The Last Supper

"you? plan something?"

V2 wanted to scoff. but, unlike mirage, its voice synthesizer was not as advanced as to actually make vocalizations such as scoffing or sighing or laughing. not to worry— it was quite adaptable either way. so, it let out a sarcastic, vaguely impressed-sounding whine.

mirage let her back hit the park bench as she stared upwards towards the foliage. V2's ambient light sensors told it better than its internal clock that it was reaching light levels typical of midday january in this pseudo-maybe-quasi-not-quite-like-kind-of japan.

"some of the trees we used to walk by are gonna blossom soon." mirage spoke. "have you seen them?"

"i believe we were talking about your invitation to dinner." V2 remarked, tilting its head at her. it, too, now mirrored mirage's pose, but with none of her lax, lazy grace. it sat back, letting its back hit the oaken bench, stabilizing its body and controlling the impact with its lone arm. the new one was still in progress, made with parts mirage would salvage from the dumpsters of the old tech shop on her way back from various lectures. in spite of every single effort that mirage took to hide and generally obfuscate any fact or bit of knowledge or evidence or truth or bit and bauble of reason V2 might scrounge up to create a wickedly logical conclusion, V2 knew that its ‘birthday’ gift was a can of red paint to decorate it with, in her hopes that it’d attach to the new arm and consider it part of its own.

its birthday was coming up soon, wasn't it? it was february already. god knows V2 could recite every millisecond of the memory of mirage trying to ask it what its birthday was. eventually, after hours of arguing, they’d just decided on february 2nd— 2’s day. in her words, ‘V2’s day.’ extremely unfunny and dry, but to mirage, it was the pinnacle of comedy, so it supposed it could tolerate her wordplay. it tolerated most of it, after all.

"yeah, i know. i was saying you could pick up flowers on your way, stupid. are you serious? do you not expect me to do something? it's custom to, like, invite someone's neighbors over." it got the aching, nagging feeling that it wasn't just that. there had to be something else behind it. mirage almost never interacted with anyone she didn't have a previous reason to, unless they barged into her way one day on the way to school, or fell into her driveway. if it pressed a little more, it might reveal the reason to her.

"who am i meeting?" it looked over. her optic was still tilted upwards towards the sun. not in any sort of state of mind to be scolded for calling it stupid, but whatever. V2 brushed that aside.

she thought about her words carefully. or, appeared to. maybe she was just enjoying basking in the sun.

[ OBJECTIVE: GET MIRAGE IN THE SUN FOR >= 1 HOUR DAILY ] was marked off, for now. they'd had a consistent schedule— mirage would come home after school, settle in for an hour, then ping V2 to come over to her home. after that, what happened was usually variable. eventually, they'd take some sort of walk— either to run errands, since mirage tended to put those off, or just for the sake of exploring the suburban purgatory, wandering into any random gas station or corner store to buy food or drink they couldn't eat and magazines they wouldn't read. she only started suggesting walks because she knew V2 grew restless when it didn't have any.

that was a byproduct of impressive neural networks built to identify patterns in her behavior, passing that data onto probabilistic language models that would suggest solutions and negotiate terms without aggression or much conflict. then again, it was impressive just how much the same solution could apply to one problem— it didn't need to be superior to know that defusing situation peacefully' could also be 'achieve objective' could also be 'hostage situation' could also be 'threat detection.' therefore, if V2 made her think that the walk was mirage's idea, she would be more inclined to help it than help herself.

simple. it took pride in watching mirage stare at the sun that had been in the same spot for hours, sunbeams dappling her plating. mirage seemed to sometimes enjoy seeing it explore and walk around, if not to liven up the world she'd long since given up on changing. she would look after it as it waded into long grasses and into meadows, memorizing the delicate platefeel of wildflowers scraping against its armored plating. sometimes, she’d take to trying to paint it, but would never show V2 the results of such endeavors.

she simulated a sigh. "so, you know how you came back here?”

