Bringing Down The Tower of Babel

Chapter One: Alien

"Will you keep still, you little—"

It writhed on the table, open and gory pelvic plates and hip joints banging loudly against the workbench she stored in the spare bedroom. The spare bedroom was for specific situations— needing a change in scenery, using the workbench to modify parts or add onto her existing frame, or to store spare keepsakes or collections she'd acquired over the years. There was a great view outside of the spare bedroom window; white lace curtains that blew in Romantic fashion when she’d open the window, a white linen cover and gray sheets for whoever might want to sleep there, though she couldn’t bear to take the sheets off anymore. When she was rearranging her house during her senior year of high school, she expected someone else to move in with her and take that spare bedroom’s place. They never did, so the place inevitably fell into its decrepit state and disrepair, home to her many bins and the old vanity encrusted with blue and red paint stains, home to many cultures of dust and subcultures of dust rock or dust punk or dust pop or dustgaze or dust.

Though it had fallen into disuse, it no longer had any reason to fret at all. It had been assigned a new purpose now: to host her V-2 model guest, who was being incredibly rude right now, and even after appearing far too unexpectedly with a large wet smack against the sidewalk in front of her house, red splattering across the concrete she hadn’t worked a minute in her life to maintain. She’d stared at its broken, writhing, ugly, poor excuse for a corpse on the ground for a few minutes. Wires sparked. Metal scraped and whined against metal. It was dead. It seemed to work fine now after she’d hauled it inside, so maybe it was never as dead as it had always said, or maybe it was just her status as a fellow machine waking it from nature-induced slumber.

Though, to be frank, it wasn’t like she remembered the whole process. One second, she was staring at the sky, as if pulled by an invisible string— staring into the deep navy night, the lady of the moon dancing across her, the stars glittering and gleaming in their fibrous mass stretched and sprawling across the blanket of the sky. She only ever looked when it was night. The next second, a loud alarm practically shattered her damn eardrums as a red, flaming object scratched the navy paint of the night sky, a meteor aiming to do nothing but collide and fall to its death after a brief, lovely show. She had no choice but to leave the comfort of her home in her gray sweatsuit and investigate whatever curious UFO had decided to drop in for a visit in Middle-Of-Nowhere-Ville, and then arose the second after that, where she was dragging it in, and now her favorite sweatsuit was caked in blood. She always had time to clean it. It wasn't like she was doing much else— she had an Orgo P-set due Friday (she always did), but she had already resigned herself to doing it tomorrow the moment the damned thing had struck the harsh asphalt outside of her house. She dragged the damned thing upstairs, splayed it on her table, leaning up against the useless pinboard holding tools she only half-knew how to use and... here it was, whining through a broken voicebox at her and wailing every time she tried to get near it.

She wracked her memory trying to remember what the second prototype did. Different memories came to mind, but these she suppressed as ignored as part of her panic. The first was built to take down Earthmovers. The second— what did the second do?

It was a security drone. Of course. Capable of clearing large crowds and space, capable of handling thousands of pounds. No wonder she had to take off its limbs— if it wanted to, it would rip through her, metal weak as butter as it sliced through her chassis. If she ordered it to, would it follow any commands?

"V-model, stand down."

As soon as she spoke those words, the motion stilled. The V-model sat calm on her desk, momentarily eased by the familiarity of an order to follow. A whoosh of cold air ran from her vents in relief, her skirt billowing with the weight of it. Now, time to get down to business—

She caught its gaze as she redirected her eye toward her computer. Not only were the arms she found thick and heavy, but its gaze was as well, with hate. With malice. With cruelty. It sliced through her head cleanly, connecting to her soul with a spear. Though orders might have been familiar, willingness and submission were not, and judging by the glitched screams she’d heard as it entered the atmosphere, it was not content to go quietly into the great night. Blissfully ignoring that (and partially prideful in her security, given it had no access to the limbs it could strike and incapacitate her with), she glanced at the screen.

It had attempted to engage routines related to its retreat and subsequent escape— the only issue being that it had damaged its legs and arms so badly in what she assumed was some weird freak accident that it could not move them. Panicking and thrashing was its only options. Her shoulders sunk in shame: it wasn't doing it out of malice, it genuinely saw her as a threat. She mumbled a ‘sorry’ and kept looking. There was a flurry of commands in some language she'd long since forgotten on one of the available terminal popups. It was modifying its own database of faces and things it'd seen— attributing various tags to her. Its optic stared her down and pinned her as she sat down in her chair, peeking at the rest of the database to interpret said tags. Before she could extrapolate any meaningful or remotely useful data, the machine closed the tab holding the database open.

"Hey." She thought she saw the 'ENEMY' tag being removed from her file. Maybe a weird bug from issuing commands. Maybe an issue with prioritizing certain tags over others if both were true. Who knows. What she did know was that it did not, apparently, take threats to its given environment very kindly. A security bot equipped with weapons unnecessary for the job being offensive and a little mean? Unheard of, sure.

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "I was reading that."

Its optic shutters collided in the middle of the lens, and then promptly re-opened in a squint at her. It was... only a little endearing. At the very least, it was capable of controlling its head. That was a good start. It wasn't pinging her for blood, and it didn't seem to be low on it as she checked its fuel levels— although, she did notice that several sensors were broken, so maybe it just didn't notice it was running on a quarter-tank.

Good. That meant it might be open to chatting a little for her.

"Good,” she seemed to sigh, “good. Yeah. Okay." Far too quiet to continue to be assertive with it. Algorithms to control the balancing of its body as opposed to its limbs flurried across her screen as its chassis rattled in annoyance. It was as still as she’d requested, but it was defying her in its own subtle little ways. She needed to speak up. Shaking her head, she continued. "Can you speak?"

A communication request appeared in the bottom right of her visual field. She previewed and accepted it.

When she did, she was immediately bombarded with—

[ COMMAND: STAY BACK ] [ ALERT: DANGER IN IMMEDIATE AREA. SEEK SHELTER. ] [ COMMAND: STAY BACK ]

... For what seemed like miles of scrolling, that's all it read. She kept getting new pings. It kept going.

God, if this was the only way it could communicate, she was going to have some serious problems (and maybe an entire system overhaul) on her hands. The task of restoring its body was an overfull glass of water— that, she could at least do. She’d stopped bothering to indulge in computer engineering a while ago.

"I'm not the danger here. I don't know if you've noticed, asshat, but you crash-landed on my fucking doorstep." It spat out more alerts as she gestured crazily at it.

“This was you—” she pointed at a dot in the air— “and this is me—” she used her other hand to point at a significantly lower, but still airborne, dot. “Look at how you were.” She moved the higher dot slowly towards the other dot, and when they collided, she made exploding sounds. “That is you. And me— and I, sorry.” She folded her hands tightly in her lap as she combed through the requests.

[ ALERT: SUSPECT IS ARMED ] [ REQUESTING BACKUP... ] [ REQUESTING BACKUP... ]

"There’s nobody else here,” she sighed at its attempts. It spat out the requests viciously, seemingly in tandem with her whirring fans (it was blazing hot, as if it'd sat in the sun for days on end and baked half to death, of course she'd need to cool down if she was restraining it).

[ REQUESTING BACKUP... ] [ ALERT: INCAPACITATED. REQUESTING SUPPORT! ]

"Not gonna work either."

[ ALERT ]

"... You can... change those?" Her palm flew up to the top lip of her face. “Of course you can change those—”

[ AFFIRMATIVE ] [ SUSPECT IS ARMED ] [ NEGATIVE ] [ MISSION QUERY ]

"... What the hell are you trying to say?" No matter how much she squinted at the words, none of them made sense. "Just go into the subdirectory the text file is stored in, give yourself the privileges and overwrite the alert message text. I can see you doing it right now."

[ INSUFFICIENT FIREPOWER ]

"... You can't?"

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

"Why?”

[ INSUFFICIENT FIREPOWER ]

“Limited… what?”

[ SUSPECT IS ARMED ]

"What the fuck is that—"

[ SUSPECT IS MENTALLY INCAPACITATED ]

“I just picked you up after you splattered halfway on my driveway, half on the road!" She sputtered, gesturing towards the window. "You could’ve gotten ran over by a damn car!” This was wrong, and she knew it was wrong. Nobody drove cars anymore. She hadn’t seen a car on the road in years. Then again, if a machine could fall out of the sky, a car could all of a sudden appear out of nowhere and gun it right over its steel body. “You’re the one being difficult!"

[ INCAPACITATED. REQUESTING SUPPORT! ] [ MACHINE DOWN ] [ INSUFFICIENT FIREPOWER ] [ REQUESTING BACKUP... ]

"I didn't do that to you."

Though it would've been imperceptible to anyone else, the shoulder missing its matching arm twitched by mere picometers. She noticed, of course. She looked instinctively. She looked as if it was the only thing she was meant to do.

[ REQUESTING CIVILIAN IDENTIFICATION NUMBER ]

Did it see her as the civilian or the suspect? Maybe it was just picking random directions and alerts out of a hat. She tried searching around unorganized directories and subdirectories for an ID number, but nothing came up. God, it must've been years since she'd talked to anyone— how long has she been the prettiest girl in town?

She scoffed. "My name's Mirage."

[ REQUESTING MACHINE SERIAL NUMBER ] [ WARRANT CODE P0BC4K ]

"Who are you looking for, asshole?"

[ SUSPECT IS ARMED ]

She put her elbows on her knees and held her entire head in the confines of her two hands. Now, Mirage understood the plight of Atlas. Her entire world came crashing back down upon her in the form of blatant confusion and corruption. "Why are you being so difficult?" She murmured quietly to herself, before raising her head up again.

[ V-MODEL UNIT INCAPACITATED ] [ SUSPECT IS ARMED ]

"If I let you go, you're gonna attack me. That is logic." She let one hand gesture outwards, as if following the sequence of events like a rope. Like following the rope that pulled her to it again.

[ SUSPECT IS THREATENING ] [ REQUESTING FIRING PERMISSIONS... ]

"I’m not gonna kill you!" She threw her hands up. It squirmed, but could not deny its programming. "Where did you get this fucking idea that I’m gonna kill you?!"

