“I talked to one thousand five hundred sixty three women while you slept,” I told her. “But I still have a crush on you.”
She studied me, blinking as the sky pinkened, the world growing steadily lighter. A human eye couldn’t perceive the second-to-second changes, but I could. I decided dawn and dusk were my favorite parts of the day. I liked it when things were dynamic.
“That’s… You shouldn’t,” she said, swallowing roughly, then turned away to drink the cold tea.
“I know. Apparently, it’s not something I can help.”
Her back shook for a moment, and I thought she laughed. My pain sensors flared and the collar activated. I grimaced and took the blasted thing off, uploading it with a quick program I wrote to make it think it was still on. No one would see us here, and I needed to feel what I felt without trying to mask it.
When Sera turned around, her face was tense, her eyes red-rimmed. I realized she didn’t laugh. My confession made her suffer.
Before I could prompt my language module for a sufficient apology, Sera pulled closer with a sad smile.
“You know what’s ironic?” she asked, looking up at the sky with a tearful sort of smile. “Everything that’s happening right now is like a dream come true for a younger version of me. She was in love with Japan, enraptured by Neo Tokyo. She would have given her kidney for a chance to have a personal cyborg like you. Even being chased by evil bots… It was her jam.”
I pulled up the information about the accident and checked the date. Sera was nineteen when it happened.
“And now, I have it all but I don’t deserve it. My mom only got that car because I asked her,” she said, her voice brimming with tears.
I ran a quick diagnostic in the background, realizing she was likely on the brink of emotional collapse. The threat of death coupled with jet lag and her erratic sleep schedule must have depleted her resources.
So now she was breaking, and I was the only one here to help her stay whole. Panicking, I prompted all my systems for clues on how to behave. The algorithm I wrote to give me quickBro Signaladvice was the fastest to engage.
Become her shoulder to cry on.
I came closer, the water rippling. It reflected the sky that turned shades of apricot and peach, still dark blue in the west. Sera watched me expectantly, and I reran her last utterance to understand what she wanted from me.
My mom only got that car because I asked her.
Guilt,my emotional module prompted at once.Debilitating, crushing, life-altering guilt mixed with heartbreaking grief.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, embracing her with enough space to let her push me away if she wanted. “You didn’t know the car was faulty. You couldn’t have.”
She shook her head, sniffling. “But she got it because of me! She’s dead because of… my obsession with everything high-tech, smart cars, smart fridges, everything! I was the one who made her get it!”
Her sobs wracked her whole body. I held her closer, emitting heat, but not too much. The onsen was warm on its own, though the morning air felt cool enough in contrast. I searched my algos for possible things to say, but all of them felt trivial or stupid, so I stayed silent.
Sera wailed for four more minutes, then calmed herself down, breathing deeply through her tremors. I held her until she wassilent, then opened my torso compartment and produced a pair of her panties that I kept as a naughty souvenir.
“I’ve laundered them,” I said. “It’s the closest thing I have to a tissue.”
She snorted with wet, sobbing laughter, and blew her nose. When she pulled back, her eyes were drawn to my still open torso.
“There’s light in there,” she said with a tired sigh. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“Yes. It’s my core. It lights up with various emotions when you’re near.”
She leaned closer as if to look, and I swung that part of my armor wide open to show her. The water lapped at my hips, and there was no risk of any getting inside me, not that it would be a problem.
I knew what she saw. The gun I carried was stored near the side of me, as were my other tools, but the core, a crystalline cylinder filled with wiring and processors encased in ballistic glazing, sat right in the middle. I didn’t have guts or lungs, so there was a lot of space inside me. The core reached from where the top of a human sternum would be to roughly the point of a human perineum, and all my limbs and sensors were connected to it.
“So that’s where your brain is,” she whispered.
Her face was inches away from the cavity of my torso, lit by the purple and red light spilling outside. The light grew brighter even as she watched, and I felt at once exposed and elated.
“Brain and what organics call heart, too. It’s my processing center. Everything that’s important to me is stored there.”
I had files upon files connected to her stored high in my core’s hierarchy. I didn’t tell her that.
