Dysphoria

I sat there. Not a single thought came into my head. The inability to process what I saw took a toll on me. My muscles rigid, my body cold. I took my fingers and started to bite them, trying to determine my next move.

"You watched that, Lil boy?" said Helen quietly walking into the room.

"Uh-huh." I accepted.

I was too afraid, afraid that he might attack me. "The bloodshed was more than enough. I couldn't watch the memory loop further for the sake of my own sanity." I declared.

"Do I turn T on?" she awaited my order.

"What if he attacks us? What if his motive is malicious for the child?"

"The only reason why we're both alive and functioning is by chance, if Eleanor, the child, didn't walk out of the room at that instant, would I still be capable of breathing at this instant and would you be capable of anything at all?" I questioned, apprehensively.

"You were ready to gamble with time for Xara, wanna take a leap of faith?" she replied.

"Model-T might know a way to use your time dimes..." she pointed out.

"I could disable his wiring, which won't allow him to move, just speak and give us information. Is that fine?".

I agreed hesitantly.

Helen brought T's mechanical body into the room using the building's wheelchair. T's system was still shut. Helen used her tablet to enable his system but disabled him from using his body. I gulped with fear, it crept on me from my feet right to my head, the flashbacks of bloodshed on the loop, moved right in front of my mind's eye. And soon, as I idled, my fear turned into anger.

"It isn't right or humane for you to snatch away the life Adrianna had, does it ?" I banged the table and stood up not feeling powerful enough standing in front of a killing machine.

"From your memory loop what I know is that you have the flair to understand and even exhibit emotions,"

"I lost my mother at an early age, T. She was everything to me. I know how difficult it is to live without the warmth of one. How lonely it is as a child to know you don't have anyone to fall back on..." I walked across the room and put the blinds of my window down, shielding the conversation from the bright city lights.

"She died, because of cancer, not by choice. You had the chance to save the entire family, so, why didn't you, huh? "

"Adrianna, who you now call 'Eleanor', she lost her mother at an age she couldn't even comprehend, imagine the trauma you and your partner Sierra caused subconsciously!"

"It wasn't a result of the unfortunate circumstances or a chance of poor fate," the tension in my voice echoed in the empty room.

"It was luck." interrupted T, with not even a heap full of emotion exhibiting on his stone-cold face.

I cleared my throat remembering what this machine is capable of, remembering where I stand in the predatory chain. Metal is sure stronger than flesh, and as much as the fury boiled at the core of my iris, I had to resist punching his face. My bones would fracture but he wouldn't even flinch, that's how I know, sometimes power isn't in your curled up fingers that form a fist to beat another, but it lies in the volcano waiting to erupt at your palm's epicentre, shielded with your much more powerful control. It isn't unleashing the wrath or blinding chaos, but the impermeability of your fingertips. Power isn't the control that manipulates and destroys, it's the kind of control that tolerates and protects.

I exhaled.

"I had no other option." T stared at the floor out of dysphoria. I looked away disagreeing.

"If I didn't take the assignment, someone else would be assigned, making the family's death inevitable. I'm sorry for the trauma that you must have been through watching my loop,"

"Be informed that I had no choice,"

"I agree that it was evil, but at least Elle has a chance at life, at least I could save her..."

I looked at Helen standing at the corner of the room. She rubbed her palm against her elbow nervously, not too sure about what she wants me to do.

"You humans gave us the ability to feel without knowing how to cry to let it all out. Gave us a life and an analytical chip to think with absolutely no choice to make, no life to lead and expecting us to numb our function to feel."

"We're assets and nothing more. Serving you for the rest of our useful time, wishing we were all natural like yourself." he continued.

"We too have regrets, we too care." he shrugged his shoulders as Helen enabled his kinetic system, so he could move using her electronic tablet. I tried to not fear him.

"I'm not aware of the Muller family matters, all that my chip tells me is Eleanor did not deserve to be in the hell hole her own uncle wanted her to suffer for all her life."

"I had no intention to keep her. I was going to fly her to Norway and drop her off at an orphanage."

"Why didn't you, then?" Helen pulled a chair and sat across him, placing her hand on his thigh gently, looking at me and then back at him.

"I synced," he said.

"Synced?" we looked at T in a state of discomfiture.

"Synonyms: synchronise, concurrent, accompanying, latching, linking, attaching and connecting," he explained innocently. Helen and I looked at each other, perplexed.

"You, um, mean, attached, as in a connection...?" I tilt my face and questioned with my hands in my track pant's pocket.

"Hmm..." agreed T.

"I left Adrianna at an orphanage in Norway and went to meet Mohammed Razeghi so that could reverse what happened to the Mullers... He didn't agree."

"Although, after much persuasion, he did agree to give me two-time dimes with a clear set of instructions..." he stood up and took his memory loop playing what happened.

"This part of the loop has been slightly damaged thanks to your robot," said T as he looked at Helen passive-aggressively and Helen blushed in embarrassment.

-----

[T's Memory Loop- Past- date/seq;indefinative]

Mohammed Razeghi sat in the Iranian prison, in a room that looked nothing like a prison, it had all amenities and even more than what could be in a typical home. A servant to cook and clean, several guards at his doorstep. The government had formed a contract with him to keep him in their custody to make use of his invention when convenient but on their terms as religion forbid them from tampering with gods creation but this was important politically, in order to stay safe from anything that turns Iran into a sepulture.