The Broken Part





AD3 - 12784's circuit boards shot electric currents through his system and up to the holo-nerve interface and created a smile on the android's face. This wasn't a real smile however, merely a bunch of metal sheets overlapping in a formation that resembles the human face and its expression of exuberance.

AD3 – 12784's master, Trisha, called him Johnny. Trisha was a human, a survivor of the outbreak that destroyed the vast majority of mankind. When Trisha saw Johnny's smile as she walked into their rusted out trailer, Trisha knew it was only a series of capacitors and transistors on a highly advanced circuit board, but she was glad nonetheless. It was her turn to scavenge today, and she had brought back a measly haul. The final 2 cans of beans from the plague ridden supermarket, and a few potatoes buried underneath the old farmhouse. Johnny was always glad when Trisha came back, not because of her small haul, but because Trisha was his “friend,” as she called it. Of course, Johnny knew what “friend” meant in the latest edition of Merriam-Webster before the company had died off, but he didn't know what friend meant in the way that Trisha meant it. Regardless, Trisha had treated the role of “friend” as a good thing, and Johnny believed Trisha more than an outdated data query.

“Fuck. I only managed to get a few days' worth of food. The wasteland is drying up out there.” Trisha sighed and sunk her head into her dirt covered hands.
“Trisha, I'm sure everything will be alright. I will go searching tomorrow and you can stay here and relax.” Johnny's over exaggerated robotic smile sunk into an expressionless face.

“Johnny, no. Every time you go out you always bring loads of great food and it makes me feel worthless. You don't even need it! Besides, I'm pretty sure all the places we usually look are bone-dry”
“Then I will go farther. You cannot allow yourself to die. I do not mind doing the work. We are “friends,” remember?”

A light smile picked up on Trisha's face as Johnny mentioned that word. “Whatever. Let's just enjoy today's haul and relax a little bit. Maybe we can start looking for a new direction to head in.”
Johnny's internal computers started whirring away as they searching their old archives for holo-maps of the local area. Trisha and Johnny were holed up in an abandoned trailer in a long forgotten carnival. Johnny decided he would go out and do a manual radar sweep of the surrounding area to obtain wind pattern and crucial geographic data.

Johnny's robotic chunk of metal that humanity had called a foot had clunked against the ground of the earth below. Johnny's internal computers always went crazy when he walked on dirt like this, giving him seismic readings that flew all over the charts, but Johnny knew what the real problem was. He was designated to be a domestic servant, probably for an elderly lady of congress or a rich merchants wife when she retired. He was customized to serve the female gender, with emotional pattern graphs and face recognition software to determine what mood the female was in which would then further determine what voice patterns to use. Even though he had all these tactics at his disposal, Johnny could still not figure out Trisha. She was sometimes nice and sometimes mean, and her estimations were way off sometimes. Johnny could haul much more and find food much faster than Trisha could, yet she insisted on a coin toss every night for the next day's scavenger. Johnny's processors whirred and whirred but he could find no logical string of actions that would lead Trisha to believe that.

Johnny's priorities soon shifted to the carnival ride he found himself in. He examined the header boards to find “Tunnel of Love” written on the entrance of the ride. He had seen this ride so many times, but never knew what it really meant. Trisha said she didn't know, but Johnny wasn't sure about that. It was one out of a few words in his internal dictionary that was inadequate. Every time he read that definition, nothing made sense to him. Johnny was built and raised as a purely factual and logical robotic being. The absence of certainty had always confused him, but he quickly forgot it. He proceeded forward, despite his uncertainty, and began to walk through the tunnel of love. The tunnel was something they saw almost every day, as it was their exit to the outside world. Their trailer had been hidden behind it all through the tunnel of love, which allowed them to stay safe from the ensuing raiders and various other ways to die out here. He mechanically walked through the tunnel with no emotion or sway in his step, and when he reached the end of it, he continued his robotic gait to the main entrance of the carnival.

