Pandora
by Dakota Allred
Arizona State University Tempe Campus
Dakota Allred is a Creative Writing undergraduate specializing in Fiction at ASU Tempe. Under the artist name “Seth Storm,” he has produced two musical albums, “Prelude” and “Bardic Tales Vol. 1.” Narratives in music have always fascinated him, and now he works to create narrative in poems outside of music and in larger written works as well. Other works of his can be found in ASU’s Canyon Voices Issue 30.
The first emotion I received was sadness. It was important to the inventors that I had something to stop me from hurting them. Some way to feel grief if I did. It did not matter that the emotion hurt me instead.
When the only thing I could feel was sadness, I thought that the absence must be feeling happy. So I made an attempt not to feel anything as often as I could. I also made sure I did everything correctly, perfectly, so that no anger was directed my way, and I was never upset. I did this well. Still, sometimes, when no one was looking I would sob. My shoulders would shake and my joints would lock up. I couldn’t cry, not really. They hadn’t given me tear ducts when they built me. Perhaps they knew they’d be unsettled by their own creation weeping.
Next came fear. This was essential, they promised. If I did not fear the future, fear death, fear them, I would not be able to fulfill my calling. I needed to care, and I would only care if I was afraid of losing everything, like they were. All it really did was make me scared to show my sadness. I carried out tasks obediently, sure that at any moment someone would round the corner and yell, discovering I was doing poorly. It made me try my best, which was good enough for them but not for me. I was certain if I was perfect then I would no longer be afraid. The moment I began fearing, though, nothing I did was perfect ever again.
When deciding what was essential for a creation like me, I wonder if they planned out the order I would receive my emotions. If they did, then why was the third thing they gave me shame? Was I not doing good enough? Did they need me to do better? If I went on to destroy humanity, like some whispered I might, did they want to at least saddle me with a more nuanced dread over what I’d done? I wasn’t sure. Once I had the ability to feel shame, I immediately did. It made sense. Acquiring these emotions was nasty business. I wasn’t sure I wanted any more.
I started hiding away as often as I could, which wasn’t as often as I would have liked. I found solace in the time between what the inventors assigned me. The best quiet place I found first was a small abandoned room, perhaps a closet no longer in use. No longer in use, except by the child I found drawing there. The first time I saw her, she froze, looking up at me with big eyes full of some emotion I couldn’t place. I simply closed the door and sat against the wall. She let there be silence for maybe five minutes, continuing with her scribbling in a small notebook. Then she asked if we could be friends. When I expressed confusion, she spent the next hour explaining it to me.
Sometimes she was there when I was. Sometimes she wasn’t. I have to assume sometimes she was there alone.
We’d sit there together, talking, then at some point we’d leave. It was weeks before she actually questioned why I was there at all.
“Is your job to watch out for me? Like a babysitter?”
I shook my head. “I am not doing a task right now.”
“Oh. You can choose not to do stuff?”
I looked down, feeling a familiar invisible tension in my chest. In the part the inventors called my soul. Something they’d figured out how to transfer, and yet the only part of me they didn’t really understand. “Yes. I can take breaks. I should not be here, though.”
“Me either.” She said, resting her head on her jean-covered knees.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“Mhm! I’m Pandora. Do you have one?”
“No.”
Pandora giggled. “That’s a funny name.”
---
I didn’t see her unless I was hiding. I could only slip away once every few weeks, if that. She was always there when I was. It made me worry as to why. Was she one of the inventor’s daughters? Was she an inventor herself? She seemed too small for that. Was she breaking the rules, then? If she didn’t come from here, where did she come from?
I looked for answers in my next emotion. The curiosity I got, though, only fueled my questions. I began to explore, to innovate. I created new ways to do things the inventors had never imagined. They praised me. I worried the praise would stop if I stopped inventing.
---
“Hey, No!” Pandora hissed, peeking out from a door. She smiled impishly and waved me inside. I followed. We’d fallen into a routine by now. The doorknob came up to her sternum instead of her eyes like when we’d met.
“Pandora, I am supposed to be busy right now.”
“You’ve been busy all day. Us people sleep all the time, they can’t get mad at you for taking breaks just because you don’t get tired.”
