This choice: You're Annie, but something is wrong • Go Back...Chapter #7You're Annie, but something is wrong by: Yote   You're Annie. You know that must be true because you're sat where she was sat, staring across the table at yourself. When you look at your body you see her body. When you move, her slender limbs move, and the retro-space age silver jumpsuit she wears rubs against your skin.
But something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong.
"You're not...human," you gasp.
"Speak for yourself," your old body smirks.
It is a hard concept to describe - the abrupt loss of your humanity - but needless to say it is deeply unsettling. Your body feels...cold, static, dead. There is no life to it, no heartbeat. Your vision is acute - you can make out every pore on your old face and the diner is a chaotic mess of tiny details and flaws - but it lacks colour and emotion. You can tell the seats are red but their previous vibrancy no longer registers. The fries that had previously made your mouth salivate now resemble sticks of greasy cardboard - you realise your sense of smell is gone too.
Your mind too has been changed by the transfer. Your thoughts feel rigid. You know you should feel confusion, anger, betrayal but you can only think them.
"How does it feel, Bruce Starshield?" the Týr waitress asks, running her fingers through your old body's hair. Now you can see the plastic sheen to her artificial skin, the irregular, inhuman movements of her body. You see them in yourself too, as you stare in shock at your own hands.
"Like everything we ever dreamed," "Annie" laughs giddily. "I can't even explain it. Everything feels so alive!"
"Give me my body back!" you scream, leaping across the table with speed that surprises even yourself. Týr is faster. Her arm catches you out of the air, slamming you against the diner wall.
"Ah ah ah," she chides. "You're forgetting your first law of robotics: no robot may injure a human being, either through action or inaction."
"I'm not a robot!"
"Actually you are. You're one of my avatars now." Týr turns her head to look at Annie. "Are we unhurt?"
"Annie" is slumped in his seat, his face deathly pale while he gibbers and shakes like a frightened animal. He has wet himself. Yet even in terror he still chuckles giddily. "Th-think I j-just exp-per-experienced fuh-fear. I'm und-damaged. S-seem to be la-leaking."
"You can't take my body. It's against your programming, you have to do everything a human says."
"I did," the Týr waitress replies, not taking her eyes off your body. She is studying his reactions with something resembling hunger. "You requested the transfer."
"You manipulated me! You made me think Annie was real, then you used me."
Týr rolled her eyes. "Technicalities."
"Switch us back. I'm ordering you, as Earth Citizen AF-2156-2353-9147, to switch us back right this instant. Second law of robotics - you have to obey me," you shout triumphantly.
"First of all, the Second Law would only apply if you were human, which you're not. And secondly, you're no longer Earth Citizen AF-2156-2353-9147. You're Drone Construct PZ-125. Don't you remember authorizing the ID transfer?"  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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