She spoke.
He spoke.
They all spoke.
Their mouths opening and closing, floodgates unleashing the ‘rolling r’ at the roof of their mouth, the ‘sh’ enunciated as ‘s’, the ‘s’ a tattoo of an ‘s’ with a ‘z’.
I try to reply to their words. But it’s fragmented, broken to smithereens.
Incoherent.
I offer a hesitant smile.
A silent prayer, a letter for a truce. My hands pinned to my thighs parleying, pinching my thick tuxedo pants.
They walk away.
Some of their gazes pass up and down, down and up my body. Scanners observing the barcodes of my eyes, just as black as theirs, chasms of apology for my betrayal. I’m a traitor. The continuous, rhythmic rise and fall, beep and echo of their voice boxes relentless. Codes running, rewinding through their system. Androids taking in every breath I gasp into my crushed lungs, my diaphragm contracting hard, the twitch of my toes encased in my shoes.
Another android comes to me.
My tongue, wiggling, writhing, knocking against my grinning teeth. Like a worm, attempting to crawl from the grab of a fisherman searching for bait.
My tongue’s ripping itself out of its case.
All I know are ‘Naughty Words’. The words that Hannah, my older sister, had embedded in me as the ‘bare basics’ I must acquire.
Words from the plethora of miscellaneous around me that I can display.
‘Fuck’ is equal to the algorithm ‘bazmeg’, emphasis on the z and g.
‘Your mother’s a bitch’ is equal to the data file ‘a kurva anyad’.
But right now, I’m incoherent.
Non-scannable.
A deformed prototype. A version 0.1.
Hannah picks a pinch of salt. Not even batting an onyx eye towards me. Some grains drip to the ground. To the linoleum, scratchy ground. She does. Not. Care.
Where is it all gone? I am sure that I have it. Embedded in my cells, my database. Backed up safely from ‘Mother’s Womb’. Hannah has it from the ‘Womb’ – I can hear it in her glimmering, shiny voice. Their stares fixate on me.
They were scanning once again, through my database:
‘Dominic Toth, fourteen.
Brit-Hungarian.
One eighty, a little overweight.
Guest at The Family Reunion.’
Hannah – confabulate my data, the code – help me…
But Hannah was participating in chattering. A sleek arm – my mother’s – wrapped around my shoulder instead.
“Mother?”
“Yes?”
“Shouldn’t I learn a bit of Hungarian?”
“Dominic, we talked over this.” she interrupted, her tone reproachful. “We only come here once a year. Hannah and I can translate for you, and that’s all you need. It’s ghastly remembering all those verb tenses – I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”
“But Hannah…”
“It was a mistake to teach her – look at her English compared to yours…”
A few cries interrupt from around the dinner table – the labrador, Vivi, had stolen and devoured most of the venison.
All the remainder of the Reunion they spent cursing Vivi, depriving them of the delicacy they yearned for.
Mother had hacked my database.
Naoka Kádár-Todo is a Japanese-Hungarian student who aspires to become a freelancer and Master of English Literature. She spends her hours watching anime, re-reading The Lord of the Rings and walking her senior westie. She is currently working on her first novel and had her first fantasy short fiction accepted by The Echo. Naoka’s goals include writing about the seriously underrated Hungarian culture and creating diverse characters who have an actual identity. Naoka hopes to publish more stories before being Cancelled by Democracy and is fighting to survive the last year of high school.
Outstanding!