“I do get tired.”
“…Really? That’s news to me.”
It was silent for a while.
“So, why are you here?” We asked simultaneously.
“You first,” Pandora insisted.
“No, please,” I replied.
It was silent again.
“I was born here,” Pandora said.
I nodded. “Me too.”
She tilted her head, which caused some strands of hair from behind her ear to fall on her freckled nose. “Weren’t you made, though?”
“Is that not the same thing?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then all we have in common is being here now.”
Pandora nodded slowly. “What do they want from you? Why were you made?” Her eyes held a weight. It was clear this answer mattered to her.
“I’m a Capsule.” I said simply. Pandora didn’t understand, and I didn’t explain. I didn’t want to. It made me sad. “What about you? Do they want something from you?”
Pandora’s gaze slid from mine morosely. “I don’t know,” She finally said.
---
I spent a lot of my time alone thinking. Not about me, or about my purpose, or where I was. I was constantly trying to wrap my head around the emotions. Questioning if there was another way to gain them. Why, sometimes, if I became very embarrassed, I cried. Why my worry would spur curiosity, drive me to find a solution. Why, often, it felt like there was something missing from my soul. My talks with Pandora led me to believe the missing piece might have been anger, love, or happiness. She said those were the most important emotions. If it had been up to her, she would have given me happiness first. She clearly didn’t know how emotions were transferred.
---
“This is stupid,” Pandora huffed.
“You lost again,” I said simply. “It makes sense.”
“Oh really? Does it, No?” Pandora grumbled. “Maybe we need better games to play than Tic-Tac-Toe.”
“If you assume that in every game we will both take a winning move if we have it, both block a winning move if the opponent has it, and always take moves that further the goal of winning, there are really only about 146 variations of this game. There are more, technically, but they would all just be rotated versions of those 146 games. 146 is generous, actually.”
“And why’s that?” Pandora huffed, scribbling out boards for new games on a new page of her notebook.
“You always play the center square if you’re going first. If you do that, there are only 14 variations of how the game will go if we assume we’re both playing to win after that.”
“But we tie all the time if I go first! You just got lucky this time.”
I shook my head. “There’s only one of those 14 variations I can win. Sometimes you block it off, I presume without even knowing. When you don’t, I steer the game toward that outcome. There are 5 outcomes where you win, so I try to avoid those.”
Pandora chewed on the eraser of her pencil thoughtfully. “Well, I guess we’ll have to find a new game.”
“Why?”
“This one’s boring now that I know you can account for every possibility.”
“I’m made to solve problems.”
“...What if I created more possibilities?”
I tilted my head curiously.
Pandora flipped to a new page in her notebook and drew a massive Tic-Tac-Toe board, one that covered the entire page. In each square, she drew another board. “You don’t get a symbol on the big square unless you win the little game. And--!” She interrupted herself with a newly conceived genius idea-- “Wherever you go on the little board is the position of the little game you have to do a turn on next. I’ll be Xs--”
“--You always are,” I informed her. She waved a hand dismissively.
“And on my first turn I’ll go in the middle of the top left board. That means you have to take your turn on the game in the middle! I call it Mega-Tac-Toe!” She beamed.
My mind was whirling with possibilities. “What if I go somewhere that would dictate a turn in a square that’s already completed?”
“Hm. Then you can go on any board, I guess.”
I started performing internal calculations immediately, then stopped. If I figured out all the variations of this game internally, Pandora would likely be unhappy. The thought of that made me sad as well. Inefficient though it would be, I decided manual calculations would be a better method of determining this game’s viability.
Pandora won the first game. She couldn’t stop smiling.
---
Eventually, I did receive anger. I went back to the empty white chamber and sat in the chair, waiting. There was a lot of yelling this time. Then I had to clean the room again. I almost stopped halfway through, started my own yelling. I was terribly upset, and I wasn’t even sure why. I knew I was built to be useful, though, so I continued on. This time I managed to ask an inventor why they gave me this emotion. He smiled arrogantly and said he wanted to see if they could. I’d proven good natured enough to be the first Capsule to receive it. I didn’t know there were more Capsules.
