Are You Listening?

“Isaac, are you listening?”

The sound of my name brings me back into reality with widened eyes and a jittery raising of my head.

The boy with blue, bionic eyes on the other side of the lunch table lets out an autonomous sigh. I can see him zooming in and out of focus from my face before continuing on.

“Anyways, we have a lot to do today. Chief wants us to make sure everyone is able to make the trip through hyperspace in one piece.”

Without breaking his gaze, he pauses for a moment.

That’s when two spaceships, visible from our circular window, burst through a ring of white light. Dispersing into a colorful display of particles that sprinkle the path they had been flying and now, their ships are hurdling through space at light speed.

That is our shared goal as well.

“Unlike the humans onboard, we cyborgs have to go through a maintenance check in case our Core Chips malfunction-“

“I’m aware.” I cut his explanation short.

His explanations have always been long-winded to me. As cyborgs, our minds obviously function at a faster rate than the humans.

“I get we were chosen randomly from a pool to do this, but does it have to be us?”

“Well, the thing is-“

Yet he still talks to cyborgs as if we were them.

Naturally, I tune him out until it’s necessary again to hear him.

The Core Chip. Something we all have which calibrates our mechanical sides to that of our flesh. Something as important as our hearts, which, regardless of what other parts of us are mechanical, are very much human.

In time, the meaty side begins to hold us back, unable to keep up with the pace that the machine pieces increasingly operate at.

Eventually, those machine parts will destroy the body under its own pressure. Thinking of it this way: If your human body is working at full potential, your machine body is working at your human body’s full potential once calibrated. That may be as far as your human body can go, but your mechanical side will naturally attempt to extend past that limit. Thus crushing us.

I understand it’s a very depressing lifestyle, but rest assured, the process is slow and… more or less without any painful complications.

Calibration will nullify any chance of crew mates falling ill, breaking down, or in any case, being injured from the light speed jump. It’s a very strenuous warp that’s caused some cyborgs in the past to require a complete reset of their-

“Isaac, you’re bleeding!”

The boy gasps.

What?

The corner of my mouth begins dripping blood onto the table top before I know it. Both of our eyes seem to follow with every drop until I bring my right hand, my human hand up to touch my lips.

Unbelievable.

“Um, buddy I think you need to reset your-“

“I’m fine, Liam. Probably just some bad oil filtering through my system.”

Taking a handful of napkins from the dispenser next to us, I smear the blood off my face and wipe the table ‘clean.’ Then I get up with the intentions of fleeing to my room.

There’s no luck there, feeling a burly pair of hands drop on both of my shoulders. The weight alone sends me falling back down onto the seat. I can only imagine what would have happened if he put force behind it.

“What do we have here? Two bots, lazing about with an objective to complete?”

Looking up and slightly behind me, I’m met with the glare of a giant. One with about ninety percent of his body covered in machinery, a few inches of black hair on top of his head, and one human eye that seems to blink less than the mechanical one.

“C-Chief! We were just getting ready to start our volunteer tasks. Right, Isaac?”

Switching my bionic gaze without lowering my head, I give Liam the same glare that Chief gives me.

“Sure.”

“Sure! That doesn’t sound like a proud crew mate of mine, ecstatic to get things up and ready for our departure from this side of the galaxy to the other.”

He grins at my displeasure. Then I lower my head, ready for him to move from my way.

His energy has always been misplaced to me. Or annoying.

“That’s because it isn’t.”

He rolls his eyes and takes a step back. I see him blink his flesh eye after for the first time since his arrival.

And he calls us bots…

“Fair enough, Tin Can. You and Liam have until tonight to check the other twelve cyborgs we have and file a report on who may or may not need recalibrations.”

“The end of tonight?! Dammit, Isaac.”

I wave off his frustration, seeing a few puffs of smoke rise from his head.

“Easy work, don’t bust a circuit on me, Liam.”

“Oh ho?! That’s what I like to hear!”

Chief gives one of my shoulders a dangerously heavy pat of approval before heading toward the cafeteria’s exit.

