CHAPTER 15: OBSESSION
The chains tinkled and chinked as Arlene shifted her position to a more comfortable spot. It was a long drive from the hospital she was taken away from her Mama to Cybertronics, where she was born. The van she was in rumbled and bumped a little when they hit a landing or two. The men who dragged her out of the ward and out of the hospital into the back of the van were sitting in front of here, watching her every move and armed themselves with an EMP gun.
She stared blankly at the chains and at the EMP gun. None of them mattered to her. What mattered to her right now was that she was away from her Mama and it was for good. She saw the hatred in her Mama’s eyes and she knew that she had no place in her heart anymore, not like she used to. Her Mama was gone and she’ll never be her little girl ever again.
It was hard for her to believe that Isabella didn’t want her anymore. She had done so much for her and went through all that trouble just to enforce her place in her Mama’s heart as her little girl. She had seen the love in her eyes when they first met, and she had been the centre of her universe for so long. She had seen the love in her eyes slowly began to shift towards Baby Angela, and she knew she had to do something to get it back. She also seen it happen when Roberto came into the family and although she tried to have good terms with him, she couldn’t bear to see the love channeling to him instead of her, and she didn’t take long to do something about it. Paulo tried to take her away from her Mama and she got rid of that obstacle with much difficulty. She had to bypass and ‘take care’ of the Flesh Fair people and the policeman who was hindering her from going back to her Mama. She had been through all the trouble just to become Isabella’s little girl, and now everything has gone to waste.
Her Mama didn’t want her. She herself has given up on her and kept herself away just for the sake of the man who has yet again tried to keep her from being her Mama’s little girl. She has become someone Isabella actually didn’t want anymore.
Arlene found it very hard to take. ‘No one,’ she thought, ‘no one has the rightful place in Mama’s heart but me! Me and me alone! Why Mama wanted to throw that away and give it to someone not worthy of it? Why did she do this? How could she do this to me?! It’s not fair! I’m her little girl! I’m…’
Her thoughts stopped short when the van came to a halt. The men who were sitting in front of her got up with their EMP guns held firmly in their hands. One of them picked up Arlene and slung her across his shoulders before carrying her down the van and into the ever familiar building of Cybertronics, the place where she remembered cleaning her guts out. As she bobbed up and down on the man’s shoulder, she noticed that she wasn’t going into the room where she had her guts cleaned, but into an elevator which was quite tight and cramped. Everyone squeezed into the elevator and pushed a button. Arlene could feel herself slowly moving upwards, indicating that the men were taking her up the building. She began to wonder where she was going.
When she was finally set down to the ground, she found herself standing in the middle of a wide office that was completely empty and silent save the accessories and furniture here and there. It was so silent and empty that it was hard for her not to feel threatened by it. She didn’t know what to do for there was no one around and none of those people who brought her into this office said a word, but continued watching her every move. It seemed as if they were waiting for someone, and sure enough, the person they were waiting for stepped into the office a few moments later. He was no other than the creator of David: Prof. Hobby.
“Sorry that I’m late, Arlene,” Prof. Hobby apologized. “Got caught in a slight traffic jam. So, how are you today, Arlene?”
Arlene didn’t reply. She stared back at Prof. Hobby with a grudging look on her face. Prof. Hobby smiled wryly and made her sit down, the chains jingled as she laid her butt on the cushioned chair.
“Now I’ve heard that you’ve been a very bad girl, have you not?”
“I’m not a bad girl,” Arlene replied darkly. “I’m Mama’s little girl.”
“Yes, that’s the problem we have to discuss here,” Prof. Hobby pulled up another chair and sat in front of her. “You see, I noticed that you have been a little bit obsessed with your new mother here and…”
“I am not obsessed. I love my Mama. I’m her little girl!”
“Take it easy, Arlene. I know you love your mother and all, but doing the things that you did, it’s just too much. This is something we didn’t expect to happen on a mecha. Well, we had a certain surprising discovery on David, but you…you’re an extreme case. A really, really, extreme case indeed.”
Arlene stared back at him with her sparkling aquamarine eyes. Who is this David? The mecha-child the doctors who helped clean her guts talked about? The same mecha-child that the people of the Flesh Fair had mentioned about? Who is he anyway? She sure wanted to meet him.
“We have discovered that David loved his mother so much that he was willing to travel such a long way to find a solution to make his mother love him again, but you…you are both magnificent and frightening. You loved your mother so much that you would do anything to get it, and that means eliminating your rivals and breaking through all obstacles. Arlene, you are also another thing that we or anyone else have never, ever programmed or taught of. We programmed you to love someone unconditionally but you have gone past the boundaries of all that. From the love of your mother, you have developed a sense of jealousy so strong, no other human being could comprehend.
“Arlene,” Prof. Hobby said as he laid his hands on the little mecha-girl’s shoulders. “You have brought jealousy and hatred upon yourself. You are designed to love and love only, but you love your mother too much to let her go and you began to hate and resent people that revolved around her. You cannot go on like this. Do you know how much trouble you have caused out there? If you continue like this, your mother would never come back to you. You’re bringing this misfortune upon yourself, Arlene. Stop this right now and we can all go home happy.”
Arlene stared back at Prof. Hobby blankly and it took her a full long 5 minutes before she finally opened her mouth and voiced out, “I am Mama’s little girl, and I’m making sure I stay that way.”
Prof. Hobby sighed and said, “Then you leave me no choice. Men, take this girl down to the white room and keep her there. We’ll do the elimination tomorrow morning. It’s getting late.”