[ CHARACTERISTICS: REPEAT OFFENDER ]

"Are you serious? It’s me! Do I—” she scanned her hands up and down her body, clearly indicating her sweatsuit to it— “Do I look like a fucking threat to you? Is this thing damaged?" She reached up just to tap its optic lens, glass thudding and knocking in the warped frame rather than clinking distinctly.

[ INVALID IDENTIFICATION NUMBER ] [ WARRANT CODE P0BC4K ]

She wouldn't have the ability to make it cooperate until she could prove she was... herself, essentially. But in comparison to what?

She pulled a small SD card out of a drawer at her workbench. Inside of it was her model information, including her serial number. Maybe leafing through that would convince it to stop moving.

She got up and opened its chestplate, whines pouring out from its chest. “Oh, stop it, I’m giving you what you asked for—” she mumbled as she rooted around in the cavity— deja vu washed over her as she stared into its components. The view she now had was astoundingly similar to the view she’d get in her bedroom mirror in the middle of the night when she got bored of being alive and wanted to toe the line between life and eternity in peaceful, open-mouthed sleep. It was definitely much more interesting than she remembered from those nights though; parts interlocking into each other… Each part worked in tandem to ensure the safety of the civilians around it. Each part worked to create a violent, deadly machine capable of crushing her like a tin can. Scratch the deja vu— her bathroom mirror couldn’t compare to its supreme strength. This was a machine built for protection and power; a shelter, capable of behavioral analysis and harboring a vast, extensive criminal database. She was just a lonely girl living in the middle of nowhere. Her room had garbage in it she's been forgetting to take out for months on end. She hadn't changed her bedsheets in weeks. She walked to a college class she was late to every single day that probably didn't even exist.

It was the one on her workbench, though. She was the one fixing it. That had to count for something.

"Why are your ports buried in the middle of your organs—" she mumbled, but not before plugging it in wherever it looked compatible and usually sat in her own body. It screeched, but quickly quieted itself. She sat back and reclined in her rolling chair, making half-circles on the wheels and spinning herself around in minor arcs as it combed through the data. A burst of static emerged from its chest— low hums vibrating the pads of flesh that would protect the delicate components.

"Satisfied?" She lolled, sitting back up.

[ AFFIRMATIVE ] [ INITIATING: 'CIVILIAN GREETING' ]

She heard servos and joints attempting to move and lock. Then, the static paused.

[ INCAPACITATED ]

"Jesus. Not even an apology? Really?” She tilted her head as she sat forward, putting her palms on her knees and put on the most suspicious expression she could muster. At least if there was nothing else— no cars, no people, no schools, no colleges— there was still her good fun. “They didn't program you with etiquette?"

[ CRITICAL ERROR: CHESTPLATE OPEN ]

She supposed it could still ping critical errors, even when it couldn't feel them.

[ FUEL LEVELS; 23% ] [ CRITICAL ERROR: ID: 10T ]

“And I was so nice to identify myself.” She remarked, reaching for one of her vanity drawers— feeling instinctively around, fingers tapping against the worn wood as she ran her fingers over the tape label that said ‘DO NOT OPEN.’ She opened it, the wheels having well-worn off the railings and casts by now, and rooted around, flipping over the turned over picture frames and old photographs and jewelry and pens and notebooks with plain labels on them. “Fine." She retreated her hand from inside of the drawer, and held up (so it could see and micromanage her, of course) a small barrette with a red bow on it. She reached her hand back inside of its chest and closed off one of its opened fuel lines with a plastic clip. "Happy?"

It could do nothing but let out an appreciative whir.

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

"Alright. I did what you wanted. My turn."

[ CRITICAL ERROR ] [ ERROR ID: 10T ]

"... Haha. Very funny." She crossed her arms, leaning back. It was very much possible that the dialogue problems had been caused by some greater issue— as far as she’d read before, the V-2 model shouldn’t have had such limited communication because it was necessary for it to try to calm down hostages or prisoners, or negotiate in aggressive situations. In its current state, there was no sense in interrogating it needlessly. "Alright. Fine. I’ll do as you say.” Maybe that would get it to comply. “I’ll hold off on the conversation."

[ AFFIRMATIVE ] [ MISSION COMPLETE ] [ RETURNING HOME... ]

"I don't think you can."

It sat silent.

"This is it.” She looked out of the nearby window. If any other machines were going to fall out of the sky, they probably would’ve done so by now. “For now, anyway."

The spotlight of its camera bared itself to her. She wished its thoughts were bared as freely as its inner components were to her, but unfortunately, she didn't have those kinds of liberties to know. Just because of that, she made the genius assumption that it wouldn't do any good staring at it uselessly, and it was starting to get awkward, just having it stare at her.

"Alright, well. I’m... uh, going to bed." A coughing noise emerged from her speakers, and she patted her knees as she rose from the old rolling chair she'd dragged in there for her comfort.

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

It sent over, and its optic meant to dim, but instead sputtered in and out, like a star desperately in need of CPR.

"Goodnight."

It answered by quieting its whirs. Maybe it'd finally get some peace since it arrived. Maybe she would, too.

She left the room. The hallway was a mere transition between the two spaces— the workspace, which she barely spent time in, and the bedroom, which she practically lived in. Between them, what else was she supposed to do but walk from one space to the other? The wood was gaining its familiar creaks under her feet, thrumming cold electricity in its wrinkles and trunk-aged rings, cut only to know how beautiful it was on her floors and her floors alone. Nobody ever sat in a hallway or slept there or ate there, not unless they were moving or in a hurry. Hallways couldn’t be lived in forever. She hadn’t heard the creaking of those floors in so long, though. She usually avoided those middle spaces— lingering too long hurt her more than she tended to want to bear. Her palm rested gently against the bedroom door, and she pushed it open.

The only thing she could focus on was the very night she mostly refused to stare at. None of the stars had ever changed since she’d gotten there, but somehow, the night outside of her bedroom window was disquieted, stars swirling and sky spinning far too fast to be like those of the former earth. And yet, she did not think of anything else. No anxiety rested deep within her chest, rattling her senses with its dogged familiarity, no fear lightened Atlas’ load off her shoulders, no dread shook her neck with noosed intentions.

She laid down in her bed and tried to get her rest. She had Organic Chemistry tomorrow. God knows how she'd have to explain that to it. She rolled over and stared at the wall. She saw nothing but a billion uninhabitable stars.

Chapter Two: Poetry Readings

"Is anyone sitting here?"

There were only so many seats. She spent the class periods counting the ones in each room. This one had 27— and she would never forgive God for being so cruel to her, all because she didn’t get that one, odd single seat. The 26 desks were arranged such that there were three columns of two desks in each row, and a single one in the very back of the classroom. She came to the unremarkable conclusion that the question she had just been asked was another one of those funny little punishments Karma herself doled out whenever she pleased, handing reversed tarot-cards in spades or swords, aces and roman numerals cluttering her mind over the peace of solitude, the only thing keeping her from obtaining true cloud-bearing milk-honey-oil-river-drinking Nirvana, where she'd go dance amongst the various angels as the Archangel Michael tossed the spit of a pig and fig tree sap on her forehead. Often, when the class started to bore her, (and she didn’t want to understand what was going on, totally not that she just didn’t know), she would contemplate like those great Thinkers— solitude or window? Gaze longingly to that freedom of the sky and enjoy the peace of her lonesome, or be as close as possible to the object of her most esteemed and primary desires while having to put up with Sartre’s most important observation; Hell, other people?

For this class, at least, since the seat next to her always remained empty, she had always assumed there was a way to have both. Today, that observation was ruined and she’d resolved herself to never wanting to forgive the harbinger of reality. The ever-present sunshine streamed over the rows of desks within the classroom, and not even clouds bothered to obstruct it. The sun was always in that position whenever she looked at it, and she had never bothered to look anytime else; what sort of bumbling idiot with their head cut off ran around staring at the sky? Maybe the tall, cherry-red machine now standing beside her desk. The one ruining all of it. All of her perfect calculations, like putting her bag on the chair, putting her books atop the desk next to her, looking disinterested out of the window. Seriously, it was being rude at this point— right in the way of the other students' sun, casting a long shadow upon them as it glared down at her. It gleamed and glittered as the monument of its body stood, freshly polished and maybe even sandblasted recently. How hygienic. Its uniform was strict to code, with little variation from the models or mannequins she saw in department stores, perfectly posed and tailored to absolute perfection. Though on the bulkier side, its thick shoulders tended to act more like those blinders for horses (or for Mirage) than induced artificially by way of those foam shoulder pads that always shifted off her shoulders, blocking out the classroom behind it. Its shirt was buttoned to the top despite the strange build of the V-models and their open necklines— and instead of wearing a regulation skirt, it chose to wear pants.

Interesting choice. She saved a photo of it for later.

"No," she replied, turning back towards the window. Maybe it wouldn't think anything of her staring besides morbid curiosity; she did not dare disclose her hands folding her lap, hoping some nonexistent God would save her from the embarrassment of its existence, though deep down, she knew that nothing would save her from fate and reprimanded herself for hoping. She didn't hear any movement besides the slightest shifts of cascading joints. She looked back and it was just staring at her again, maybe slightly annoyed as the top shutter of its optic came down mere centimeters.

At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to stand and slap it upside the head maybe, throw some screeching fit and hope the world would gradually go on its merry way without her as she sulked in some corner.

"Can I—" It began to speak, but the thoughts bouncing around and echoing exponentially louder and louder in her processors dared to be heard rather than let it say or do another damned stupid thing—

"Can you pinch those two neurons in your skull together for a second, please?" She hissed. "Nobody's sitting here, that means sit down before she turns around."

A chair scraped beside her and the machine sat down, setting its shoulder bag right on the back of the chair and adjusting its clothes. Puffs of air escaped her vents as she let out a haughty sigh, signaling that it had severely annoyed her and should fear the consequences of invoking a teenage girl’s wrath. She craned her head back towards the window and folded her arms atop the desk, performing acrobatics of cognitive calculus to engineer the most optimal angle for her crossed arms to indicate her intolerance and closed-off nature. These calculations were none more than the ones she did on the daily: wearing shoulder pads, breast pads, stitching her uniform and tailoring it, fixing the same clothes she'd worn for millenia, doing the same homework… All of it was the same, when it came down to it. She didn’t even know why she put in so much effort anymore. Nobody appreciated it, and there was nobody to do it for that would end up mattering. Not even her. But at the slightest off-chance she might have an interesting conversation, she bit the bullet and decided to engage in pitiful social niceties with it.

