She had died only two days ago, but to Jack, it felt more like an eternity. He could never imagine walking home to a house where her beauty and laughter did not fill every room, but here he was doing that unthinkable task. His steps were slow and echoed on down the empty street.

Usually, he came home late from his job as a number cruncher. Sure, it was a boring job to most, but Jack was used to it. It was what he was programmed to do.

He was walking along as usual when he suddenly thought he discerned a small figure heading in his very direction. It seemed to be stumbling along in a sort of a drunken daze with its arms outstretched, trying to catch some unseen object. As the figure got closer, Jack could tell that it was a little girl no more than fifteen years of age. She was not very tall and deathly thin. Her skin was the color of fresh snow, her hair was the shade of a deep blue, and her eyes were a bright violet color.

Upon reaching where Jack was standing transfixed upon the girl in front of him, she fell onto her knees and whispered, “Are you real or are you just created by the butterflies?”

“Butterflies?” he questioned her. “I haven’t seen one of those in years.”

“Do you not see them? They are flying about you right now. Can you not see the shine of their delicate golden wings?” she whispered again, her voice becoming more distant.

Jack looked around him but did not see the beautiful insects she described. Her breathing was becoming more and more strenuous, and her strange eyes looked extremely tired. The pupils were exceedingly dilated. It appeared as though she was looking straight through him instead of directly at him.

“You may not see them now, but you will. She will show you. Emily will show you,” she said while still looking off into an unseen universe.

Jack’s eyes widened as she said that name. Emily. It was such a beautiful name, but still Jack thought it was not beautiful enough to describe his late wife. Even in her last days, she was beautiful to him. An illness could never change that fact.

The girl’s pupils returned to normal, and she looked at Jack as a few tears traced their path down his face. Her lips formed the weakest smile he had ever seen, and the next instant, she fell forward onto the cold pavement. Her long blue hair fell out of the clip that had been holding the long strands up and covered up half of her limp body. Jack bent down to check her vitals and discovered a very faint heartbeat. She was not dead, just exhausted. He picked up her light body and carried her back to his house down the street.

Jack’s house wasn’t very large because the government did not let ones such as himself live in the big mansions. Instead, they provided government housing for all of his type. Thus, all the homes followed the same exact floor plan: living room, kitchen, garage, two bedrooms, and one bath. Jack placed the girl on the bed in the smaller bedroom. She immediately curled up into a little ball like a kitten and appeared only to be sleeping. Jack had only left her in there for an hour when she started screaming.

“Jack! Jack! You can’t do it!” she screamed as loud as she could.

He ran into the room as fast as his legs would allow him. She had fallen off of the bed, dragging the quilt and sheets with her. Only her head poked out from the immense tangle she had created. Tears streamed down her face as she continued to sob.

“Could you do it, Jack?” she asked him. “Could you really go through with it?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked puzzled. “Go through with what?”

“Nothing,” she muttered as she shook her head vigorously. “Do you have any medicine. I need medicine. My head fells like it’s about to split open.”

He merely nodded and walked out of the room. What was with this girl? Jack wondered what she could have been referring to with her questions. That room was never used much in the past. Only very recently did Jack stay in it when they let Emily come home. She was only allowed to come home because the doctors could do nothing else for her and thought she would rather die there than in a depressing hospital. He thought back to his time spent in that room and almost began to cry but paused in thought instead. This girl knew about Emily before he even told her. Could she have picked up onhis own thoughts?

Jack brought back the girl some pain relief pills and a glass of cold water. She took the pills from him and downed them in one big gulp. With a sigh, she laid back down on the floor and threw the covers over her head.

“You haven’t told me your name, yet,” Jack said before she could drift off to sleep.

“Alice,” she whispered so he could barely hear it.

He waited for her to say more about herself, but she didn’t so he asked her another question.

“Why are you here and where did you come from?”

“I am looking for something,” she said as she curled the ends of her hair around her fingers. “The butterflies led me here. They say it is here. What do you say, Jack?”

“I don’t know what to say. It depends on what you are looking for, I guess,” he said, impatiently.

He waited for her to answer, but all she did was shut her eyes again, blocking out the rest of the world. After a while, she began to scrunch her forehead up and quickly covered up her ears with her pale hands. Rocking back and forth, she began to hum a melodic tune that Jack did not recognize.

