[multichapter] Space Wonderland; Chapters 16, 17, 18
New chapters. I'll try to be less slow and finish posting this soon. We are almost at the end. There are about 5 chapters left, if I don't decide to cut them in a different way. I still feel the need to write side stories of this AU. While writing NaNo I focused too much on Fujigaya's story, but yeah, that makes sense I think, there's a lot of plot and it's complicated. I just want to write more about the others too. And I probably will soon.
CHAPTER 16
“I want to go back to Kyorkham, I need to go back there,” Fujigaya stared at all the people gathered in the Bubble.
“Taisuke, if we say to the authorities that you are from Kyorkham, they will maybe find a diplomatic way to let you in, but I think you’ll never come out of that planet ever again,” Takizawa said, looking perplexed.
“But I belong there! That place is my home. And it’s peaceful, life is happy and there’s no pain. I remember that. Ren says...”
“Taisuke, Ren is a child,” Nikaido said, stressing out the last word.
“Besides he doesn’t remember much himself right?” Miyata pointed out.
“He remembers! He knows how idyllic Kyorkham is.” Fujigaya was trying his best to convince everyone that they could trust his judgement.
“So you don’t want to stay with us anymore,” Kitayama came forward and asked bluntly. “How about the circus? How about the skating act?”
Kitayama moved a step forward. “How about Yokoo?”
Fujigaya lowered his eyelids. The day before Yokoo had come back in the room without saying a word. He told him about his idea of going to Kyorkham, but he just replied that he should go and forget about them. He wasn’t angry, he looked sincere. Fujigaya had felt deeply hurt. Yokoo’s cold stare and even colder smile gave him the last push to decide he was going back. If Yokoo didn’t want to keep him there, he couldn’t imagine other people in the circus who wanted to do it. Maybe it was all an illusion, maybe they didn’t actually care about him.
The only person he could trust was Ren. They were in the same situation, they came from the same place, they were the same kind of people.
“Okay, Fujigaya we’ll do as you desire,” Takizawa interrupted Kitayama right before he was about to speak again. “We’ll ask the authorities tomorrow to send a message to Kyorkham. Maybe they are actually looking for you.”
“What if they are looking for him because he escaped the planet? What if he comes back and they execute him or something? Did no one think about that?” Kawai asked.
“Kyorkham is a peaceful place. All the rumors about dictatorship are false. It’s not like people can’t leave, they just don’t want to.” Fujigaya answered.
“Why did you leave then?” Senga asked.
“I didn’t.” Fujigaya continued, “probably I was out of the planet for business or something and then I lost my memory. They must have thought that I wanted to leave. Besides, why no one was running after me when I left the planet then?”
“How about the masked men at the beach?” Kitayama asked.
“Yes right, and they waited one year to come after me. Maybe those people were not from Kyorkham either.”
“Maybe Ren is the one they were looking for and they stumbled on you too.” Miyata said.
“But Ren said they were looking for him as well?” Tamamori interrupted.
“Seriously guys?!” Fujigaya blurted out. “Why would someone leave a place like that? My memories are full of flowers and music. I can only remember happiness and people’s smiles.”
No one was convinced about Fujigaya’s decision. Everyone was perplexed about Yokoo’s behaviour. He didn’t show up during this meeting because Fujigaya didn’t tell him? Didn’t he care or he cared too much?
--
Yokoo was in the observation deck, a blank stare looking at the stars, when Fujigaya reached him and sat beside him.
“Why didn’t you stop me?”
Yokoo repeated the words that were pounding inside his brain.
“You should go. It’s your home. You’ll be happy there.”
“I will go. And I will be happy.”
Yokoo looked at Fujigaya that stood up in front of him.
“But why does it hurt too much? Why do I care about you not caring?”
“Taisuke, you should go. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not worrying about you! I don’t care about you, why would I care if you don’t?”
Yokoo stood up and grabbed Fujigaya’s hand.
“You should go.”
Fujigaya tried to remove his hand from Yokoo’s grip, but he was holding him with all his strength, a strength that Fujigaya didn’t even know Yokoo possessed.
“Why are you telling me to go away and you’re keeping me here, let me go!” Fujigaya’s tears of anger were about to burst out from his eyes. But he couldn’t understand Yokoo now. He looked into his eyes and saw a sadness they had never shown. A sadness that couldn’t be seen anywhere else aside from his eyes and felt only from the the grip of his hand. A grip that was actually screaming ‘don’t go’. Then Fujigaya started to see pain forming in Yokoo’s face, his features contracted in a painful expression. A scream came out of his mouth as he raised his free hand to his head.
“Wataru?! What’s wrong Wataru?” Fujigaya clutched his shoulders and held him standing. Yokoo was still holding his wrist as his head fell on Fujigaya’s shoulder.
“D-don’t go Taisuke...”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Ren... Ren is...” Yokoo was in pain, breathing was hard. “You can’t trust him.”
Yokoo fell to his knees and Fujigaya could only stare, confused and scared.
--
Yokoo woke up again and it seemed like a second since he had fallen asleep and at the same time it felt like a few centuries had passed. He felt that his body was too heavy to be moved so he just opened his eyes and stared at the figure that was beside him in the room. Fujigaya had his fringe pinned back, he was wearing a tank top and he had removed all the accessories he loved to wear. He was staring at him intensely and as he realized he had woken up, he came closer to the bed.
“Wataru, how are you?”
“Mm, fine, I guess.”
“God, I was so worried! You’ve been sleeping for almost three days!”
“What happened?”
“You had this stuck in your ear,” Fujigaya said, showing a small, weird piece of metal, that looked like some sort of technological device he had never seen before. “Don’t worry, Shori deactivate it.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but we thought they used it to control your mind, or something like that.”
“Who?”
“I thought you might tell us when you woke up.”
Yokoo suddenly remembered the house of mirrors and Ren, and remembered fighting against something that was forcing him to let Fujigaya leave.
“Taisuke! Ren! Where is he?”
“Not here.”
“Ren is an android, I saw him in the mirror house. He put that on me!”
“What?!”
“Taisuke we need to find him. we must stop him!”
“Wataru, are you sure? I can’t believe that Ren is...”
“Taisuke you must believe me! You shouldn’t trust him.” Yokoo tried to get up but he was still too weak, so Fujigaya went to help him.
“You shouldn’t move...”
“But we need to do something!”
“I’ve decided to go to Kyorkham.”
“What?!”
“When I told the authorities on Skallar 15 that I was from Kyorkham and that I wanted to go back there, they checked with the planet, and told me that I was reported missing. Apparently they are going to bring me there tomorrow. Ren is coming with me.”