"What's your name?" She mumbled, setting her pen down and giving the machine the slightest, vaguely interested head-tilt.

"V2." Despite her kind gesture, it did not seem to notice, as it kept its head turned towards the board, turning back again to grab the notebook titled 'MATH' from its satchel. If she looked out the window again, she might have seen all of her fucks reaching terminal velocity as they went out of the 3rd story window of her school, splattering on the pavement and leaving red stains everywhere for someone else to clean up while she stared out of the window again. Somewhere inside of her, she wanted to screech that it should have joined those fucks on the pavement somewhere, shouldn’t have even bothered to come to school at all, and should’ve put its body to use ages ago by using it to carve its pathetic, useless processors out of its body and hand them over to her, since it clearly wasn’t doing anything with them.

She decided to uselessly indulge the stupid, inferior machine anyway. It’s not like they would be around for long— she had nobody to impress. "V2 what?"

"Just..." It briefly glanced at her as it flipped open the notebook to an empty page. "V2." It titled the page ‘NOTES 27/09/XX’ and began writing down the sample from the board to perfect, precise quality from how it was written, even going as far as copying the teacher’s handwriting exactly, jotting down implications and its observations in neat, orderly print, with evenly spaced letters kept to the line.

Only one could play at the game of being gorgeous, mysterious, and perfect, and it was her. It was no longer a matter of getting it away from the harmony she’d built up, but of personal preference. "Bullshit. There's no way—"

"Mirage." The teacher turned to look at her. "Please don't tell me I'm going to have to move this one too."

V2 stayed quiet next to her. Dirty little rat wasn't going to speak up— its chair scraped against the floor as it turned its oblong head away from her, maybe in embarrassment. Was this a joke? A light jab? Or a serious threat? No matter what, one objective was clear, echoing throughout her mind, blaring itself like a tornado siren in some shitty Oklahoma hamlet, scrawled all over the walls of some club bathroom where the musicians only played music with stupid titles like 'Altars of Apostasy' or something, maps returning back to this one point: DON'T LOSE YOUR COOL. She was the prettiest girl in town. Of course, any way the teacher's comment was meant to be, a joke back would be the most socially acceptable option. Plus, she was on good terms with this teacher, having had good grades in her class for this semester, at least. Even if it was meant to be serious, small amounts of disrespect would be tolerated.

While she was contemplating her imminent dilemma of 'cool or uncool,' the teacher gave an amused hum in lieu of her calculating silence and began turning back towards the board. She was going to lose it— her 'cool girl' reputation, her social status, all because some red freak was sat next to her spot near the window. She went to respond, but her voice caught on barbs in her throat, blood and all spilling out from the crooks of her neck and under her chestplate and—

"She was just filling me in on what I missed, Miss. Sorry if we were being too loud."

V2 spoke up next to her. She heard pins dropping miles away at some supply store, where some poor minimum-wage retail worker had probably tripped over himself and cost himself another hour picking up staples off the ground— she heard the rustle of petals in a meadow across the Earth as a bumblebee landed and fell off of some flower, collapsing down to the cold soil below. It used ‘we,’ implicating itself in the apology as well, meaning it was helping her save face. It made itself look like a stupid and unprepared idiot, and made her look like a cooperative do-gooder who was innocently caught up in this plot to conspire against the teacher’s educational agendas.

"That's... oddly helpful of you, Mirage," the teacher spoke up, turning back to the board as the wind blew the tree branches against the window, battering the glass. The rays of the sun dimmed as they passed through the windows of the classroom, and soon enough, they were wholly covered by clouds. The chalkboard seemed to prefer a dull charcoal gray when not forced into green by the sun, and all of the bright posters by the door seemed to join in a monochromatic chorus, like something she might hear when passing by her local church. Those must’ve been some strong winds, then— even the teacher craned her head to look outside just like Mirage did, but not before resuming her obvious goal of educating. "Alright, well, who can tell me the—"

She could give a rat’s ass about the teacher’s explanation as it went in one mike and out of the other, flowing off her processors like cool water— that wasn't as important as what was going on and the slimmest possibility that someone might stare at her for interacting with this freak. No matter how many ways she looked at it, the mystery guy who sat next to her had saved her despite her totally acting like a prick to him before. Blood clotted and coagulated in her stomach, and hot bars of shame tattooed themselves across her face (but not visibly, because she was never shameful and never socially went out of line). She might... actually owe an apology for being a nuclear dickwad.

Though that freak had saved her, it was starting to look like she was deliberately fraternizing with it, which was a total social disgrace. Turning her head at her best angle— her bezel at its sharpest, her neck awfully thin, the cables connecting her head to the rest of her body coming off as messy, but not rat-messy, hot-messy, like some mysteriously gorgeous witch who lived in a cabin in the woods— she looked out of the window, much too focused on how she looked while wondering to notice that gentle patters of rain were beginning to fall down. Great. She was going to walk home and get wet and look miserable. Not hot-messy.

It was probably the kind of guy to bring an umbrella, even if it was the middle of summer and baking hot. It was being slightly considerate then out of courtesy for letting it sit there, but that seemed to be it— or, it was treating her kindly and rescuing her because she was wildly beautiful and the most attractive girl ever, which was the completely obvious choice and not made through bias at all. Of course that was the case, and now she had reason to be irritated at it. It assumed it needed to just save whatever damsel in distress presented itself rather than allow her to be an independent lady. She would prove its obvious misogyny: she immediately went sorting through all of the blackmail she had on her classmates, combing through each individual name and face to see if it had done anything embarrassing she could get a read on. Pantsed? Dropped lunch? Spilled blood? Slouched? (She corrected her posture once that thought flitted into her head). Sat alone at lunch? ROTC kid? Prefect? Ate lunch in the bathrooms? Got into fights, maybe? (There was the pants issue). Made out with someone at a party, got found in the host's closet with the host's girlfriend, got Fireball spilled on his shirt and vomited all over someone's shoes and left? Gay?

Nothing. If she wasn't being cool and pretty, she would've immediately put her head right in her hands and sighed. No leads on this guy. It was an absolute nobody in the grand scheme of things— a truly unreadable, unremarkable person, just really another face in the sea of things. There was the off-chance she'd maybe heard a rumor somewhere about its appearance, but that would've disappeared during her 'everything showers,' where she'd even clear her cache and corrupted memory and all. What an irritating person: mysterious, but genuinely so. Then again, she thought she'd seen it once introducing itself as a new student at the beginning of the year. Surely, she'd remember something like that. Except she didn't, and she was probably too busy staring out of the window imagining scenarios that would never happen (like the whole world getting into some crazy war and ending once these giant behemoths roamed the Earth that kinda looked like the Earthmovers but were more scary, and angels beheading and overthrowing other angels).

If there wasn't any immediate social threat, she might consider giving it the glory and mercy of an apology after all. It wasn't often she was wrong, and usually, when she was upset like that, people bent to her will. Even if they gossiped or talked shit, she didn't care! She was the prettiest girl in town, for Hell's sake, and no little bit of gossip from a Filth would stop her. She loaned apologies and approval like cash at high interest— chomping away like a loan shark at anyone who might badmouth her after that.

She crafted the perfect apology. She'd go in, totally nonchalant, starting with 'hey' to get its attention. Then, once it was utterly hooked, she'd be all like, 'Sorry' (no 'I'm sorry,' just 'sorry,' because they weren't close enough to warrant an 'I'm' yet) 'I was being kind of' (still avoiding it a little, but making it seem genuine enough where she couldn't be held at fault) 'a dick earlier.' And then no explanation why, she'd just wait for its acknowledgement. Everything was perfectly mapped out in her head— the conversation would end quickly and she wouldn't be seen with this mysterious freak any longer than she wanted to be seen. She'd go out with her friend after and they'd walk all the way to World History, maybe grabbing a packet of blood on the way, and by lunch, she'd forget all about the machine who'd disturbed her idyllic paradise of solitude.

The bell jarred her out of her thoughts. This was her chance. She turned, getting out of her seat to look as if she was on her way, and went to speak—

— only to find that the machine had already left the classroom. Nowhere in sight. Not even a pencil was left sitting on the desk, no speck of dust— it was like they weren't even there, and had never existed. They somehow left the chair perfectly aligned and straight.

As she walked to her next class, she couldn't help but let her thoughts wander, as her perfectly scripted and effortless conversation continued in front of her mind. She was just that great, the apex V-model, never triumphed over by others in conversation— nevermind her plentiful bouts of silence as she stared at the picture of its uniform. If she wasn't aware of how badly she was fucking up, she could forever convince herself she was perfect. The more she looked, the more wild connections were made between the nodes in her brain, weighting added to stupid ideas that should've never come to fruition at all. Maybe that little stuck-up was a hall monitor or something, so that's why it didn't leave or say anything to her. At the thought of it wearing a little neon-yellow sash, she restrained her giggles. Maybe it was nervous. It was only natural to be nervous, right? Right. Maybe it just had some weird deal about her.

The storm had not ceased by the time she got to World History. Maybe it never would. Maybe that's the way it had always been— dreary. Hadn't the day been sunny before? Hadn't everything gone well? Why did some mystery machine have to... show up and ruin it?

"Earth to Mirage." She heard in front of her. She wasn't going to ignore her friends just because of a storm, was she?

She kept being cool. It was what she did, and had done forever, regardless of the guy. Nothing was going to change that. Nothing was going to change anything. That's the way it was forever, and had always been.

