“Offline” (English)

They all stopped. In the middle of the dispute, all the robots that were fighting against us, the resistance, stopped and put down their weapons. Unable to understand such behaviour, I tried to find an explanation, a reason of their sudden proceed. But after looking around me, there was just smoke and destruction, nothing that indicates that cessation of hostilities. 
Then it was when I saw her on the inner screen of the helmet. An image slightly blurred and confusing due to the movement of the robot that recorded her, but enough to recognize her. She was the cyborg who took care of me, the one I called mom and then I repudiated when I grew up and understood that she was just a machine and not human like me. She was sat next to the large central computer and a cable was protruding from the back of her neck. The head was tilted and motionless, with one of her hands resting on the cheek. I felt a chill at the sight of the laser impact on her chest. It took me awhile to understand what was happening until I noticed that hand on her face, next to her mouth, that gave a hint of a kiss; I observed the little star, the heart and the different tiny pendants that adorned the bracelet that I gifted her when I was a child. I felt the grief scaling my throat and, taking off my helmet, I couldn´t suppress a gasp with tears. It was then when I realized that a mother is the one who takes care of you, who watches over your sleeplessness and sacrifices herself for giving you a present and a future. She´s able to do it even without being flesh and blood, nor did she have a behavioural protocol installed in her system. She only did it because she was my mother, the only one I have ever met and the only one I will always have.

Six months after that event that I remember now, I no longer hear explosions or bullets whistling around me. The war finished. Now I am sitting at the window of the house and the only sounds are the trill of the birds among the trees, and the rhythmic although soft strumming of my hair with the brush, that one that my mom wields with the usual dexterity after having being repaired.

Pepe Gallego                              (Translated by Ariadna B. Alonso)