Ch4

Rehearsal dragged late into the night. The old theater’s stage was one of the few places that hadn’t been fully replaced with modern integrations. The director had insisted on keeping the stage as is for ‘atmosphere’ while the rest of the building was renovated. Lucian had agreed it would make the plays feel more alive without today's hologram props and digital actors.

He partially regretted that decision now.

Lucian stood center stage, reading his script for the next scene, when a heavy stage light gave way. One hundred pounds of metal and glass plummeted from thirty feet above with almost no warning, just a metallic groan and a snap of failing brackets.

“Luci!” Kai moved faster than any human can and slammed into Lucian, shoving him violently out of the way. The light crashed down exactly where Lucian had been standing, shattering on impact and splintering the stage floor as shards of glass sprayed outward.

But Kai hadn’t cleared the impact zone completely in time. The edge of the fixture caught him across the torso and right leg as it fell, pinning him for a terrible second before he dragged himself free with a grinding mechanical sound.

“K-Kai, holy shit…” Lucian stammers as he stares, frozen in place from where he landed. Half of Kai’s body was shredded, the synthetic skin and muscle from his right shoulder down to his hip had been torn away in ragged strips. Gleaming alloy vertebrae shone in the remaining stage lights like silver, bundles of translucent fluid lines pulsed and leaked. Exposed actuators twitched, motors sputtered and electrical wires sparked. Where his right leg had been crushed, intricate carbon fiber bones jutted at unnatural angles. There was no blood, only a thick dark lubricant and amber red hydraulic fluid leaking onto the stage boards slowly.

Having now processed the severity of the damage, Lucian froze in horror as he looked between the human side, still replicating a real person perfectly, and the broken robotics mimicking bones and organs. “Are you- Are you okay?” He choked out, unsure if something like this is enough for a continuation to be scrapped or not.

Kai dragged himself closer, leaving a trail of fluid. His functional hand reached out and gently gripped Lucian’s shoulder, reassuring him. “I’m alright.” Kai said, voice slightly distorted but calm. “All the important parts are still intact. Core is fine, processing is fine. Just glad you’re okay.”

“But you’re-” Lucian gestured vaguely at the exposed wreckage. “It- it’s all out. I can- I can see your bones? And like blood vessels? It’s a lot.” He laughs, a nervous response. “If you were a real person I’d be throwing up. Like a lot. How uh- How are you even moving? You’re bleeding

out or uh- leaking? Does it-” Lucian looks concerned, knowing how much they sell continuations as being true to life. “Does it hurt?”

Kai managed a weak smile, the torn side of his mouth not cooperating properly. “Pain receptors are fully active so yeah.” Kai sucks in air through his teeth. “Hurts like hell, Luci.” Lucian goes pale with horror knowing that pain is something built in and Kai rushes to say. “I’m not dying, as long as my core memory isn’t destroyed and there is a backup somewhere, I can always be brought back. But yeah hurts. A lot.”

Lucian’s eyes filled with tears as he realizes what normally killed a person, Kai had to bear the pain because it’s built in. “Displaying a corpse is fine but saving someone from pain after death isn’t? That’s so messed up, Kai. Why the hell does a robot need to feel pain?”

“To be realistic.” Kai answered softly. “That’s the point, always has been. To make us better companions, actors, whatever. If we couldn’t feel it, we couldn’t act accordingly.” The theater doors burst open and two maintenance techs and a building supervisor rushed in, faces professionally stoic. A sleek medical pod manned by a nurse bot, followed silently behind them.

The director was shouting. “How did the sensors miss this? I thought it was okay to have old equipment because they could be scanned at this distance if they were safe or not!”

The supervisor knelt to the floor before the orchestral pit, then gestured sharply. “Strip this floor section.”

The smart floor panels around the impact zone peeled back automatically, folding away like living scales. Beneath them lay a dense web of sensors, cables leading to cameras, and glowing data conduits, far more complex than Lucian had ever imagined. The entire building, spare the stage, was wired. The sight made Lucian’s skin crawl.

