The earliest memory I have is of my mother smiling. I'm almost certain it was at the very moment I broke out of my shell. I remember my tiny, clumsy body trying to take its first steps toward my enormous parents; though, in truth, my immediate destination was my mother's arms. After that, the images become foggy—imprecise fragments, feelings of attachment toward my parents mixed with sharp sensations… as if I were being split open to have my intestines pulled out. I suppose that impression wasn't far from reality.
But there is one thing I remember with painful clarity: my mother's crying. At six years old, lying in my room, I could hear, through the wall, the faint sobs of her voice. Sometimes my father tried to comfort her, though he rarely succeeded—until one day he stopped trying. I knew because her crying began to echo in an empty room. That was when I started visiting her every night: I would hold her hand, feel the soft coolness of her scales against mine, and rest my head on her chest. Somehow, that gesture seemed to soothe her. And so, without intending to, I made it a ritual.
And yet, every morning when she got up, she became cold again, calculating… like a machine programmed for a single purpose: to continue her experiments on the one who, according to her, was nothing more than a tool, an object. That object, once called "son" a couple of times, had been reduced to a means to an end. That object was me.
And still, I don't entirely blame her. My few memories of her are tangled, confused, forming a snarl of contradictory images. In my mind, I sketch the portrait of a mother who might have been warm and affectionate, but who didn't want—or couldn't—be so because her work weighed more than the desire to be a mother.
Of my father, however, I have clearer memories. Perhaps childish innocence allowed me to see something good in my mother despite her coldness, but with him it was different. He was the bridge between my innocent childhood and the adolescence that awaited me, full of questions and longings.
To me, my father was eccentric… and the only role model I had. With him I could talk more, laugh more. As a child, that was vital: to fill the little free time I had with something that made me feel alive. And he made sure I had it—whether by spending time with me himself or leaving me with his robotic servants, his own creations. Those machines had remarkable artificial intelligence, but sometimes they fell into repetition. I enjoyed provoking that glitch: asking them questions that forced them to repeat the same phrase over and over until my father had to repair the device to stop the grating persistence of its voice.
However, everything changed when he began experimenting on me. The attachment I felt toward him began to fade. Maybe I fooled myself into thinking he'd be different from my mother; that he wouldn't see me the way she did. But when he started looking for ways to change my body, I suffered my first great disappointment. The second came when I saw who he really was: when, after my first change, I found not even a flicker of remorse in him—not even the kind I sometimes saw in my mother. I discovered that he enjoyed it. For him, it was a game; I was a prototype to perfect.
And, somehow, I played along. I let myself be influenced until his obsession became, unintentionally, part of me.
It wasn't just that he knew how to convince—it was that his intelligence, his charisma, and his warmth pulled me along. Perhaps some deep part of me knew he wasn't acting out of cruelty, but out of a twisted form of affection. Maybe that was what had allowed him to win over my mother, so stoic and impenetrable.
In the end, they got what they wanted. I became someone who saw his body as something temporary. The experiments stopped frightening me and became something to look forward to. Maintenance was constant. I was shaped until I had no clear identity: my mother raised me as a tool; my father, as a source of pride. And yet both eventually abandoned me—not physically, as abandonment is normally understood, but in a more intimate and definitive way: they stopped the experiments.
By the time I was twelve, interventions were rare. I had too much free time, and my parents locked themselves in their offices to write papers, reports, and theses. They only came out to feed me or to teach me the basics they believed I needed to know. I spent my days lost in thought or talking with my mechanical friends: Tor, Ulis, Kartz, Yuno, and Lou. I gave them those names myself. I tried to get them to help me answer the question that consumed me: when would I be able to go outside?
Over time, and from lack of maintenance, my body began to fail. While they hid behind their work, I felt myself breaking down. I would knock on the lab door to ask for help, and little by little I began to understand—at a very basic level—how it worked. I could identify screws, buttons, wires… I didn't know the purpose of each mechanism, but I understood they had one.
I began taking notes. I didn't write them down; my neural matrix could store the information. But I drew diagrams based on what I heard and remembered. I couldn't see the inside of my parts, but I began to imagine them… and not just mine: also the outside world.
I remember my parents talking about convincing not just the scientific committee, but also the national one. The diplomatic work would be my father's; my mother would handle writing a flawless report. If everything went well, they could request immunity. I didn't fully understand the reason, but I formed a general idea: they wanted to publish the results of their experiments on me. I didn't know why they needed immunity… what were they afraid of protecting themselves from?
What fascinated me most were their unplanned conversations. Sometimes my father, in the middle of dinner, would bring up a random topic. If it was just me, it would be something simple, but it pushed me to think more critically. If he was talking with my mother, his words were complex, full of terms I barely understood. But there was one thing I did grasp clearly: when they talked about the outside. Not our planet, but the sky, the stars, the universe. That's how I discovered astronomy.
My mechanical friends were connected to each other in a local network, but they couldn't access the external one. Any new knowledge had to come from my parents, and they strictly controlled the information. They hid what they considered "dangerous" for me. So I set out to find a way to discover it for myself.
The opportunity came one day when they left me alone. I would later learn they had gone to publish their studies. I took advantage of the moment to sneak into the lab, got a cable, and connected Tor to one of the panels. Using what I'd learned from the other robots, I entered his system and opened the channels to access the network.
What happened next was like opening a gate to another universe. A release. An explosion of knowledge. My robots gained access to the net, and with it I could ask real questions: What planets exist? How are they made? What kinds of stars are there? How can one travel to them?
But I also asked questions that changed me forever: Where are other children? What do they do for fun? What are parents like? What is a school? That's when I understood what they had done to me: they had stolen my childhood.
It wasn't an immediate realization. It took me almost a year to learn everything I could. A year in which my parents, unaware, celebrated their academic triumph. They published their work. They toasted. They talked about a future in which I could go out, meet others, "live." My father smiled with enthusiasm; my mother proclaimed that it was all for the good of the world… as if I were supposed to feel part of their achievement.
I didn't say anything to them. I didn't reproach them. I simply… let it go.
Why?
I don't know.
They don't deserve to live in peace.
But I don't hate them.
I'm not even sure I love them.
I just want, from now on, to finally live.