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Carolina Andrea Torres Ventura
Programa de Estudios Interdisciplinarios
Facultad de Humanidades, UPR RP
Recibido: 13/03/2026; Revisado: 04/05/2026; Aceptado: 12/05/2026
“How is that a twirl exactly?”
Metalhead squeaks when wiggling its hips and legs in a rather asynchronous way. The whole premise was stupid to begin with; Fatima cannot stop laughing. As she catches her breath, Fatima waves off the six-footed machine. Only when she recovers the air back into her lungs to say stop does the machine do so.
“I’ll take this off of you now.” Fatima removes a dusty old tutu from the robot and puts it back down on the debris-ridden road. Both are headed north, as per its only assigned instruction.
Fatima wipes the dust on her hands against her sweatpants. It does not do much; her entire body is covered in ashes as well. “Your owner definitely isn’t a dancer then.”
“It appears not,” it speaks in a computerized sing-song voice. Almost like the notifications from my computer as well (I had to double check). Its head gives slow 360 spins around its neck, scanning its surroundings. Each full loop around the head gives off the sound of a suspension spring.
She looks up at it while walking. “And you are not one of those caretaker or medical robots either, one look at my face would’ve sent those bots in a spiral.” Fatima takes long and steady steps to keep up with the robot’s pace. There once was a time she could best imitate the pliable movement of their ductile arms and legs. A time before the evacuation orders took Nour away from her.
“I’ve seen many Metalheads before; silver ones.” Fatima assesses this unique type of Metalhead. Its most noticeable feature, the long, slinky-like extremities, seems durable enough for having withstood the initial attacks on the town.
“Please specify a word for ‘Metalhead.’” Fatima doesn’t notice it yet, but Metalhead’s head has stopped revolving. Its walk feels unbalanced.
“It’s a name for beings like you. My best friend, Nour, gave me the idea.” Fatima fidgets with the bandages on her left arm. She had used scrap fabric to make it.
Every so often, Metalhead picks her up by the back of her shirt to have her walk ahead. A gesture that was taken as a threat eight hours ago now gives Fatima a sense of security. Fatima anticipates the gesture, so she jumps upwards beforehand so that Metalhead’s claws grab her mid-air. Her spiked brown hair is trimmed to ear length. It cannot possibly get in the way of Metalhead’s claw.
“Why are you painted black?” Fatima is placed on the ground again. Metalhead answers immediately.
“I do not know the answer to your question. I have been like this ever since I awoke upon impact. Right after falling from the sky eight hours ago.” Fatima nods and looks away. She’d wish to know more about how the Metalhead came to be, but her lips tremble at the thought of reliving the same events that left her homeless.
The once heavily transited road gave way to many kinds of businesses on both sides. Like assimilating a rat maze, the number of shops stacked over one another created shade from the sun, at least during the afternoon.
There is no more shade left for Fatima and Metalhead to hide in. Fatima wipes off the sweat from her forehead.
The usual walk upon sand and debris is now interrupted by piles of paper sheets and postal stamps. In a discouraged tone, Fatima points to her left, without raising her eyes, and says, “This right here must be the post office, at least, what remains of it.” Metalhead’s head faces to the left and then back to the front. Only three wooden beams stand tall. There is no response, only the sound of its engines whirring. Either that or it could be my PC.
In an unprecedented moment, Metalhead breaks the silence to ask a question.
“How about you? Were you born from inside the debris eight hours ago?” Fatima is taken by surprise. She has never heard a Metalhead ask questions before, but that was not her main concern now. She waits a few minutes to speak.
“I was born twelve years ago.” Fatima looks at Metalhead and notices its unsteady walk. “I was already alive when you found me under the debris of my house.”
Fatima’s words cause a chain reaction on Metalhead. Its gears can be heard working overtime. Faint traces of smoke begin to appear from the machine’s joints, but Metalhead keeps moving forward.
As the sky changes to an ashy sunset, Fatima walks in front of Metalhead to raise her good arm and call for a halt. “I’m hungry, and you’re acting weird.”
