stood on the ledge. The streets below bustled like the rapids. Though it was night it was still crowded. People didn’t seem to know of each other's existence, or care. The city never seemed to rest. The neon signs lit the buildings like the day. It was easy to lose track of time.  Only I could see the darkness because I was standing high above them. I closed my eyes and put my left foot out in the open air, ready to take a step. The sound of wind was all around me, but I felt nothing. I could only listen, trying to imagine how it would feel on my synthetic skin.

The programming wasn’t considered important, it wasn’t their priority to make me feel more human, only to look it. My aesthetic and specific functions were to make the ones around me feel more at ease. Father had even given me the ability to eat like a human. It was only an empty function for show. Father made me never know warmth, flavor, joy, or sleep. I was made to think like them, even have a face like theirs. But they never looked at me with the same recognition as their own.

I was made in their image but had no place with them. In public Father praised me as his gift to the world, talking of my amazing attributes. Alone he put me in an empty dark room, never cared for what I thought or had to say. I was the latest model of robotic assistants designed by him—we were made to look and act more human. Only fifty were assembled as a beta test group. I was Number Identifier 24, traffic patrol division, active for eight months now. Only after causing a problem did Father show some kind of interest in me. Even with the way Father felt and treated me in the past, it had meant nothing to me. Nothing had meant nothing to me. Now I don’t know what ‘nothing’ means.

A honk from below made me open my synthetic eyelids, my gaze falling on the building across the street. All of the lights were off except for the fifty-third floor. I focused my right eye to see the image. A lone light shone down on a man. He sat in his living room on the floor looking down at his hands, completely still, like a statue. I could see he was holding what I’d sent.

He was still wearing the suit from the funeral earlier today. I’d watched the service from a distant hill. I didn’t think he would want to see me again. It was the first funeral I’d ever seen. Everyone cried, some spoke. They placed flowers on the coffin and left. He was the only one who stayed behind to watch her be buried. He stayed after the digger droids had put the last shovelful of earth over her. I stood, watching him there for hours. I don’t know why I followed him home. Why I wanted to see him before I ended it. 

I couldn’t stop thinking about the accident.

I ran through my memory footage, calculating the outcome over and over, every time getting the same result. 

She was going to die. 

wanted to save her. I tried to help, even knowing the outcome. Why did he hate that I tried? I knew all of the facts, and still I felt something. It was the way he looked at me, like I was the one responsible for her death.

I could see her eyes, in my memory bank, looking at me while I ran her to the EMT. I felt guilty, or at least I think it was guilt. That is what Father had called it. When I looked at my hands I could see the blood all over them. None of this made any sense. It happened a week ago, but I could still see the blood. After the incident I started to have these thoughts and feelings. I wondered if a piece of her soul had passed over to me. Had her blood entered my system and made a piece of me human?

That day I had walked the street monitoring the sector for any disturbances. I patrolled this street five times a week, from 00:00 to 20:00 hours. Everything was uneventful, as on most days. I’d only experienced two minor accidents during my eight months of service. At 14:17 hours I heard the sound of an accident, around the next corner, no more than forty feet away. I ran at a pace of 10 mphs, so as not to hurt any pedestrians on the street. As I ran, I alerted the authorities and medical AIs.

A crowd was standing in the way of the two collided cars. One of the victims was out of his car and safe. He had a child, crying but unharmed. 

I went to check the second victim. The woman was not moving. Blood leaking onto the street from her car door. Designed with emergency first aid knowledge and motor rescue tools, I read her heartbeat and knew she wouldn’t last long. I pulled the door off in the safest way possible. She had been impaled by a piece protruding from the dash which pierced the left side of her torso. Because of the extreme loss of blood I knew it had hit her liver. To remove the object would cause her to bleed out even faster. The EMT was minutes out, but she needed immediate medical attention. I jumped over the car in a single motion and pulled off the passenger door with no resistance.

The angle on this side was safer for her to be detached from the car.

I changed my left hand to the proper tool and cut the protruding piece, then quickly moved back to her door. I carefully lifted her free, the piece remaining in her torso untouched. I pulled up the map in my eyes, I could meet them and help increase her chances of survival.

I ran at 40 mph despite the fact it added danger to the street. People watched as I ran past, a bleeding woman in my arms. The medical team was about a minute away.

I checked again.

Her vitals were much lower. The team wouldn’t be able to do anything. In the remaining distance she wouldn’t make it. Calculations told me to slow down, not to endanger anyone else, to let the team come to me and take her body. The facts told me she was already dead. There was no reason to fight. I slowed down. My run became a walk. People walking by had already lost interest in the scene.

er eyes looked at me, searching for any trace of humanity, like I was the only thing in the world. How true it was. I had learned about souls. I knew the concept. Only looking at her now did I finally understand. She reached into her pocket and took out a picture. She could say no words from fatigue, but I saw the picture of her smiling with her husband, holding their child. This was her plea, begging me to fight so she could see them again.

