Hard Drive

A great gun metal sky reflected the grim metal city below.

Aden kept his eyes down to the gray sidewalk. He dismissed the eerie silence of the crowd.

It was like a fog. A thick fog had fallen inside the crowd. People moved slowly and without much effort. It was a sway. Their feet barely lifted from the floor. Their bodies leaned forward or to the side.

Aden made it to his work desk. He sensed the mood. The strange feeling whirled inside him as if to warn him. Something was wrong.

The humanoid refused to admit this.

Just as he placed his finger on the keyboard, two men approached him.

“Are you Aden 398?”

“Yes.”

“Come with us. We have questions for you.”

Aden was led to an isolated room. Gray square tiles and a metal table with two chairs. He took his seat quickly.

“Where were you on the 35th hour last week?”

“Walking home.”

“…”

“Something wrong?”

The two men exchanged glances. Finally, one of them held up a screen and played some footage.

It was the little boy.

“Do you know this human?”

“Not too well. I don’t normally see humans in my day.” Answered Aden.

“We have reason to believe you do.”

Suddenly the footage blurred. Aden realized this must have been the police drone’s footage before he shot it out of the sky. He needed to answer carefully.

“Recently you required maintenance for your system. These events are rare. Especially for a humanoid like yourself. This goes without saying but we will require your processing unit.”

“Yes. Yes of course.”

Aden removed his hard drive from the back of his head and set it on the table. He stared aimlessly in front of himself.

The two policemen inspected it carefully and shrugged after they seen it was without a scratch.

“No tampering. This checks out. The humanoid is cleared to go.”

They inserted the hard drive back into the humanoid and Aden blinked three times.

He was released without any more questions.

Aden walked quietly and took satisfaction in his gamble.

Had they took the time to open his files they would have seen his memory of the woman with her human child. They would have seen his fantasy of living as a dutiful husband and father. They would have seen his inner desires corrupting his original programming.

A smile naturally glossed over his face.

For some reason, Aden was feeling more human than he had ever felt in his entire existence.

***

As Aden crossed the road he was bumped into by another person. They apologized in a gruff voice and continued on their way.

Aden had been in such a daze he barely noticed the man. No matter.

He arrived at a terminal and waited for transport. Hover cars. The most efficient way to travel. Machine operated vehicles that only traveled in one direction at high speeds.

Aden had missed the last car because of his untimely meeting with at man at the crossroads. It would take another three minutes before the next car arrived.

He sat down and waited in the empty terminal.

All the other humanoids had returned to their apartments by now. Work was over. How strange he never noticed the cycle of this city. This city had a way of keeping a tight grip on time. There was time to work and time to leave.

He was in the dead hour.

The hour no one really left their apartments. For no reason at all people stayed in their apartments until it was time to work once again. That was all there was in this city. Apartments and businesses.

Aden watched the hover car pull into the terminal. He was about to get on when he spotted a small bottle roll from the stairs.

How unusual.

No trash littered the metal city. Especially not dirty glass bottles. He would have to do his civilian duty to put that garbage away.

He bent down and picked up the bottle. Before he could even look up. A blunt object struck the back of his head and he collapsed to the ground.

A group of people in black clothes collected Aden, his briefcase, and the glass bottle. They ran off into the metal city.

Meanwhile the hover car door closed and immediately went traveling through the streets without a single passenger.

***

“We should destroy his hard drive. The sooner the better. We can’t let these humanoid alert the city of our infiltration.”

“I thought you said it was empty at that hour? And Carmen. How the hell did you drop that glass bottle? I thought you were the stealthiest person for the job!”

“Calm down Michael. I slipped up because I’m human. Okay? I think I did a pretty decent job knocking the lights out of this robot. It’s an easy fix. We just have to destroy the disk like Jason said.”

The three humans nodded in agreement.

“Agreed. Where’s your hammer. I want it broken into a million pieces.”

Just as Jason was about to slam the metal head on the fragile hard drive, someone screamed.

“Holy… Anthony?! What’s wrong with you? Kid, hey…”

The little boy with blonde hair ran to Aden and sank to his knees. He tossed his arms around the humanoid’s leg and trembled.

“He’s the one that saved me!”

***

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