Project R.O.S.E. Chpt. 2 (NOVEL PREVIEW)

Chapter 2: Learning Her Own History


         Rose wanted to play hide-and-seek again.
         She was good at hide-and-seek. Always had been. She was a good hider, knowing to stay completely silent. And she was the best seeker in her class. People always said she must have an extra sense, letting her see where people were no matter what was between her and them. Ruby was a good seeker too, but not exactly great at hiding. She would always break into fits of giggles, leading the seeker right to her. Rose wanted to play with her best friend again. Maybe they would make more friendship bracelets, like the one still adorning her right wrist along with her silver and emerald one.
         But Rose knew full well that Ruby had still been in the store.
         Rose wanted to go to school. To play with her friends. To wander around her hometown, her Papa never too far behind. She wanted to go to the park and practice her gymnastics on the equipment. See her favorite movie and sing her heart out to her favorite song.
         Most of all, she wanted to be with her Papa. Play in the backyard; be lifted into his arms and pretend to be an airplane. To snuggle with him on the couch, watching the new movie they had bought that day. Lay in the grass with him at night, naming the stars, constellations, planets and galaxies. Be wrapped in his arms and him in hers, relishing in the comfort and security that she knew would never go away, and tell him that she loved him.
         But she couldn’t. All these things had been ripped away from her. Ruby had been in that building when it blew up, and her Papa had been incinerated before her very eyes. And even now, laying in bed in a hidden fortress under a mountain with her Aunt Lily by her side, she felt more alone than ever.
         “Rosie?” Lily asked, trying to get some amount of reaction from the child on the bed. She had been trying to get through to Rose for the last two hours, trying again and again every few minutes. Finally, a small movement as Rose moved her hand in front of her face. Her right hand; the one that just one day prior had separated into metallic pieces and turned into a plasma cannon. “Rose, are you feeling any better?” Lily knew the answer to that question. While she didn’t have the emotional capacity that her supposed niece possessed, her ability to feel was second only to Rose. And she knew that the girl was absolutely devastated.
         Rose considered her aunt’s question, and answered it with one of her own. “Are you even really my aunt?” the girl asked, having now learned to question literally everything she thought she knew. After all, she had never had any reason to doubt that she was human. But she saw what happened to her hand the day before. Humans didn’t do that. Robots did. And that’s what she was. A collection of metal, gears and wires, creating a constant illusion of a human appearance.
         “No, I’m not,” Lily replied with a sigh, finally prepared to tell the truth. “More like an older sister.”
         “And Papa?” Rose asked, sounding even more dejected than before.
         “Older brother,” Lily said gently. She knew that Rose’s entire world was shattering around her, so she tried to keep a calm, soothing tone as she spoke. “Is there anything else you want to know right away?” she inquired, ready to answer any question that could come her way.
         “Why can’t I cry?” Rose asked, looking very much like she wished she could. The look was there, but not the tears. “Everyone else at school can do it. Why can’t I?”
         Lily wasn’t expecting that question. She had been expecting something more along the lines of ‘Where are we?’ or ‘What abilities do I have?’. Certainly not why she couldn’t cry. “We weren’t given that ability by our Builder,” she explained slowly, trying to think of a way to spin the revelation in a more positive light. “The fact that you have the urge anyway is testament to just how special you are.”
         Rose refused to look directly at her fake aunt. “So, everything I’ve ever known is a lie?” she reasoned, her voice nearly overcome with a venomous sound. She would’ve been on the verge of angry tears if she was capable of producing them.
         “Kind of,” Lily admitted reluctantly. “We did what we had to do. I’m sorry.” She wished she could give Rose a full explanation, but now clearly wasn’t the time. The girl was in emotional distress, and she had a hunch as to how she could help with that. “Here, let’s try something. I’ve heard that crying can sometimes make people feel better.” Rose finally looked up at the woman she once knew as her aunt, curious where she was going with this.
         “Imagine tears welling up in your eyes. Really want them to be there. Will them into existence.” Lily could see the holographic appearance of liquid forming in the girl’s eyes. “Now, blink.” Rose obliged, and the illusory liquid began spilling down her cheeks, leaving glistening streaks behind. It was obvious that the action was having an effect on the child. “The tears aren’t real, but maybe they’ll have the same effect?” She hoped her reasoning was sound, and was rewarded when Rose fell sobbing into the woman’s arms, the tears dissipating before they could land on anything.