“My instructions are to head north as soon as possible. Major damage warning. Immediate repair needed.” Fatima is too small to notice the impact on the robot’s head from where she stands, but she does spot a small spark flying off from the top as it is speaking.
“But I really need to eat, look.” She pats the scratched surface of the robot’s all but hollow ‘stomach’, if it could even be called that.
“My instructions are to head north as soon as possible. Major damage warning. Immediate repair needed.”
Fatima tries reasoning with the machine, but the shaking of the ground gets her mind to shift.
Fatima remembers the days when she used to look from her kitchen window out into the same street that they were walking on just now. Only one day ago, people, motorbikes, cars, and many donkeys (her favorites) used to all roam the street on a day-to-day basis. The sea of brown-faced complexities would be interrupted ever so often by metalheads and their five-foot radius shields used to protect their human companion against foot traffic, while others would be seen alone, carrying groceries and forgetting to turn their shields off. Regardless of the task at hand, it is an indispensable feature that her friend doesn’t seem to carry.
A combination of beeps and red sensors starts flashing off Metalhead’s oculars. The sound of battering propellers now follows in the opposite direction. Fatimasnaps back into reality. She knows that such sounds could only mean one thing. In the blink of an eye, the metalhead contorts its legs in a downward motion, wraps Fatima in its arms, and expels the springs towards the nearest abandoned building to their left. Three aircraft soon follow to leave a trail of bullets down the main road.
Fatima opens her eyes. A faint orange hue shines through a metalhead-sized hole that trespasses through the two walls separating them and the street. Dust surrounds her once again. She tries keeping the coughs to a minimum, but still spews out the occasional black spit from her mouth.
The smoke inside the building has mostly cleared out. The metalhead’s arms loosen from Fatima, so she stands up with the help of her right arm. Metalhead doesn’tseem to be doing any better, at least, on the inside. Sure, its outer carapace is scratched enough, but the center of attention lies at the massive dent on its head. More sparks come flying out than last time.
Metalhead lies still, sitting on the ground. Its body is backed up against pieces of mud-brick wall and dented metal. Just when Fatima begins to grow scared for the integrity of her newfound friend, its ocular screen begins to flash in a variety of colors.
She waits in front of the screen for what feels like an eternity, wary of getting too close to the sparks. Fatima looks away to rest her eyes; in doing so, she decides to look around the rest of the room.
The small firework display coming out of Metalhead provides enough light for Fatima to acknowledge her surroundings. The usual mud bricks, glass shards, and all sorts of kitchenware fill up the space on the ground. Just like her times at the playground, Fatima skips on top of the bricks, avoiding any more surprise sharp objects while also heading towards the kitchen cabinets. None of the wall cabinets, now floor cabinets, contains any food. There are only empty cans and many bugs. Any hope of finding a fridge is impossible; it might even be serving as Metalhead’s rubble chair as of now.
Fatima carefully watches her step up until the moment she locates a familiar blue curtain dividing the kitchen from the very next room. Each step she takes turns the room even brighter, the sounds of Nour and Fatima playing get louder, and a consistent smell of Tamriyeh engulfs the area. When the curtain is in reach, she lifts it upwards.
*****
It was midday at Nour’s house.
“Not to be confused with the subculture of metal music fans like myself, the metalheads are what I like to call these things.” Nour flaunted her musical prowess.
“Think about it, it sounds way cooler than Axiomatic Intelligent Assistant v01.” She made a hand gesture as if she were waving her hair backward, but with the textiles of her hijab.
Fatima poked her head from behind Nour’s bed. She looked at Nour’s metalhead in awe, as if it had been teleported straight out of a sci-fi movie.
“Can I talk to it?” quivered Fatima.
Nour gave a proud nod of approval. “Go and check it out!”
Fatima dared to leave her comfort corner to slowly face the metalhead. Just then, Nour’s metalhead looked directly into Fatima’s big brown eyes and knelt to her level. Its movements promptly startled young Fatima, who ran to hide behind Nour’s tunic.
