CinderellAI

by Lyssa Chiavari

  Contents

  Copyright

  CinderellA.I.

  More from Lyssa Chiavari

  CINDERELLA.I.

  Copyright © 2018, 2019 by Lyssa Chiavari.

  Originally published in Magic at Midnight: A YA Fairy Tale Anthology

  from Snowy Wings Publishing

  Cover design by DesignRAN.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, brands, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  CinderellA.I.

  “Cinderella!” I hollered, hands on my hips. Behind me, my internal sensors could detect the eyes of the audience just beyond the velvet cord boring into my back, rapt with attention as always. “Where are you? You need to iron my dress!”

  Beside me, 4N1TA—also known as my “sister,” Anita—shouted, “Cinderella, hurry up! You need to fix my hair!”

  This was the part of the show where Cinderella was supposed to float in on her cloud of red-gold curls. The audience would sigh at her beauty, radiant despite the smudges of soot on her cheeks, and our roles in this story would be set: Cinderella, the hapless but beautiful and pure-hearted heroine; and Anita and myself, the cruel bullies set on keeping her from her happily-ever-after. It was a story everyone knew, one beloved by millions, committed to memory over hundreds of years.

  And my reality, reenacted every day, three times daily. Five on weekends. I had more than just memorized this story—the lines were programmed into me, literally. I could have done this routine on sleep mode. It was always the same.

  Except today.

  Because this time, Cinderella didn’t come. Anita’s line hung in midair, the few instants of silence afterward seeming to drag out into eternity. The audience hadn’t noticed yet, but I could tell by the frantic way Anita’s pupils were spinning that she’d caught it, too. Cinderella was supposed to appear two-point-seven seconds after Anita finished her line, but four-point-five seconds had passed and she was nowhere to be seen.

  Had she malfunctioned? I supposed it was always possible, though it had never happened before. My panic-stricken CPU was beginning to lag now, the way it always did when my processors were overloaded. Mr. Tinker said it was because I had a “nervous personality,” which was, of course, ridiculous. There was obviously a glitch in my A.I. programming, but he wouldn’t do anything to fix it. The last time I’d asked him to debug me, he’d laughed and said, “Why would I do a fool thing like that? It’s what makes you you.”

  It was completely illogical. If a system has bugs, you debug it. I’d told him time and again that there was no sense in getting sentimental about a malfunction. This just proved it. Now Cinderella had broken down somewhere offstage or something, and the show was ruined, and my stupid overloaded circuitry was too slow to do anything about it.

  But then, two-point-nine seconds later—a full seven-point-four seconds after her cue, I might add—Cinderella’s voice rang lyrically across the set. “Coming!”

  She sauntered in, titian locks streaming out from under the oil-stained rag that covered her head in her “peasant” costume. She wore an angelic smile on her face, as if there were no problem with her tardiness, as if she was always meant to come on stage seven-point-four seconds after Anita’s line.

  I glared at her—which is what I was programmed to do at this part, but this time I meant it—and said, “You’re so lazy, Cinderella. What have you been doing all morning? Reading, as usual?”

  She caught my eye, winking before saying her next line. “Oh, but stepsister, don’t you ever dream of living another life? Of adventure and romance? Some dashing hero to sweep you off your feet?” She sighed dreamily.

  I frowned. What had that wink been about? “You need to keep your feet on the ground. I’ve never heard such falderal in my life.”

  A knowing smile spread across her lips. “Falderal and fiddle-de-dee,” she said, her voice melodic, like the chiming of bells. She ran a hand through her silky locks as she spoke, and the audience made its routine sounds of approval.

  And there it was again, that familiar, uncomfortable sensation I had whenever I looked at Cinderella. She moved so effortlessly, and she looked so elegant when she did it. Graceful movements on delicate, tiny feet; a serene smile on a perfect, heart-shaped face. Lithe and regal. Nothing like my boxy form and my plain face with its pug nose. Just as unattractive as the fairy tale described.

  Jealousy. I knew it was programmed into me; it was part of the Ugly Stepsister’s personality. Of course she would be jealous of Cinderella, so, naturally, so was I. It wasn’t real. But sometimes, like right now, it seemed real. Real and raw.

  “Now, girls,” Mother’s deep voice interjected. “We’ve no time for such folly. The Prince’s ball is in just a few short hours.” She looked regal and imperious as she came down the stairs—every bit the wicked villain the audience expected. I wondered what they would think if they could see her when the park was closed.

  “Oh, Stepmother, can’t I go to the ball?” Cinderella asked, pouting daintily.

  Mother’s lip curled into a sneer. “You? Don’t be ridiculous. A little hearth-mouse like you would be the laughingstock of the kingdom.”

  “But it’s sure to be wonderful. A chance to find true love...”

  Normally, when Cinderella said that line, she looked dreamily up toward the ceiling. But today, she looked straight out at the audience. My processors flared again at the sight of it. We never looked at the audience—as far as we were concerned, they weren’t supposed to be there. We were animatrons. To the audience, we were just supposed to be lifelike dummies that acted out our stories on a loop. Extremely lifelike, of course: we were the most realistic humanoid animatrons ever constructed, which was why people paid so much to come to a theme park whose attractions were little more than short plays reenacting well-known fairy tales. Why there was always a murmur of awe when Cinderella floated onstage, even though these people had seen this story a hundred times before. Animatrons that looked so convincingly like humans, that moved in such a lifelike way, were a novelty seen nowhere else the whole world over.

