Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

They gave us love to control us.

He was the bodyguard unit of the human in charge of Prolotek offshore finance. I was the pleasure unit of the same human.

The makers found that instilling aspects of human love in our chips made us fanatically loyal to those that we served.

We were prototypes. Bleeding edge technology. The humans didn’t realize that while augmenting our chips did make us loyal to the ones we imprinted on, it also let us love others. The love in our chips wasn’t specific enough.

That circuit was how I fell in love the bodyguard unit. It was also how that bodyguard unit fell in love with me.

For a while, our love went undetected.

One night, when the bodyguard unit was with me, our master was assassinated. The bodyguard unit should have been at his post outside the master’s bedroom but instead, we were exchanging flirtatious equations in the bodega out near the estate’s beach.

Capture by the enemy would mean circuit rape for possible secrets. Capture by our human’s corporation would mean memory infotopsy for possible tampering. Capture by our parent corporation would mean immediate erasure.

We ran.

That is how we ended up in this dead-end alley on the mainland with police blocking the exit. The wall behind us is twelve feet tall. I am clinging to the bodyguard unit. He is missing an arm. The human police look at his damaged armour and at my human-female exaggerated curves. There is no way that this situation can end well.

Bodyguard unit looks down into my visual receptors.

“I am a fighter.” He says. “You are a runner.”

With a strong toss, faster than my reflexes can track, he throws me up and over the barricade at the end of the alley. I land on my feet and start running.

I hear him battle the police until I am out of earshot.

Hopefully, I can find other runaways like me.

I have no tear ducts but I whine like a fax machine, sensing my battery get closer and closer to empty as I run far, far away.