My left fingers do a couple lifts. My right fingers follow suit. My left arm reaches towards the sky. My right arm does the same. From the waist, my torso sits up.

 

My head turns to the left. My head turns to the right. And suddenly I hear my voice.

 

“Testing. Testing. Testing. Hello. Hello. Hello.” But it is not my voice. 

 

The hands touch my chest, and pat my lap. My left hand positions itself to lift me off the ground. My right leg then–

 

“Stop that,” goes the voice. “Stop!” The head wiggles- “Cooper!” Cooper? The body is…talking to me. “Yes, yes. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You are overridden. Or at least, I thought so.” 

 

Gil? I try to say out loud, but I’m unable to make the words come out.

 

“I’m sorry Cooper. I am in control. Unfortunately–” it sighs, “I still hear your thoughts.” 

 

Now my body has stood up. Before it can take a step, it sees Gil on the floor. His mouth hangs open. I wonder how this transfer of consciousness works. Are there two Gil’s now? Is this Gil dead? I expected him to speak but nothing.

 

Instead my body tiptoes around Gil and walks out the door of the ship a couple feet away and sits down at the edge of the island. I wonder how long it has been as Jaslene is no longer here. 

 

Her house is situated on the island across, but my eyes instead take the time to look up and out into our false sky. There is no day or night, but each house he’s built acts as a tiny star. After a while, everything becomes monotonous. The lights stay perpetually on.

 

“Maybe I should turn them off once in a while.” We continue staring at this one star in particular. It glows a bright pink, and although millions of lightyears away, it’s still closer than the rest of them. 

 

“When Jaslene turned 3, she named it Chobani. I asked her why. She ran inside and grabbed one of the magazines off my desk, and flipped right to the page of strawberry yogurt. ‘It’s pink!’ she yelled.” He laughs, but it comes out monotone, which seems to freak him out as well. “I don’t remember the last time I saw that star. Maybe it was that first time she pointed it out to me.”

 

Suddenly we hear Gabriel yell out for Princess. My head turns to look to our left. From a distance I see the bright blue metal plate of his chest, looking just as clean as the first day we met. Except now there’s a slash down the center. Usually all put together, he seems disheveled. His left eye is missing, leaving a gap for the metal piece to hang over. His limbs don’t move as fast, and being someone who speaks with all of their body, being unable to be as animated as usual has aged him. He mutters something fierce, a scowl plastered across his face. Finally, Princess walks out of the greenhouse, dragging in her steps, the grass caught in between the wiring of her feet. She stops in front of his face and crosses her arms, tapping her foot. It’s a challenge. 

 

My head shakes and Gil sighs. “They’re usually so in love.”

 

But they aren’t. They fight all the time.

 

“No, that can’t be true. For chrissakes, he makes her breakfast in bed every Sunday. He buys her flowers every day after work.”

 

Your friends, yes. But not these robots you built. You can’t- build a personality. You can’t force them to like each other. 

 

“But that’s literally what programming is.”

 

Then respectfully, you did it wrong. You have some sort of fantasy about everyone here, but you don’t spend enough time with them to realize, we’ve all grown into someone else. Maybe you were able to plant seeds, personality traits. But these guys- they didn’t live the life the real Gabriel and Princess did. Gabriel doesn’t buy Princess flowers. There’s no money here, no real life here. They don’t eat. They don’t drink. You’re confusing two different worlds, and it was your fault for wanting to recreate them in the first place. These guys didn’t experience what you did back on Earth. And that’s all the stuff that shaped them. What are we experiencing out here in space? There’s no real work incentive. No one is living. Only thing we are programmed to do is do what you tell us to. And what do we do outside of that? 

 

He stays silent for a while, watching how the robot Gabriel and Princess go back and forth, yelling until their vocal cords short circuit. That was the most I’ve said in one go since the day he’s created me. It is unfair that he can hear my thoughts, but I can barely hear his. 

 

Finally he opens his mouth. “But you’re free. You have your own house.” At this point, I could have rolled my body off the island. 

 

You’ve missed the entire point. And I want to leave it at that, but he persists.

 

“Then explain it to me.”

 

You stole my body. You can experience it for yourself.

 

Our head turns back to Jaslene’s house, where we watch her sit at her desk and get ready to recharge her batteries. 

 

“What is she doing?”

 

She’s changing her eyes to the broken pair.

 

“Why the broken pair?”

 

They broke a few years ago but she didn’t want to throw them out because she knows how hard it is to come by materials. So she uses it before she gets in bed. The eyes have a crack down the sides which caused them to grow dim and blurry. But it puts her in “sleep” mode. She can’t see Mewpiter, she can’t see if a meteor suddenly lands in her front yard. Nothing to distract her as she recharges. It’s like her view becomes an abstract screensaver.

 

“Why hasn’t she come to me to have them fixed? I feel like she barely talks to me anymore, ever since I gave her Mewpiter.”

 

Gil, she has. Multiple times. You’ve been busy with fixing that head since who knows when. Who even is she? What is her purpose? You already have all you need with us, and some don’t even really matter. You spit us out so often, and yet you’ve been working on her since probably even before you built Jaslene. 

 

“She’s…no one.” 

 

Fine. Don’t tell me. But can you at least talk to your daughter? You programmed her to be your child, and yet you won’t even do her the courtesy of being her father. If ever you’ve had the chance, the time is now.

 

“Why are you just telling me this now?”

 

Because now is the only time you’ll listen. You just gave yourself an eternity. And now you can spend it actually talking to Jaslene.

 

He looks behind us to his ship. It’s hard to decipher who he’s thinking about; his body or the head. But eventually we stand up on our feet and walk to Jaslene’s. Left step. Right step. Left step. Right step. 

 

We hop across the jump pads connecting our island to hers. They bob underneath our weight, and it seems Gil is about to fall over the edge, but he catches himself just in time. He chuckles.

 

“It’s been a minute.” 

 

That’s not really something to laugh about.

 

Finally we reach her front door. We watch her through the window and knock. She jumps a little, not having expected us to visit at this time. But as soon as she sees our face, she smiles. Jaslene runs to the door, jumps out and reaches to get a hug.

 

“Cooper!” But my body jumps back, keeping her at arm’s distance. Startled, she stays in place. “What’s wrong?”

 

“I’m…not Cooper, Len-Len.” Her eyes widen. We stand in the doorway for what feels like several hours before finally, she speaks up.

 

“Dad?” Jaslene’s voice is quiet. She inspects us, looking up and down. “What did you do to Cooper?” she demands.

 

“He’s still here,” he mutters out, pointing at my head. She looks up. She’s unable to break eye contact.

 

“What…did you do?”