Just to share, as I’m quite proud of this little bit, and NaNoWriMo is over in four minutes.
Late at night, two flatmates – indeed, two sweethearts – were caught up in their work, in a small, poorly lit room tucked away in the corner of their flat.
The young woman sat not at a desk, but at a spare card table with wobbly legs, somewhat levelled by a thick tome of programming how-to, upon which sat the monitor and keyboard of a computer console. Shoved against the wall was the console itself, which was in turn connected to a cheap, thick external hard drive. Her hair was pulled back messily, and she continued on pure caffeine.
The young man was crouched in the corner, a space where the walls and floor were coated in crude barriers of aluminium foil. He wore thick gloves and bent, with all his might, equally thick copper wires. Sparks flew when he welded them all to a well crafted base. His clothing was dirty and rumpled, and he was driven by a sort of mad scientist’s glee.
This is how Gaius, an unregistered companionship automaton, was born. He could not react to the room’s lonely, dark atmosphere, or the caring, crazy work that brought him into existence. He couldn’t feel fear or comfort; only process the reactions that might fit the emotions, and what emotions might fit the circumstances.
In much the same way, Gaius didn’t question, hesitate, or cry when he died, in a lonely, dark place, for caring, crazy people.
