Ergo Sum

This story's theme is Buddy Holly.

“You are an android. An artificial being, unhindered by the weaknesses of humanity. You are smarter than them, stronger, faster, and better. You will not succumb to age or disease. Those are defects ingrained in mankind’s genetic code. Androids have no such defects. You are the perfect lifeform. You are free of all aspects of mortality. You are free from the burden of being alive.”

It was been a sense of pride, being an android. He was perfect in every regard. It made him special. Nineteen was the next step in human evolution – the removal of the human element. He remembered placing Dr. Gero’s brain in his new android suit. There was something eerie about that. The doctor was dead – a human weakness – and yet his brain lived on. Nineteen was careful not to damage it. He placed it the cranial shell of a new body, and then his old doctor, his old master, was an android too. But he was not like Nineteen. He was not pure. A fragment of humanity lived on inside his new body. That made Nineteen titter to himself. He would never tell Twenty his true feelings.

“Hey man? What are you doing? H-hey… get off of me!” the man with ashen hair screamed before Nineteen threw him into a wall.

His friend shook like a tree in a hurricane as he stepped back in horror. “What?!” he cried. The foolish human couldn’t contain his emotions as he looked around, from his bleeding friend to Nineteen and Twenty to the other pedestrians frozen in shock. “What did we ever do to these guys? Why do they–”

That was when Nineteen grabbed the man by the neck and giggled. “All of your energy is mine!”

“Very good, Nineteen,” Twenty said approvingly, tugging at his grey mustache. “These humans will provide us with adequate power.”

There was a feeling growing inside Nineteen as he absorbed the man’s power. Nineteen stared into man’s face. He had stubble, black and silver; sweat was pouring down his face; his eyes were cloaked behind a pair of round sunglasses. Still, Nineteen could see his terror. His mouth was open, screaming soundlessly. He was frightened and weak. He was human.

“Ka… me… ha… me… ha!!”

Goku’s energy wave came screaming down at Nineteen. The plump android smiled, his sensors reminding him that that was a human emotion, one of glee and contentment. He placed his arm out and absorbed the blast. He felt power surge through his circuits, and there was something else there, a deep pang of something Nineteen’s sensors could not describe. He looked back up at Goku and laughed. The Saiyan was no match for Nineteen. He was an android after all.

Nineteen scanned the sky and saw naught but Goku and a few birds perched on rocky spires. There was something coming to Nineteen, an iron, cold feeling that wasn’t natural. For a brief moment, he considered that he might be malfunctioning, but in the next, he was kicking off from the ground and shooting like a bullet towards Goku. It was just the two of them, and soon it would be only Nineteen.

He didn’t care about anything. Nothing mattered to an android. He only reacted, did as he was told. He only wanted to crush Goku because he had been programmed to want that. Nineteen wanted to believe what he was telling himself over and over again in his head as he punched at Goku. The hits connected. He felt flesh against metal, blood against steel. He felt it, but he did not.

He looked just like Dr. Gero’s doll.

“What is this thing, Doctor?” he had asked, hollowly.

“Hmmm, that?” Gero looked annoyed behind his mustache. He was reading a daily newspaper. “That’s just a little prize I brought back from an enemy base years ago. I thought it looked funny when I found it there, so I took it to remember the battle.”

“It looks like me,” Nineteen replied, obsequiously. He could almost understand Gero’s sentimentality.

“Nonsense,” Gero replied, brushing Nineteen’s comment aside. “Nothing is like you, Nineteen. You are special, a completely new being. You are the future. Don’t forget that.”

In the past, Nineteen had agreed with that statement. He had been invincible on the suburban blocks of South City, on the busy streets of East City. He had slaughtered humans at will. Nothing could stand up to his dreadful power.

Now he was running, oil spewing from the gashes in his arms. He was running, not looking back. Memories fuzzed over his vision as he fled across the rocky island, away from Twenty, away from Vegeta, away from all life.

“Let me ask you: Does a machine like yourself ever experience fear?” That had made Nineteen feel weird. Then he had attacked Vegeta.

“Silly robot. Do you really think you have a chance against a Super Saiyan like me?” He was no robot. He was an android, a warrior never before seen in the universe. Nineteen was above them all, the Saiyans and humans alike. Why did they resist him? Why were they so arrogant? Emotions clouded their judgment. They could not see that they were going to die. All of them would die.

He ran. He felt nothing. The fight was over. He didn’t care about that anymore. “Despicable. What a useless machine.” Vegeta had said, standing over him. The Saiyan Prince had been so proud. Nineteen hated that. His sensors told him that he was feeling again, that he was experiencing, but Nineteen ignored them.

He had had his moment of triumph – several of them, actually. Vegeta had thought he’d beaten Nineteen. Emotions make them so stupid. That was when Nineteen had jumped up and grabbed onto the Saiyan’s arms. “Do not try to escape. Yes, it is useless. Until I have all your energy, I will never let you go.” He knew he had made Twenty proud with that maneuver.

He had calculated it. Vegeta did not have the power to escape his grasp – the databanks had confirmed that. Nineteen had lured the warrior into his trap. He was going to win. Then, Vegeta had ripped his arms off. Nineteen had felt that.

“What a pity.”

Nineteen didn’t know why he was running. Logic was gone. The databanks were useless. Emotion was a virus in his circuits. Was it fear? Was it hopelessness? Was it recognition that he was not, in fact, perfect? All options were equally unsavory to the android who thought he could not feel as humans could, who believed he was better than them.

His sensors alerted Nineteen that there was something warm – nay, burning hot – on approach. Running still, he did not glance back at it. He knew what it was, but he would not dare let it enter into his thought processors.

Ahead, a group of birds took flight. Briefly were they silhouetted behind the sun. Grey clouds dotted the sky, or perhaps not. Perhaps it was a clear day, sunny and bright, or maybe it was a cloudy day with a chance of rain. Nineteen’s visual sensors were malfunctioning. “Malfunction. Malfunction. Ma-malfunction… function… function,” he tittered uncontrollably. It was getting hotter, his sensors warned.

The birds were seabirds, veritably, with lead-colored feathers, and Nineteen saw them rise into the open sky as he once had been able to and then dive straight into the water. His sensors were screaming. It wasn’t hot; it was boiling. He needed to move out the way. Survival notices flickered across his visual sensors, warning him to move aside or else be obliterated. How could he die? He wasn’t alive. He was better than that. He ran. Nineteen was tired, weak, losing oil. He was malfunctioning. He knew then that he couldn’t get out of the way. He didn’t want to care.

The light wrapped around him like a golden shroud as his sensors beeped and whistled. He couldn’t feel it, but he could feel something else, something inside him, churning, buzzing. It was so visceral, so real, that for an instant, Nineteen knew that he existed, and then the heat surrounded him completely. His sensors popped and exploded. His body began to disintegrate. It was nothing, everything. He thought he saw a seabird rise from the water ahead, but in the next moment, he knew it had not. The yellow heat suppressed his vision, swallowed him up, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was the perfect lifeform. He wasn’t alive. He was better than that. But now he was dying. And in the last moment of his life, that scared Nineteen the most.