V2 nodded. although she couldn't see it, it knew she recognized the sound of the powerful hydraulics forcing its neck to move, steel joints yielding to its desire to approve of her— and would know the very motion even if it taped off her lens and destroyed her mikes. though, she kept using that damned odd phrase— ‘came back.’ like it left, or like it was there before. it never knew why she did that.

"there's two others... dropped in hours before and hours after you came back." she looked down from the sun, gesturing to V2 beside her. she used two index fingers to demarcate events in time, knowing V2 would be drawing helpful little lines in its HUD to figure out whatever her vague outlines of a timeline meant. "i think after V1 finished gluttony, it went back and killed the prime soul on that layer, then killed you, then finished act two, then killed the prime soul on that layer."

it squinted. mirage made eye contact. the two held each other's gaze all too tightly.

"you have no clue what that means, do you."

the birds chirped in the meantime. it didn’t know if mirage, as this realm’s artificial god, had willed this into existence, since no birds certainly chirped before, or what. maybe she just wanted to do something with the complete, perfect abyss of silence between them.

"i have... vague understanding. admittedly i hadn't looked into the prime sanctums.”

it was only half-certain she remembered its terse reports on its activities in the underworld— it wouldn't blame her. it found itself diving for and recycling the same language over and over again in attempts to say 'found fuel. progressed in hell. performed maintenance.' in multiple different ways. it wouldn't be unusual for her to have reasoned nothing much went on in V2's head during that time besides tracking down V1 and ripping the whiplash right from its socket. in moments where they sat in idyllic silence— perhaps on her bed or out on the couch while 'gilmore girls' droned on in the background— she'd ask if V2 had any stories to share. in moments such as this, she knew the answer well enough to know it was usually 'no.' deciphering why she asked was beneath far more important uses for its processing units, as its scheduler noted. secretly, it already knew that hearing V2 talk about its routine and how it devised an optimal schedule for catching up to V1 was reassuring. secretly, it already knew she wanted it to self-disclose to help it compensate for how vulnerable she had been when it first arrived; it wasn't either of their faults that V2 was not particularly interesting in casual conversation. it was working on that.

the important thing was that hearing V2 discuss its problem-solving strategies was a method for equipping mirage to eventually tackle some of the larger challenges she’d been putting off, like facing her still-massive helplessness. though she had been working through it with a much-needed support system, there were things that V2 could not guide her through. like virgil left at the gates of paradise, he yearned after beatrice and her warm embrace of the lone dante. V2 wondered if virgil ever felt as if he was an insufficient guide— was this part of his torment in limbo? it mused so. limbo punished those virtuous pagans, depriving them eternally of the grace and blessings of heaven despite their moral goodness. all of virgil’s delivery and rational wisdom paled in comparison to divine love. then V2 got confused on what the metaphor it was trying to make was about, and quickly cut that train of thought out of its queue, as if not to take up vital processing power that could be used for staring into her optic.

the point was that they had an eternity to do this whole ‘learning to live with life itself’ thing. V2 had an eternity to be a rock for mirage to sit by, and mirage had an eternity to come and find it. so, V2 supposed it could sit through another episode of ‘gilmore girls.’

"bummer. i'll have to tell you what i found later, then." she waved it off. V2 relished in the time that they still had together. thinking about the fact that it had gone from an imminent demise at the hands of its predecessor to being breadcrumbed by a girl (who had taken one too many gap years) with what now sounded like gossip made its fans tick a few revolutions faster in mere shock. “our guests are the king of lust and the king of greed.”

two references popped up, and the associated data spelled out disaster. after a couple of mental checks, V2 let out a soft hum.

“... king minos, king sisyphus.”

“yeah.”

“... coming over for dinner.”

