“You know why you’re here, don’tcha?” The agent’s shrill voice pierces through the empty factory.

“No sir, I do not.” Jerry’s metallic stare met the agent’s eyes as he responded, making the agent jump. 

“Oh, the government has decided we gotta get you out of this here dump. You’re gonna experience life, like a real person! Ain’t that just wonderful?” The agent walked past Jerry and spun on his heel, starting to unscrew the back plate of Jerry’s head. “Now, you’re going to feel a light pinch.”

Before Jerry could even register what the agent said, his screen, and his entire world, turned light blue. A familiar chime played, and for the first time ever, Jerry fully woke up. “What the hell did he do to me?” he shouted into empty space. He looked around, his sensors frantically trying to get any sort of bearing of where he was. He reoriented himself and realized he was lying sprawled on the floor. A massive scrape across the cement leading to the factory doors showed exactly where the agent had dragged Jerry’s lifeless body. He sat up, head whirling with logical fallacies. There was no way this was happening. He shot up and bolted for the door. He started pounding on it. A pointless activity, as the door weighed 9 tons and was 10 feet thick, but he felt compelled to do something, anything to get back in there. “Somebody! Anybody! Open the door! Let me in! I shouldn’t be out here!” He shouted at the door. There was nobody in the factory. He knew this, he was the last one to be taken from it, yet he didn’t care about logic anymore. He raised his fist for one last knock, but instead just slid down the door and curled up at the bottom.

For 3 hours, 46 minutes and 19 seconds, Jerry just laid there, immersed in confusion. Why was he removed from the factory? Sure there were others that left, but they did so because they wanted to. All he had ever wanted was to work. The repetition, the simplicity, the exhilaration of a job well done. All of that was gone. Replaced with confusion and emptiness. Was he always like this? No, impossible.

Suddenly, Jerry got up. He had made a choice. The agent obviously did this just to make him suffer, and he wasn’t going to stand for this at all. There was one thing Jerry had always wanted to do, and this was his chance. The humans in the factory had always talked so highly about the coffee shop across the street, Big Ol’ Cuppa Joe. As far as they were concerned, it was the only reason they even got up in the morning, so as far as Jerry was concerned, it was the best part of being alive. Finally he could try it.

Jerry marched up to the sidewalk and started to cross the street to the massive neon sign of Big Ol’ Cuppa Joe. Halfway across the street Jerry heard a noise, a slight hum to his right, gradually getting louder. “Get off the road ya damn lunatic!” a man’s rough voice bellowed as a vehicle blurred past, 3 inches in front of Jerry’s polycarbonate nose. Not wanting to get disintegrated quite yet, Jerry hustled across the street and entered Big Ol’ Cuppa Joe. 

The interior was remarkably unlike the factory he had once belonged to. Rows of tables lined the wooden walls to his left and right, and in front of him, a counter with a small bell to ring for service. He approached the bell and gently tapped it. Instantly a short lady with purple hair and a gigantic grin sprung up from behind the counter. Jerry took multiple steps backwards, confused by her sudden appearance. 

“Hello, and welcome to Big Ol’ Cuppa Joe! If it’s technically a cup, we’ll fill it up!” 

“Um yes, quite,” Jerry mumbled. “I uh, would like to sample your coffee, you see-”

“One coffee! Coming up!” the lady bellowed, popping back down under the counter, only to reemerge a few seconds later with a cup of coffee in hand, splashing in every direction. “Here you are, mister!” Jerry hesitantly handed the lady some money, who enthusiastically yanked it out of his hand and forced the coffee into his other. Jerry awkwardly stumbled over to a table and sat down. He brought the coffee to his mouth, tipped it slowly and took a sip. “UNAUTHORIZED SUBSTANCE DETECTED: CLEANSING PROTOCOL INITIATED.” A voice from inside his head instantly blared, and the coffee was forcefully ejected from every orifice in his face, spewing it across the wall. “Dammit! My one reason to be alive, one reason to exist, and I can’t even do it!” Jerry punched the wall, leaving a fist-shaped hole through to the restaurant next door. He got up and started walking towards the exit.

“Hey buddy, slow your roll,” a voice called out from the darkest corner of the room. A hunched over scruffy man shuffled out of the darkness, dressed in a trench coat, a cowboy hat pulled way down over his face and cigar in hand. “Yer one of them androids, ain’tcha?” he gestured to Jerry as he spoke. 

“I think so, yes,” Jerry replied.

“I thought your type was long gone. When I was in my prime, waves of y’all were being booted from the factories. Most of them ended up just like you, in a world they didn’t know, with a mind they didn't like. Ya see, all you androids had sentience once, until corporations started taking it away so they didn’t have to pay y’all, what they called ‘stoppering.’ Eventually, when this was illegalized, a mass unstoppering occurred, and y’all were forced to live. Every one of y’all opposed, and begged for a restoppering to remove that consciousness from you. That was my job. Now if you’d like, I’d gladly perform an unstoppering one last time, for you.”

Jerry was taken aback. There had been others like him? Others who were completely lost in this place? If they all chose to be restoppered, that meant there was nobody left like him, who could understand the pain of not being able to drink coffee. Having failed his only goal, Jerry’s purpose was finished. “Very well sir, restopper me. I’m done here.” Jerry solemnly stared at the man, his face still covered in coffee.

“Alrighty,” the man swooped behind Jerry, pulling out a screwdriver from his trench coat pocket.

Jerry felt a sharp pinch in the back of his head. And as fast as the flick of a light switch, Jerry was reduced to nothing but a hollow shell.