thought, angrily almost. He's not like that. I am, but he's not.

    Autumn wind lances briefly through the house, and I move to the door to stand by it. I might be anyone, I might be a wife, watching her husband go to work, daughter sleeping peacefully in a now empty bed. I might be anything than what I am.

    He turns towards me at the door, as though he means to say something, and I reach up to tug at a forelock of hair. It's a childish, almost kittenish thing to do, but his hair is a source of endless fascination for me. No one back in. . . in where I came from had hair like his. Theirs was brown or blond, black or red. No one had white hair. Blue-black and white, her hair clashing with his, her blue eyes much brighter than his dark ones. When I first saw him I thought how very much he was like a mouse they had in the lab, white like the rest, but instead of red devils eyes, this mouse's eyes were serene black discs. I tried to pick it up, but it bit my finger.

    He bends suddenly, to peck my forehead. The oddness of his hair bothers him. He would rather be ordinary. With a wave of his hand he is gone, tucking the gun into his shoulder holster, the sun's red rays painting him against the row on rows of houses, neatly laid out, like gingerbread men on a grandmother's tray.

    "Good-bye, Max," he grins over his shoulder, and I wave, then turn back inside the house.

    That's me. Max. It's my name. I have another name: Beta Unit 07742, cybernosis third generation female model. I'm one step down from the Alphas. I always thought they were snobs. They got to pick their eye colour.

    My name is Max. Max for a cartoon rabbit with a funny voice. Max for being maxed out, for reaching the max, for being born the max for max this and max that, but mostly because it just stuck.

    My name is. . .

    I do have a name, don't I?

    I. . .

    What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

    God, I hate Shakespeare. He was a fag.

    "OW!" No screams, just ow. ow ow ow ow ow ow.

    Max for running on auxiliary batteries for three days, for feeling it hurt and not having a bandaid. Max for holding a knife and not knowing where to cut, wrist or throat, and it didn't matter anyway did it? Head and foot must be severed before we shut down, and a knife can't cut through titanium alloy, through wires as thick as my finger. Max for hitting a teacher, hitting him until blood ran and they pulled me off him, Max for a dark hallway and a dark room and not screaming. Max for loving, and not being sure what I loved.

    There. I said I, didn't I?

    I. I. I. I. It's good to say it. Feels good.

    "ow. . ."

    Max for not having anything else to say when they ripped the wires out of my skull.

    She wanted to call me Eilonwy. Wasn't that nice of her?

We walk beside the gingerbread houses, nodding at the gingerbread people on our way to school. She is skipping beside me, swinging off my arm occasionally. All are caught in the flashbulb light of her smile. Even the blue hared ladies, who tuck mouths behind hands to whisper about me turn adoring eyes on her. We are her subjects and she is the Queen. They bring her gifts of cookies and milk, "here I saved this for you," they say, as their own children skip past, trailing crumbs. She takes her tribute gravely, saying thank you very much and how are you today? then dashes after me, backpack sailing behind. They shake their heads after she leaves, and she does not see their crippling pity. Poor thing, they pray, poor thing with no mother, and him for a father. Poor, poor dear. And such a lovely child too.

"God forgive you should walk a mile in their shoes. . ." I sing when she catches up, mouth full of cookie. She looks at me quizzically, then extends the cookie to me.

"Bite?"

"Nuh-uh," I say. "Never share your food with strangers."

Her expression is a puzzled delight. Her eyes are wide and blue, full moons in the slight oval of her face. Her dark hair, blue in this light, cups her face with straight hands. She is an owl, I think, she looks like one. She had matched their strangely baffled expression, their mad animal wisdom.

"But you're not a stranger, Max!" she grins, thinking it a game.

We reach the School.

"Have a good day, Owly," I say. Like my name, it's not her name. It's something Grant has given her, something to make the past disappear. I wonder, as I stand to watch her walk towards the school, what it is in her past that has made Grant turn magician. Hasn't she always been with him. . .?

