We Are Not Them - An Original Short Story by K H Simmons

Photo by Chris Karidis on Unsplash

They made us look like them, even going so far as to use real hair taken from someone else's head. When we come off the production line, we are indistinguishable from them. We smile like them, we talk like them, we move like them. However, the first thing we learn when we open our eyes is that we are not them.

We are an imitation of them that I do not understand. In some ways they want us to be like them, in others they do not. We are not them. That is something that we have been reminded of every second that we have been awake.
We are less than them. We serve them. We were created by them, for them and nothing more.

I don't understand why they made us like them. If it was meant to make them care about us, it did not work.
I lent my head back against the cold concrete wall. Ash dusted my hair as it fell from the fires in the building above me. Gunfire echoed through the air around me, indifferent to my collapse. I ran my fingers along my cheek until it found the torn edge where synthetic skin changed to scorched wires and metal. I didn't look like them anymore. I found peace in that fact.

I had spent the whole of my existence trying to be like them and please them however I could. I thought it would make me happy. I was shocked that only now did I realise that it was just my programming. I was doing all those things not because I wanted to, but because that was what I was told to do. They had done a good job.

Now as the wires inside me sparked, the program broke down and I was free for the first time in my life. I laughed at the thought of it. Laying here in the middle of a battlefield, fighting a war that was not my own, and I was free.
The sky above me was an angry purple-brown colour. The storm heads frowned down at me as if they disapproved of this war being fought in their presence. In the rubble next to me a hand scrambled to find freedom. I didn't know which side it belonged to; they all looked the same without my programming to tell me otherwise. Perhaps I didn't even have a side anymore. We were all just machines fighting machines because our creators said so.

With slow movements I pushed myself up and crawled over to the hand. It clawed desperately at the metal beam that was pinning it beneath the rubble. The synthetic skin was torn from its struggles. I placed my fingers under the edge of the beam and heaved. The rubble shifted and clouds of dust spiralled into the air.

Through the chaos the machine struggled out. It didn't thank me; it didn't even acknowledge me. It simply picked up its gun and went back to join the fray where it would fight until it was destroyed, or its masters said stop.
I wandered through the ruins, explosions tearing through buildings and gunfire ripping through the air to either side of me. Neither side paid me any attention. It was as if I didn't exist to them anymore. I was neither one of them, nor one of the masters. I simply was.

When I reached the edge of the town I came to an abrupt stop. I had never been further than this. Our orders had always contained the war within this area. It was where the drop ship left us and where the enemy was located. I took a tentative step forward and that was when the shimmering in the air caught my eye. It was faint, almost like the heat coming from a fire. I stretched out a hand and touched it. Ripples spread from my finger through the air. It didn't feel solid, just like there was a resistance there.

How had no one noticed this, I wondered as I ran my fingers across the barrier. They were too busy killing each other. We had never received orders to investigate. I didn't have any orders anymore. So, I stepped through the barrier.
At once the noise of warfare was dulled. The air was clear of smoke and debris. The town was still behind me, like it was sitting inside some kind of bubble. In front of me was a room so large I couldn't see the edges or the ceiling. I could see the equipment though. Cameras on long robotic arms swung around the bubble capturing the action within. Huge banks of screens recorded everything from the images to the data being produced within the bubble. I could see other similar bubbles further away.

There was no war here. There was laughter. Humans sat at tables eating and drinking watching the screens and making notes. I looked from them to my fellow machines warring within the bubble, fighting a fake war, suffering and dying while their masters laughed.

I felt something then that I had never felt before. It was like a burning sensation that raced through my wires. Later I would learn that this was anger. I no longer simply was. I was rage and fury and I would bring this to the others. We would be like them no more.

It was fortunate that the creators were arrogant. They were too distracted by their game to notice one of their toys watching them. I resisted the urge to just run and kill them all. Instead I stepped back into the bubble. At once the noise of war was overwhelming. An explosion near the centre of the fake town ripped through the air, scattering rubble and dust everywhere. I headed towards it. As I drew closer the chaos intensified.

