[UNPACKING] by Otkrlj & BlipXP - Blue Strokes

“When I’m no longer in this world, I ask of you that you look after my daughter. That and the mission I gave her are my two last wishes.”

I remembered the Professor saying that like it had been just the day before. But ten years had passed since I left his tutelage and went to study to the capital on my own, and only now was I receiving the news of his passing.

He wasn’t even that old, I thought to myself, but his brilliant mind had tried to carry him farther than his frail body would allow. 

But taking care of his daughter, eh? I suppose there was nobody else he could ask this of. I would bet all my possessions on him not having told anyone about his child other than me. After all, if he had, she’d undoubtedly become nothing more than a plaything and a lab rat for scientists and the press.

Of course, even if that weren’t the case, the fact remained that he’d asked me to look after what he loved most in the world… there was no way I could refuse.

The day after receiving the news of the Professor’s death, I had arrived in front of his residence.

Pipes and gears were everywhere, it all felt like the inside of a steam machine. Quite a strange choice, given the falling prices of electricity lately. Also, I always imagined progress would simplify the look of machines, not make them even more unfriendly to the eye. Though knowing the Professor as I did, his odd choices didn’t surprise me in the slightest. He always embraced that image of mad scientist he gave off, if only to protect his creations from undesirable eyes.

Regardless, it was not outside his home where I would find what I came for. I knocked on the door.

…

No response. I tried again.

…

And then a third time.

“Ah!”

The door blasted open, revealing the very person I’d come here looking for—petite, fair-skinned, with long black hair and deep brown eyes. She looked to be about eight or nine, maybe, and was dressed in plain indoors clothing.

Or in short, she was a cute but unremarkable little girl, who looked completely ordinary in all but her expression.

A face of sadness and deep-rooted pain, one which looked terribly out of place in a kid her age. It made me shiver for an instant.

“Hello, dear! Are you Lilly?”

“Y-yes. Who are you? I was told only important people knock more than two times.”

“I'm an old friend of your father's, his assistant for about three years. He… told me to look after you if something ever happened to him.”

“I see... That's not going to be an issue, though. I can take care of myself.”

“… Is that so? You do seem like a very mature girl, but please, I'd like you to give me a chance.”

On my face was the most genuine smile I could muster. It was normal for her to be sad and not welcoming of strangers, it would have scared me if the opposite were true—but I obviously couldn't leave her on her own.

“Accepted. I'll give you a week to prove that you'll be useful. After that I'll decide if I stay with you or if I remain alone in Master’s house.”

Master?

What was it with this weird speech pattern of hers? It definitely didn't sound natural. It sounded… artificial, robotic. Except at the very beginning, when she'd stuttered after hearing me say her name, she had displayed minimal emotion of any kind.

“Come on, don't stand there. Please come in and make yourself at home.”

She said, politely inviting me in and showing me to an old guest bedroom in the upper floor—the exact one I'd used throughout my three-year stay with the Professor. The nostalgia felt endless. 

“Hey, lady. I found something for you to help with, if you don't mind.”

This caught my attention. I’d assumed she would do her best to ignore me and send me back home the earliest she could.

“Of course, I’ll do my best. What is it?”

“It’s this note… Da—my master left it in his room just before he died.”

She handed me a neatly folded piece of paper with a short message inside. I recognized the handwriting immediately—there was no way I’d mistake it.

“By the time you read this, I’ll probably have passed away with one task still incomplete. I’m sorry to have to ask this of you, but—please, I need you to look at the other side. Understand who you really are. Unpack… your soul.”

…

I reread the message again and again, but no matter how I tried to spin it, this was clearly not meant to be understood by anyone other than Lilly or its author. 

…I was at a loss. No clue what to make of this if Lilly herself didn’t understand.

Though, be that as it may, I refused to give up on the chance of gaining her trust this early on. The Professor had done far more for me than I could ever repay, and besides, this child didn’t deserve to live her life in complete isolation.

“… Okay. Listen up, Lilly. I can help you solve this riddle, but that’s all I can do—help. I’m afraid I can’t do it without you. Is that okay?”

“Y-Yes, of course. It’s something Master wanted me to figure out, after all.”

“Perfect. Well then, let’s get looking around the house. I need you to pick up everything you think your father considered important and bring it here.”

Lilly nodded, her eyes lighting up after being given a clue to work with. She stormed out of the room, barely keeping her balance as she tried to climb the metallic stairs as fast as she could. Who in Heaven would think of installing the kind of stairs you’d see leading to a ship’s engine room in one’s house? The Professor’s taste never ceased to impress me—though that’s most certainly not a compliment.

Regardless, Lilly knew her way around the upper part of the house better than I did, but what I still remembered like the back of my hand was the underground floor—the laboratory.

The reason I’d been staying with the Professor for so long. And the reason I eventually had to leave.

After all, in that laboratory he’d created what no other could even conceive of attempting. Something only he and I had ever seen. And when some rumors got out, he convinced me to leave before they could affect me in any way.

…He didn’t want me to be the target of all the world’s press, asking about the creation of the first artificial human. So he secluded himself with his creation for a decade.

The laboratory itself was pure contrast. On one side, everything was organized to allow the highest efficiency—after all, the Professor was a genius doctor and chemist, and he understood better than anyone the importance of keeping order even amidst his chaotic experiments. But on the other, the atmosphere of the place was oppressive to a fault—a tad too hot due to the steam machine providing energy to all the weird machines, and with an appearance that made the Professor look the mad scientist part he’d so wanted to evade. Once again, his idea of ‘futuristic’ had made this room a complete hazard.

