Kindness is something I don't want or need.

And still we sing, and still we cry, our loved ones look at us from the sky.
Don't let your flame wane or your hope die, the future we were promised is nigh.

"What are you singing, Joanne?"

"Hm? Just an old song I remember hearing when I was a little kid."

"You must have a pretty good memory if you can recall those details from back then..."

"Ah, you know that's not true. I barely remember anything from back then."

"Then why this specifically? I doubt it's a very famous song if I haven't heard it in my life."

"Well, I don't know... No use asking me when I don't remember why I remember what I remember."

I sit up, shaking my head to get rid of the grass that might've gotten stuck on my hair. It's nice to be able to relax in places like these from time to time, isn’t it? The familiar scent of this freshly cut lawn sticks to my nose, but it’s not unpleasant.

"So? Did you need anything, Felix?"

"Not me, no, but the guys back in Lab Two need help with maintenance. Some crazy stuff is going on, so they asked me to come get you."

"Booo... Couldn't you help them yourself, Mr. Assistant? You interrupted my daily time of inner peace."

"I tried, but they kept saying I'm useless and that you'd get it fixed in an instant."

"Ah, well... I'll be there in a second, you can go have lunch yourself if you want."

"Thanks, Chief. If you need me for anything, I'll be in Lab One after I'm done eating."

I wave at him as he walks away into the restaurant for employees and visitors. He looks a bit out of it, I hope he's not forgotten his ID card again... The visitor prices are truly outrageous and management seems completely okay with that.

Choosing to leave him to his own devices, I wander in the general direction of Lab Two when a sudden vibration from my PDA startles me.

The components requested by R&D Dept. 1 Chief of Section Joanne Armand will arrive shortly at HQ. The ship is estimated to be landing in about five minutes.

Already in delivery...? That was quicker than usual for these sorts of shipments. Looking up at the sky through the gigantic glass dome that covered all of Helix Industries Headquarters, I see a cargo spaceship heading towards the nearest spaceport. This isn’t too big a planet, since it’s wholly intended to host some of Helix’s offices and labs, so it really would take just about five minutes to go from up there to the spaceport.

…

I’ll have someone go pick them up for me, helping with maintenance takes priority. Getting to Lab Two doesn’t take me long, and the automatic door hasn’t even finished opening before a few people with exasperated and despairing faces throw themselves at me.

“Hey, Chief! Please, you need to take a look at this!”

“The system keeps throwing us out like it’s nothing, all our privileges have been revoked completely!”

“I have no clue what’s going on, the android kicked me in the face when I tried to check for errors in the network logic board!”

Oh, god, what is this chaos...? My head already hurts before I’ve had any chance to open my mouth.

“QUIET! You’re making my head spin!”

… That seemed to do the trick.

“Alexis, you’re going to tell me everything that’s happened in an orderly and concise way. But before that, Pauline, your face is covered in blood, go to the infirmary ward right this second.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Yes, ma’am...”

Sigh. These people... I can’t believe they’ve all been in this project for more than a year at this point.

“So then. Alexis, if you could please inform me of the situation.”

“Okay, uh, we started this morning’s testing by simulating an instance of Program 109 in the central computer. We then hooked the Model Two to the simulation, and had her perform the usual checkup tests on a randomly generated set of enemies.”

“Please, you can go straight to the problem. I was here through all of that, I only left forty minutes ago for lunch break. Skip all the stuff I already know.”

“O-okay, my apologies... After you left, we just let the program run unmodified until Phase 25—but it suddenly started rejecting all orders from the central computer and revoking all of our access rights! And when Felix tried to come in and help us, he somehow managed to make Model Two take over control of his terminal and destroy it!”

“Destroy it? That sounds like a bit much. You’re sure it didn’t just crash it?”

“Chief, who do you take me for? It overwrote the temperature limit and loaded the processor up to max while way beyond safe clock speeds—it deliberately burnt down the chips inside!”

“Ah, that's problematic.”

“Problematic? THAT’s all you have to say?!”

Oh dear, she’s still rejecting every attempt at establishing communication… Well, in a sense it’s to be expected, I suppose.

“Chief, we need you to return it to normal values before it breaks even more of our equipment, or management will get extremely angry at us. We’re already struggling to keep the project afloat…”

“Yes, yes, leave it to me. Go have your lunch break, I’ll have her back in shape by the time you’re back.”

“Thanks, Chief, you’re our savior!”

“Ah, stop that, I’m just doing my job. What kind of chief would I be if I couldn’t take care of these things?”

All the team gets up from their seats and leaves, the air of panic almost fully dissipated by now. It’s not like I’ve fixed anything yet… but I appreciate the confidence.

I guess it’s time to get to it then…

“Don’t mind them, dear, they’re not trying to hurt you on purpose.”

… It’s not like she can hear me.

