Rosebush

Simon could still smell the rose bush from his grandmothers yard. Now, so many years later he could still feel the sun on his face, feel the gentle breeze and the grass beneath his feet. In his mind's eye he reached out and felt the soft velvet of the petals between his thumb and finger. Absently he gently rubbed them remembering the sensation and letting them drift to the ground below. Birds circled overhead as his grandmother stood on her front steps clipping hydrangea. Memories from 40 years ago; memories of a childhood; memories not his own.

This was not his past and these were not his memories of an idyllic childhood of summers spent whiling away the long summer days at his grandmothers country home. They were perhaps someone's though. Someone once stood beneath rosebushes and felt the gentle breeze and the comforting sun. But not Simon. These memories were given him on his date of manufacturing, 2.28.2088.

His makers knew the human condition and knew how to manufacture and implant it. They knew for a synthetic to be truly convincing he needed to believe in himself. He needed the hopes, the dreams, the strengths and failings that are only afforded those who once stood beneath rose bushes on warm, sunny, wistful days of summer. They knew parts and circuitry however well made were but an assembly of blind and cold components incapable of passing the litmus of human interaction without the sense of self that comes with a past.

Rose petals drifting gently from his fingers to settle on the face of his victim as the light of life faded from her eyes. A light he envied her.