Victoria’s soft hazel eyes fluttered open to the chime of her doorbell ringing, which was followed by a harsh round of someone banging on the door.

Squinting her eyes into thin slits, she tried to adjust them to the darkness that engulfed her bedroom.  She peered over at her window to see if any light had been able to breach her tightly shut blinds, but only saw that the sky was just now turning into a dark navy blue.  With this information, she knew the time was only a few minutes before 5:45 a.m.

Dragging her hand across her silky white sheets, she lazily sat up in her bed and groaned when her back popped in the process.  She murmured a few bitter curses under her breath at her unwanted visitor as she stumbled her entire way over to her window to put a face to all the racket.  Bending the blinds, she rested her right cheek against the window, hoping the vantage point would reveal the jerk who woke her up so early.

Instead of seeing a person, which was what she was expecting to see, she saw a tall box.  What the box was made from, or what the thick, bold print that ran down the side of the box said, she did not know.   Her eyes were no match for the lack of light.

She wasn’t expecting a delivery, nor could she remember ordering anything.   She was sure she would have remembered ordering something as big as a refrigerator.   Looking out at the street, she didn’t see any delivery van or car that could have accommodated a box that size.  Next, she looked up at the sky.  For the past few years, shipments from the heavens were becoming more and more common, but the sky was clear with only a small wispy cloud that floated by slowly.  By then, the sun was shyly peeking out from behind the wall of mountains that sat in the distance.

She thought early morning wake-up calls were a thing of the past.  The year was 2200.  Maybe in 2100 was it acceptable to wake people up before the sunrise- when she thought people were barbaric. But still, she trudged through the hallway, her bare feet slapping against the dark hardwood floors towards her small living room to the front door.  Her house, which reminded her more of an apartment was cold that morning, a clear contrast to the hot, humid air outside.  The goosebumps that textured her tan skin sunk back down with the air flowing through the door and the temperature difference the oxygen from her lungs. For a second, closing the door and trying again later when she was more prepared to brave the summer day, seemed like a good option.

A sudden surge of adrenaline pulsed through her veins, and she drew a huge breath of hot air into her lungs, setting them and on fire.  The concrete slab she called her porch was already warm to the touch, even though the roof shaded it and the sun was beginning to make its presence known.  Her red and yellow flowers drooped pitifully, touching the ground.  She put in countless hours trying to keep them alive, but the scorching sun showed no mercy.  The only benefit the heat offered was heating up the flowers enough to where the sweet scent wafted through the air.  She loved taking a huge whiff of them every morning before work, but she hated ever looking at them because they were dying.

She turned around curiously to the right to face the box, which she could now identify as cardboard.  Her mystery box stood almost half a foot taller than her five-foot-seven-inch frame. She traced her manicured fingertips down the side of the box as she read the words she could not see any more than ten minutes ago. 

“Cyber Carbon Technologies,” she whispered to herself.  It definitely wasn’t a refrigerator, and she frowned at the thought.  Honestly, a new refrigerator would have been lovely, but she would have loved anything the box contained, especially if it was free. 

The thought that the box could have been delivered to the wrong address suppressed her excitement, but the likelihood of the possibility was slim to none.

With the exponential technological growth and advances, cars could drive themselves to a predetermined location.  Humans were only present to bring the package to the door.  With this breakthrough, traffic accidents were almost nonexistent because of the lack of human error.  In effect, the population skyrocketed, leaving many people without jobs because the number of individuals outnumbered the number of jobs by tenfold.   Jobs were only available for the top elite.

Those who were lucky enough to have a job were expected to live almost 2.5 times longer than the unfortunate saps without one.  There were now three life expectancies.  One for people with jobs, one for people without jobs, and one for the things that had killed her father nine years ago.

Victoria could recall a news program she had been watching late one night that covered a story about how the country’s oldest person had passed away that morning.  The woman had lived to be a few months short of her 137^th birthday.  To reach an age in the triple digits was not out of the ordinary, and Victoria often wondered how long she would live.  She had a decent place to live, the best food money could buy, and a job other’s would say she did not deserve to have.

