Eshtine

the prototype

I'm about to freak my sister out, I think.
When I was seven, eight years old I walked in to the TV room when my sister was watching a movie. The movie was almost over and I bugged her about it as only a seven or eight year old can.
"What is this?"
"It's called 'The Prototype.'"
"What's going on?"
"That guy there, he's a robot, and the other guy is the one who invented him."
It was an emotional scene, a big goodbye. The inventor was reaching out his hand to the robot but the robot said "Don't touch me. You'll feel the metal."
"What's going on?"
"The robot has to destroy himself, and he doesn't want his inventor to get all upset."
"Why does he have to destroy himself?"
"It's too complicated to explain."
This has been in the back of my head ever since then because I just didn't have enough information to process it. I can still hear the voice of the robot so clearly, I would bet anybody that "Don't touch me. You'll feel the metal." is an exact quote--a line I heard once nineteen years ago. I've always remembered the name of the movie, too, probably because I had to have my sister explain what "prototype" meant; it would have been the first time I heard the word.
This evening I looked it up on the Internet Movie Database--imdb.com. Here is the entry if you're curious. I've said it before and I'll say it again--the internet is an amazing thing. Now at least I know why the robot (well, they say "android" here--my sister must have thought "prototype" was hard enough to explain) had to destroy himself...
A footnote: I had a dream about my basement not long after seeing this. In the dream I met a handsome fellow who looked astonishingly like Michael the robot from "The Prototype." He told me he was a monster and he lived in my basement. He said everything was okay, though; the monsters weren't out to get me. They wanted to live peaceable lives as much as I did. He promised me none of his fellow monsters would ever bother me when I played in the basement during the day. The basement did belong to them at night, though, so it was probably best that I stay out of it then.