The moonlight lit an abandoned skyscraper. Noises of metals clashing, crashes, shouts, and yells echoed from the building.

Then, a mechanical, robotic, autotune-like voice shouted, “I’m Chorong!”

A particular girl was on one of the floors of the skyscraper. She seemed to be in her adolescence, though she was a bit shorter than the average female height. She curled her hands into fists; her left forearm was clearly a prosthetic that was big and clunky. Still, it responded to her signals well, and its hand clenched. Her turquoise hair that came down to her chin glistened in the light. Contrasting the cold moonlight, the look in her eyes burned fiercely, like a pair of burning cameras locked onto a target in front of her.

So, who was she, and how did she get there? That’s what this story is about. And to tell you the story, we need to rewind the time, back to when two men were having a conversation.

…

“Have you seen William lately?”

“No? He’s the head of the software development team. Why are you asking me?”

“…Did you hear what happened?”

“Not really.”

“His daughter passed away.”

“…Wait, Katherine? Really?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Same disease as his wife. I think genetics played some part.”

“Shucks. I hope William’s okay. We should check if he is. He’s not gonna try anything stupid, right?”

“I already tried to go to his house, but no one responded. I checked with HR, and there are records of him logging into the company OS every day, so he’s still alive, at least.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

A third voice interrupted the conversation: “Patrick, Mathieu, I need you guys back.”

“Coming,” the two men said in unison.

The two men stood up from their chairs, holding their cups of coffees. Their lab gowns glowed brightly, reflecting the sunlight coming through a window of the office pantry room they were in.

“I bet you, Jack probably configured hardware-software unison test wrong again and blew a circuit,” Patrick, a tall man with an egg-shaped head, said. His name tag on his gown notified its readers that he was an intermediate software engineer. He drank all his coffee in one shot and then threw the paper cup in a garbage can.

“I just hope William’s okay,” Mathieu, a short man with a rather circular head, said. Like Patrick’s, his name tag had his position title, which was the intermediate hardware engineer.

“He will be. Hopefully,” Patrick said.

The two left the office pantry together, marching back into the hell called work.

In the same building as the two men, there was a room near the top. If the curtains were not draped, one in the room would’ve been able to look down at a part across the street, shined on by a bright sunlight. However, the curtains covered the windows, making the room very dark. The only light source in the room was a monitor. A man sat in front of it, typing furiously on the keyboard to write hundreds of lines of code within mere minutes. His lab gown indicated that he worked for the same company as Patrick and Mathieu. The difference between him and the two were that he looked much more tired. The dark circle under his eyes and bushy hair indicated he had not been outside for a very long time. His back was slouched even though he looked like he was in his forties. However, even though he looked extremely tired, his eyes were focused on the screen, never being distracted to something else.

The monitor was connected to a computer, which had a thick wire connecting it to something else. Suppose there was a mouse that would crawl up the wire and follow it, starting from the computer body. The wire weaved across the floor of the office, which had a messy web of wires already. If the mouse had managed to not lose track of the thick wire and reach its end, it would’ve climbed onto a medical bed resembling a dental chair.

The chair was occupied by a humanoid skeletal frame with bunch of mechanical parts and circuits attached inside. However, one could tell it wasn’t just a humanoid robot; its head, unlike other parts, was nearly completed. It was covered with synthetic humanlike skin with a human face resembling a young, cute teenage girl.

Yes, as you can probably tell, she is the main character of this story. She would explore the world, experience many things, question many things, and eventually find an appropriate ending to her story.

But all these come later.

Firstly, she has to be born.