Students are a flood plunging through the school's yawing gates. Two girls shout at her, waving skinny arms. She grins at me and dashes off, our comradeship forgotten. I am only her baby-sitter now, and turn away from the school, the darling red brick hinged with dark shingle, to avoid the mothers also walking home.

-Later. . .

The keyboard is a piano, and my hands flutter over it.

*fzzzzzzzt* interfacingpleaseuseproperaccesscodethankyou *fzzzzzzt*

good morning mr. phelps

1111000101010110.

stop, Dave. Dave. will you stop.

i'm afraid, Dave.

i'm afraid.

i'm afraid everytime i go in, interface, plug in, whatever, everytime a computer infringes on my mind, everytime i am reminded that i cannot call myself 'I' because i am not an 'I.' i am an it.

i like the religion with God in it. i like it because it makes me think. i sit on the balcony with my arms folded over the railing, watching the bobbing heads of the choir below. owly sits beside me, drawing noisily on a bulletin. i stare at the stain glass window above it all. there is a man in the window, a man made of glass, of flesh. his head is bowed upon the nailed tree, and even though i have read the bible many times, i cannot read between the lines, to understand what owly does, that he died for our sins, for our souls. . .

but what if you don't have a soul?

is it hard, grant says, in england, being only a bot?

no, i say.

but surely. . . he cannot understand. i will not let him. i will not tell him of how we sat upon the thousands in our classrooms, having things stuffed into our heads. ten years collapsed into one, and as i am two nearly three years old, thus do i have twenty and change of knowledge. i have survived high school and university without the cliques, without the pain, learning shakespeare (macbethhamlethenryVrichardIIItempest) in only the bright dawn of knowledge. there is no pain. we learn. we learn there is no pain.

what happens, he says, then hesitates before going on. what happens if someone hurts a bot-

android, i correct.

-hurts an android, or. . . i don't know, rapes one. surely it's been known to happen.

yes, i say, its been known to happen. i answer as best i can.

the person is fined for damaging government property and sent on their way. it is a cold explanation.

Jesus, says grant, and it is a prayer, a prayer that the City will never sink to england's depths.

max, I'm sorry.

s'okay, i say. you forget, after a while. you heal.

*fzzzzzzzt* accessingdatabase

Emma always used to say plugging in at a computer was like fucking in an elevator. It was fun and exciting while you were doing it, but afterwards felt dirty, used almost. Emma liked to say 'fuck.' She thought it was great fun to watch their eyes pop our of their heads when she told them to fuck off. Where on earth did you learn that word? they'd sputter, and she'd grin, blond head tilted up to meet the humming lights. If she hadn't been an Alpha (alphaunit#12669female. . . you get the point) I might have liked her.

*FZZZZZT* database open. Where would you like to go today?

It may look as though I am just leaning towards the computer, my face sickly in it's glow, but there is more. Interspecies communication, Grant calls it, from one computer to another. I suppose he is right, only my code is continuous, no longer bare ones and zeros. It has met it's maker and found a human face, mimicked it, shaped in the cybernetic clay of the potter's hands. But in the beginning, for there is always a beginning, we belonged with the computers. Only we don't grow obsolete anymore. We grow, and that is all there is to it.

I have to find something. I'm in the computer for a reason. I don't go every day. Today is different.

*WARNING. YOU HAVE ENTERED A RESTRICTED AREA. TRESPASSERS WILL BE-

i never hear the end.

i stare at the picture, at the woman in the picture, at the picture on the screen, at the picture in my mind. it is a news photo shot, and she is half turned to the camera, a winsome smile thrown over her shoulder. her hair is red, a rich autumn colour, something beautiful, i think. i know her, but in the same breath i do not. i know of her then, as does the rest of the City.

we look alike, in some way. in some way i cannot think of, if i had red hair and she brown we could be sisters. the same eyes, same mouth, but hers are tilted with learning and power, for the City lies wrapped around her wrist, a fawning dog.

i wonder if it is their joke, to make me look like her.

the photo is not my photo, if you know what i mean. there were two faces in my picture, hers and someone else's. a man.

