At first glance, the metropolis that I live in looks like chaos. It kind of is. But don't tell the public that.

  Everything is ashen, layered over with coal and fumes that are taken away by Government filters that appear every morning. They float around the sky like large, foreboding, enongated floating brooms. There are hardly any cars, and no animal-run vehicles run the streets, only children that are as dirty as the tops of the buildings.

   It's always grey here, and we like that. Sometimes, the sun will appear, and people treat it like a storm. They stay indoors until it's gone, and the usual grey clouds loom overhead.

   Scared of things that are different, I think.

   I guess it's because we don't know what to do with the sun. According to books I've read, people used to enojy it. Run around in it's glow, bask, frolic. I can't think of anything more out of the ordinary. Actually, I can.

    But the truth is, there isn't chaos unless the public see chaos.

   And we're all oblivious.

   I realize that I'm being oblivious to everything just by thinking, and I jolt myself back. Just in time, too.

  "Barron." I whisper to my classmate, keeping my voice low.

   He turns his head away from the rusty device at which he's poking, looking back at me. I gesture with my head to the lecturer, who's staring this way. He drops the metal contraption under his seat, giving his attention to the slow talking man.

  He's boring. Old, the kind of old that nobody ever wants to be. Plus, he smells like coal and cigars. Pretty sure he hasn't showered in, like, a month.

  Every word he says he prizes, while others throw it away to be replaced with other thoughts.

   I almost feel sorry for him, but then the lecturer starts to hobble over to Barron, and puts his hand out. His palms are glistening in the grey light of the day.

   Glaring up at him, Barron puts the metal into his hand, and the man keeps talking as he hobbles across the pavement to a slot in the circular courtyard. The pale stones around the slot are black with ash from the square hole.

  We all know what he's doing, where he's going to put the metal.

   He pulls down the handle, and a slide drops out like an open mouth, ready for anything interesting to be thrown inside. The man drops it, and I hear it clang down until there's a splash, and I know it's fallen into the hot metal that causes some of the grime at the tops of buildings.

   Gone. Forever. Thrown in with the robots.

   Barron hangs his head down in front of me, but I know he's glaring at the lecturer for the rest of the whole hour he keeps talking.

  When we're released to stand up, it takes the seventy people in my class a moment, and as we all attempt to stand, half of us topple over. My legs aren't numb, but I pretend they are so I don't have to stand around and wait for the line of people to keep moving.

   It's all I can do to stop myself from cursing the lecturer out loud, and I settle for swearing many times until to anybody half-listening it shows that I, too, have lost feeling in my legs. I haven't, but maybe it'll get me a symepthetic glance from somebody.

   The girl I was sitting next to is still sat, and I offer my hand to pull her up.

  "There was a rain warning earlier." I tell her, and she curls her lips at my presence.

  "Go away, Aaran." She says, spitting my name like it's the dumbest possible thing. Standing up, strutting away, she limps because her leg is still numb.

   Her sunflower dress overflows onto the gravel, and I pray for it to catch on a wire and rip apart. It doesn't, and I sigh, and start to file along the seats to get out.

  The courtyard is widely used for preaches of rights, and for a school class to visit, you need to book months in advance. I know that my class booked it last year, during a Christmas assembly.

   I wasn't there, though I heard girls talking about it as I was waiting outside the bathroom for them exit. Once they came out, I could finally pee without the stony silence of them all not wanting to even utter a word with me there.

   Though the assembly was important, I was screaming in this very courtyard for them to keep the old buildings still standing. Heritage is more important.

  I swarm with the rest through the break in the bleachers, and out into the streets. Tall concrete buildings loom overhead, the oldest structures among my city. If they start to crack, if they start to look anything less than brilliant, down, down, down, they will go.

   I volunteer for their upkeep as often as there are flyers on streetlamps request help.

  Barron comes to stand beside me, still glaring back at the courtyard wall like the lecturer will see him. He's sort of a friend, but there are very few times when he actually talk for more than one sentence.

   I like him, though.

   Even though we're neighbors, exchanging more than a good morning would be friends. And nobody wants to be my friend. Nobody.

   Even with that knowledge, he turns back to me. "Do you know what that thing was? That Sir Talk-Too-Damn-Much threw down the chute?"

  I shake my head.

  "Whisker. An actual whisker. They made those cake things with them." Barron seems to mourn it for a moment, then heaves and exaggerated sigh. "Anyway. Thanks." I don't know for what he's thanking me, but I smile anyway, and he starts to walk with the others. They stare as he heads over, whispering when he's close enough.

  I pray they get their clothes hooked on a stray wire from the ground, too.

  Maybe then there'll be enough room for more people who believe in keeping the buildings up.

