weirdNow, every day, I see perfection at work. Imperfection, too; our floors are scrubbed by the flawed. We keep our successes for shipping and for demonstrating our achievements; television, radio, private entertainment in private rooms. Never films, though. Our boys and girls are above that kind of work, however often the studios call. And today I finished work on a flawless boy, felt the undimmed surge of Frankensteinian delight as he opened his eyes to recognise me as his creator. We are gods, and these people are ours, breathing our artificial life to aid the transport of blood under perfect skin. Real blood, the customers insisted on that, and before working on this one I never truly understood why. But during finishing touches on his predecessor, an assistant jerked his arm and suddenly the skin I had worked so hard to lace together was split, the white opening before my eyes to discharge little threads of red. Dark red, with a trace, a sheen, of blue. Synthetic blood was never so fascinating.
I kept that predecessor. He is art, and a reminder.
This one, though, is more than art, and has rightly been bought by a young man whose name they refuse to tell me. It's company policy, and one that has never angered me before, but I should like to know where he is going, every inch of him having been placed with precision by my hands, or by exquisite tools operated by my hands. He asks what will be wanted of him and I answer that I don't know, and he looks crestfallen (beautifully so); perhaps his god is not omniscient after all. It breaks my heart, and so I lie. I lie, I lie, I tell him he'll be treated like a prince and kept in silks and feathers. It suits his temperament, it quiets him. He doesn't need to know the truth, not yet.
-----
No, I don't really know either. I blame
deborah_c. Though I'm not sure I can find grounds for that. ~s~E.
x