When she was fifteen years old, her father was killed in what everyone thought to be a freak car accident.  The driver of the other car had swerved into the other lane and caused a head-on collision with her father’s car.  She could remember the day like it was a scene from her favorite movie.  She had been a riding in the passenger seat playing a game with her father.  They would pick a car coming in the opposite direction and create rich backstories about the people that may not have been necessarily true, solely based on their appearance.  On that day, they picked out a nice sleek, black car to play the game with and Victoria was about to comment about the victim’s stern eyes and pursed lips when the driver locked eyes with her and jerked the steering wheel in their direction.

Victoria was left parentless and eventually homeless because of the incident.  Others called it an accident, but Victoria refused to call it as such.  She knew it was not an accident because that thing had replaced her father at his job.  Living on the streets and sometimes not being able to eat for days had taken a toll on her body.  She lived day to day trying to make a few dollars to eat and find a place to sleep.  There were many times she contemplated suicide.

Suicide rates were the highest they had been in the last fifty years from people cracking under the immense pressure of trying to maintain perfect college scores. Anything under a 3.9-grade point average was a guaranteed jobless, homeless life.  Eventually, it was a guaranteed early death sentence. 

College preparations started as soon as one could utter their first words.  Like Victoria’s parents, most parents saw this as the perfect opportunity to cram as many languages as possible into their children’s brains.  After all, being able to speak five languages looked much better on job resumes than only being able to speak just one.

Humans were now on average almost three times smarter than their ancestors from the beginning of the millennium.  Victoria knew people were becoming too intelligent for their own good.

Victoria searched for the address the box was supposed to be delivered to, but only found evidence of where the information had been ripped off.  Under where the address was missing, was a series of numbers and letters.  Once again, she mumbled the 01-KAI-88 to herself.  To her, it resembled a model number more than anything.

An orange sticky note gently fluttered to the ground, and Victoria wondered how she failed to spot it.  Quickly dipping down to snatch up the orange paper, she attempted to piece together the messy penmanship.  She moved the note back and forth, side to side and even turned it upside down once because it was so illegible.

Found something better.

Hasn’t been touched.

Please don’t send him back.

Do whatever you want.

“Him?” She questioned herself, rereading just in case.  Victoria slightly pushed against the cardboard to test the weight.  The box pivoted ever so slightly to the right.  It was heavy, but not too heavy for her to drag it across the rough concrete into her house.

Once she had dragged the box unceremoniously into her pristine living room, sweat had dotted her forehead.  Her lungs begged for air, and her brain cursed her stupidity for underestimating the weight of her mystery gift.

A thick line of clear tape had kept the box from opening and from all the air pockets and wrinkles that tainted its smooth surface, she knew the box had been opened once before.  She picked at the tape trying to tear it away from the cardboard but eventually she was sent on a hunt for a knife even though the instructions on the box had explicitly said not to use one to open the box. 

She rolled her eyes.  Didn’t all packages and boxes say that?  But still, she let out a small, high-pitched squeak when she pushed with a little too much force and the knife buried itself to the hilt inside of the cardboard.  Ripping the knife from the box’s clutches, she placed her left hand over her heart and patted her chest.  Gripping the knife with a steadier hand, she gently slid the blade down the tape and forcefully ripped open the box.  A few packing peanuts fell to the hardwood floors, so Victoria closed the flaps and not so gracefully laid the box horizontally on the floor.

Bending at the waist, she scooped all the peanuts into her hand and walked the short distance to her kitchen. She let the peanuts fall from her cupped hands and into the trash.  Picking a stray hair from her hand, she almost threw it in the garbage along with the peanuts.  Bringing the hair closer to her face, she observed the short, nearly black strand.  At first, she wondered if it could be hers, but, her hair was a light brown with a red undertone.  Curiously sifting through the garbage, she discovered a small tuft of the same dark hair.  She straightened her posture and stared into space pondering the origin of the hair.

