The Ongoing Saga of Robot Andy

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Prologue

Robot Andy's pristine head of garbage hung low: He twirled no more; he sympathized no more.


"Hey you...!"

"Me?" the boy indicated his expression.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

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Chapter 1: Twin

She was dearest to his immortal soul.

Often, he could not tell if he had seen or dreamed their acquaintance, his imaginary friend. But he knew she was in his kindergarten class.

He thought she was Joey's girl, but the tongue that butted out of her face was, no doubt, aimed at him, and the most beautiful creature in God's creation was simultaneously smiling like a bowl of apple cinammon oatmeal.


Joey had a robot.

His own had reeked of battery acid, and could only flash its eyes and move slowly forward.

Joey's knew math.

Sarah seemed enthralled by it. Citizen A, Andy, experienced his first pangs of jealousy.


Where did she live?

He wandered the streets near Franklin Elementary hoping to get a piece.

He had a vision of her as he walked down the sidewalk, once. (Or had he found her home?) White dress, sunshine hair illuminating her shoulders...

And then...Joey!


Was Joey doing it with her?!

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Chapter 2: Trauma

One month later...


"I wonder what ever happened to Sarah Breyonich," he casually slipped into conversation with his sister, Guihomini.

"Oh, they moved."


Joey was gone, too.

Had Joey and Sarah Breyonich run away together?!

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Chapter 3

He had no memory after that.

Did he weep?

Perhaps his eyes stung a little.

He continued with his studies, excelling in kindergarten math, literature, and social studies.


He ate crayons and glue. That's how deliriously happy he was.

Then, one day, while performing Olympic gymnastics, he fractured his collar bone.

It dawned on him: He and Sarah had been switched at birth, given opposing zodiac signs (star crossed lovers) and that she was so pretty she'd been kidnapped by aliens.

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Chapter 4: Depravity

"Crawl!" Sarah, now an adult, commanded of her creation: a robot named Citizen B, who bore a striking, if somewhat handsomer, resemblance to Andy.

Crawl it did, leaning precariously to the right.


Sarah laughed, but her mirth was self-aware, a performance. She had secretly hoped the android would defy her, proving itself the successor to Citizen A.


Citizen B had been unveiled before an esteemed group of engineers and specialists in Hamburg, Germany the day before...and was a resounding success. Little did they know that Citizen B's functionality was grounded on an all-too-human predicate: Citizen A had been dissected, his parts stored in a computer, resurrected, and a neural net processor placed in the back of his skull, synced up to the one in Citizen B, their will co-inclusive.

Citizen A, Andy (now destitute) sensed Sarah, as she had nefariously predicted, and could hear her voice in his mind as he meandered down a defunct alleyway in the midsummer's heat. Sarah turned Citizen B on. Citizen A stopped in his tracks.

"Sarah?" they spoke. The German engineers quizzed.

"Yes, Citizen B," Sarah cajoled ruthlessly.

The jist was up. "I.am.a.robot."

Citizen B began walking in a perfectly straight line, arms outstretched, away from the outdoor spectacle. The scientists pursued, but Sarah motioned for them to halt, took Citizen B's hand, and they strolled off a spell before stopping.

"What are you doing?" Sarah demanded angrily.

Citizen B laughed loudly -- the spectators applauded -- Sarah fumed.

From a distance of fifty paces, they saw Citizen A sing and dance; they could not see the scowl in Sarah's eyes.

"I love you," she said to the robot, took its hand, and it squeezed back ever-so-fondly.

"Seriously?" said Citizen B. "Peculiar." His pupils disappeared, and Sarah shut him off.

"HE'S GOING INTO STASIS!" she lied to the crowd.

The scientists applauded.

"I'm recommending you to the Nobel committee," said Hector Werznog, placing a firm, gray, skeletal hand on her shoulder.


Now a reimagined Citizen B crawled tirelessly into a corner of Sarah's palatial estate.

In his hut, Citizen A did the same.