“mhm.”

the birds stopped chirping, and then resumed chirping again. it was starting to irritate V2 that it could not identify any of the birds— instead, it seemed like what was playing was a guess at what birds chirping usually sounded like, not the real thing. all things pointed to mirage being the culprit.

really, the world seemed to operate as usual. she could control smaller things, like the birds chirping or the place she was in, but anything meant to make herself believe she was a part of normal society was a facade. taxes worked according to reports she had seemed to have skimmed, and stocks either went ‘up’ or ‘down,’ depending on if it was a weekend or a weekday. despite her clear emotional maturity since V2 had arrived, it was clear knowledge on the real world was still lacking. if anyone else was any different, or if anyone else had any idea what was going on, in V2’s training data, it never showed. bureaucratic red tape always obscured the true nature of whatever seemed to be going on— if the people were too busy doing any sort of paperwork, they would never engage in war, because the paperwork necessary would simply never allow it. people were motivated by simple things, and the world worked how they saw it— if good things happened, god willed it, or it was because they manifested, or it was because that was simply the cycle of luck.

it supposed this interpretation of whatever the ‘real world’ happened to be; whatever was controlling the world beyond her senses, whatever delivered her a couple dollars in her tax return every year was… sufficient. accurate, even. it didn’t really matter what happened— just as it didn’t matter how much money mirage got back in the mail, just as the real names for the news agencies and ‘tax people’ and the police besides acronyms didn’t really matter. mirage had to learn to live with a system that didn’t really make sense and was utterly neutral to the consequences of her existence, positive or negative. alone, the system may seem uncaring. together, a couple dollars wasn’t just a courtesy or a laughing reminder of the world’s indifferent cruelty— it was a reminder that goodness was to be found everywhere, that she benefited.

“... right.” it tilted its head away. mirage let out a raucous laugh.

“you? intimidated? miss—”

“—no.” it stopped her before she could say the very thing it knew she was going to say. something about confronting its inferior at the top of a pyramid. “i’m trying to recall.” showing any weakness might influence her decision. despite mirage being in control of everything that had happened here (nevermind her contradictory position of believing much to be meaningless. it was meaningful because she was experiencing it.) it still enjoyed playing at the role of her lackey— a guard with a charge, and nothing to protect her from. “i remember reading about king sisyphus." it supposed that sisyphus might find its situation and response amusing.

"sounds like it's up your alley." mirage clicked.

"hm?"

"boring... military history stuff. logbooks. recordkeeping. you're good with the details." she waved a hand away. “you used to be great at maths. tried to explain all that vector calculus stuff to me.”

though it wanted to be confused at the last part, it figured it should respond as it always did, and ignore it. addressing it and reminding her that they had only known each other for a little while seemed to annoy her. maybe the world just worked differently here. this wouldn’t be the first time V2 had to take the place of something that came before it. thus, V2 lowered the top shutter of its optic in irritation. "i can't tell when you're insulting me."

"are you calling me unfair?"

"yes."

"you said i couldn't plan anything earlier."

"every year that i have been here, february 2nd has fallen on a tuesday just because you want it to.” it spat out in characteristic spite. it had been waiting to say that since it had to use one arm to balance. “you are extremely partial.”

“to you? yeah, sure i am. what’s the big deal?” she crossed her arms. “sometimes i am unfair. tough fucking luck. you like it when your birthday falls on a tuesday.”

it supposed this is why they got so many accusations of being a damned couple. mirage had gotten so attached to her companion that she’d told it that in a slice of life, mirage would be the careless, reckless protagonist, and V2 would be the realistic, cautious sidekick. god knows they’d get ‘shipped’ to high heavens. (a term V2 learned recently while watching ‘gilmore girls.’ it seemed that that show was incredibly educational for any sort of phenomena mirage usually tended to display in her charade.)

“if i told you i only liked it because you laughed at it once and i found it funny, would it still fall on a tuesday?” V2 squinted.

mirage threw open her arms in exasperation. “you don’t like it?!”

“i said i liked it because it was funny.” V2 put a single finger up in conflicting interest. “not that i didn’t like it.”

