kore_logs | Minus one robot.

Entry tags:

Minus one robot.

Who: Daneel and Lydia
What: holy crap Daneel has a pulse
Where: Their house, in the morning.
When: Day 58.

Slouched against the wall in his attic, Daneel wakes, and that is really the first sign that something is wrong.

There's a stiffness to his body that puzzles him, and a sluggishness to his thoughts that keeps him from questioning it yet. Everything feels... strange. The floor under his fingers is as it always was, hard and smooth and slightly cool to the touch, with small imperfections in the grain of the wood, but he feels strangely more aware of it than he usually is. There's an intensity to everything he can't explain. There's a hollowness in his abdomen that is entirely unfamiliar too, and he doesn't know how to interpret this either.

As he straightens up, trying to catalogue his state of mind and work out why he was unconscious, he's aware of a stiffness and a discomfort in his wrist; he had put his weight upon that hand while he was out. That shouldn't matter, but damage can't be ruled out. Ignoring, for the moment, everything else that feels so peculiarly wrong, he rolls up his sleeve and digs his fingers into the skin of his wrist, intending to open the invisible seam he knows is there and inspect the bare joint.

Instead, nothing. There is no seam. Daneel's fingers can find nothing, and this is wrong. A peculiar feeling comes over him, a vague discomfort, a... light-headedness? He doesn't know the proper term. Suddenly it seems very difficult to breathe. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest.

And that's more wrong than anything.

He must be mistaken. Daneel puts two fingers to his throat, and impossibly, feels there a pulse. He shouldn't have a pulse. He doesn't have a heart.

“Lydia!” Daneel is two hundred years old, and he can count the number of times he's had to raise his voice on one hand, but he's yelling now as he scrambles down the attic ladder, frightened in a way that's entirely new and entirely baffling to him. “Lydia!”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Lydia has never once heard Daneel use that tone of voice in all the weeks she's known him. Months now, actually. It has her on edge after everything that happened with Kobra and she has her bedroom door opened almost instantly.

She steps into the hall, wide-eyed and radiating concern. "Dan, what's wrong?" What could possibly be so wrong that it has Daneel panicked? "What happened?

"Something is wrong with me." Daneel is breathing hard, almost hyperventilating as a new human body reacts in an instinctual way to his fear. Fear -- he knows it in an intellectual sense, but never has he felt it. "I have a pulse. I should not have a pulse. That was not considered necessary for the illusion of humanity. I... I cannot breathe."

It's an entirely nonsensical statement for him to make. He doesn't need to breathe. He only needs air for speech, but right now he has the sensation of needing air and being unable to get enough of it.

"Something has gone very wrong with my systems and I do not know what it could be. Lydia, I require help."

What the hell is going on. A pulse? Breathing? Not just breathing, this is a borderline panic attack. Lydia frowns and takes his arm, directing him to the kitchen and pulling out a chair so he can sit. "You need to calm down so we can figure this out."

Once he's seated, she grabs hold of his wrist, turning it over to feel the very real pulse he mentioned. He feels warm. He looks flushed. This is no illusion of humanity. This appears to be the real deal.

She locks her eyes with his to help him focus, and speaks with a calm, but firm tone, "I need you breathe in as deep as you can. Don't stop until you fill your entire chest, and then exhale."

It's not the strangest thing that's happened in this place. She wouldn't put it past them to find some way to do this with all the other technology they seem to possess. The fact that they can doesn't bother her as much as the fact that she can't understand how or why.

"I'm going to get you a glass of water. Keep breathing deep."

This is the first time Daneel's ever sat and ever seen it as anything other than a change in position; there's an actual relief to not having to stand up any longer. Water is a ridiculous idea, it can't possibly do him any good. He can swallow it but he'll only have to empty it out later.

Sill, he obeys, used to a long lifetime of obedience even if the mental pathways that lead him to it are slightly difference now. He takes in a deep, full breath of air, and he feels it in a way he never has before, a physical gratitude for oxygen. When he exhales... well, he feels calmer, somehow. Calm is good, calm is familiar, and he clings to that as well as he can.

"I cannot feel your mind, Lydia." It's almost an afterthought, one more perplexing thing among so many.

She doesn't move away from him until he starts to calm down. There's a hint of a smile when he takes that breath before she turns to grab a glass from the cupboard and fill it from the sink.

"Not surprising." That he can't feel her mind. "That's not usually something humans can do." It's not meant to be a dig at him, more a subtle explanation said casually to not upset him more than he already is.

She sets the glass of water down in front of him and pulls another chair over to sit close, watching his face. "My mind isn't doing anything interesting right now, anyway. It's just worrying about you."

"But I am not human," Daneel insists. "It is not possible for me to be human."

He knows what she's saying, though, and the facts seem overwhelming. He has a pulse, he's breathing, he's coming through the other side of a fear and a panic that is entirely new to him. Perhaps if he cut his finger, he would bleed. For now, he just stares at the glass of water. It seems strangely alluring, but he's not entirely sure if he should try drinking it.

And how can he possibly explain why it's wrong, wrong that Lydia is worried for him? He's a robot. Part of his purpose is protect humans. If he's human, then what does he do now?

"A hypothesis must be tested." He's nearly desperate. "How can we be certain that this has happened?"

"Inter-dimensional time-travelling robots from the future aren't possible either, but here you are. A lot of impossible things happen here, Dan." A few impossible things happen back home, too. She's familiar with the impossible.

"Aside from cutting you open, we can't be. We don't need certain, we just need you to be okay." But a small test might be reassuring. Lydia sighs and removes one of her earrings, setting the backing down on the table and holding the pointed end up. She holds her hand out, palm up, so Daneel can give her his hand. "May I?"

He could have protested that he isn't impossible, only that he's here at all, but again, she has a point. Daneel lays his hand in hers, palm up. He understands, intellectually, what she intends to do, but it's... confusing. He is letting her intentionally harm him -- for a greater cause, for understanding -- but even that little bit should cause some sort of feedback with the Three Laws. There isn't. There are no Laws. He is bound by nothing except whatever governs the behaviour of human beings, if such a thing can be said to exist.

And that is terrifying.

"Please," he says.

She nods, swiping her thumb across the palm of his hand in what's meant to be a reassuring gesture. She then shifts her grip on his hand and uses the earring to prick the pad of his index finger. It doesn't have to be much. It's just like testing blood sugar without the meter or a proper lancing kit.

All they need to see is a drop of blood.

He waits for it without flinching, if only because he doesn't know any better. At the prick of the earring, however, he gives a startled, wordless yelp and pulls away, entirely a reflex. Pain. It's such a very small amount of pain, but it's almost overwhelming in its novelty. It's strange and awful and intense.

Daneel clutches his hand to himself for a moment, staring at Lydia before he manages to look down at his fingertip. There is, indeed, a tiny drop of blood -- his blood.

There is a very old story where he comes from, a legend, very nearly a fairy tale, about a robot who desired to be human and slowly made himself humaniform, eventually going so far as to give himself blood and accept mortality, to die as an old man. Whether the robot Andrew Martin ever existed is something Daneel can't answer, but he's never desired humanity for himself. He doesn't know how to deal with this now.

"I was made by humans," he says, his voice very soft. "I was assembled and programmed with the intention that I would be a new type of robot, more easily accepted, to serve and aid humanity. I have always attempted to do that. It is not possible that I am human now. Robots do not become human. We are different, separate."

Just as she thought. She sets the earring on the table, stretching to reach a tea towel from the counter, but not letting go of his hand. Lydia holds the tea towel over his finger, applying gentle pressure.

"Well maybe someone up there decided to play the role of the blue fairy from Pinocchio. I don't know. Obviously it is possible, because it happened. I don't know how, but it did. You are going to have to be so careful, Dan." Because if anything ever happened to him, she's not sure what she'd do. "Don't mention this to anyone you don't trust. Don't-- you have to let me know where you are at all times. Are you hungry? ... Do you even know what that feels like?"

Don't panic, Lydia. You have to hold this together. Panic spreads like wildfire and that is the last thing he needs right now.

"I will be careful, Lydia. I promise you that." Of course he has to be careful. He doesn't know his own limits any longer, what he can and cannot do on his own. Humans are... fragile, and should be protected. The Laws he... apparently no longer has dictate that he has to protect himself.

This is confusing, to say the least.

"There is a," Daneel struggles for words, trying to explain something he's never experienced before, "a sensation, a hollowness, in my abdomen. It was there when I awoke. Is that likely to be hunger?"

There is no way Lydia would be as calm as she is if weirder stuff hadn't already happened back home or for the past few months. Actually, this is a pretty mild situation as far as disasters go. They just-- ... they have to take it slow.

She smiles slowly, nodding. "Sounds like it." When she pulls the tea towel away, she lifts his hand to her mouth to kiss it better. "I'll make us something."

He's familiar with the custom of 'kissing better,' though mostly by reputation rather than personal experience. It had always seemed completely illogical to him; a gesture of affection, no matter how well-meant, could not soothe pain and heal a wound. It seemed to help now, though, and that... that involved some questioning. Placebo could be powerful, perhaps, and humans were social creatures -- whatever Solarians might choose to believe.

What is eating even like? He knows how to chew and swallowa, at least, but beyond that... he's a bit lost. Maybe he should start with the water in front of him.

"Thank you, Lydia." He wraps his un-poked hand around the glass, feels it cool to the touch in an interesting way. "Am I correct in my understanding that digestion is entirely unconscious?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Minus one robot.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject