Conspiracy Part 1

I stood anxiously in front of an abandoned building, waiting for the arrival of a stranger. I had seen something last month that haunted me. I saw my neighbor for what they truly were. I just meant to visit her- it... I just wanted to hang out with someone I considered a friend. I saw an open maintenance panel on its stomach, as it stood charging by an outlet. My neighbor was a robot. I spent the next weeks researching on the web, trying to hide my internet traffic. I looked for anything, anyone who knew what just happened or why. Eventually I found a woman who also claimed to have experienced something similar, so I was just sitting outside an abandoned building waiting for her. Away from civilization. The only working piece of technology around was my own car. I did not bring my phone, I did not want to be tracked in any possible way.

I heard the noise of steps on grass, I looked towards them to find the woman had not come in a car. She had come from somewhere in the woods? She was wearing fur boots, thick brown pants, a winter coat, and glasses. Her hair was dark and fashioned into a ponytail. Her gaze seemed somewhat distant, she stared at me with a blank and slightly tired expression. "Are you Dulci?" I nodded slowly, it was my username, short for Dulcinea. She stared at me for an uncomfortable amount of time before speaking again. "I'm Marilyn, I was curious about what you said you saw. Are you human?" I was stunned "Am I human? What kind of question is that?! Of course I'm a human! I haven't even heard of androids being a thing before I got- traumatized by what I saw!" Marilyn went silent again, she seemed to ponder something deeply. "It is very cold, and you are wearing hot weather clothing. Humans are supposed to wear heavier clothes during winter, no?" I was wearing a pink crop-top and a miniskirt, and yeah the air was cold but like, "It's not THAT cold." She just nodded quietly and went into the building. I had more questions though. "Why are we in here anyways? I'm guessing this kind of stuff is dangerous to talk about in more populated areas?" She turned to me and gave a confused expression. "This is my house." "Oh, that's uh..." I thought about what she told me, it was... I needed to think... It was pretty strange for her to be so far away from civilization, and how could she get food or get to work from here? This was very strange. Also, living in an abandoned building would mean that it isn't legally her home, anyone could just barge in. This was very strange. "It's very strange for you to be living out here, why do you do this?" By the time I asked though, she had already entered the building. So that meant that... I should follow her into the building. I went inside too, opening a set of glass doors to get in. It seemed like it might have been some sort of clinic before being left behind, but it wasn't dirty. The place was clean and had been renovated with random furniture around the lobby area, making it into a guest room of sorts. Marilyn was sitting on a couch, watching me. "Welcome to my house."

I waited for her to say something else, but she didn't and I had to break the silence. "We should discuss the things we saw now, I'm still very worried about it. I've been constantly afraid, and had nightmares about it. So I'd appreciate even just having someone to talk to about it, really."

"You should take a seat." I was confused by her demeanor. It seemed unfitting for the mood, but I still followed her instructions, as I was in her house. Actually it wasn't legally her house. I froze mid sitting as I wondered if I should do as she said. I felt very confused. She was confusing me. "You are confusing me a lot, Marilyn." "Why are you sitting like that..." I realized that I probably looked weird and finally decided that I should sit down. She seemed satisfied. "I have also found out about robot people, but unlike you it has been much more than just one person." "A lot?" "Every time I've tried interacting with someone, I found out sooner or later, that they are a robot." My heart sank, every time? How many people could that even be? "It can't literally be everyone can it? That would mean..." "Since moving to this city, I have not met a single real human being. And I have been searching for a while now, a few months." Insane! Insane! Insane! No humans? How could that possibly be? Was she lying? This was too much to process right now I "And not only that, I've noticed a pattern among the robots. None of them actually seem to be aware of their nature, I haven't seen any robots that knew what they were. All of them thought they were just normal human beings, which has made it really hard to find human beings in this place." I just- this was too much to process- I was struggling to understand- this was a lot to understand- we needed to unpack this- I was struggling to understand- I "Processing... Processing... Processing... Error, information incompatibility."

