Heart

She had almost forgotten what a chocolate bar looked like, wrapped in gold, cut perfectly into symmetrical squares. The glossy shine of each hazel bar, so perfect it could have been hand-painted by an artist.

Her mouth salivated just at the sight of it. That was proof enough of her humanity returning. She was hungry. Actually hungry. She could put the chocolate to her lips and actually taste it.

How long had it been? It even brought tears to her eyes. Her dry, desiccated eyes flowed with fresh, salty tears again at last.

The heart locket hung heavily around her neck, and her mechanical, soulless body had a heartbeat once more. Her humanity was to be restored, sealed by her first bite of chocolate bliss.

She lifted it ever so slowly to her lips, felt its smooth flesh, and bit into its exterior. The taste was close to her taste buds; however, an unexpected bullet flew through the air. The bullet, aimed so perfectly it would soar right through her mainframe and out the other side in a clean, swift motion. Silent, but all too painful, for to be human was to feel pain. Chocolate on her lips and confusion filling her brainwaves, she fell to her knees as her predator approached.

He approached and saw the being there, tears in its eyes. How? he thought. How could this bot feel as such? For he, although bewildered, felt no such emotion, even at the sight of the bot fighting to keep its systems running.

Then, he saw it. The heart-shaped locket that hung from her neck heaved in and out in a rhythmic beat, growing and shrinking with each beat. Memories flooded him, ones hidden and blocked by wiring and hard drives crammed in his mainframe. Somewhere there, he remembered what a heartbeat was, and this, this was that. This was how she had received the gift of taste and pain. All those gifts were lost now that her mainframe sizzled and sparked from his calculated bullet.

He reached out his metal fingertips, void of all feeling for so long. He couldn't even comprehend the idea of anything else but vacant. Just a brush of his fingertips sent a jolt of sensation through his hand and all the way through him straight to his brainwaves. He could feel it. He could feel the beating of the heart, the warmth. He was reminded of what warmth was, and he felt it. He felt terrified.

He jolted his arm back away from the strange device. He half expected the effects to linger, but they faded as fast as his fingers pulled away from the heart. So, his theory was correct. Somehow, this locket was emitting humanity back to them.

It was a strange subject for his brainwaves to handle. The idea that there could be anything other than calculated motions of basic coding simply wasn't conceivable. But again, deep down, there was a break in the code. In there, He knew that the only way he would understand was to take the locket and feel, as the bot did before him.

He reached out once more and yanked the heart locket from the other bot's neck, allowing her body to rest on the ground at last. In his grasp, the heartbeat, in and out, steady as a drum. He felt the warmth extend out again. It beckoned him closer just with the pleasure of its sensation. He wanted to feel more. He lifted the heavy chain and placed it around his neck. The heart hung rightly positioned on his chest, where a heart ought to be. It beat for him, beat, beat, steady in and out. He felt it all. He felt frightened, he felt curious, he felt sad, and most of all, he felt guilt. He felt guilt as he looked down at the girl at his feet.

The girl lay defeated on the ground below, the shiny chocolate bar loosely within her grasp. Her mainframe was exposed within her skull, sparking wildly. He would never have noticed her frozen expression of devastation if it weren't for the locket. Never would he feel so crushed by his own actiSuddenly, he was overwhelmed by memories and emotions that floated out from deep within his brainwaves, further within his mainframe, past the wiring and code, and erupted from deep within his heart. He suddenly knew where he was. They were inches away from where his house might have been at one time, where rubble and debris had taken its place. He remembered why his coding had told him to protect this spot because it was his home.

Suddenly, he was overwhelmed by memories and emotions that floated out from deep within his brainwaves, further within his mainframe, past the wiring and code, and erupted from deep within his heart. He suddenly knew where he was. They were inches away from where his house might have been at one time, where rubble and debris had taken its place. He remembered why his coding had told him to protect this spot because it was his home. He lived here. He raised his family here.

The sheer impact of these memories hit him all at once and brought him to a knee on the ground and tears to his eyes. He understood the emotion of the bot before him. He now felt it, and he understood. He understood, and he remembered why they had stopped using their hearts so long before. The void, the vacant mind, kept you from feeling the pain. It kept you from seeing the way things really are. You didn't have to remember the hatred, greed, and evil that desecrated the world as it was. You didn't have to think at all. You just had to follow your code and act without consequence.

He grasped the heart once more, barely visible in his hazy, tearful eyes. To feel, to understand is to carry the weight of the pain attached to them. He perhaps, would rather not feel at all.

He broke the chain off of his neck and flung the locket away from him. As soon as the heart escaped from his trembling fingers, he once again was all metal and wires and as soulless as a barren corpse. He forgot as soon as he remembered.

The locket was lost within the debris and waste of a forgotten and defaced world. The heart beat its solo rhythm as the beings above it ran in chaos, acting only on instinct.