Hidden Nature by Goro Fujita

They’d told her of the benefits of cyberization. They’d said she would live forever, learn everything, forget nothing.

But they didn’t tell her that one day she’d be left alone.

Jo wandered through the Facility, scanning the tree roots coming through the walls, measuring their progress. The screws in her legs squeaked with every step. She had two days until the building collapsed. Two days to decide her future.

She turned right into the main hall and gazed at the rows of robots lining the walls, empty shells of chrome and steel waiting for souls that would never come. She walked up to the nearest carcass, her spray-painted fingers falling just short of touching the hull. She could see her face in its polished reflection — or what had become her face, an inexpressive triangle with glowing orange eyes that couldn’t wink, couldn’t frown.

It would take minutes to transfer her consciousness from this rusted body into a new one. Minutes to start anew in a body once reserved for someone else. They weren’t coming; the Great Data Wipe had deleted humanity without so much as a whisper. Jo dropped her arm to her side, pushed a loose wire back into place, and left the room without a backward glance.

Down the corridor, in what had once been the maintenance closet, was her slice of heaven. There were no mirrors, no screens. Nothing to remind her of what she had become. Only a calendar on the wall, to remind her what day it used to be, back when days mattered. It was here that she’d carefully spray painted her body green in an attempt to recover the hidden nature inside. It was here that she’d decided to wear a skirt, because even after all this time it didn’t feel right to walk around without clothes.

And it was here, in the middle of the room, that she was growing her new body. A real body.

Her last body.

She switched to infrared vision and checked the temperature of the shell, sprinkling water across the top to minimise the chances of cracking. Two days left until the building collapsed. One day, twenty-three hours and fifty-two minutes until the body was ready. And that was assuming her calculations were correct; biological data was much more difficult to predict.

Jo cut off the electricity to her eyes to have a moment of darkness, to better hear the steady thump of her new body’s heartbeat. She missed the ability to laugh. The feeling of sunshine on her forehead. The brush of fabric against her skin.

She missed living — and all of its frailties.

Jo poured more water onto the shell, and watched, and waited.

(Cross-posted from the Writers’ Discussion Group Weekly Writing Excercise.)