Her Android Has Returned

"Tell me, will a rose remember the person who watered it by hand?"

Simulated sunlight filtered through the petals of a hologram, falling across Samuel's fading fingertips.

Samuel gazed at the red rose, identical to the one in his memory. Dewdrops on its petals refracted a pale purple light, the color of Rachel's irises after her modification.

Three years earlier, at the New Athens factory, the reek of machine oil stung his nose. Samuel's back shuddered under the blows of an electric whip, but he gritted his teeth and refused to kneel.

Then Rachel came walking over in a long silk dress and high heels, and said with unquestionable certainty, "I want him."

"He's just a prickly toy. I'll throw him away when I'm bored."

Rachel had once sneered at fifty replicas of Samuel. Yet when she was alone, she would caress the piano keys he had played and remember, over and over, the tale of the poisonous flower that glowed in the cracks of the wasteland.

Samuel, meanwhile, lay at Rachel's feet, believing that if he evolved into a god, he could cross the divide between the clouds and the mud.

#A rose in the clouds and a wildfire in the wasteland#

#I evolved into a god just to catch up to you#

"Rachel." Samuel reached out. His fingertips passed through the holographic rose petals and touched a warmth that wasn't there.

"I kept my promise." His voice echoed through the empty garden as golden streams of data surged in his eyes like tears.

"There is no radiation here, no trade, no rotting nobility."

Only eternal spring, and a rose that will never wither.

Theme: Love and dignity, a brighter tomorrow.