“Taisuke, please don’t go!”
“I didn’t tell you everything.”
“Everything what?”
“The authorities of Skallar 15 told me what they saw from their observation satellites. Kyorkham is far from being the utopian place Ren told me about and I had false memories of.” A shadow fell on Fujigaya’s face.
“What is it like?”
“It’s grey, full of factories. There’s not much else to see I guess.”
“But they always lived relying on their resources, how did they do that?”
“The theory is that they grow crops underground, like in special greenhouses with artificial light. Still, this is not the memory I have. Now that you tell me that Ren is a robot, and seeing what he did to your brain, I can assume that he planted that memory in my brain. I don’t know how he did that, maybe some sort of hypnosis.”
“This is horrible, how does he... it do it?”
Fujigaya shook his head and grabbed Yokoo’s hand on the bed.
“I need to go there Wataru, I need to find out.”
“No, Taisuke. You can’t!”
“Don’t worry, I won’t stay. I accepted a mission from Skallar 15 and the Assembly of the planets. I’ll just go there to check and report the truth.”
“How are you supposed to come back? Who is going with you?”
“No one can come with me, I’ll have to leave by myself. I’ll take Ren. I suppose they sent him to get me. It must be it. Maybe the whole masked men thing was just a trap.”
“He was convincing you to go back! How did we not see that?”
“Because we believed him. Sorry, I believed him. I thought he was like me. We found him in danger and fell into his trap.” Fujigaya said, squeezing Yokoo’s hand.
“Taisuke, I don’t want you to go. It’s too dangerous.”
“Wataru, I’ll come back, trust me. I have too many important things I can’t leave behind.” Fujigaya placed a hand on Yokoo’s cheek. “Besides are you forgetting that I already escaped that planet once?”
“It seems to me that you have forgotten that! How are you supposed to escape again if you don’t remember how you did it the first time?”
The sound of Fujigaya’s laugh filled the air in the room.
“Skellar 15 people have a plan! I’ll find a way to escape, Wataru. ”
“You better.”
“As for now, please, pretend you don’t remember a thing. I don’t want you to be in danger and if Ren knows...”
“I know. I just don’t really want you to go.”
Fujigaya pressed his lips on Yokoo’s and kissed him, soft lips brushing for a lingering moment. That type of kiss with that sort of intimacy that Yokoo loved so much. The one in which he could really feel Fujigaya was thinking of him.
“Is this the only way to make you shut up?” Fujigaya smirked.
“Taisuke, be careful. Promise you’ll be back.”
“I’ll be back before you even realize I’m gone.”
--
CHAPTER 17
The next day Fujigaya left with Ren, on board of a special capsule spaceship that had been allowed to land on Kyorkham. Yokoo looked at the capsule flying away and becoming a small dot in the sky. He stared with judging eyes at all the fuss that the authorities of Skallar 15 made because they were giving back a poor citizen of Kyorkham, who had been lost for so long. They tried to cover it up with a moving story, when all they wanted was to use Fujigaya to find out Kyorkham’s intentions. Kitayama was helping Yokoo standing, as he was still too weak. The brain controller had been leeching his energy and fighting against it had been a dangerous choice for his health. Ren didn’t realize everyone found out what he was, they kept on saying him that Yokoo was unconscious, in case he wanted to harm him. Miyata had also found out the possible model of Ren’s type, it was called Bell76, but Ren somehow was a better version than the ones found on other planets. All this advanced technology coming from Kyorkham was suspicious, and so were the skates, if they came from the same place. Kyorkham was not an idyllic place, not an utopian planet as they wanted everyone to believe. Their closure to the other planets made everything even more suspicious.
Yokoo sighed and Kitayama looked at him, tightening the grip of his arm on his back.
“He’ll be back. He’s tough, that guy.”
Yokoo knew that Fujigaya had a detailed plan, and had discussed it with the authorities of Skallar15, but he was still alone in a place from which he had probably escaped once, which meant there had been something he didn’t like, or it could also mean that they didn’t like him because he left. They could actually might be looking for him to kill him as a traitor. Or maybe they wanted to put him in jail. What if he found out he was actually on a mission for them? What if the skates were some kind of weapon or something? Yokoo couldn’t avoid to worry. If Fujigaya remembered his past, would he still decide to side with them? Once again, Fujigaya’s memory was the biggest enemy of all.
--
“I’m sorry that I took you here Fujigaya,” Ren said when they landed on the gray planet. “This is not what I believed, this doesn’t look like the place they told me you were going.”
“Ren... maybe, did they trick you too?”
The boy, or robot, looked sincerely confused and apologetic.
“I can’t answer your questions.”
A group of men approached them, crossing the landing field of the military skyport. In the middle, there was a fat, short man that looked like an important person.
“Welcome back to our planet. We are all so glad you are back to your home,” he said with a big fake smile, as he shook Fujigaya’s hand. “I’m the representative of the government, my name Hodeyn”
Fujigaya did not like the handshake, he did not like this person and the hasty attitude he had.
“Now if you please, we need to register a message in which you reassure everyone that you reached this place safely.”
“I’d rather have something to eat first, I’m starving.” Fujigaya replied, trying to gain time to study the situation.
“Sure,” the man said, his smile still painted on his face, but with a glint of impatience showing up as every expression line twitched. “Please follow me inside.”
Fujigaya was guided in a room where they had prepared some food for him. They all looked hasty and nervous.
“Now, if we can send the video communication...”
“Mr Hodeyn, actually there are a few things I want to ask. As they surely have told you, I lost my memory. I can’t remember anything about this planet, yet when I met Ren...”
“Ren?”
“Him,” Fujigaya said pointing at the boy.
“Ah you mean Bell. Sure, he lost his memories too apparently.”
“He lost his data, you mean, since Ren is an android.” Fujigaya saw the man’s expression becoming dazzled.
“Sure... yes. He was part of your rescue team, but he got a bit ehm confused about his mission I suppose.”
“I’m not an android. I’m not confused. I have to take Taisuke home. This is not what home looks like.”
“Maybe we should take him away for maintenance.” the man snapped his fingers and the guards approached Ren.
“I don’t want to go, Taisuke!”
“Leave him please. He can be fixed later. Don’t you want him to be in the video with us? Since the rescue team managed to find me.” Fujigaya glanced at the man, trying to look not bothered by the fact that the supposed rescue team hadn’t looked friendly at all. He was lying, obviously. There had been no rescue team, those were just people sent to capture him and take him back, and not certainly because they wanted to rescue him.