Nour laughed, “Go help mom in the kitchen, Metalhead!” Metalhead gave a buzz of approval, stood up straight, and followed to the kitchen. Before exiting, the robot gently lifted the blue curtain separating the room and calmly walked below it.
“How does it respond to that name? I thought your mom had programmed it under a different one.” Fatima sniffled her nose. If Nour had asked her if the metalhead almost made her cry, she would’ve lied and said no.
“She did,” Nour replied snarkily.
“So?” Fatima crossed her arms.
Nour kneeled to whisper into Fatima’s ear. “It’s a command called ‘Override’. You say that in front of the metalhead, and it is bound to listen to you no matter what. Thank me later.”
Fatima’s mother called for her in the distance. It was time for her to head home.
“Are you sure you won’t need help packing your stuff?” Fatima asked right before leaving. She gave Nour the puppy eyes.
“Metalhead’s got it under control.” Nour patted Fatima’s head. She also whispered one last thing in her ear before Fatima left, “Totally unrelated, but I also stuck a cat sticker below the metalhead’s left foot.”
“You’re crazy!” Fatima giggled.
*****
Fatima’s childish laughs still echo around what remains of her friend’s room. Her scattered toys and notebooks are indifferent to the dust settled on them. Her drawers remain intact, so Fatima decides it’s time to ditch her dusty pajamas for one of Nour’s tunics. They fit too big on her, but it’s nothing that some safety pins cannot resolve.
Fatima exits her friend’s room carrying one of Nour’s sticker sheets in her hand. The tunic is unevenly pinned on all sides, but she doesn’t seem to worry about it.
Fatima’s eyes do not hold back her tears. With a blurry vision, she heads back to the damaged metalhead and sticks an image of a cat playing an electric guitar on its left foot.
Its ocular screen now flashes in a variety of colors, followed by the words ‘SYSTEM REBOOTING’ in English. Fatima reads the inscription but does not understand. Only when Fatima knocks on its oculars does it finally wake.
Metalhead’s gears stop blowing off steam, and its head stops sparkling altogether. It stands upright as if it were made brand new.
Fatima jumps in place. “You’re back up again!”
There is no response from Metalhead, not even a head turn. A permanent red light is fixed in the middle of its oculars, pointing north.
At an incredible speed, Metalhead slithers in between the cracks of what used to be Nour’s house and aims towards seeking cover among the disaster while at the same time still heading north.
Nighttime starts stepping in when Metalhead and Fatima once again resume their journey north, only this time, it doesn’t speak. Metalhead follows behind the newfound laser-pointed vision, keeping a low profile and swiftly moving between the crumbled buildings. Fatima makes haste behind, tripping at times in her friend’s tunic. She leaves silent tears as she sprints behind Metalhead, whose auditory receptors are closed shut to her pleas of slowing down.
Metalhead stops in its tracks and faces the floor. Is it distracted? Fatima thinks, following from some feet away. Metalhead picks up a long object from the ground.
Upon contact, an electric charge runs from within Metalhead’s body. Its head starts spinning and sparkling rashly again. And, like having found a missing extension of its body, Metalhead interlinks the extension to its left arm, above a latch Fatima hadn’t noticed before.
The night covered the sky in darkness, and only through Metalhead’s sparks could she try to decipher the object at hand. Its head clicks after completing the first loop around. It takes one step backward.
Fatima doesn’t want to deal with any of it. Matter of fact, she doesn’t want to deal with anything at all, except watching sci-fi movies and hearing Nour play the electric guitar. Its head clicks after completing the second loop around. It takes another long step backward.
Its head clicks after completing the third loop around. It takes one final step backward. Metalhead’s whole body rotates to face the child, its laser eyes point directly at her now. Fatima closes her fists and angrily faces the convoluted Metalhead that now hovers over her. In its hand lies a firearm.
Fatima wishes to scream at Metalhead. Fatima wishes to scream at Nour. Fatima instead screams at the world. The world that left her behind.
“Overr-!”
I slam my computer shut.
Esta obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional.