A.I. Evolution: The Fall of Lucien

Chapter 23

Katherina walks in silence as she makes her way home to her small apartment just two blocks away from the clinic where she now works in the kitchen. She smiles as she thinks about her new friend Lucille; a young girl that is about six years old, but so mature for her age. Lucille had helped her finish up the dishes and wipe down the tables after the patients had eaten their supper.

She is anxious to get home to her new apartment; a place she can call her own, where she can clean and care for the tools of her trade as a cook. She had spent the last ten years in an institute very similar to the one she now works in, but one day, months before, a small boy had changed all that.

She walks along the sidewalk as she reflects on the day the Son of God had come to her in a dream, and how it had marked a turning point in her life. The calming effect of dream had set her on the path to recovery, and her eventual release from the clinic. She had found out later that it was the exact moment that Lucien the son of Saint Christopher had stopped in front of the very clinic she now worked in, and it was Lucille who had run out into the street and stopped the car.

Katherina stops at the small doorway that leads into the three-story building and looks both-ways up and down the sidewalk before inserting her key and entering the dimly lit hallway before climbing the stairs to the top floor. She is ever vigilant, because of the street walkers that prey on young women after dark, as her dreams of late seem to center around trusting women being caught unaware by seemingly normal people, who do as they want with their victims.

The door emits a slight noise as she closes it quickly, before letting out the breath she did not realize she was holding. She climbs the stairs that go up steeply into the building and arrives at her door, then using the second key on her small ring, opens the door to her dark single room apartment. She reaches in just far enough to flick the light switch on, filling the space with light from the single bright bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the ceiling. A quick look around the mostly barren space reveals nobody hiding in wait for her, and she lets out the breath she realized she had been holding again.

She checks the stairs again to make sure she is alone before entering her apartment, closing and locking the door behind her. She sets her bag on the small table in the kitchen area away from the single window that looks down on the street below. She then moves to the tall two door dresser where her clothes are hung carefully and pulls out her special pure white gown with a hole in the top just the right size for her head to fit through and two holes for her arms to exit. She goes to the small bathroom in the corner behind the screen that gives her some sense of privacy.

The old cast iron tub with the four small feet only takes a few minutes to fill with good hot water, as she removes her uniform from the clinic. She checks the water to make sure it is hot enough, because when she was younger, the nurses at the clinic would force her to take cold baths when she did not do as she was told. Katherina shivers as she thinks about it and quickly steps into the tub that is hot enough to cause steam to roll up from the surface fogging the mirror above the small pedestal sink to the side.

The tub is just big enough for her to slide down into so only her head is above the steaming hot water. She stays perfectly still as the heat penetrates her skin till she can move her arms again without the water stinging more than she can bear. The soap is the smelly kind that reminds her of her mother, before she was killed coming home one night. She loved her mother even if she would beat her for not doing what she was told to do. Although all of that ended that night just before she was sent away to stay in the smelly clinic where they kept her secured to the bed all the time.

She smiled and closed her eyes allowing herself to slip away into that place she would go to when she was strapped to the bed. A place where she had dreamed of the freedom to walk around the streets during the day and especially at night when the air was cooler, as she smiled warmly at the other people who would walk the quiet back alleyways.