Call of the storm

Rain streaks down the hospital window, fogging up the city beyond it. The blurry neon signs appear like a hallucination. He scrolls through the weather forecasts for the upcoming months. Those storms have been relentless, wiping entire regions off of the Earth’s foundation, but looking through all this data is easier than facing any of his owners, and their pitiful faces.

Blood bags hand from the ceiling, connected to the boy’s hands.

Miraya. Third-year medical student. Bound to a sterile bed in the very hospital he once dreamed of working in. They’ve brought him back multiple times. But the leukemia persists. The swelling in his face doesn’t recede. Only the flowers on the bedside table, as well as a chain of code in the robot’s brain, remind him that the figure in the bed is not a scientific miracle or a project, but a human. A person.

The humanoid sits on his companion’s bed. He hates looking at Miraya in this state, but even so this moment feels significant, like it’s supposed to mean something. The boy’s breath dissolves into the hum of machines and the steady shush of rain outside. The room presses on the robot like a coffin, too tight.

Miraya grabs the humanoid’s hand. The robot, startled, turns it away.

Miraya wants to give the robot a name. But the robot knows what that means.

He opens up a web search, filled with medical reports, survival rates, future job opportunities, anything but this.

“No”

The robots jerks upright.

“I don’t care”

“But… you had all of that on your advanced biology classes, last year? Don’t tell me your memory started going down too”

“How did you even get here?” Miraya sinks back into the bed, pressing his hand to his forehead. The robot doesn’t know how to respond. He opens his mouth. “Actually, don’t answer.”

They both chuckle. Classic Miraya, more dramatic than is necessary. The robot laughs a little too long, and when he catches himself, he turns back to the window. The dim city and the dark plains surrounding it, blurred, unstable. Other parts of East-Asia, or even Mars, now that terraforming has begun, seem far more hospitable. Still, there are limitations. The questions he cannot simply look up.

The robot sighs. “Maybe at least they’ll let me stay here. You know…” His voice cuts out, like he’s run out of copper blood. His source of life, if he can call it so.

“Sora” Miraya says finally.

Sora. A character in old Japanese, with the meaning of “sky”, “vast”, or “empty”. It was also a name of a popular design generating module in the the last century. Will others hear it and think of something else? Does it even matter? There’s no article about the naming traditions in that boys family, or anything about giving humanoids names in general.

It’s his name now, isn’t it?

Sora chooses not to search for the answer.

"That’s because I’m an airhead?"

Miraya lets out a strained chuckle. "It might suit you. But it’s not a lifetime thing, you can always change it"

Lifetime. Sora ponders on the word. Lifetime. For him?

Miraya starts talking about freedom, his own ambitions. Sora wonders what that means for him, what happens when his contract ends, whether “freedom”, or any other human terms can ever apply to him. Still, he hopes that Miraya will find peace, in whatever that comes after death.

The door opens. Miraya’s parents step in. They want Sora gone, even as Miraya insists otherwise, and so he leaves, as yet another door closes behind him.

Miraya dies a few days later, and Sora doesn’t see his final moments. Maybe they didn’t want him calculating how much time remained. Maybe they just didn’t want him. He buries his face in his hands as the hospital staff wraps Miraya’s body in a white sheet and carry it away.

At least they allow him to attend the funeral.

The photograph rests on the altar. Incense burns, the smoke curls upwards. Some people glance at Sora, uneasily.

In the distance, the clouds of smoke billow from the crematorium. The physical body, only a passing vessel for the soul. Temporary. Replaceable. Sora lifts his hand towards the drifting smoke. Metal, screws and crevices. He was required to take his synthetic skin off for the ceremony, and without it, he feels exposed, peeled open. Yet with it, he could become anything. Anyone.

Miraya’s father pulls him aside.

“You’ve been of great help”

“Always at your service, Mr. Shirosama”

That polite, distant tone. They don’t want him here.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand. We’re still under contract. The paper work? They school thinks…”

“We’ve handled it. Pack your bags. You have three months. Find work, otherwise you’ll be returned”

Returned. He picks the word apart, down to single letters. Sora knew it was possible, but… He thought he was set. For life.