  As if they heard me, one of them shouts at me from the group. He's roughly the size of a dwarf, and for a moment I think that he should be the one without and friends.

   "Hey! Aaran! You going for another jog? Just make sure you don't fuse yourself out!" It gets a laugh from all of them, and a few others who heard it. Snickering twits.

  My name's pronounced 'Aaron' like the original name that isn't always corrected on whirring computers. But apparently, I was supposed to be a boy, and even though I have no idea how they got the scans incorrect, I came out a girl.

  It was a good joke, actually. Funny. Ha, ha. Ugh.

  My name, if you try hard enough, sounds like 'run', so it's an ongoing gag between everybody that I'm always running. And of course, which makes the joke even funnier, I'm a robot, right? So I've got to make sure I don't short-circuit.

  Hilarious. Right? Yeah. Ha, fucking, ha.

  I turn my head to look down, and cross the street in the opposite direction to where they're going.

   Once I make sure they're not looking twice, I start to run, and I dive into a tiny path between two buildings. I stop to fill my lungs with air, and run through the smoke that's thick enough to put soot in my eye. I only let myself breathe again when the air is clearer, and I look up at the dead-end of the alley.

  Dark clouds are all I can see above the buildings, but they look brighter today. Hmm.

   I think that, if, for a moment, I were to build an airship that would take me above the smoke and fumes, and view the city from a height. If I would see anything important up there. If I would be able to breathe clearly for the first time.

  Shaking my head at myself, I jump up a drain pipe, climbing it's rusty metal until I reach a window ledge. It was mistake in the building plans, a window that would look onto nothing, so it's perfect to use as a boost. I cling onto the stone, jumping once, twice, and a final time to lift myself onto the roof above it.

  I pull myself up, careful to doge the steam pipe that's constantly puffing out grey smoke.

   It smells worse near it, the air filled with dirt that I can feel caking onto my skin, so I start a jog toward the edge, jumping onto the rim, and leaping across.

   The gap used to be too small for me to jump over, and by brother had to throw me to my dad over it, but now it's as easy as sitting alone at the lunch table.

  The smoke from the pipe clears the further I get away from it, so I quicken my pace with every building.

   Regardless of the insults I get for it, running makes me feel better. Like rain used to help some people calm down, that's what running, or jumping, or anything that takes my breath away, does for me. I tell myself it's because I don't want to become unfit, but I guess it's because when I get tired, it's a reminder that I'm not a mechanical piece of engineering.

  I sprint the rest of the way.

  By the time I get to the building I need, I'm breathing so heavily the cold air burns my throat.

  The roof of this building is bricked, and not flat like the others, so I have to use the old gutters on the side that used to catch water to step along it. It doesn't rain, not anymore. Or when it does, it's painful, and burns your skin with so much pain that you scream until your lungs rip apart.

   It burns if you're outside. It seeps into your skin and burns away your muscle. They made a word for it at the school, but it didn't catch on to anyone official. Acid rain.

  The government prefer to call it something with lots of letter of which nobody remembers the order. Acid used to be dangerous, my great grandpa had said, news of it being thrown on people in violence.

   He sighed at how things had changed for it now to be a normal call in schools to run home to avoid it...

  "Oh, no." And I remember the rush I was supposed to be in a minute too late.

   The first drop of rain hits the back of my gloves, and it seeps through the worn cotton too quickly for me to get it off.

  It burns. It burns. It burns; hurts like sticking my hand into an open flame, and heating until the fire is blue. I can almost feel it tearing through the muscle, ripping it apart slowly.

  I yelp, jumping from the edge of the roof. It's a small drop until the next wooden windowsill, and I hear it creak and splinter beneath my weight. I use my free hand to fumble for the window, pushing the shutters open and falling through. I land on the carpet of my bedroom, curling myself into a ball and cradling my hand. It hurts.

   So much. I want to scream and swear and cry. I take the cotton off, throwing it out of the open window for some other sucker to enjoy.

   I've got this dark hair cut just below my shoulders, in loose waves that never leave. It all sticks to my face and neck with sweat, and it just makes it even more unbarable.

  I know I mustn't scream, though. I know that Sammy and Jarvis and my father are busy just past my walls, probably all passed out on the chairs by the stove from working so hard at the factories.

  But I can see it seeping into me, and I start to panic. I get up, clambering over the handle of my door, and stumbling out.

   "Sammy." I mumble, wishing for somebody who knows how to treat an acid burn.

   I walk down the wooden hallway, kicking up the ripped carpet as I trip towards the bathroom. The grout between the tiles is dirty, various drops of blood stain from wounds that their work can't pay for staining it. I reach for the shelf, but my hand is shaking too much, and I topple a jar of rusty pins that falls onto the sink.

   It smashes, sending glass and pins flying onto my burning hand.