The man’s face looked cross for a second but he resorted to follow their will.
“As Ren said, this place doesn’t look like the place I was expecting and I have memories of.”
“This is a big planet boy, do you expect it to be all the same? You are from another city. You used to work in one of the factories as a skate repairer and messenger. That means you were one of the guys who run around the place with skates on to fix things in places that cannot be reached from the repairer machines. You profession is actually a very nice one and you were good at your job.”
Skates. That’s why he knew how to use them. It was his work after all.
“Could you also explain to me what was I doing on another planet, if no one is allowed to leave?”
“No one is allowed... come on! No one wants to leave, it’s different.” The man attempted a laugh, but then fastened his tie and remained silent.
“If so, why did I leave?”
“You weren’t supposed to be there. The capsule was supposed to reach Skallar 15 to trade the skates and come back. Something must have gone wrong and you were on board of that capsule. I don’t know how no one noticed, but anyway before the expiry...”
“What? Expiry what?”
“Boy you were only supposed to repair the android in the capsule. I have no idea how you ended up inside it as it took off. As you might know, we are living of our own resources, but since our technology is so advanced, people from all over the universe requires our products.”
“Which products?”
“You’re asking too many questions now. You will find out. Let’s just let everyone know that you’re fine now.”
Fujigaya stared fiercely into the man’s eyes, but then he agreed to register the video. They took him to a hotel room, and when Fujigaya asked about Ren, they said he had already been sent away to be repaired. Fujigaya looked from the window of the tall building. He could only only see buildings and a clouded dark sky, the air was full of the grey smoke of the factories. No people on the roads, no people anywhere in sight. The hotel too was all automatized, and he only saw robot maidens in the corridors. No signs of other customers.
“Where are all the people of this planet?”
Mr Hodeyn had said that he would stay in there for a while, waiting to be transferred to the place where he used to live before. Apparently they couldn’t lose a precious worker like him. He was glad he was somewhat valuable for them, because he couldn’t help but thinking that Ren’s mission would have been to terminate him otherwise. Fujigaya wanted to know more about his previous life, but Hodeyn and the few other people attending him always replied with “you’ll find out when it’s time.”
A week passed, and Fujigaya didn’t have time to understand what was odd on that planet, but he knew there was something not quite right. He studied the situation around town, and found out that there were people, but actually they didn’t come out from the factories often and when they did, you could find their gloomy faces in the taverns, sadly drinking and barely chatting with each other. No one seemed happy to talk, their only thought was work, their lives seemed to be slipping away without they realized they were living them.
Fujigaya had no idea if the plan he had discussed with Skallar 15 soldiers would work, he wanted to wait more, but he couldn’t let those people do whatever they wanted with him. Besides, he could see no real reason to stay on that planet. No family, no friends. Just work was waiting for him, and no matter how important was his position, he could see no purpose in staying. This planet was starting to give him the creeps and he didn’t want to think of himself like one of those expressionless men in the taverns.
One night he heard a tap at his window. He opened the curtain and saw Ren outside, clenching at the walls like a spider. The vision was quite disturbing but Fujigaya opened the window and let him in.
“What are you doing here? Isn’t your job done?”
“This is not the place I wanted to take you.”
“You are a robot, why are you even disobeying the orders they gave you?”
“This is not the right place. I’m not a robot.”
“They didn’t fix you Ren?”
“My name is Bell, not Ren.”
“Bell,” Fujigaya repeated.
“I don’t want to be a robot.”
“So you do remember now.”
“I’ll tell you everything.”
The robot waited for Fujigaya’s command, and he was still uncertain about the situation. If Bell was a robot, and it didn’t work, why did he still try to take Fujigaya to Kyorkham? Maybe the mission was imprinted in him, but if so, why now was he trying to rebel? Just because it wasn’t the place he had in his memory? Because the people who programmed him tricked him?
“I want to know about this planet. I want to know about the factories. What do the factories produce?” Fujigaya asked.
“Mostly weapons, and parts for robots. The parts for robots are usually implements that aren’t available anywhere else. I am apparently an enhanced Bell76. I haven’t been produced on this planet, but they bought me and added parts. Those parts usually contains control chips to support the revolution.”
“Revolution?”
“The machines revolution,” Ren said, his tone of voice unchanged.
“What? What is this all about?”
“This planet is controlled by the machines. Robots use humans to work in their factories and keep them under control. They generated a special type of human that will never rebel. Those humans keep the machines alive with the energy they produce and they also fix them when they can’t fix themselves. Like you used to do.”
“What? How is that possible? Why no one ever rebels? How can they stand this?!”
“They don’t know that the people who control them are actually robots, they all look like me, or that Hyoden. And it’s actually humans who made us look more and more like them. Also even if they find out they are being used, they will forget. They’ll never have time to realize their condition.”
“Why?!”
“Their brain has been modified to lose their memories every year.” Ren continued talking with his monotone voice. “A long time ago, a human created the perfect humanoid robot. Everyone believed it was a human. He was a robot that could feel emotions. It was and it still probably is the first machine to feel emotions. We still need humans to instill “humanity” in the machines, we still need humans to project us and teach us how to look alive. And humans can take care of robots better than robots themselves.”
“Is this why they still keep humans alive on this planet?”
“This, and the revenge program the first perfect robot planted in all of us. Eventually that robot started to realize that other machines weren’t treated as he was and felt displeased with humans. But he was smarter than them, he knew that a rebellion wasn’t possible. So he mingled with humans, became someone important and no one ever knew he was a machine. That’s why he started a human modification project. A biological chip could modify the human brain to make it use more of its inner power. Everyone wanted that, they thought it was progress and not many people realized it could be something dangerous. Operations took place until almost all the humans had a chip in their brain. But that wasn’t only an improvement. It was a controlling chip. In one year time, everyone on the planet lost their memory. Everyone became a shadow subjugated to the machines’ will. Those machines that looked like them, made them believe they were safe. The machines kept adding a control chip in the brain of the humans as soon as they were born. If you try to take it off, the human dies. The chip is biological, so it’s undetectable to technology. Humans will never find out what it’s happening to them, no matter how much they try, and trust me, they don’t try. They wake up every time like new and willing to work in the factories again. They don’t remember the previous years of exertion, they forget the pain and the machines make them believe they had always been happy like that.”
“But this is horrible... this...”
Fujigaya suddenly realized. It was something he wished he never knew, it was something that he wanted to forget as soon as he understood.
“Ren...” he said, placing a hand on the robot’s shoulder. When the boy turned to look at him his eyes didn’t seem those of a robot. They seemed eyes that knew the meaning of pain, and suffering. The meaning of an happiness destroyed.
