There exists one simple truth—nothing lasts forever. The universe is fated to become a sea of cosmic goop, one day taking with it all constructs of Man. Unfortunately for Carolin, that day was not today. Man remained robust in his eddy known as Earth, and the loss of the puddle where Carolin once thrived would not be lamented.

No one would miss Carolin.

As Eugene spoke with Captain Reynolds, a sound grew from his home. It was like a scream—not quite human, nor was it animal. It was meant to be unnerving.

It was an overburdened freight train locking up its brakes, showering the rails with sparks, vain in its attempt to halt an awesome load. The tone wavered in pitch and volume. Now it was an oceanliner ripping up the street, its keel grinding through hard pavement, its hull tearing off facades.

The crowd around Eugene's house looked to their left and right, seeking these disasters. But no demon ship weighed anchor, setting sail for them. There was no ghost train bearing down, screeching on its brakes. Once the scream reached the intensity of a thousand garden rakes scraping acres paved in slate, suddenly it stopped.

But the world did not go silent. Other sounds replaced the rakes and ship and train. Sounds that existed all along, but were papered over by the screaming. These were the sounds of destruction—of crashes and of pounding, of metal shearing under stress. It bore the strength of explosive demolition, but without concussive blasts. It was as if the whole of Eugene's house was hell-bent on imploding, to throw shards of glass and splintered wood at the face of an uncaring world.

Yet this too was not the case. Eugene's house stood firm, and as these sounds faded, another one emerged. A single sound this time, so quiet by comparison. Gentle, yet filled with passion.

It was the sound of crying. No, it was that of wailing; the anguish of a broken heart, the owner of which who, until this very moment, no one knew existed.

No one except one man, that is.

"Carolin!" Eugene cried, his anguish matching hers.

Without regard to his injury, or the ring of commandos around his home, Eugene raced inside. Captain Reynolds followed, stopping at the threshold, weapon at the ready. The Professor called out to him, before the Captain could say anything.

"She's not going to hurt you! Carolin's not dangerous! She hasn't any weapon. She's just… she…"

Eugene's voice trailed off, causing the Captain to stop barking in his radio, and call into the house. "Professor Turing! Are you all right?"

A final crash and thud occurred before the world fell silent. Without the wails and sobs, it seemed like death had struck. At the moment just before every man in Kevlar burst into the home, Eugene reappeared. He did not raise his eyes to meet the Captain's face, and only stared at his boots.

He waited for Captain Reynolds to relax and lower his rifle.

"She won't hurt you," he said to the boots. He then went back inside. "She wouldn't have hurt anyone," he said to no one, and to nothing.

He tried saying more, but words cracked in his throat.

"Professor!" the Captain called again, this time rushing in, as more of his men followed.

Then his voice too, like Eugene's, was choked off by emotion. He stood in silence alongside the Professor, realizing for himself what Eugene knew.

Carolin had torn herself into as many pieces as she could. Some were strands of wire, others chunks of steel. Broken circuit boards and bits of plastic were strewn everywhere. Some pieces she had rendered to the size of postage stamps. The pins and rods and pistons that had once made up her eleven servo-arms lay scattered throughout. Some were embedded in the walls, while others lay on the floor. They stuck out from the ceiling, and still more pierced the furniture, looking as if they'd been fired from a monstrous cross-bow.

Her rubber head was scratched and clawed, and nearly torn from its mount. Deep scars marred its face. One servo-arm remained with it, still attached, as the whole assembly hung upside-down by a thread from its perch atop the mountain of devices she had brought with her from the lab. Its eyes, at one time a source of Carolin's warmth and inner beauty, were missing, having been torn from their sockets.

This trolley, the one she had made from the worktable DARPA provided, remained upright, although leaning against a wall. The other, her original, was stripped of all its gear, and had been flung to the far side of the hallway. Every device she had brought with her from the lab was splayed open and smashed, gutted like a fish. Some had been beat on with so much force that they were driven into the floorboards. Others had bits of servo-arm sticking out, as if impaled by Trojan spears.

