"What is it?" Caleb asked, desperate for an explanation of the chaos surrounding him.
"Um, so here's the thing," Mark started, fidgeting nervously. "So you know how you jokingly said that everyone's a robot? Well, everyone actually is a robot, and you saying "You're all robots!" shuts them down permanently.
This planet is called Heart and it was created to help robots mimic humans and see the ways humans react to different situations as a way to learn without humans catching on to the fact that they're robots.
But it's hard to do that without a reference. And 16 years ago, a baby boy was born on Earth. His father had died a few months prior to his birth due to a car accident, and his mother died in childbirth. So robots from Heart were allowed to take the human to Heart with them to learn from him.
That baby was you. The reason why everyone was acting so weird at your party is because it's your birthday. Every year on your birthday the robots you don't usually interact with go back to the way they behaved when you first got here. I don't know why, it just happens.
The reason you haven't noticed until now is because you've only had small birthday parties with people you're close to until now, when you decided to have a big party. I should have known something would go wrong, but I had so much fun with you that it completely slipped my mind."
Caleb stared, dumbstruck. Finally, he found his voice and shouted "What the hell, Mark?! Are you saying all of this is my fault for wanting a bigger party this year? Well, I'm sorry that I wanted to try and get to know more people! And who even are you and why do you know all this? And if you knew why didn't you tell me, Mark?" Caleb fumed.
Mark looked distraught. "I'm so sorry Caleb, I never meant to hurt you! I wasn't trying to blame you, there's no way you could've known that this would happen, and it's admirable that you wanted to try to socialize with more people.
And my name isn't actually Mark Baker, it's Isaiah Marksman and I'm a spy sent from an organization known as the Anti Heart Group or A.H.G. I was sent here as a spy to prove that even if the robots' goal started out innocent enough, now they're just playing with you and your emotions just to see what will happen and how well they can choose the appropriate responses. That's just sick and no one should be treated like that.
I couldn't tell you because A.H.G.'s goal was to sneak onto Heart, find evidence that Heart's robots were mistreating you, and bring it back to Earth so that you could leave Heart. I really wanted to tell you but I didn't want to ruin the plan." Isaiah looked at Caleb with a guilty expression on his face.
"While that's a respectable goal, how can I trust you now? I don't know who you really are, Mar-I mean, Isaiah." It took all of Caleb's effort to not give into Isaiah's guilty face.
"I completely understand, and I don't expect you to trust me right away. But I want you to know that I'm the same person you've always known just with a different name. I could barely handle having you call me by a fake name, so I just gave up on pretending about anything else. I really care about you Caleb, and I'm sorry I had to put you through all this." Isaiah smiled.
Caleb sighed, blushing and accepting that he couldn't stand against Isaiah anymore. "I really care about you too, Isaiah."
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