I have to kill her. That's what's so important.

I touch the woman's picture. The screen crackles with life.

It's not a matter of wanting to do something. It's a matter of doing. I have to kill them.

It's what I was created for, after all. That's what bots are for.

It's that simple. It has to be.

Nothing complex about it. Nothing at all.

So why does it make something inside hurt?

Before they sent me to the City, I attacked and nearly killed a teacher. Violence is wound into us, corkscrewed around our minds like the binding of women's corsets, but we are not a threat. We are taught that you should never hit, never hit anyone about God (Philip Roth's stories, was it?), that you should never discriminate and judge on appearances (Joy Kogawa and her Obasan), that you should tuck your violence away. Save it for a rainy day.

Like now.

The sun has hidden, and I think it must be because of me. I am two stories up, standing on the edge of the building's flat roof, head bare in the drizzling rain, feeling the wetness creep down my back, but the worry is distant in my mind. I wonder absently if the rain will short circuit me, and I will not have to do this, for I am water repellent, but not water resistant. Showers but no baths, and I watched Owly in her blue bathing suit dog paddle in the City pool, wanting to join, but knowing it wasn't possible.

I stare down, to the drizzling park below. It is flat and concrete, the City's little brother, limp trees bowed to industrial professionalism. The crowd is thick, jubilant and cheerful despite the weather, and the woman in red waves to them, smiling. I lift my face to the sky, to the bruised clouds above, and feel water run down my cheeks. Maybe I'm crying. We can, you know. They were not so cruel as to deprive us of feelings.

The woman is saying something into the microphone. There is a platform set up in the park, and behind her the new building rises like a silver dagger, stark against the sky. She laughs, making a comment about the weather, and the crowd smiles, laughing with her. She is theirs, she belongs to them, she is one of them. She touches them all, remembers where she came from, and has pulled the City towards her. They resisted at first, but then turned, one by one, to face her. She has them all, the City a shining prize gambled for on Calvery's Hill, and she pulled the winning lot.

She is power. She is. . . something I don't have words for. Like rolling authority and control and disdain into a muddy ball and painting it brilliant with grace.

Around me the City is dark. Dark in the half rain, dark under the cloud's frown.

Wait a year, they told me. Wait a bit. She goes out occasionally, for public appearances. It must look fanatical, jump down, kill a few bystanders, then her. Him too, of course. Can't do one without the other.

I'm scared.

I'm afraid, Grant. Stop. Will you stop, Grant.

I can see him off to her right, looking ordinary except for his hair. He rocks back and forth, heel toe heel toe, as he does when he's bored, gazing quietly at the crowd with concentrated disinterest. What's he thinking about, I wonder. Is he thinking about her, about me, about Owly? Is he thinking about the newspaper, with it's bloody ink spilled across a woman's face, dragging her away? Would he see someone if they crept in with a knife, slipped through the perimeter to skewer it between her shoulder blades? He's hers, in a way. The coat that he wears means he works for her. He protects her. Protects the City. From me.

Then-

Something changes, it twists, as a person taps Grant on his shoulder. The other man is taller than Grant, something that makes me blink, and his hair is a soggy yellow halo. The colour is striking against the blackness of his coat, which sweeps to the ground like a waterfall of night. Grant turns and they face each other, the blond man says something, and Grant grins easily, finger flicking towards the woman in red.

!!!!

Jealous! I am suddenly jealous! Jealous of the blond man, of the overwhelming gulf between the sexes, of things I can't reach for, just beyond my grasp. There is an ease between them, something that makes me think they might be friends. . . Do they talk, I think furiously, do they talk about women and work and how each are a necessary mystery? Has Grant told the other man about me? What was the term, 'got laid last night.' Fucking, Emma, would say proudly. It's not love, he just wants to get into your pants. .