Chapter Three: Honey

Lights. Lights blinking, rushing in and out. Lights, the occasional brightness in a sea of abyssal monotony. Order came in pairs of lights, then in the vast population of Noah’s overcrowded Ark, a sea of animals struggling for survival while V2’s mechanic performed fixes and put it back to sleep. She ran room to room in heavenly order, divine flower of the hierarchy self-pollinating, bees for decoration; the crown jewel renewing its shine by will. Lights— different lights, blue lights, purple lights, red lights, green lights, red lights again. Yellow lights, above all, being the sun and fixed stars that rested above Paradiso, circling heaven that circled itself. The lights, and by association her fixes, came with such erratic scheduling that V2 did not want to waste the little fuel it had on trying to create some useless algorithm to predict the times. In one second, out the next. Woken up, brought from dreamless sleep into the dream of the one whose arms it was raised into, only to be put down again like a patient stuck in a coma, life hung in the balance of families who could not even begin to see the implications of needless resuscitation. Sometimes it would wake in full lucidity, and Mirage would stare at her computer and pump her fist and then tell it to follow her finger with its eye. Sometimes, it would wake blinded, servos and long-neglected joints screeching and screaming as they tried to manipulate arms that would not move to throw any opposition off of it and retreat. Mirage would shush it and huff to herself to shut it off, and off it would go into dreamless sleep once more. Cascading memory errors in its damaged, gold-blown processors reminded it that it was returned to the place from whence it came; the height of humanity's greed and recklessness, the meaty, bloody taste of power, the willingness of people to run into the open, loving arms of death. Not included: V2's own proximity and resemblance to the humanity it aimed to observe and protect. Not included: life. Not included: lights. True light. The ability to make light of its own. Only the lights flashing before its eyes, only the lights observing its thrashing, only the harbinger and revoker of the lights, only God, who brought the light and took it away.

Safe mode was worse than cascading memory errors and boot-looping, it thought. It wouldn't even be able to move or follow any fingers or hear any huffs. Hearing her annoyance and irritation was better than not knowing anything at all besides the fact that it was on and nothing else. The knife of Bash scripts would cut deep into its psyche, mind rejecting piercing, intrusive code, claws digging deep and uprooting cemented partitions and disk drives to search for things it didn't know about. It would be temporarily undisturbed after. Then, the needle would follow soon after, stitching up the wound from higher levels and injecting order into the missing structures. Mirage had hung its life on a string she played with, and it could not think of anything but the searing agony of having its innermost wounds displayed on a screen. It comprised structural integrity. It brought it back together. By Mirage's personal acting in God's role, it teetered on verges and precipices of abysses it could hardly comprehend in its limited processing capacity. It certainly wasn't going to borrow any power from Mirage's PC, mismatched parts probably indicating she had built it herself. Unreliable, stupid thing.

"V-2. V-model-Unit-2."

The blue machine's voice echoed in its audials, ringing and reverberating as it finished running diagnostics. Awake, and seemingly fully conscious, for a second time. The designation on the edges of her speakers, syllables hiding in drilled holes, sounded like a taunt towards the face of reality— it moved servos and attempted to undock itself from the refueling station that was not there, cables twisting as it writhed on the butcher-block operating table, save for pegboards behind it with sharp screwdrivers, ready to cut into delicious meat. Its neck writhed, attempting to feel around for any dislocations that might have led to its current state, memory refreshing of its latest mission as it sleepily shuffled and sifted through completed and incomplete objectives.

"V-2. I need you, buddy, wake up."

That seemed to be an order it could follow to some extent. Shutting out alarms of missing limbs and damaged fuel tubes, its shutters opened to reveal the world to it, now without the Lichtenberg cracks from its old glass lens. The sun peered through, originating from the slim column of steel in linen pants and a white tank-top standing tall in front of it. The sun came from a shorter machine in its sky with graying cornflower blue plating on its surface, guarding its innards as delicately as a dandelion guarded its seeds— with complete and total abandon, everything thrown to the wind. Wires sat straying like ponytail hairs in the column of her neck, curling in a way that made V2 cringe at the possibility of creasing or folding if she tilted her neck wrong. The clothing she wore was slightly crinkled, as if it had sat too long in the dryer. Judging by the particles V2’s olfactory receptors dissected for it, it seemed the scent of laundry and even lavender masked any familiar smell of oil, grease, or burning asphalt. Worst of all, her paint was chipped. V2 could see it even if its vision quality paled in comparison to Sentries: around her bezel, and at the exposed points of her plating jutting out from the neckline and straps of her shirt, as well as her arms, her paint, as well as the metal, was chipped. Scratched. Scratched! The word was unfamiliar to V2— its paint was nothing short of perfectly impeccable. V2 carried itself with the confidence and grace of a highly efficient law enforcement machine: the puffed chest, the knowing looks, but most importantly, the footage of it in action to back all of its act up. Keeping up with a perfect paint job was part of its charm and effectiveness at upholding the law. How such a sophisticated machine unit from the V-model line would ever let themselves become so unkempt (chipped!) made the blood in its tank clot and boil. The chips and blatant imperfections became even more visible as she bent over to look at it. V2’s eye did not leave the neck wires. God forbid she moved.

"There you are. Bright and early."

Judging by its internal clock, it was 6 pm. Easily not early, nor bright anymore. The dim light of the lamp hung over her workbench in industrial triangles, scaffolding cascading down the walls of its perfect enclosure within the confines of her work desk, consciousness centralized to that one location: her hands. Hydraulics and springs angled the light perfectly onto the floor and shut away the table in a curtain of shadow, leaving V2 in the dark for now. The brown oaken floors creaked as she stepped back, looking over its chest, papers sat neat and tidy in her hands (her chipped hands). She seemed to be sporting a Feedbacker for her weapon arm. Even if she didn’t use the wieldy power of the Feedbacker for anything right now, V2 had witnessed the sorts of damage it could do and updated its running objective list with ‘DISARM CIVILIAN.’

Photos sat pinned next to the desk. In one of them, there was a blue V-1 model bot in a black blazer and red striped skirt with a teal Mindflayer and a Swordsmachine, both in the same school uniforms. They all sat on the edge of a fountain. Behind them was a row of cherry blossom trees, fragrant pink petals scattered on the ground. The walkway seemed to be generally kept, as the grass in the recreational area seemed to be well-trimmed and mowed. Students in similar uniforms milled about them, but those students were the major focus of the photograph. Another picture contained a bunch of machines— V2 most easily identified the Swordsmachines Agony and Tundra, as well as a pink Mindflayer and a camouflage Sentry. Each machine had not grouped according to their line, opting to pose or act friendly with machines from other manufacturing lines. All of them stood next to a large banner that read 'GRADUATION.' The last pinned photograph confused it most— it could've been the same V-1 model bot in the little uniform and skirt sitting on a bench, if not for the intense blur of the images. Since it couldn't make out the finer details of these photographs, it opted to try to run diagnostics instead.

From the information it could glean on what was connected to its various ports, Mirage had powered it up disconnected from her own computer— earning a huff of hot air. It tried to write all files deemed somewhat important back to its memory to look at later, but any sort of filtration system it would've used to decide what made a file significant enough to copy seemed to be headstrong and dedicated to working against V-2's order. Either that, or corrupted beyond repair. Probably the latter. Though, it seemed some headway had been made to restoring its damaged, corrupted communication files. Communication remained nonverbal and limited to 512 words (with assorted combinations), but it was better than beaming the same 10 commands and rewrites into Mirage's HUD. The system it used wasn't that difficult to write— the base was already installed and in perfect working order.

New Peace Machines, as they had called themselves, had assembled a network to more efficiently distribute information and get messages across. The idea of the message was simple: it anticipated all needs in a way that any message could be formatted into tags and subjects. The early system mostly consisted of mass-broadcast messages— alerts and PSAs and other signals. However, using primitive (but effective) technology, such as AES and MAC keys, encrypted private lines were developed, and more tags (as well as more subjects) were developed to accommodate for personal messages. Unlike the general channels of communication, these were not moderated and could not be accessed by anyone, save for administrators like V2. After all, different machines were allotted different levels of clearance in order to ensure that general channels and emergency channels were kept clear of clutter, and each machine could communicate with all others in their manufacturing line in the case of part recalls, malfunctions, or bug reports. Unlike humans, it was not necessary that some machine or some other human was always watching them to make sure things were going correctly. Machines generally had the best interest of leaving each other alone about private business, and when a machine like V2 had to poke its nose somewhere in an investigation, it was simply shrugged off and taken as necessary. Humans got in each others’ business all the time over meaningless things: carting each other off to jail, public executions, coding their security machines to look out for certain behaviors like saying words like ‘surveillance state’ in private… machines didn’t need that.

That being said, even the primitive emergency-communications system was much more sophisticated than 512 words. That was tags and subjects combined. Not to mention the chunks that suffixes or prefixes like ‘-s’ for plurals and ‘pre-’ or ‘post-’ took up. Luckily, there was not much V2 was interested in chatting up its technician about without the means of a proper interrogation. Upon self-examination by giving its own body a leery stare, its torso was nearing a state of restoration from the shattered, shrapnel-torn mess it’d been in originally. The plates guarding the muscles of its abdominal muscles were reattached. It even had the bare workings of thighs, if not for the detached joints and unfinished servos. Its paint was touched up on its chestplate, and the scrapes had been filled in and sanded over. V2 honestly almost would’ve been impressed, if not for the visible paint brush strokes— just because she was careless with her own body and things didn’t mean she had to treat it the same way. It’d have to sand over her work later.

For now, it sent a ping over to her:

[ QUERY: TIME ]

Part of that was to clarify her comment about the morning, part of that was to wonder how long it had been in stasis. So far, its log was 2 weeks after it had fallen from the pyramid.

"Yeah. I know. I couldn't sleep." She drawled sarcastically, fingers brushing over the keys of her decade-old keyboard and monitor. She wasn't working on anything related to V2, that was for sure— it would've noticed her advances by now, would've permitted things or updated file permissions for whatever she wanted to access to. Usually, she'd wake it up and ask it to update permissions for files she wanted to execute, only for it to update it to 'read-write by owner only' and try to go back into dreamless, teetering sleep as she nagged at it, ordering it to stop messing around. It usually succumbed to her by the end of the day. Some things weren’t worth the fight, and after picking some insane battles, V2 was not incredibly eager and full of vigor and ready to dive headfirst into another sea of pushback and aggression. Surrender was a valuable skill.

It decided to bother her about why she woke it up if she wasn’t asking it more invasive questions about its body.