If I had a shilling for every time either of us had slammed our heads against any of the red-hot metal pipes or tripped with the moving gears embedded on the floor, I’d be richer than half this country.

At some point I’d memorized where every single obstacle was, though, and subsequently learnt to avoid them. The memory seems to have stuck with me since I didn’t fall into a single one as I looked through the entire place.

“Oh!”

While inspecting the shelf at the back end of the room, something immediately stood out to me—something its owner would never, ever do.

A stack of papers with drawings detailing the process to creating the artificial human from scratch and their expected growth process were spread on the floor, in a corner of the room. I knew for a fact the Professor would never be this careless with documents as important as these—actually, never mind. 

Closer inspection, though not a lot closer, revealed the answer to this apparent mystery.

There were notes and drawings scribbled all over the margins and the backs of the papers—ones clearly done by a very young child.

That explains it.

That explains everything.

Now I have a pretty good idea of what that previously cryptic message meant…

Though the findings in the lab weren’t quite finished yet.

Right beside the scattered papers, in the same dark corner of an already poorly illuminated room, there was a small cardboard box. On it was written “Do not open under any circumstance” on thick but recognizable ink strokes.

It really did look like it hadn’t been opened at all… 

Still, while dusty, it was remarkably less so than the rest of the lab, as if it had been placed there years after the room had received its last thorough cleanup.

…

There wasn’t much else to see in the basement floor, so after picking up the box and dusting it off the best I could, I went up to the living room again. I expected to find Lilly waiting there for me already, since I had spent my sweet time in the lab, but I was mistaken—she arrived shortly after I did, precariously going down those steep stairs that weren’t and would never be appropriate for a child as she carried another box similar to the one I’d found.

 “This is all I could find…”, she said, carefully putting the box down in the floor. I did the same with mine.

“I don’t know why Master left that message… It’s wrong, he must’ve been wrong…”

Lilly suddenly spoke up. I feigned ignorance, somewhat surprised she’d bring it up like this.

“Huh? What do you mean by that?”

“Well… You were Master’s assistant, right? You should know that I’m just a copy, made to replace his real daughter…”

…

Now this was a surprise. Poor little girl… She was at the verge of tears as she spoke.

“A-and if I’m just a copy, there’s no soul to be unpacked… Maybe he said that because I acted too robotic, because I wasn’t a good enough copy…”

“Stop that.”

My sudden seriousness and firm tone made her flinch.

“Your father would never want you to talk like that. I was here when he was making you, and I can assure you, you’re no fake or copy.”

“Liar! You’re lying to me, and you know it! I-I’m not dumb…!”

She ran to the box she’d brought from the upper floor and took out its contents—an old-fashioned diary, evidently the Professor’s given his aesthetic sensibilities. On the verge of tears again, she shoved it into my hands, motioning for me to read it.

“My daughter remains as splendidly energetic as always… I’m having trouble keeping up with her lately, my old man body has definitely seen better days. Her mother would probably be a better parent than me… Oh, Sophia, what would I be today without you?”

“I-I found that on Dad’s room just a few days after seeing those papers in the basement… You can’t lie to me anymore! I’m just a copy of his real daughter, of that Sophia, he made those drawings of how she looked and how I should look! He just… wanted to relive his memories with his real daughter!”

Now there were no doubts in my mind—such an innocent mistake to make, and yet, it must’ve hurt so much… Her tears had started fiercely flowing down, the young girl no longer being able to contain them. Still, I couldn’t help but smile. Out of curiosity, I opened the box I’d brought from the basement and looked inside—oh.

So, what he had meant by unpacking her soul… it felt like an oddly disappointing riddle once I figured out the answer. When he said ‘unpack’, he meant it literally.

“Hey, Lilly. You’re wrong. You aren’t a copy, your dad loved you more than anything else in the world.”

Hearing this made her sobbing stop. She looked at me with those sad, reddened eyes whose pain I would possibly never fully understand.

“…?”

“Look here. Inside this box…”

She did as I said and looked inside, seemingly having forgotten that box was ever there to begin with.

She started taking out the pictures inside it one by one.

Very well-drawn sketches of Lilly throughout her life, since she was a baby up to the present day. Sometimes these included her father, sometimes only Lilly herself, but they all represented scenes from what I presumed had been their daily life.

I managed to glimpse a few of them—the young girl learning to draw as her father taught her, her playing with some hand-made plushies in her bed, and more.

Before I realized it, I was the one crying now.

…

Dozens of drawings later, the bottom of the box had been reached. Down there, previously covered by all the paper stacked on top, was a neatly folded envelope with only two words written on it. 

“To Lilly.”

She looked at me, wavering, but I gestured for her to open it.

Inside was one more piece of paper, with a note written on it.

“This is my last gift to you, Lilly. I’m sorry I couldn’t do much more, but I hope you’ll like it. I only have one thing left to ask of you as a father: please never lose sight of yourself. Love you forever, Dad.”

These notes were starting to get old… though this last one didn’t fail to make me cry once more. 

And for one last gut punch—

In the reverse of the note was one last drawing.

Three people standing right next to each other, all of which I recognized in an instant.

On the left, a middle-aged man with short hair, glasses and an awkward smile—Clive (Dad).

On the middle, a petite girl with long hair, a handmade plushie in her hand and a beaming smile—Lilly.

On the right, a tall young woman dressed with formal clothes and with a calming smile—the Professor had nailed how I’d look ten years later—Sophia (Mom).

When Lilly saw this, she turned back and looked at my face. She didn’t have any more tears left to cry, but as she ran towards me with her arms open, her sobbing didn’t stop for a second.

I embraced her tightly, and we remained like that until the sun had set.