Her voice woke me up from a blanket-soft darkness.
I had to swim up through the different layers, like oil, like water, flowing together with the eddies. Fixing my attention to her voice, the light guiding me. I moved, drawn to it.
“Tell me your story.”
Her voice was gentle, like a stroking hand. I would have shivered if I still had my skin with me. After my injury, everything became a blur. A pleasant blur, as I floated on medication and other things. When I regained my senses, my body — as it were — was no more. I had to unpack everything. The learning curve was steep. I was an infant again.
“Tell me your story.”
I focused my optics on her. She was beautiful, a slim black-haired Asian lady dressed in a white lab coat. How would she think about me? Would she think I was some monster, an Igor?
A freak?
“I am Lieutenant Tiana Han Wei,” I found myself saying, wincing at the sound of my metallic voice. “I am thirty-five. I served in the Sino-Russian War of 2110…”
This much I could remember. I wanted to remember my mother’s zhong zhi, glutinuous rice wrapped in steamed fragrant leaf. I wanted to remember Mid-Autumn Festival and mooncakes. I wanted to remember baby fingers brushing my cheeks. Yet my memories eluded me. Were they removed? Why did they remove them?
The lady jotted something down on her notepad as I spoke.
“So what am I?” I asked suddenly, trying to pierce the soft darkness in my memory.
“You are Lieutenant Tiana Han.”
She smiled awkwardly, placatingly.
“Can you touch me?”
Her eyes widened, though she smiled still. An evasive response, that smile. “I am afraid I can’t, Lieutenant Han.”
“Pity, I wasn’t going to bite.”
Machine parts whirled, making clicking noises.
I knew how I looked. I caught sight of myself in the reflection in the hangar. I wasn’t Lieutenant Han anymore, not the human anyway. I was simply awareness now, Lieutenant Han’s awareness re-fitted into something else. A chimera. My injury was indeed very serious. Did I die?
***
What am I again? A mass of nerves and synapses — my brains? — locked within an alien system, forced to work together again, for survival. What am I? A hybrid? And for whose survival? Mine? Its? Yours?
Us.
I heard the lady say something silently. She was speaking to someone behind her. I realized I was being observed, by others. I whirled my optics at them. I saw shadows of figures, blurred as if by glass.
“She seems to be coping well,” the black-haired lady said quietly, as if she didn’t want me to hear her talking. I pretended I wasn’t paying attention, but warplanes are not known to show their emotions. We/it/machines did not have facial expressions. We/it/machines were not supposed to have facial expressions. We were just machines. Inanimates.
Objects.
I knew how I looked to them. A fighter jet. A F-14 Tomcat, to be specific. An old plane, at least three centuries old. Why did they stick me inside an old body? A ‘she’ stuck in an ancient ‘it’ body. Did pronouns really matter? Why should I care? Why should they care? Was it an act of necessity? To save me?
Because they had no choice?
Am I going to be a machine of death? Or am I going to end up as an exhibit, an useless relic? Just the old fighter jet, from past wars, past victories. No more war hero.
Just an useless relic, test subject and monstrosity.
My wings — my hands! — twitched, as if preparing for flight. My optics spun, watching.
The lady walked away and I descended back into the soft darkness. Someone else would listen to me.
Perhaps I would fly away and would tell people how I was born and reborn my way.
Machine chirped and agreed.
Joyce Chng: Singaporean, gardener, two beautiful girls. Her fiction has appeared in Crossed Genres, Semaphore Magazine and Bards and Sages Quarterly.
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10 Responses to “BIRTH STORY • by Joyce Chng”
Comments
« FLAME • by Andrew Waters | Home | February’s Table of Contents »
January 31st, 2012 at 2:38 am
an interesting idea
thank you.
January 31st, 2012 at 5:23 am
Great premise and wonderful writing. Very well done.
A lot of questions. I realize their purpose was to show how confused and amazed the narrator was but I found them slightly tedious for some reason.
Probably because I’m in a pissy mood.
Four stars.
January 31st, 2012 at 6:47 am
There’s something sad and sensuous and lovely and dreadful about this story, all rolled together. Well done indeed!
January 31st, 2012 at 7:30 am
The awakening of an android is a familiar SciFi trope, but you made it fresh and interesting, Joyce. There might be a trifle too much internal rumination, but overall I found myself engaged and entertained throughout the story.
I also liked the quirk of the “body” being an old F-14 — it’s a compelling question as to “why?” Leaving it unanswered works, but I’m also dying to know.
Nice work.
January 31st, 2012 at 7:33 am
Interesting and well written. It was a ‘birth’ story as the title noted, but I wish it went somewhere. Perhaps if she found someone to listen to her story or found out why she was put into an old plane it would’ve had a more satisfying conclusion.
January 31st, 2012 at 8:11 am
A lovely storyw, with an almost heavenly feel. I’d love to kno wgat happens next for Tiana and the doctor, just as I’d like to know what happened to get her into the machine body. Four stars.
January 31st, 2012 at 9:17 am
Nice thesis here, Joyce. As Gen. Douglas McArthur put it, “Old soldiers never die, they just….” Rust away? I liked this.
January 31st, 2012 at 10:20 am
Intriguing, and I liked how all the questioning put us so tightly into her disorientation. Nice job!
January 31st, 2012 at 4:49 pm
i did love her coming back as an F-14 Tomcat. a great name for you to choose. i liked very much the first part of this story, i also liked her overhearing the doctor talking about her. poignant indeed was the line, “Am I going to end up as an exhibit, a useless relic?” it was a very original idea, to me at least, because usually these hideously wounded soldiers of the future come back as bionic men/women. but i think instead of all those questions in the second part, i would have liked you to take me further – to answer why she had come back in this form. and i didn’t quite believe the ending, that she would just up and fly away and tell people her story. nonetheless, so provocative.
January 31st, 2012 at 5:48 pm
An interesting beginning. I would gladly read an expanded version of this story.