NftM #21: Birth Day

For the first time in his existence, AEX12.3469 had a dream. For a while — he couldn’t tell how long — time seemed to stand still, suspended in water, before he saw himself standing out outside across the street from his apartment building. The light seemed odd—too bright, too yellow, as if the city was transplanted to a different planet where clouds and dust didn’t obscure the sun, making it bleed. He felt the sunlight warm his skin, smelled fresh bread from a bakery across the street, heard the giggles of children running past him and sensed the perfume of their mother as she passed by behind him. 

Confused, he decided to walk toward the seafront a few minutes away. But as he approached the plaza, all the buildings swollen by the sea were above water and the streets buzzing with life, lined with living green trees. He looked around in amazement until a soft voice made him look behind him.

“Are you lost?” a woman asked, smiling. Her yellow sundress waved gently with the summer breeze. “May I help?”

AEX12.3469 stared at her for a second. “I’m going to the seafront,” he hesitated.

“It’s that way,” she pointed to her right. “But it’s a bit of a long walk, maybe over 30 minutes. See those tall buildings over there? They’re beach hotels next to the casino. Just follow this avenue toward the buildings, and you’ll get to the pier.”

“Thank you.” The strange feeling of the muscles contracting in a smile lingered on his face as he walked along the broad street with groups of teenagers laughing their way to the beach and young women walking their tiny dogs and young men running and old men with grey caps sitting on the benches under large carob trees, reading the paper. For a moment, he wondered what it’d be like to have friends waiting for him at the pier and plans to go out for lunch somewhere and stories to tell about himself between courses. 

When he arrived, the sea he found was not the one he remembered—it was impossibly still, welcoming, blue as far as the eyes could see. It didn’t rage against sunken buildings, crashing debris on old tree trunks or walls; it didn’t threaten to devour what remained of the city after a bad storm. He stood on the edge of the pier, eyes closed, soaking in the sun's warmth and the ebb and flow of life around him as if he himself could become alive, flesh and blood, born of a woman, blessed with a soul, cursed with decay and death. 

“Allen!” a woman called out behind him, her thin voice drowned in the buzz of other voices crying out other names equally strange to him. But she called the name again, closer and closer to him, until she stood next to him, a small figure looking up at him with a puzzled look. “Allen! What took you so long? We’re starving, let’s go!” Her hand was warm as she grabbed him by the wrist to lead him to the restaurant. As soon as her skin touched him, a jolt of electricity shook him to the core, and he woke up in his bed among the darkness, curtains shut to keep the neon streetlights out. He was alone, as expected, in the dead stillness of his world, but his wrist was still warm from the touch of this unknown friend, perhaps from a different universe where he was real and people laughed more often. 

Dreams were a known bug and would show on his monthly checkup, but it was nothing he couldn’t hide by tweaking his logs, he thought, slowly getting out of bed. For the first time, he had a name, something of his own, not built or programmed or commanded, and he felt the smile rise again as he turned the lights on and the image on the mirror showed him, for the first time, something closer to a man.