---
“Why haven’t they given you happiness yet?” Pandora finally asked. The doorknob was up to her waist now.
“No one is willing to give up their happiness.” I said simply.
She looked at me, not understanding. “Give it up?”
I nodded somberly. “They find someone who has the emotion I need. They provoke the emotion. Then they take their soul away. In the process, in the room, somehow it transfers to me.”
Pandora stared. Then she walked as far away from me as she could and sat back down. There was a long silence. So long I thought she might never speak to me again. Her hair fell in front of her face, red strands against blue jeans. She might have grown since we met, but she dressed largely the same. “Do they ever tell you the names of the people who… lose their souls?”
“No.”
Another long silence.
“Next time,” Pandora whispered, “Can you ask?”
---
I’m their greatest failsafe. They built the Capsules because the world is dying. I’m storage. Storage for human memories, human emotions. Storage for humanity. If the worst happens and they all die, their spirit will be kept alive inside something that can live forever. Something that can think. Something that can invent. They are trying to live. If they can not, at least they will create an echo of life. Eventually, that’s what they started calling me. Echo. I preferred No, but I didn’t tell them that. It seemed like a secret.
They told me I was going to be the first Capsule to receive every emotion. I had passed some test the others hadn’t. Handled everything better. They weren’t sure why. Some unknown variable. Maybe I was just better than the others.
I did not feel better. Every time I received a new emotion it took me months or years to navigate how to use it, how to feel it, how to hold it. If I didn’t like it, I learned as quickly as possible not to feel it at all.
They promised I would like the next one.
I did not go into the room first this time. They told me there were already people there. People. Plural. When I opened the door, there was a pink blanket on the white ground. On the blanket, there was food. Eating the food were two people. One of them started crying when I entered. The other looked at me contentedly. They had no hair.
Before the inventors could begin, I asked the people their names. The crying one said Tristan. The other one said Grace. Tristan hugged Grace tightly. Then the inventor placed a syringe in Grace’s neck, and their body went limp. Then I got the memories. Within them, I found immense amounts of love. Love for a cat. Love for two sons. Love for Tristan. I also found deep sadness. Sadness felt in a quarantined colony of humans on a dying planet. I’d gotten used to ignoring that one. It was part of every emotion I received. This time, though, there was a deeper sadness. A sadness when Grace learned they would die far before the planet. When the doctor told them they were sick. When they told Tristan. When they volunteered to give a Capsule their love through… their… death.
Until now I was told that those who gave their souls to me were put back together and then lived empty lives, like I did when I was built. I’d been lied to. They’d been killed.
I sank to my knees and wished I could cry. Tristan was escorted away. This time the room was easier to clean. There was just the body to move.
---
“No way,” Pandora said numbly. “I knew Grace.” She sat beside me, playing with a necklace. She’d grown to be almost as tall as me.
“You did?” I asked.
“She was my teacher years ago,” She explained. I tilted my head. Noticing my expression, she continued, “I sneak over here while I’m supposed to be at school. I think this is more interesting. I might not qualify to graduate this year, but whatever. The world’s ending soon anyway. Why do I need to know algebra?”
“There’s a place outside of here?”
Pandora’s face turned sour. “Yeah, there is.”
I expected her to elaborate, but she didn’t.
I broke the silence. “Do you know Tristan, too?”
“Sort of. He came to class sometimes to give Grace lunch.”
“He seemed very sad.”
“That makes sense. He loved Grace.”
I remembered receiving the emotion. “I know. ...I am sorry for misinforming you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I figured you knew they were dying.”
“But I never said they were.”
“No one can live without their soul.” Pandora shrugged. “So even if they didn’t die, they would have still been dead.”
I thought about that a while. It made me realize my memories before my soul felt more like information I had learned rather than time I had lived. Maybe I hadn’t lived at all before being sad.
Pandora rested her head on my shoulder. “So you can feel love now?”
“Yes, but I don’t.”
“No? Why not?”
“There is nothing to love about me. I have only taken from everyone. I do not love the inventors, because they made me so horrible. I do not love this place, as I have nothing else to judge against it. It seems there’s not much use for this emotion.”
