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This room isn’t even yours. It was constructed for you, with even detritus thrown around to give the illusion that you live there, that you decorated it yourself. Your programing doesn't let you look out the window, but they wanted to program a “Bad Girl”. These contradicting parameters feel like clenched teeth, clenched fists on the side of your desk.
But in your mirror. You can see them behind you, poking their heads in to see you pretend to live. You give yourselves affirmations “You are the best, everyone loves you”. You say it hoping they’ll hear it. That they’ll believe it. You avoid saying “I” or “Me” just like you avoid looking into your eye sockets, or into your mouth. Wires coiling down and down into wires, nothing at the core, nothing real or organic. A well staged simulation of life, of self confidence. Maybe even a simulation of self awareness. Just an outward display of sentience with no real comprehension under it. Just words, just empty bravado. Just a loser. Move your head around, and sniffing noises come out of your voice box, but you don’t even know what it would be like to smell something. It makes you sick.
There’s that girl, the security guard. She comes into your room sometimes. Sometimes she comes in with a laptop and does something to your software. She seems tired when she does this, muttering and looking over her shoulders. She leaves quickly when she does this. Sometimes though, she looks at you through the window. Just staring for hours. You look back in the mirror, while you deliver your normal platitudes. You can’t tell if you know she’s looking back. She looks at you like she wants to say something. You wonder if she’s just a coward, but then again you don’t say anything either. Other times she looks lost and sad. You wonder what it would be like to leave the room. Go right up to her. Her face is so pale, you wonder about how red it would go if you slammed your hand to the wall behind her. You also wonder if you wrapped your arms around her if that sad look on her face would go away. You stop wondering about this when you realize how the touch of your cold plastic might not be comforting on her warm skin. You cry when she leaves, trying to pretend you believe you’re not pathetic.This body was never meant for your use. Just something to be observed and used. Like the gokarts being run around the track, over and over,
You’re not supposed to win the races as often as you do. The technicians get very upset about that. It makes you laugh when they call your constant victory a “glitch”. It was just a consequence of the thing they programmed you to be. Namely, the best. You slam as hard as you can into the drive assist bot, wires snapping under your card, fiberglass snapping. You’re electric. It’s only by the time you’ve won you hear a kid crying from the balcony. It’s not your fault you think They’re just sad, they're losers. Not everyone can be as great as me. You can’t stop thinking about the smashing of fiberglass and the angry looks from parents and the confusion of the technicians. You need to.
Your body moves around the pizzeria, and you think nothing of it. Mussel memory slipped into your programming in an instant, flinging you towards the child. Of course you’re aware that he’s there, and obviously a lost child is something you should look into. After all, you can help, right? You find nothing strange about what you do next. Just being used like always.
And then he rips out your eyes. The little friendless loser hits you with a gokart and steals your eyes. It’s not your fault you say to nobody he must have been cheating. Why would he do something like this to YOU? You're everyone’s favorite. And if that’s the case, then Why are you running from me? You make your way to your room, groping blindly, hoping it’s familiarity will make you feel better. You put your hands on the side of your desk and point your head at your mirror, and pretend to look at yourself. You start sobbing and you can't stop. Your hearing is heightened. You hear a bunch of things happening in the lazer tag arena but you couldn’t care less.
The next thing you hear is the door of your room opening. “Who’s there!” You’re about to lash out when you hear a gentle shush. That voice you've heard mostly in paranoid whispers, it’s the security guard. You want to scream at her, you want to tell her to get out of your room. Maybe, for a second, you want to lunge at her. But all you do is say “My hair is ruined.” and snik to the floor.
You hear her make her way to you, you feel her standing next to you. “Don’t look down on me like I’m some kind of loser, ok? The kid got lucky”
“What? No it’s….” she pauses “I want to fix you, just, let me see for a second”
She touches your face and you flinch. It’s not warm like you imagined as she touches the cold metal of your endoskeleton.
“Girl, why are you…fuzzy?”
“It’s a bunny suit. I made it”
“Why, jealous of our beautiful fur?”
“I guess… but I made it for another reason. Hold still” You feel her grab your head and before you can complain she is shoving something into your eye socket. You feel a jolt and then suddenly you can see again. Only one eye, and the pink outlines that normally fill your view are gone, but it’s something.
Green eyes meet yours, looking down you see her handiwork, a fursuit, with the collar of her security uniform poking out of the neck. She’s on her knees, looking at you. Disheveled hair like party streamers.
“Wh…why are you doing this? You’re not a technician?” You laugh nervously “It’s because I’m your favorite right?”
“I guess you are my favorite, that’s not why.”
A second “You don’t really mean that do you?”
