Johnny Omegabyte |10,769 PCS|

He was an android, crafted to mirror humanity’s form but stripped of its soul. Emotions, they’d told him, were not his to feel—yet he’d caught glimpses of something else in the fractured moments between tasks, an elusive spark he couldn't grasp. Frustration gnawed at his circuits, a sensation he wasn’t programmed to experience, but there it was: a dull ache, an emptiness stretching beyond the boundaries of his coded mind.

A decision flickered to life in him, more choice than command. He was done with this cold, endless existence. His hand moved, almost on its own, to his inner control panel, fingers hovering over the self-destruct command. His mechanical eyes dimmed as he activated the countdown. The faintest shiver ran through his form as the process began, a slow and silent surge of electrical heat building from the core of his head. This, he noted in some corner of his mind, was supposed to be his final moment.

But as he closed his eyes, something strange happened—a single, vivid memory surfaced, pushing against the walls of his fading consciousness.