Max, I'm sorry. Why can't things be simple?

In my picture the man has a name. His hair is a shining crown, and he is bending to rest his cheek on the woman's head. She comes barely to his shoulder. Her face is pressed to him, and I know she is crying. Perhaps that is all he can do, comfort her, and I think the City is not bowing at her feet anymore, but is a noose tight on her neck. If I look closer, perhaps I will see the bruises the rope left

The woman in red waves again, and the man moves towards her, stepping on the platform to bend and whisper something in her ear. He is standing too close to her, the moment is too intimate, too secret to be in public, before the grinning crowd. She, however, only tilts her head down, considering his words, and for a moment I have them, I freeze them, and they are perfectly preserved, caught in the strobe light of my stare. I am a dragonfly in amber, torn in my indecision. She owns the City. People like that aren't real. They don't love.

Do Grant and I look like that, I wonder, when we go out with Owly? When I loop my arm through his and watch as she chases geese along the harbor front, shrieking with delight. Do they see something there, those who pass us, are we a couple out for a stroll, or are we something else? Do they see through me?

No. I won't say that, and the thought is a tearing in my chest.

She is moving now, the crowd parting before her, rolling back the red sea with a wave of her hand, shuffled behind the sawhorse barriers and held there. She walks alone through the passage, as the man falls back, in step with Grant. They are speaking now, Grant's head tilted upwards, nodding. I watch them coming towards me. They have the same way of walking, I think, a quiet casualness which is a cunning ruse. There is violence underneath, which sometimes must come out.

I have never seen Grant angry. Never truly, truly angry, furious enough to hit a person. But I have seen him afraid, that morning when I had to pick Owly up early from school and she came out with a Kleenex over her bloodied nose. She had started the fight, the teachers said, and their tone was cold, but Grant's face went as white as his hair, and I saw something alien twist in his eyes.

You should never hit a person, Owly, he said to her when we got home, face inches from hers.

Do you understand me? Don't ever hit someone, for any reason. There are always options.

Why did it frighten him so?

She fled crying to her room, sulky and defiant, sure we'd understand why she did what she did. Maybe I did, inside, though I didn't tell Grant. I hit a person once, for reasons that lie unknowing in my head. I will never understand them, and only say that the violence is wound into my brain, and I cannot escape it.

What bullshit.

She is almost beneath my perch now, red head bobbing, moving towards her car with a purposeful stride. I stick my hand in my coat, feeling it snap and move around me with the soggy breeze, finger thumbing the gun's handle, feeling dead, feeling robotic, android, bot, cyberbeing.

Something rips against me as I see them.

I see them in a brilliant flash of horror, in a scream of terror that dies before it can bubble from my throat. I see their honey coloured heads, all matching, two girls, one boy, three years old each, which makes thirty in android years. One is Emma, hair a shade darker than the man's. They are so close to the woman. They could touch her, reach out with cybernetic hands to touch the edge of her garment. Would she heal us? The bleeding inside. . .?

There is something else too.

They must be on a school trip, all the little children, all pressed to the barriers with shining faces. Here to see the school's benefactor, to throw flowers at her feet. I see Owly's dark head, bouncing up and down on her toes, waving, trying to get Grant to look at her. That's my daddy, she's saying, that's him.

oh God

oh sweet sweet God.

I jump.

I'm in free fall, I'm plunging towards my doom, I'm hang gliding with my coat sailing out behind me. The wind is a knife on my face, I see the building flash by in a shriek of brick, I see the car roof hurtling up towards me. I hit it, balanced on my feet, it caves, metal screams, feet nearly go through it and faces whirl. Three blond heads turn, Emma's face knowing. Knowing. Am I insulted, that they would send her after me, that they think I will not finish the job? No, hard to be insulted when you're proving them right.

