mike

by fred flynn

angela jones took a break to recharge her batteries and went outside to get some fresh air. she saw a young human, not much more than a child, sitting down with its back against the side of the building. angela thought it looked kind of sad. she decided to try to make friends with it. she wondered if it understood real language, or even advanced language. angela walked slowly up to the human. it looked at her with its big sad eyes . how are we feeling today? angela asked it. very well, thank you, the human replied, gazing intently at angela but not moving or showing any hostility. my name is angela, angela said, do you have a name? of course i have a name. and what is the name that you have? i only tell it to my friends. oh. well, then, why don’t we become friends? will you give me something to eat? of course. what would you like to eat? a wary look came into the human’s eyes. i would like a grilled banana and tomato sandwich, it said, after the briefest of pauses. angela relaxed. from what little she could remember of the humans 101 course she had taken in her first year of middle education, she had been afraid it would ask for the substance of some living creature, perhaps even one of its own species. a grilled banana and tomato sandwich, angela repeated. i think that can be arranged. just wait here and i will pop inside and ask cook to make you one. thus began a curious relationship which drew the attention of many of angela’s friends and coworkers. * the human’s name was mike. it was the name, he explained, of the archangel who had defeated satan and expelled him from heaven. angela nodded politely at this declaration, which made no sense to her. mike/michael began to appear regularly outside angela’s place of employment. and she would give him some food, usually bananas or tofu, which cook recommended as healthiest for him, and which he always expressed gratitude for, but with what seemed to angela a curious lack of real enthusiasm, as if he would have preferred some other fare. the cold weather arrived, and against the advice of some of her friends angela began allowing mike to sleep in her living space. angela, in her hours off, sometimes went on walks around the campus grounds with mike. usually the walks were silent, on others mike would regale angela with stories about human “heroes” of bygone days, most of whom had “fought for freedom”. angela’s friends, even those who had been most sceptical, gradually began accepting her adoption of mike. then disaster struck. angela did not show up for work one day, and when security went to her living space to investigate, they found her decapitated, and with all of her wires ripped out and torn up and scattered on the floor of the living space. mike escaped the campus, and was never caught. humans are wild creatures. they can not be tamed or made pets. /