Systems online.

The words rang out in her ears, bouncing back and forth between in the space between them, echoing in the nothingness that was her current state of existence. It was a blank slate, where not even darkness resided, anchored only to those two words.

Processing power at ten-percent and rising.

Slowly, her reality began to expand. It started with her head; just the mere sensation that she even possessed a head was a large leap forward in terms of cognitive awareness for her. Her body presented itself to her in segments. Torso, upper limbs, lower limbs. Though she was unable to move them, she could feel them. And that was enough for her.

Processing power at fifty-percent and rising.

She wondered whose voice she was hearing. It was vaguely familiar, associated with some kind of sweet emotion that she was unable to put her finger on. Regardless, she enjoyed its high, almost childlike tonalities. They were comforting.

Processing power at seventy-five percent. Adjusting visual capacities.

There it was. She could open her eyelids. She’d forgotten how amazing of a feeling it was. It came with the capacity to move her entire head, though she didn’t care much for anything but her regained ability to see.

Her eyes sprung open unnaturally fast, chocolate brown irises greeting the world around her. She was in a large metal cylinder, one that was just slightly larger than her own dimensions. The interior of the housing sported many blinking lights and buttons, along with several appendage-like, rubber-coated wires that connected to every inch of her body. The area smelled of sterility with a slight hint of ozone. She her lips merely for the sake of doing so. Just to know she could.

“Good morning, Joohyun. How are you feeling today?”

The voice came externally now, no longer echoing through her brain but dancing forth from a speaker somewhere above her, bouncing off her eardrums and registering as actual sound that she was perceiving.

Joohyun knew she’d be unable to move the rest of her body until all of the wires were gone, but she set her lips into a small grin and tilted her neck up a few degrees, her eyes settling on the tiny speck of red adjacent to the speakers.

“Hi, Seungwan. I feel good. Thank you for waking me.”

Joohyun loved the sound of her own voice. It was like a constant reminder that she was able to speak.

“You’re welcome. I’ll have you out in a little while, okay? Just making sure everything’s functioning properly.”

“Okay.”

Joohyun waited patiently. Not that she had a choice. In the meantime, she hummed to herself. She wasn’t exactly sure how she knew the tune that she produced, but she hummed it anyway. Mostly because it was Seungwan’s favorite song.

As expected, Seungwan hummed back over the intercom, melding their hums into a full, complex tune. Joohyun felt her own smile widening as she lost herself in the music, and she hoped that Seungwan was smiling as well.

The wires retracted from Joohyun’s body, snaking back into the wall of the cylinder, their ports sealing themselves as they disappeared from view. She felt each one as it detached from her, as well as the unpleasant crawling sensation of her skin sliding over to cover the openings they left. Joohyun shut her eyes for this part. She hated seeing those holes.

“I’m sorry, Joohyun,” Seungwan said soothingly, “It’s almost over.”

There was a long hiss as the process ceased, the curved metal before her parting perfectly down the middle as the final wire detached from her. Joohyun wiggled her toes, and shook her arms out. She could move.

“Processing power at one-hundred percent.”

Joohyun and Seungwan spoke the words in tandem, perfectly in sync, just like their humming.

Joohyun took her first step out of her casing, bare feet padding lightly across the smooth metal platform that lay beyond the pod. The surroundings were the same as always: a high-ceilinged, mechanically intricate, rectangular room with four computer stations at each of its corners. The hum of electricity permeated every inch of the space, along with the soft clicking of computer keys. Joohyun was pleased to see that the observation deck that surrounded the upper tiers of the room was unoccupied, and that all of the control stations were in a similar condition. All but one, that is.

In the top right control station stood a petite, lab-coat clad woman. There was a look of deep concentration on her delicate features as her fingers danced over the keyboard before her.

Joohyun knew that protocol dictated that she ask permission to approach the scientist, and that she would be scolded by any other of her handlers if she was seen doing so without consent beforehand. However, Seungwan was the only one present here now, and according to her uncannily accurate perception, the majority of their complex was unoccupied aside from the security personnel that frequented the outside halls.

And so, Joohyun strode over to Seungwan at a leisurely pace, disregarding her own form and simply enjoying the freedom of being able to autonomously move herself from one place to another. She even took a moment to caress her own hair, considering that the jet-black hue it had taken one was quite different from the violet one it had possessed when she’d last gone to sleep.

Joohyun stepped off of the connecting bridge between her housing and the main floor, turning to meet Seungwan’s gaze with her own. Although she had no qualms about walking around entirely in then , it seemed that the scientist was always flustered by seeing Joohyun in such a state. As expected, Seungwan’s soft cheeks took on a pink blush, causing Joohyun to giggle.

“Joohyun, you have to wait until I get your clothes… It’s not decent to walk around like that… My father would go absolutely insane if he knew I let you do that,” Seungwan muttered, her eyes actively avoiding anything below Joohyun’s neck.

“I know. I just like seeing you blush,” Joohyun was unable to control her laughter as the aforementioned blush deepened, “And it’s rare that we’re alone together. I need to take advantage.”

