윤

Being as I am the product of a broken home, there’s certainly more than enough psychological trauma to explain away any apprehension with relationships, and while no curse or temptation can’t be overcome a modicum of effort, I’m still subject to a paranoid dread in the middle of my Caffeine-addled nights that the people around me aren’t real, that I don’t really know who they are. And partly responsible is that scene from my childhood, which Sandy Frank’s Standards & Practices person must’ve felt could escape censors with a terrible voiceover:

She was beautiful, even for an enemy alien robot, but she forgot, she was only a machine. They say we robots aren’t programmed to have feelings, only to be coldly efficient and perfect. But sometimes something happens, a mistake in the wiring, a surge in the power rectifier, and maybe that’s what happened to the one Jason came to know as a real girl, of codename Lucy. This should be Jason’s proudest moment, but who can blame him for feeling bad? He’ll get over it, though, and be back to win another big race soon. Don’t worry, 1-Rover-1, we weren’t built with self-destruct buttons. The good people who made us want us to show affection.

So which is it, Zark: do you have feelings or don’t you? And wasn’t she detonated remotely by Spectra, not by her own choice? Could the lifelong whirr in my ears mean the secret machinery
has been inside me all along? Am I the robot?!