  Then I finally call out, grimacing through the urge to shriek. Almost immediately my dad zooms around the corner, stopping in the doorway. I look up at him, and am in too much pain to do anything other than sit on the tiled floor, holding my hand like I'm protecting it. I feel the glass rub against my palm, and I take it away, attempting to pick out the shards. I yell, biting down on my lip so hard it starts to bleed. My dad comes back into the doorway, even though I hadn't noticed him leaving, with a filthy-faced Sammy in tow.

   They hadn't slept, and I wonder why as my brother crouches beside me, gesturing for my hand.

  "God, Aaran." He mumbles, shaking his head. He turns to my dad. "Get Jarvis to make some salt and ice. I'll also need bandages, a pin, a rough sponge, and a cloth. And get the bowl on top of the fridge!" Dad nods, but I look away from his face.

  I know that it isn't sympathetic, or worried. I'd come to know that my father has lost the ability to have any facial expressions, and to go on what he says is the best chance you have at knowing what he's thinking.

  Sammy holds the back of my hand up, and studies it. "You know not to stay out when there's a whether warning. What the hell was going through your mind?"

  Leaning my back against the bathtub, I try to appear like it doesn't hurt with every movement he forces my hand to do. "I was wondering if I was a robot, and how traumatically horrible my death would be to you all." I say, and I hear him laugh.

  "You're not a piece of machinery." He says, taking a large piece of glass from my hand. "Would you bleed if you were a robot?"

  I actually prepared for this question. "I saw an article the other day about robots that bleed. That have organs, and eyes and a heart."

   I had researched it in the library, but it's a robotic thing to read books, so I keep my mouth shut. It's hard enough for them to get through the factory day with everybody asking if missing cogs had been stolen by them to replace my rusty ones. 

  Sammy pokes my arm above where the acid is. "Shut up. I saw you hours after you were born, through a glass window, in a little cot. There was absolutely nothing more fleshy and human and non-robotic than that. Alright?" He says, throwing another shard into the sink. He's told me that many times before.

  Whenever I came home crying, he fed me custard and crackers and told me those exact words. They never seemed to lose their effectiveness.

   But I can't think about anything that isn't agony.

  I try to smile as a thank-you, but when he starts to tug out another shard, and I can hear the movement of my skin as it clings its bloody layers around the glass, I shout. I shout out a swear so loud I think even the thick-walled neighbors might hear it. In between the pain, I hope between load cries that Barron and the other neighbouring kids that go to my school don't hear it, and spread rumors about me again.

   That was one hell of a rumor, too. One wild ride. Hah. Get it? Because...oh, never mind.

  Sammy keeps tugging on it, knowing full well that the only way to help me is to clear the wound. But all my trust in his medical expertise melts away, and I kick my shoes against the tile to get away from him.

   "Aaran, stop it." He says, just as Jarvis and dad walk to the doorway.

  "What's she doing?" Dad asks, handing the bowl of needed medical supplies over.

  Sammy takes the bowl, setting it down and rummaging through it with one hand, using the other to hold my arm in place. His grip is firm, and I know that even with his training, he hates seeing me like this.

   "Kicking." He answers dad. "Kicking like a damn baby."

  Jarvis stands next to the sink holding a ragged piece of cloth, holding it under the running water. He looks down into the basin, and then looks at my hand. Swallowing back the sick that normally rises from him being squeamish, he keeps his eyes on the cloth.

  "Aaran, what happened?" He asks. "It wasn't them from school was it?"

  He gives the cloth the Sammy, and the water drips onto my burn. I call out again, biting my tongue through the rest of the drops to appear calm.

  "There was a whether warning." Sammy explains, using an end of the cloth to take out glass. He's too busy concentrating to know that the question wasn't for him, and I hope that that means I won't lose my hand.

  Dad's low rumble of a voice speaks from the doorway. "And you stayed out?"

  "She wanted to test if she would short-circuit." Sammy says, and he finishes speaking before he catches himself.

  I see him mouth a swear, and avoid my eyes. I don't know whether he feels guilty about saying it out-loud, or about the glass he's pulling from my skin. He takes a syringe from the bowl, and I hope it'll numb the pain.

  The room is quiet of voices.

   Jarvis has stopped washing the medical kit of old blood, and the water running down the tap is the only sound echoing off the tiles. I don't notice the seconds slipping by, I don't notice anything. I don't notice how Jarvis glances at dad to say something, or how there are voices from the shutters above my head.

  It's agony. I push the side of my head against the bathtub, trying my best to not scream.

  "You're not a robot, love." Dad finally says, and I think that I hear sympathy in his voice. Ooh.

  "So you keep telling me." I mumble, just before Sammy sticks a needle into my arm, and I black out.