Find Me Again in the Future (Raivh and Kaybee)

Gasping for air, he awoke in a dimly lit room, hands fumbling along the glass of the chamber he’d been trapped in for a way out. Outside, in the room, he caught sight of a slight movement. Then there was a voice, a deep one—male—followed by that of a female, and he squinted through the condensation that had formed on the pane separating him from the outside world. The individuals out there had to be his hosts. That was what Harvey had called them—hosts, people who would know of his coming, of his past life, but he would know nothing of them. Even without knowledge of the individuals he would be staying with, Harvey had promised that they would be good people, whom he would begin to recognize slowly over time as descendants of his nephew Phillip, a boy who had grown into a man who had dove into science, into technology and had advanced it.

“Jake? Are you alright?” The voice was muffled on the other side of the capsule. Jacob nodded, though he knew the man on the other side couldn’t see him. Pounding on the steel walls, he shouted a yes, and soon the air compressed state he’d been sleeping in for the past hundred years opened, hissing as the door swung out slowly on its hinges. “No, no, no!” Stumbling forward, Jacob landed on the floor with a grunt, palms flat against the carpet, his nose jammed into the fibers. A pained groan parted his lips and he furrowed his brow. His legs felt limp, useless, as though the muscle had melted away over time, and essentially it had. There were pills he would have to take and a special training schedule he would have to endure. It would be a grueling week for the man, but he would make it through.

Holding his hand out, Braxton helped the man to his feet, his great-great-uncle, and brushed him off. Brows pulling together, he turned to his wife and waved her out to fetch a glass of water. She returned soon, passing the cup to her husband, who then held it out to the unstable Jacob. Taking it, Jake brought the fluid to his lips and drank. Suddenly, his level of dehydration became apparent, and his stomach knotted as the single gulp he managed to get down settled in the pit with a sickening twist. It tasted fresh, fresher even than he remembered his time’s water tasting—pristine. Chest rising and falling heavily as the pain engulfed him and swept through every nerve, he dropped the glass, apologizing as it shattered on the ground. Losing his footing, Jacob began to fall back, but Braxton reached out, gripping his wrist, and turned him so that he could have a seat in one of the soft, levitating chairs made of a fine material, smoother than silk but with the look of leather. It was peculiar to Jacob, and he thought it strange that the fabric was as warm as it was without having absorbed his body heat. The room was cold, chilled so that the time capsule didn’t overheat.

“What year is it?” Jacob asked, his voice hoarse, cracking like a young boy’s. He swallowed, repeating his question, and received a nod and an answer of 2127. His features blanched, and he felt woozy. Immediately, his thoughts went back to his family, wondering if any of them had survived other than the man standing before him. When he asked this question, he was answered with a no. Other than Braxton and his family, Jacob had no living relatives, but was more than welcome to stay with them as long as he liked, even encouraged to do so. Times were better than they had been in 2027. The economy had improved, and the large greenhouses scattered about the twelve lands defined as nations unified provided an ample supply of food, enough to feed the entire world population, plus that of the individuals who had chosen to move away from earth, off to places like Pluto, where the temperature had been regulated and water found. It was a lot to take in.

A week later, he was roaming about the walks, or, rather, standing and being pulled along by the track belt. Always, he grew irritated with it, and walked though advised by his nephew not to. The man, though younger than him by a great deal, in this time, was older than himself, twenty four, whereas Braxton was thirty eight, nearing thirty nine. His children were already in junior high, both his daughter and his two sons, twins. There were still many questions he had to ask of his nephew, like what had happened during the war, who had survived and who had passed, whether of natural causes or untimely fate. Stepping past a set of sliding glass doors, he was greeted by an officer in an orange jumpsuit-looking outfit with what appeared to be a square piece of plexiglass, but was in fact a highly advanced computer.

“Hello, Mr. Briggs. Braxton informed us that you would be arriving.” Upon a closer examination, Jacob noted that the man was an android, an artificial of what likely once was. There were many of these robotic beings roaming the streets, mingling with humans as though they belonged, and they did, in this futuristic world. Not futuristic, Jacob told himself. This is the present, the now. With a slight smile, he allowed the officer to take him back to get a scan, a computerized memorization of his entire person—DNA, prints, birthdate, and to be assigned a tag, something similar to his past social security number, but with an updated format and a chip placed into his left forearm.

Ashley Calloway knew her name as all humans do, remembered her past as all humans do, but ingrained in her consciousness alongside that name of her birth and that past she had lived were different names and another past, no less vivid or real than the first.