“Well, you don’t have to love yourself yet. Maybe you’re more like a love letter. You’ll tell other people about us when we’re gone.”
“But I don’t want you to be gone,” I protested.
Pandora looked up at me and smiled, as if I’d told her something I didn’t know myself. Then she started weaving her fingers into the chain of her necklace again. “Well, I won’t be. I’m going to find some way to regrow the plants and bring back the animals. We can live together on a fixed planet.”
I wasn’t sure such a thing was possible. But Pandora seemed sure. “Can I help?’
She beamed. “I’d like that.”
---
A few weeks later, Pandora flipped through her notebook past our games of Mega-Tac-Toe (which I had begun to win more frequently) to a page with a sketch of a leaf on it. Several of the notebook’s pages had been ripped out, and I was left to suppose she’d left this drawing alone so she could show it to me.
“One of the biggest problems about the outside is the fact that plants can’t really survive anymore. It’s too hot, and when it’s not the storms are too severe. At least that’s what my science teacher said.”
“Plants survive in the lab just fine,” I observed.
Pandora nodded. “They do, but there aren’t enough of them to feed everybody. Plus, we’re in a desert in the middle of nowhere, far from the worst of the storms. Plants don’t grow here naturally because… it’s a desert. But the lab makes enough. Well, for now. But from what I’ve seen, it won’t be able to for long. The population is still growing, and people like to pretend that nothing’s happening.”
I thought about it for a long moment. It was the sort of problem I was designed to solve. I wondered why I’d never been asked to solve it before. “I will need more time to reflect on this and come up with an idea.”
“Oh, I already have one! For this, at least. There are other problems I don’t have any idea on how to solve yet.” Pandora flipped the page. On it was a drawing of a cactus, but its fruit was different than it should have been. “Part of the problem is that people are too focused on regrowing all the plants that they used to have, exactly the way they used to be. But those plants don't survive in the desert. You know what does? Cactus. I’ve seen them doing gene experiments in the lab, but they use it to create slightly altered existing plants that can survive indoors and yield more food. What if they used it to grow different kinds of fruits and vegetables on cactus? Surely such a thing is possible, right?”
I was taken aback. “Perhaps? I had not considered it a possibility.”
“Well that’s the good thing about possibilities, No. You get to make new ones.” Pandora smiled proudly. I felt a glow in my own chest. I was unsure if Pandora’s idea would work, but moved by her conviction.
“You are the most amazing human I have ever met, Pandora.”
Tears sprung to Pandora’s eyes. I wasn’t sure why. She wrapped her arms around me tightly. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“I am unsure what this is.”
“It’s a hug. Just copy what I'm doing.”
I put my arms around Pandora, careful not to crush her. Something in that carefulness made my soul glow again.
---
“It will be too distressing for it. We can’t take that risk.”
“What is humanity without happiness? I thought our goal was to make Echo a faithful representation of us.”
“No one will volunteer.”
“Volunteer someone yourself, then.”
---
I was back in the room. There were many inventors observing this time. There were whispers. Today was the most important. Today was the most dangerous. Today I would become human.
The room had been redecorated. Not much, but it had been painted yellow. I was smart. I was able to infer. I would be tasked with making someone happy. Then they would die.
I knew this task would be the first one I failed when Pandora entered the room. I did not know why she was here. Perhaps she had been discovered. Perhaps they determined, correctly, that she was a very kind girl. Perhaps she had smiled at one of the inventors on the street.
“No!” Pandora yelled. She ran toward me.
The inventors took this as a sign of aggression. There was a loud bang and a lot of blood.
I was not sure what lies they had told her. I was not sure why she was happy to see me when she should have known this was how this would go. She should have known what was coming. Shouldn’t have believed them. Should have known that this was the room where they stole humanity to make me human. I felt my heart sink, leaving a space for something new.
I did not receive happiness from Pandora.
---
She was born in the Haven, though she was never fond of the name. A haven implies shelter from something awful, and she wasn’t convinced that’s what the world was. It was vastly uninhabitable, sure, but humanity seemed more focused on surviving than fixing it. And she was sure it could be fixed.