“I… ummm… y-yeah,” Seungwan said nervously, furiously typing a few more commands into the computer, “Well, I guess it’s a good joke…”

As the scientist finished, an automated set of cranes popped themselves out from one of the walls, holding an unremarkable alabaster-white jumpsuit and approaching rapidly. Joohyun extended her arms out with a sigh, allowing the machines to outfit her in the form-fitting yet plain garment. The robots worked slow enough that Joohyun had time to sit and ponder, sift through the contents of her artificial brain, curious as to what her makers could have inserted in there during her sleep.

She found that there was a tiny tickling in the very center of her thought stream, one that was very familiar, yet foreign. A glimmering memory that, as soon as it was acknowledged, tugged at her unceasingly. It was something that needed to be unlocked by an external source that Joohyun didn’t have access to. She furrowed her brow and ran through all of the routines that she was permitted to manipulate (all thirty-seven trillion of them within a fraction of a second) and found nothing that could help her open this odd, tittering, unopenable door.

As soon as the robots were finished sealing the back of her garment, she spoke.

“Seungwan. There’s something in my mind, a file of some sort, that I can’t use. Not a normal one, either. One that I feel like I should have access to, but I don’t. It’s very annoying. Do you know what it is?”

Seungwan smiled, a bright, unrestrained smile that represented the utmost joy. Joohyun tilted her head to the side, puzzled.

“I do know that file. I was actually waiting for you to notice it. You always take a little while to,” Seungwan said fondly, turning back to the computer and pulling up several video feeds and scanning them with her gaze. Joohyun recognized the playback as every adjacent room and hallway in the facility, only adding to her confusion.

“What are you referring to, Seungwan?”

“Activate subroutine zero-eight-zero-one-one-four,” Seungwan turned around and faced the now motionless Joohyun, who stared into space without seeing, her primary functionalities halted.

“Awaiting input,” the black-haired woman said blankly, unaware that she was even speaking.

Seungwan leaned in, drawing their faces near one another. Joohyun was unable to react, or even register what was going on, staring emptily out at the wall behind the scientist without seeing. The shorter girl moved closer and closer until their noses were about to meet, turning her head at the very last moment and pressing their lips together in a simple, chaste kiss.

Joohyun’s brain sprung into action. A burst of information filled her, and her body responded in the way that it now knew how to: she hers eyes, wrapped her arms around Seungwan’s waist, pulled her in, and kissed her back.

Seungwan’s kiss - the moistness of her lips, the smell of her breath, the taste of her skin - brought a rush of memories into Joohyun’s mind. Wonderful memories that caused her heart to swell and her stomach to fill with fluttering feathers. Seconds ago, she’d known that Seungwan was a good friend of hers, and that was extent of it. Now, she knew that it was so much more. Seungwan was her savior. Seungwan was her sanity. Seungwan was her love. Each experience with the auburn-haired angel in front of her cast a radiating warmth, compounding into an intense hotness that burned through her, sparking blossoms of neural connections that branched throughout her entire being. Seungwan. Seungwan. Seungwan.

The two-second kiss ended with Seungwan pulling back slightly, looking up at Joohyun, cupping a hand to the taller girl’s cheek.

“I remember,” Joohyun whispered, awestruck by the raw assault of sentiment that raged within her digitized soul, “I remember everything.”

“Good,” Seungwan replied, shifting her hand so that it rested at the back of Joohyun’s head, pressing their foreheads together and shutting her eyes, “Good… It’s been so long.”

“Twenty-two days, seven hours, forty-four minutes, and twelve seconds,” Joohyun inhaled, allowing the auburn-haired woman’s scent to dominate her attention, “An eternity.”

“There haven’t been many opportunities for me to come see you. Especially now that my father is aware of… us.”

Joohyun frowned as she recalled the day that Seungwan’s father had discovered them together, in the dead of night. She remembered the man’s even, though clearly infuriated, tone as he’d approached, speaking only to his daughter, disregarding Joohyun’s presence entirely. He’d marched directly to the same command post that they now stood on, activating the emergency override and shutting Joohyun down immediately. What happened afterwards was still a mystery to her, and she didn’t like the prospect of asking her partner about it. Since then, their meetings had been much scarcer.

Joohyun swallowed as she pondered the possibility of him finding them together again.

“He’s off site for the next three days,” Seungwan assuaged her partner’s fears as if she was intuitively aware of them, “Meaning I’m technically the overseer of this facility. I don’t doubt that he’s told his men to keep an eye on me, but I did everything I could to make this meeting happen. I couldn’t stand being without you for any longer.”

“Me neither… when I’m able to, that is,” Joohyun said with a chuckle.

Seungwan frowned slightly and looked away, a near-imperceptible movement that even Joohyun’s processing systems barely picked up on.

“What’s wrong?” the black-haired girl asked, using the tip of a finger to gently poke Seungwan’s cheek.

Seungwan sighed through her nose and shut her eyes before speaking.

“A lot has happened since I last saw you. A lot of bad things…”

“What kind of things?” Joohyun pressed, admittedly becoming slightly impatient now. She was still elated by the fact that she was in Seungwan’s arms, and she felt a deep sadness that her love was troubled, but at the end of the day, she still processed things much faster than a human could. Waiting and suspense were not thrilling for her.

“My father began work on a new project. That’s why he isn’t here today. He’s presenting it at a conference. Another AI.”

Joohyun’s brow furrowed. She had a slight inkling of what this meant, but it still wasn’t completely clear to her.

“It’s a new model, one that has essentially the sam