Zak-2 (Old story)

My name is Zak-2. I am 18 years old. This is 3210 AD and I live on a cargo spaceship. 

I am a cyborg. 

And I belong to Kyla.

Before being a cyborg I was a young boy. But Kyla killed me. I’ll keep that story for later. It’s a bit gore.

I’ve been reanimated and physically rearranged with robotics and cybergenetics. The only -true- parts of my true body are my brain, my heart, a few organs. It is common to save young dead humans this way. I’m glad I had the chance to be reanimated. Kyla’s family paid a lot for that. 

Kyla is one of the 3 daughters of a very important man. He’s the CEO of Albertsson’s Transcorp and his company is in charge of a very important spaceship fleet that delivers cargo, people, and information through the different places of the galaxy. 

As for Kyla, she’s 18 years old as well, and she’s a very demanding girl. She has everything she wants because her rich dad pays. But she’s not a happy girl, she’s stuck on the flagship and even if she’s respected and well treated by everyone like a little princess, she keeps telling me about how she would love to live on a planet, make new friends, go to the beach, and live like a normal girl. 

Back when I was younger, I was travelling with this company and I met Kyla. After what she did to me, her dad paid to have me reanimated and he bought me to be her friend. Space travels can be long and lonely. I live in my quarters, they are under Kyla’s and when it rings, it means she needs me or want to see me. In fact, she owns me. 

Honestly, I’m glad to be her friend, and I’m glad to be alive.

We left yesterday for our current travel. The ship we’re on travels between two very important locations and the estimated time for the travel is 2 months. Kyla wasn’t very happy with this decision and yelled around in her quarters. It didn’t take long before the bell rang for me to go up there to see her. 

I deactivated my gravity boots and jumped up to reach the seal in no gravity. I opened it and went through. Once up there I closed the seal and reactivated my gravity boots so I would walk on the floor normally. Kyla was on the computer, she was talking to some friends she would see on the next planet we would reach in two months. 

“Evy, I need to go, Zak 2 is here.” The girl on the screen looked asian, she smiled and waved, the broadcast was over. Kyla turned to me. 

“Zak, thanks for coming. I need your opinion.” She stood up and walked in the large room past her bed to her huge closet. Mostly everything on this spaceship can be maintained by assisted gravity, but Kyla keeps her room’s assisted gravity off most of the time so many objects are floating around, clothes, cups, shoes, socks, etc. It’s a girl’s room. A big one. It has view on space through a large window with gold plates to protect from different galactic rays. I followed her a bit near the entrance of her closet. She was looking around in some compartments for something.

“Daddy bought me the nicest looking boots of the galaxy, the new Z156.” I looked at her as she removed her current shoes revealing her perfect shaped feet encased in some pink socks. While she changed her boots for the new pair, she was floating upside down. After she managed to put them on she pushed herself to the floor and activated them. 

“How do I look?” She asked. 

The boots were bright red with straps on the side a bit higher than her ankle. A few lights were on near the ankle and they had a 4 inch high block heel and maybe a one inch platform. The black rigged sole was anti-bacterial and the model was planned, like most shoes are since a few decades already, to counter human sweat making feet odorless. She walked in them like on a catwalk and smiled, making poses.

"You look great Kyla, you always do. What’s the new improvement on them?” I said, my voice sounding like a tin can. 

"My dear Zak, these boots have electro-magnetic impulses that massage my feet while I walk.” She walked up to me and grabbed the back of my head and pulled it to a few inches from her face. “And I want to walk on you with them.” She kissed me passionately like she always does. I’m not her boyfriend, but I’m nice looking and since I belong to her she can do whatever she wants with me. She’s a secluded girl with great desires. After kissing me she bit my lower lip. “Lie down baby…It can’t hurt you...”

I lied down and activated the “lie-down” function on my suit. It makes my whole body attracted to the floor in a gravity-less environment. I laid on my belly. After the reanimation, it was clear that I wouldn’t feel pain, cold or warmth, I wouldn’t feel anything. So when she stood on my body with her new boots, she was like a feather on me and she laughed. 

“You know Zak, it was much better when you could feel my weight back in the old days don’t you think?” She grinded her shoes on my artificial spine. “I enjoyed watching your face’s expression…Now you’re practically useless.”

She walked around my back and asked me to turn around to lay down on my back. She stepped up on my torso, again she was a feather. 

“What do you feel, Zak, what makes you feel?” She stomped on my belly with her red boots. 

“I feel nothing.” I said back. 

“There must be something you feel!” She walked on my torso and hovered her high heel platform boot above my face. “I could stomp your head and you wouldn’t feel anything?”

“Nothing at all.” I answered. She rotated her ankle above my face and slowly touched my nose with the black rigged sole of her new boots. She caressed my nose lightly, my forehead. I could see she was trying to make me react but I was just an object like the others, it was hard for me to even think of an other purpose. 

She lifted her foot above my face.

“Care for a smile?” she asked. I smiled, after what she stomped on my face as hard as she could. She then jumped on it with both feet, jumped jumped jumped again and again. My nose was bleeding and the drips of blood flew in the gravity less place, and she stopped. She saw the drips of blood and reached for her wrist watch. She pressed on a few buttons and the gravity was restored in the room. The drops of blood just splashed on the floor and some of the blood was dripping on the side of my face, which was still under her red boots as she was standing on my face with skilled balance. Every object that was floating dropped and slammed on the floor.

“This is a shame.” She said as she stomped a few more times and stepped off. “At least you like my boots?”

“I do.” 

“Clean your mess now.” I removed the lay down function on my suit, and the gravity on my boots and got up and cleaned the blood from my face and on the floor. “Quickly.” She cooed. After I cleaned everything, she removed gravity from the room again and jumped to reach the ceiling. I was floating innocently. 

“Zak I’m bored on this ship, I’ve tried and done everything. Entertain me.”

“Well Kyla, I do feel sometimes.” 

“Really?” Interested, she jumped from the ceiling and floated to me and we collided and float slowly to the floor. She activated the gravity on her boots. She grabbed my head, and in no gravity I’m like a feather so she moved me around and placed my head on the floor. I was almost laying down, she put a foot on my head and pressed. The rest of my body was floating a little but I wasn’t moving much. She removed her foot from my head and backed a few steps. 

“Tell me or I kick you like a ball.”

I was floating a bit off the floor. I was about to tell her but she ran toward me and kicked my head as hard as she could, sending me flying in the room and turning until I hit the opposite wall. She laughed a bit. I was near the ceiling. She activated gravity and I fell almost 2 stories down right on the hard floor with a big “clunk”. 

I activated my own boots to stay on the floor, and she removed gravity again. Funny girl. 

“Tell me!” 

“I can feel odors.” 

“You can smell?” She laughed. 

“Yes, this is something my memory still has, and the doctors reanimated me with an intelligent cyborg body. I can feel smells. I can feel taste.”

“You can taste?” She asked from across the room. 

“I do.”

“This could be useful.” She said. I don’t know what she had in mind. 

“I also feel love, hate, friendship…” She walked to me after I said that. She grabbed my head on her both hands and came closer to my face with hers. 

“Oh baby, I love you, you know that right?” she said, artificially.

“No, Kyla, you don’t love me.” I said. She punched me in the face and started kicking me all around in vain. Then, she kissed me, she kissed me all around on my mouth, cheeks, eyes, nose, she kissed and bit my ears, in my neck. I couldn’t feel anything, but I knew this wasn’t love. 

“See?”

“Yes….Kyla…..I see.” Sometimes I just agree to buy peace. 

“Good!” She smiled. “Go back to your quarters now.” 

I opened the hatch in the floor of her room and dropped myself in, to fall down into my own quarters. Since both our quarters are linked, she controls gravity and she always enjoys seeing me drop down the 15 feet high on the floor of my own room, wish me good night and close the hatch above me.

This is my life with Kyla. 

She loves me, so it seems. 

I went back to my work. I never sleep, so when I have free time I walk around the ship and I go to the mechanical section. On my way there I always come across some of the crew and passengers. I like seeing these people they remind me of real life, the life I had before. In the morning, well, what the ship’s automatic cycle decide it is time for morning, I always go back to my quarters in time, so I’m never too far in case Kyla wants me. She can beep me on my watch when I’m at the other end of the ship, but she hates waiting and she threatens to have me deactivated. Even if my life is dull, I would hate to die again. 

When I arrived the next morning I was surprised to see Kyla had gravity on and the hatch opened. She was above the hole.

“Zak my boy, how are you this morning?”

“Do you really need an answer to that?” I said back. Emotions weren’t really my best area of expertise. 

“No, no, it’s okay. I have a request. Here catch these.” I didn’t have time to react I received a red boot model Z156 in my hands, from the ceiling, and the other right on my upturned face. I didn’t expect it to hit me square. It fell down on the floor beside me. 

“Zak, you have 3 hours to hack in these boot’s program to remove the anti-odor function.” She closed the hatch while humming a girly song, and removed gravity. 3 hours. To hack the boots’ program, it would take me at least 6. I had to make this quick. And I knew exactly what she had in mind. 

While walking, almost running to the tech-lab section of the ship I asked myself if I should just remove the program, or hack it so it would smell like perfume. I knew since I told her I could smell that she would wear those boots to have her feet smelly. I read in the archives that back a few century people didn’t have anti-odor boots and shoes and that encased in boots for a few hours, feet can develop some strange odors. From archives, it is said foot smell is commonly known as bad. But all of a sudden I became curious. I didn’t smell anything but ambient air (which I was used to) and some things people eat. I can’t eat anymore, since I do not have any oesophagus. I can taste but can’t swallow. My body is nourished by supplies plugged in once in a while, I can sustain very long.

Maybe smelling her feet would be something new in my boring life. So I just removed the programs on each boot and it took me 4 hours. When I came back to my quarters, after passing the SAS, the hatch was opened, and the gravity was off. That was a message I had to jump up to her quarter and bring her the boots. I would also have to face her fury for being late. 

She put her boots on her feet and flew around with them. 

“Zak you’re a good boy, but you’re late.”

“I know Kyla, what can I do to repay you.” I asked. 

“Hack the programs of all my shoes.”

“It would take a while you have dozens of pairs.” I said.

“I don’t mind. You do them all. I don’t mind if it takes you the whole week. Bring the tools you need here and do it here if you think it can go faster. Start now, I’m going for a walk, I need to talk to my father.” With that she left her quarters and me alone inside with a lot of work to do. 

On my watch I can see where Kyla is, when I access the ship’s map screen. That way I always know on which level she is, and which section. That is useful. As I worked on the first pair of shoes I had, some ankle sports shoes model S345 with half-gravity, full gravity, and low gravity function, I kept an eye on her movements on my watch. She went to the cargo bay where stocks are being reduced and stored.

I hate when she goes there, it means she thinks about the reducer. It’s a machine you put stuff inside and reduce them so they take less storing space in the ship. Kyla’s dad made a real lot of money with this invention and the company he operates is the best transportation company of all galaxy because of this. 

Kyla loves to put me in the reducer and play with me. I’m not fond of this at all, it’s really boring. When she was younger she loved to try and crush me under her weight in vain (I'm an object and reduced I'm like a piece of metal), she would stomp on me as I was a few inches tall. The machine doesn’t work very good on flesh, but since my body is 95% made with genetically created fibers and metal I can be reduced to very small sizes. It gives me head aches, and odd heart beats, and my organs have a hard time dealing with this. I’m always a bit catatonic after the reducing and she knows it’s making me dizzy. 

To have the reducer work you need codes, this prevents accidents, but since she’s the daughter of the company’s number one, she just have to walk over there and flirt with the operator and he gives her reducing codes. 

I doubled speed on this shoe-hacking stuff.

This 2 month travel was about to be a long one.