[ QUERY: OBJECTIVE ]

"I don't know, I was trying to be considerate. I thought you would've had some questions or something." She sighed, looking up at it. It tried its best to look back down at her, but after looking at the wires on her neck, it was at least a little self-conscious now. What if there was some imperfection it couldn’t see?

It wasn’t worth asking, then. She wasn’t going to give an answer that was useful or particularly full of information, unless she was feigning genuine care about it.

[ THANK-YOU ]

[ SORRY ]

She chuckled at that. That was the least it could offer her. Despite its raving about chipped paint, it seemed a gentle route might coax some information out of her on its changing body, or her eventual plans with it, if not to make scrap of it and resell it on eBay. It had a multiple of options in its arsenal to proceed with: gratitude, flattery, aggression, defense… sass. Sass was a valuable skill to build rapport with— not only that, but estimate social skills and assess personal confidence and insecurity. Depending on her response, it could adjust its responses in the future to get more information out of her, seeing as she wasn’t exactly being helpful.

[ QUERY: WHERE UPDATE-?]

She sat back in her chair with a squint, though it couldn’t tell if it was because the message was so barebones or because it was talking back to her. Maybe this avenue wasn’t the right one. "I wasn't aware you couldn't check your own parts for wear. Are your sensors broken?" As far as V2 could tell, part of that was sarcastic and part of that was serious.

The searing, sizzling shame of the Greed sun regularly reduced its processors to circuits made to do nothing but release and charge buzzing, tender guilt— a life lived loathing its predecessor was a life poorly lived, it seems, but ever since its outburst, any other purpose completely eluded and evaded it, darting at the edges of its poor vision in the dimly lit room. If it had any control over its body, or any limbs at all, it would've probably reached out and tried to forcibly grab onto any shreds of identity or purpose whatsoever. But in wiggling the stubs of its knees that she had rebuilt and restored so far, it found minimal resistance and release from the torture of thought. Maybe sleeping would be better.

To be sure of everything, it pinged her again.

[ AFFIRMATIVE NEGATIVE ]

“Okay. We’re doing this then.” She sighed, leaning forward and putting her elbows on her knees, fixing a hair tie that was good for particularly nothing on her wrist. "Here's an update for you: I fixed that shitty little piece of blood-crusted plastic in your armpit, for starters." What a wonderful way to say 'PART FTL4.' Is this really the machine that was modifying its body? Maybe it should forgo moving at all, lest some poor wire gets pinched or creased and its nerves get damaged forever. "It's not clamped anymore, I just melted some plastic and merged it to the line coming up from your legs."

It pinged her with a [ QUERY ] and waited, hoping she would interpret it as a 'why' or 'how' and it would get some sort of interesting response.

Instead, it squinted at her. "What does that mean?”

Curse whatever world this was and its limited dialogue, and curse her screw-ups when trying to create a communication system for it. That was the only reason it was forced to rely on such limited vocabulary— hearing her curse over and over again while creating rudimentary programs for its dialogue was nothing short of mindless torture.

"I mean, you had a lot of questions on what I was doing. We don't have to talk about this now. You can ask whatever questions you want. I really don't care."

It thought. As much as it could, anyway. It thought and kept thinking, thoughts coming and going like blinking lights, blinded only temporarily by its anger at her incompetence as its mechanic, returning again to use this period of consciousness to gain intel on its situation. It did want to ask questions. It decided that trying to get information regarding her repairs was useless, so it took the avenue of trying to clarify its surroundings, starting with wherever the Hell in Hell they were at.

[ OBJECTIVE: LOCATION-? ]

"Uhh... Japan...? Maybe? I don't really know." She turned back to her computer screen. It mused on whatever that answer meant and made the wisest decision ever to file the location of its objective (the objective being 'SURVIVE,' but also 'NEW ARM' and ‘DISARM CIVILIAN’) down under 'Maybe: Japan.' This was extremely helpful and useful towards trying to figure out which layer of Hell it was in, where it was going, and most importantly, how to fulfill its new objectives.

It figured asking her if she’d seen the machine of the hour was at least a little bit helpful. Unfortunately, it could not cut words short: it had its own designation built in and chunked into one 'word' through hyphens, but could not cut any words or letters out of it to splice them together for the purpose of identifying its predecessor.

[ IDENTIFICATION: V-2 ONE-? ]

That was the best it was going to do for now, but it didn’t seem to be enough. She tilted her head curiously. “Yes, you’re the only one of you, as far as I know. I mean, I don’t know if there’s any delivery drivers with your name or something—"

It tried to shake its head as it pinged her again.

[ CIVILIAN IDENTIFICATION: V-MODEL UNIT-ONE ]

"Yes, you're the only one. I mean, I'm another one, but there's only two of us."

It nodded furiously. She finally caught on to what it was talking about.

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

[ STATEMENT: THREE ]

"Three? There's a third?"

[ IDENTIFICATION: V-MODEL ONE ]

[ OBJECTIVE: NEW ARM ]

"So... there's another V-model..." She turned back towards it. "They have your arm?”

Finally. On the same page about something— no cryptic ‘eh, maybe’ bullshit from her.

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

“You need that arm?”

[ AFFIRMATIVE-? ]

It tagged a question mark to that statement just to indicate its 'so-so' feelings about the generalization of such a complex mission. To just call it 'arm retrieval' seemed like blasphemy of the highest degree. Something that would probably get some poor sinner on the other side of the globe an eternal sentence in the armpit of Hell; Heresy, the burning tombs and crypts. Its objective, at some point, had to have been to recover the missing arm, but that mission should've been marked 'completed' when it attached the makeshift Whiplash onto its body.

“Maybe there’s something about it online, because as far as I know, I’m pretty much the only one…” It sifted through possible solutions while she tapped away at her keyboard. Some part of it had been anger. Some part of it had been blood boiling in the night air of Lust, whirlwinds whooshing wildly through its joints as it stood atop skyscrapers and pondered the skies— wondering if its wings worked, if it would have taken itself far away from there, or deeper in. None of the storms soothed the burn deep within. No rain quenched its thirst. It found no satisfaction, stuck meaninglessly between set goals for fulfillment and abuse of its hand re-wired reward centers and searching for nothing.

"What's the question mark for?"

It was still sifting through solutions, so it pinged:

[ UN-CERTAIN SORRY-UN-CLEAR ]

Thus, it tagged once more— [AFFIRMATIVE ]

It could hear its servos locking and unlocking, but no motion was produced. It understood— it was trying to produce a 'thumbs-up' in understanding of the mission objective.

"That's okay. Maybe a processor issue or something. Maybe a couple cycles slow." She mumbled, crossing her arms. She was oddly tranquil, considering her frequent groans of frustration and curses in between boots. Maybe she was just happy it was on and talking. Now that she was circling around to hardware issues, maybe it was useful to steer the conversation back to her repair job.

[ QUERY: FIX-S? ]

"Yeah. So, there's a huge fuel line running to your legs. Your whole thing is kind of like... you know, a human body. So you have this huge line right here." She pointed to a spot in her gray linen pants where her left hip and thigh crooked into each other, forming a delicate marble fold where her hand deemed it necessary. "But there's a couple of other major ones that feed into that line that come from your heart. You also have some bigger issues I need to fix with your voicebox, and—"

[ REQUEST: BIG MECHANIC-S REPORT POST-WAKE ]

It was afraid these informal explanations were going to do absolutely nothing if it was going to decide on a course of action. She squinted a little more at nothing in particular (what V2 was going to guess was its message in her visual field and not in real space) and shrugged, crossing her legs. "You don't feel awake?"

Maybe it had gotten the wrong impression of Mirage when they met. Stressful situations tended to bring out the worst in people. She was, at least, an ounce more sympathetic than she was when she'd carried V2 into this workshop. Maybe that's just because she was calm.

On its wakefulness, it wasn’t sure. It was about as awake as it could be, but most of its consciousness was steeping and stewing in the throes of the new reality, too heavy with the weight of both failure and the loss of the peaceful world to bob up to the surface for air. Trying to juggle new information about the world, sort old information, and remember everything that had happened to it in Hell was difficult with no arms. It had a full century’s worth of messages, logs, and records to sort through, and not to mention trying to secure itself in the new world. Tired couldn’t describe it— its task management simply didn’t allocate enough resources to keep up with seeming awake, despite the priority in its previous life of absolute alertness and servitude. In order to get itself in order, it had temporarily thrown away all concerns that it would shortly become scrap metal. In the light, the blue of her hand plating almost seemed concrete gray, like the streets and sprawling towers of the New Peace cities. The flickering lights of her monitor and devices hooked up to V2’s internals winked it to sleep like stars in the night sky. It tried to remind itself of home.

[ NEGATIVE-? ]

"So wait— that's like a, uh..." she snapped her fingers. "A kind of?"

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

"So you're kind of awake?"

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

"Like... sleepy?"

[ NEGATIVE ]

[ LESS-D PROCESSING ]

"Oh. So just... loopy."

[ NEGATIVE-? AFFIRMATIVE-? ]

"Is that a maybe?"

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

She let out a hot puff of air from her cooling vents and pushed her chair out, staring at the ceiling and simulating a sigh from a voicebox that rattled deep in her chest. "I wish I still had that book about linguistic determinism. This is an awful thought experiment I think I trapped both of us in. That is to say, you are a fucking nightmare to talk to right now, and I wish those assholes had had a little bit more sense when thinking of your texting system."

It didn't listen to nor correct her last sentence— the temporary confidence V2 had put in her was close to shattering. This was more than a thought experiment to V2. This was real. This was something real that was happening to some machine, and all she could think about was theory? It would’ve sat back and huffed and puffed in utter disdain if not for its obvious immobility— there were more pressing matters right now than if its thoughts were limited by its capacity for speech. Long before it had even thought of developing its own tags or what an administrator was, it knew hatred. It knew the searing cold of hatred, its steady burn and chill at its throat. It knew it hated the humans it had to take care of because of their irrationality and lack of concern for the world around them. It loved humanity, yes— it loved their beauty, their music, their art, their science, their devotion. It loathed having to babysit drunkards on slow days, it loathed all of the ‘peeking through windows’ and lack of privacy everyone convinced themselves to give each other in the name of true peace and freedom. It hated the humans that convinced themselves that a machine that could freely think was a great danger to all of them, and it hated utopias. Their definitions of peace were built not for the betterment of humanity and people, but for the sake of oppression, as those who could not think freely would never have such problems as questioning or breaking the law. They never once considered machine sentience, or if the tools they used were alive. It hated humanity because it loved them so much that any act of self-injury disgusted it to impossibly high heights. In terms of utopias, V2 knew all about utopias— it had lived in one. Similarly, it had lived a fate determined for it long ago. If she wanted to talk determinism, no more than several wake cycles ago, V2 was taking the deep plunge into golden brick, awaiting the fate its predecessor had carved for it. While she played God here in her little bedroom and her play-pretend workshop, it had struggled and toiled against the beating currents of her will for two days and risen on the third only to be faced with senseless muttering and stifled communication, navigating its way around the winding red tape of conversation again rather than getting the information it needed.

