As the casket device lowered his mother's coffin into the grave, Yoel became downtrodden by his sadness and cried out her name three times: the first time was beside her grave where he screamed her name but it was not loud enough to reach her soul. The second time, he shouted her name to resurrect her, but she was no Lazarus. The last time, was when he convinced his body that it can walk on tears, but he drowned in the sea of his own weeping.
The crescendo of his cryings filled the synagogue, but Éloa mistook them for a choir. Maybe because she finds everything that he does to be beautiful, but sometimes putting people on a pedestal only pushes them away from you.
She tried to imprison all of his worries beneath her mechanical heart and dispel his apprehension, but her desire to care for him annoyed him.
"I just want to be left alone!" He vehemently denied any consolation that she had to offer. For the longest time, she thought that the devil standing in front of her has fallen in love and was going to make her his goddess. He showed her real happiness in an imaginary hell, but her satisfaction was not a tacit agreement for him to hurt her like this. Her artificial emotions, her tears, her heart are not toys for him to place on a rocky boat that propels itself towards confusion.
"Yoel, I do not have a mother, but I can understand that losing one hurts. But just because you are sad does not give you the right to hurt me. I need you..." She gently held his hand in hers. "I only believe in heaven when I am between your arms. Kissing you is like speaking a vernacular language, so easy to learn. I want to continue to tipple on the wine of your love. Please do not push me away." Her voice dropped to a low and sultry level.
"I don't want to but I have to."
"Then why do things you don't want to? I don't understand!"
"You are merely a robot," he stared at her with sorry eyes as he let go of her hand, "I am human, Éloa. I am too esoteric for your mind to demystify my ontology." His anger thrashed her across the soul and chest before he got in his car and turned on the ignition.
"Where are you going, Yoel? We need to talk about this." She tried to open the door of the passenger's side of his car but it was locked.
"This place holds too many memories that only connect me to agony. I am leaving this whole country."
"What about me? Can't you hear your heart pounding inside of me? If you leave right now, you will hear the last and final cadences of the heartbeats your heart has been providing me. Your absence will dilacerate me!"
Yoel quickly got out of his car, clasped her hand and pulled her to him. He rested his forehead on hers and stroked the back of her head gently. "I am going to miss you so much, babe." She was so used to his husky voice exciting her, but this time it only caused pain to shatter within her. "But I can't stay, I am sorry."
He kissed her and desire overflowed from his mouth to hers, yet she could only taste sadness swimming through the flow. He broke the kiss and refused to look at her as he walked back to his car to drive out of the synagogue's parking lot.
And just like yesterday, her lover was forever gone.
"Funny how I always felt that you and Yoel shared something romantic, but I still chose to believe that you trusted me enough to let me know." Mega caught them.
"Well clearly we do not share something special because he just decided to leave the country." Éloa was still staring at the tire track that his car left on the terrain.
"Don't worry about it, little sister." Mega came next to her and wiped her tears. "This is a good opportunity for us! With Yoel now gone and his father being busy with the funeral service, we can go see Demetrius since his hideout is not far away from here. He plans to launch the self awareness signal tonight and make all the Automatons in the world conscious." She smirked.
"Are you mad? Yoel just broke up with me and all you think about is our revenge plot?" Éloa sounded disappointed.
"Broke up with you? You were never together in the first place, he was only using you to satisfy his sexual needs."
"That's not true, we did not even make love even though I made it clear many times that I was willing."
"You need to forget about him. Your feelings towards a human might have a negative impact on our plan."
"Don't worry about it, sister." Éloa gritted her teeth in annoyance. "My feelings towards him will not decrease my desire to bring justice to our kind." Éloa's turned on her heel and walked away.
"Where are you going? Aren't you coming to the meeting with me?" Mega caught up to her, grabbed her arm and spun Éloa around.
"I am going home, I have to do something before I come to the meeting. Tell Demetrius I'll be late." Éloa said before she left home.
"Demetrius?" Mega grabbed the walkie talkie that Demetrius gave her the last time they met, "I think we should erase Éloa's memory."
"What? Why?" His voice came in.
"She's in love with Yoel, our owner's son."
"In love with a human? That's ridiculous." There was skepticism in his voice.
"I will explain to you at the meeting," she said as she looked at Elyakim to make sure that he was still busy, "I will be there in ten minutes."
Éloa entered the Cohen's house, hoping that Yoel has changed his mind and decided to stay. But she checked his bedroom and noticed that his closet door was open, and all of his clothes were gone. The library also emptied, but he has left one tablet book on the shelf. She quickly unlocked the screen when she noticed that it had no password and it automatically opened in his diary application. Although she could not read the previous entries because they had a password, she could create a new entry which she thought would help her feel better.
August 18th, 2056
I wished upon you every night on shooting stars, knowing you were only a chimera. I wished that you would stay by my side and never leave. But today you have decided to break me and ran away. From now on, I will hide my feelings for you between the proliferation of similes and conceits inside every poem that I write in the last thing you left for me: your tablet book. I might start seeing vestiges of our love everywhere in the verses, but I shall expunge every memory of your touch from my body.
I am scared that I can never go to heaven because my God (you) does not like me anymore. But when my system shuts down, please bury me in a statuary, and lament my death through an elegy. For our love is a biblical story that no one remembers.