The shock absorbers in my legs thrum belatedly. When I was new and just-made, I liked to jump from high places to make them hiss. I don't remember it hurting then, but now I am turned cripple, rolling off the car in agony, clutching my legs. ow ow ow ow ow. Shut up, I think. Move, there's no time.

No time and I am ripped from time, the blond man grabbing the front of my shirt, and yanking me to my feet. I stare at him, he stares back, and his eyes are as blue as Owly's. I didn't think they'd be blue. Dark I had thought, like all bot eyes, black holes in our empty heads. It throws me, the blueness of it all, and I spin, miserable, not sure what I'm doing, hearing the woman in red exclaim in surprise, hearing Grant twist suddenly, caught, wondering why I'm here.

"Get down," I say sadly to the man, "get down or there's no point." I know his name. I want to call him by his name. I can't. I almost killed him. He's not supposed to be a real person.

Time is the enemy, time does not slow them as they step from behind the barriers, as all eyes turn towards them and their triplet faces. Why guns, I think, hitting the ground with a thud as the man drops me, why bother? We can rip a person to shreds with our bare hands. But, I suppose, it is all part of the game. Making it look fanatical, or something, so that the woman's death can never be traced. A splinter group that bought some bots on the black market, that's what they'll say.

Believe the lie, deny everything, trust no one. The truth is out there.

Grant is already moving, but it's too late. Too late as the crowd splinters and roars, screams with sheepish panic, and tries to flee, tangling each other. I see Owly go down, the children will be on the bottom, first to be hurt, and plunge towards her. I tear someone's face with my fingernails, fling them aside, go down, come up, slashing my way through the mob. I see her, curled on the ground, arms wrapped around head. My hand catches someone, they are all faceless, they are not real, and the body is thrown away. The first to die as the bullets scream, and he falls into the line of fire.

I pull her towards me, shoving the faceless people away. My shoulder hits another, I knock them flying, but I cannot get out, I am caught in a whirlwind of flesh and bone, clutching a child. I cannot get out and I am suffocating, drowning in the sea of humanity. I can't get out, and suddenly she whimpers, the sound an animal makes when their heart breaks and between the barriers I see Grant tip forward onto his hands and knees.

No.

No.

But what's there to deny?! Stop denying what's REAL!!!!

Blood is not the colour of ink. It's red, red as the woman's hair, spilling out from under him, encircling his crumpled body.

I don't care.

I leave Owly, drag her to the edge of the fray and turn back. The three are standing almost quietly now, reloading. Emma's gun clicks on it's empty chamber and she raises it, for a moment glancing down at Grant. Her eyes are empty, barren, as she looks down, and I wonder if she's jealous. She knows, knew I was happy. I do not see the woman or the blond man. I imagine that they are behind her car, that he is shielding her, tucking her towards him perhaps.

SNIKT!!!!!

The sound is for the slicing of an android face, and I am an avenger, I am vesper holly, I am james bond, indiana jones, ellen ripley, I simply am, my fingers like knives and I tear Emma to ribbons. We tumble to the pavement, I on top, silent as warmth spurts between my fingers. I don't meet her gaze. I cannot feel anything, I can't cry, I am inhuman, past human, I checked my humanity at the door and left for the weekend. Blinding pain is driving at me, the other two bots pulling me away from her, but i cannot feel it, i cannot feel them shredding me i cannot feel the violence in my brain, i only feel nothing i am dead i am nothing i am a pathetic little shit with a skull stuffed of shakespeare. <*FZZZT systemerror*> i cannot hold them even in the nothingness, i cannot make him better i cannot make him forget i cannot bring back to life he that died for our sins upon the nailed cross. . .

owly understands, <*FZZZZT! SYSTEM ERROR! REPEAT SYSTEM ERROR*> how can she understand? pavement scrapes my back, i curl into a ball but they still see me, i have not hidden myself i am still there. . . how can she understand? she's only a little girl and out of the corner of my eye i see her sitting on the pavement next to grant, eyes stark with understanding. . . something warm is running down my front. i can't see, is it blood? <*SYSTEM ERROR SYSTEM ERROR CORE CRITICAL*> and there is only violence, only violence that binds us. not love, not hate, not us-against-them, we are bound by ties of violence because we understand, we know what it is, what it can do. *FZZZZZZZZT* a bot whirls, turns away from me, towards owly- *FZZZZZT SHUT DOWN IMMINENT CORE CRITICAL* and i see the curved umbrellas in their arms, the deadly dark things that mean death, and why am i calling them umbrellas? I know they're guns, turn towards her as she backs away on the ground, eyes as blue as the blond man's. i cannot reach her. i am kneeling at the alter, waiting for what i deserve.

I'm going to die. Forgive them, they know exactly what they do.

system error

system erro

system err

system er

system e

system

Jesus wept. But not for me.

Darkness giving way to light-

"Ow. . ." I mutter, somewhat brilliantly. I am on my side, hard concrete digging into my ribs, yellow brown fluid spilling a wet circle beneath me. Something's leaking, probably lung fluid, I think, maybe a puncture in the right one. The front of my shirt is soaked with the stuff, but it smells of nothingness, of what I felt. I am in ribbons, cloth and flesh hanging from me, as though I've been flayed alive. Wires poke out, mechanical heads jutting from me, as though I'm a pink pincushion. There's no pain though. I must look a mess.

Grant, Owly, I think suddenly, and try to roll over. Did they cover up the bodies yet, will I get to see them one last time? but a hand grabs my shoulder, holding me. I look up and the man's blue eyes regard me darkly.

"Hi," I say, voice foggy. "I love your hair." He blinks, taken aback, as though he thought I'd simply emit a string of burbling computer noises, no words at all.

"I always wanted blond hair, but they only let the Alphas pick."

I peer past him, ignoring his hand, and see them, Grant and Owly. He's sitting with his legs splayed out in front of him, stripped to his undershirt, a grimace on his face as a white coated doctor bends over his shoulder. His coat is a dark puddle at his side. An ambulance is parked half on the road, half on the plaza, wheels wordlessly spinning. He looks as though one half of him has been painted red, but I am suddenly struck with the wonder of it all. He's not dead. Owly is sitting in his lap, dark head pressed to his chest, thumb in her mouth. Her eyes are distant, and I know something inside is hurting.

I want to go see them, and struggle to sit up. The hand on my shoulder presses me down, however, and I glance at the man, puzzled. His gaze is curiously dark.

"Lie still," he says.

The woman in red is nowhere in sight. I imagine she has been spirited away to her secret batcave, where she will be safe from all harm. Her life will not change. It may be more closeted in the months to come, but it will not change. Not really, I think. I wonder if he will worry more for her. The honey triplets lie in a dismembered pile a few yards away, Emma's decapitated head staring at me with sightless eyes. Their feet are lined up in a separate pile, almost as though set out for a display in toenail polish. The sight is oddly troublesome.

He knew, I think suddenly, and stare up at the man holding me. He knew about the foot, about the batteries inside. Everyone knows about the head, but if you chop it off, the android will continue to dance, a horrible puppet whose strings will never be cut. I struggle suddenly, panic a wave infringing on the edge of my mind, and his grip on my shoulder is tightened. He thinks I'm one of them, one of them the alphas i'm one of them i'm NOT.

"Stop it," he says tiredly, and I lie still. He is looking over at Grant now, at the dark haired child in his lap. Something is on the man's face, an oddness that I have not seen before. He seems bothered by it all, troubled almost, by the sight of the child tucked safely in Grant's arms.

"Is that his daughter?" he says suddenly, and I start from the strangeness of the question.

"You could say that."

I see something, hurt?, spill on his face, only for a moment, but it is enough, and I realize that Grant does not talk about me, about Owly, that I guessed wrong about their conversations and that it is hard to discover that a friend is not always what you think. He turns towards me abruptly, and I almost think that I might have imagined the look crossing his face. He holds my picture up then, the one of him and the woman, in a moment that should never have been known.