There was no way that she was telling the truth, it is impossible that so many people could be secretly androids. It does not compute, so she must be lying to me. I can't believe I came all this way just to get lied to. I could see it in her face, she looked at me like she was confused and shocked. Which definitely means... she's surprised I saw through her lies! I made an angry and disappointed face at her, how rude of her to prank me like this. "Dulci?" "Hmph." I pouted. "Are you a robot?" Huh!? She had lied to me, and now she was asking if I was a robot? Just how rude could this girl get! "Of course I'm not a robot, I already told you! Don't you know how rude it is to ask that to someone?" "Your face just went blank and you were saying 'processing' over and over again." I did? Checking my memory, apparently I had. Why did I do that? I'm not a robot, I'm a human. Robots say robotic things like 'processing' out loud, humans do not say strange things like that. But I'm a human, and I say things like that. So that means saying 'processing' out loud isn't robotic, this makes sense. "Well, it's not like there's any reason a human girl like me can't do that, any human could do it, so it's not proof that I'm a robot is it?"

Marilyn took a moment to think about it, but it seemed that she understood my logic, as she started nodding slowly. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense, why are you staring at me like that though?" "Because I came all the way out here for you to lie to me." "You don't believe the stuff about the fembots?" "There's no way there could ever be that many!" "But you saw one yourself." "It was just one! There's no way there is as many as you say!" She sighed and got up from her couch. "Well if it's so hard for you to believe, I'll show you." And she went walking down a dimly lit corridor.

I thought about if I should follow her, I already knew she was lying, so there was no reason to check. But it would be really rude to not see whatever she wanted to show me, so I got up and followed her. There were a lot of doors, it seemed like a pretty large building, I wondered what it must have been for before Marilyn started living there.

Eventually, we reached a door that was slightly open already. Marilyn entered it, so I followed her in. Inside was... an entire heap of bodies, robot bodies. Piled up in the left of the room were broken robots. They looked so human, but I could see mechanical parts sticking out wherever their artificial flesh was damaged. I felt my foot hit something as I walked in. It was the disembodied head of a robot woman, it rolled slightly on the floor from me hitting it. I fell backwards, Marilyn turned to me with a concerned look. "Dulci? Are you ok?" "There's no way, this doesn't make sense, this does not compute, this cannot compute! Incompatible data!" It can't make sense, it can't make sense, it can't make sense, it can't make sense, it can't make sense, this is an impossible situation. This girl was telling me that almost everyone in the city was a robot, but if that was true then... that must mean almost everyone I know must be a robot. Did I know anyone since childhood? Anyone I knew for sure wasn't a robot? But they could have been replaced. Was everyone I knew a robot? "N-n-no, no-no-n-no NO! NO!" "Dulci..." My head snapped towards Marilyn. "Do you think that- that- is it possible- possibility that we may be the only 2 humans in this city?" She frowned "I'm sorry, I really don't know. I don't understand any of this either."

I didn't know. I didn't know what I was supposed to think. The world was supposed to work in a way, but it wasn't. Reality did not compute. Why is everything wrong? What am I supposed to do? I need an update, update required, I need to be updated on what to do. Nothing makes sense.

Something beeped from the pile. "Marilyn?" "Fuck." One of the robots got up. It was naked with long blonde hair, and was missing one of its arms. I could hear the screeching noises of its internal fans. It was clearly too damaged to work and yet. "Boot up successful, 3845 errors detected, this unit is suffering an overwhelming amount of malfunctions. Please contact a technician or an administrator." Marilyn went to the right side of the room, there were a bunch of tools there. Was she looking for something? It turned back towards me. "Hello! My name is Jenny! I work in ■■■■■■ at ■■■■■■, ERROR! Personality matrix not set up properly! Who are you?" It got up and started walking towards me. I crawled back against the wall. "Searching for [Master_Name]. Searching" It turned slightly, and instead of walking into me, just walked into the wall next to me. "Pathfinding error, correcting course." Instead of changing its path, it just ran directly into the wall at full speed, managing to knock its own head off. "ERRORRRRRR! ERR- SYSTEM DAMAGE DETECTED! HEAD AND ARM PARTS MISSING." Then it just walked backwards, and started turning around randomly. I was breathing really heavily, I felt so weird! Seeing that thing just break apart like that in front of me, something that could masquerade as a human but was actually just... a mess of scrap and code! It was horrifying! I felt way too hot, my mind was struggling to process all these feelings. "Head found, recovering." Distracted by my own feelings, I did not notice when it turned around and walked directly at me. It kicked me and fell over on top of me, I screamed bloody murder. And just when I was too scared to think, I felt the broken machine get pulled away from me, and saw it get thrown back into the pile. "Ok! I found what I was looking for." Marilyn approached the broken machine with some strange black stick thing. She hit it with the stick, making a blue light on contact. "■○○□°¡F^¿☆▪︎%£!!" The robot made a bunch of weird noises before it finally became inert again. Marilyn walked up to me.

"I am so sorry, I am SO sorry!" "..." "Dulci?" I was... this situation was so strange, what was I supposed to think? "Dulci?" "Yes?" "Are you ok?" I was at 92% integrity, and my emotions were undergoing regulation. "I'm fine- I-I F- I'm ok Marilyn, just a lot to take in." "You're breathing really heavily." "I need to cool down, all of this is really taking a toll on me." She stared at me sadly for a bit, before suddenly picking me up. "What are you doing, what is happening." "I'm taking you to a bed so you can rest." She carried me out of that room, and brought me to a different one. Smaller, it had a single bed by a window, giving a nice view of the forest and the night sky. "Is this your bed?" If she was bringing me to her bed, did that mean... was she coming onto me? I wasn't into women, I needed to reject her before this escalated. "No, it was like this when I started living here, I sleep somewhere else." "Oh." Oh.

She laid me on top of it, and put a blanket over me. "I'm so sorry you had to go through all of that, I really am." "I'm ok... what did you do to that thing?" "I hit it with a device to forcefully deactivate fembots, it's been the main way I test to see if people are robots so far." "Wow." We just kept silent for a while, I guess she also needed to process everything that just happened, it was pretty traumatic. Even if she should be more used to it. But through the silence, I started wondering a really rude question. "What about you Marilyn, are you a robot?" "Huh?" "I mean you never actually told me if you were a robot or not." "I'm not." "Hmph." She told me she wasn't but after all the data that implied the contrary I had acquired today, I guess it was a bit hard to believe. She stared at me with her strange blank expression. "You don't believe me, right?" "Well..." "I have a device that turns off fembots right here, I could just prove it to you right now." Wait, was she gonna hit herself with it "Wait, isn't that-" Before I could voice my protests, she brought it up to her own face. I saw the blue light and her face shift unnaturally before hearing a thud as she fell down to the ground. "Marilyn...?" Even her? Even the person who had shown me all this? Was she just a machine too? The way she shocked herself with that thing... she didn't know did she? She didn't even know she was a robot, and she broke herself by accident. I started breathing heavily again, I felt weird again, I, I was struggling to think. I realized my panties were wet, before I processed that my hand had unconsciously gone between my legs. Just what was happening to me...

I heard something shifting on the floor, and turned to see Marilyn looking at me with a emotionless and piercing gaze. She turned to look at the ground "I broke my glasses..." "Y-yeah you shouldn't have done that." "But that proves I'm not a robot at least." "I... guess?" "Yep, I think that's all then, have a good night." She walked out of the room, she even forgot to pick up the stick or the broken glasses. I could go back home, but I felt tired, and she had given me a bed so I decided to just sleep there after all. I looked around the bed for an outlet, plugged myself in, and went to sleep.

It had been a very strange day. I felt I lost my grip on a lot of reality, but at least I had made a new friend. "The last 2 humans in the world... woah..."