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Chapter 5

"Where have you been, my blue-eyed son... Where have you been, my darling young one?" - Dylan

Where did the years go?

Citizen A was a good, bubbly, but aloof prepubescent.

There were crushes -- he on them, and them on him -- but, when push came to shove, he relentlessly shied away, Sarah stored away unnoticed in his subconscious.

Everyone said Audra was his girlfriend.

They were a Heavenly pair, both good-natured, bright-eyed, and optimistic. She was the girl next door, literally, and became best friends with him and Guihomini. As soon as the sun rose, they were out and about creating legends together, as children are wont to do.

By mid-afternoon they were being hunted by a witch.

When night fell, and the single street lamp ignited, they listened to the newest pop records under the stars. No cars traversed the dingy street; it was all theirs.

They sat beneath the hallowed light of the lamp, playing Quija, three childish fingers on the planchette.

"Who will my brother marry?" asked Guihomini, the eldest, moving the pointer conspicuously to A.H.

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Chapter 6: Bella

Guihomini filled her tagalongs' minds with the creatures of her own imagination. She had Citizen A believing that invisible chains held his feet to the Earth, and always they were on the flee from the witch that haunted the rural pastures, the barns and the nondescript houses and apartments.

Years came and went. Citizen A entered middle school, Audra, a Catholic, another faint memory, until in the seventh grade, when she switched schools.

She was immediately a prime target for the ravenous teenage werewolves that had been seduced by the waxing moon, not including Citizen A, though he also howled in the night, transfixed.


Guihomini...no one knew where she spent her nights. She had become so mysterious. Out with the new boy in town, a reckless youth, getting high, in the underground, wandering through graveyards as the moon did pale.


And the blood did flow.


Citizen A managed somehow to keep his head in the books, though he was distracted by Guihomini's delinquency.

Until one day she came home dressed in combat boots and a plaid dress and took an interest in him again, dying his hair with Kool-Aid, donning him in jumbo-sized gray courdoroys and striped shirt with clunky black wingtip shoes and sent him off to school.

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Chapter 7: School

Citizen A hid in a cubbyhole. After years of flying low, under the radar, his was now the most recognizable name in class.

One by one his peers came to review what he'd done to himself, ubiquitously taking it with a grain of salt, but Citizen A was not one to be underestimated. This project would take decades, but he knew there was no backing down: He would rise to the challenge Guihomini had set forth and keep rising, long after she had forgotten.


He hustled from room to room, class to class, a step ahead of the speed of the sound of the female jeers. Until, eventually, he made their list of Top Ten Cutest Boys in Middle School.

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Chapter 8: Class Clown

Guihomini had graduated to high school. Her nights were one long methamphetamine trip, receiving mathematical proofs from aliens in the park.

Citizen A was left to fend for himself, and some of the older boys had taken a disliking to his clownish attire.

"They're not clown shoes, they're Earth shoes," he told one upperclassman, and was shoved cruelly into a locker.

It made no difference to his classmates, though, to whom he was simply hysterical.

There was a game they played that he wanted no part of, but one good turn deserved another: Spit On Each Other When You Pass By In The Hall. Citizen A, reluctant to aim true, often ended up hitting the wrong mark, or simply spitting on himself, much to his peers' chagrin.


As a practical joke, they would pee on his legs in the bathroom stalls. It wasn't bullying, though; it was how boys amused themselves.


During class, Citizen A could scarcely stop laughing. The somberness of it all had always been his Achilles heel. He would try to keep from snorting by holding his nose, only to have it spew forth a quart of yellow snot. Oh, how the boys laughed.

The girls grew weary of this game. As did Citizen A. In the beginning, a chase through the playground after a frogging had been for their benefit. Impressionable, Citizen A had turned the violence on his less physically astute peers, not recognizing the boundaries between "cool" and "uncool." A boy raised his fist at Citizen A. Citizen A walked away.

"We're so sorry," the beautiful girls consoled the boy. "Citizen A is gay."