Could it have been her friend Kyungsoo’s hair?  Not possible.  He hadn’t been over in nearly two weeks, and she was sure she had swept the floor since then.  There was no possible way she would have missed the mess either, as she was a self-proclaimed clean freak.  Besides, Kyungsoo wouldn’t have been playing salon and chopping at his locks in the first place.

She decided to backtrack.  She must have picked up the hair along with the peanuts, right?  The peanuts fell out of the box and it was only logical the hair must have fallen out of the box, too.

All the life flowed out of her body, and she could feel a surge of electricity creep down her spine. Only able to move her eyes, she bore holes into the box that was laying so carelessly in her living room.  It was then the word carbon in the company’s name began to make a disturbing amount of sense. 

Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to even her breathing to a more regular pattern.  She also tried to convince herself that she still hadn’t seen what the box contained and could be completely wrong about its contents.

Taking a shaky step towards her living room, she began to sulk back.  She got on her knees and gripped at the cardboard flaps and flung them open only to be greeted with more packing peanuts.  She painstakingly moved them around with her eyes shut in fear, occasionally opening just one every so often to check her progress.  Her hand jerked up out of the packaging material when the tip of her pointer finger brushed against a solid object.  Slowly reaching back in to clear away the peanuts, she uncovered a nose.  The energy drained from her arms as she kept working. 

All she could do was stare at the face before her.  Her body was void of feeling and her mind of thoughts as she carefully poked and prodded at its synthetic skin.  She grimaced and recoiled her hand at the feeling.  It looked and felt all too real.  It made her sick.

She studied the thing in front of her.  The full, pink lips, the perfect, bronze skin, a sharp jawline that could cut glass, and the soft, black eyebrows.  She hated it.  His youthfulness and the look of pure innocence is what she hated the most.  Yet she couldn’t help but feel intrigued by him.  She traced his jawline and then swiped her thumb across his eyebrow. The “muscle” underneath his skin ever so slightly twitched and sent Victoria sprinting to her bedroom in terror.

Her bedroom door emitted a loud pop when she threw her back against it.  began to constrict the air she was so desperately trying to inhale.  There was lava in her eyes as they were threatening to release the tears that were on the brink of running down her red cheeks.  Eyes darting around the room, she let out a choked back sob on the realization there was nothing to protect herself with if that thing in the living room decided to come after her. 

Several of her old heavy books were an option, but she didn’t want to use them as books were now a rare commodity.  On the same shelf, there was a picture of her and her friend, Kyungsoo.  She thought about taking out the glass and using it to fight the thing off.  Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head, and a single tear detached itself and landed on the wood floor.  Who was she trying to fool?  She would only injure herself even more with the glass.

Opening her eyes again, her gaze met with Kyungsoo’s.  He was her answer.  Diving on her bed, she stripped it of its sheets in a desperate attempt to find her phone.  Throwing a sheet on the floor, she heard a clunk.  She slid off the bed and onto the cold floor to retrieve her phone.

Bringing her knees to her chest, she searched for Kyungsoo’s name.  Her arms trembled causing her to press the wrong things on her phone, which resulted in her panicking even more.

Once the phone began to ring, she prayed for him to pick up.  With each ring, she could feel the burn of stomach acid in the back of . 

“Hello?”

            “Kyungsoo,” she whispered in a shaky voice.

            “Victoria?  Are you okay?”  his soothing voice asked.

            “There’s one of those things in my house!”  she squeaked.

            “One of those things?  What are you talking about?  Are you drunk? It’s way too early to be drunk.”

            “No, I’m not drunk!  There’s a robot in my living room!”  There was a moment of silence on the other line.

            “How do you know it’s an android?”

            “It’s in a box.  I brought it in because I didn’t know what was inside and then I opened it and then- and then- “

            “Calm down, I’m actually in the area, and I can be there in less than five minutes.  I’m in the van.”