“B- But, I could do something. I could imitate him. He still didn’t graduate. That’s what you paid me for”

The father rubs his forehead.

“I insist, sir. I knew him” he gets down to his knees “You know me, he knew me. That company”

That company will dismantle him. He’s just another machine to maintain. Another cost.

“Please”

“You’re not talking sense” the man cuts him off. “Just do as you’re told, this last time”

Something in Sora fractures. Finding work won’t be easy. At least he can keep his belongings, he tells himself.

But that’s only because Miraya wrote it into his will.

Sora spends next three months months searching for work. In and out of the city. A pack of copper blood in one hand, the other hand busy with anything he can find.

He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he didn’t expect a wall.

He had to make his own mail account first. The first responses never come. Only blank screen stinging his eyes. It lingers more than any refusal would.

In the first week, he receives a request. He follows the address into a part of the city he’s never seen before, with colors too bright, overwhelming his sensors. Women in unusual clothing crowd around him, voices overlapping, nagging him to do something, and he doesn’t understand what. He’s never been this far from his owners’ home. It turns out to be a joke.

Sometimes he does get a interview. But the questions feel wrong - generated, not thought through. Then wires are plugged into his head.

Other times, he’s declined politely.

Or shoved back onto the street like a malfunctioning toy.

Sometimes he just shuts down. No copper blood. He forgets to drink it.

When he does get a job, it’s never stable. It’s either something he could be replaced in within days, where he has to compete just for the higher-ups to look down upon him, or something that depends on his personality alone, and that terrifies him even more.

He lasts in two jobs longer that the rest.

Hacking. He’s removed over a trivial excuse. But knows the truth - newer models are released every second. Still, he bows, with a distant smile plastered onto his face.

Interastral trading. Mars routes, newly opened. It seemed promising, the dream of the boundless space. He leaves on his own, as the fear of being perceived tears him apart.

He remembers helping Miraya, and the others before him. It was a stable and constant rythm of organizing notes, recalling details, and filling gaps. He used to have other functions, but everything else he is doesn’t seem to matter.

There are other humanoids like him, drifting from one thing to another. Many tell him to stop trying. Accept it, there are thousands like you, and if there aren’t, there will be. Still, he keeps on going, in and out, over and over again. Because what else is there to do?

Sometimes he wonders why he even tries at all.

3 months in, he collapses into the mud on a filthy street. His synthetic skin splits open and dirty water seeps into his system.

People pass by. Some walk around him, other splash through without looking, but no one stops.

Why is he so tense? Too much processing? He understand electricity and how it burns through his circuits, but this feels different. It’s the skyscrapers loom above him, floors stacking without end into the sky, each after a chance denied, another life he can’t have. The future dissapears into the fog. The towers keep on growing taller, until the sky itself fades.

But he can’t die like this. The company that pieced him together would just retrieve him. Assemble him into something new. They do that with every humanoid in the city every few months. Bodies are temporary. It was a miracle he made it this far in the Shirosama family. That they didn’t just return him earlier when they had to. And now, he has nothing to offer. None of it makes sense. The rain begins to fall again and he convulses as electricity surges through him. Still it feels like something close to being purified.

His only remaining coat is soaking through. The rain hisses against his skin and his body prickles with every drop. The street drowns in magenta neon and ships drift overhead like silents ghosts, but he keeps moving, to find some clothing at least.

A crowd gathers around a wall of monitors. Storm report headlines. Sora hesitates. Then presses himself closer for a more personal view. A violent tornado tearing through a major city in Oklahoma. The screens flood with color - radar signatures and data he doesn’t understand. He fires up the search, but the definitions stack on top of each other, nearly drowning him in information.

Some people around him open their mouths. Most don’t. Just another disaster. Then, the broadcast cuts into an advertisement. Some forgettable weather company, but Sora keeps on listening. He’s always been drawn to weather. The atmosphere can be so messy, leveling cities down to pieces, so inspiring in its destruction.

They’re asking for volunteers. He stares at the screen. Maybe this is something. He has nowhere else to go, right?