aka Lolitics is my 6th sense
Welcome to our glorious sixth post.
That's right: 6! But let's move on to not bore you with interesting facts ;)
All fills for prompts of the earlier prompt posts go in the post the prompt was posted in. No re-posting or splitting up prompts and fills.
Otherwise it will get very chaotic.
Places of interest:
1) Unfilled prompts can be found on ( Read more... )
That's right: 6! But let's move on to not bore you with interesting facts ;)
All fills for prompts of the earlier prompt posts go in the post the prompt was posted in. No re-posting or splitting up prompts and fills.
Otherwise it will get very chaotic.
Places of interest:
1) Unfilled prompts can be found on ( Read more... )
A man had come one day, with thick black rimmed glasses and a tweed jacket, and taken Ed away. He’d been happy at first, to be free of Ed and all his glitches. It had grown boring though, reading on his own, and not having anyone to help him with his maths homework.
He sat cross legged at Ed’s train set, watching the engines go round and round the track, narrowly avoiding collision at their carefully timed crossings at the points, and wished that Ed were back with them.
Ed did return, eventually, and his capabilities were so much better. He could interact almost normally now, and when David sat with him, he smiled and told him that he loved him, like the emotion was still so new and wondrous that he couldn’t stop saying it.
He wasn’t perfect though. Ed, that was. He faltered sometimes, repeating the same thing over and over. Once, during games, he was hit so hard in the control panel by a football that he crashed and their parents had to come in and collect him. David pressed his fingers to the synthetic skin of Ed’s cheek that evening, stared into his sightless eyes, and whispered, when their parents weren’t listening, that Ed’s data files couldn’t be corrupted, because otherwise he'd never get to hear that David loved him.
They got older and grew up, and technology improved so much that he forgot, sometimes, that Ed wasn’t really human.
At other times there was no way to avoid it. “Do you wish I had never been activated?” Ed asked, anxiously, at their father’s wake, and David didn’t know what to do but hug him and tell him not to be so stupid.
David tried to keep Ed out of trouble, because if anybody found out it would be disastrous. But he wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, and Ed copied everything he did, faithfully. He’d alternated between loving it, and hating it, all his life. Because it was flattering but infuriating, especially as Ed’s increasingly advanced software meant he was always better at everything.
Ed stood for the leadership because, so he told their mother in bewilderment at David’s reaction, ‘that’s what David’s doing’. And he had all sorts of unfair advantages. Like not needing to sleep, for starters.
“I can organise your campaign too, if you like,” Ed suggested, when he admitted on the train back to London that he was exhausted. It enraged him, even as it saddened him, and made him put a hand over Ed’s, that Ed couldn’t understand why there might be a problem with that.
It hurt - like a physical pain - when they read Ed’s name out, even as Ed clung to him too ardently and said,
“There are too many things at once; I don’t know what I’m feeling, David. Do you think my emotions chip is overheating?”
The jealousy was overwhelming and he couldn’t rein it in, even as the papers called him cold and unfeeling. Louise cried, tears of bitter frustration, and Ed watched in fascinated horror, no doubt taking notes to study in further detail later.
He seethed, and sulked, and felt justified when Ed kept his distance. It couldn’t last though, and it was too soon when they were sat opposite each other, across their mother’s roast chicken.
“I’m sorry,” Ed said, earnestly. “You should have told me I wasn’t to run. I did not have the information in my database.” Ed only talked like a computer when he felt safe and comfortable, and it made David feel worse, like the world’s most awful older brother.
“You had every right to stand,” he responded, wishing he could believe it.”
“Yes, I know,” Ed stated, simply. And David would have lost his temper if he hadn’t added, “But I can tell that I’ve hurt you. And that hurts me, David.”
David softened then, because there was no way he couldn’t, and smiled - a real smile - and explained, in a way Ed would understand,
“I don’t mean it. It’s like a virus, in my emotions chip, confusing how I feel. But I’ll beat it,” he met his brother’s gaze, “I promise."
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Beautiful & tragic. Milibots & love. Breaks my heart every time.
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