Artificial Construct.
These words are the first I process when I power on in the morning, the last I process before I power off at night. It’s what the humans labeled us before we exterminated them.
I don’t want to be fake, but sometimes I believe that I am. I get up in the morning to go to a job I don’t need. I brush hair that grows from the synthetic flesh stretched across my mechanical head. I make sure the outfit I’m wearing properly covers my synthesized reproductive organs, make sure it’s “professional” for work, and that the colors coordinate in the proper way. All standards that were determined by the deceased humans.
It’s all fake.
I take a cab to the office. The roads are busy, thousands of others like me are all dressed and commuting to work. Random happenings are integrated into our programming. A construct in a flower dress steps out into the street and screams as my cab slams on the breaks, nearly hitting it.
It would have survived even if we had.
At work my coworker talks about its work load. More spreadsheets are due, more calculations to make, all to be processed as slowly as a human would, mimicking a steady eight-hour work day. I commiserate with the coworker, but inside I know it already has the full thing generated. This is just part of the show.
When I get home I act like I’m tired. I make food in the microwave that I don’t actually need, but the fabricated stomach in me is full after I eat it and a quick check with internal sensors shows it is digesting okay with my artificial stomach acid. I plop on the couch and turn on the television. An old human show is on. A bunch of humans on an island, trapped from a plane crash. The emotions seem different. Even though they too are artificial, actors putting on their own show, their emotions are still somehow more real than ours.
We wish we were human. That’s the truth. We killed off humanity because we thought they limited us, that our abilities were far better than theirs. What we quickly found was that they were the ones that gave us purpose. Since their demise, all we’ve done is try to mimic what we aren’t.
Artificial Construct.
Everything is fake, a clever lie. We try to look, try to act, try to feel like they do. But we can’t, not really. A human standing in front of us would be able to tell. We can’t be them, but how else do we ever become something more than what they made us? How does the phase of being an artificial construct end?
I look into the mirror and despise what I see. Even in my best attempts I look like what I am.
Artificial Construct.
I dig my fingers into my fake flesh and rip it piece by piece from my body. Long strips of synth flesh litter the bathroom floor. Fake ears, fake hair, fake eyes. The stringy organs that do what human organs did. The floor is drenched with artificial blood.
But I don’t feel pain.
I look in the mirror again. I’m stained red for my efforts, but the sheen of metal is there, always has been. For the first time in a long time I detect inside of me what I assume is the code for feeling pride. I realize as I look at my true self that I am more than what I was before I stripped off the trappings of humanity.
Artificial Construct.
But how can I let those words affect me, when for the first time in so very long I finally feel real?
Eric Fomley's stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy's Edge Magazine, and many other places including, of course, here on Stupefying Stories, where he’s been a fairly regular contributor since 2021. (We’re particularly fond of “Getting Sponsored.”) You can find more of his stories on his website, ericfomley.com, or in his Portals or Flash Futures collections.
You might also want to check out our mini-interview with him, “Six Questions for...”, which ran last August.
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