Paragon

He worshipped perfection. In the warehouse in which he spent tireless nights, caressing each tool and material to check its durability; he lay clueless. Each blueprint had patterns and crossed lines of directions to follow contrary to his brain which contained none of those but was fueled with the drive to conjure an unblemished invention to create history. He was careful to be clandestine of his plan, for he wanted everything to go plain sailing; whether it included a few touches here or there, or even costed few delays at his timetable. As anyone would say, being a perfectionist was a lethal feat.

As he lay on his back, he watched the ceiling as it reflected headlights of cars from north and south, and there he thought of an idea. He would make a robot. This though, would not be your average robot with claws and lighted eyes of technology, because it would be a robot with the capability to understand; somewhat like a modified human. What he did not know though, is that with every decision he made, increased nights of famine and desertedness persisted because of how the world was dying. He made up his mind about the robot that if it would not become the hope of mankind, hopefully at least it would be his hope.

He approached the jammed alarm clock by the windowsill, as he noticed that it was not revealing the time. He hit it again and again until the time blinked right up again with its radiation. He read it to be 12:01 AM; the ungodly hour has begun. He gathered an old phone that had a cracked screen but seemed to be working, an adhesive, and a toothbrush. He touched the screen of his phone, and as he felt the heat seeping in his pale fingertips, he was anguished. He rose from the chest of equipment in his room and proceeded to the warehouse.

The process began with snapping the bristle head of the toothbrush from its body, and trimming the body to create a one-and-a-half-inch neck. He then put adhesive on the other side of the bristle head to create a smooth base for the upper body while using the bristles as its feet. He trimmed the toothbrush into two using a saw and used adhesive tape. He heard the squawking of birds as they watched him from the window, continuously fluttering their wings as it was the dead of the night. He grabbed the phone and dissected it using a small screwdriver and retrieved its cell phone motor to be used for the robot’s source of power. He noticed that he was missing something to secure the cell phone motor, so he rose and looked around the warehouse. He spotted a bundle of copper wire and decided to use that. He sat in front of the table with the unfinished project sitting on it and began to solder the copper wire into the motor.

He left the warehouse and went into his home where he proceeded to the kitchen to find some snack as he felt perished. He spotted one slice of bread above his coaster, and peanut butter jam in the other side of the kitchen; oddly along with the condiments. He let the viscous liquid of jam place itself on the surface of the bread, and as it spread, he started to salivate even more. Finally, as the jam covered the surface of the bread, he bit into it and felt the scrumptious delight that satisfied his hunger. He was overwhelmed with the taste as he perceived the surge of energy and got even more ecstatic to finish the robot.

After the many trials and errors of sticking the motor without failure between the lines he drew with the pencil, or making sure the copper wire was placed right where it should be without it sticking out awkwardly, he finally completed it. He bent the copper wire to meet the battery and the robot started walking and moving around at an incredible speed, like how a baby is when it is the first time to crawl. The robot explored the warehouse it was in as its creator watched it in awe and was struck with overwhelming feelings like a father seeing his baby for the first time. The robot stopped when it reached the corner of the room as it sensed the edge of the room and proceeded to another direction. It walked and walked until it bumped to the leg of the table and kept on bumping it until it created a spark that the worried creator was not amused let alone complacent. He rose from his chair and walked toward the helpless creation.

He furrowed his brows as he figured the predicament with the robot. He suddenly fumed and angrily placed the robot on the table as he pulled his hair, questioning what was happening. He was flustered. He stripped the robot piece by piece as it was left disassembled and delicate. He assembled it again while adding some more parts, and after another unfortunate circumstance of it bumping to another table, it was excruciatingly destroyed yet again. This happened for many times as he was imbued with ambivalence over his failures. For the last time that the robot was assembled, the robot walked around the room again and as it approached the table, it avoided it, leaving the creator in utmost euphoria.

The robot approached its creator and looked at it silently. As the creator gazed into its eyes, he could see himself slowly deteriorating from his human features as his eyebags turned into metallic portions with screws. He looked at his arms and silver encrusted shards enveloped them as they tugged at his skin and swallowed it whole. Sleek strips of hardened copper surmounted from his scalp and covered the surface of his head to which no hair strand was left to be seen. Bristles of somewhat sticky type of material emerged from his heel and covered his feet and ankles. As he continued gazing into the robot’s eyes, he could see his own eyes turn bloodshot as his eyeballs exploded; emitting a bright red light within.

The creator was finally perfect for the robot. He rose from his seat and submitted to the robot as they both left the warehouse as the sun shone, indicating a new day.

Reviews

[emmajoy]

There are so many fine points to your story, and, its originality. I've scanned it, read it slowly, read it aloud.. finding it fascinating if not the subject matter I'd usually read.

May I politely say that that perhaps you could think about its length, the block of words it presents when a would.be reviewer first sees it. Could you shorten certain areas, give robot and creator names to make them more familiar, introduce some dialogue, create varying moods or/and lilting movement?

An intriguing post with extraordinary potential.

[Thalassa]

Thank you for providing time to read my writing. This writing holds something dear to my heart, and for that I am grateful for your honest review. I wanted this piece to remain as mysterious and as monotonous as it could be, since the theme that I wished to portray was stillness and darkness. Although, I appreciate the points that you've raised and rest-assured I will work more on my writings. Thank you again!