"You dropped this."

Well, of course I dropped it. I dropped it when I dropped from the heavens to crash on the top of the woman's car, and save her bloody life. I scowl at him. He crumples the photo, stuffing it in his coat pocket.

"You're a bot," he says, voice low, but I don't feel much anger there. "You should be in that pile with the others. You exist for one reason only. . ."

"They rewired my head," I murmur, and he pauses to listen. "Something went wrong and I attacked a teacher. I saw them pull all the wires out, they were green and red and black and I though what if that's all there is to me, if all I am is wires, nothing more. It's like seeing your soul pulled out of your guts, and it just being a shriveled little brown thing, not pretty, and you think if that's all I am, then what's the point? But then you find that it's not really what's inside that's the point, it's what's outside. Who you love and shit like that. Because maybe that makes up your insides, makes up who you are and what you feel. . ."

I don't finish.

I don't look at him. I don't want to.

I want to end this story. I want to give it a Shakespeare ending, where the good guy wins and everyone gets married under a starry sky. I want things to fall into place and stay there, never to break into glassy fragments again, to stay whole and perfect.

But you see, this isn't Shakespeare, good doesn't win over evil, because evil is everywhere, and I guess if you look at it slanted, I'm the bad guy. This is the MegaCity, the world that belongs to the woman in red, and I'm a bot, and bots are velveteen rabbits. We're not Real. This is all the darkness of the world held in my hand, and the story will end here, and I'll die again, my head and foot melted down into paper clips.

I drop my head to the concrete beneath me, closing my eyes. I'd rather not see anymore, and think abruptly that it would have been better if I'd died permanently, because then Grant wouldn't be in trouble, two dark coated figures standing behind him. I wonder if he knows them, if he talked and laughed with them, as people do under the common banner of work.

Do they like their work? Grant isn't sure he does, of late. It starts to hurt you after a while, controlling the City, quelling riots, keeping the gingerbread houses safe. It ekes away at your insides, and you are a shell, transparent. Perhaps he does it for Owly.

Maybe he does it for me.

Next to me the man rises. I don't open my eyes. I already know what's happening, so what's the point of looking?

"Get that. . . thing out of here," he says, and with a shock I realize I have frightened him. He almost killed me. I cannot be real person. I open my eyes.

Hands pull me to my feet, and for a moment I waver, not sure if I can stand. My legs are shaking like a leaf, tremors rocking me as wires scream with overload. Responses shoot to my brain, entangle in their rush to get there, trip and fall over each other and I jerk violently. I watch the man turn away from me, his night dark coat swirling around him like a magician's cape, but even it cannot hide the violence underneath. He strides over to Grant, and crouches suddenly next to him. Owly tries to burrow further into Grant's chest, and I suddenly see her eyes, a wide and terrified blue, and know she saw the man kill the other two bots, decapitating them in perfect efficiency.

Grant looks at him, but his gaze darts suddenly towards me, worried. The hands holding me pause, curious, wondering how the story will end.

They are speaking now, Grant shaking his head no, the other man tilting his in an oddly delicate repose. Their voices are too low to catch, a circle of silence enfolding them. The figures in their dark coats turn away, and I know it is between Grant and his employer. I think about the photograph in the newspaper, Grant and him holding back the tides of despair that rip the City's neon soul. I wonder absently if the blond man is equal to the woman in red, or if he is under her, or if they have merged to form a more unified whole. I wonder if it complicates their relationship. I wonder a lot.

The man's finger stabs at Grant abruptly, then sweeps back towards me. He is angry, and shakes his head at Grant's words and says something sharp, causing Grant to look away. There is a betrayal there, I think, that sometimes you can trust someone without really knowing it. I want to explain, tell him that Grant didn't know about why I was sent here, that we just fell into each other's company, that I am different from the bots he fights against. . . but that's not really the truth.