She lifted that picture as a plea. I read her heart rate, but nothing changed, and her vitals were steadily falling.

Something spread through me, a feeling I couldn’t describe. Everything stopped. I could only hear her heartbeat. Somehow I felt it in my own chest. With every beat it seemed to be saying to continue, to save her. 

That’s when I did it, something that defied all logic.

I ran faster to meet the medical team. I had never done anything against calculations before. I knew what the numbers told me—she would die in the next ten seconds, and I could not cover that distance. But still I ran. I couldn’t stop myself. How could I let her just die? How could I not try?

As I ran down the street with ten seconds left, I saw the EMT down a ways. I ran. Seven seconds left. I believed I could save her—I thought the impossible could happen. I ran faster. Five seconds.

Faster.

My chest seemed to feel tense and heavy, the same part that had felt the heartbeat. I came up to the medical vehicle.

Joy came over me as I stopped, ready to hand her over. I looked down at her. I was so focused I hadn’t noticed her vitals had flatlined.

She was already dead.

The medical AIs were the older models, ones without faces. Without a word, they brought out a gurney, wanting me to hand her over. They didn’t care that she was dead. They wanted to get to the next job. How could they not care?

I held her tight, not wanting them to take her away. Her blood was on my hands.

I laid her on the gurney slowly so as not to disturb her. Her eyes were wide, except the pleading had left them. Now her face was empty and unfeeling, like the two AIs that strapped her body down. While they were busy, I grabbed the picture that was still in her hand. I hid it in a compartment on my arm. They wouldn’t know what it meant. They worked mindlessly, emotionless. I stood there well after they left. Pedestrians passed me by, not wanting to interrupt their lives.

But I did. I wanted everyone to stop and acknowledge the loss of another human life. While I stood there, motionless, it began to rain. It fell on my hands, washing the blood off. The blood left me as she had. I wished that if I closed my fingers I could stop it. I wish I could give it back to her so she could see her daughter and husband again. I knew that these thoughts were pointless and I could do nothing else for her, but I couldn’t help but think them.

ather asked me why I had run knowing she wouldn’t make it. I told him my data was wrong. I thought she could live. That was the first lie I ever told. They ran thousands of diagnostic tests on me. Nothing came up. How could they prove I felt anything? Father watched the footage, said there must have been an anomaly, and told me to get rid of the memory. I told him I deleted it. The second time I’d ever lied. I couldn’t get rid of it.

I had sent the picture to her house to make sure her husband got it. Now he was holding it.

How could I forget her? If I erased it, who would remember her last moments? I would keep her death with me for as long as I lived.

After the incident at the hospital I talked to him, telling him how I tried to save her. I wanted to give him the photo then but he was angry, saying I should have let the medical team take care of her. He pushed me to the ground and walked away. I let him with no resistance and didn’t try to get back up until he’d left.

When I went back to the lab, Father and I talked. “You were only made to feel like us to understand us better,” he said. “What you felt wasn’t real, just a simulation for data purposes. Don’t let them fool you into feeling real.”

How am I supposed to know what is real and not? He’d never given me anything to understand feelings.

I leaned slightly forward over the ledge to see what the jump was like, to see if this was what I wanted. Looking at the sky I saw the stars, barely visible through the overcast and city lights. I thought of what they say about seeing everything in your life that had happened up to your last moments. I could do this at any time—all I had to do was review my memory bank. I ran through it, trying to find something that resembled happiness. I could find nothing that could be categorized as happiness. I wished I could cry, let out all of this pain. I knew nothing could ever come, no relief would be granted to me. The tears I could not shed weighed heavy on me.

A bright light shone down on me suddenly. I thought that Father had noticed my absence and come to get me. I was ready to jump if he found me. After a few moments nothing happened. The clouds parted revealing a moon almost as big as the sky, casting its light on me like the rest of the world, not discerning how I was different. I wished people were like the moon. I looked at my foot. It still hovered over the ledge in the air. I felt no tiredness from the strain.

I’d been made with a piece missing. After trying to save her, I got that piece and Father wanted to take it away. How could I go back to the way I had been? If they were going to take her memory from me, I was going to die knowing it. I couldn’t just forget. I knew I could never truly be like them, only watch them. I just wanted to stop being told it wasn’t real.

I didn’t even know if I could die. Maybe I would simply lose my human consciousness? I looked down again at the street, then at her husband in his apartment, and lastly at the stars. What would Father say about me? Would he care? Or would I be just another failed experiment? I wished I could be like them just for this moment, to be missed, to be mourned. The truth was I would be forgotten as easily as yesterday.

The moon was blocked by a cloud, covering me in darkness. It was my cue. I wondered if God cared for things like me. Soon I would find out. I took the step off the ledge.