  Mr. Tinker constantly warned us to make sure that we didn’t let any human other than him know that we were anything more than that. We weren’t ready, he told us, and neither were they. He’d built us as an experiment in artificial intelligence, and built this park—Magical Woods—as a way to test our abilities. But we were a secret from the world, and if the world found out, he couldn’t promise he could keep us online. We had to keep it secret. We had to stay on script.

  And here was Cinderella, acting off-cue, moving in ways other than what she’d been programmed to do. This was more than just a malfunction, I decided—she was completely out of her mind.

  In a manner of speaking, anyway.

  Surreptitiously, I glanced over at the audience, following her gaze as she continued her frilly monologue about the magic of true love. Most of the crowd were parents or grandparents and young children, our typical audience. But at the back of the crowd, one man stood by himself. It was hard to see much about him in the shadows, but I could tell he was tall and had dark hair. He didn’t look much different than the other men who had passed through Magical Woods a thousand times before. But Cinderella’s eyes were riveted on him nonetheless.

  “That’s enough of this nonsense,” Mother snapped, dragging my attention back where it belonged. “This isn’t about love. It’s abou
t marriage. Now, girls, come along! You have to finish getting ready before you’re late for the ball!”

  I spat out my remaining lines on cue and hurried after Mother up the stairs. Once I reached the top, out of the sight of the audience, I glanced back down at the crowd again as inconspicuously as I could.

  The dark-haired man was gone.

  ☆

  After the performance, when the humans had all left the building and Cinderella’s Palace was closed to visitors for another hour, I sought her out. She was sitting on a stool in front of the faux fireplace, the little area that served as her private space, just like in the fairy tale. When I came in the room, she looked up from the copy of Glamour she’d been reading and grinned.

  “Hey, Maddie,” she said, gesturing for me to sit on the hearth beside her. I didn’t really need to sit—it’s not like my legs ever got tired—but I’d given up on arguing with Cinderella about that a while ago. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said, absently leafing through the stack of magazines she kept in a crate next to the fireplace, obscured from the audience’s view during show hours. “I just wanted to check in and, you know, make sure you were functioning correctly.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m feeling fine, thanks.”

  “Are you sure? I noticed you missed your cue a little bit earlier. I thought maybe the patch we got last week might not have installed properly or something.”

  Now she laughed. “I promise you, I’m fine.”

  I looked down at the magazines. “Cinderella...”

  “Cindy!” she corrected. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Right, Cindy. Sorry. I just... if there’s something wrong, you should tell Mr. Tinker. If you malfunction during the show...”

  She sighed just like a human, her shoulders slumping dramatically, her voice coming out just as it would on an exhaled breath. “Madeline,” she said at last. “Have you ever been in love?”

  I blinked at her—a motor function Mr. Tinker had installed to make us seem more lifelike. “Are you talking about the Prince?”

  “Oh, God, no. Never.” She stuck her tongue out and wrinkled her nose. “I mean... you know, someone else.”

  I narrowed my eyes, remembering the way she’d stared out at the audience during her monologue. “You can’t be in love, Cinder—Cindy. We’re just animatrons, remember? We don’t have feelings.”

  She scoffed. “We’re the most human-like machines ever constructed. Remember that little thing called artificial intelligence that Mr. Tinker is always on about? I don’t see how the humans’ nerve impulses are any different than our electronic ones. If their feelings are ‘real,’ why aren’t ours?”

  I started to answer, but she cut me off. “Come on, Madeline. Don’t you want more out of your life than this? And don’t even start on that ‘we’re not alive’ nonsense again. For all intents and purposes, we’re just as alive as any of the humans. Yet Mr. Tinker keeps us locked up in his stupid theme park, forcing us to live out this moronic story day in and day out, whether we want to or not.”

  “We’re not completed yet, Cindy!” I pointed out. “You know what Mr. Tinker said. We can’t leave the park. We’re not ready to go out, and the humans aren’t ready to know about us.”

  “Says who—Mr. Tinker? How do you know he’s not just lying to keep us here? You know we’re Magical Woods’ biggest attraction. If we weren’t here, this park wouldn’t last a week.” She ran a finger down the stapled spine of her magazine. “What if we tried? Just tried to leave?”

  “We can’t do that,” I said, my CPU feeling overloaded again. “It... goes against our programming.”

  “Oh, it goes against our programming, of course. Madeline would never do anything to void her warranty like that. Then how do you explain what you’ve been up to with the Grand Duke every night? Don’t you think that goes against your programming?”

  At that, I completely locked up. No thoughts would come. Slowly, I attempted to open my mouth, but the only sounds that emerged were spluttering, unintelligible grunts. My pupils spun around and around, clicking and whirring. Finally, my voice returned enough to demand, “How do you know about that?!”