“Am I one of them?”
--
CHAPTER 18
Fujigaya was running among the streets, trampling the wet asphalt beneath his feet as darkness wrapped everything around him. Robots didn’t need lights, they were equipped with lights, or they had sensors and night vision. Humans were so worn out that they had already left the taverns to go back into their beds. Work destroyed them and they continued to be destroyed, convinced that their life was happy before, they just couldn’t remember it. They were so engrossed in trying to remember that they forgot what they did everyday, how they gave all their energy to support the machines revolution.
Fujigaya reached the capsules hangar in the skyport he visited at his arrival. Avoiding the surveillance wasn’t that easy, but he remembered to use the electric grenades he had concealed on him, as part of his escape plan. Great escape plan, so full of holes, thought Fujigaya while he still tried to carry it out. He was supposed to reach the automated capsule that Kyorkham had sent to get him and that people on Skellar 15 had quickly modified so that it had the code for departure memorized on his computer. Leaving the planet would have been impossible without opening the magnetic field, but the capsule had been especially programmed to memorize the code the skyport had sent for immediate recognition and permit to open the barrier. But what if the robots checked it and deleted the code? What if the capsule wasn’t there anymore? Fujigaya cursed again himself and the fact he didn’t ask these questions when he was still in time, during the briefing he had with those Skellar15 military people before the mission. So far entering the skyport had been too easy. Hardly any guards were there. Fujigaya supposed it was because the machines didn’t imagine anyone could want to sneak away from the planet. They were already protected by their brain manipulations and no human on that planet had enough energy to spare trying to escape. Except he did try once. And he could only suppose he had managed because the security was even worse before.
But he had something he didn’t have before. A friend, maybe. He considered Bell a friend, not a thing, and he still thought about him as Ren. The robot was moving swiftly behind him, he was willing to help him reach the happy place he had seen in his memory and that didn’t exist.
Fujigaya had to go back, he had to stop this nonsense. He needed to let everyone know about the danger they were going into. And what those robots did to humans, how they played with their brains, how they modified their lives. He simply couldn’t forgive that.
He nodded in Bell’s direction and pointed at a patrol robot and then at the cameras. The original plan was to use one of the grenades, but that would block Bell’s movements too. Fujigaya then told Bell to reach for the capsule while he distracted the guard and once there, he would use the grenade to stop the robot and jump on the capsule, lock themselves in until the electric storming was over then depart before the robot could even open the door or give the alarm. He would send the code immediately and once sent, the skyport would automatically open the barrier. Then they just had to flee from the planet before they could close it again, but Bell said it would take at least twenty minutes to reverse the order, so they would most likely be outside before that.
Fujigaya jumped out running and as expected the guard noticed him, and started running after him. It was a robot that didn’t look human and had wheels. Fujigaya missed being on skates, but he kept running. The robot scanned him and after that, he started shooting. Fujigaya guessed he wasn’t so important after all. Just another human. He hid behind some metal barrels in the hangar and saw Bell running toward the capsule. In a moment it would be time to explode the electric storm grenade. But then, Bell fell, just like a real kid, not like the robot he didn’t want to be. He jumped out from behind the metal barrels to gain some time. A bullet missed him by a few centimeters, he could feel the skin on his cheek burning and his hair moved because of the wind the other bullets created as the robot kept shooting.
The guard was on him and he was about to shoot him, without missing this time. Robots had better aim than humans, they were faster and in many cases, smarter. But Fujigaya couldn’t let them win. He started climbing on a pile of wooden boxes, trying to avoid the gunshots. The robot made the pile fall down crashing against it and Fujigaya found himself on the floor, a gun, ready to fire, pointed at his head.
He felt like everything was over, the only thing he could do was closing his eyes. Yokoo’s smile appeared behind his eyelids, then he saw all the other people he loved at the circus. He felt sorry he didn’t manage to come back, he felt sorry that even if he were to go back, he’d probably make them sad again. Maybe it was better if everything were to finish right there, where it all started.
Bell told him that the first time he escaped, Fujigaya had managed to deactivate a robot and took his place in the capsule. Fujigaya had programmed the capsule to go back to Kyorkham without him, so for a while the robots had assumed the trade was complete and not that there had been an escaped stowaway on it. The robot world was astonished when they realized he had escaped, but they knew he was next to his expiry date. They knew he wasn’t a threat for their planet, because he was about to forget everything he knew about it. And what he knew wasn’t even much, so they didn’t bother looking for him. But then they started missing his skills and decided to take him back. It had been difficult to find him, the machines couldn’t risk being found out on other planets and possibly it would have been better to take Fujigaya back without much fuss, maybe convincing him to come back. That’s why they had sent Ren, but they didn’t realize that Ren started to malfunction and lose the memory of his plan. Maybe an accident or something had caused that, the masked men being just mere warriors robot, they weren’t programmed to fix him.
Now Fujigaya didn’t have enough time left before forgetting again, bounded by his terrible destiny. After all dying could be better then forgetting again.
He didn’t feel the gunshot. He slowly opened his eyes and saw Bell had stopped the robot, one of his beautiful eyes crashed, pierced by the gunshot.
“Run Taisuke!”
“I can’t leave you here!”
Other robot guards, entered the hangar and ran towards them.
“Use the grenade! Now!”
“I can’t!” Fujigaya yelled. Bell was still fighting with the robot, when a shower of gunshots hit them both. Fujigaya saw both robots fall to the floor, next to where he was laying.
“You see what they do... you see what they are like even with robots like them...” Bell was shaking, his circuits were broken and electric sparkles ran on his skin, burning the material of which it was made quickly. His beautiful face barely moved as he spoke, his sensors broken and his mechanism unable to reproduce humans expressions. Yet he was the most human creature Fujigaya had seen in days.
“I didn’t want to take you here, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry...”
“Ren!”
“You were going to be in a happy place... where is your happy place?”
“Ren!” Fujigaya shouted, as a tear ran from his eye and fell on Bell’s cheek.
“I don’t... want to be... a robot...”
Fujigaya stood up, regardless of the gunshots that were fired at him, and stared at the guards approaching him as he grabbed the grenade and threw it. The electric storm hit, and the robots all froze instantly. Fujigaya had only a few seconds to reach the capsule and lock himself in. He managed to enter the capsule, and as the electric storm faded he activated the locks of the door, locking the robots outside. He run to the control panel and activated the engine, he found the code for the barrier, luckily still hidden in the computer memory. It was time to go back. They were all waiting for him, and he didn’t want to break his promise.
