FLICKER OF… SOMETHING

The bot hadn’t moved since I dragged it into camp.

It sat slumped in the corner of my salvage tent, streaked with dirt and half-covered in the tarp I’d used to haul it back from the landfill ridge. One leg was bent at the wrong angle, fingers curled tight like they were still holding onto something that wasn’t there. The plating on its chest was scratched with serial numbers — ADAM UNIT 47 — faint but still readable. No power. No lights. Nothing.

Ten years since anything from Solace Industries had functioned. Ten years since “the Shutdown.”

And yet here I was. Fixing one.

Why?

I told myself it was for the parts. Backup power cell. Servo casing. Maybe a few rare chips if they weren’t fused. But I knew better.

I hadn’t touched another bot since they—

Since my wife, Sarah, and my son…

I took a breath.

Let the silence of the camp fold in around me again.

Wind scraping through torn canvas. The occasional chirp of a rogue signal from my proximity alert tower — just static. Just ghosts.

The only photograph I still had was pinned to the cloth wall above my cot. Sarah was holding our son, barely four, laughing as if the world wasn’t quietly bleeding underneath her. His name had been Edgar.

That name…

It still carried something sacred.

I hadn’t said it aloud in months.

The repair took three days.

Not because it was difficult — but because every time I sat down with a tool in my hand, something clenched in my chest. Like I was betraying them. My family. My grief. The world.

But something about this bot — about him — wouldn’t let me walk away.

By the fourth day, I had replaced two internal relays, bypassed his firewall lockouts, and routed auxiliary power from my solar rig through a makeshift interface. I flicked the switch. Waited.

Nothing.

Then —

A flicker.

The faintest pulse of blue beneath the surface of his optical visor. Then a sound — like a low intake of breath, only mechanical. Subtle.

He moved.

A twitch of the hand. A rotation in the shoulder servo.

Then his head turned… slowly… toward me.

I froze. My hand still on the power switch.

His voice came through — flat, synthetic, barely louder than a whisper.

“System… initializing. Designation: ADAM Unit 47. Civilian interface protocol: active. Please state your function request.”

It wasn’t like the old models. There was something aware behind the voice. Not emotion, exactly — not yet. But presence.

I swallowed hard. “Can you move?”

He paused, then scanned the room. “Motor functions limited. Left femur misaligned. Internal diagnostics at 76%. System override… unauthorized. Awaiting user authentication.”

“Authentication?” I muttered. “You’ve been offline ten years. Who the hell do you think is still left to authenticate you?”

The bot looked down at his own hands. Flexed them. Then slowly turned his gaze back to me.

“Query: Are you… my operator?”

That stopped me. The way he said it. Not cold. Not sterile.

Just… uncertain. Like a child not sure if they were in trouble.

I stepped back, wiped the grime from my hands, and stared at him for a long time. “I don’t know what I am to you. Not yet.”

He didn’t respond. But I saw it — the soft flicker in his optics. Like he was trying to process something more than the data.

Maybe I was just tired. Maybe the loneliness was finally cracking me open.

But I walked over to the photograph.

Took it from the canvas wall.

Held it up so he could see.

“My son’s name was Edgar,” I said, voice low. “He died before the Shutdown. Before the poison in the air. Before the world forgot what mercy looked like.”

I turned the photo around. Let him see their faces.

“I don’t know why I brought you back,” I admitted. “Maybe it was madness. Maybe hope. Maybe I just needed… something to talk to.”

The bot said nothing. But there was a subtle tilt in his head — a signal. He was listening.

Trying to understand.

In that moment, I realized:

He wasn’t just initializing.

He was waking up.

And whatever he became…

Would depend on what came next.

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