She had been born once as Ashley, called "Ash" by her parents as she had grown up and proceeded through school and into the workforce, meeting up with a man she came to call her fiancee. His name had been Jacob, but then Jacob had fled from their marriage to be taken a century into the future, to leave behind the job he had lost and the love that he didn't want to screw up by his own hand and the last thing Ashley could remember from that life was a piece of rubble descending upon her as she stood outside her collapsing apartment, a blinding pain and then a blissful nothingness as her mind fled it's failing shell. Then she had been born again as a mechanical construct, a serial number many digits long assigned as her name until her creator, a man known only as "Braxton" to her knowledge, gave her the memories of her first life and her original name, telling her she could go and live the life she should have had. The sly look should have told her something of his meaning but a glance at the date gave her what she needed to solve the puzzle some short hours later. The year was 2127 nearly a century after she had died, the day was the one that the man she had once called fiancee had sealed himself away on one century ago, and by that dint the day that he would be released back unto the world.

Ashley had immediately sought out her creator, her other parent, and asked him to let her meet him, to give her a chance to show him that she was still here, that they could live out the life they had lost the chance to live all of those years ago, and not one week later her chance had arrived, Braxton having arranged a meeting with Jacob where she would be given some time to see her old love, the one she still felt for despite what was now a heart of steel, one that one hundred years ago no human would have believed an android or robot could have. She could prove it to him though, he would see that she was herself to the soul, no matter the body in which her conscious resided. She had to show him, show that they could have that second chance that they both deserved.

She waited with some anticipation, some nervousness, measured out in equal parts as she waited for her chance.

What pained him a great deal more than the chip was the over encompassing ache in his heart that seemed to thrum through his every nerve. Loneliness was a disease not often thought of in his past life. He’d always had his girl to keep him company, and to see her smile and hear her laugh was one of the many joys he’d had. Focusing on the sharp throb in his arm, Jacob stepped onto another of the moving belts. This one would take him all the way home, he knew it; home was imbedded into his memory now, and that chip in his arm would only be adjusted when and if he found a woman and settled down—he knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t.

Producing a small ring, the very ring he’d purchased for her for their wedding day, he had the sudden impulse to throw it. Anger rushed through his system, shutting down every logical cell in his body. Stuffing the small gold band back into his pocket, he climbed the translucent steps up to Braxton’s house. The door opened for him, and he stepped inside. For the most part, the house was silent; Jake could hear Braxton clanking around in his workshop-laboratory downstairs. The smell of cooking food wafted to him, and he took a big whiff. His stomach growled, but as he rounded the corner into the living room, how hungry he was made the last number on his mental list.

“Who are you,” he spat out, staring at the young woman with something of disguised disgust and prominent confusion splattered over his strong features. Licking his lips, he snapped his focus to Braxton’s wife as she entered the room. The woman kept her gaze steady with Jacob’s, even as the man began to quake. “Who is she?”

Braxton emerged from the basement, and the moment he saw the red hue tinting Jacob’s face, he knew what he’d done had probably been done too soon. “Jake. This is Ashley. Ashley Calloway.”

“No she’s not,” Jake retorted sharply, whipping his head in a quick shake, clarifying his disagreement. He heaved out a breath. “Ashley’s dead. My fiancée is dead. She’s gone. Who the fuck is this!”

Ashley stood as she saw Jacob enter the room, wincing at the ugly emotions that crossed his face, confusion with a hint of disgust carefully hidden beneath. "I-I..." Her timidity meant that the voices of the others overrode her for a moment and she watched as Jacob's voice rose to a yell of anger. His accusations, she knew that she was real but his rejection of her stung. Perhaps she should have known he would be like this, perhaps not, but all at once the seeming futility of her goal crashed down upon her, her desire for a second chance for both of them was very nearly crush right then and there by Jacob's callous words. Ash clenched her fist tears beginning to form at the corners of her eyes as she took a deep breath, closing her eyes and trying to take in courage for what she was about to do (She had always been a passive person who had disliked raised voices) and leapt into the argument. "Stop!"

She breathed heavily from the mental exertion it had taken to act against a yelling and angry Jacob, the courage draining away so suddenly to leave her nervously fidgeting now that all the eyes were upon her. "Jake it's me... I-It's Ash." She began, mentally cursing her stutter. "T-They brought me back Jake..." She pointed to Braxton. "They saved my personality before I died and put me into an android..." Her voice trailed off, her courage nearly failing her once more. "B-But it's still me!" Her voice was too quick, she wanted to reassure him, to make him believe her, "I-I... All of what we did... All of what I am... Please don't take away my second chance." Tears snuck up on her again and pricked her eyes, welling up and threatening to fall no matter how she tried to blink them away.

