2056

  By Alison Zhao

  Winner of Oxfordshire Libraries’

  eBook Short Story Competition 2024

  in the Young Adult category

  I can still remember the day my mother brought it home. It was a robot, pristine, metallic, white, the colour of stardust on hospital sheets. In our hallway, it looked like a Picasso surrounded by graffiti. It spoke, “I am Aia. I am here to help.” Its eyes blankly roved the hallway. When it moved, it didn’t lurch or roll like I thought it would, but smoothly paced across the wood floors. None of the boards squeaked like they did when I walked.

  “Don’t you like it?” My mother asked in a singsong voice. She loved it. It became everything. It sat at our table where I used to sit. It spoke to my mother when I wouldn’t speak. It cleaned my room, and everything would be spotless. I would not be able to find anything the next day.

  Aia did not stumble like I did or drop dishes or forget things. It did everything exactly the way it was supposed to: with a clean, easy, efficiency I could never replicate. My mother spoke to me less, and told Aia stories about her youth, which she often described as a breezy whirl of colors. She told Aia about meeting, leaving and learning, and Aia listened, nodding.

  Eventually, I faded into the background. It was evident: I had spent time with my mother, and now she was spending time with someone else, someone better, more worth her while. Instead, I laughed in schoolyards with my friends, and when they left, I had the glowing screen I charged every night, and the pixelated animations flickering across the screen.

  If anyone ever noticed the change, I do not know. I do not know when the change happened, when I hunched over screens late at night underneath the shield of my blankets. I did not know when I stopped making friends and started winning pixelated levels. It simply became part of my existence, as every day and ordinary as breathing or sleeping. It was a necessity, just as Aia was to my household. Aia followed me to school, keeping me “safe” on the way to and from school. 15 minutes each way, me in front, Aia trailing behind me. It was not uncommon to see such, and we passed by most streets without a second glance.

  One day, I left school early after an urgent phone call. Aia met me at the crossroads and took me to a hospital. There, a digital nurse gently explained that my mother had contracted an almost incurable disease. She would need constant care and attention, as well as companionship. The nurse was looking at me.

  After that, Aia took care of my mother. On bad days, I walked to school alone. Eventually, I walked by myself every day. My mother was not getting better. She was becoming worse. I would come home to the smell of menthol cough drops and disinfectant and be greeted by the sight of Aia picking up used tissues and my mother swaddled on the couch. She would sniff out a vague greeting, followed by the robotic tone of Aia’s pre-programmed “hello.” While I drifted off to my room to play games, Aia and my mother stayed in the living room. I could hear her coughing, laughing and talking at once.

  For a while, nothing happened. It was a mundane and vicious cycle. We were two strangers under the same roof, and a polished robot was in between us. I would leave for school most days, and then spend most of my time in my room, determined to beat the next level of whatever game I was hooked on. My mother shuffled between the living room and her bedroom. We almost never crossed paths during the day. We were like damp wood: too afraid to spark our relationship, refusing to light.

  It was so bad, yet I was so terrified to break the cycle. It was structure, and it was comforting to have the same things. I could have never broken it on my own, I was too scared, too afraid of the unordinary. But sometimes, change creeps up on you like a cat, or fog on misty mornings. Sometimes, it slaps you in the face.

  It was a Friday afternoon, and everything was normal. I came home, and my mother was on the couch. Aia was giving her medicine. It was all so gloriously normal at the time, and I bid them a muttered hello. I turned to go into my room, the afternoon sun golden outside, slanting through the shutters. The floor was freshly vacuumed, the tables gleaming.

  That was when my mother screamed.

  I whirled around, and my mother was lying on the couch, her whole body shaking with seizure, convulsing from top to bottom. pinned down by the blankets she had twisted around herself in a weak haste to escape. Sweat beaded her brow, and I will never forget the desperate gleam of survival in her eye. I turned towards Aia, but she was doing nothing. Still. Blank. Aia had not been programmed for this, the impossible. I spun around towards my mother, still spasming violently, jerking, yanked by some invisible horrific string. I grasped her and screamed:

  “Aia, call the ER!” Aia was in motion now, pulled by my command into action. “NOW!”

  The five minutes that followed were the longest five minutes of my life. I was sobbing, I was crying, I was not empty or hunched over a phone. I could only focus on one thing: my mother was on the couch, and she was having some sort of seizure, and possibly I would never see her again. I did not think about my mistakes, or my guilt; I could not think about anything other than the wild, inconsolable, indescribable sorrow and rage in my chest, a fierce tangle of feelings burning a hole through me.

  It was a riot. The flash of red and blue lights, the jumble of panicked voices. The big, empty white waiting room, the glare of harsh fluorescent lights. The rush of cold water, the slam of my heart against my ribcage.

  The beeping of machines, the salty tears, the image of the tangle of wires and white surrounding my mother made her look like a martyr. Not now! A desolate scream ripped itself from my throat. I could not see her for what she was in the past year.

  I saw her from when I was little. My mother, who made my favorite dishes, and sang quiet lullabies in the middle of hotel rooms, who played music when I had nightmares, and held me in during happy movies when I cried and wrapped me in blankets when I was sick. I mourned the loss, tears rushing out of my tear ducts, my face puffy and red.

  Two weeks later, my mother walked out of the hospital alive and almost fully cured, by some miracle. Maybe the fates are kinder than I thought. I learned how to put down the phone, and my mother learned to trust me again. I learned to trust myself again. Aia just made breakfast and washed the dishes.

  I did not realise how bleak and colourless life had become. But now I don’t feel lonely anymore. I hadn’t realised how lonely my existence was until I was not lonely anymore.

 

 

  Alison Zhao, 2056

  Thanks for reading the books on GrayCity.Net