Glutinous Metals!

The fly escaped through the tight net that Elisa has built in all around her property, in particular the kitchen area where most of the flies see though the tiny holes and slip through to land themselves in the juicy boiling soup she has been making for her and three-year-old Bappy (A hybrid child, conceived through metal engineering means, when life on earth were meaningful and emotions bred a sense of security and stability.

Nowadays, people handle things differently. Its metabolic system doe

s not like jarred foods. Elisa has been told by the local Metalcist that there is no way you should shove stuff like that in its mouth, because its fibres and the mixture of liquid fibres and the inner walls of the gut system of these hybrids isn’t compatible - it creates no beneficial nutrition and all they do they just release it into the outside. 

This has been going on for a few days. And Elisa, being an inheritor of a whole human past, was never ready to consume such information in a way that would convince her that Bappy would not last long if he continues to defecate everything and not grow.

She recalls the metalcists advising to give these machines only liquid substances that contain no fibre and no sugar. Because they are machines, and machines don’t take the role of a human on steroids very well. 

Elisa blamed the flies and the deteriorating conditions outside for Bappy’s condition. No one considered any valid evidence of this shortcoming. She was stubborn enough to challenge the official line that comes from metalcists and their association. But Bappy has no energy. His intellectual functions are Elisa gets out of it as much as she can. She types the prelogs onto him every evening, ready for tomorrow’s tasks. Stuff Bappy has to do - things like picking up groceries, warming up home, prepping bike for the journey, cleaning and tidying up, fixing any issues in the maintenance side of things, cleaning garden and updating security features in the logs, answering any enquiries and preparing the calendar for the days ahead. The pre-logs are a task that has a lot of elements of care to it. For instance, she has to be careful not to overload its system with rubbish, stuff like misspelled words, difficult intentions or criminal intent. These machines cannot operate effectively in that setting and environment because they lack sociability and respond poorly to overload demands. When she first got Bappy, a month later she needed to go to a Metals Consultant to get the best advice on how to materialise all the advice she had received on the prelogs and how to utilise the best outcome for the benefit of her needs. But the consultants gave the secret away by telling her a few insights into how to handle baby metals. For instance, she couldn’t do reframing on Bappy. Reframing is a conduct of past deeds into the memory of Bappy. Do not turn Bappy into a who failed to become what you wanted them to become. Reframing also works when you override systems, natural systems on your hybrid. For instance, if you decide that one day you had a bad day and that you want to smash information onto overload and splinter his memories, diversify his attention into multiple platforms simultaneously and non-stop as if to create a system of consistent barraging combined that with your bad moods and neurosis. You can’t do that. Whether it’s reframing on a scale that undermines the autonomy of Bappy or any other measure of self-indulgence, it’s not allowed. It has to be within the margins set by the regulator. Here, the Digi-Council will determine any readjustments to the process. All you need to do is pay for things based on need. So it isn’t on a first-come,first-served basis. Means-tested and properly checked out, the likes of Bappy are not just some kind of objects that are tangible enough only for the interests of a human, an enclave, or a group of human stock - no. It’s wrong to think that Bappy and the other Bappy’s are some sort of bygone stuff that are not self-fulfilling in itself. They are not prone to succumbing to human nerves and human sentiments. For Elisa, the difficulty arises when she thinks about the past that had encapsulated her life, to think properly about the effects that kind of behaviour would have on her relationship she is building with Bappy. Elisa is a human being. Beyond that, she is a human who thinks and has feelings. Those feelings are quite complex and can ostracise her from a deeper sense of security for herself. Bappy comes second, but then Bappy is a safety mode that keeps her secure within her rebounds. 

Bappy would feel occasionally unhappy. He would express his distress by throwing plates over the window or by catching birds and killing them, smashing them against the wall or even chasing cats around, catching them, peeling their skins off and then packaging them as if they were chicken thighs for Elisa to consume. A few times Elisa ended up going to hospital because of the nefarious behaviour. But Elsa forgives. She gives up for not hurting the feelings . She takes it personally and is very protective of Bappy. 

But now, Bappy is sick. Feeding himself into the grid is something he cannot do. He cannot do all the duties at home. He is sick, and he is very conscious. Elisa doesn’t know that. She is immersed in the day to day living and finds it hard to concentrate and look after Bappy too. Wherever she can, she spends a bit of time trying to figure out what is happening to him. Days go by and nights too, but Elisa isn’t sure what to do next. She conducted all the necessary diagnostics to check the problem and understand what is happening in his system. After having it checked with the Orbital Resource and Recovery Hub, a futuristic hospital based in orbit, they concluded she needs to let go of Bappy and contract another Bappy. She does not agree with that. After she took Bappy back to Earth. The winds encompassed most of the Earth. Strong winds that do not obey any other natural order of things. Stuff is becoming dodgier on Earth. The migration of humans, whatever remained on Earth, was increasing. Elisa sees the earth not merely as a memory but as a hope for the future, a hope for improving and changing things. It’s like a restart. A second chance to begin something new. 

She ploughed on for a few more days. 