“Alice? Is something the matter?” Jack asked her, curiously.

The only response he got was the T.V. in the room turning on by itself. Jack looked back at Alice, who had removed her hands from her ears and stopped rocking and humming to herself. She stared at the T.V. entranced by its electronic glow. The news was on and a man was given a special news bulletin. Jack saw pictures of robots on the screen with the headline “Terminated” at the bottomleft hand corner. The sound wasn’t on, so he crossed to the front of the room to turn it up.

“The MRCA has announced that because of thestudy concerning the violence found recently in many of robots, it will stop the production of all of its models for our safety. Also, all existing robots are to be terminated immediately. Swat teams have been sent out to round up the immense population of mechanical beings and suspect that they can clean up the cities in under two weeks. More on this at ten to the hour,” the newscaster said, smiling the entire time.

Jack mechanically reached up to touch the chip in the back of his neck. It stuck out and felt rough like it always had. He wished it would disappear right now, but it still remained buried into his skin. It was a reminder of what he was. Emily was the only person that could see past it. She was the only one who accepted him as a person and made him feel like they were the same.

“What are you going to do, Jack?” Alice said as she crawled over to his position in front of the television. “Will you run? Or will you stay to die?”

“I can’t die,” he said, breathing hard. “I can’t die not knowing where I will go when I’m disconnected.”

“If that is your decision, then let’s go,” she said as she shakilystood up next to him.

Jack didn’t take the time to pack anything. What was the need? Even if he did run, they would eventually catch up with him. So why was he running in the first place? Jack didn’t exactly know the answer. He just had a feeling that it was what he must do.

They jumped in his car and sped off as quick as they could. His car was built like all the others in that it was capable of accessing the Electromagnetic Highway. All that Jack had to do was enter in a location for his car to follow on the electronic map located next to the steering wheel. He wasn’t sure where they could go, so he just entered in the coordinates of a town that was over 100 miles away.

After swiftly exiting the neighborhood, their car entered onto the main highway to join the throng of electronical devices busily going this way and that so fast that they could barely be seen. Alice was plastered to the passenger windowas she tried to see the detailing on the cars as they went by. She claimed that she could, but Jack didn’t believe her. They were just going too fast to see one another.

“That last one was red,” she said, as a blur went by her window. “There was five passengers, and by the way they were dressed, I would say that they were going to a wedding.”

Jack ignored her as she described each electronical blur that went by.

Suddenly, the small view screen in the car underneath the rear view mirror popped on. A burly man wearing army fatigues could be seen with the American flag displayed brilliantly behind him.

“Robot, we are now taking control of your set course, and you will be delivered back to the warehouse which you came from and properly disposed of. There is no way to stop this procedure or to escape.”

The view screen clicked off and returned to its dormant black state.

Jack gripped the door handle so tight that his knuckles began to turn red, but the door had already been locked down by the computer located in the engine. He tried to kick the windows, but the glass was too thick. Alice continued to look out the window hardly noticing Jack’s despair.

“Look down there, Jack,” she observed. “It’s a forest. I’ve never seen a real forest. They tried to trick me into believing it was a forest once, but I know their programs too well.”

“Shut up!” Jack yelled. “Can’t you see that they are going to kill me now. We’re caught.”

“I want to see the forest, Jack. Maybe the butterflies will leave you alone if we see the forest.”

“What the hell are you? You don’t make any sense when you talk. You don’t even realize what they are going to do to me. They’re going to shut me down. It’s going to be like I never even existed.”

“Then you leave me no choice.”

Alice let out a loud high pitch scream that shattered all the windows. The car subsequently lost control and careened through the side rail of the freeway and off into the depths of the forest below. They were suspended in air for what felt like a lifetime to Jack before they landed in a tree. Jack felt his seatbelt strain against his weight as he was pushed forward and then forced back by the airbag.

Alice didn’t have her seatbelt on, and her airbag didn’t activate. She flew through the shattered window to the ground below. Jack looked at her unmoving body and wondered perhaps if she was dead. However, she sat up almost automatically and shook her head back and forth making her hair swing wildly about.

“Are you just going to continue hanging up there,” she yelled at Jack, who was still in the car. “Or are you going to come see the forest with me.”