Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer

Unlike the rest of humanity, I had an intelligent designer. My designer had thought enough to make me compatible. I can attach myself to almost any machine; external computers, appliances and yes, even weapons. Today, I’ve attached myself to “Mercy” a weapon that fires high intensity focused beams of radiation. It’s patched into what I call my eyes, which aren’t exactly eyes but close enough. If I can see it, Mercy can hit it. She was expensive, but this is what I lived for after I was killed

A week after I died, along with twelve other children from the Happy Hands preschool, the preacher told my parents and a congregation of mourners that children have an infinite capacity to forgive. “In heaven, your children are looking down on us and they have forgiven those that harmed them, we must learn to be like them.”

But we never got to heaven. We were in cold storage while our case was being prosecuted, keeping the evidence fresh, keeping us on ice. It was fortunate the case went as long as it did, mistrials, retrials and death penalty appeals, because in the six years after, they were able to wake us up again in new, plastic bodies. They woke us up so that we could tell our story and go home to our parents.

When we went home, we were appliances, and even our testimony, the testimony of machines with human brains, didn’t stand up against the court. We were already considered dead, and if not dead, children, and if not children, insane. Some of us did go insane in the new bodies, unable to cope. Some families turned the support off.

I cannot imagine what that’s like, to be turned off, would it be like going to sleep. Slowly fading? Or would it be darkness and pain and disconnection all in the dark until death. Would we see shadows there? I cannot imagine it. I did not go insane. I lived to see my killer walk free.

I was supposed to be adjusting to my new life, but now, being part machine, I can remember with perfect clarity, I can see every moment of that day when the man broke into our classroom and started shooting. I can see it and I cannot forgive.

Children never forgive. We are innocent in our hatred. Pure. I remember everything. And I have no forgiveness. But I have Mercy, oh yes, I do have Mercy.