“Stop it,” I cry. “What are you doing to him?”
My father ignores my tears. He asks Kalxor a question. “How did you first arrive here?”
Kalxor drops his mouth. His voice is robotic and cold. Lifeless. “I was sent here by my creators.”
My dad circles around his chair, hands flexing. Open and closed. “For what purpose?”
More words come, but I can barely register them as true. It seems impossible. “To find my one true love. To mate and escape Earth. To obey the code they give me.”
“Earth,” I whisper. “Is that what you want? A second world? How did you convince Elon to help you? Tell me.”
My father grins, head spinning to peer at me. “You need to get over yourself, Ava. It’s touching, seeing you fall for a cyborg. I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d get
this far. But now that you have, I realize just how gullible you really are,” he says, eyes black as night. “You’re just like your mother.”
My heart sinks like an anchor into a bottomless well, pulling all of me down with it, until it’s impossible to get enough oxygen.
My taut stomach kicks. My heart burns. But none of it matters. I’m stuck here for good.
No. I can't comprehend this.
I drop to the floor, twisting under the pressure of a knot that seems to have me trapped like I’m some sort of caged princess.
My father runs his hands across his abdomen, chuckling to himself. “Enough questions,” he says. “Wake up.”
I feel my cheeks turn hot. It’s getting so hard to breathe.
But Kalxor is back, blinking his eyes, stunned. He exhales, visibly shaken by this experience as tears drag down his cheeks.
“Now do you understand?” my father asks.
Kalxor looks like he’s seen a ghost. He’s pale, sweaty, lungs breathing in heavy as one might do during a bout of hypothermia.
“No,” he growls. “I’m fucking real. I know I’m real. Everything that happened to me, I felt. I saw what happened to my family.”
Hearing this makes me emotional, but I have to constantly remind myself that it never happened. He is an autonomous robot. He’s merely programmed to have these thoughts.
Programmed by people like me.
My father spins, arms outstretched. He takes a deep breath through his nose as if he is enjoying the smell of fresh air.
Is he a cyborg, too? Does he know what a smell is? He might know the concept, to recognize and discern the scent. But will he ever know it? Know it like we do?
He meanders through us without acknowledging Kalxor’s newly acquired freedom. The alien could kill my father, but it’s like he knows it won’t happen.
He meanders toward the door of the dimly lit cabin. “Quit asking yourself questions. It’ll only drive you deeper into the maze,” he says.
Strangely, both of us follow him outside. He gazes at the moons and exhales again, biting his top lip. Then, with a quick snap of his fingers, he makes them travel across the sky, replacing them with the sun.
In here, he’s a magician. Great.
Lost in sudden silence, he points to a mountain in the distance. An impressive roar rings out, followed by gunshots.
And then my father seems to read my mind.
“All of this is designed,” he says. “By people like my daughter.”
He turns, facing me, a smile turning into one dark frown. Fear grips the heart like a snake’s fangs, digging in deeper and deeper, draining the poison into the blood.