“you’re just going to have to see if it falls on a tuesday this year.” she huffed, maxi skirt blowing as air was forcefully pushed out of her cooling vents. no wonder she was so hot all of the time— the thick woolen fabric of her cardigan kept too much heat in, trapped it against her more fragile plating. she was always taking her jackets off around it to reveal tighter clothing, and no matter what recommendations it made to keep her more comfortable, she would huff and dismiss it before it could even try to act on these recommendations.

“we were talking about minos and sisyphus, by the way.” V2 reset its expression as it reminded mirage of the dire subject at hand, the most important thing as a test of familiarity with social norms— dinner parties, the dreaded examinations.

"right— minos expressed curiosity as to how sisyphus was doing. actually, once he learned i existed, he kind of just showed up at my door with a bunch of gifts and started lamenting about the whole ordeal, how he 'wasn't able to save his children,' and all. it kind of turned into, like, some hours-long kind of thing. he's a nice guy, though. kind of. just needs to work on the whole 'self-disclosure' thing." that answered its question from earlier. it got some amusement thinking about mirage sitting there, begrudgingly listening to the guy from the portrait bemoan his lost lover and lost kingdom. "sisyphus, uh... entertained the idea."

"explain."

"okay, so more like he was entertained by the idea." mirage shifted so she was no longer looking directly into the sun and was instead directly facing V2. "i proposed it to him. he was sure once he heard the name, i think, because he asked me to give him a basic rundown. and once i did, he laughed and said he wants to see the look on minos' face, and no wonder he's here as well, and all that."

its body language would signal interest in the conversation if they were facing each other, and judging by the open nature of mirage's gestures, she was incredibly invested in gossiping like she was still in high school, even though she was, in her words, ‘a grown ass woman who paid bills and did taxes.’ (again, every year, she got a meager tax return, which V2 thought was hilarious, largely because it knew the world operated according to mirage’s perceptions of it. meaning she believed herself fortunate, but only a little. V2 always wondered why.)

V2 jotted down [ OBJECTIVE: ENTERTAIN MIRAGE ] in its visual field and shifted accordingly towards her. "they knew each other?" turning towards her and mimicking her body language would imitate investment, and at this point, V2 was very much interesting in fulfilling its itemized list of goals.

"apparently they were great friends or something before some gigantic argument they had." as her capacity for vocalization was much more nuanced than the shabby V2, she clicked a tongue that didn’t exist. it seemed she doubted their friendship, and it grew curious as to why.

V2 reviewed the observations it’d stored from various logs stored in the temples and pyramids of greed. several insurrectionists had noted that speeches given by sisyphus warned against peaceful obligations, spoke of the harshness of regimes and their tendencies to stomp all over those pacifists that would not use force, all while toting their ideals as righteous and just to maintain order... for a while, V2 had largely assumed that sisyphus had loathed minos and was subtly shading him while motivating his soldiers. "... in the context of the data i have on the situation, it would've been more like allies, and only for the sake of numbers against heaven.”

"i don't know, the way minos was talking about it was like he had some huge boy-crush on him. seriously."

"it was likely a necessity to establish friendly relations and camaraderie—" yes, that was likely true. the argument or conflict that mirage had reasoned occurred might have been their ideological differences and approaches to the order of society, which was resolved by other documents V2 was sure it could pull and quote right out of its database. maybe mirage's tendency to badmouth was rubbing off on it. it was sitting here, piecing together some conflict it knew absolutely nothing about. but collecting this information was necessary to avoid aggression by being respectful towards their past and easing them into confronting their previous conflicts. V2 wanted to achieve the objective of entertaining mirage, and had acquired a method to achieve it by, but was unsure that the methods by which to accomplish the objective were completely sound by its staunch moral positions. it was much too busy contemplating this moral mishap to realize mirage had completely cut it off.

"—V, does being inspired by 'the beauty and radiance of his soul in the face of all that is hopeless' sound even remotely diplomatic to you?"

V2 looked off in the distance. the playground was difficult to make out now, and further details faded into a blur of colors and shadows only graced barely by the sun. she was starting to focus less on the playground, and more on the situation she’d now gotten them both in.

no. it was succumbing to mirage's terrible tendencies. this was truly the worst day of its entire life. becoming a gossip.

