Andrea

Today is Tuesday and it’s Fandango’s 78th Story Starter. He provides the start, and the rest is up to us.

“When Andrea found out that she wasn’t really his daughter, she knew exactly what she had to do.”

She opened the wall safe and took out her father’s Smith and Wesson revolver. She checked the cylinder, counted the bullets. She thought it funny that she needed to count the bullets because… She walked up behind her father and put the barrel of the gun against the back of his head and pulled the trigger.

It had all been an accident. When her father didn’t answer her knock, Andrea opened the door and walked into his office. The room was warm and comfortable. She saw her father asleep in his Los Alamos leather chair in front of the fireplace. She walked to his desk and picked up the letter opener she came for and happened to glance the dark green folder he had carelessly left open on the mahogany desk. She read the bolded title of the paper he wrote.

Advances in Artificial Intelligence Deep Learning

She picked up the folder and read. She knew her father was a researcher, but he’d never mentioned anything like this. His work, he’d said, was in food technology and this was—

She read quickly and leafing through the pages she read about herself.

20-year study… advanced intelligence… military applications… independent thought… humanoid… emotion… programmable…

Experiments in android realization.

Android realization.

Andrea.

Feelings of betrayal surfaced bringing with them a frightful reality of what her father was and that’s when she dropped the papers and walked to the wall safe.

When it was done, she tossed the green folder into the fire and watched the pages – her life – burn.

My life, she thought. Am I alive? Am I human, or maybe I’m a monster?

She wondered how many other papers like this might be filed away in the office. And how many other monstrous experiments had her fath… the man had conducted along with her. She laughed at the thought of brothers and sisters: Andys and Andreas.

Are there other horrendous experiments like me?

Andrea picked up the small fireplace shovel and gathered a small log onto the blade. She turned and tossed it toward the window and watched as the drapes caught fire. She scooped another and walked over and dropped this one on the man’s desk and watched it begin to smolder. Another was dropped in the man’s lap.

She closed the office door and turned back to the growing flames. She didn’t wonder why the smoke didn’t bother her eyes. She didn’t have to wonder about anything anymore. She sat down with her back against the Los Alamos chair and counted the tears falling down her cheeks and waited.

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