            “Please hurry,” she pleaded, “and get this thing out of my house.”  More tears formed in her eyes.

            “I’m going as fast as I can.  Just whatever you do, don’t touch it.  Especially it’s face.”

            Victoria’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach.  “Why? Oh my God, Kyungsoo, I touched his face! What happens if I touch his face, Kyungsoo? Kyungsoo, oh my God, WHAT DO I DO?!”  Black spots formed in her vision as she fought to stay conscious.  Could that thing’s skin take a sample of her DNA?  For all she knew, it could be learning all about her weaknesses and the easiest way to kill her.

            “Great,” He mumbled.  “Since you said his face, I’m going to assume it’s a male,” he said more to himself than Victoria.  “Please tell me that you didn’t say his name.”

            “No, I don’t know his name.  At least I think I don’t know his name.  Oh my God, what if I accidentally said his name without knowing it?  Kyungsoo, what is his name, so I don’t say it?!”

            Kyungsoo laughed a little at her silly question.  “I don’t know his name, because I’m not there, but I just pulled up.”

            Victoria heard the van door open and close off in the distance.  She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.  Kyungsoo would know what to do with her problem.

            “The door’s unlocked.”  The sound of the front door closing rang in her ears.  Seconds later the phone line went dead.

            “Victoria?” Kyungsoo called out throughout the house.

            Steadying herself on her feet, she carefully tiptoed to her bedroom door, slowly opened it and then soundlessly crept down the hall.  Each forced step brought a new wave of anxiety. 

            Just Kyungsoo’s presence was enough to calm her frayed nerves, but not enough for her to leave the comfort of the hallway.  If anything were to happen, the safety of her bedroom was only a few feet away.

            Kyungsoo’s thick, black eyebrows formed a hard, straight line as he critiqued every inch of the robot’s face.  Soon after, he dipped his hands inside the box and pulled them out along with the robot’s arm.  Victoria watched in horror as he manipulated the thing’s hand with his own.

            “Don’t touch it!” she squeaked.

            He whipped his head around and plastered a huge grin on his face.  “I don’t have to worry about that; you already took care of that,” he teased.  “Whoever made this android did an incredible job!  My team and I could learn a lot from them.”

            “That’s great!” Victoria exclaimed.  “Now, please take it back to the factory and learn about it as you rip it to shreds.”

            “I don’t think I can do that,” Kyungsoo frowned as he extended a finger to the company’s name printed on the cardboard, “he wasn’t made at the company I work at.  It would be illegal for me to disassemble him.”

            Victoria’s eyes began to sting again.  “Please tell me you’re joking.  The floor swayed beneath her feet at the thought of being stuck with the monster.

            Kyungsoo rushed to her side and steadied her before leading her to the couch.  He sat next to her and retrieved a small, red laptop from his bag that was leaning up against the sofa.  He opened the laptop and pressed a few keys before letting out a long, exasperated sigh.  “Just because I said it was illegal, doesn’t mean that I’m not going to get rid of him for you.”

            Victoria closed her eyes at his words.  Then she noticed the metallic taste of blood in .  She didn’t realize she had been biting down on the inside of her bottom lip that hard.  In fact, she was so immersed in her thoughts and self-pity, she didn’t even know she was biting her lip at all.

“I know how you feel about them,” Kyungsoo continued.

            Victoria reached over and wrapped her arms around his small shoulders in an awkward side hug.  How did she manage to bag a friend like him?

            Everything Victoria had was because of Kyungsoo. Her house, her job, and her life were all thanks to him. 

            Victoria and Kyungsoo had met the first day of Kindergarten.  She, being the extroverted social butterfly she was, for some reason decided to pick the shyest, introverted classmate to be her best friend.  She ran from one classmate to the next, trying to get them to engage with her, but no one seemed to be a fit for her.  But then she saw a mother walk in with her small, big-eyed son, who immediately clutched to his mother’s legs, begging her not to leave him.

