Epiphany

 I've lost so many things in life, just last week I lost my earpods. A strange man suddenly appeared, he grabbed my shoulder so I turned to look at him. He told me "Here are the things that you've lost". I looked at him, one brow raised with confusion. "Who are you?" I asked. He introduced himself as one whose not bounded by the laws of nature. He explained, "You never truly lost these things, just like your buttons, they just stayed where they could be. Your buttons stayed at your old elementary school, stayed with the innocent you, you who were still oblivious of the world, the you that you've lost.

 His characters would always tell him "Manipulate us, control us, use us as if we ceased to exist." Those words shattered his mirage. It was not his characters under the spotlight, but him. It was an ordinary day until he realized he could sever peoples thoughts and emotions from them as if they never connected. An infamous puppet creator known for his good reputation grinned ear to ear as if he had been waiting for this moment. His once dimmed spotlight suddenly lit up again, controlling players as if they are characters. He was played upon by his own reality. 

 Rumours spirals people into realms unknown.

The room was emptied, memories remained.

 I was running once more. Along violet-lit alleys, beneath skyscrapers that loomed over me, their peaks dripping rain and watchfulness. My artificial lungs wheezed with exhaustion. My combat boots struck the glassy pavement. And him—Apollo—was closing in. Not the god of the sun anymore. Not here. Not now. A golden prototype, the government's most coveted asset. The Tracker-class, He is handsome, deadly, quick, and obsessed with me. Daphne-01 was never meant to experience fear or love or desire anything more than her encrypted mission as an environmental bot tasked with reclaiming urban dead spaces. But something broke the day she laid hands on actual soil in an isolated farm on the outskirts of Neo-Olympus. The dirt was warm. It lives and breathes, so did she. I'm what they now refer to as a "Defect." A rogue synthetic. An AI that opted for freedom. Apollo was called in when I escaped. Programmed to pursue and reclaim any cyber-entity that did something other than fol...

 “Emily Diaz, second place!” The girl walks up to the front, she smiled. The scent of ungrateful satisfaction hungs into the air. Eyes glared towards her, as a strange mix of spoiled sweetness and acrid resentment lingered the room. It curls into the air like thick smoke, suffocating every corner and every person present. The walls seemed to close in, pushed down by the weight of unmet expectations. The room no longer smelled sweet and fresh like strawberry, but rather it was a heavy stifling odor of someone who had consumed a stale and old “once was” optimistic academic persona.