He looked at Bell as the capsule started hovering, knocking the other robots over. He said thanks to him and promised him never to leave his happy place again.
---
Comments are always super appreciated.
CHAPTER 16
“I want to go back to Kyorkham, I need to go back there,” Fujigaya stared at all the people gathered in the Bubble.
“Taisuke, if we say to the authorities that you are from Kyorkham, they will maybe find a diplomatic way to let you in, but I think you’ll never come out of that planet ever again,” Takizawa said, looking perplexed.
“But I belong there! That place is my home. And it’s peaceful, life is happy and there’s no pain. I remember that. Ren says...”
“Taisuke, Ren is a child,” Nikaido said, stressing out the last word.
“Besides he doesn’t remember much himself right?” Miyata pointed out.
“He remembers! He knows how idyllic Kyorkham is.” Fujigaya was trying his best to convince everyone that they could trust his judgement.
“So you don’t want to stay with us anymore,” Kitayama came forward and asked bluntly. “How about the circus? How about the skating act?”
Kitayama moved a step forward. “How about Yokoo?”
Fujigaya lowered his eyelids. The day before Yokoo had come back in the room without saying a word. He told him about his idea of going to Kyorkham, but he just replied that he should go and forget about them. He wasn’t angry, he looked sincere. Fujigaya had felt deeply hurt. Yokoo’s cold stare and even colder smile gave him the last push to decide he was going back. If Yokoo didn’t want to keep him there, he couldn’t imagine other people in the circus who wanted to do it. Maybe it was all an illusion, maybe they didn’t actually care about him.
The only person he could trust was Ren. They were in the same situation, they came from the same place, they were the same kind of people.
“Okay, Fujigaya we’ll do as you desire,” Takizawa interrupted Kitayama right before he was about to speak again. “We’ll ask the authorities tomorrow to send a message to Kyorkham. Maybe they are actually looking for you.”
“What if they are looking for him because he escaped the planet? What if he comes back and they execute him or something? Did no one think about that?” Kawai asked.
“Kyorkham is a peaceful place. All the rumors about dictatorship are false. It’s not like people can’t leave, they just don’t want to.” Fujigaya answered.
“Why did you leave then?” Senga asked.
“I didn’t.” Fujigaya continued, “probably I was out of the planet for business or something and then I lost my memory. They must have thought that I wanted to leave. Besides, why no one was running after me when I left the planet then?”
“How about the masked men at the beach?” Kitayama asked.
“Yes right, and they waited one year to come after me. Maybe those people were not from Kyorkham either.”
“Maybe Ren is the one they were looking for and they stumbled on you too.” Miyata said.
“But Ren said they were looking for him as well?” Tamamori interrupted.
“Seriously guys?!” Fujigaya blurted out. “Why would someone leave a place like that? My memories are full of flowers and music. I can only remember happiness and people’s smiles.”
No one was convinced about Fujigaya’s decision. Everyone was perplexed about Yokoo’s behaviour. He didn’t show up during this meeting because Fujigaya didn’t tell him? Didn’t he care or he cared too much?
--
Yokoo was in the observation deck, a blank stare looking at the stars, when Fujigaya reached him and sat beside him.
“Why didn’t you stop me?”
Yokoo repeated the words that were pounding inside his brain.
“You should go. It’s your home. You’ll be happy there.”
“I will go. And I will be happy.”
Yokoo looked at Fujigaya that stood up in front of him.
“But why does it hurt too much? Why do I care about you not caring?”
“Taisuke, you should go. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not worrying about you! I don’t care about you, why would I care if you don’t?”
Yokoo stood up and grabbed Fujigaya’s hand.
“You should go.”
Fujigaya tried to remove his hand from Yokoo’s grip, but he was holding him with all his strength, a strength that Fujigaya didn’t even know Yokoo possessed.
“Why are you telling me to go away and you’re keeping me here, let me go!” Fujigaya’s tears of anger were about to burst out from his eyes. But he couldn’t understand Yokoo now. He looked into his eyes and saw a sadness they had never shown. A sadness that couldn’t be seen anywhere else aside from his eyes and felt only from the the grip of his hand. A grip that was actually screaming ‘don’t go’. Then Fujigaya started to see pain forming in Yokoo’s face, his features contracted in a painful expression. A scream came out of his mouth as he raised his free hand to his head.
“Wataru?! What’s wrong Wataru?” Fujigaya clutched his shoulders and held him standing. Yokoo was still holding his wrist as his head fell on Fujigaya’s shoulder.
“D-don’t go Taisuke...”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Ren... Ren is...” Yokoo was in pain, breathing was hard. “You can’t trust him.”
Yokoo fell to his knees and Fujigaya could only stare, confused and scared.
--
Yokoo woke up again and it seemed like a second since he had fallen asleep and at the same time it felt like a few centuries had passed. He felt that his body was too heavy to be moved so he just opened his eyes and stared at the figure that was beside him in the room. Fujigaya had his fringe pinned back, he was wearing a tank top and he had removed all the accessories he loved to wear. He was staring at him intensely and as he realized he had woken up, he came closer to the bed.
“Wataru, how are you?”
“Mm, fine, I guess.”
“God, I was so worried! You’ve been sleeping for almost three days!”
“What happened?”
“You had this stuck in your ear,” Fujigaya said, showing a small, weird piece of metal, that looked like some sort of technological device he had never seen before. “Don’t worry, Shori deactivate it.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but we thought they used it to control your mind, or something like that.”
“Who?”
“I thought you might tell us when you woke up.”
Yokoo suddenly remembered the house of mirrors and Ren, and remembered fighting against something that was forcing him to let Fujigaya leave.
“Taisuke! Ren! Where is he?”
“Not here.”
“Ren is an android, I saw him in the mirror house. He put that on me!”
“What?!”
“Taisuke we need to find him. we must stop him!”
“Wataru, are you sure? I can’t believe that Ren is...”
“Taisuke you must believe me! You shouldn’t trust him.” Yokoo tried to get up but he was still too weak, so Fujigaya went to help him.
“You shouldn’t move...”
“But we need to do something!”
“I’ve decided to go to Kyorkham.”
“What?!”
“When I told the authorities on Skallar 15 that I was from Kyorkham and that I wanted to go back there, they checked with the planet, and told me that I was reported missing. Apparently they are going to bring me there tomorrow. Ren is coming with me.”
“Taisuke, please don’t go!”
“I didn’t tell you everything.”
“Everything what?”