The director cursed. “The seats know exactly whose ass is sitting in them but a hundred-pound light about to fall somehow slipped through? Unacceptable!”

One of the techs glanced at Lucian as they observed Kai. “We’ll have him restored by morning. Not too hard of a procedure.”

Kai squeezed Lucian’s shoulder one last time before they loaded him onto the pod. “Don’t look so scared, I just have to sleep it off, alright? You get some sleep too and it’ll be like it never happened in the morning.”

That’s exactly what Lucian was afraid of, everything getting swept under the rug. If this hurt or killed an actual person there would be a lawsuit on their hands. Maybe there was but nobody acted like it, they acted like a kids toy broke and grandma needed to sew it back up.

As the pod sealed and glided away, Lucian stayed rooted to the spot, staring at the exposed underfloor infrastructure. Miles of hidden technology pulsing beneath the surface of everyday life, always present and watching.

The argument between the director and supervisor continued in hushed, angry tones. “This never used to happen.” The director snapped. “We used to have real inspections for risk assessment but no, we trusted your sensors.”

The supervisor’s reply was cold. “And there was real crime. Real deaths. This is better, we’ll have the sensors recalibrated by tomorrow.”

Lucian left the theater feeling physically ill. The streetlights felt like they were following him, getting brighter as he passed and dimmer once he was away to preserve energy, tilting along the way like a spotlight following him from one cue to the next. Every building he passed seemed like another bundle of technology staring, ready for him to give it an excuse to call authoraties.

By the time he reached his apartment, the nausea had turned to anger. He didn’t feel like a person, they weren’t allowed to anymore. Personhood was a suggestion despite all of this technology made to help humanity. It helped too much, so much so that it babied people far into adulthood so they stopped caring about what they can or can’t do as long as they were comfortable. Why bother doing anything when a robot can do it? Why try to be an actor when any actor can be brought back to be as good as they always were? Why reflect and think about what’s best for you when AI can analyze your life and give you the best possible outcome based on data from people who weren’t you?

Lucian hated it all, hated the people who made life this way, hated being born in a time where you’re not sure if what you’re looking at is real or a simulation. Hated things being so easy, rendering them pointless. The anger bubbles into rage and Lucian lashes out. He needed to feel safe again, no prying eyes and ears of the system built by the city. He wanted it gone. By hell or highwater he was going to get rid of it to claim his right to exist without being mined for data.

He started with the refrigerator, he smashed the screen reading its contents, suggesting the most nutritionally optimal meal. Next was the climate control panel, adjusting based on your body heat rather than a button to press. Then the voice-responsive mirror that pointed out too often the bags under his eyes. One by one he destroyed every comfort the city had installed as a necessity.

“Fuck all of you.” He muttered through gritted teeth, tears streaming down his face, near breathless.

“You made us useless!” He tore the climate control panel from the wall.

“Blind!” He smashed it on the ground.

“You gave me a best friend who was already dead and let me watch him nearly die again!” He stomped on it, breaking it into pieces. He tore apart everything room to room, smashed the window shade that adjusted based on the time of day, every ‘helpful’ convenience that had slowly erased the need for real effort.

When the destruction finally stopped, his hands were bleeding from small cuts and his apartment was in ruins. No soft voice asked if he needed medical attention, nor warning him about rising stress levels.

For the first time in years, the apartment was truly silent.

Lucian collapsed onto his bed, curling into a tight ball in the darkness as the emptiness pressed in from all sides. No ‘comforting’ presence of the AI watching over him. Just the terrifying realization of how alone he truly was in a world that had perfected comfort while destroying what made it meaningful.

He had watched half his friend’s body get destroyed and then casually taken away to be rebuilt like a broken prop. And out there, the city continued its flawless watch, ready to smooth away any imperfections that threatened its perfect surface.

Lucian closed his eyes, but the image of Kai’s shredded mechanical torso refused to fade. The gore of it, but most of all the pained voice saying “to be realistic.”

He felt smaller than he ever had, and more alone than any person ever should be.