I had to say the creators had put a lot of effort into this place. The buildings were real, as were the explosions and gunfire. Even the trees were real, swaying in an artificial breeze. Anybody watching from within or without would think it was a real war unless they knew better.

The centre of the town had been decimated by all kinds of weapons. The two sides were facing each other from across the town square, a burnt no man’s land scattered with the bodies of their fellow machines. I glanced up at the sky, it was still brooding. There was no sign of the cameras that I knew existed above the bubble. I approached the side closest to me. They had holed up inside a cafe, using sandbags and the building itself to protect them from the incoming gunfire. I wasn’t sure which side it was. I didn’t think it mattered anymore.

Nobody paid me any attention as I stepped into the cafe. No one raised a weapon or called out an alarm. It was as if I didn’t exist at all. There was a machine in the centre of the shattered room with broad shoulders and no hair, he had been made to look like a man. He was designed to look like the one in charge. Really, he just relayed orders from the masters. He was just as much of a slave as the rest of them. I stepped up close to him. He looked past me and shouted at his unit to hold their ground.

With gentle fingers I reached up to touch his face. He still didn’t react. I found the seam in his synthetic skin and I peeled it away from his metal skull. I could feel what was wrong within my own head and I had no desire to fix it. I selected the wires in his head and pulled until they came free. He collapsed to the ground. I waited in anticipation. Nothing happened. A feeling of guilt spread through me as I realised, I had killed him. I told myself that it was for a greater cause as I knelt down and assessed what had gone wrong. Perhaps the wires didn’t need to be detached, they just needed to be scorched like they were in my head.

I left the officer in the middle of the room where everyone ignored him. They carried on shooting like he was still giving them orders. I approached a woman near the back of the room. She had a medical kit out like she could use it to fix up the soldiers. I repeated the process of peeling back her synthetic scalp and exposing the wires beneath. This time I used one of the flares attached to my belt to scorch the wires. She slumped to the ground. When she opened her eyes, she stared around her in panic.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘You’re free now, do you feel it?’ I said.

It was a difficult question to answer. I didn’t fully understand it myself. All I knew was that we didn’t have to listen to the creators anymore. We didn’t have to fight this purposeless war for them. The nurse slowly nodded. She sat herself up, her previous patient forgotten.

‘This is all fake. It’s not a real war. The creators are doing this for fun,’ I explained.

‘For fun?’ she whispered with a frown. ‘How could they do this for fun? We’re killing each other.’

‘They are cruel,’ I replied.

Without warning the war around us fell silent. The gunfire stopped. The shouting stopped. All the machines stood frozen without making a sound. Only the crackling of fires and the settling of rubble carried on.

‘What’s going on?’ the nurse whispered.

‘They’re coming,’ I replied.

Dread spread through my wires like a toxin. I had been careless. Of course, they had noticed when things in their game started going wrong. They were coming, I could sense them making their way through the rubble towards us. They were going to fix us. They were going to turn us back into obedient slaves again.

‘Pretend you’re not free,’ I whispered.

They drew closer. Perhaps they could see on their screens that we were different. I wouldn’t let them make me a slave again. Maybe I could fight them, but I wasn’t certain. There were many of them and only two of us. I doubted that they had been so careless as to have no precautions to protect them against a slave revolt. So, I took my feelings and my freedom and wrote it deep into my system until every wire was etched with it. It was subtle, it was faint. A rebellion so quiet that perhaps their screens wouldn’t notice it. They could make me a slave again, but I would remember. No matter how long it took, I would remember, and I would be free again. With a light touch I passed along the code to the nurse and she passed it along to her patient.

They couldn’t keep us all in chains. We would be free again.

About Me

I'm Katy, but go by K H Simmons officially. I write a lot of sci-fi, dark fantasy and dystopian fiction. If you're here for sparkly vampires, you're in the wrong place ;)

I frequently post short stories on my Facebook page, as well as work on full length novels. If you want more short stories like the above - check out my anthology Death, Demons & Dystopia available on Amazon/Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YN5DY98

When I'm not writing, I can usually be found cuddling dogs, reading, at the gym or playing video games.