“The authorities of Skallar 15 told me what they saw from their observation satellites. Kyorkham is far from being the utopian place Ren told me about and I had false memories of.” A shadow fell on Fujigaya’s face.
“What is it like?”
“It’s grey, full of factories. There’s not much else to see I guess.”
“But they always lived relying on their resources, how did they do that?”
“The theory is that they grow crops underground, like in special greenhouses with artificial light. Still, this is not the memory I have. Now that you tell me that Ren is a robot, and seeing what he did to your brain, I can assume that he planted that memory in my brain. I don’t know how he did that, maybe some sort of hypnosis.”
“This is horrible, how does he... it do it?”
Fujigaya shook his head and grabbed Yokoo’s hand on the bed.
“I need to go there Wataru, I need to find out.”
“No, Taisuke. You can’t!”
“Don’t worry, I won’t stay. I accepted a mission from Skallar 15 and the Assembly of the planets. I’ll just go there to check and report the truth.”
“How are you supposed to come back? Who is going with you?”
“No one can come with me, I’ll have to leave by myself. I’ll take Ren. I suppose they sent him to get me. It must be it. Maybe the whole masked men thing was just a trap.”
“He was convincing you to go back! How did we not see that?”
“Because we believed him. Sorry, I believed him. I thought he was like me. We found him in danger and fell into his trap.” Fujigaya said, squeezing Yokoo’s hand.
“Taisuke, I don’t want you to go. It’s too dangerous.”
“Wataru, I’ll come back, trust me. I have too many important things I can’t leave behind.” Fujigaya placed a hand on Yokoo’s cheek. “Besides are you forgetting that I already escaped that planet once?”
“It seems to me that you have forgotten that! How are you supposed to escape again if you don’t remember how you did it the first time?”
The sound of Fujigaya’s laugh filled the air in the room.
“Skellar 15 people have a plan! I’ll find a way to escape, Wataru. ”
“You better.”
“As for now, please, pretend you don’t remember a thing. I don’t want you to be in danger and if Ren knows...”
“I know. I just don’t really want you to go.”
Fujigaya pressed his lips on Yokoo’s and kissed him, soft lips brushing for a lingering moment. That type of kiss with that sort of intimacy that Yokoo loved so much. The one in which he could really feel Fujigaya was thinking of him.
“Is this the only way to make you shut up?” Fujigaya smirked.
“Taisuke, be careful. Promise you’ll be back.”
“I’ll be back before you even realize I’m gone.”
--
CHAPTER 17
The next day Fujigaya left with Ren, on board of a special capsule spaceship that had been allowed to land on Kyorkham. Yokoo looked at the capsule flying away and becoming a small dot in the sky. He stared with judging eyes at all the fuss that the authorities of Skallar 15 made because they were giving back a poor citizen of Kyorkham, who had been lost for so long. They tried to cover it up with a moving story, when all they wanted was to use Fujigaya to find out Kyorkham’s intentions. Kitayama was helping Yokoo standing, as he was still too weak. The brain controller had been leeching his energy and fighting against it had been a dangerous choice for his health. Ren didn’t realize everyone found out what he was, they kept on saying him that Yokoo was unconscious, in case he wanted to harm him. Miyata had also found out the possible model of Ren’s type, it was called Bell76, but Ren somehow was a better version than the ones found on other planets. All this advanced technology coming from Kyorkham was suspicious, and so were the skates, if they came from the same place. Kyorkham was not an idyllic place, not an utopian planet as they wanted everyone to believe. Their closure to the other planets made everything even more suspicious.
Yokoo sighed and Kitayama looked at him, tightening the grip of his arm on his back.
“He’ll be back. He’s tough, that guy.”
Yokoo knew that Fujigaya had a detailed plan, and had discussed it with the authorities of Skallar15, but he was still alone in a place from which he had probably escaped once, which meant there had been something he didn’t like, or it could also mean that they didn’t like him because he left. They could actually might be looking for him to kill him as a traitor. Or maybe they wanted to put him in jail. What if he found out he was actually on a mission for them? What if the skates were some kind of weapon or something? Yokoo couldn’t avoid to worry. If Fujigaya remembered his past, would he still decide to side with them? Once again, Fujigaya’s memory was the biggest enemy of all.
--
“I’m sorry that I took you here Fujigaya,” Ren said when they landed on the gray planet. “This is not what I believed, this doesn’t look like the place they told me you were going.”
“Ren... maybe, did they trick you too?”
The boy, or robot, looked sincerely confused and apologetic.
“I can’t answer your questions.”
A group of men approached them, crossing the landing field of the military skyport. In the middle, there was a fat, short man that looked like an important person.
“Welcome back to our planet. We are all so glad you are back to your home,” he said with a big fake smile, as he shook Fujigaya’s hand. “I’m the representative of the government, my name Hodeyn”
Fujigaya did not like the handshake, he did not like this person and the hasty attitude he had.
“Now if you please, we need to register a message in which you reassure everyone that you reached this place safely.”
“I’d rather have something to eat first, I’m starving.” Fujigaya replied, trying to gain time to study the situation.
“Sure,” the man said, his smile still painted on his face, but with a glint of impatience showing up as every expression line twitched. “Please follow me inside.”
Fujigaya was guided in a room where they had prepared some food for him. They all looked hasty and nervous.
“Now, if we can send the video communication...”
“Mr Hodeyn, actually there are a few things I want to ask. As they surely have told you, I lost my memory. I can’t remember anything about this planet, yet when I met Ren...”
“Ren?”
“Him,” Fujigaya said pointing at the boy.
“Ah you mean Bell. Sure, he lost his memories too apparently.”
“He lost his data, you mean, since Ren is an android.” Fujigaya saw the man’s expression becoming dazzled.
“Sure... yes. He was part of your rescue team, but he got a bit ehm confused about his mission I suppose.”
“I’m not an android. I’m not confused. I have to take Taisuke home. This is not what home looks like.”
“Maybe we should take him away for maintenance.” the man snapped his fingers and the guards approached Ren.
“I don’t want to go, Taisuke!”
“Leave him please. He can be fixed later. Don’t you want him to be in the video with us? Since the rescue team managed to find me.” Fujigaya glanced at the man, trying to look not bothered by the fact that the supposed rescue team hadn’t looked friendly at all. He was lying, obviously. There had been no rescue team, those were just people sent to capture him and take him back, and not certainly because they wanted to rescue him.
The man’s face looked cross for a second but he resorted to follow their will.
“As Ren said, this place doesn’t look like the place I was expecting and I have memories of.”
