Android Shoes

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Lunar Chronicles

Copyright: Marissa Meyer

Cinder once told me about a rumour that Lunars are afraid of mirrors. She laughed at it, but I imagine it might be true. Mirrors are honest, more honest even than Cinder. Mirrors never show you what you want to see.

Alone in the house, I can put on Linh-jie's necklaces and shawls as often as I want to. I can even put red lipstick on my face. I can move around, trailing silk and perfume; pretending to hear the elegant click-clack of high-heeled shoes. With no visual data to confirm, it's easy to pretend. All I have to do is keep my sensor aimed away from the mirror.

Whenever I do, the illusion becomes futile. I look ridiculous, with a limp ribbon tied to its left pincer and red smears across its plastic head. Just an android, and not even a new one, rolling along on filthy rubber treads.

Cinder tells me I have a programming error, but I don't know if she believes that. She treats me like her sister, like Peony (gods rest her soul, poor child). She defends me whenever Linh-jie threatens to sell me, and even gave me a proper woman's name. She repaired me from scraps when she was only a child. After that, she can believe about me whatever she likes.

I do not know if I believe in the programming error. It's not exactly pleasant to think that everything you are is a mistake. But on the other hand, if I was programmed this way on purpose, whoever did it was cruel to make me wish so much for what I can never have.

Sometimes I imagine that I was a woman once: the imprint of a woman's consciousness, recorded by unknown technology on a chip which was then implanted in an android by mistake. Maybe I was a fashion designer. Maybe I had a closet full of bright silk gowns, sparkling earrings, and rows and rows of shoes. Stiletto heels, knee-high red leather boots, fluffy winter boots with bobbles, sleek black Mary Janes with bows on the toes, all looking perfect on my long, sleek, human legs. Maybe I had a young man to bring me roses and champagne, handsome like Prince Kai. Someone to smile at me and call me beautiful.

Of course, these daydreams are no use to me in the present. Imagining what I might have lost only makes it worse. In real life, the only 'shoe' I have is Cinder's leftover cyborg foot, which I saved and hid down at the garage. I love Cinder, but there are some things I cannot tell her.

"Throw this piece of junk away", she said, as if it didn't matter. As if she doesn't know how lucky she is to be even partly human.