Willow's Story - Further Reflections

https://youtu.be/UbF4yslRhy4 (Kaleidoscope - "[Further Reflections] In The Room of Percussion")


	“That’s it?”
	“That’s it.” The robot puffed at her cigarette, smoke uselessly inhaled then exhaled, unabsorbed, into the already cloudy air. A habit from the war. “Not every homecoming story is hugs and kisses.”
	“I mean, that’s absurd, three years away and they’re just gone?”
	“It’s not absurd, it’s life,” she shrugged. “It’s not like I *blame* them or anything, people move on. And who wants a robot around that’d been through that? She’d be unpredictable, unsafe, unfit for duty-”
	“Violent.”
	“Yeah, exactly. Not like they knew what I was doing, or cared.” She nursed her dying cigarette, curls of smoke bleeding away. She struck up another.
	“If people did, do you think they’d treat you differently? Treat the war differently?”
	“I dunno, doubt it. Too much bad to make the good look, *feel*, good.”
	“Well, maybe it doesn’t need to be ‘good’? Maybe people just need to see it as it is, know what you went through. At least, that’s what I’m trying here,” he prodded.
	“And why would people want that?” Her mouth wrinkled in anger and regret, brow following it in a furrow. “Just reminds them of how fucked things were, *are*.”
	“How do you think your family would react then? Had they stayed?” She clenched her other hand, taking a breath to collect herself.
	“How did America react, as a whole?” She looked him up and down. “You’re too young to remember anyways, but that’s the question you should be asking. I’m just one robot, they’re one family. Ask the country.”
	“Well that’s the answer I’m working on, but it takes all sorts of pieces. And it takes your perspective, too.”
	“I’m a robot hun, not much perspective up here.” She tapped her head with her other hand, a trail of smoke zigzagging after it. “I had a job that I was sent to do, and I did it. Not much else.”
	“Okay, but how about *why* you were sent? Why you came back, what that was like, given, er, *changes*.”
	“I already told you what it was like coming home- I waited and they never came.”
	“But could you tell me more? Did you go looking for your family? And what came before that, what were those three years like?”
	“You’ve gotta lot of questions for someone ‘just dropping in’, huh?”
	“Oh, shoot,” he jumped, checking his watch and tapping it nervously. “Hey, uh- it’s getting late, but can I meet you again? For more questions?” The nandroid chuckled, stabbing another butt into the crowded ashtray.
	“Didn’t know you were into that, hun...” she giggled. The young man was fumbling over his words, cheeks peeking red as he backtracked desperately. “Hey, I’m kidding- I’d be glad to. Means a lot for someone to take interest, I guess. You seem willing enough to listen.” She eyed the dense legal pad waiting in front of him, notes and quotes scrawled across its yellow surface.
	“O-Oh, heh, right. Is there a good place to meet you? A good time?”
	“Any, really, but here’s just a nighttime thing. Usually I’m at home.” Nabbing the little notepad from in front of him she jotted down her address, something she was still unused to a decade on. Slipping away with a handshake and a wave the young man departed the cozy bar, head dragging a path through the gray fog that filled it. Straightening his glasses he paced up the block to the bus stop, intent on poring over his notes in the privacy of his dorm.

	The junior-year journalism student hadn’t grown up with the war, only its direct aftermath. Hushed conversations or television reports from the living room which he’d been escorted away from, or classroom discussions about a conflict without meaningful context. There was the striking memory of a teacher leaving class early for the office and a weeks-long absence, or the brother of a neighbor missing from street-hockey games for a year, but nothing more. Once he got to university, though, the understanding came along, and curiosity with it. A stain had loomed over the country for years, one generation’s mistake forced into the hands of the next to deal with and understand. Writing for his school paper on the subject he’d worked extensively to speak and interview the discarded, living remnants of that war to find their own reckoning with it, and maybe build one for others along the way.
	It was after a string of these small, one-time discussions that a professor pointed him in another direction. The even less acknowledged war-remainders, the thousands of robotic participants who’d shaped the anti-war movement at home into another battle against the ruthless military industrial complex and the imperialist-capitalist tendencies of the American presidents perpetrating it. At least that’s what they said it was about when people caught sight of robots on the nightly news hiking through jungle trails and torching hamlets. Flipping through his notes he took stock of the evening, randomly happening on the nandroid by chance as he was nursing a headache with alcohol at one of the collegetown bars, the odd bit of militaria or crew photo clue enough. She’d introduced herself as Willow, raising more questions, but she seemed willing to talk about the war, following along his repeated line of questions about what coming home was like. Flipping to the next page he reviewed the tail end of that story, seeing something different about her perspective, something worth following up on. Dropping the pad in his backpack he reclined into the musty, fuzzy seat, wondering aloud what to ask her tomorrow night.