"Science Fiction" means—to us—everything found in the science fiction section of a bookstore, or at a science fiction convention, or amongst the winners of the Hugo awards given by the World Science Fiction Society. This includes the genres of science fiction (or sci-fi), fantasy, slipstream, alternative history, and even stories with lighter speculative elements. We hope you enjoy the broad range that SF has to offer.
I get uncomfortable when you stare at me with your flitting android eyes while you fork-feed me an overcooked brussels sprout because you tied me up to my favorite chair so I wouldn't escape again. Plus, I was hungry and the only edible and nutritious (your word, not mine) item in our fridge were the spoiled sprouts. So here I am, swallowing and imagining what would happen if I could untie the ropes, snatch the fork, and stab it into your gelatinous optic flesh and pull out your cornea. And I wonder if it would dribble with robotic oil, or if your retina would spark mini lightning bolts, but either way I would hope--please God--that I would have done some damage to your visual system. If I punctured deep enough to have reached your eye's aqueous layers to generate a blind spot, or at the very least, hit the emergency STOP switch that I designed and placed right behind the rectus muscle but before the eye socket, so I could run away this time around.
But you'd probably grab me with your bionic arm and tie me right back in this chair, and you'd probably tell me that you still love me underneath my irrational human heart, and you'd go on and on about how you're just trying to protect me, your creator, from myself, from the cruel and abrasive outside world you don't understand why I love so much. And that you actually feel bad that you had to bind me to furniture so you could explain and calculate your logic and the chances of my dying out there. And just as you finished up the probability of my getting killed by... literally anything, you'd remind me that overall we were O.K., and love was complicated and all.
But when I'd ask you what you knew about love, you'd say that I programmed you to protect, and that was surely love, and I would mutter no, it's infatuation, and you would chuckle, the mechanical nerve fibers of your dead eye whirring. And I would wonder why I designed you with your off button in the place that would be the most difficult to press.
The End
This story was first published on Monday, December 14th, 2020
Become a Member!
We hope you're enjoying Optic Covenant by Katherine Ley.
Please support Daily Science Fiction by becoming a member.
Daily Science Fiction does not have a paywall, but we do have expenses—more than 95% of which are direct payments to authors for their stories. With your $15 membership, less than 6 cents per story, we can continue to provide genre fiction every weekday by email and on the website to thousands of readers for many years to come. You may also choose to support us via patreon.
Rate This Story
Please click to rate this story from 1(ho-hum) to 7(excellent!):