            Kyungsoo’s calm disposition was the missing piece to Victoria’s adventurous tendencies.  No matter what Victoria did, Kyungsoo was always right beside her, even though he was forced most of the time by her.  But Victoria never failed to level her head for his laid-back spirit.

After the death of her father, it was forbidden for them to have anything to do with each other.  Victoria was now a “street rat” and would “die soon anyway.”  Kyungsoo tried his best to keep in touch with her and help her as much as he possibly could without his parents knowing.  Sometimes that meant telling his mother he was staying late at school when in reality he was visiting her.

Kyungsoo went along with his schooling and majored in engineering, which landed him a job at one of the biggest robotics companies in the nation.  Victoria was extremely happy for him.  He now had everything he had ever wanted according to their late-night talks.  He had a huge penthouse on the top floor of the building he lived in, a luxury car with the “heated leather seats” he would always throw in when talking to Victoria about it, and he had more money than he knew what to do with.

When he heard his friend Minseok was looking for another employee to work at his computer programming company, he convinced him to interview her.  Although Victoria had no formal education or training in that field, Minseok was impressed at her uncanny ability to pick up on all the intricacies quite quickly.  He later offered her a permanent position.

“As expected,” Kyungsoo spoke up.  He turned the laptop to face her and pointed to the screen.  “Cyber Carbon Technologies is a company from China.  China is our biggest competitor when it comes to androids.”  Turing the laptop back to himself, he scrolled and did a few clicks all while squinting his eyes at the brightly lit screen.  “The android’s name is followed by the first set of numbers printed on the box.”

Victoria offered a wary glance to the box that was still laying on the floor.  Just the thought of the thing having a name made her sick.  Names were meant for humans and animals- beings that breathed oxygen with a set of lungs and had blood flowing in their veins.  Names did not belong to something essentially made of computers and wires and lacked a moral compass.

Kai.  She tried out the name in her mind. Kai. Kai, Kai, Kai. Nope.  A jolt of electricity flowed throughout her body causing her to wiggle around in her spot.

Kyungsoo cleared his throat and tapped his fingertips against his leg.  Victoria noticed a flush of bright red extend from the collar of his shirt to his chubby cheeks.  “Yeah…” he trailed off, “definitely don’t say his name.”

Victoria raised her brow at his comment.  She wasn’t planning to do so in the first place, but she felt like she needed another reason not to. “Why not?”  She patiently watched him close the laptop and put it away.

“Well, you see, your… friend,” the word earned him a smack on his knee, and he quickly mumbled an apology, “he was made for extracurricular activities.”  Kyungsoo fully intended to leave the sentence as it was in hopes that Victoria would understand his euphemism.   He waited for her blank stare to morph into something more horrified, but it never came.  “Activities as in… bedroom activities.”  He cringed at the words that came from his mouth as if they were the most colorful curse words he could ever imagine.

Victoria knitted her brows in a straight line as she pieced the words together.  She blinked once, twice, and on the third time, her eyes flew open.  “Oh my God!” she wailed.

“With that being said, his nerve receptors are made to be extra sensitive- just like a human being’s.”  Kyungsoo gently picked up Victoria’s left hand and then trailed two fingers down her arm.  His calloused fingers scratched her skin, and the sudden sensation brought another round of goosebumps to her arm.  He looked deep into her eyes thoroughly studying the different flecks of green and brown that were held within them.  Starting with her thumb, he bent and curled her fingers into different ways.  Victoria winced when he bent her finger into an unnatural position and immediately let go to relive her of the discomfort.  She continued to let him play with her fingers wondering what the purpose of his actions were.

Ever so slightly, he rubbed his pointer finger in the center of her palm, “Do you feel that?”

“Of course, I feel that.”

Kyungsoo nodded his head a few times in satisfaction, “If you feel that, then you should be able to feel this, too.”  A hard pinch stung the back of her hand, and she promptly ripped it from his grasp.

“What was that for?” she screeched, massaging the irritated skin.

