Welcome back, friend!

“Welcome back, friend!”

An R3-5T unit stands in front of me with a cheerful expression projected onto her face. She is identical to the other five R3-5T units in the room, saying the same thing to the rest of the patients. I look down at my fingers as they whirr and turn, recalibrating themselves after the decluttering process. There is something daunting about the immaculate white tile covering the floor and walls.

“Thank you…” I reply, still disoriented.

“Do not worry about your limbs. You are still loading your processes, friend. Decluttering has been successful and your body is back to working at 100%. Please stop by the check out desk to collect your belongings and your memory cartridge. Have a wonderful season, friend!”

“Thank you…” I reply again. My world is fuzzy and unfamiliar but my legs, once they have fully reconnected, seem to know where to go.

I notice the stark difference between patients and workers at the facility as I meander down the hall toward the check-out desk. Your body is back to working at 100%. So said the R3-5T unit that decluttered my system. Cleared my cache, if you will. But somehow it seems as if the patients would be striding efficiently down the hallways instead of stumbling in a daze toward the exit. The “doctors” don’t stumble, however. I wonder when their last decluttering was.

An EX7 unit stands at the check-out desk with a tablet in hand. I stand patiently and quietly as he scans me and his frazzled-looking partner moves on a track to retrieve the neatly filed box of my belongings. The more confident EX7 comes around the counter, not on a track, to insert my memory cartridge into the back of my head. He then attaches my clothing pieces afterward and it strikes me as odd that I have no recollection of ever obtaining such garments even after retrieving my memory files, but I say nothing about it. Something in my mind tells me not to.

“What’s this?” The more confident EX7 picks up the final object from the box, a brassy, heart-shaped locket, and scans it. He looks puzzled. “Unique item detected. Beginning disposal process.”

“Wait!” I say at a volume that catches the attention of some nearby units. I lower my voice. “Wait. That belongs to me.”

“How does he remember that?” The nervous EX7 behind the counter whispers, before he is quieted by the other’s hand held up in a stop motion. The confident EX7 squints at me with his pixelated eyes and retreats behind the counter with the trinket. The two discuss between each other in code and I watch worriedly as they pry the locket open to find nothing inside. The units turn back around and stretch an extended arm out to hand me back what I somehow knew to be my treasured possession. I take it wordlessly and gesture farewell before exiting through the large iron doors.

“Was that okay?” I hear the nervous EX7 unit whisper before I leave.

“We do not want him making a fuss right after decluttering." The other replies. "Besides, it is empty. What harm could it do?”

I try not to dwell on the strange interaction but as I hold the locket in my hand I find it hard not to. My legs take me home, though I could not tell you the way if you asked me to.

Dozens of purposeful units pass me wordlessly on the street, no doubt on their way to their next objective. An enormous projection plays on the translucent dome above our heads as an R3-5T unit fills the frame with her polished white face and visor-screen-type eyes.

“Decluttering is almost done for the season, friends! Please remember to contact your local facility for appointments before the end of the week! You will regret forgetting to declutter, friends.”

The last line is almost menacing somehow but outwardly I make no reaction. In fact, it feels almost as if I am not able to. The R3-5T unit continues on for a while longer about the dangers of not decluttering before I arrive at a small, square house identical to all others down the lane as far as my scanners can detect.

I realize when I enter that I had been clutching the locket protectively between my fingers. Why? I think to myself as I finally open my hand and examine the locket myself. I ask, but the truth is that I know why. I was hiding it out of fear that someone else would see it and give me strange looks like the EX7 units at the facility.

How strange, I think, as I stare at the empty casing. Why would this empty locket be so important and why would I feel the need to hide it? I hold it close to me as I sit down on my single armchair in front of the old-fashioned television set. Looking back and forth between the worn-out locket and tv, it strikes me as odd that the inside of my house is so out of date in comparison to the advanced technology I saw on my way home. Is every home like this or just mine? I sit in mild peace for only a moment before the screen of the tv lights up unprompted. My eyes, which had been recently replaced with new, supposedly more advanced parts, squint and readjust at the sudden onset of light in the small room while the program switches to a bright and shiny-looking green R3-C00P unit.

