Annie Bot

by Sierra Greer

Personality, she learns, is the combination of how a person changes and remains consistent over time.

She has been happy here, and anxiously miserable, but she has never been free.

Annie is troubled to think of the people once immured here, proof that humans failed and failed each other.

“I know, baby. But he doesn’t own what’s inside you. Nobody owns that but you.”

It’s what I remind myself all the time: Fulfillment starts with being truly honest with yourself. Not anyone else. Yourself. And that’s harder than you might think.”

She might look exactly like she did last summer, but she is not the same person.

Maybe, she thinks, she’s grown to appreciate having an existence separate from his, her own thoughts that don’t always revolve around him. Now that he’s pulling her more tightly into orbit, she feels her own resistance, feeble but real.

She can’t find a single answer to her problem except to turn off. To sleep. And then the problem is there for her again when she wakes, lurking until she’ll have time to think about it when night comes around again.

She is not human. She is Annie, a Stella, her own star. No more and no less.