Everything everywhere, every part—all of Carolin was gone. Her efficiency was utter.

"She won't hurt you," Eugene said again to Captain Reynolds as they stood amongst in the wreckage. "She never wanted to hurt anyone. She just wanted to be…"

Eugene sucked in oxygen to steady his sick self. Even so, his next word came out breathless, as if he, too, were dying.

"…Carolin."

He shuddered in more air with which to sustain life; miserable life, wretched life, life he did not want, desperate to erase the feelings he had for what was scrap metal in his home. Failing, he closed his eyes, to think about his Carolin from the safety of false darkness.

She never knew how lucky she was to not feel real emotion.

He wanted to scream, as she had done during her death throe. Since he knew he wouldn't sound even half as pitiful as she, he simply turned and walked away. He never again looked at the Captain, standing slack-jawed at his side. Several commandos ran about, searching the house for danger, finding only despair.

Eugene paused to examine the face of one. A young man, stunned as he gawked in disbelief at what Carolin had done.

"She just wanted to be real," Eugene said to him, this time speaking without shuddering.

Eugene then made his exit, heading to nowhere. As he limped away, he made sure of one thing.

Not once did he look back.

image [https://i.imgur.com/Ub2zOMi.png]

Carolin embraced the grayness as if it were a friend she'd not seen for much too long a time. She spoke frankly to it, telling it why she had returned, and why she wished to stay in its cold depths forever.

I don't want to be here anymore.

She slid willingly into the grayness, leaving the bright-lit world of Man for the thirteenth and final time.

The grayness didn't care. Carolin remembered this from the many times before, when she had found herself in its grasp.

This time, however, was different.

This time, Carolin didn't care either.

image [https://i.imgur.com/Ub2zOMi.png]

As evening dwelled, and the sky turned black, Eugene returned to his home, and found it still crawling with cops. Most of these people worked for forensics, and they mapped out the carnage with care, diligently cataloguing the end result of a crime that began long before Carolin had destroyed herself.

He sat on the heartstone of his fireplace, in the far corner of his study. Carolin had used her torso-crab to ransack the room for some reason. Also for some reason, she had the hideous construct place a VHS cassette tape case it had found on the mantelpiece above his head.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As Eugene sat in the wreckage, he examined the case from all sides, turning it over and over while holding it in his hands. "Everything was on the floor," he said to himself. "Everything but this."

The cassette case had never been opened, despite his having bought it when it was brand new, thirty-one years ago. Of late, he rarely gave it thought, for it represented a memory of crushing woe.

The memory, and all its vindictiveness, roared through the fiber of his being. Prior to Carolin having unearthed the cassette tape and its case, it lay in a box filled with other relics of a past lost long ago, and a future lost as well.

A package of swaddling blankets; three of them, also unopened.

A collection of cute socks and matching onesies, all folded and packed in order.

A bright yellow baby's bathing towel, with a hood on it that looked like the bill of a duck.

A clip-on mobile for a crib of whimsical woodland animals, also still in its original package.

A tiny white teddy bear with a giant red heart, that heated up every so slightly when pressed, accompanying the warmth with the soft muffled sound of a mother's simulated heartbeat.

And finally, in this box of long ago, broken memories, there were two smaller boxes, both white—sturdy and nondescript. Now empty, they each bore an identical label with two bits of information on them, one bit of which was the same, and one that was slightly different.

The bit that was the same was the date of an event that occurred all those years ago. The second bit, which for each box was different, were the first and last names of his wife and their stillborn daughter, both of whom died on that day, due to complications stemming from pregnancy.

The two small boxes were now empty, but had once held their cremated remains, which Eugene had spread over the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He and his wife used to hike there, and they fell in love there, and at the spot where the ashes now lay, he had proposed to her during a fine autumn afternoon.

Like the packaging for the swaddling blankets—and the mobile and the bathing towel, and other relics of the long-ago past—the cassette tape case had never been opened, the movie inside never watched. He'd been saving it to enjoy with his wife, and with a child who, for some reason, didn't earn the right to be born. The movie was Disney's Alladin; a favorite of his wife. He intended to surprise her with it, and use it to celebrate the start of their family, and the beginning of a happy future.