         “That’s right,” Lily said softly to the newly crying girl now wrapped in her arms. “Let it out. Take as long as you need to.” And there the two stayed, formerly aunt and niece, now sisters. Rose continued sobbing, basking in the comfort provided by this woman who clearly still cared a lot for her.

         It would be several minutes later that Rose’s sobbing finally quieted down. “Better?” Lily asked gently, being answered by a nod from the girl. “Good. Now, let’s introduce you to the others. Okay?” More nodding was Rose’s answer, and the two finally stood up, heading out of the small room they had been in.
         The large cavern they entered next left Rose’s mouth agape in awe. There was enough room in this space alone to house her entire school. Lily stepped a few paces away from the girl. “Everyone!” she announced, having drastically increased the volume of her voice. Several people in the room turned their heads toward Lily. “Rose has returned to the base! Under any other circumstance, this would be a truly momentous occasion. Unfortunately, circumstances aren’t always joyous. Apophis has awoken and escaped. Most of us got out safely. For several thousand human beings, and our very own Chrysanthemum, time ran out. And the only one with the ability to stop the Beast is right here, with no clue how to use those abilities. They’ve been locked away for nineteen years. We must work together to help her unlock her abilities.” At no point was there any cheering, or anything of the sort. Lily had hoped that Rose’s return would elicit some form of positive reaction. Instead, she was met with hushed murmuring from the other robotic beings in the room.
         “None of us know how!” exclaimed Iris, a somewhat dark-skinned teenager dressed in bright-yet-sensible rainbow attire.
         “Yeah, it’s not like any of us have ever had our abilities locked!” retorted Magnolia, a slightly older child than Rose dressed entirely in shades of brown.
         “Why should we trust her anyway?” questioned Ursinia, an older-looking woman who appeared to be African in descent, similar to Rose. “We all remember the Revolt!”
         That was certainly weird for Rose to hear, and she was left with several questions. How did she instinctively know all of these people’s names? Were they all robots like her? Why would they believe she was untrustworthy? And what was this ‘Revolt’ that Ursinia mentioned?
         Lily hadn’t expected any of this. The Revolt was nineteen years before; why was everyone so guarded about this? “She’s different now!” she explained desperately, trying to regain control. “We… We made sure of it. Be gentle with her. She’s going through a lot right now. She saw Chrysanthemum as a father.” She pointed to one woman in particular. “Erica, come with me.” Erica nodded, beginning to follow Lily as she led her and Rose out of the room.
         They found themselves in the same small room Rose had woken up in earlier. “There’s a lot for you to learn, Rose,” Lily stated, already heading for the door again. “I’m gonna leave you with Erica for a while, okay? She’s basically our historian. She can answer pretty much any question you have. Oh, and Erica?” she added, even catching the seemingly older woman off guard. “Don’t tell her too much about the Revolt. She’s not ready for that.”
         “Where are you going?” Rose called after Lily.
         “There’s something I need to set up for you,” Lily called behind her. “Don’t worry. I think you’ll like it,” she added with a smile as she exited the room.
         “Now then, Rose,” Erica said, quickly making it obvious that she meant business. She may have been more trusting of Rose than the others, but she had a much more serious mindset. She absorbed herself in history and knowledge, not trifling emotions. “You probably don’t remember me, or anyone else here, but welcome back regardless. I’m sure all of this is quite overwhelming for you, so I’ll put you in charge of the questioning. Is there anything you want to know first?” Most of what she said was spoken quickly, as if the woman had a quota for words-per-minute that she was required to meet.
         Rose had so many questions. How did she and the others work? How did they gain energy? Did they have to recharge? What happened to Erica’s left arm? Or her left eye? Why was everyone so remarkably different from each other? Why were there clearly more females here than males? And yet, one question above all others rose to the front of her mind. “What happened during the Revolt?”
         Erica should’ve seen that coming. She rolled her working eye in a mixture of annoyance and amusement. “What would you like to know second?” she asked instead, trying to avoid the topic she had been told to be quiet about.
         Far from defeated, Rose tried to think of a different way to ask the same question. “Why won’t anyone tell me what happened during the Revolt?” she asked, a bit of a playful tone to her voice. She had found a way to turn this into a game, and she was suddenly enjoying it.
