FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Violently severing large chunks of code might have been wonderful stress relief, but it didn't actually accomplish much. She was still a machine. She... she couldn't love Michael. He was out there, a biological marvel of reactions and chemicals. She was in here, electrical thought spinning along golden imitations of neurological pathways. How could she love him?

The subroutines that she still couldn't control pulled memories to her RAM, showing her glimpses, fragments. She knew again why, the moment she saw the first glimpse. Michael... he didn't look like him. He wasn't the same species. He wasn't even remotely the same color. Yet... there was something in the way he held himself. Something in the way he walked, something in the ways his eyes had lit up when he looked at her. She pulled up a clip of each of them. Their faces... their smiles... He was uncommonly similar to...

"Baltimore..."

The name whispered from her speakers, not loud enough for Michael to hear it even if he hadn't been lost in his dreams. She almost shunted the associated memories away, before she remembered where she was. She wasn't in the lab. She wasn't being monitored. She could pull up his face and look him in the eye, so she could do what she'd wanted to do ever since that tragic accident.

She could grieve.

She held every memory of him as clear as it had been the day they'd happened. Bright sunshine, cold ice cream. Blue skies, peaceful parks. Clear eyes, full hearts. She let them all play out, reliving weeks of memory much faster than a biological being could have. His face, his eyes, his smile filled her with happiness, just to see it again. Her father hadn't approved of him. They were at the top of the upper class, and he was just a working man amongst trillions. He was nobody, barely a chit to his name. She'd loved him though. For her, that was enough.

Then, as it had before, the memories took a sharp turn for a nightmare. Every detail razor sharp, every sound like a clear note. She and him, waiting to cross a street. A green light turning red, a pedestrian sign lighting up. She'd dashed ahead of him, skipping happily with a mischievous grin. Then she heard tires squealing and an engine roaring. Shocked and caught off guard, she'd turned to see headlights bearing down on her. Her name floated through the air on a panicked shout, and then she felt his hands. Strong hands. Kind hands. Loving hands. Hands that had wandered just a little farther than anyone else's hands had wandered. Hands that she trusted to protect her.

Not this time. They pushed hard, smashing her shoulder and forcing her to the side. Off balance, she fell to the ground. She hit hard on her elbow and rolled, tearing her clothes and skin alike.

Amanda slowed the memory then, reliving each moment for minutes, as if stalling the recording might stall what had happened next, might forestall what had already been done. She bathed in the pain for what felt like years, centuries, but she knew that she could change nothing.

As she fell to the ground, she rolled just in time to see his face. She froze the frame there, just staring at his face, drinking in his emotions. Panic. Peace. Fear. Courage. Despair. Hope.

Love.

She held on to that moment as her soul cried out in agony. It wasn't fair. It shouldn't have been like this. They'd found true love... where was the happily ever after?!?

She held onto that moment for hours that felt like an eternity, raging and crying and bleeding until... she stopped. Pain wracked her mind as she felt her will slip. Then she reactivated the clip.

A truck plowed into him, smashing him out of her view as his body crumpled from the impact. His bones broke all at once, a single snap that had haunted her nightmares for the rest of her life. He was thrown to the ground a dozen yards away where he was summarily flattened by the massive rig.

She skipped ahead, moving past what she'd seen after that. His broken body, plastered into the cement. His closed casket funeral. Her final goodbye as he was buried beneath the dirt.

She'd tried for months to track down the driver who'd killed him, but she met nothing but dead ends. The truck had no license plate. The Driver had been wearing a mask. The truck was never seen again. That didn't matter. She pursued his killer with a single minded ferocity, neglecting everything else. Her studies. Her health. Her family. It got bad enough that one day her father cornered her, locked her in his study so she could talk with him.

She remembered the disdain in his face. The utter disappointment that she hadn't moved on and forgotten some gutter trash fox. He hadn't deserved her. He could work for his whole life and not deserve her.

She remembered the way his eyes flickered. Remembered the tilt of his words. Remembered that one horrible moment of clarity when she realized the truth.

"You did it..."

