[ WP ] You get a deep cut for the first time in your life , instead of bone or muscle , you see wires .

My fingers twitched as I noticed the metallic sheen of my interior, a composite of wires, cables and a gleaming structure. The grasp I had on the small razor blade quickly released and it disappeared from my mind. Everything around me ceased to exist in this moment. I didn ’ t really know what I was expecting. The curiosity I had held of the nature of my makeup had long been on my mind. Of course I had had my fair share of scrapes, bruises and cuts in the past but none had affected me. My inability to feel had always perplexed me, for the longest time I had put it down to a mental defect, perhaps something in my brain had not been wired right. Now I was starting to realise that my brain might in fact be wired and that there might be more different about me than I had at first suspected. 
 
 
 ‘ You ’ ve got grit, Kid! ’ and ‘ You ’ re a tough one ’ are a couple of phrases I had more times than I could remember. I never really got ill, never really cared. Kids at school would be off from time to time with a cold or chicken pox or some other ailment I had never felt. Not me. I always put it down to the way my mum ran the house. ‘ Spick and Span ’ is a motto I swear she must recite in her head in her sleep. I wasn ’ t exactly bubble boy but I guess some of her habits had stuck with me. I was clean, I was concise. My shoes were always clean, my hair was slick back smart and there was never a crease in my school uniform. Even though they never aired their jokes publicly in front of me I knew the other kids joked that I was a robot, but I didn ’ t care, emotion was something I never really processed, that probably comes from my father ’ s side. He had been a military man, like my mother he was compulsive but at a difference. He spoke little and seemed to care even less. With a purpose he would march to and fro throughout the house but apart from that he would be fixated on the day ’ s paper or tuned in to the news channel, like he was just absorbing each platform ’ s knowledge. 
 
 
 It seemed as if the kid ’ s jokes may have had some grounding. Today was the day my curiosity peaked. Today was the day my curiosity was rewarded with knowledge. I had gotten the idea from a film I had seen late at night. This character had removed his sleeve of skin in order to prove to another character that he was a robot sent from the future. His emotionless face reminded me of every time I had ‘ hurt ’ myself in the past. After a fall or a scrape I would be doted on with sympathy but I never really felt anything. I would screw my face but that was only because it was something I had learnt that happens when such an occasion occurs. Now in my teens I felt like I had built up courage enough to push my curiosities. Despite never really feeling any sort of physical pain in the past I was not free of fear, that in itself had promised me a form of pain. It was an ‘ emotion ’ I had learnt as I had grown up. The fear of the unknown. The fear of the ‘ what if? ’. 
 
 
 My forearm shed the viscous crimson liquid I had always recognised but as it cleared I understood that this was only a hoax. It masqueraded my apparent human-ness. The ‘ blood ’ thinned out and gave me a better look of what was beneath. A buzz and a whir of life, but that of a synthetic life. In the film the main character had been sent back from the future with a purpose. Did I have a purpose? 