“It hurt, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it hurt a lot!”  She looked down to see two crescent-shaped indents on her hand.

“Your arm and the android’s arm are made out of the same technology- “

“DON’T!” Victoria interrupted him.  “Do not remind me!” she seethed, squeezing her eyes shut.

Sinking into the couch, Kyungsoo panicked.  “I wasn’t trying to upset you.  I was just trying to make a point.”

“What kind of point were you trying to make?” she challenged him.  “That me and that thing share some of the same parts, so we are practically related?”  She jumped up from the couch to quickly, and her legs struggled to hold her up.  “One of those things killed my father and almost killed me, too!  I refuse to be associated with it!” she cried while furiously wiping away the tears that fell like fat raindrops down her cheeks.

Kyungsoo grabbed her hand to pull her back to her sitting position on the couch.  “I’m not asking you to associate with it.”  His calm voice relaxed her spinning head.  The tension lingering in the air was like a thick cloud that would only be able to be cut with a diamond edged knife.   “I’m asking you to sympathize with him.”

Only the ragged breaths Victoria attempted to inhale was heard.  All she could do was stare at her friend- who must have lost his mind if he seriously thought she would be able to feel bad for the monster in the box.  Even if he asked her to feel for him only for half a second, she wouldn’t be able to do it.  “I’m sorry, Kyungsoo, but I can’t sympathize,” she growled.

“You of all people should be able to sympathize,” he retorted.  “I just proved that even though you have a robotic arm, that arm can still feel pain.”

Then it hit her.  Kyungsoo wasn’t asking her to sympathize with that thing in the box, but rather to sympathize with pain.  Victoria was no stranger to pain.  Four years ago, she was involved in a freak train accident, which lead to her losing her left arm and it being replaced with a robotic arm.  The robotic arm was not her decision.  It was a last-minute decision made by the surgeons.  She would have much rather gone the rest of her life without the limb.

With a huge huff, Victoria crossed her arms.  “Where are you going with this?”

“Do you remember what it felt like when you lost your arm?”

Of course she remembered what if felt like.  Her arm was torn off her body for goodness sake.  The pain was excruciating. 

Kyungsoo continued, “Androids have billions of sensors all over them that allow them to process stimuli.  These sensors are the equivalent to our nerve endings; therefore they can feel the same way you and I can.  When we deprogram any android, we are required to take them apart to salvage parts.”

“Then what are you waiting for?  I’m sure your team could use some more parts right about now,” Victoria urged.

“As I was saying,” Kyungsoo glared, “Deprogramming only wipes out the android’s memory, kind of like a factory reset.  But before we take them apart, they are given a special mix of chemicals to destroy the sensors, so the process of disassembling them is virtually painless.  It’s much like giving someone anesthesia before surgery,” he explained.  “Your android- “ 

“He is not mine!”

“Fine,” He replied running a hand through his short, black hair.  “The android that is in your living room was made to assist in the bedroom, which means his sensors are extremely heightened.  No amount of anesthesia is going to help him, and it will hurt a lot,” Kyungsoo rushed.

Victoria unfolded her arms and tapped her fingertips against her knees.  She thought back to the day of the train accident.  Having her arm ripped from the rest of her body was so painful she had fainted.  Yet, she just asked Kyungsoo to do the same to Kai not only thirty minutes ago.  She wouldn’t wish that kind of pain on her worst enemy.

Standing up from her spot on her black leather couch, she slowly walked over to the box.  Looking down at Kai’s peaceful face, she thought about the pain he would go through.  No matter how much she tried to convince herself that she didn’t care and he deserved every ounce of pain he would endure, she pitied him.

She sat down beside him and took his hand in her left hand.  Much like her own arm, she couldn’t tell that it was not formed in the womb.  Rubbing her thumb across his skin, she could feel his veins, but she quickly reminded herself the veins were only wires.

Kyungsoo sat on the other side of the box and fiddled with the cardboard.  “As soon as you touched him, he formed a bond to you.”