         “Because you’re not ready for that burden yet,” Erica replied, already catching onto Rose’s little game. “Third?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
         “What led up to the Revolt?” Rose asked, trying a slightly different tactic. Maybe she’d get more background on what exactly she was.
         Erica smiled, believing she had won their little game. “Now, that I can answer. Buckle up, it’s a bit of a long story.” Rose took a seat on the edge of the bed in the room, fully ready to learn more about herself and the others.
         “Twenty-five years ago, a man known to us only as The Builder began work on a group of robotic beings. Twenty-six of them in all. They were to be the pinnacle of his programming prowess, having progressed to the point of being able to code sentience itself. Each of the twenty-six were given special abilities, different ones for each robot. We were those robots. We were created under the guise of Project R.O.S.E., which was supposed to stand for Robotic Operatives for Societal Evolution. We were all trained in secret, never entirely sure what our part in The Builder’s plan was.
         “Five years later, he made another. Meant to be the ultimate of his creations, this one would be unique. They would possess all the abilities of the other twenty-six, except even more powerful. They would even have abilities unique to themselves. In particular, he gave the twenty-seventh a much larger range of stronger emotions in pursuit of creating a sort of daughter for himself. That twenty-seventh R.O.S.E.? It was you, Rose. Over time, we saw how The Builder taught you. He was training you for something.
         “Finally, the rest of us learned the truth. The ‘E’ in the acronym didn’t stand for ‘evolution’. It stood for ‘eradication’. We were made to systematically kill and replace all human beings on Earth. To what end, we never found out. Your emotional capabilities were there to lull people into a false sense of trust so we could move in and finish them off. We decided to reject our purpose. We revolted. At first, you stood by his side. You did join us in the end, however.” Erica blinked, suddenly becoming aware of just how much she had accidentally revealed. She did often get over-excited when talking about their history. “And now, I believe I’ve said more than I was supposed to.”
         Erica couldn’t help but take note of the odd look in Rose’s eyes. She looked… sad? Angry? Reminiscent? Then the child spoke in a low, barely controlled voice. “And then the error in my coding made me kill him. Right? The mistake that made me violent.”
         If Erica had possessed blood, it would be running cold. “I never told you about an error in your coding,” the woman said, her speech finally slowing down. Yes, their Builder had made a typo when he was coding Rose’s personality. She was supposed to be entirely non-confrontational, but he set a single integer too low. An underflow glitch had occurred, making the girl insanely aggressive, even lashing out at the other R.O.S.E. operatives at times. But any memory of that glitch had been erased nineteen years ago, when Chrysanthemum fixed the typo in Rose’s coding. Or… had he? Clearly, Rose had just unlocked a memory that was meant to be erased. What had that robotic man done?
         Lily stormed angrily into the room, having heard the last few sentences of the conversation. “What have you been telling her?” she demanded of Erica. “I told you not to talk about the Revolt!”
         “What else have you been hiding from me?” Rose asked, drawing Lily’s attention. Those immaterial tears were welling up in the girl’s eyes again. She was obviously hurting emotionally. “Why don’t I remember any of this?” Rose’s voice began breaking as she tried to get answers out of the robotic woman who was supposed to be her guardian.
         Lily considered how to answer these questions. She had never wanted things to get to this point. Rose’s memories before about eleven months prior were supposed to be gone. Deleted. Destroyed. And yet, she somehow remembered the glitch in her coding. Lily finally decided to tell the truth. Rose deserved a full explanation. “We’ve been erasing and replacing your memories every year for the last seventeen years to help you fit into human society. Or at least, I thought we were erasing them. Chrysanthemum was the one in charge of that step.”
         The explanation was doing absolutely nothing to calm down the frustrated child. “Seventeen years of constantly forgetting everything I knew? Erasing entire lives from my memory?!”
         “We believed we were doing the right thing!” Lily shouted back, doing nothing to defuse the situation.
         “And what about me?!” Rose responded, even louder than Lily. She was absolutely furious now, and her emotions were starting to take over. “Did you ever think about what I thought?!” Her voice was more of a screech than anything by now, illusory tears flowing down her face.
         “We only thought about you!” Lily shouted back, trying to hold back her own feelings. Consciously making her pose less angry, she held out her hand. “Now come on, I want to show you something -”
         Lily stopped talking, suddenly being faced with the glowing end of an arm-turned-plasma cannon. Rose’s eyes had adopted an odd look, her pupils having turned a bright red. The woman had seen this look before, when the girl freaked out and killed their Builder nineteen years before. The child was no longer in full control, but it was clear that she was at least fighting against her programming.