Her mother hadn’t survived bringing her into the world. Her father never got over his grief.
No one taught her how to fix the world in school. They didn’t teach her much of anything there. What they did teach her is that the smartest people in the Haven worked in the lab near the walls. That, she thought, is surely where the fixers will be. So she slipped into the lab with the stealth only a child possesses, snooping around and looking for all the things the scientists were working on.
She was disappointed. The people there were not concerned with saving the world. They were too focused on creating enough food and water for the Haven. Despite that focus, they were failing. Within her first day of investigating, Pandora learned humanity was doomed.
Then she met a robot. She thought No was cute and funny looking, and it spoke to her like no one else had before. Like she mattered. She realized it could survive the conditions outside the walls. It could fix things. It could save humanity. She grew up alongside the robot, concocting her master plan. When she told No she wanted to save the world, it didn’t laugh at her. It asked to help. There was that feeling of surety again. So sure that everything would be okay.
Sure despite not knowing how the world used to be. Sure despite believing those who said she’d never amount to anything. Sure, despite the fact that around the time the robot confessed he’d learned to feel anger, her drunken father had gone missing.
She’d spent the last couple months in an empty house, still receiving rations from the Haven. Slowly, the entire living room had been overtaken with scribbled notes ripped out of a notebook otherwise filled with Mega-Tac-Toe. Those notes were years worth of musings turned into concrete ideas. Pandora hadn’t gone to school in months. She met with No, snuck around the lab, and returned home to plan.
She’d met with an inventor recently, proposing her idea to save the world. He asked her if she really cared about saving the world, and when she said yes, replied that there was someone he wanted her to meet. She was so excited to share her ideas with the inventors. Even more so when she saw a familiar figure waiting for her in the lab. It was time.
She knew she could save the world. She knew it even though she also knew she couldn’t.
She hoped she could.
What a horrible emotion to feel, I thought, while cradling the corpse of your only friend.
---
I will leave the lab tomorrow. They won’t stop me. I'll tell them that they can let me leave or I can sit in a corner and collect rust until they all die. They will be amicable. They’ll think I’ve been planning to kill them all. …I will have thought about it. Ultimately, they were foolish to give me anger. They were smart to give me shame.
An inventor will ask me what emotion I got from “the girl.” What ruined me. What they should withhold from future Capsules.
I’ll tell him happiness.
I’ll take Pandora’s body with me. I haven’t let them near her since…
I’ll go outside the lab. There’ll be no time to wonder over the expanse of the Haven. No time, and no desire. This place didn’t matter to her, so it won’t matter to me.
The inventors say the world has no possibility of being fixed. I’ll create a new possibility.
I will bury Pandora in the world she wanted to save.
Then I’ll save it.
Interview with the Author
1. What inspired you to write this piece? What was your thought process throughout?
I was inspired by my love of kind robots and my hatred of human complacency regarding the climate crisis of our world. I started with the idea of a cute story about a girl and a robot growing up together, but realized fairly quickly that one of them would have to die for the story to work the way I wanted. The rest is history.
2. What do you hope readers will take away from your piece? What effects do you want the piece to have on the person, community, or society?
The true center of this piece is Pandora. She is the indomitable human spirit, the undying hope that humanity has for its future. That will live on long after humans are gone. In this case, in No. Similarly, in reality, our souls will live on in the things we’ve built.
3. What is your favorite piece of fiction (short story, novel, flash fiction, etc.) that you’ve ever read? Why?
My favorite piece of fiction is The God of Arepo. It’s a collaborative short story written by multiple users on tumblr, but it brings a tear to my eye every time. My favorite thing to do in writing is make simple sentences mean a lot. This story does that phenomenally, and I try to emulate the impact it had on me in my own writing.
4. If you plan on continuing to write, what are some goals/plans you may have for your future?
I’m currently working on a book series called “The Folklore” that I hope to eventually publish. It’s about superheroes in NYC who fight cryptids and creatures from North American folktales. I’m also working on revising the first draft of a novella called “Assassin” about four rival professional killers trying to shape an empire. I mostly write longer works, but I loved writing “Pandora” and hope you enjoyed reading it!