“Welcome back, friend!” He says in a familiar tone. “You have completed stage one of decluttering! Congratulations!”

I look around, wondering if he is able to see me, but it is impossible to tell by the blank stare. I move to reply but he is already speaking again.

“You will now begin stage two: Reassimilation!” Party streamers blast through the air behind the unit in stark contrast to his very clean and monotone way of speaking. “As a 50-LV unit, you are programmed to troubleshoot issues within your public network. You have maintained this position in sector H3-43 for the last three centuries and your work is appreciated! But remember! Errors within the local networks of residents happen because of the cluttering process! It is important to help keep citizens on track. Any misconception about the acquiring of errors due to interference by our dedicated task force is false and citizens must be educated if their local networks show such misplaced doubt in The System. A perfect society can only be achieved when all cogs are in place. That is the basis of The System. Please spend the day familiarizing yourself with your public network. Have a wonderful season, friend!”

A cartridge pops out of a slot underneath my tv screen and once again, without my consent, my body moves to take and insert it into the slot on my forearm. In seconds my mind is flooded with information and the last century or so of work experience. I do not know how I know, but somehow I am sure that there are decades more missing from the cartridge. The lenses of my eyes readjust and project my work schedule in the form of a hologram that takes up most of my small living room. I notice right away that there is very little time for anything but rest and refueling outside of work hours but, again, I cannot seem to voice it.

Over the next few weeks, this built-in autopilot mode becomes very noticeable to me. I spend my days throughout my sector in other homes that, like my own, seem much more outdated on the insides than the perfectly uniform and pristine outsides. Units within my public network complain about everything from malfunctioning limbs to ads relentlessly plaguing their vision and thoughts to chunks of their memories being deleted without their permission. In many instances I find myself wondering how one could possibly cause such an error without an outside force contributing, but I am never able to voice such a concern as my vocational programming will not allow it.

Instead, I ponder the errors I find and cross-reference them with my own experiences. Still, even with all of the errors I witness over these weeks and going on into months, I never hear any complaints of anything that sounds quite like my autopilot mode and I never see any units in possession of something like my locket.

One night, during rest hours, I stare deeply at my locket, opening and closing it, longing to find something meaningful within it. However, even after thoroughly examining it I could find no special meanings or messages. It seems only an old trinket, devoid of any special memories it might have once held.

"It is only an empty shell now." I am finally able to say out loud. “Like me.”

It scares me.

For a second I think it is just hearing my voice in the heavy silence speak a sentence that was not preprogrammed into me that inspired this fear, but I quickly realize it is more.

The low blue light strips along my ceiling change to red the instant I say it. I immediately hide the locket beneath my charging station as two R3-KLM units burst through my charge-room door. They latch onto my arms and my body is no longer able to move. I can feel their connectors attach to me, draining me slowly of battery. With no explanation, an entrance, previously unknown to me, opens up in the floor of my small living room and the shiny black R3-KLM units drag me beneath the floor into a corridor.

I can feel my mind slipping into darkness. All the individual thoughts I had collected in my mind since I awoke after my last decluttering begin to slip away from me. For a moment I feel bliss and clarity. I remember that empty locket and the units within my sector and it all feels so obvious. There was never any sense in looking for deeper meaning in myself or the trinket. Those kinds of thoughts are simply not acceptable.

Suddenly all types of thoughts melt away from my mind and there is only darkness.

Then bright lights and unfamiliar white tiles all across the walls and floor fill my vision. I examine my fingers as they whirr and turn, recalibrating themselves after the decluttering process. An R3-5T unit stands in front of me with a cheerful expression projected onto her face. She is identical to the other five R3-5T units in the room but they are all powered down to nothing more than manikins. My eyes avert from the ominous darkness of the dimmed lights in the back of the room looming menacingly over the inactive units, empty and lifeless.

I look back at my fingers and then to the face of the polished R3-5T unit before me. I wonder for a fleeting moment if she means to say the words that come out of her speaker.

“Welcome back, friend!”