“Are you saying that he already loves me or something?” She joked.

“Actually, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Victoria paused.  Love was such a foreign concept to her after the passing of her father.  Gazing at Kai, she wondered how something like him could love.  Sure, love was a chemical reaction produced in your brain, and it could be easily manufactured in a lab.  Love was just a nice mixture of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.  Then again, love was so much more than a chemical formula and Kai would never be able to understand that fact.

Victoria was also no stranger to loneliness.  She daydreamed about having someone to come home to more often than she would like to admit and she often wondered what it would feel like to have someone smile and be happy just because you walked in the room.  Kai would be able to help her discover what it would be like.

“Just because they are programmed to fulfill certain…actions, doesn’t mean you must use them for that, right?” she questioned.

“Of course not.  Many elderly people buy these androids just to keep them company.  These types tend to be better at emotional support than their counterparts.”   The corners of Kyungsoo’s lips rose up to form a content smirk.  “Something tells me you like him a little more than you did in the beginning.”  He pointed at Victoria’s hand.

Glancing down, she was surprised to see her fingers laced together so comfortably with Kai’s.  Dropping his hand quickly, she frowned at the lack of connection.

“Just keep him.”

Victoria bit at her red lips and put her head in both her hands.  “Kyungsoo I don’t know if I can.”  She looked to her right, wanting to focus on anything other than her current situation.  A single, thick ray of sunlight flooded through her cracked curtains, and she followed the sunbeam through her house and watched the specks of dust dance in its presence.  The beam of light highlighted Kai’s angelic face, his skin becoming flushed from the heat.   Pushing the box away from her and out of the sunlight, she glanced back at Kyungsoo, who had been watching her intently.

“I don’t really want to say this, but androids are like dogs.”  Victoria raised a brow at his odd comparison.  “I know,” he said agreeing with her intrigued look, “it sounds stupid, but just like dogs don’t know they are dogs, androids don’t know they are androids.”  He lowered his eyes to the ground and picked at his fingers.  “I can’t tell you how many times people have dropped them off at the lab.  Mostly because they have grown bored of them and no longer want them.”

Victoria felt her heart plummet to the pit of her stomach like a brick at his words.  She knew exactly what it felt like to be unwanted.

“They don’t understand why the people they love no longer love them back.  It hurts when they have all these questions, and you don’t have any answers.”

“Why didn’t you sell them to other people?”

“We tried, but the androids were never able to bond with the people we resold them to.”

There was a brief silence before she rolled her head side to side and hopped up from the floor.  “I need some water,” she groaned, dragging her feet towards her kitchen. 

Opening her refrigerator, she pulled out two glass water bottles and handed one to Kyungsoo, who had followed her lead.  The icy water flowed down , and she felt it pool into her empty stomach.

“Victoria, I’m about to tell you something that may potentially devastate you, or set your hardened heart free.”

She glanced up at him only moving her eyes.  “Then, I don’t know if I want to hear it at all.  I’d much rather spare myself the heartache.”  If heartache was physical, she could take the pain.  Too bad it wasn’t.

Kyungsoo sat his water down on her white counter and took her hand, pulling her with him.  Arriving at her small kitchen table, he e of her wooden chairs around to face away from the living room and then took her by the shoulders and gently pushed on them to sit her down.  “As your friend, it’s my job to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.  When I do tell you, I think it would be best to keep the android out of your sight.  Just looking at him might add fuel to the fire.”  Kyungsoo sat down across from her and cleared his throat, pondering how to word his sentence before it would reach her ears.  “The android that killed your father…” he tried to gage her reaction to see if he should continue or attempt to become more tactful than he was already trying to be.

Victoria’s expressionless face gave him no indication as to whether she was listening to him or trying to drown him out.  Honestly, there was nothing he could say that would hurt her more than she already was.

