Remembrance

The mahogany skin is smooth as butterfly wings as he begins to feel her sweet and tender face.  Methodically, he reaches for a clean scalpel that catches the light wonderfully and he cuts deep into her flesh with a heavy slicing sound. He pulled her skin to expose the insides of her head filled with a dazzling kaleidescope of flashing rainbow colors and wiring.

“Just one more piece is needed, My Love,” he wiped his thin hands snug in dull emerald gloves on the white towel smeared with ebony goo and slime.  Doctor Oliver looked at his digital watch and due to his fatigue, the electronic ruby numbers seem to jump at him.

1:00 a.m.  Oliver had been working since 5:00 a.m.  He did not care.  He wanted to bring his wife back.

Oliver pauses to grab his Sony min-recorder, turns on the power, and begins: “The date is February 18th, 2022.  I have been working, well, like a madman.”  He pauses to digest what he had just said as his stomach tightened with hungry pangs. 

“I know I haven't eaten all day.  Yet I cannot stop.  I cannot bear this loneliness anymore.  This nothingness in my soul.  An abyss that has not been filled since you left this world.”  The words impacted him like he was hit by a freight train. 

Feeling weak from the work, Oliver sits down in his laboratory trying to gather his thoughts which right now felt like trying to herd feral cats into a corral.  He pauses again to look at his stunning creation.  Blood.  Sweat. Tears.  He had heard many say that before.  Now he knew the reality.

“As I record this last journal entry...I-I think this will work this time.  I have etched the calculations over and over and over again,” he grips the recorder tightly, “Forward.  Backwards.  I am sure that this has to work.  Even computer scenarios state the probability of success is 99.999% rate.”

“Still, my fear of the 1% chills my soul, My Love.  I had activated you once and all you keep saying was the following words over and over again: 'an orange, a holey sock and a jazz song.'  I had to deactivate you while laughing because I hadn't completed downloaded all of your memories.”

He looks at his creation as a father who is overjoyed by the birth of a child.  Oliver scans over her with both amazement and fright.  She is perfect.  Too perfect.  Her black silky hair is cut short to shoulders.  Her cheekbones is a slight higher than Oliver wanted yet he learned to accept them.

Oliver was careful to make sure her measurements were exact to the number.  36-24-36.  Her freckles is placed strategically so the match is unmistakable.  He strokes her hair carefully.

“My Love, you will live again.  I promise.  I haven't been the same sense you left me that day.  The day where...,” his voice quivers, “...Sophia, I didn't see the other driver coming around the bend during that night!  The drunk didn't care with his friends.”

Tears begin to flow, “I tried to swerve to avoid them b-b-but I couldn't in time.  I really...tried.”  Oliver gets up to stand to avoid the rush of sadness that threatened his composure, “I had been working on robots for years.  You know this was my hobby to keep me sane as a surgeon.”

“Now my hobby has become a passion to experience you once again.  I had studied and studied on how to preserve your memories through...thank God...friends who had been using cutting edge technology to save them.  I-I had to lie about what I would do with them.”

“If they would have known what I was trying to do, they would have stopped me.  I know the government would have...stopped me or...worse.  Plus, as a foreigner working for them on a work visa for research in medical science and surgery, I could easily be deported.”

“Yet after several years after your death, I had tried to bring a piece of you back.  Seeing your pictures would not do anymore.  I missed your laugh.  I ached to hear your sweet voice again. 
So after months...no, years of failure...I finally perfected my design of the android to bring you back from the dead.”

Oliver places his right fingers to massage his right temple while he continued talking into the recorder, “Finally...I have downloaded all of your memories, Sophia, into my creation and I truly believe that you will live again.  Yes, this body may be crude yet you can have a second chance.”

Oliver fishes out a metallic vital with a microchip inside of his lab coat, “This is the last piece.  This is what was missing.  This will stabilize your system so that you can be fully functional.  I know that I was close last time because your eyes glowed with life then the gibberish happened.”

Oliver approaches, “This emotion chip that I have worked for a year is done.  This chip can only be used once and if this fails, then there is no hope.  And although I lost you in the hospital the week of the accident...I miss you, Sophia.  I want you back.  Please...please...come back to me.”

Oliver swallows hard and removes the tiny chip (the size of a forefinger) with tweezers then pulls the fold of Sophia's face near the brain to place the chip.  Delicately and nervously, he inserts the chip into slot 15, the emotion center. 

Suddenly, Sophia starts to whirl with gears grinding and crunching inside of her body cavity.  Sophia's eyes glow with electric life and she slowly her turns toward Oliver while laying on the operating table.  Oliver looks through his tears to see her sweet face – stunned that the chip worked. 

Sophia smiles slightly and her eyes fade in the cold of night. 

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S.D.G.
(Word Count: 991)