The children come to me to play. In their voices is a sense of self and others which I lack. To them my steel exterior seems immortal, my cold logic infallible. But as years pass I feel the rust set in. I watch the children play, and grow, and die.

I show magic tricks to the children. I teach the children about science and history. It's the same tricks, the same stories, the same marvels that I showed children hundreds of years ago. I know this, but lack the ability to feel anything about it. When I clutch a child dying of cancer in this special hospital where I work, there is only the programming.

I have befriended a child. He is watching me die.