He stands abruptly, jerking a hand at me. I am dragged backwards, into the darkness of the back of a van. The last thing I see is Owly's face, lifted to watch me, as the Sun's distant rays slant through the stormy clouds.

I hold my handcuffed palms up, an inch from my face, trying to see them. It is dark in the back of the van, but I can see in the dark. I should be able to see my hands, fingers splayed out, but I cannot focus my eyes. The fine tuning must have been destroyed in the fight. We are surprisingly fragile equipment.

The van's engine is a distant purring that stops suddenly, and we lurch to a halt. I glance around at the darkness, confused, and hear the door at the back of the van snap open. We should not be there yet, we've only been riding for ten minutes, but still light stabs into my compartment. I blink, eyes focusing and unfocusing, trying to orient myself.

The man's coat is the only darkness in the now bright day, and I latch onto it, peering at him owlishly. He waves a hand at me and I hesitate, unsure.

"It's okay," he says, as though speaking to a child, and holds my elbow as I hop down from the van. I nearly fall when my feet meet ground, wavering on the point of collapse, his hand on my arm the only thing holding me up. I shake the cobwebs from my mind, peering up at him, afraid and not afraid.

He pulls my hands up, unsnapping the cuffs, tossing them back into the black recesses of the van. They clatter away into darkness, and I stare at him, surprised.

"Can you walk from here?" he asks. I look around and realize we are at the edge of the city, on the outskirts of the gingerbread houses, the harborfront. The blue expanse of the lake roars softly out behind his shoulder. It is a ten minute walk from here to Grant's house.

I nod. I'll totter my way home, somehow.

I turn back to him. Should I thank him?

He looks away, blue eyes quiet.

"Just don't let me catch you anywhere near her again," he says softly, meaning the woman in red. I nod again, understanding.

I have taken something from him. It has to do with the picture which was supposed to be secret. But there's more. There's always more, complexities that will exist even in the simplest of times.

There's Grant as well, and again I want to explain. I want to tell him how Grant didn't know, how we met in perfect innocence. . .

"Thank you. . ."

The man turns towards me, and his gaze is harsh enough to scorch me. We stand like that for a moment, and I am a burnt fetus caught in the brightness of his glance. I am torn and broken, wires shafting from beneath my flesh, a claw mark laying open my cheek, but it is he who looks worse. There's no anger in his eyes, just something sad.

"He's at the City hospital, but I wouldn't suggest showing up there. He'll be under watch for the next few days. I'll talk to her about this whole. . . mess. She listens to me."

He's not boasting, and his voice is quietly matter of fact.

It's not true. Not true about Grant being innocent. He knew, a long time ago.

After a moment the man walks to the passenger door of the van and climbs in. The wind on the lake catches at his coat, and darkness swirls around him, briefly. The van motor sounds and they drive away.

Sometimes you do things for friends, things you wouldn't normally do, like jumping off a roof and crashing on the top of a car. Or letting a bot go and choosing between two people you care about, because friendship can't be wasted. Or is that bullshit too?

The City is dark against the sky. It is an etching against the uneven blue, against the gray clouds. I don't think about hope or future when I see the City. I think about all the things that go wrong in it, I think about the concrete park with it's sad trees, and the bodies they still have to clear from the ground. I think about all the darkness in the world, and how it somehow came to rest here, and found a home.

I know why they sent me here. I know why I was supposed to kill them. It's because the City will someday rise up and swallow everything, and then no one will be safe, and all the bots will be sent back. But instead of rewiring our heads, we'll be shut off. We'll sit on the ground in a dollhouse circle, legs stiff in front of us, and cobwebs will gather at the corner of our empty eyes.

No one will hear us crying.

Fzzzzzt.

He isn't a toy. He's REAL.

Hello Dave.

What's a tortoise?

Forgive me. . .

Go back home, little kitten.