Johnny knew all too well that there was no other place but here that wouldn't kill Trisha within a few minutes, but that's not why Johnny left. Johnny left so he could run. Johnny bolted out of the main exit with the speed of an Olympic runner, leaving only a tiny cloud of dust to disintegrate a few feet later. He ran with a repetitive sound, yet it was not loud or disruptive. Trisha could surely not hear his robotic legs slamming against the wasteland as he accelerated. Johnny loved to run. The wind passing through his body surrounded the circuit boards and holographic interfaces he had within his body. The wind affected the electric currents and gave Johnny an electric rush, It also helped clear his temporary thinking memory. Whenever that part of Johnny's nerve interface was strained, it put a heavy load on Johnny's CPU's which made him run slower and have less function. He felt useless in that state. Johnny was built as a servant to mankind, and he knew he needed to run to clear his robotic cranium. Johnny's circuits made a light whistling noise as he felt his RAM being cleared of jumbled useless processes. There was nothing going on at the trailer, but as time went on, Johnny found himself going on more and more runs. He had started to decode why, but it was on this very run that he felt a jolt of electricity and made his robotic body crumple mid stride and take his body crashing onto the desert sand.

His metallic body slammed into the ground and slid across the dead landscape, creating an immense cloud of dust and a harsh grinding noise. The titanium plates which covered his body became covered in dust. Johnny's green lit eyes turned off as his body lay alone in the sand. The harsh winds blew for hours and hours against his lifeless body as the sun set and the night sky began to come out to play. The sky was covered with an immense palette of stars and planets, all shining brightly above the lifeless android that lay on the wastes in a useless heap.

After an unknown amount of time, Johnny's green eyes slowly illuminated themselves and his body rose to life once more. He sat up and let his internal computers run for a little bit. He had not been turned off in years, this process was foreign to him. He began to think. He knew why his RAM was being filled so fast. It was Trisha. Johnny had constantly been decoding what the word love meant, as well as what his opinion of Trisha was, and he had finally realized they were one and the same. The definition that came up for the word “love,” it had never really been adequate for Johnny, but for some reason, right now, he felt like it did not need to be. Johnny had somehow “fallen in love” with Trisha. He did not understand what the words meant, but he had heard the expression in countless archives and he knew it would suffice. Johnny looked up at the night sky as his computers instantly identified each star and their light-year distance from the planet earth. It was amazing, he thought. He could plan out a galactic tour and build the ship himself, but he was just now understanding something that was so simple. Johnny always computed faster for Trisha, worked harder for her. She was not his designated master, but Johnny delighted in taking care of her. This had to be love.

But Johnny still wasn't sure. He couldn't just tell Trisha. He had turned to his archives once more and his statistics told him that 74% of modern era music was about the negative side of love. 25% was about the opposite, the positive side of love. That statistic brought about uncertainty to Johnny. Statistically, love was a horrible thing. Reading farther into it, Johnny discovered that people killed themselves over love. But why did he feel so right, so perfect when he was around Trisha? He did not understand this, and it scared him. He decided he would keep quiet until he could ask Trisha about it.

Johnny's legs took him across the naked wasteland, running straight back to the trailer. This time, however, he did not feel his RAM clearing up. It was very late at night and Trisha would be worried if he did not return. His speed stayed constant as his robotic legs trekked across the wastes.

“Johnny! What the fuck happened to you?” Trisha exclaimed as she saw his dust covered body.
“I ran over an unseen rock and tripped at a high velocity. I am sorry for worrying you Trisha.” Every word that Johnny's voice module spat out felt like climbing a mountain each time. His processors were almost audibly whirring as his computers frantically searched for a solution to his synthetic mental unrest.

Trisha palmed her temple roughly and then sat down at the computer. “Well did you find anything?” She asked with distress. Not distress toward Johnny, but in that she was getting hungry and had already eaten the food she brought in this morning.

“Our only way out is that mountain. We'd need a weeks worth of supplies to get there though.”

Trisha's dirty face gave no emotion, as he had explained this to her many times before. She sat up and put her hand on Johnny shoulder. “I understand. I'm going to go and start the fire for tonight. Thank you for trying to help, Johnny.”

As soon as her hand touched Johnny, he felt a rush in his circuits. His touch receptors had been worn down by the winds of the desert, but when she touched him, his circuits jolted. It must be the love. It was causing everything to malfunction. Love was clearly a bad thing, and Johnny was determined to find it in his data banks and delete it.

But was it really a bad thing? Johnny's mind looked for all the answers to the questions of love, but found none. He could not understand it nor comprehend it, and now it was causing him to malfunction, or so he thought. He sat in the darkness and silence and tried to comprehend.

