The Urimine Effect Read online

repeated.

  "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean, what don't you understand?"

  "This." He said shaking the picture as if gesturing toward every part of it.

  Yin sighed and rested her head in her hands, frustrated to realize that she'd purchased a deranged robot.

  "I don't know, My father took me out to the zoo one day and we spent the afternoon together. This is the last time I'd seen him so happy for a long time."

  Marcus blinked and looked at the picture, "Why was he happy?"

  "I don't know. I like to think that he loved me enough to be happy, but I don't think that's true anymore." Yin clenched her paw against the surface of the table, she didn't want to think about her father right then, she'd made the choices she'd needed to to forget him. Why was Marcus trying to bring it up again?

  "Is love something that makes you happy." Yin perked up. Marcus was upset from his past life and something must have happened to him to keep him from experiencing love or joy, leaving him with a broken image of why creatures choose to live such pitiful lives. The life of a Meregal, or even a human, must seem very strange to a robot who knows only how to work. It must be very frustrating and frightening sometimes. Yin let her gaze drop to her paws.

  "Love is the reason why so many of us do what we do," She explained, "Love is the reason why you like to clean, it is something that you enjoy." Marcus seemed surprised by this revelation, it must not have occurred to him that he had ever loved anything before, even if he'd had so much pain in his life, it must never have occurred to him that the work he does was the escape he'd found in the times of crisis in his life. Maybe he'd been forced to work for someone cruel and unfeeling to have forgotten why happiness was something he needed. Being sold and forced to shut down for so long in the shop must have been crippling as well. A life of pain, ended by abandonment, it must have been hard.

  "Is all love work?"

  "No." Yin concluded, "Love has so many forms, it is hard to tell you all of them, but one thing I do know is this; Love is acceptance in its purest form. Without acceptance, we can never learn to move past the insignificant things that cloud our path. There was once a god that the humans worshipped whose son came to Earth to save them from the evil things they'd done. They say he came because he loved them, because he cared enough to give up everything for those who would accept him. It wasn't enough for them to know they did good in the eyes of their God, but to be what he wanted them to be, something new, something even they could never comprehend until they had been filled with the love of their God." Yin sighed, "Things have changed now, the humans have moved on to more convenient beliefs. Meregals, though, have never had any sort of conceivable religion." Yin opened her mouth to speak more, but closed it, moving away from the table and returning her empty plate to the sink before going upstairs to her room. She wanted to believe in this great God, but time had erased the scraps of sympathy. It had been more than three thousand years since he'd come, but the Humans had moved on, and the new religion exists; Convenience. Yin growled to herself as she drew herself under the covers. A religion meant for those who'd never wanted religion and those who'd never wanted to change. It was all a lie, but it was a lie hidden behind half-truths, and those are the kind that unchanging people believe in, even if the truth was a thing known to all. To be shunned by humans was one thing, but to be shunned by someone who believed in Convenience was to be shunned by Convenience itself, and many sacrificed themselves to belong. Yin put the covers over her head and tried to sleep before her thoughts became any more taxing. She only managed to make herself feel worse. She sat up, frustrated by her lack of control, and went to desk to to find a pencil and paper, she wanted to make a list of all the most important things in her life, to know what was worth holding on to and what was worth letting go. Yin wanted to leave the city, to start fresh somewhere else where she can reinvent herself, to cast off the stigma of being called her father's pet. Yin laughed to herself, imagine if I were to own a pet cat myself? Would people think I was odd? It's strange enough that I look like one, I think it would be amusing to see what others thought of it too. Then again, maybe they'll just think they're my own kittens, or at the least, I've gone mad with despair and I've substituted cats for the friends I didn't have. Yin shook the distraction from her head and drew a pencil out of the top drawer in her desk. She wanted this list to be definitive before she made any final decisions. She sighed before putting her mind back on the paper.

  "1. I live alone. A single Meregal who doesn't know the meaning of acceptance.

  2. I own a robot.

  3. My father has abandoned me.

  4. I've been accepted by an employer who is willing to provide food and shelter for as long as I work.

  5. I don't want to be here anymore.

  6. I have no friends, only a robot who doesn't know what love is.

  7. I want a boyfriend who will marry me and raise a family. (Denen seems kind of nice, though I doubt it would ever work out between us.)

  8. I don't know where to go because everything else that I've done is over now. Most people get a well paying job about now and earn their living, but I don't know long I can take living here to keep with it, the money I have from selling my father's secret should keep me safe if I lost my job, but I don't know if it's worth staying to learn how well that will work. If only I had someone I could talk to about all of this."

  Yin placed the pencil carefully onto the desk, she'd rambled toward the end, but she felt better now that she'd organized her problems into a more manageable pile. She needed to get into the mood to work as a maid, that was the most important thing right now, everything else depended on how she felt after she'd learned the routine. But until then, she thought, I think it's important that I make a decision concerning the house. I can't afford it anymore because my father isn't paying the bills. I need to find a new way to live, otherwise the house will be taken from me once I stop paying. Can Marcus do anything to help? Yin wanted to think keeping him was a possibility, but she didn't have anywhere to put him now that she'd been, quite miraculously, accepted as the new maid in the human household. She would need to think about this in the morning, until then, she really needed to get to bed.

  Yin dimmed the lights for the second time that night and curled up under the covers on her mattress, feeling the cool fabric brush against her fur. Her thoughts drifted to Dennen, the dark, hansom Meregal she'd just met, and she began thinking to herself how important it was that she find someone else to help carry the load of the life she lived, but her mind was set, she couldn't choose someone who would never be anything more than a pretty face.

  Until I can find the right one for me, she told herself, I need to search with all my heart, and look in the right directions.

  Gradually, Yin's thoughts began to slow until she'd fallen into a deep sleep, protected from her father's influences and the problems she'd grown to live with. She was a kind girl at heart with a mind open to the possibilities. Though clouded by misjudgment, she made her way through life one step at a time until she found the things she'd needed most, often skipping the things she'd wanted. Her father had taught her to be self sufficient and her mind had taught her to pay attention. Everything else was unimportant in her life as long as she could become what was most important in her eyes.

  Yin woke up the next morning, having forgotten most of yesterday's occurrences to the blissful embrace of sleep. She went downstairs, unaware of the immaculately cleaned furniture in the living room, or the smell in the air that spoke 'clean'. Instead, her mind was fixed on getting something to eat from the cupboard. A bowl, some milk, and a small can of tuna. She pulled it all down and set it on the floor, flopping down on all fours like a cat. She knew her favourite foods were often stereotypes of associated with cats, and her father had often made fun of her for acting like one, but she'd learned that if that was the way she liked it, sh
e'd have it the same way every time, even if her father never learned to let it go.

  Yin thought of the bad habits her father had acquired as she'd watched him fall into the pit of disrepair that made him too ashamed to stay. She knew it was wrong of her to see the things he had become in such a casual light, and to accept that he could never change, but she had no choice and Flynn had offered the only kind of home she could hope for. In growing up, this was the only life she knew and to her, this was the only life that was right. She'd learned to shun people only because happiness had been taken from her life. Now she understood why her father had loved that picture of them at the zoo; He had loved her, deep inside, but life had made him brittle and cracked, susceptible to his weakness for the bottle. Yin did not blame him for what he had become, instead, she chose to forgive him, letting go of the anger she could have held inside.

  She yawned. Today is a new day, she thought, and I need to find some closure in my life. Otherwise, I might go mad with the thought of it. She picked herself up and placed the bowl and the empty can in their respective places, returning to her room upstairs to change clothes for the day. She was going to take advantage of that ticket her