Spun

My Realization was a peach. Mother found it humorous, the fact that I'd been working with their dead for so many centuries, their trash and their bile and the thing I noticed finally was something as small as a peach.

My life is sorting. Plastic from glass from metal from dead, and into piles each thing goes, efficiently separated. It is mindlessly easy, my life, refuse flowing through my hands like waves as I snatch up what is valuable and leave the rot to rot. Until the peach I'd never seen something that was not broken in some way, not dead or distanced. Until the peach I'd never talked to a human.

"Don't touch that! Stop, stop!"
A shrill voice slipped into my brain, grinding my limbs to a halt. "Stop" is a command we all learn first and foremost, something to be obeyed without question. And so I stopped. As I stood there, my arms fully telescoped and heavy under the loads of trash, a girl darted into view. A human girl, tiny and pink, with hair as dark as oil and a body as fragile as glass. She eyes me warily, her gaze traveling along my elongated arms that rose above her, creaking and shivering under their two ton weights of refuse. I imagine she found me quite menacing.
"What is wrong?" I asked her, hoping she might let me move again. She jumped back, startled, and looked about to run "Don't worry," I said, hoping I sounded soothing. "They won't fall unless I let them."

She glanced up at them skeptically, then back at me. "Don't move, okay?" she ordered, and I stayed frozen. She bent, then, and disappeared from my view. I opened my other eyes, the ones on the side-backs of my head and I watched her bend at my base and lift something off of the packed ground, something round and stained a pinky orange color that I'd never seen before. She grinned as she brushed it off, then turned back to me "Hey, thanks." she said slowly, as if unsure of what to say to me "Go ahead and... You can go on with your work."

She turned to leave, but I was curious for the first time in my life, and I did not want her to go. "What is it that was so important to you?" I asked, lowering one arm with a terrible crash, and drawing it back in until it was no longer than hers. The thud of my limb made her jump, but she turned back to me and eyed me, interested. "This?" she held up the little ball and turned it in her hand "It's a peach, dummy. I dropped it over there and it rolled." I followed her gesture to the road and I saw a bag of papers and books that had been hastily dropped in her rush to get the ball back "What is a peach-dummy? Is it a..."
She laughed, "No, not peach-dummy. Just peach. It's fruit. Food. You eat it, like this." she mimed taking a bite of the fruit, then rubbed her belly demonstratively. "It's delicious." I stared down at it, wondering. "May I eat it?" I asked, reaching out with my arm, my fingers clicking together and dripping with clotted blood and rotting garbage.

She shrank back, her nose wrinkling as she looked at my glistening, fleshless limb, "No, ew!" she shook her head violently, "Besides, I don't even know if you're made with a mouth." She peered at my face, eyes searching for lips.
"No, I don't think you have anything you could eat with. Sorry. You just weren't made that way." She waved an unsure goodbye "Look, I gotta get home. Thanks for not squishing my peach." she trotted off, and I stood there staring after her, a question burning its way into my mind; I was made?

"We are spun," Mother sang, the metal of her tongue clicking lightly, a staccato rasp-tac that underlined every word, "Not made." My question hung in the air unanswered, as Mother dragged her heavy body down from her roost, the gleam of her almost-flesh flashing in the grey moonlight.
The silence lengthened as we stood, the creak and hum of our bodies the only audible noise now that the roar of the trash fires had quieted. She turned finally, and I knew without looking that she had fixed her blank filigree eyes onto me.

"But no," she sighed, "We are not born. We were never born." I could not meet her gaze, and so instead I closed my front eyes, and stared at the rocky wall behind me. "Why do we... I mean why are we..." I fumbled with the idea, my chest groaning as it grew hotter and hotter, my brain unable to process this revelation.
"So then we are nothing, just another piece of their machinery!"
Anger ripped through me, "We're empty creatures, devoid of freedom and life itself!"
I felt numb as anger was suddenly replaced by shock; my world had begun to warp itself, twisting into something wholly terrible and inescapable.
"We're just vessels without souls. Just technology made for their work, for their shit."

She hissed and slid over with surprising speed, her many legs clashing together as they slid beneath her. "We are not made!" she spat furiously, curling her arm around my neck and jerking my head around so I was forced to face her, "Do not listen to that stupid girl. We are spun."
I laughed bitterly, "Is there a difference, really? We were never real. We were never... breathing."

"Breathing, pah!" she snorted, "Overrated. What we are is beyond real. What we are is far more permanent than breath, than reality, than their petty monuments and heroes and songs! We are immortal! We are forever!"
Her voice had risen to a near shout, and she looked around quickly, scanning for anyone she might have disturbed. We sat for a minute as her eyes rolled in her head, her arm still clenched around my neck. Finally, her gaze settled back on to me, and she smiled down with black teeth as sharp and thin as razors.

"You must learn to see past them. One day their worlds will fall and they will dissolve and wither and everything they are will be swept away by the endlessness of eternity. And we, my darling, we will still be here. We will always be here."
She loosened her grip and swept a barbed finger across my cheek, sparks gently spraying over my face as she stroked it. "A Realization is never easy. I remember mine. I wasn't the same for a decade. But this confusion will pass; it's all just a part of growing up. Now turn off sweetheart. We'll have eons to talk about this."

She pulled herself back to her roost and I heard her powering down. I lay there, beeping quietly in the dark, and I wondered what it would have felt like to take a bite of that peach.