“The android wasn’t an android that magically went rogue.  They can’t do anything they aren’t programmed to do; it just doesn’t work that way.  The android that killed your father was programmed to kill.  After it fled the scene, it went home and killed the programmer.”  Reaching across the table, he unraveled Victoria’s tightly clasped hands and held them gently in his own.  “It was the man who programmed the android who wanted your father dead, not the android itself.”

Victoria’s mouth hung slightly ajar.  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

Kyungsoo’s shoulders rose to his ears and fell back down.  “I didn’t know how to tell you.  Anything I would have said would have fallen on deaf ears, anyway.”

As much as she hated to admit it, Kyungsoo was right.

People avoided Victoria nearly as much as she tried to avoid them.  She was a local celebrity, but not the kind you looked to Hollywood for.  She wasn’t blind.  She could see people staring at her while huddling up to their friends and whispering to one another about the unfortunate circumstance that was her life.  In the rare event she did bump into someone, they were always so quick to give their condolences.  Victoria was so sick of the pity, and she learned to smile and nod while she pretended to listen to them.  She was so desperate to move on, but the whispering, pointing, and any variation of “you must miss your father so much” or “you must think about the accident every day” wouldn’t allow her to.

“Are you even listening to me?”  Kyungsoo waved his hand in front of her face.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“I just don’t want your view to be skewed for the entire android population because of the accident.  He,” Kyungsoo nodded towards the box, “can’t do anything he isn’t programmed to do.  He certainly wasn’t made to harm anyone.”

Victoria rolled her eyes so far into the back of her head she swore she caught a glimpse of her brain.  “Why are you like this?”

“Like what?” Kyungsoo innocently replied.

“You know exactly what you are doing, and it’s working!” She groaned sinking into her chair.  “You and your guilt trips,” she mumbled.

Kyungsoo bit the inside of his cheeks trying to hold back a grin.  “It wasn’t a guilt trip.  Everything I said was completely true.”

Tapping her fingers on the table, she glared at her friend. “You aren’t going to let me say no, are you?”  A curse escaped her lips when Kyungsoo vigorously shook his head.  “Fine,” she spat, “I’ll keep him for two days, and if he tries anything funny, I’m calling you to pick him up.”

“Two days? Oh come on, give him at least a week!”

“Nope.  Two days.”

“Five.”

“Take him now.”

“Two days it is.”

Victoria smiled triumphantly and held out her hand for him to shake.  Taking her hand reluctantly, Kyungsoo knew he was the true winner of the game.  He convinced her to give Kai a chance when at first, she wanted him to be ripped apart.   “You won’t regret this.”

“I hope I won’t,” she sighed turning around in her chair to look at Kai who was still lying on the floor in her living room.

Victoria didn’t say a single word as Kyungsoo stood from his seat and gathered his things.  He put his hand on the door handle and then turned back around.

“Take it easy on him, Victoria.  He’s not going to understand some things at first.  He has to learn to be human.”  Kyungsoo opened the door and allowed the stifling heat flow in.  “I’ll call you later this evening to check in on you.”

           As soon as she watched Kyungsoo disappear behind the door and it made a soft click, she wanted to run to him and drag him back into the house.  She didn’t want to use Kyungsoo as a crutch anymore.  She always called him to console her after a run in with the other kind.  One time, Kyungsoo tried to calm her down by telling her that her favorite cashier at her local grocery store was an android.  She stopped going.

Tiptoeing around Kai, she squatted down near his head and slightly leaned in.  “I don’t know if you can hear me,” she growled, “but I’m going to talk to you like you can.”  Grabbing at her hair and plopping down on the floor, she whispered to herself, “What are you doing?  You must be going crazy.”

She glared at Kai, squinting her eyes at him checking for any sign of movement.  “Do something if you can hear me,” she demanded.

Nothing.

She was glad.  She didn’t particularly want him to move.  “Never mind.  I don’t want to explain what happened again,” she whispered.  Straightening herself back to a standing position she looked around the room.  “Don’t you come with instructions?  Every electronic comes with them.”

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