Published in Stranger Sagas.
I unraveled the family portrait. If these were my parents, who was downstairs? The relevance of this thought was disturbing. I am an only child, and I live on a potato farm in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“Come down from the attic, Timothy, your supper's ready.” That was my “mother.” As I walked downstairs to the two-room first floor, the only floor of the house besides the attic, I could smell my birthday dinner. It was potato stew.
“Potatoes, it's like the only thing I've eaten my entire boring eleven years living,” I stated. As I sat down in the chair I usually sit in for meals, I showed the portrait to my parents. All of a sudden they looked heartbroken.
Dad started, “Listen, Tim, your real parents work for the Central Intelligence Agency located in Mclean, Virginia, and they build robots. You're an invention, Timothy!”
“That can't be true! It just can't!” I exclaimed. After that, I went straight up to my bedroom in the attic and I wept myself to sleep. In the morning, I questioned my “mom,” and I asked her why I wasn't in Virginia with the people who brought me to life. She said the two people who invented me programmed me to be a war robot to fight in wars instead of humans. It turns out that they accidentally programmed me to have human emotions, so they sent me away to live with my fake parents, whose names are Suzanne and Rick Gavantry. Gavantry is the last name I've been going by.
When I went back up to my room after eating breakfast, I saw a robot manual in the frame of the portrait of my real parents!
It had my robot name on it, Fight Fighter I, but I didn't want to be called that. I wanted to be given a real name from my real parents! It also said I could fly by shooting fuel out of my palms and the bottoms of my feet.
Sure enough, when I said out loud, “Fuel on,” I went high into the sky and right through the ceiling. The only problem was that I couldn't control myself. I was surprised that going through the ceiling didn't hurt at all! After I became in control with this new flying mechanism, I decided I was going to find a way to get to McLean, Virginia, before sunset. I thought it wouldn't be too hard because I can fly at least 200 mph now. I also have a compass that shows you where you are by looking at the coordinates.
It took me about eight hours to get to McLean, Virginia. Now the hard part was finding exactly where they worked. I searched for the CIA building for roughly fifteen minutes, and then I found it.
I decided I was going to sneak inside the building; then I would ask someone if he or she recognized the two people in the portrait.
As I was walking through a hallway, I came to a woman in a white lab coat. I asked her if she recognized anyone in the portrait.
She said, “I do; in fact, the young lady in that portrait is me. The gentleman there is one of my colleagues.
I asked, “So you invented me?”
“It depends. What robot type are you?” she said.
I said, “Fight Fighter I.”
The scientist said, “Then yes, I invented you.”
Little Tim's life was never the same again. He lived with his new parents in Virginia. His mom decided to make a robotic dog for Tim to play with. He went to a public school in Virginia. He made some new friends at his new school, and “life” was going swell for Tim - if you know what I mean.
The End