I shift the papers through my hands, staring at them, seeing nothing. Bright blinking lights dazzle my eyes if I look up, and glinting steel walls greet my eyes in every other direction. The entire room is barely a few meters around. Straight up, the closest thing to a possible escape is wildly out of reach. There is no way for anything to get in or out, air included. I won't need to eat or drink anything. If the computers get their way, I won't be conscious for that long. And the computers always get their way.
I nervously shift my weight in this plastic chair, fiddle with the keyboard keys bolted into the small desk, and stall before I must process this last story, tell this last lie.
I want to think of anything, anything, rather than what I must do. And so, my mind drifts to the place that has been my home for so long, my containment chamber. This time around, I'd hung there in suspended animation for... how long? How many months, years, decades, had I spent in that cruel device? I tried to remember how many times the computer had taken me out of animation, them put me back in when I'd finished my job. Nine, I thought, then I remember the one with the fire. And the one with the UFO, and don't forget the one that happened at a dance... Let's be honest. I don't know how many times I've come out.
I don't know how many years old I am.
My thin, cracked lips press together at the thought.
I don't know if my kids, or grand-kids, or descendants are still alive.
When it comes down to it... I don't know anything.
An unexpected tear rolls down my face. It falls on the papers, leaving a smudge.
There is a small electrocution device installed in the sole of my shoe. It zaps me now, a reminder to get back to work, to stop being human and return to being the computer's tool.
The pain doesn't affect me anymore.
I sit there, motionless, daring them to zap me again.
An automated voice echos through my cage.
“Remember, when you finish, you may die. Hurry. Begin.”
A small smile struggles onto my face. I revel in those words. You may die. Oh, yes, please. Kill me soon.
In a corner of my mind, the part that remembers freedom, I think how odd it is that the thing I once feared, death, is now all I want.
As I always do, I bury that part deep down, where I pray I'll never find it again.
But it always digs it's self out to torment me again.
I look at the papers again. All I have to do is read them, edit them slightly, and type what I see into the machine, and then I can finally die.
It sounds so simple when I put it that way.
And it is simple. At first. Until I realize why they want me to translate it, who I will hurt or kill with this information. And then it becomes a struggle to slip something in to change the message, to give these people a sliver of hope. I've never been able to do it before, but every time I think, maybe this time. I've never done it this way before. I have to try. I have to...
I shake myself . I don't have to do anything but read this story. This assignment is all there is, all there ever was, and all there will be. Because if I don't believe that, I'll never die.
I feel the papers again, slipping my fingers across the thin grain. It occurs to me, as it has before, that I could rip these papers in half. I could finish this here and now. Except, it wouldn't be finished. They wouldn't kill me. They would send me back to the chamber, and maybe this time, they wouldn't put me to sleep. Maybe I would stay awake like I did the first time, unable to move, unable to breath. Nothing but waiting, trying to cry but unable. And the next time they needed me, they wouldn't give me paper, with it's glorious scent and texture. They would give me a computer screen with it's plain, emotionless image. And in my life, if you can call it that, I need every small happiness I can get.
And so I don't tear the pages. I don't change a word. I look at the messy handwriting, the only code that few computers are comfortable with, and I start to tell this final story.
