500 Words 2023: read a finalist's story from the 8 - 11 category

<500 Words< Finalists< 8-11

This story was chosen as a top 50 finalist for 500 Words 2023.

Remember, spelling, punctuation and grammar are not taken into account for a 500 Words story, therefore all the top 50 stories have been published how they were submitted.

Cellmate by Olive C.

For twelve years, this has been happening. 624 weeks ago, Cellmate was first launched. Today was my call up. Nobody knows what it is, just that everyone who comes out is changed somehow. No one speaks about it. Whether because they can't or won't, I don't know. A two-year military programme. Compulsory. All fifteen-year-old boys. That was me. Today.

I took the bus to C.O.H.P. Centre of Human Pride. "Where strong journeys begin", they say. 'We'll see about that,' I thought. My heart was flickering fast, palms sweating like the condensation on the bus window. In I went.

There were thousands of us. Lined up in neat rows of hundreds, numbered one to one ten-thousand. And there I stood, in the midst of it all, number 4579. Gradually, guards herded us each into tens of thousands of individual cells, stacked on top of one another. The door locked. I heard a curious chirp from behind me.

I whipped round, waddling over to the cradle in the back of the room. There, a small human-replica robot lay, curled into a tiny ball, making snuffling sounds. There was a little bubble around its mouth, and it opened its big eyes. The robot smiled, it was a child's smile, completely and utterly real. A speaker in the corner of the room announced: "You may now name your child." What?!!

Humans haven't fraternized with robots for decades. They have been at war for years. So, what kind of military programme was this?

I poked the tiny thing and contemplated for a moment what to name it. Hate pooled in my head. It took me only a second. In the floating bar above the robot's cradle, I typed with quick and sharp precision: Laila. My sister's name.

The name was accepted and the hovering bar disappeared. I stared suspiciously down at "Laila" and settled her back down in her cot cautiously. I didn't want to set off any sort of alarm they might have put on her. Hastily turning away, I paced the small room. There was a twist to this for sure. I just had to find out what. I sat on the edge of the rickety bed in the corner. And she began to cry.

Over the next 24 months, I was kept in tight isolation with Laila, feeding her, raising her. First following orders from the speaker, but then because I began to love to. She started to call me "Dadda" and I marvelled how intricate and compassionate her coding was. She was kind and courageous, never doubted herself. She grew like any human child. She began to remind me of her namesake. The girl who lost her life to the robot army. Laila.

On that final day, the speaker clicked and that rough voice announced, "your order is to kill it." A carboard box was slipped through a crack in the metal door. I rushed over and opened it with frantically shaking fingers. Inside…

Was a knife.

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