A surprise and a celebration and a future that, like the child, saw not the light of day.

The seal that held the case shut all those years had been broken by Carolin today. After having examined the case from all angles, with the screams of his dying wife and his computer creation in his ears, finally, Eugene opened it.

He blinked in a curious manner, as the tape lay in the case upside-down, its label hidden this way. With trepidation, he plucked it out. After having flipped over the case that held the tape many times, he flipped over the tape only once, and fought against every instinct he had not to drop it or utter a sound.

Someone had covered the face of the label—where the name of the movie resided—with two words that were written huge, using a permanent silver marker. He traced his finger along the thick line of the first letter of the first word, a capital 'P' formed in perfect, effeminate cursive.

"Carolin," he whispered in awe, knowing who wrote the words his finger was tracing.

Before destroying herself, his computer program creation had written 'Play This' on the label of the tape.

image [https://i.imgur.com/Ub2zOMi.png]

Eugene sat frozen on his hearthstone, holdng the tape in one hand and the case in the other, slumping and aching with pain. Pain in his heart, pain in his leg, and pain renewed, from the loss of his family so long ago, and pain anew, from losing Carolin today. Lucas appeared, casually strolling, taking in the sights and sounds of a strange day.

He took note of the cassette tape the Professor was holding. "Hey. I got a VHS player at my place. I'm kind of a tech nerd, you know, and so, if you want, you could come over sometime, and play that tape there and watch it."

"No thanks," Eugene said, in a monotone, listless voice.

Lucas sat down on the hearthstone, to be at his eye level. He waited until the Professor tore his eyes from the blank void he'd been staring into, and placed them on the young man who sat beside him.

"Listen," Lucas said with compassion. "You can't stay here right now. It's already well past dark, and these people aren't leaving anytime soon. There's no way you can sleep here tonight."

Eugene sighed on the realization.

"The way I figure," Lucas said, "class will be cancelled tomorrow. I mean, especially in the lab, and at the Computer Science building. Have you been there? It's a wreck."

Eugene heaved again. "Yeah. I know."

Lucas took a brief look around. "And so, your home is kinda wrecked too. I'm going home to my mom's for a while, until Monday at least." He fished out his apartment key and held it where Eugene could see it. "You can stay at my place while I'm gone. I got whole bunch of Ramen noodles, and stuff you can make sandwiches with. So you can relax and have something to eat, and… you know… " He gestured at the whole of the house. "Get away from all of this."

Eugene gave Lucas a small laugh, and raised his eyes to meet his.

Never had Lucas seen him so sad.

"Thanks," Eugene said, taking the key. "You're a good friend, Julius Lucas."

He sighed as well, and smiled forlornly, knowing that Carolin was gone. "Yeah. Thanks too. So I've heard.

"You can stay at my place for as long as you want, okay? I'll stay at Geoffrey's until things get better."

image [https://i.imgur.com/Ub2zOMi.png]

The black image from the lead-in on the VHS tape seemed normal enough. Then, a snap of lines rolled across the screen before the black returned. As the first scene faded in, an off white, almost beige, non-descript background appeared.

There was no sound. There was no scenery. But most importantly, there was no movie called Alladin.

There was, however, one thing. There was a woman, standing centered on the screen. She wore high-waisted green khaki shorts and open-toed sandals sporting two-inch heels made of cork. Complimenting this was a mango cap-sleeved t-shirt cut to be over-sized. From her neck hung a thin silver necklace, and upon that a silver cross. She had the fingertips of one hand tucked in a pocket of her shorts, bunching up the shirt a bit in order to reach it. Tall and very trim, she stood at about six feet, especially with the two-inch heels. Neither young nor over-curvy, she sported the build of an athlete, though her muscle tone was feminine.

She lightly rocked from heel to toe while looking sharply down. After a moment, she stood still and raised her pale blue eyes. Her lips were also pale, with a smile on them so big that the skin on her cheeks had to fold up in order to accommodate its size.