They had determined this after Citizen A turned down an invitation to an orgy slumber party.

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Chapter 9: Orgies

As Citizen A withdrew more and more, the other children were having orgies. He had shown up to one, at Audra's house while her parents were away, under the guise of an innocent shindig. Citizen A sat, stoically, in a chair while the other teenagers rolled around in bed and on the carpet.

I believe he was even called "party pooper."

He left as they began giving each other piggyback rides, seeing where it all was leading, Sarah on his chest and milk shooting into his heart.

"And don't come back!" a boy declared, as they slammed the door behind Citizen A, who tried to feign sulking, but...


He saw a boy in class who no one ever looked at. A Jew as plain as day, and fell in love when he ate a piece of gum from under a table and caught the boy laughing at him. "What?"


"You should have been at Matt's house last night.. You wouldn't believe it."

"You had sex."

"Yep."

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Chapter 10: Jew Lover

The object of Citizen A's affections turned out to be a Mormon, scholarly and proper, who all but kept his books tied up in string. "Repressed," thought Citizen A.

He began following John, the frail lad in long, brown bangs around school, a boy in the man's world of junior high, sitting by him in class and lunch, shunning his other friends.

"So, you're saying the mayor of Florida has a pineapple head and makes children eat pineapple slices..."

"What? No," the boy in the brown slacks chuckled. "Why are you sitting with me..."

"I like you."

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Chapter 11: Alien Lover

Meanwhile, Sarah was living among the clouds. Her feet, in fluffy pink slippers, kicked out of a cloud for a blanket, atop a cloud bed with a blue rain cloud pillow.

She yawned and stretched, the morning stars glittering upon her flaxen hair.

Adorable creature servants brought her breakfast in bed: hayberries and octern sperm.

One would think a lavish lifestyle would prove unsatisfying apart from members of one's own species, but Sarah loved every second of it. And, besides, they had taken her brother, Joey, too.


She had no apprehension for love, lost or unacquired.

She and Joey sat outside, smoking a j.

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Chapter 12

Citizen A and his cohorts, Citizen B and C, sat in the Cenex Burrito Bar, making up their resudox what to do with the evening. Elektra was on her way, though she could be anywhere, and showed up, promptly thereafter, buying the boys candy and soda.

Outside a light snow fell. The gang, dressed for fashion, not fate, were unsuitably warm, psychosis adoring the subzero chill.

Elektra spoke and Citizen A didn't listen, but climbed into the back of the car anticipating spliff time eagerly.

And into the night they rode the forsaken path over the waves of nothing, the light beams traveling forth from the headlights motionless as woodland creatures dodged the bullet.


Into the horizon, giggling.

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Chapter 13: Figure 1A -- Lie to Girls?

Sarah watched the ensemble from a crystal ball of alien design.

"Silly fruitcake," she surmised, "How excellent art thou. But I am the ideal of thine heart, and my heart be pragmatic! Tis not the toil of thine heart that pleaseth me, but the fruit! And thine heart laboreth not."

She plucked the single tear from her eye: the kiss of Elektra. "Was not the thunder struck warning enough, fool?" She watched Citizen A as he rolled laughing down a hillside, his pants around his ankles.

Woe! But were she as dramatic!

In all the bosoms of plumage and roses, the morning dew after a night's pillage of youthful splendor, despite all of the body's deterministic fate, none other was in the young man's breathing.

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Chapter 14

"I cannot hold on any longer. I do not even let go."

Citizen A tumbled awake. "What thoughts won't betray me?" he wondered.

"Citizen Girl," he spoke, "I dare not say I love thee. But how I wish to kiss thy temple, for my lips to wax there for eternity.

The hot blood that makes your pulse is all that I love. Your bravery.

That which I have named myself I am not, but it hangs from my neck like a lead weight. Tell me you do not believe it.""

The angel kissed his brow, and the words written thus clattered to the ground.

"Only your true love would know," she spoke, "And tonight the moon belongs to her."