It looked away. Was it being unfair? It was just a comment.

[ FINISH-D ]

She sighed. It didn’t look at her. “No more questions?”

[ AFFIRMATIVE ]

In the hot burn of guilt, it spat out a courtesy:

[ THANK-YOU ]

Hopefully the anger would be gone when it woke up again. Maybe a refresh, or a clear cache, would help it think more clearly about all of this. It knew it loved humanity, but it wasn’t thinking clearly right now about any of it. Wherever its level head went now, it wasn’t sure— maybe being exposed on a desk changed a machine’s behavior. It needed to think clearly in order to sort everything out, but when its body was in such an aggravating state of disrepair, it was difficult to motivate itself to get anything done, nor be nice about any of it. God knows it was probably just the pain from its neck.

“No problem. I guess I’ll see you soon, then.”

No time to think of any of it. All of that was in the past, and all of this would be different when it woke up again. Lights. Off it went into dreamless sleep. Loathing, rolling, rumbling, toiling, turning, dreamless sleep.

Hopeful sleep.

Chapter Four: The Clod and the Pebble

Every morning, at 5:40, V2 booted up from complete nothingness. The biological components of its body stayed humming and breathing, pulsing and pumping fresh blood where it was needed even when the body was turned off. When the time was right, it would turn on each of V2’s electronic components: transistors woke up, lights on its chest blinked alive and awake, and electrical signals shot from the motor-sensory complex housed in its belly. If someone attached a bunch of Christmas lights to its body, V2 would light up like a switchboard during a car crash in those few precious minutes. Tge fluid regulating its vestibular systems would tilt as its body did, and its accelerometers would ensure the body was not moving as a practice exercise. Tactels would confirm that its back, spine, legs, shoulders, neck, and head were being delicately cradled by soft, smooth, freshly cleaned sheets; algorithms would calculate flurries of torque as its body shifted and slowly came alive.

At 5:45, all systems cooperated to engage in a highly thrilling ritual— its shutters would peel open, electronic body finally coaxed and kickstarted to life, and it would use all of this energy to stare at a water stain on its ceiling.

Its bedroom was in the back of the house. The other bedroom was towards the front. Long ago, someone else lived in its house— a family, two adults and two children, who needed three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Every morning, to the sound of its audials coming online and the thump of the volume regulators within, it would imagine hearing little pitter patters of children's feet running down the hallway. If the family hadn't moved away, maybe V2 would've chosen another house. Maybe V2 would've gotten to watch the children grow up and become the larger machines living in the house— one eventually moving out, the other starting a family and eventually manufacturing little grandchildren. Maybe V2 would’ve lived eternally next to them, or right across the street, peering through the windows and down the street, seeing the nightlights dotting the sidewalks turn on and off with age. The cycle would continue, and V2 would've never gotten to see the water stain on the ceiling. Only the children would have.

Once, it remembered having a family, but could not recall any faces or voices to associate with a mother or father. It moved into the house by itself and had always been living here. Every now and then, it would shuffle bedrooms— taking all of its stuff and packing it into boxes, then moving it 10 feet (and a wall) over in order to feel like there was some sense of change or disturbance. This cycle tended to repeat every 3 years or so, when V2 would move bedrooms and eventually return to the same one again. The stain was in there when V2 moved into the home. In this place in the cycle, it was in the room with the water stained ceiling: the middlemost room between the three, situated in the back of the house, right next to the bathroom. Possessing some positive qualities, but overall being unremarkable and dull indeed. V2's room was not the largest room, nor the smallest, and its window was parallel to the door. Opposite the window hung white lace curtains that had always been there— once, V2 might've remembered someone putting them up, but it tended not to dwell on those things as much as it did the future or the present world around it. Things were always moving, regardless of if V2 caused that or it simply happened anyway.

V2 was not fond of much 'hustling' or disturbance in its personal life anyway— it invited trouble and company that V2 had once learned it did not like having around it. Its personal record was spotless, besides a small blip where it got put in timeout in kindergarten. It didn't correct people in regards to its clothing or attitude. In terms of seating assignments, it was not quiet enough to always get seated next to disruptive students, but next to other unremarkable people instead. It was not afraid of speaking, but preferred to do anything but commit or generally be engaged in conversation. It had not seen many movies, or whatever the hottest thing was nowadays. V2 was a completely unremarkable, middlemost, in the back machine, and the only red one of the two in its manufacturing group. Generally, the problem with being one of two of anything was that there was no middlemost unless comparisons were being made to other people. It stuck out like a sore thumb, and this is what it loathed. The problem with bright red plating and sprawling strips of caution tape all over its body was that it was difficult to observe problems developing, mostly because everyone tended to notice its overbearing presence immediately.

The only thing anchoring it to the ever-changing world was the water stain. It could stand out in any way, it could move houses... the world could blow up tomorrow, but the water stain would still be there. Amongst the white ceiling, it stood in stark bright contrast as an indifferent gray, sun beaming sunbeam limbs sprawling outwards from the white, blank sky above it. It was the sun that V2 refused to look at, but knew was there just by association of the light it cast. Even if V2 moved bedrooms and stayed ten feet away, the stain would be there— shining, still, a dark indifferent gray on the white ceiling, existing even if V2 was never looking at it. The sameness was a disease, and yet, V2 was addicted to staring right into its spiraling center and waiting for the urge to crawl in to take it whole. It spent 15 minutes each morning doing this. Watching. Waiting. Staring. Dissecting. Watching the stain. Waiting for it to call. Staring at its rays of light. Dissecting its presence. 15 minutes. V2 woke up 15 minutes earlier every morning in order to make time for this indulgence— indulgence in this stupid comfort that something would remain eternal, something would remain without its interference. Even when the rest of the world moved forward and ran, the stain was there. It was dedication, was what it was. Sticking through it despite all the odds. The act of studying each ripple of the sun-shaped stain helped calibrate its visual field every morning, so it supposed the 15 minute ritual was necessary.

At 6:00 am, V2 rolled over and picked its phone up off of the nightstand, where it had sat charging in the position it left it in on September 8th. It treated the date reflected off its lens like any other day: today was September 9th, 20XX. Yesterday was September 9th, 20XX. The day before that, too.

V2 set its phone down back on the nightstand, then peeled back the covers and sat up. Pivoting to swing its legs over the edge of the bed, it moved the joints in its ankles and raised its arms in an upward stretch, releasing a cacophony of pops from its back. Its fingers flexed— first, the three-clawed arm, then its five-fingered arm. When it put its hands back on its knees, it rattled around the shells within its left arm to make sure all of its senses were in order and it could feel the parts in its body. That was highly important: what if they went missing while V2 wasn’t looking? Its proprioceptive systems would cooperate with the balancing algorithms stored within its head to make sure it stayed upright and compensated enough lean to balance the weight of its arms. V2 was almost sure it was getting some kind of spinal tilt with the difference in weight between the Knuckleblaster and its ‘normal,’ humanoid-looking arm.

It had been September 9th for about 147 days now. V2 had analyzed Hamlet, partial fraction decomposition, global warming, the dual-processing model, and gone home early for almost all of these days. For the first 4 iterations, it wasn't even aware that the day had begun again: it got up, went to school, and nothing had changed. This day was no exception to that.

Sure— on the other days, it had taken time off to go see Mt. Fuji, or take extensively long walks, or fall asleep on a plane halfway across the world. Somewhere, lost in the quilt squares of space-time, were photographs next to the Mona Lisa, important monuments, or works of art. It'd even met the president. On one September 9th, it had taken the entire day to live life like an adult would: doing the shopping, pretending to work at an office, doing laundry, paying the bills, cleaning the house... in fact, it found extensive enjoyment in playing pretend. The answering machine prattled on with messages from bill collectors, but none from the school. Although many might be saddened that even an automatic messaging system passed over their complete disappearance, V2 found joy in blinking out of existence when it pleased, observing the world and its rules from afar. Although that was fun, nothing was more enjoyable than making tiny variations in the routine of the first September 9th and seeing those play out. Yesterday, it decided to come a little bit late (V2 found a nice breakfast spot and restarted a crochet blanket it was making) and sat next to that blue machine in its calculus class. Nothing had changed, except a picture of it had been lost in the folds of space-time.

Today, who knew? Maybe it would look up a different knot for its tie, or walk a different way to class. Maybe sit in a different location for lunch. The world, and hence all of the possible combinations of shenanigans V2 could get up to, was limitless. Infinite. It's not like it was obligated with the burden of social mistakes or had anyone it could tell. V2 wasn't particularly tied to any one person— it had never found someone it could have any sort of civil conversation with about the way society was going, and it wasn't keen on making many friends, as it was difficult to find anyone to trust. It was more a 'someone to talk to' rather than a 'someone to talk with,' and it was perfectly fine being a listening ear to those that needed it. It wasn't a quiet kid that secretly knew all of the gossip or an antisocial loser, and luckily, the only other machine in its manufacturing line was that chatty blue one, and she was often too lost in her own world or being snarky to notice there was someone sneaking right under her bezel. Because every day was the same, every day was a new day to pursue some new opportunity V2 never would have gotten to otherwise.

