Belong

Shyla ‘Lerun awoke to the sound of ringing alarms and rumbling. She sat bolt upright in her bed, reaching over for a plasma rifle she always kept beside her bunk. The sound of wailing didn’t cease, and the rumbling began shaking dust down from the roof of the shelter she slept in. Fumbling about for a purchase on her rifle, she didn’t find anything next to the soft mattress she was sleeping on.

It was at that point that she cleared the haze from her eyes, and actually took a look around her sleeping quarters. A semi-spacious room, littered with trinkets and personal keepsakes greeted her. A desk at the far wall, just beneath the curtained window, held a few pieces of broken machinery, and a screwdriver. The lamp next to the whole ensemble of screws and wires was still on, and flickered a little as the batteries inside it struggled to stay alive.

Shyla still heard the wailing, coming from her alarm clock next to her, and not the alarms of a barracks coming under assault. The plasma rifle she reached for didn’t exist, and she hadn’t kept one by her beside for nearly five years now.

The rumbling came from a human machine outside her ground-floor apartment lifting up the dumpsters outside, and depositing a week’s worth of trash into its gaping maw for compacting and transport to a waste plant.

The entire apartment was different, too. This one was decidedly made for a human, and she had come in and taken over with items that looked too sleek against the Humans’ blocky furniture and curios.

Letting out a sigh, Shyla rested herself back down against the mattress, and slammed her fist on top of the alarm clock. The digital readouts winked out, and the alarm gave one last warbling cry before the crushed circuitry gave up.

Shyla dressed for work and arrived on time, just like any other day. She punched her name in on the light-up screen, put on her coveralls that were too tight, placed her belongings in her locker, and walked through onto the factory floor.

Rows and rows of machines and robotic arms lined the floor alongside items in mid-assembly. Doors, windshields, axels, chassis, everything for the human vehicle industry.

Striding across the floor, she made courteous nods to anyone that she happened to catch staring at her. Moving into a side room with clear yellow windows, Shyla sat herself down at a desk with the rest of her team. Usually, maintenance workers didn’t need their own desks, or their own teams, but the sheer amount of machinery in the factory necessitated a centralised maintenance server, where tickets could be put into the system and addressed as soon as they came up.

“I got a dolly acting fritzy,” Markus said, tossing a belt over at Shyla. “Get down there and check to see what’s up, would ya?”

Shyla caught the belt and rolled her eyes, flexing her jaw muscles tersely. “I just got here,” she said.

Markus nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “And I’m already sick of lookin’ at ya.” He made a whistling noise, and jabbed his thumb towards the door.

Shyla stood up and walked back out of the room, leaving the five snickering Humans behind.

When Shyla got to the second floor, full of administrative workers and offices, the dolly was drifting in lazy circles, surrounded by a line of waste bins. Every now and then, the dolly would speed into one, knock into it, and emit a beep as though it were an animal, confused about why it was constrained.

It didn’t help that there was a small screen on the top displaying its current ‘emotion’. Shyla observed the screen, and noted that it was a pair of X’s for eyes, and a squiggly line for a mouth.

“Okay,” she said to it. “What ails you?” She tapped the side for the access panel, and it lifted itself up to reveal a mess of wires and circuits. She made a face, and patted the top of the dolly. “Who did this to you?” she asked.

The dolly beeped sadly, making a sad face on the screen atop it.

“Hey,” a voice said.

Shyla looked up at the source. A man in a pressed suit looked over his cubicle wall at her.

“What’re you doing up here?” he asked.

Shyla motioned her hand down at the robotic dolly in the circle of bins. “Addressing a maintenance ticket.”

“Yeah?” the man asked. “Well, don’t. We got it just the way we want it.”

Shyla tilted her head, and looked back down at the dolly’s screen. The X’s and squiggly line were back, as it drifted around her feet.

“I don’t understand,” Shyla said. “Why would you want this machine broken?”

“Because it’s useless,” the man said, eyeing her up and down and folding his arms. “So, every time it hits one of those bins, the person whose bin it is has to make everyone a coffee.”

“The machine dispenses drinks, does it not?” Shyla looked down at the dolly, access panel off, wires crossed and circuitry buzzing unhealthily. The man scoffed. “If you call them drinks. Just leave it.”

Shyla shrugged her shoulders. “I need to address the maintenance ticket.”

“Oh, who put the ticket in?” The man leaned over his cubicle wall and dropped his voice a bit. “Was it the snot-nose new kid?”

“I’m unsure,” Shyla shook her head. “They didn’t tell me.”

“Oh,” the man grinned wickedly. “So it might not even be a real ticket, huh?”

Shylah hadn’t considered that. She stood up to her full height, nearly brushing the ceiling with the tip of her head. The man in his cubicle looked up at her with a snide grin.

“If I were you, I’d head back downstairs,” the man said, sitting back down behind his desk. “Or, hell,” he laughed to himself, chewing his stylus. “Maybe you can find a bin to slam into. You and the dolly would have two things in common then.”

Shyla balled her fists and looked around the office. A few people were staring over at her. One woman busied herself with her desk Chatter once Shyla found her looking. Two men turned back around to the office server tower, and the last man at the far end pushed his door shut with a foot.

Shyla turned and left the offices, leaving the dolly to lazily spin in its circular motions.

“You’ll never be one of them, you know.”

Shyla took off the welding mask that didn’t fit, and switched off her ion torch, looking up at the woman who spoke to her.

“Excuse me?”

The woman motioned up into the offices above them, separated from the factory floor by catwalks. “You’ll never be one of them. They won’t let you.”

“I don’t want to be one of them,” Shyla put her mask back on and started up her welding torch. The human woman moved behind the Elite so she wouldn’t have to look at the burning whiteness.

“No? Everyone down here wants to be one of them, why should you be any different?”

Shyla didn’t answer, she just kept repairing the broken panel in front of her, welding the two halves of titanium plating together.

“What do you get out of coming over here?” the woman asked, tossing a toothpick over onto the linoleum floor, and sticking her hands in the pockets of her coveralls. “Is it for a thrill? A hobby? Do you get off on rubbing elbows with the primitives and toying with their machines?”

Shyla switched the torch off again, and stood up, turning to face the human. “Don’t force your insecurities on me. I don’t find humans primitive.”

“No? Last I checked, your people were colonising planets back when we were still using pointy sticks to stab each other. That’s pretty much the definition of ‘primitive’, isn’t it?” The woman folded her hands and cocked her head to one side.

Shyla paused for a moment, she didn’t see malice in the humans eyes, it was remarkably hard to gauge human emotions, but there was no hard edge to this one’s gaze. “Humans progressed from pointy sticks to space flight within a thousand years. It took us almost thrice that,” Shyla said. “We each have our strengths. Our people are not beholden to the standards set by the other.”

The woman said nothing. Shyla picked up the welding torch and slung the apparatus over her shoulder, walking past the human towards the maintenance offices.

“You’ll never be one of them,” the woman said again.

Shyla let the welder drop to the floor with a clang, spinning around to face the woman with a hard glare and flared mandibles. “I don’t want to be one of them, I only ever wanted to be me!”

The woman flicked her head towards the offices. “What if they won’t let you? What if they make your life a living hell?”

“Then I believe you humans would say ‘fuck them’,” Shyla said.

The woman laughed, pushed herself off of the robotic arm she was leaning on, and stepped up to Shyla with a smile. “You know what? You might never be one of us, but I think you’ll fit right in.” She hit Shyla on the shoulder, and stooped down to pick up the welder in her arms.

Shyla watched her leave, unsure of what to make of the human. Perhaps she was right, perhaps Shyla could belong.