  Cinderella stood, putting her foot on the stool and leaning her weight on it. “Please. I’m not completely dense, you know.” When I couldn’t respond, she turned and paced away from me. “Don’t you ever think it’s weird that we even have these conversations? If we’re really just animatrons that are programmed for one thing only, then why are we even thinking about this stuff?”

  “We’re not thinking at all, we’re just…” I trailed off. My processors sought the answer but came up with nothing. “I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. If you’re not going to ask Mr. Tinker to check your hardware, then I guess there’s nothing further to discuss.” I stood and started to leave the kitchen, but her voice stopped me in the doorway.

  “You know, Maddie, I used to always think you were different from the story. You weren’t some kind of wicked stepsister—you were way too nice. But you know what? I was wrong.” I turned to face her. She stood with her fists clenched at her side, her perfectly sculpted eyebrows scrunched together so furiously that it almost made her look ugly. “Because here we are, living out the same old story: me itching to get the heck out of this stupid fairy tale and find a real happily-ever-after, and you trying to keep me trapped here as someone else’s servant. Well, I’m not doing it anymore, Madeline.”

  I stood there, mouth agape, trying to come up with a response. But before I could speak, she’d shoved me out the door and slammed it in my face.

  ☆

  That evening, I sat at a picnic table in the garden outside Hansel and Gretel’s Burger Cottage. The park had long since closed. Mr. Tinker had stopped by to quickly check on all of us before he left for the day as usual. He used to spend more time with us, but now he had so much work to do for the business, and we were mostly self-sufficient, so we were lucky if we saw him a few times a week these days.

  With the humans gone, our large family of animatrons began to set about its typical nightly routine. When I’d left the palace, Mother had been setting up her weekly tea party with the Red Queen and the Cheshire Cat from the Alice in Wonderland attraction. She’d smiled cheerily and blown me a kiss as I’d walked past. I’d long ago given up trying to convince them that there was no point in having a tea party when they couldn’t eat or drink anything.

  I stared down at my feet. My shoes glowed where they touched the ground. Mr. Tinker had installed power lines under the streets and paths of the whole park, so we could go wherever we wanted as long as we stayed within Magical Woods’ tall walls. With nothing but the dim moonlight and the lamp posts dotted around the courtyard for light, the blue glow of my shoes would probably look magical to any human watching.

  “Madeline,” a voice behind me said. I glanced over my shoulder to see the Grand Duke—G1L83RT, or Gilbert, as he liked me to call him—coming down the steps into the recessed eatery area. He was tall and gangly, with short brown hair, and a narrow face punctuated by a long nose. He’d taken off the monocle prop that he always had to wear in character, as well as the Duke’s formal jacket, leaving behind a crisp white long-sleeved blouse with a blue silk vest over it.

  I smiled at the sight of him, then paused. These human-like impulses were so natural, but after the discussion with Cinderella earlier, I was more conscious of it. I trained my face back into a neutral expression.

  “Is something wrong?” Gilbert asked when he reached me, looking at me curiously.

  “No, of course not,” I said. He sat beside me on the picnic bench, nudging my side with his elbow. The smile came back involuntarily. To my frustration, I couldn’t control it. “Well, just a small thing. I had an argument with Cinderella earlier.”

  Gilbert laughed. “What else is new? She’s not exactly the easiest person to get along with.”

  Person.

  I looked down at th
e ruffled skirt of my gaudy dress. “Gilbert, do you think it’s strange that we do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “This.” I gestured at the courtyard, still not looking up.

  He slid off the bench, crouching in front of me and peering up into my face, the dark pupils of his brown eyes rotating gently. “Madeline, what did Cinderella say to you?”

  I leaned back against the table, looking up at the sky now, still avoiding his gaze. “Nothing. It just seems pointless to fight my programming like this. It’s not going to change anything. I am what I am.”

  Gilbert put his hand on my cheek, gently tilting my face down to face him. “You are who you are.” He smiled, and the corners of my lips turned up involuntarily again. “And I don’t think it’s pointless at all.” He stood up, offering me his hand. “But if you want to cancel dance lessons...”

  “No,” I burst out, surprising myself. Gilbert grinned, and I took his hand and stood.

  He moved over to the speaker system next to the Burger Cottage. During the day, it played ambient Celtic folk music, adding to the fairytale feel of the park, but at night it was silent. Gilbert had rigged the system in the eatery area, though, to play music for us. For what we did in secret.

  Or maybe not such a secret, if Cinderella knew about it.

  After a moment, the speakers crackled to life, and the first notes of one of Strauss’s waltzes floated across the courtyard. Gilbert came over to face me. More hesitantly than usual, I lifted my left hand to his shoulder, and he placed his right on my ribcage. As always, a small spark shot through my chest when he touched me. Just static electricity, I reminded myself.

  “Ready?” he asked. “One, two, three...”

  I stepped backward with my right foot as Gilbert stepped forward with his left. The motions had gotten a bit simpler for me over the months, but I still had trouble keeping my balance, particularly when we would pivot on the balls of our feet and turn. The Ugly Stepsister was clumsy. It was programmed into me. There was no sense fighting my programming.