Makes me wince slightly, but more so from the unexpected pressure than the stress of my body.

“I can’t stand him.”

“Literally… wait, no! Isaac, we have to get to work now or we won’t have any time.”

“Yes, I hear you.”

I assure him before pushing myself up from the seat for a second attempt. Liam follows suit and scans the room for anyone who may be on break themselves.

“Ah, there’s Cole and Raya.”

He spots two cyborgs at the corner of the room chatting over coffee.

Looking at me, he gives me a nod to come with so we traverse through the handful of people walking around until we get there.

“Hey, have you two anything urgent planned, or may we take some of your time to do some maintenance?”

They both exchange a casual glance at first. Cole giving her a shrug before she responds.

“No, nothing urgent. Have a look for us, please.”

She pulls her long hair to the side to expose the Core Chip on the back of her neck. Cole turns around and lowers his collar so that his is more visible as well.

The process is simple. They show us their chips, we scan them with our eyes, tell them to do some basic movement of flesh and machinery parts, and gauge how in sync they are. If the synchronicity is off by more than one percent, we use this newfangled gadget that Chief gave us upon receiving the task to send a few electrical surges through the Core Chip. Voilà, a recalibration successful.

“How do you feel?”

I watch them stretch their joints after the maintenance.

“As good as new, right?”

Raya looks over to Cole who looks equally as satisfied.

“Pretty much, yeah. Thanks Isaac and Liam.”

He looks me over a moment longer with an inquisitive expression.

“Although I am shocked to see you actually working, Isaac. You don’t really do that.”

Nearly impossible to commit to a poker face, the annoyance they witness dismisses the comment entirely.

I can’t be that much of a loafer to everyone. I can’t. The thought nags at me as we walk down the hall outside of the cafeteria.

Liam, tediously recognizes my disgruntled demeanor and elbows me gently into my side.

“Cheer up, Isaac. After all the maintenance, your reputation with the rest of the crew will surely elevate from here.”

I’m not trying to hear that.

I give him no signs of acknowledgment as we continue our search for the other ten cybernetic members.

Corridor after corridor, the number of cyborgs we perform maintenance on dwindles.

Half of the day eventually passes and we finally finish all of the work. While fidgeting with the Chief’s ‘Core Chip Zapper,’ I decided to call it, I watch Liam from the corner of my eye wipe some sweat off his brow.

“Fatigued, Liam? From watching me work all day?”

He raises an eyebrow and leans against the wall, hands in his jacket pockets.

“This is the most I’ve seen you do all year. I’m more than fatigued, I’ve pinched myself on multiple occasions just to make sure this wasn’t a dream.”

“You’re a bucket of bolts, literally.”

He chuckles a bit and I do as well.

“Today wasn’t so bad, honestly.”

“That’s because you have the best partner in the fleet, Isaac.”

“That better be.”

I scuff as we go to make our report to Chief.

But as we get closer to his quarters, I can feel Liam has something on his mind. So I act preemptively.

“What is it?”

“Um… well… I just-“

“What is it, Liam? You don’t have to beat around the bush.”

So he nods and takes a breath before speaking.

“I’m no nutcase, Isaac. Are you going to talk to the boss? I think it’s time you get your pa-“

“I’ll talk to him. In private, before we take off. We have one more day, correct?”

He’s silent a moment as the distance of Chief’s door to us shortens.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I just am.”

I honestly didn’t think that would be the last thing I heard him say to me before the warp.

I really didn’t.

The report came with no complications. The walk back to our respective rooms was met with just as much silence as our travel to Chief’s room.

I spent the next day thinking about things. There was certainly a growing malfunction I had been experiencing. And ignoring.

Factory Reset. That’s basically what he’s asking me to do. You can imagine what happens to me, my personality, my memories if that were to happen. But as we got closer to the warp time, I became more reluctant to speak on it.

Reluctant enough that I found myself going through light speed with nobody but Liam and I as the only ones who knew of it.

So there I was, a pile of twitching, aching, lumps and mechanical scraps in the end. Two people standing over me in disbelief.

“Isaac, you should’ve just… reset your password.”