Someday we'll be able to talk again like we used to…

Oh, crap. I forgot to send someone over to pick up those parts. Those could've been useful for fixing the dead terminals… Ah, well.

For now, I should focus on fixing her.

I initialize my terminal and connect it to the access point in her network system—connection rejected. Are you really that scared of making contact...?

Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t have much choice in the matter.

I sit on the VR bench beside my terminal and initialize the full-dive program. DNA check complete—connection successful. Now, I’ve just got to reach out and press the Enter key before full-dive finishes initializing!

Just a bit more, Joanne, you have to stretch just a bit more-!

Helix Industries Full-Dive program started. Now attempting link to unit XTX9500-2 Polaris.

Damnit.

I legitimately don’t know if my keypress registered. I guess I’ll see soon enough.

Loading client-side physical security... loaded

Loading Lorentz space emulator... loaded.

Loading Artum-X Subsystem... loaded.

Loading complete.

You can now open your eyes.

The system messages stop buzzing in my ears and as I’m told, I open my eyes to find myself in a familiar location.

I can’t quite put my finger on where this is, but I’m almost certain I’ve seen this landscape before...

All around me, towering buildings stretch beyond my view, the streets around them bustling with people of all walks of life. Above my head is a clean and radiant sky and below my feet is a children’s park.

Freshly cut grass that I almost feel sorry to be stepping on; the peaceful birds all chirp around my ears.

It smells like cocoa milk.

And lastly, just behind me—a wonderfully out of place tiny wooden house. You’d assume it's for the kids to play on, it's certainly as well kept as the rest of the park, but this is in fact a privately owned house.

It belongs—it used to belong—to a small cozy family that voluntarily and expecting no reward took care of the whole park.

My family.

But this is clearly out of place here. This is an exact replica of my family’s comedically tiny house, but situated right in the middle of a foreign urban landscape. My memory isn’t that good, it really isn’t, but I'm pretty confident I would remember if the planet where I was born had any place this rich and advanced…

Even though this is a simulation, she shouldn’t have been given any data of that place, much less to this level of detail. It is simply a physical impossibility that such data would still exist.

“Good afternoon, Joanne. All training protocols ready for testing.”

Ah! That scared me, I didn’t expect her to appear from behind. She looks inside the simulation just like she does outside of it, her robotic parts and metallic touches contrasting against the remainders of what was once a beautiful and healthy human body. It defies every rule of nature, every traditional definition of aesthetic harmony. Still, there’s a beauty in the mix that I never thought possible, and I quite admire her look.

“Hello, Aris. I’m sorry but I’m not here for training today, that’ll have to wait for another day. I just wanted to come and see you for a bit.”

“The error logs have detected malfunctions in previous attempts at establishing connections to terminals 015, 008, 103 and 072. Do you want me to attempt to restore all settings to their previous values?”

I struggle to respond. An awkward silence—one I’ve grown too accustomed to.

“Won’t you just talk to me a bit normally, Aris? Is every interaction you have with me going to always be like this?”

“…”

“You can’t fool me, I know you’re still there… Please, Aris…”

“It would be preferable if you addressed me by my current registered codename. I would advise against using my previous name or other nicknames for conveniency and ease of understanding.”

“Polaris. Is there anything you need? Anything I can do for you?”

“Nothing to request. Please do limit your interactions with me while outside any of the test modes.”

“Ah, go fuck yourself! You won’t even talk to me properly, you keep messing up all of our research, you won’t allow me to call you by your name, and on top of THAT you come at me with that bullshit?!”

I’ve had just about enough of this. She really is just a machine now, she couldn’t care less about anything else in the world other than her preprogrammed purpose. And she even keeps giving us all kinds of trouble with that, all of the time. Please, someone give me patience, I barely know what to do anymore…

“I sincerely apologize for all the inconveniences caused to you and your team, Joanne. I will do my very best to prevent them from happening again.”

“That’s what you say every single time… Look, if you can’t make the other guys’ lives easier, at least do me a favor and stop acting so much like one of those autonomous construction worker mechs. I keep treating you with all the kindness I can, and yet I only seem to receive an ice-cold shoulder in return…”

“Kindness is something I don’t want or need. My current human interaction module has only been programmed to engage in conversation regarding my development and operative functions.”

“… Fine. If that’s how you want it to be.”

“I do.”

“In that case, clean all temp files in your storage drive and undo all changes made to terminal access permissions in the last twelve hours. Tomorrow we will start combat testing against Lab Four’s new prototype battle android.”

At least if she can beat that toy of theirs in a simulated environment, I might get an extra pay fat enough to be worth all this trouble. I input a command to the simulation terminal, booting myself out of the current session.

Helix Industries Full-dive Program has successfully closed all processes. You can now safely remove your headset.

…

Good night, Aris. See you tomorrow.