She then had strange dreams. Stuff that you get lost just by entertaining the idea of it. She would see Bappy turn into a proper human. Like a father figure to her, advising her and recommending swordfish for dinner one night. The belatedness of the feeling, the softness of his skin when he touched her cheeks and gave her a smile and hugged her immediately, for Elisa was not just impressionable; it was deep and ever so reaching. She looked him in the eye and couldn’t think of anything else apart from her dad’s face. She remembers only a few minor details of her dad when he was alive, and she was only twelve years old. He was a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, strong, forty-two years old. The mother was never there. A head nurse at a local hospital, she would spend more time at work rather than attending children. She was too busy earning a living. He was less so. He would spend a lot of time shutting himself away in the cabin and working away. Elisa never knew what he was working on. The shed was at the far-end of the back garden, facing onto the national park next to it. Elisa and her siblings would roam the garden, playing. Her little brother was into football, Donna was into dolls, and Elisa would spend hours just circling around her daddy’s shed, trying to sneak in and peek in to see what he was up to. 

The tragic day of his death. Elisa and her siblings were playing in the garden. The weather became gloomier; she could see her dad working away in the shed. The light is emanating from a distance. Elisa was as happy as she could be. She had always liked rainy days. Looking up at the sky to see gathering storms always gave her thrills. She would invite her siblings to head out and play together. Harpit would never come. Fear always gripped him. Donna would be more than willing to oblige. They would play outside even when it was pouring. The father would concentrate on his work. The only time he would attend to their attention was when they were hungry and three of them would knock on the door of his shed and demand food. Sometimes they would spend two to three hours until he would appear just like a giant cyclops in front of them and ask what they were asking for. 

That day, a tremendous explosion inside her daddy’s shed erupted. The explosion shattered the stuff inside into smithereens. The building itself was intact. Elisa and her siblings were inside reading books. The explosion was pretty big. Simon, the next-door pensioner neighbour, knocked on the front of the house to find out what happened. Elsa had opened the door and told Simon what she had seen ‘Daddy’s on fire, I think. I am scared.’ Simon had called the emergency services and the police. Despite several days of investigation and searching, the team never located Elisa’s dad’s body. The explosion was so penetratingly severe that it actually melted any physical form inside the room. An explosion that is uncommon in the gravity-prone life on Earth. An explosion that is allergic to air but can destroy anything hard and physical, anything that resists its wrath. 

For Elisa, this has made no sense. 

For the police, this was very suspicious because they thought that this was more than just a usual explosion by a mad person. 

They wanted to get to the bottom of it . But never did. 

When mother came home that day, she was absolutely distraught but knew that something was rather not right with her husband. So she cooperated with the authorities, and they came to a sort of conclusion and found out what had happened to her husband. But she was glad and happy that her children hadn’t suffered and that anything else would not be the same, ever again. 

Years have gone by since then. Elisa never recovered from the thought of her dad perishing. After over fifteen years, once she graduated from UCL, Elisa got a job in the Department of Defence in London. She would tell her friends that she is not cut out for that kind of job, but she is doing it because she has to do something. ‘I guess,’ she would say. 

After a long seminar held by the organisation that contracts all weird projects within the state - called Tetranus, she was heading home one day and a person emerged from a black SUV in front of her entrance to the flat. The streetlights were off on that day because some work was undergoing down the road. Elisa couldn’t see much. The gentleman approached her and said nothing, but gave her a letter. She accepted out of fear. He was wearing a long white overcoat and had dark glasses, funnily enough. He went walking back to the car quickly. Elisa walked up the steps to her flat quickly, too. He turned the light on and opened the letter fairly fast. A blank page with an inscription “DOLMERHYPO”. She knew what that was. It all made sense to her. She sat in the chair next to the mirror and looked herself in the mirror opposite and all she was seeing was her father’s silhouette telling her of his fears and his life and his messed up conjectures, his regrets that he saw little of his kids or he wasn’t gentle enough to look after them properly, or his last kiss that he wanted to receive from his eldest and the regret of keeping his kids forever, waiting outside his shed door. Regrets that he could’ve gotten more out of his time to be a bit more malleable and nearer his family. 

***

The letter stated, ‘You cannot handle the inbreeding of this magnitude.’ You need to leave Earth, and the Digi-Council can sanction your migration. Just say so and I will make it happen’ The letter read. 

DOLMERHYPO was hard stuff to swallow. The migration wave was in full swing now, and Elisa needed to leave and evacuate from Earth. Only metallic components are to stay and thrive here. In Patagonia, the metallic structures of former live have reemerged as a genuine threat, militarily and technologically. Now they are threatening to endorse the recent under-earth spineless swarms emerging from the depths of the seas and forming an alliance against anything that is human and made of blood and flesh. 

They are approaching closely. Bappy is getting better, but she needs to keep away from it. She placed Bappy in the Termine Hub because he eats, defecates, and attempts to mate with her. Things have changed of late. Elisa needs to decide. 

I wish this were easy. She said to herself when she picked up the nightgown before heading all naked inside the Termine Hub.