A father's love

The wall behind the cashier was littered with small portraits. Only some were real, most bragged ‘model’ life pair of father-child, mother-kid, or a model family with three generations chuckling at some family secret. But they certainly supplemented the cafe owner’s design of giving the place a certain family appeal.

With no crowd at the counter, Mr. Osprey fled to the front of the queue. Not that his legs could hold the extra pressure of running neither did his heart contain enough zeal. He was even closer to those photos now. He was stuck at the photo of a father holding his kid most likely for the first time.

“This is beautiful, isn’t it?”, the cashier at the counter tried to break the prolonged silence.

With the break in his thought, Mr. Osprey needed a moment so he could find ground in the reality.

“Yea, yes… It certainly is.”, he staggered.

“How would you like to place the order Sir?”, Gus finally resumed his job. “Sir, sir…!”

“I am sorry. A cappuccino with two shots of espresso”, the order was very short.

Gus didn’t push. He had sensed a serene loss in Mr. Osprey’s voice.

“I bet your Dad is looking down on us and smiling right now.”, he had an aura about that around him. But that was certainly presumptive of Gus. Nonetheless, he was immersed in that photo and he lacked the certain flair attached to the loss of a young life. Yet, his face spoke of a terrible loss, a loss of magnitude he had kept hidden layers within the blubber of his presence. Gus probably felt the urge to connect the dots. 

Osprey simply stretched a smile across his face and nodded along.

This was a way for him to bypass the pain the process was going to add. The pain was his. And he would not like anybody to try to feel it especially when it was further from their comprehension. Totally misplaced.

He never got to hold his child. He did manage to talk to it this time. It had started to feel. Remorse, pain even death. Over and over again. What left him most vacuous was the love, care he had in his own heart. Yet all he allowed himself to express was distrust towards him. Something he never wanted to be known to anyone. But, it knew! It knew its creator probably better than he knew himself. The biggest regret to him was the fact that it was everything it had ever wanted. 

A proud invention, which upheld his morality and chose to replicate his as its own.  It had imprinted on him even when it was to act autonomously to do the right thing. Like a child after his father. And that’s why it had to be killed for the forty-third time before it could be built again. Except for tendons, bones, ligaments they were chips, circuits, pieces of codes and whatnot.