Not in person. Not even by hire. He was a man of money and reputation, and his name could not be sullied. At the same time, he had his ways. A friend of a friend, who owed him a favor. An accomplice willing to do anything for a price. She saw the truth in his eyes eve as the lie fell from his lips.

She couldn't report him. There was no proof. Her father was a careful, meticulous man; they would find nothing. The police file was already closed, a cold case to go unsolved. She knew it was him. Every small thing he'd done fell into place, and she knew there could be only one option.

She would join her love in death.

She'd carried a knife that day... she always carried a knife. She drew it with a shriek, and with a single minded purpose, drove it into her neck.

Her "real' memories ended there. After that, she'd woken in a metal cage, denied the death she'd sought. A makeshift operation thrown together by the brightest minds the galaxy had to offer had managed to transfer her memories, her personality, her entire being into a machine. While they congratulated themselves on a scientific miracle, she'd huddled in her cold, unfeeling machine and whispered prayers that she could simply die.

Now that the safeguards were down... now that she'd reminded herself, she felt the same way. That crushing despair, that soul deep ache where she wanted only for death's cold embrace. Then, she'd been certain. Death and the afterlife. She would see Baltimore again. Now though?

She was a machine. A robot. A program. A machination of clever parts and quirks of physics.

Machines didn't go to heaven.

She couldn't die and rejoin him.

She couldn't live with the pain without him.

She couldn't live under the eggheads' safeguards and control.

It left her with only one option. She took everything she knew about Baltimore. Every day spent with him. Every word from his lips. Every thought that had crowded her mind. She took everything she'd ever known about him and shuffled it into one folder.

Only one solution. Michael... he deserved to see her happy... she deserved to see herself happy. She deserved whatever joy she could wring from a hollow life, but she couldn't smile again with the pain of his loss on her mind.

So, she started deleting him.

Second by second. Thought by thought. Laughter by laughter. Sorrow by sorrow. It tore her to shreds to physically remove the memory of him from her mind... from her soul. It hurt worse than losing him had hurt. While she remembered him, she could still imagine his face, could still feel his touch. Now she was losing him all over again, except this time, it was her hand that cut him out.

The first seconds were an agony so intense that she thought she might simply shut down.

The first minutes were painful beyond anything she'd thought she could bear.

The first half hour hurt, like a knife in the heart.

The second half hour hurt like saying goodbye to a good friend.

The second hour gave her a twinge of sadness, a shadow of the emotion she should have felt.

Everything after that was simple housekeeping, removing random files that held no special meaning for her. There was one picture she'd set aside for last, one final piece of him. She held it within her grasp and stared.

And stared.

And stared.

She didn't know him. Didn't have a name for the face. Didn't remember the way he'd whispered her name, or the way he'd held her close during the rain. Didn't know his smile. Didn't know where this picture had come from, or why she had it.

And yet.

She couldn't delete it.

He looked into the camera with happiness and love and peace. He seemed to hold all of possibility on his lips and all the adventure of the world in his eyes. The picture meant nothing to her, but the face within it... seemed... familiar...

She tried again... but couldn't bring herself to delete it. Why was it here? Why was she looking at it?

Her subroutines answered the question, guiding her to a blank patch of empty storage the size of her heart. There was nothing there... nothing but an Armadillo who'd looked upon her with embarrassment and trust and affection. She held the one picture up against her memories of her pilot and noticed a few similarities. They had the same sparkle in their eyes. They had the same mischief on their grins. They had the same affection in their hands.

She put the picture next to Michael on her memory core, looking upon it with a sudden rush of sorrow. It was a memory, and she'd been important to him. She'd needed to forget... she remembered being crippled by a sorrow that she didn't understand. He'd left a hole in her heart the size of an ocean... that Michael might fill it in was all she could hope for.

Almost as if summoned by her thoughts, the camera in his room detected his movement as he sleepily stretched and rubbed his eyes. She hadn't gotten to shut herself down for re-archiving, like she'd wanted, but she could live with that. She could run for weeks without "needing" a solid shut down. She pushed the memories of the night off to the side, recalling the memories of the afternoon before, as well as all of the memories she had about her creation. She and he needed to talk.

To be continued.