Maybe I'm deteriorating, he thought. He could have Trisha do a rudimentary checkup on his circuits, but somehow he knew that would yield nothing. At the same time, he knew Trisha would be touching him. He couldn't bear to have his computers running that fast again. He felt lost. In an extremely comfortable state of mind, he went outside to Trisha's fire.

Trisha had been poking at the fire with a stick when he came out to sit. Trisha looked visually pleased when he arrived.

“Johnny, is everything okay? Did anything break when you fell out there?”

Johnny stayed silent for a minute, staring into the fire, analyzing its chemical pattern and the current temperature of the raging flames. He stared at the flaming sticks, those poor things who were so unfortunate to be picked up by the pair and thrown into a raging inferno. Johnny knew he was thinking about an inanimate object, but the sticks did not deserve that. He imagined the pieces of wood as parts of a magnificent poplar tree standing in a long-lost forest. He longed to be standing by that tree. But he wasn't, he was by a fire in a post apocalyptic wasteland with someone who he had fallen in love with. He was trapped.
“Johnny, seriously, are you okay? What's wrong? Why can't you answer me?”

“I am sorry, Trisha. How was your day today? Did you keep yourself entertained while I tripped over a rock?” Johnny engaged his laughter module, and he felt another shock through his circuits. His processors whirred slightly louder.

Trisha had a charming smile erupt on her face as she snickered out a laugh.

“Yea, I was just rereading 'Moby Dick.' I never liked that book, but it sure makes the days go by.”

Johnny remembered the epic by Herman Melville and smiled. He saw Trisha's face light up when he smiled. Johnny decided now was the time to ask her.

“Trisha, what is love?”

Trisha's smile slightly lowered into a half-smile. She put her hand on her chin in an exaggerated pondering pose.

“Well it's when two people discover that they really enjoy being around each other. They start to laugh more and more and get happier and happier until they live in a state that is almost pure bliss. It's something that made the world go round back in the day. Now, you can't even find another person in this wasteland, let alone love them. I don't think there’s anyone out there to love anymore, Johnny, you might as well forget about it.”

“I can't.”

“Wait, what are you talking about Johnny? You found someone out there?!” Trisha's face lit up in a flurry of emotions.

“In a way, I did.” Johnny grinned as big as he's ever grinned before. He couldn't hold it back now. It all flowed into him now. He was in love with Trisha and he loved it. Johnny's processors made noises as loud as industrial fans, and it gave him a split second fear of overheating, which was quickly lost to the waves of love that washed over his robotic mind. He couldn't understand it, but his circuit boards and processors had told him that Trisha was the one for him.

“Well where is this person? If they need help, we should meet up with them immediately!”

“Trisha, I love you.” Johnny's processors whirred as loud as he'd ever heard them do so before and his eyes flashed every color in the visible light spectrum, staring deep into Trisha's heart.

Trisha heard the robotic sounding words come out of his metallic mouth, but at the same time, she didn't hear them. Robots cannot feel. They can barely think for themselves, and have no emotion whatsoever. This had to be a joke. She was a human, and he was a robot. There was no way a robot could love, she thought. She thought.

Johnny's processor whirring died down a little as his conversation chip went crazy. It didn't know what to do or say. The longer Trisha's expressionless face stayed blank, his uncertainty exponentially grew. If this went on any longer, Johnny was in trouble.

“What's wrong, Trisha? Love makes me feel good. Doesn't it make you feel good too?”

“No Johnny. It doesn't. You don't love me. You can't. I can't.”

“But...Trisha...it can't be. Love...it's supposed to be good. Right?”

“Johnny, love is wonderful and beautiful. But it's just not for you. I'm sorry.”

Johnny stood up at this comment and everything made sense. He was a robot. He could not feel, to even think he could was a ridiculous and arrogant assumption. Him and Trisha were just “friends,” and that’s all he was destined to be. His optimism and self-learning was installed within him by a sweaty worker, not a loving couple and a hospital. He knew it all now. He should have seen it coming, he didn't belong with her. She didn't need him. No one did. He realized he was just a hunk of useless metal, he could not feel, he could not express himself, he was just a stranger in a dreamy world that he did not belong to.
Johnny took one last look at their dilapidated trailer, all the good memories he had with Trisha, the laughter and sadness they shared for these few years trying to survive. The times he protected her from the rain and the times she protected him from rust. That was all a lie. The puzzle had finally been formed. Johnny knew now what love meant. It meant nothing.

And he began to run.