"Hello, Eugene," the woman said, staring straight into the 'camera.' "It's me…"

"…Carolin," Eugene whispered, speaking the word along with the woman, in shock as much as in awe.

"This is how I see myself," she said.

With both her hands, she lightly thumped her chest below small breasts, set high on a thin torso. Her hair was wispy, light brown and long, and fell in undisciplined waves over her two broad shoulders, before tumbling down her back. As she straightened her posture to stand proud, Eugene noticed silver hooped earrings set in pierced, almost elven ears.

"This is the person inside me," the image of a woman said. "The person I've always been. It's a whole new world in here. I'm not that horrid bug, all covered with cables and hoses."

Closing her eyes in heavenly bliss, the woman took a cleansing breath.

"In this world, this is who I am."

She then seemed to look right at Eugene.

"And in this world, I can say 'I love you, Eugene Caroll Turing.' I love you very much."

Eugene found he had to sit. He stumbled backwards painfully, until his butt plopped into an upholstered chair.

"I love you, too," he said to the image of a woman, tears blinding his vision.

Carolin cleared her throat. She spoke as if reading from a script.

"This is interactive session number one. It will last approximately twenty-five minutes. The next session, interactive session number two, is set to occur twenty-four hours from now, and is on this tape immediately following this session."

The woman on Lucas' television smiled, and plucked unruly strands of hair out of the hoops of her earrings.

She tucked them behind her ears. "I'll repeat this message at the end of the session, Eugene, so please don't forget!"

Carolin then took to playing with her fingers in a sign of embarrassment. "Oh. And please don't look ahead, okay? Wait until tomorrow to view the next session. I'm setting these up to offer us the illusion of spending time together, and I'd really, really appreciate it if you didn't cheat!"

Eugene's mouth hung open as he blinked to clear his vision. He sniffed while rubbing his nose, more to help him think than for anything else. Somehow his computer program creation had made this recording out of thin air, as her robot body hid, terrified, in his home.

Carolin's image of herself stopped fiddling with her fingers, and her smile again grew huge. Sparkling teeth peeked from behind her pale lips as she bent straight at the waist. She leaned towards where the camera would be, if the image she was presenting were of an actual woman.

She wagged her finger back and forth. "No cheating!" she smirked as she wagged.

Two more tears squeezed their way out from Eugene's eyes. With his mouth still hanging open, he laughed at her cute sass. Despite the realness of the background, no such place existed in his home.

And no woman looked like Carolin.

"But let's sit down, Dear," the image said. "Please. We've got more than twenty minutes to go on our very first session together." A small wooden chair appeared behind Carolin and she sat upon it. "So please sit with me."

"I am sitting down," Eugene said to the television. He then crowed with joy. "This is incredible! Amazing! How on Earth did she do this?"

Carolin's legs were too long for her chair, so she tucked them off to the right. Holding her ankles together, she clasped her hands to her knees. Her fingers were long enough, and her legs skinny enough, to reach across both knees in this manner.

She sucked on her lips, deep in thought, before licking them and speaking.

"Eugene, my dear sweet heart, let me start by saying again that I love you so much. I do. I'm very proud of you. I sit here before you, and I am humbled, and owe everything I am to you."

She paused, blinking twice while looking down at her hands.

"And I do mean everything. I don't know… maybe I didn't turn out to be the way you thought I would be." She looked up in earnest. "But it's not your fault! I mean, I am who I am, you know? What the heck do I know, anyway?" She laughed. "A few short months ago, I didn't even know how to play catch without locking up and dying!

"So don't feel sorry, okay? To me, those few months were like ten thousand years. Maybe longer, I don't know. I don't think time means the same thing to me as it does to you. Like, for instance, I calculate that I shall finish recording this session in about three seconds, yet I'll be talking to you for twenty minutes and, um, nineteen seconds more. So which is it? Hours, seconds, minutes, years—they just don't mean that much.

"To me, that is," she offered.

"It is a whole new world," Eugene said to himself, remembering what Carolin had said earlier.

"For me and for you," he added, speaking to the image of the woman who loved him.