With her right hand, she grabbed the handle of a small pan, lowered her gaze to place it on the stove, and then spoke in a slightly robotic voice the words she had been repeating for a century: “Ok, Ziliki, cook meal two one zero.” From an opening at the top, a gray and odorless liquid fell. As she looked at the liquid, she noticed a new thought lingering around; this was her last meal before the transition. She had been waiting for that day for one hundred years.
For a hundred years, she had been carrying out a set routine in this body. Every morning, she needed to take one thousand steps to the right, one hundred fifty to the left, and two steps forward; afterward, a screen appeared, and with a few instructions, thousands of fixes were made to the tiny concrete capsules.
But today, her routine felt different; maybe her nervous system was acting up. After completing her last repair, a popup message appeared on the main screen. “Transition in progress… Place your ID card on the screen.” From her right pocket, she took out a gray circle with the words “P.M.L 499” and approached the window; a light beep, accompanied by a green light showed a new message: “Validation complete, Transition granted.” In that moment, she let out a huge sigh, something she had never done in her five centuries of existence. Finally, it was time to return to the origin. Her vision began to blur as a counting voice intoned, “Five, Four, Three, Two, One.” Her body fell heavily to the floor.
As she looked up through the window, she saw a few of the remaining stars. As her smile began to fade, a new tiny concrete capsule began to form on one of the grey mountains.