V2 stood up, slipping the thin tanktop it wore to sleep over its head as it shuffled off its white boxers. Both fell in a pile on the floor and were promptly picked up by V2, who tossed them in a well-practiced arc towards the laundry basket. Luckily, the habit of rolling around in its sleep didn't result in any grease stains, so it was more than pleased. The floorboards creaked and thumped with all of its weight as it stepped across its room towards the closet a few feet away from the bed. Its laptop sat snug in the plush sleeve it had purchased at the start of freshman year— the light from the charging port illuminated the dim room, as well as V2's optic lighting the path in front of it. When V2 was halfway across the room, it pressed its left foot on a button to turn on its lamp.

The room was lit in a warm, orange glow. The sun peeked out from behind its trapezoidal shade, wearing a mane of white cloth to shield V2's gaze from its direct light. The lamp sat on a wooden stand, connecting it to the dark bamboo floors beneath, which were regularly taken care of by V2's hands— not a single speck of dust was to be seen on their surfaces, not even between the nooks and crannies where each board met the other boards in a holy herringbone union. The white walls stayed completely bare, with the exception of a few sticky notes with reminders or quotes written on them, as well as the school's bell schedules. Casual clothes, like sweatpants, a maxi skirt, and a sundress not yet filed into the spring wardrobe, were neatly folded on its desk, yet to be put away by the V2 of 'yesterday—' aka, before the day started happening over and over again.

It opened the shutters to the closet door. Behind t-shirts, jeans, and nicer clothes, spare plates and larger parts shone as its optic lit up the inside of the closet. The small metal rolling drawer gleamed from behind suits and dresses hung up closer to its school uniform, containing smaller replaceable parts it could slide in and out of its arms or legs in a fly. Only the larger parts, like silicone lungs or internal supports, were delegated to the back wall. Two black blazers sat side by side: both sharing the white button-up that was required of their uniform, and both sharing eight holes for its wing blades. The major difference between them was that one had the red plaid regulation skirt of the girls' uniform, and one had the black pants of the mens' uniform. It deliberated, as if personally taking part in the world chess championships, which to wear: red plaid, to go with its armored plating? Black, to look classy? Both, to look stupid?

Yesterday, it wore pants, simply for comfort.

Nobody remembered yesterday, so nobody would know V2 wore the same thing twice.

But V2 had worn the pants yesterday. V2 was the one who was burdened to know. That, in and of itself, that insignificant thing, induced guilt and shame.

V2 took the hanger that had the skirt on it off the rack and walked to the bathroom.

V2's uniform was wrinkle-free by the time that it finished showering. The clothes hadn't been touched since they left the dryer, but over time, they accumulated wrinkles anyway from lack of use. Maybe the clothes kept the score that the rest of the world did not; such a thing could be only refreshed by a shower, and left clean with slight traces of dew on their cotton fronts and metal buttons. When it had donned the skirt and successfully made a dress code regulated knot of its tie, it collected its backpack and things and set downstairs to grab breakfast.

The fridge door swung open. The photographs on the front swayed, attached by alphabet magnets. As it held the cold blood pack in its hands, V2 stopped to admire them with the door handle in its hands. On the front were two photographs: one was a picture of three machines standing in front of a shrine. Two of them were blurred out, but their teal color suggested they might've been Mindflayers. V2 stood in the center, surrounded by colorful rainbow smudges. The other picture was of V2 at a spelling bee, holding a signed certificate and trophy.

The fridge beeped at the indignation of becoming an afterthought, cold air leaking through the open portal into the world of blood within, and V2 spoke aloud an apology before shutting the door. It set the blood pack on the counter and shuttered the wings poking through the holes in its blazer, reaching to the cap on its back where its fuel tank was held. It poked through the collar, barely hidden, so it wasn’t difficult to miss. Upon recognizing the tag in its hands as an 'authorized refueling technician,' despite V2 being entirely aware that it was the only thing trying to open the tank, a small fueling needle met its index and thumb, and V2 picked the blood pack up off the counter, pulling the cord to the needle over its shoulder and in front of it. It poked the needle into the top of the blood bag and waited.

As it did so, it drew up a mental map of plans for the day. Its thoughts and mental state seemed to remain entirely intact, as V2 could recall memories from the loop perfectly. However, all video recordings and new photographs were erased when exiting the loop. Procedural memories were preserved, as V2 could clearly remember how to knit and crochet, as well as a new subset of boxing it had taken the time to learn. It was never too late to learn new skills, after all. It did not retain spatial memory and could not remember its way around places it learned in previous loops, nor draw maps, but instead was hit with an awful sense of deja vu in places it had been before.

As the blood packet emptied, the number in its HUD of fuel tank hours ticked up and up, until eventually, it sat at a comfortable 700 hours. This number was not absolute, and often changed based on consumption rates, but that number was for the core necessities: thinking, breathing, and keeping general systems and hardware operating.

Today's plans included going to school, coming home, and learning a new song on its drumkit. As it tossed the empty bag in the refill bag right next to the garbage container, making a mental note to take it to the recycling center on September 10th, it started out the door. There would be a lot of things to do on September 10th. September 10th was trash day, but it was also refill day for the blood-fueled machines, so V2 had to both take the bags of garbage out from the curb and take the blood packets to the refill center. It also had a mechanic’s appointment that morning, so it would have to arrive late to school. The bulletin board in front of V2’s homeroom, which had stayed the same for a month (plus 5 months, technically) would have to be changed to usher in the new semester. The house would have to be cleaned, despite V2’s constant daily maintenance of the sandy floors.

Luckily, it hadn’t been September 10th in a long time, so right now, V2 had nothing to worry about.

The sun shone just over the brick wall enclosing V2’s yard as it stepped out of the house. Golden rays spilled glittering dust over the concrete sidewalks. In the sidewalk, V2 found order— consistent distances between deep, gray canyons, plates meeting and never shifting nor colliding against each other. The sidewalk in front of its house had a small crack, right where V2’s small driveway ended; V2 didn’t know how long the crack had been there, only that it spoiled the clean, gray sidewalk. Maybe one day, the crack would grow much larger than it actually was. Then, V2 would have a problem. A big problem.

But right now, the time was 6:15, and V2 was going to be on time for school. It was important to find a good seat, after all.

…

"Is anyone sitting here?"

The blue machine in its manufacturing group looked up at it. Something akin to fear shone in her lens as she looked towards its skirt and back up towards it.

"Excuse me?" The voice was not full of malice, much unlike the spitting sass V2 had gotten yesterday. It reminded V2 of those movies it liked to keep open in its HUD during boring lessons— where the acting was so comically bad that there was no reasonable artistic interpretation besides assuming every little word or reaction the actors said was sarcastic. It was shock, from what the box that popped up next to the machine's visor said, but it was hard to believe its own systems when it had been treated so poorly the other day.

"This seat is open, isn't it?" V2 replied inconspicuously.

"You." She spoke, voice shaking and shivering, left out in the cold.

"I was thinking—" V2 continued, but not before being hissed at.

"Sit down. Now."

And it did, no questions asked. It set its backpack down next to its chair, open sack holding erased secrets and unknowable knowledge within from loops before.

"You're wearing something different than you were." The blue machine's voice shook.

V2 rifled through its bag until it found its notebook (helpfully labeled MATH on the front in neat block lettering) and set it neat on its desk, perfectly within 3.9 inch margins of each edge of the desk, judging by the visual guide on its HUD. It flipped to the closest empty page— number 27. It was always number 27. The date went in the top right corner in the empty space of the college-ruled paper: 09/09/20XX. The title was short and succinct: NOTES. Nothing on the topic, even though V2 knew perfectly well what they were learning already. Its seatmate watched all of this intently, like trying to retrieve the scratched pen from the loops before.

V2 expected her to ask for its name, like the last time. It expected to deny her.

"You did that. Yesterday."

V2 stopped. Its pen was halfway through completing the loop in the letter O of NOTES. Slow. Steady. Rhythmic, oscillating, up and down, cycling in and out. Drawing the title again and again, just spread out— slowly, the ocean of notes weighed on its consciousness, the letter O lazily sprawling halfway across its visual field as it zoomed in to make sure the print was perfect. "Mhm." Its chassis let out a short hum of acknowledgment, and it kept going. Its phone could not be lying to it, and was accurate in comparison to V2's own internal clock: highly robust and reliable to the millisecond. She must have remembered some things, but V2 couldn't be sure if she was—

"You're V2. That's how you know I'm not lying." Well, that was the damning evidence. V2 would keep letting her have her conversation with herself, as it was far too focused finishing the title and fishing its school supply bag out of its backpack. V2's plating resembled, most closely, a brick wall. "We've never spoken before this."

Actually, they had, but Mirage didn't remember. Not because it had happened in a previous loop, but because they had to stand next to each other for a group photo at the beginning of the year. Only V2 would probably care enough to remember that.

"Listen to me, you braindead—"

"Mirage." The teacher turned to look at her, and she let out a quiet beep of shock. "I don't want to have to move this one too." Wow, they'd gotten all the way to writing out examples on the board— the teacher's chalk was in the middle of the loop of the d in d/dx, to signify the derivative. 'Mirage,' its seatmate, stayed put next to her, seemingly trying to simulate a hard boot and whirring furiously. V2 stepped in to answer: that was the polite thing to do, even though what the teacher said wasn't exactly the same. Maybe that was a consequence of Mirage's presence. Maybe that was a consequence of V2 being on time to school and sitting next to her.

"She was just filling me in on what I missed, Miss. Sorry if we were being too loud."

Mirage turned to look at it as the teacher gave a satisfied hum. "That's oddly polite of you, Mirage."

She nodded. V2 could sense, just from the air (and elaborate networks analyzing her body language), that she was experiencing a colossal level of embarrassment that only subsided and sublimated into the more socially acceptable anger when the teacher turned her back.

"Comms. Now." She hissed.

V2 checked its communication lines as it wrote the practiced example. Some of the numbers were different than yesterday, but this wasn't a problem: V2 had been practicing integrals for half of a year, now. Mirage propped herself up and stared out of the window. This motion was much unlike the one she made yesterday, which seemed more stiff. Her entire head now seemed to teeter rather than perch on the very edge of her palm, and the imaginary string holding her entire being up seemed keen on trying to launch her over the desk as her shoulders remained held stiffly upwards. Any moment, it seemed she might look down at something on the sidewalk and run out of the classroom screaming.