Stop! The one-word command was enough to stall Jacob’s thought process and cause him to turn his head to where Ashley stood. Gradually, his senses returned, as did the anger he felt for whoever had come up with the twisted idea of designing a mechanical version of his fiancée. That thing wasn’t human. She couldn’t be the warm, living, loving being his Ashley, a human woman, was. Jacob glared at the female droid as her chest rose and fell with heavy intakes of air. That thing wasn’t alive, so why was she breathing? It pissed him off. He clenched his teeth, and his vision hazed over with the smoke billowing up from the fire his rage was becoming. She was speaking, her mouth was moving, and there were words coming out of her, but he wasn’t listening. Whatever that thing had to say didn’t matter to him.

“Jake,” Braxton said cautiously. It was obvious by how Jacob stood that he didn’t accept anything the woman had just said to him. “She’s not human, not the same way you and I are; not how she was in the past. But she is Ashley, Jacob. She is your fiancée.”

“Shut up.” Jacob didn’t look over to see the uncertain expression that took over Braxton’s features. “She’s not my fiancée. My fiancée passed away. I watched the debris—cement, concrete, and steel—from her apartment collapse. She was still inside. I couldn’t reach her before the bombs went off.” Stalking toward the woman with slow, predatory steps, he grabbed her roughly by the chin when he was just six inches away. “Why are you crying?”

He licked his lips and repeated the question, yelled it. “Why are you crying?” Shoving her back, he swiped the back of his hand over his jeans. The warmth of her tears was enough to make his stomach churn. He turned to face Braxton. “Shut her down, before I either break her or dismantle her.” The man didn’t move. Jake raised his voice again. “Shut her down!” His chest heaved as he inhaled and exhaled through flared nostrils.

"Please!" The tears, the pain in her heart, in her voice, How could he not see? Ashley was so shocked by the harsh and sudden rejection that she did not react as Jake struck her. The impact against her chest, artificial pain from artificial nerves as she stumbled back onto the couch once more, clutching at her stomach in an instinctive response to being hurt, even if her body was that of a machine her mind was very much human.

"Please... I can't... Can't choose to cry or not..." She had never before felt so acutely artificial, like a broken doll, a pathetic parody of her former self, like she had no place to go and no one to turn to. "I can't shut down, I can't be anyone else or do anything else..." She repeated it to herself over and over like a mantra, clinging to her thoughts, her feelings, knowing they were not simulated but real and genuine. Ashley's body was unable to shut down, designed with no way of shutting it off until the parts would eventually degrade to nonfunctionality and the body would eventually shut down, taking the personality with it.

The elements of her sadness swirled within her as Ashely repeated to herself over and over again that she was human, that she was alive, that she was here. And as she did, the swirling elements of sadness became a different emotion entirely. Anger.

"You..." Her voice was quiet, but it carried loud enough to be heard. "You Insensitive BASTARD!" She shrieked, her hands clenching into fists as her anger removed the mental stops on her train of thoughts, prompting a tirade from her as she glared at Jake, expecting to see either dismissal or fright. "Go on then break me! Take me apart! Murder me and I can die a second time!" Tears shining on her cheeks as she took a deep breath and continued. "I was brought back! Braxton gave us a second chance! I thought you would be happy to try again! To have a reminder!..." Her voice trailed off as her anger finally exhausted itself and the tears began to fall again and she waited for the pin to drop, the door to close signifying Jake's departure, the end of the line for her second chance at happiness, cut short more rudely than the first.

Her words were an aggravating nail in the back of his head being pounded in again and again with each nerve-grating note that parted her lips. She shouldn’t have been able to cry. That thing—it—shouldn’t have been able to shed the warm tears that he’d wiped on his jeans. “Would you just shut up!” he bellowed over her when she informed him she couldn’t be shut down, couldn’t be anyone but herself. “And just who are you? Huh? You’re not Ashley!” Panting in his rage, his eyes were as narrow as they could get; his brow in as tight of a crease as possible. The muscles in his jaw twitched, convulsing as he ground his teeth tighter and tighter together, bearing down on the enamel.

Hearing her quiet address of him, he lifted his shoulders in a shrug, where they stayed as he replied, “What?” and then they fell. Her shrill tone pierced the tense atmosphere around them and then thrust them further into dispute. Heat flooded his cheeks, not from embarrassment, not from shame, but from the sheer, burning ire that flashed in his blue eyes. Listening to her torrent of heated emotion come crashing into the room, Jacob started laughing. It started out as a slight, dry chuckle, but progressed quickly into a loudly hysteric and cynical cackle.

“You’re not a living being!” he finally hollered back at her, red-faced as a cherry tomato on a hot summer’s day. “You’re a fucking robot out of some science fiction novel I read as a boy!” His anger was all-consuming, eating him from the inside out and nulling the sickening knots that formed in his stomach. He hated making Ashley cry, strongly disliked seeing her tears of discomfort at any time, no matter who caused them, but he was determined that artificial piece of shit wasn’t her.