The men who were standing beside the two people nodded. One of them took Arlene and slung her over his shoulder again, carrying her out of the room. Again, her chains jingled and her body bobbed up and down as she was taken out of the office into somewhere unknown. She heard the man walking in front of the person who was holding her took out a set of keys and was opening a door. She felt her body lowering and was set down on a padded floor before being left alone and locked in.
She could see why this room was called the white room: it was all white and bright, with puffy, padded cushions for the floor and wallpaper, just like those rooms for insane people. It was as if Prof. Hobby was afraid that she would be more of a threat to herself than to anyone else. She looked around, poked and prodded the place a little before settling down on a corner. She looked up the ceiling and could see the surveillance camera shooting at her direction. She smiled at the camera before turning her back at it, facing the wall. Silently, she opened her chest just like the way she remembered those doctors did when they cleaned her off the wedding cake.
The camera only caught her back and couldn’t see what she was doing really doing to herself.
The door of the white room opened. Arlene looked up and saw the same men coming in. She was getting bored—isn’t there anyone else in this place that can come and get her? It was the same men over and over again since last night. Again, she was slung over the shoulder of one of the men and her body bobbed up and down again. Arlene giggled as she was beginning to enjoy this kind of ride. She was taken into a conference room (whoever has watched A.I. should know this room in the beginning of the movie) where this time, there were a considerable number of people who were important and solemn-looking. They have come to watch the shutting-off of this little dangerous mecha-child and observe her cube to scan and see what went wrong.
She was seated on a bench right in the middle of the conference room and looked back innocently with her aquamarine eyes at everyone who was watching her with interest. Prof. Hobby stood somewhere near the huge window and nodded at the people in charge of turning her off to get started. The people nodded back and advanced towards her. Making sure that she was securely chained and not going anywhere, they tilted her head back and opened her mouth. Surprisingly, she didn’t attempt to fight them and she didn’t bite off the person’s finger when they tried to find the switch in the roof of her mouth. They found it and pressed it.
Soon, Arlene’s sparkling aquamarine eyes began to go blank, signaling that she has been entirely turned off. Her face began to split and part, revealing her metallic skeletal face and the compartment which kept the memory cube in her brain. They took it out and handed it to Prof. Hobby, who in turn slotted it in a small machine and turned on the projector. From the flashes of scenery recorded in Arlene’s memory cube, aside from a few good memories when she and the Santonios started out as a family, they were shocked and horrified to see the things she had done over the past couple of years. They were terrified with the way she suffocated Baby Angela, grossed out when she rammed Roberto’s head onto the window railings, even more grossed out when she hit Paulo with the wrench and burned him and the car and some of them couldn’t hold their guts anymore when they saw what she had done to the members of the Flesh Fair and the policeman who tried to rape her. Feeding George with the poisoned wine was the last straw. Prof. Hobby finally turned the machine off, his face quite ashen.
“There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, a slight glitch to what we have created,” Prof. Hobby announced, much to the people’s annoyance.
“A slight glitch? That is an understatement for such a murderous creature like her!” one of them exclaimed.
“Yes, we didn’t expect that to happen. We created a mecha-child who would love their parents unconditionally with no questions asked, but this…this is something beyond our control. We didn’t think that the love would create such an impact on the mecha-child to make her feel so obsessive towards the one she loves.”
“Well, that is not supposed to happen, Mr. Hobby. You’re lucky she is just a test subject!” another one said.
“Yeah!” another one also exclaimed. “What if all the Davids and the Arlenes go out on sale and they develop the same emotions as this Arlene has displayed? What would happen to the city?! What would happen to our company?!”
“Calm down, everybody,” Prof. Hobby said. “We can still fix this. The David and the Arlene prototype have not gone on sale and won’t be on sale for at least a few more months. We can still make some adjustment to her…”
And the argument went on and on, practically oblivious about the empty shell of Arlene sitting there quietly. If they had kept the projector on for just a few more minutes or so, they would have seen what Arlene was doing to herself that the surveillance camera couldn’t catch, for at the very moment, Arlene’s eyes started to blink. Her fingers began to twitch and her body was showing signs of movements. Slowly, she stood up. The sound of the chains that were still locked on her wrists and ankles got Prof. Hobby’s attention and boy, was he in for a shock. Everyone was shocked and stunned at what they were looking at. This wasn’t supposed to happen. A mecha which has been shut off cannot move or even function at all unless the memory cube is fitted back into the brain section and the mecha is turned back on, but Arlene was actually moving without the help of the cube.
Arlene’s body slowly moved mechanically towards the projector and was reaching out her hand to get the cube. Prof. Hobby realized what she was trying to do and ran over to stop her. Like the scene in the Flesh Fair, she dodged and moved away when they struggled to grab her, resulting into a lot of bumping around on each other or on chairs, just minus the gore and bleeding. She slowly climbed up to the tallest table and, with her hands on her ears (wherever it is on her metallic skeletal face), she let out an ear-piercing scream that emitted a sound wave so loud and deafening, you’ll be killed in an instant. And that’s what happened to the people present in the conference room. They were caught without warning that when her scream reached their ears, they were too late to cover it up. One by one, they fell onto the floor, dead as a dog and blood running out of their ears, including Prof. Hobby. The floor was, like in the Flesh Fair office, covered with dead people. None of them survived that fatal sound wave.
Slowly, Arlene’s body got off the chair and moved mechanically towards the projector again. Her fingers fumbled with the switches until at last, a slot slid out containing her memory cube. Her hands reached for the cube and felt her cold forehead for the compartment that fits the cube. She slipped the cube into that compartment and slowly her face sealed back together without leaving the slightest seam. Her blank aquamarine eyes began to glow to life and her face creased into a malevolent smile, just like old times.
“If I can’t have Mama, no one can.”
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