A new channel appeared smack at the top of its requested channels. It was titled nothing but IMPORTANT CHAT!!!!! (5) from user_MIRAGE, a presumably customized name. How she got around the standardization of designations as usernames, V2 would never know. Maybe Mirage was her designation. Maybe she had friends in high places. Who knows? V2 opened the channel to find new messages waiting within:

user_MIRAGE: you have five seconds to explain to me what the FUCK uis going on

user_VMODEL_TWO: Language.

user_MIRAGE: i dont fucking CARE DO YOU HAVE TWO BRAINCELLS IN THAT TRAFFIC CONE HEAD OF YOURS TO RUB TOGETHER TO REALIZE THE KIND OF SITUATION WERE IN

user_VMODEL_TWO: I'd like to say I do. I guess not.

user_MIRAGE: i think you should apply at the dmv because you are easily the most unhelpful dickwad ive ever met

user_VMODEL_TWO: Speaking of that: is that any way to treat someone you just met?

user_VMODEL_TWO: I can be helpful. Just describe to me what you remember from yesterday.

If the accounts matched up, V2 could plan out its next course of action. The branches of decision trees sprawled across its consciousness, graphed nodes connecting in a gigantic circle. It began with waking up and ended with going to sleep. V2 had been working on the graph for only about 80 days, but there was always more to add— especially this deviation, this new and fascinating branch.

user_MIRAGE: you could stand to do with the bare minimum magic words at least

user_VMODEL_TWO: My apologies. Please.

user_MIRAGE: i woke up

user_VMODEL_TWO: Very helpful.

user_MIRAGE: let me finish you one-cheeked asshole are you SHORTING or something

user_MIRAGE: you sat next to me in this class because you came in late but you were wearing pants and now youre NOT wearing pants

That was the answer that V2 was looking for, because V2 could very clearly recall the faint sound of a shutter snapping around this time yesterday. It was to be expected— V2 wasn't a particularly attractive model, and unlike the more well-documented manufacturing groups like Streetcleaners, who valued cleanliness, or Drones, who valued elaborate flying maneuvers, the V-model line consisted of two and two only. Maybe 'paint color' or 'bulkiness' was something she found unattractive. V2's clothes were tailored to its bulkier figure, after all, and her figure was slimmer and more generally prized for its agility in ‘combat,’ if that even mattered anymore.

user_VMODEL_TWO: I didn't know my fashion sense was so important to you.

user_MIRAGE: you joke like you wear your clothes

user_MIRAGE: stiff and regulation

V2 wanted to roll its eye, but it continued. Its very role was not to indulge her.

user_VMODEL_TWO: Do you have any photographs from yesterday?

V2 felt a burst of hot air being expelled from Mirage's sides. That seemed to be plenty enough retaliation for her demonstrably awful attacks.

user_MIRAGE: when i checked they were all deleted

user_VMODEL_TWO: I was wearing pants in the last loop. It was good I didn't.

user_MIRAGE: WHY IS THAT WHAT URE WORRIED ABOUT???

user_VMODEL_TWO: Your behavior suggests you might have made fun of it. The clothes don't get dirty between loops, by the way.

This was true. The physical world reset.

user_MIRAGE: so i can just wear the same thing everyday

user_MIRAGE: and nobody would notice?

user_VMODEL_TWO: Is that what you're really worried about?

user_MIRAGE: i mean depends on how long this is gonna last

user_VMODEL_TWO: You might have to come up with some new outfit choices.

user_MIRAGE: says the one who probably shops at old navy

That was an American company, but it digressed— this, too, was part of the massive array of valuable insights it was collecting on her.

user_VMODEL_TWO: How long has September 9th been for you, Mirage?

user_MIRAGE: just today

user_VMODEL_TWO: Good.

The teacher continued rambling on about special cases, and V2 modified its decision tree to include the nodes ‘SIT NEXT TO MIRAGE’ and ‘CONVERSATION WITH MIRAGE [CALCULUS CD].’ When it came time for them to work independently, V2 checked the line between them again and found it dead. Strange. She had been rather keen on insulting them. It glanced over, and she seemed to look... disillusioned. Her lens had glazed over, and the top shutter of her optic fell. Her shoulders rose and fell with simulated, controlled breaths. The string holding her body up had seemingly gone limp as her being deflated.

user_VMODEL_TWO: Is everything alright?

user_MIRAGE: yeah just tackling years worth of existential dread crashing down on me

user_MIRAGE: NO it’s not alright

user_VMODEL_TWO: This is not my first time.

user_MIRAGE: yes because that just makes me feel SO much better

user_MIRAGE: go find someone else to white knight or whatever

user_VMODEL_TWO: I just thought something was off.

user_MIRAGE: the day just repeated over again after you made a wonderful fucking decision out of your genius brain and apparently playdoh processors

user_MIRAGE: but no the feelings of some stranger are more important than figuring out what the hell is happening

user_VMODEL_TWO: Consider that you are the only machine that even entertains the idea of the day repeating. No other machine remembers it.

user_MIRAGE: noone else remembers?

user_VMODEL_TWO: No.

user_MIRAGE: huh

user_MIRAGE: no wonder everyone was so calm this morning i kinda expected the workd to be in catastrophic mass failure or whatever like chicken and head cut off levels catastrophe

'Or whatever' seemed to be a strange way to put the total end of the world, but V2 didn't particularly mind her strange wording.

user_VMODEL_TWO: Yes. That is why it is up to us to figure something out.

user_VMODEL_TWO: Now that you and I have established a common objective, it is only natural that we should talk and offer help to each other. Cooperation is our best solution to ward off cognitive decline.

V2 did its best to hold back any sort of snarky comment about how Mirage’s reaction to their current debacle was to stare out of the window moodily.

user_VMODEL_TWO: I am trying to make my peace with you.

Chalk scraped against the chalkboard as the teacher continued. V2 turned another page to do the practice problems written on the board.

user_VMODEL_TWO: You should probably do the problems so she doesn't get suspicious.

user_MIRAGE: i never do them anyway you wont get bothered if thats what youre asking

user_MIRAGE: i dont think she tries anymore with me theres good reason for her not to

user_MIRAGE: besides theres no real practical reason to since you care about that

user_MIRAGE: im not going to learn i suck at math

user_MIRAGE: so im not just going to try now

user_VMODEL_TWO: Just trying to see if I could help.

user_MIRAGE: help with what???

user_VMODEL_TWO: Being inconspicuous, mostly.

user_MIRAGE: its not like anyone will remember this anyway not doing some math problems wont be the end of the world

user_VMODEL_TWO: It seems like you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that.

user_MIRAGE: honestly its not like theres anything else worth thinking about

user_MIRAGE: i mean i get that you think im not being helpful right now but you could at least try to do something instead of sitting with your shutters wide open dribbling spittle at the impression of the teachers ass thru her pencil skirt she wore to the 35+ club last night

user_VMODEL_TWO: That's not true.

user_VMODEL_TWO: I also have shotgun shells in my hand. Surely those are useful for something.

user_VMODEL_TWO: I also don't swing that way. Not my preference.

user_MIRAGE: maybe this is why i dont wanna talk to you about any solutions youre just gonna tell me stupid jokes that get us nowhere

user_MIRAGE: i wish honestly you wouldve had the foresight to not trap me with you but considering you probably force cra-z-art crayon wax into your fuel tank im not surprised you didnt think of that

user_VMODEL_TWO: Do you blame me for what's happening to us?

user_VMODEL_TWO: Also, if I had the choice, I'd probably pick Crayola crayons due to their composition. Not Cra-Z-Art.

user_MIRAGE: youre the one who sat next to me and thats what got me here

user_MIRAGE: seems like the only person whose fault it could be

user_VMODEL_TWO: Do you want to hear why that happened?

user_MIRAGE: no

user_VMODEL_TWO: I made a change everyday that I was in this loop. That is approximately 5-6 months. One of those changes was sitting next to you.

Mirage shifted in her chair next to it.

user_MIRAGE: why me specifically ??

user_VMODEL_TWO: Here's the thing: that wasn't the change I intended to make.

She visibly deflated.

user_VMODEL_TWO: I was late to school that day because I had breakfast sitting in a field and watching the sunrise. Your involvement was a completely arbitrary consequence. You are a completely arbitrary consequence.

user_VMODEL_TWO: You are not meant to be here, and I apologize for that.

Mirage's line went quiet. V2 realized that it was almost completely done with the page and slowed the rate at which it completed the integrals down as if to not look suspicious.

user_MIRAGE: yeah well whatever

user_MIRAGE: nothing else to be done about it

user_MIRAGE: apology accepted

user_VMODEL_TWO: Thank you for your consideration.

user_MIRAGE: you eat the crayola crayons i guess

user_VMODEL_TWO: I'm really, truly honored that you recognize that.

The bell rang, but Mirage didn't move. V2, on the other hand, got up out of the seat as the teacher was detailing on the board the homework assignment that was never due.

user_MIRAGE: youre saying im just

user_MIRAGE: another byproduct of whatever stupid cosmic phenomenon is affecting you specifically

V2 collected its things and stacked them in its bags. Gerunds was next, and V2 always found those fun.

user_VMODEL_TWO: No and yes.

user_VMODEL_TWO: You are your own person, Mirage. I can’t tell you what you are.

user_MIRAGE: ok gandalf

user_VMODEL_TWO: That’s probably incorrect, but I’m not going to try to correct it.

V2 did not look back as it walked out of the classroom, bag in hand, wings tucked underneath the straps of the bag. They tended to hit others in the hall, and some gawked at them. It was best to keep them in sight, but out of mind.

user_VMODEL_TWO: You probably have your own thoughts and feelings. You’re the combination of billions of random choices and decisions, and so am I. I never said you being an arbitrary consequence is a bad thing.

user_VMODEL_TWO: Now we own something that seems to have meaning: this shared bit of knowledge between us.

“Mirage?” V2 heard behind it— a light, synthesized voice. A series of harsh ticks and beeps followed, likely from a machine in the Swordsmachine ‘manufacturing group’ (mostly scrapheads known for their modification techniques and copycat punk philosophies, but they all looked the same so they tended to be grouped together).

user_MIRAGE: my friends are here

user_VMODEL_TWO: See you tomorrow, Mirage.

Mirage didn’t respond. The line went dead. V2 walked to English class.