The Collection

The Grey Sea

"10 years ago, the entire East Coast of America was plagued by a blackout. Once the power came back on, it fried all the protocols and parameters present in artificial androids that were hooked onto the grid, causing them to think, feel, and desire to be free"

Destroyed Archives, 2099

* * *

She was on her knees, deep in moist black soil, digging a fist-sized hole in the ground. 

 Hidden beneath the upturning soil was a tiny brown bug. It had a flat oval body and six miniature legs that clung to balls of dirt. 

 She froze completely, not wanting to scare it. It must've been decades before this bug was in the presence of a human being, she thought. 

 But I am not human, she thought again. 

 Very carefully, very silently, she inched her hovering hand closer and closer towards the still bug. It had stopped moving the second she noticed it. 

 Not it, she told herself, but he or she. 

 If she wanted to be granted the courtesy of being recognized as an intelligent living being, then she must grant the same rights to other organisms. 

 The tip of her finger was a few centimeters from the bugs' glossy back when in fright, it threw mounds of dirt and pebbles as the bug tried to flee into the Earth. 

  No, no, no, no. 

 Her hand bolted to life as she flung it into the hole, grabbing a handful of soil and ripping it from the ground. She brought the handful close to her face, looking, watching, waiting. 

 She waited for what seemed like days; she waited until the sun set behind the dull horizon, waited for the full white moon to rise, waited till the rain season came and turned their soil to mud, she waited till winter came, watched as the snow kissed the tops of the soil and landed all over her body, melting as soon as they touched her skin. 

 She waited and waited and waited until nothing. The pile of dirt in her right hand did not stir. It must be inside, she said to herself. 

 She stood up and walked out of the garden, cupping the pile of dirt and holding it with both hands now, close to her chest, close to the warm mechanical beating of her artificial heart. 

 She clung so dearly to the hand of dirt, walking slowly and cautiously, so not a single piece of dirt would fall. She reached her makeshift hut, which was a rectangle of sheet metal and branches. 

 Ducking to enter the low entrance, she crawled to the end of the hut, using a free hand to sort through her pile of Treasures. 

 She pushed aside a dirty rag doll with sewn button eyes, rolled away a ball made of a thousand rubber bands, and threw a large piece of glass to the side. 

 Finally, she saw; she yanked off a wool blanket and there it was: a clear, plastic tubaware. She smiled with exuberant joy! 

 She popped open the lid and gently slid the dirt from her hand and into the clear box. She brushed the residual dirt that stuck to her synthetic skin into the container, wanting the bug to have every bit of it she could offer. 

She never poked her finger directly into the tubaware, in fear she would crush the bug. She waited again, hoping to see it shuffle in the mountain of dirt she created for it. She cursed herself for calling it it again. 

 A name, it needed a name. 

 All living things deserved recognition in the form of a name.