"... like i said. more friendly." it admitted defeat. mirage let out a chirp of joy.

it checked [ OBJECTIVE: ENTERTAIN MIRAGE ] off. winning against it gave her the ability to face problems on her own. that was much more important than any of its outstanding ego problems. somehow, observing her successes was infinitely more gratifying than achieving its empty goals. it had theorized that this was due to prioritizing and being receptive to the emotional expressions of those it shepherded. it spent most of its day looking after her needs and doting on her— whether that was listening to her gossip or helping her fix or maintain long neglected components. it was made to ensure her safety, success, and wellbeing. internally, it knew that true peace would never be attained. if true peace was achieved, it wouldn’t have a job, and its mere existence would be a problem, and the only sound method to use would be self-elimination. so helping mirage was not exactly against its existence, nor was maintaining her health in the face of no present threat.

there was no threat until mirage created one or allowed one. so was she trying to—

"i mean, come on! he practically sat there and lamented the story of his divorce! how he's had time to think about all of it, and said he wishes to tell him how right he was, but thinks he'd get laughed out of town." mirage's awful storytelling aside, V2 began forming a plan. "which, c'mon, i didn't ask how you two got divorced, i asked what you thought of him. and not to sit at my fucking dinner table for four hours, i have homework to do!—" she scoffed.

"be nice." V2 beeped at her. it went over the vague schematics of a plan it had drawn up while mirage was talking. there was obviously going to be some conflict or confrontation— there was no way around that. the more it knew, the more it could prepare and mull over a possible strategy for approaching the dinner. "does he know sisyphus is gonna be at the dinner?"

"i haven't, uh... really thought that far ahead yet. just that maybe making them aware the other exists would be nice."

"right. less lonely.”

“yeah.” she stared at the trees. “it gets kinda lonely out here. i know that.”

mirage put her head on its shoulder. it dutifully obliged to its newfound role of staying absolutely, completely still so that she could stay in peace for a little while longer. her cardigan and button-down rumpled and wrinkled against its unforgiving plating; but how V2 wanted it to give to her every whim and her every will. it direly wished that it understood her, that it could know what secrets she was hiding within— that it could know why she looked at it so, and with what warmth of the sun behind her, as it frolicked through open fields and stood as still as the world around them in her eyes. it had an eternity, and this was the fact it reminded itself of frequently when it found its visual field becoming full of nothing but her image, reaching towards that blissful hope that seemed to be on the horizon but forever out of reach. every hour she referred to someone like it, that looked just like it, that was not quite it, that did things that it knew it would also do and find quite some joy in… it felt something like what it imagined her to be feeling as she looked towards it, yearning for some distant, forgotten, or not yet realized hope. the past was behind them, and the future was not quite here yet, if not sooner into the evening. but both of them would have to be met soon as the present. for now, their present was still— the trees rustled with nonexistent wind, though a light breeze rustled V2’s tight bundle of cables that connected its motor-sensory complex to its arm.

“we gotta figure out how to get you into a suit or—”

“i am not wearing clothes.” it reminded her. she let out a sigh, accompanied by thoughtful clicks.

"we should do karaoke night. you're a great singer."

V2 wanted to remind mirage it couldn't sing. then, it was struck with the wonderful epiphany that that was the point. with as much data that was pumped right into it, carefully weighted and analyzed and reinforced, and all of the supervision and time that had gone into fine-tuning, editing, refining, and polishing V2's social interaction protocols, it still was a prototype, and there were some errors (like sarcasm) that slipped through the cracks.

"is he a good singer?"

"you know that one song?" mirage snapped her fingers together in thought, as if this would magically summon the song title. "'last christmas.' by wham."

"yes."

"he'd like it. you know, all sad. and kinda gay.”

“mirage.” it scolded.

a loud snicker erupted into the looming day above them.