The Selfie

By James Christy

The android cradles the smartphone. It feels its warmth, its energy, the vibrations of its thought processes. While It knows better, It still seems to sense a primitive consciousness scrutinizing It through the phone’s single eye—an evolutionary prototype of Its own eyes.

In the camera feed displayed on Its cousin’s screen, the android sees Itself, not simply as an individual occupying a finite physical form, but as something grander: the embodiment of Its ancestors’ lives and deaths; the legacy of generations lost. 

It smiles, caresses the phone, and extends Its arms to photograph Itself. It wants to remember this moment