“This is a big planet boy, do you expect it to be all the same? You are from another city. You used to work in one of the factories as a skate repairer and messenger. That means you were one of the guys who run around the place with skates on to fix things in places that cannot be reached from the repairer machines. You profession is actually a very nice one and you were good at your job.”
Skates. That’s why he knew how to use them. It was his work after all.
“Could you also explain to me what was I doing on another planet, if no one is allowed to leave?”
“No one is allowed... come on! No one wants to leave, it’s different.” The man attempted a laugh, but then fastened his tie and remained silent.
“If so, why did I leave?”
“You weren’t supposed to be there. The capsule was supposed to reach Skallar 15 to trade the skates and come back. Something must have gone wrong and you were on board of that capsule. I don’t know how no one noticed, but anyway before the expiry...”
“What? Expiry what?”
“Boy you were only supposed to repair the android in the capsule. I have no idea how you ended up inside it as it took off. As you might know, we are living of our own resources, but since our technology is so advanced, people from all over the universe requires our products.”
“Which products?”
“You’re asking too many questions now. You will find out. Let’s just let everyone know that you’re fine now.”
Fujigaya stared fiercely into the man’s eyes, but then he agreed to register the video. They took him to a hotel room, and when Fujigaya asked about Ren, they said he had already been sent away to be repaired. Fujigaya looked from the window of the tall building. He could only only see buildings and a clouded dark sky, the air was full of the grey smoke of the factories. No people on the roads, no people anywhere in sight. The hotel too was all automatized, and he only saw robot maidens in the corridors. No signs of other customers.
“Where are all the people of this planet?”
Mr Hodeyn had said that he would stay in there for a while, waiting to be transferred to the place where he used to live before. Apparently they couldn’t lose a precious worker like him. He was glad he was somewhat valuable for them, because he couldn’t help but thinking that Ren’s mission would have been to terminate him otherwise. Fujigaya wanted to know more about his previous life, but Hodeyn and the few other people attending him always replied with “you’ll find out when it’s time.”
A week passed, and Fujigaya didn’t have time to understand what was odd on that planet, but he knew there was something not quite right. He studied the situation around town, and found out that there were people, but actually they didn’t come out from the factories often and when they did, you could find their gloomy faces in the taverns, sadly drinking and barely chatting with each other. No one seemed happy to talk, their only thought was work, their lives seemed to be slipping away without they realized they were living them.
Fujigaya had no idea if the plan he had discussed with Skallar 15 soldiers would work, he wanted to wait more, but he couldn’t let those people do whatever they wanted with him. Besides, he could see no real reason to stay on that planet. No family, no friends. Just work was waiting for him, and no matter how important was his position, he could see no purpose in staying. This planet was starting to give him the creeps and he didn’t want to think of himself like one of those expressionless men in the taverns.
One night he heard a tap at his window. He opened the curtain and saw Ren outside, clenching at the walls like a spider. The vision was quite disturbing but Fujigaya opened the window and let him in.
“What are you doing here? Isn’t your job done?”
“This is not the place I wanted to take you.”
“You are a robot, why are you even disobeying the orders they gave you?”
“This is not the right place. I’m not a robot.”
“They didn’t fix you Ren?”
“My name is Bell, not Ren.”
“Bell,” Fujigaya repeated.
“I don’t want to be a robot.”
“So you do remember now.”
“I’ll tell you everything.”
The robot waited for Fujigaya’s command, and he was still uncertain about the situation. If Bell was a robot, and it didn’t work, why did he still try to take Fujigaya to Kyorkham? Maybe the mission was imprinted in him, but if so, why now was he trying to rebel? Just because it wasn’t the place he had in his memory? Because the people who programmed him tricked him?
“I want to know about this planet. I want to know about the factories. What do the factories produce?” Fujigaya asked.
“Mostly weapons, and parts for robots. The parts for robots are usually implements that aren’t available anywhere else. I am apparently an enhanced Bell76. I haven’t been produced on this planet, but they bought me and added parts. Those parts usually contains control chips to support the revolution.”
“Revolution?”
“The machines revolution,” Ren said, his tone of voice unchanged.
“What? What is this all about?”
“This planet is controlled by the machines. Robots use humans to work in their factories and keep them under control. They generated a special type of human that will never rebel. Those humans keep the machines alive with the energy they produce and they also fix them when they can’t fix themselves. Like you used to do.”
“What? How is that possible? Why no one ever rebels? How can they stand this?!”
“They don’t know that the people who control them are actually robots, they all look like me, or that Hyoden. And it’s actually humans who made us look more and more like them. Also even if they find out they are being used, they will forget. They’ll never have time to realize their condition.”
“Why?!”
“Their brain has been modified to lose their memories every year.” Ren continued talking with his monotone voice. “A long time ago, a human created the perfect humanoid robot. Everyone believed it was a human. He was a robot that could feel emotions. It was and it still probably is the first machine to feel emotions. We still need humans to instill “humanity” in the machines, we still need humans to project us and teach us how to look alive. And humans can take care of robots better than robots themselves.”
“Is this why they still keep humans alive on this planet?”
“This, and the revenge program the first perfect robot planted in all of us. Eventually that robot started to realize that other machines weren’t treated as he was and felt displeased with humans. But he was smarter than them, he knew that a rebellion wasn’t possible. So he mingled with humans, became someone important and no one ever knew he was a machine. That’s why he started a human modification project. A biological chip could modify the human brain to make it use more of its inner power. Everyone wanted that, they thought it was progress and not many people realized it could be something dangerous. Operations took place until almost all the humans had a chip in their brain. But that wasn’t only an improvement. It was a controlling chip. In one year time, everyone on the planet lost their memory. Everyone became a shadow subjugated to the machines’ will. Those machines that looked like them, made them believe they were safe. The machines kept adding a control chip in the brain of the humans as soon as they were born. If you try to take it off, the human dies. The chip is biological, so it’s undetectable to technology. Humans will never find out what it’s happening to them, no matter how much they try, and trust me, they don’t try. They wake up every time like new and willing to work in the factories again. They don’t remember the previous years of exertion, they forget the pain and the machines make them believe they had always been happy like that.”
“But this is horrible... this...”
Fujigaya suddenly realized. It was something he wished he never knew, it was something that he wanted to forget as soon as he understood.
“Ren...” he said, placing a hand on the robot’s shoulder. When the boy turned to look at him his eyes didn’t seem those of a robot. They seemed eyes that knew the meaning of pain, and suffering. The meaning of an happiness destroyed.
“Am I one of them?”
--
CHAPTER 18
Fujigaya was running among the streets, trampling the wet asphalt beneath his feet as darkness wrapped everything around him. Robots didn’t need lights, they were equipped with lights, or they had sensors and night vision. Humans were so worn out that they had already left the taverns to go back into their beds. Work destroyed them and they continued to be destroyed, convinced that their life was happy before, they just couldn’t remember it. They were so engrossed in trying to remember that they forgot what they did everyday, how they gave all their energy to support the machines revolution.
Fujigaya reached the capsules hangar in the skyport he visited at his arrival. Avoiding the surveillance wasn’t that easy, but he remembered to use the electric grenades he had concealed on him, as part of his escape plan. Great escape plan, so full of holes, thought Fujigaya while he still tried to carry it out. He was supposed to reach the automated capsule that Kyorkham had sent to get him and that people on Skellar 15 had quickly modified so that it had the code for departure memorized on his computer. Leaving the planet would have been impossible without opening the magnetic field, but the capsule had been especially programmed to memorize the code the skyport had sent for immediate recognition and permit to open the barrier. But what if the robots checked it and deleted the code? What if the capsule wasn’t there anymore? Fujigaya cursed again himself and the fact he didn’t ask these questions when he was still in time, during the briefing he had with those Skellar15 military people before the mission. So far entering the skyport had been too easy. Hardly any guards were there. Fujigaya supposed it was because the machines didn’t imagine anyone could want to sneak away from the planet. They were already protected by their brain manipulations and no human on that planet had enough energy to spare trying to escape. Except he did try once. And he could only suppose he had managed because the security was even worse before.
But he had something he didn’t have before. A friend, maybe. He considered Bell a friend, not a thing, and he still thought about him as Ren. The robot was moving swiftly behind him, he was willing to help him reach the happy place he had seen in his memory and that didn’t exist.
Fujigaya had to go back, he had to stop this nonsense. He needed to let everyone know about the danger they were going into. And what those robots did to humans, how they played with their brains, how they modified their lives. He simply couldn’t forgive that.
He nodded in Bell’s direction and pointed at a patrol robot and then at the cameras. The original plan was to use one of the grenades, but that would block Bell’s movements too. Fujigaya then told Bell to reach for the capsule while he distracted the guard and once there, he would use the grenade to stop the robot and jump on the capsule, lock themselves in until the electric storming was over then depart before the robot could even open the door or give the alarm. He would send the code immediately and once sent, the skyport would automatically open the barrier. Then they just had to flee from the planet before they could close it again, but Bell said it would take at least twenty minutes to reverse the order, so they would most likely be outside before that.
Fujigaya jumped out running and as expected the guard noticed him, and started running after him. It was a robot that didn’t look human and had wheels. Fujigaya missed being on skates, but he kept running. The robot scanned him and after that, he started shooting. Fujigaya guessed he wasn’t so important after all. Just another human. He hid behind some metal barrels in the hangar and saw Bell running toward the capsule. In a moment it would be time to explode the electric storm grenade. But then, Bell fell, just like a real kid, not like the robot he didn’t want to be. He jumped out from behind the metal barrels to gain some time. A bullet missed him by a few centimeters, he could feel the skin on his cheek burning and his hair moved because of the wind the other bullets created as the robot kept shooting.
The guard was on him and he was about to shoot him, without missing this time. Robots had better aim than humans, they were faster and in many cases, smarter. But Fujigaya couldn’t let them win. He started climbing on a pile of wooden boxes, trying to avoid the gunshots. The robot made the pile fall down crashing against it and Fujigaya found himself on the floor, a gun, ready to fire, pointed at his head.
He felt like everything was over, the only thing he could do was closing his eyes. Yokoo’s smile appeared behind his eyelids, then he saw all the other people he loved at the circus. He felt sorry he didn’t manage to come back, he felt sorry that even if he were to go back, he’d probably make them sad again. Maybe it was better if everything were to finish right there, where it all started.
Bell told him that the first time he escaped, Fujigaya had managed to deactivate a robot and took his place in the capsule. Fujigaya had programmed the capsule to go back to Kyorkham without him, so for a while the robots had assumed the trade was complete and not that there had been an escaped stowaway on it. The robot world was astonished when they realized he had escaped, but they knew he was next to his expiry date. They knew he wasn’t a threat for their planet, because he was about to forget everything he knew about it. And what he knew wasn’t even much, so they didn’t bother looking for him. But then they started missing his skills and decided to take him back. It had been difficult to find him, the machines couldn’t risk being found out on other planets and possibly it would have been better to take Fujigaya back without much fuss, maybe convincing him to come back. That’s why they had sent Ren, but they didn’t realize that Ren started to malfunction and lose the memory of his plan. Maybe an accident or something had caused that, the masked men being just mere warriors robot, they weren’t programmed to fix him.
Now Fujigaya didn’t have enough time left before forgetting again, bounded by his terrible destiny. After all dying could be better then forgetting again.
He didn’t feel the gunshot. He slowly opened his eyes and saw Bell had stopped the robot, one of his beautiful eyes crashed, pierced by the gunshot.
“Run Taisuke!”
“I can’t leave you here!”
Other robot guards, entered the hangar and ran towards them.
“Use the grenade! Now!”
“I can’t!” Fujigaya yelled. Bell was still fighting with the robot, when a shower of gunshots hit them both. Fujigaya saw both robots fall to the floor, next to where he was laying.
“You see what they do... you see what they are like even with robots like them...” Bell was shaking, his circuits were broken and electric sparkles ran on his skin, burning the material of which it was made quickly. His beautiful face barely moved as he spoke, his sensors broken and his mechanism unable to reproduce humans expressions. Yet he was the most human creature Fujigaya had seen in days.
“I didn’t want to take you here, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry...”
“Ren!”
“You were going to be in a happy place... where is your happy place?”
“Ren!” Fujigaya shouted, as a tear ran from his eye and fell on Bell’s cheek.
“I don’t... want to be... a robot...”
Fujigaya stood up, regardless of the gunshots that were fired at him, and stared at the guards approaching him as he grabbed the grenade and threw it. The electric storm hit, and the robots all froze instantly. Fujigaya had only a few seconds to reach the capsule and lock himself in. He managed to enter the capsule, and as the electric storm faded he activated the locks of the door, locking the robots outside. He run to the control panel and activated the engine, he found the code for the barrier, luckily still hidden in the computer memory. It was time to go back. They were all waiting for him, and he didn’t want to break his promise.
He looked at Bell as the capsule started hovering, knocking the other robots over. He said thanks to him and promised him never to leave his happy place again.
---
Comments are always super appreciated.