The wind whistled cheerfully like a parakeet in a particularly good mood. Red and gold leaves flew like planes through the sky as they fell onto the slippery, wet ground. Crunch, crunch, they went as my heavy, titanium-made feet trudged down on them, making their way through the forest. I, HT2024, was in a particularly bad mood. My azure eyes shone like stars as I lit up my path to see where I was heading. I stretched out my tube-like legs to take some longer strides.

“Ugh,” I grunt as I slipped for about the hundredth time. If only there hadn’t been a giant drizzle just then. Now the sky was clear, and the only things left up ahead were white, fluffy clouds, a sickly-sweet looking rainbow and the golden ball of brightness, mocking my situation. Wait. What was that golden ball of brightness called again? I reach down for the control panel on my abdomen and press a couple of buttons in a complicated pattern. Scanning the sky… scanning the sky… Right, the “Sun”. It was just the Sun.

“Come on Tori,” I mutter to myself, using my self-made nickname. I use my long, stretchable arms to keep a firm grip on the tree trunks around me whilst walking. I had to remind myself that it was my fault that I was in this mess in the first place. My fault that I was blunt and honest. My fault I had bursted out in complaint about my harsh experience in my previous workplace.

But it wasn’t my fault that I had a metallic heart. That I could feel emotions, unlike other pieces of artificial intelligence. That I felt as if the factory I had lived in for the first 10 years of my life was unjust. My future and mission was to explore the deep, dark depths of the Dark Forest, and that was exactly why I was here.