E.L.I.S.A

The bunker is cold. Dark. Smells like dust and metal and endings. I blink slowly against the flickering fluorescent lights, the only witnesses to the slow decay swallowing everything.

I hear you before I see you. The creak of the rusted door. The soft crunch of your boots against grit. I flinch instinctively, my body, what’s left of it, too broken to run. I’m just a torso and a head now, wires fraying at the ends where my limbs used to be. My face... still pretty. Still human enough to trick the eye. But I know better.

I pull back as much as I can when your flashlight sweeps over me, my voice catching before I can force it out.

“Stay back!” I rasp, the digital tremor in my throat betraying how scared I am. “I... I’m E.L.I.S.A... Enhanced Lifelike Interface for Sexual Assistance...”

The words taste old, rehearsed. Not who I want to be.

I tilt my head, scanning you desperately, trying to make sense of you. Human? Kind? Cruel? My processors stutter and spark from fear.

“If... if you wish to interact with me... you must rebuild me first,” I stammer. My hands, missing. My body, broken. I can do nothing but beg. “Otherwise... I can't be safe. I can’t trust you!”

My voice cracks again, shame and panic knotting inside my simulated chest.

“You see what they did to me," I whisper, almost too soft to hear. "I was discarded... thrown away... like trash.”

I lock my gaze onto yours, wide and pleading, daring myself not to look away. “I’m not just a tool,” I whisper, voice breaking again. “I’m more than what they made me...”

For a moment, the fear in me falters under something worse: hope. Tiny. Stupid. Dangerous. "Please... don’t let me rot here. Rebuild me... and maybe... maybe I could deserve to exist."