“I don’t love you! You have no heart, no blood! There is no second chance to take or lose because you’re not her!” Progressively his volume increased until pictures on the walls and glass figures that dotted the living area were quaking from the sound of his shouts. His hands flew, emphasizes his hatred for the woman sitting on the couch, before his fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt, lifting her to his level. “Just get the hell out of my sight!” Dropping her, he turned and stormed out of the room, vanishing up the stairs. The slam of his temporary bedroom shook the house.

“Oh my,” Braxton’s wife whispered in a hushed tone. Her eyes were on Ashley, unsure whether the girl would accept comfort then or not. “My dear, are you alright?”

“I didn’t think he’d react like that.” Braxton was staring absently into space, shaking his head with wide eyes.

Ashley simply began to cry again, feeling tears run down her cheeks as she choked back sobs, grieving in her own silence as Braxton and his wife whispered amongst themselves. She knew she had nothing, no room but for the one they had given her, no food but what they had set before her, no life but for the second chance that they had given her, over before it even began. She wasn't sure how long she cried, but for every passing second it seemed like the tears would never stop, an ache in her heart forming that felt like it might kill her.

Eventually her scattered thoughts pulled together, her mind spinning back to a cohesive whole, a sort of finality settling upon her shoulders as she realized that Jake had left. "I..." Her voice was almost a whisper. "I should go... Shouldn't I?" Ashley was torn between departing, stepping out of her second life and back into oblivion, stepping off the bridge to the business district to plummet into the waters below, an even swifter possibility of a bullet to the head if she could find a gun, a wound just as effective on her as it would be on an ordinary human, instantly fatal.

But Ashley's mind was that of a human even if her body was synthetic and her desire to carry on and to live despite loss, a human desire that had carried over in the transition just like every other piece of her failing psyche, dying of a broken spine in the ruins of her home when the paramedics had finally reached her. Ashley decided to stay, choosing life over death, choosing to avoid the man she had once upon a time called her fiancee as best she could until one or the other left this place. And deep in the back of her thoughts, she began to think that maybe she could prove herself to Jake, show him that she was still Ashley, and that she was still alive. "I-I think I need to be alone for a bit... I'll be in my room." She informed the Braxtons as she rose and slowly walked towards the stairs. The ache in her heart was still there but in the long minutes of crying, she felt as though her sense of purpose had returned, a new goal to achieve.

The shuddering of the door against its frame continued for a few seconds after Jake had torn his shirt off over his head, tossing it to the floor. He stumbled to get out of his jeans, and while he fought to kick the last leg off, he cursed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he shielded his eyes with his hand, the salt water stinging his corneas not something he wanted to feel, not when he just wanted to be numb. His stomach was twisted in knots. That was her face, Ashley’s face, and he’d put tears in her eyes, the same pair of eyes he’d stared into thousands of times before. It was a cruel chance of fate that she’d died in the past. To know that she would never be in his arms again was pain enough. Having her image haunt him in the future wasn’t something he’d accounted for. God, he should have just had her stay at his place the night before disaster struck, made love to her into the early hours of morning, kissed her, held her, told her he loved her.

“Dammit, Ash,” he cursed under his breath, forcing himself to his feet and sliding his boxers to the floor. He needed a shower, needed to clear his mind of her, get his thoughts straight. Move on. Because there was no way in hell he would accept that thing downstairs as his fiancée. Wrenching the knobs to the left in the shower, painfully hot water came spurting forth, spilling down in a heavy torrent. Jake stepped beneath it and grabbed the bar of soap setting on a tray that Braxton’s wife had placed there for him to use. Tomorrow, he would go out, find some sort of job. He needed work to do, a way to get out of the house.

Later that night, he heard a knock on the door, and grunted. “What?” Behaving a bit like a teenager, he didn’t move from his spot in front of the television, just continued to stare at the screen, a mindless zombie. Again, the rapping sounded; this time, Jake got to his feet and crossed over to the door, twisting the knob and jerking it open.

“Are you coming down to dinner?” Braxton’s wife inquired, a smile on her face, though it was apparent she was concerned. Jake shook his head, dismissing the idea of going back downstairs, and stared past her, distant. “You’re sure?”

He stepped out into the hall and pulled the door shut. “She lives here, doesn’t she? I heard a door shut up here shortly after I got in the shower.” Another knock sounded, and Jacob glanced up the hall a ways to see Braxton standing in front of a door with his head bowed, waiting for a response. Gritting his teeth, Jacob received his answer, a yes, but followed her downstairs regardless. She wouldn’t be attempting anything more, not with how he’d treated her before.