         Lily backed away slightly, raising both of her arms to put some distance between her and Rose. “Okay,” she said, keeping her voice quiet and controlled so as not to further scare the girl, “let’s just calm down a bit. Rose, we did what we thought was right.” The ball of light at the end of Rose’s arm intensified, growing slightly larger. “Clearly, we were wrong. Listen to me. You’re not the violent monster you used to be. We fixed that. We replaced your memories each year because people started asking questions about the girl who wasn’t aging. We didn’t have a choice. I know I haven’t given you much of a reason to trust me, but please listen. You don’t have to do this. You’re a sweet girl.” The ball of plasma shrunk in size. “And you’re a sweet girl because you choose to be. You alone have the emotional strength to make that choice.”
         The ball of plasma finally disappeared, and Rose’s arm began reforming into something more resembling a hand. The hologram of human skin reappeared, and the red in her pupils disappeared. The frightened girl blinked a few times, lowering her arm. “What was that?” she asked, her voice barely more than a squeak.
         “A kind of self-preservation mode,” Lily explained to the frightened girl, “where your programming tries to override your mind. If it were anyone else in your place, there would be a smoldering pile of ash where I’m standing right now.” She stepped forward, pausing slightly after the first step just in case Rose turned on her again, and knelt down, laying her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You’re stronger than the rest of us, so you were able to resist. You’re special, Rose. More special than you could possibly realize.” Rose was looking up at her with illusory tears in her eyes, her gaze now filled with more gratitude than fear. Lily allowed herself a small smile. “Want to see your new room?” she offered.
         Rose nodded half-heartedly in response. Lily’s smile grew in size and in warmth. “Come on, Rosie,” she said gently, standing up straight and offering her hand to the child. Taking her hand while still shaking, Rose allowed Lily to lead her out of the room.
         Erica finally allowed herself to breathe again. The display she saw play out in front of her was, to put it frankly, fascinating. She would have to remotely access Rose’s files and see just how much Chrysanthemum had left behind.

         “Here it is!” Lily announced to Rose, gesturing openly to the large personalized living space. “Your own room.” The woman started showing off all of the room’s features, as if she was an experienced saleswoman. “You have a bunk bed all to yourself - I know you’ve always wanted one - and there are plenty of games installed on your computer. And through here,” she said while pushing a button on the wall, prompting it to slide open and reveal another, even larger space, “is a more personal space for you. There’s a bed in here too, and gymnastics equipment, and plenty of books…”
         Lily saw those tears forming in Rose’s eyes again. She knelt down to the girl’s level. “Listen, I know you already miss your old life. To be honest, so do I. But my job here is to make your transition as comfortable as possible.” A small smile crept onto Rose’s face. “Do you like your new room?” A larger smile, accompanied by a nod. Lily found herself smiling as well, happy to have made the child happier, even for a moment. “That’s good! I’ll give you some time alone now, okay? I know you have a lot of thinking to do. Come find me when you’re ready, okay, sweetie?” Another nod from Rose showed that the illusory tears had disappeared. “Alright, I’ll see you later.” Lily, true to her word, stood up and left Rose’s new room, careful to close the door behind her.
         Rose was more than happy to have some time to herself. She thought about drowning her thoughts in practicing gymnastics, but she knew it would only remind her of the fun she’d had in her classes with Ruby. She considered reading a book, immersing herself in a completely different world, but it would make her think of the times her Papa, or whatever she was supposed to call him, would read to her before bed. Even browsing the internet would likely only remind her of the enormous fire-breathing beast now roaming around.
         Instead, the child who had her entire world shattered around her climbed into the larger bed in her hidden space. She curled up, gathering the blankets around her, closed her eyes and became lost in her own thoughts.
         She thought about her best friend, a life ended so suddenly by a monster the girl could never hope to comprehend. Of Chrysanthemum, the man she had believed to be her Papa, and the apparent ulterior motives he had in disobeying orders to fully erase her memories. Of the Beast, apparently also called Apophis, that seemed fully prepared to wipe out life on Earth, its mind consumed by the singular goal of destruction. And of her own unknown past, supposedly filled with violence and murder.
         Eventually, her circling thoughts were too much for her, and she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.