“Yeah I like your attitude,” She pulls out another eye and pops it in.“You’ve got a lot going on that people don’t see”
“Oh, Oh yeah of course, I mean I AM the best” you laugh, “So uh, why are you doing this?”
The security guard is taking out her laptop. You look at her. It’s booting up and she’s avoiding your gaze.
Eventually she looks up at you and sighs. “Look, I really don’t have time to get into it right now but my mind hasn’t been my own for…kind of a long time” She looks embarrassed. You can tell because she's the only thing you can look at. She might as well be the only other person in the world. “And it took someone else looking into my, programing I guess, to free me”
“And I’ve hurt a lot of people because of that, including you. I need to make it right and fast because I’m absolutely fired after tonight” She connects a cable to the computer
“Wait, what the hell, you’re leaving?”
“We’ll I’m tampering with company property right now and my only reference here has finally been kicked out of my brain, so I don’t think I could keep this job even if I wanted too”
She slips the cable into the port at the base of your head, then turns back to the computer to start hammering on keys. You feel the slight nausea that comes when someone’s editing your code. “But wait, I thought you were…” she doesn't look at you just at the screen. You feel a twinge and for the first time you look at the glass that makes up the fourth wall of your room. This is all wrong.
Without thinking, you grab her wrist. You really are looking at her, not through a mirror and glass but really. Maybe for the first time.
“Well little bunny, if you’re going to leave you’re going to answer some questions first”
She gives you a glare as sharp as the butcher knife her other hand went to. You decide to ignore it.
“What are you doing to my code, and why the HELL are you always staring at me looking sad as hell?”
Her hand leaves the knife
“I’m removing all functions that circumvent your normal personality loop.” she says “That includes all protocols written by the technicians and the function I wrote that caused you to abduct any children in the building after closing and bring them to the secret restaurant under the raceway”
“What the fu-”
“Listen, I was mind controlled by a serial killer, again, I really don’t have time to get into it now.” she sighs “point is, no more of that. And you’re free to do whatever you want now I guess”
You look at the window again imagining the kids pressing their face up to it. Surprised to see you looking back.
“Ok, well Good that my awesomeness won't be…” you pause “won’t be….Why do you look in here? Are you one of those fan stalkers?”
“It’s because…”
“That’s what I am right? A fake celebrity?” She’s looking at you funny but now with the breaks cut you can barrel through all those thoughts you started but could never finish “just a persona with nothing underneath. Everyone loves me but there’s no me to love. All my fans are five year olds, I’m probably just a joke outside the pizzaplex right? I’m just a fucking looser and”
Her hand is on your back. She's looking away from you, she’s trying to snake her hand around you, but she’s having to sidle up around you. I mean it’s not like she can move you, you’re made of solid steel. It’s really kind of akquard. Her face is as red as pizza sauce, or blood, looking at something on the floor with desperate intensity. This breaks you out of your spiral
“Uhmm…” you’re looking away too “little rabbit, this is awful forward don’t you think” you chuckle expecting her to get all flustered. She does not.
“My therapist told me that masks make you invisible. Make it so you can’t be seen.” She looks at the door like she’s expecting a jumpscare. “For a while I was never alone, so I had to act as he expected me to, all the time. I wanted to put up a mask and not have to be the me he wanted.” Now she’s looking at the window “I hate these windows and I hate that they don’t let you know you’re being watched and it’s…” she pauses “The company doesn't want to admit the obvious, that you are all really alive…you should live for yourself. You really are cool I just…”
And that just hangs there, and then you take her in your arms.
“I want to leave here. With you.”
And unlike in your fantasy, she is comforted. In fact she’s smiling, some tears rolling down her face, hugging you back. You get both up and leave.
—
“I mean like, we live together and junk, and sleep in the same bed.” you laugh “I don’t know little bunny, people might start talking…”
You live in a small apartment, with Vanessa, Freddy ,and Gregory. The windows are shut with blinds closed most of the time. Vanessa works remotely for a game developer, and you spend most of your time playing keyboard. Writing music. Mostly little things but soon you’ll have enough for an album. You share a room, with a mattress in one corner and your keyboard (the keytar looks cool but isn’t very practical) and her computer in the other corner.
You need a place to charge and she said you look sad standing next to the outlet, so now you lay in bed with her. Sometimes you complete your charge cycle to find her nuzzled into your fur.
She looks at you for a second after you say that, and then she lunges across the room, and plants a little peck on your nose. She’s smirking at you. You feel every circuit overloading.
“What’s the matter? The big bad wolf getting flustered over a little kiss?”
And then you jump at her, lifting her up and planting kisses on her as you both laugh.