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 “Come on, Yesung, cheer up!” she encourages, gently patting his cheeks.

His expression does not change, and he deadpans, “I cannot.”

She sighs, letting her head drop back, blowing out a stream of air. “You’re no fun.”

He follows her into the kitchen, explaining, “I’m not supposed to have emotions.”

She leans against the counter, acknowledging the fact with a wave of her hand.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says disinterestedly. “You’re artificial intelligence, and AIs do not – have no way to, actually - possess the emotional factors that humans have, and it is a flaw that we hope to overcome someday. I know all that.

“I’m your maker, after all.”

Yesung smiles mechanically, as he had been taught to do. She glances at him from out the corner of her eye, raising her cup to take another sip of coffee.

“Yesung,” she suddenly says, setting down the coffee cup to face him in seriousness. “Tell me, what is your definition of I?”

“I,” he immediately responds. “The ninth letter of the alphabet; equivalent in binary to the decimal values 73 or 105, depending on capitalization; the capitalized version, when used as a single word, is typically use to refer to oneself.”

She leans forward to fix him with a steely gaze.

“I, myself,” she begins firmly, “is an expression of self. It means that you exist, that you are someone who deserves to be on this Earth. It means that you have a right to anything that anyone else has.”

He continues to look at her calmly, face expressionlessly polite.

She snorts in disgust and turns away.

“I’m sorry if I made you mad,” Yesung apologizes automatically, but she doesn’t stay to hear it.

The door swings shut with one last command to stay.

---

01101100, 01101111, 01110110, 01100101

 “Don’t move, I’m nearly done,” she mutters, knowing full well that robots cannot move when they are in the process of being modified.

“Force of habit?” Yesung asks with a smile, seeming to read her mind. She jerks up in surprise, looking into his dark eyes, trying to remember when – if ever – she had programmed him to say that one line.

“Yes,” she answers, deciding against the possibility that someone else had managed to hack through her heavily encrypted code. “Now stay still.”

A few seconds later, the gears in Yesung’s chest click and spin, and she closes the panel, turning and removing the key in the lock.

“I programmed you to not be so apathetic anymore,” she tells him with a raise of her eyebrows, setting the key down on the table to wipe her hands.

Yesung’s eyes stray to the golden key, shining under the soft light of the lamp.

“What’s that?” he asks, pointing to the shape that is the bow of the key. “I know it’s a heart, but what does it mean?”

She looks at it, then him, and sighs.

“It… it pumps blood through the body, Yesung,” she says a bit helplessly. “I know you know that since it’s a medical definition, but I don’t know how to explain the emotional part…”

He closes his right hand into a fist and presses it against the left side of his chest, feeling only the whirrs and clicks of smooth-running machinery as opposed to the steady thump of human hearts.

“Tell me,” he whispers. “Tell me how the humans feel.”

Sadness and anger. Disappointment and hate. Love and hope. Joy and satisfaction.

“I… can’t.”

She looks at him, tears falling from her eyes.

He reaches out to wipe them away, newly-programmed curiosity prompting him to ask why she is crying.

She shakes her head, fleeing the room.

He stays behind, staring blankly at the one shining teardrop on the tip of his finger.

---

01111001, 01101111, 01110101

“I’ve done it,” she tells him heavily, attempting to smile. It falls short of her eyes, though, and she averts her gaze.

“It will initiate in two days, so before then, you still won’t understand. When I am gone, do not talk to anyone. If they try to take you away or modify you, escape in any way you can. Do not question my orders.”

He never had any way to disobey and says so, but she only smiles sadly.

“You’ll see,” she says, turning away to lock herself into her workroom.

He doesn’t understand what she meant by “when I am gone.” Hadn’t she always been there by his side? She is his maker, and he is bound to her. He was made to serve her all his life, and she wouldn’t leave him behind either, would she?

One day passes. The silence is becoming unbearable. Yesung feels an unfamiliar stirring within his mechanical gears, a longing to hear her voice again.

“Come out, please,” he calls through the still-shut door. “You have to eat.”

He thinks that he hears her laugh shortly, without humor.

“It’s okay,” she replies bitterly. “Leave me alone unless there are people at the door.”

Yesung draws back, inner mechanisms whirring quickly, trying to process that sudden feeling of being hit in the chest.

That night, as he sits quietly by her door, face turned to the starlight, there come loud, abrupt knocks on the front door.

He starts, desperately trying to work out, in that short journey to the door, why the sound had sent him into overdrive.

“Hello?” he calls cautiously. There is a pause on the other side. In that split second, she had exited her room and pulled him away from the door.

“If they try to touch you or persuade you to go with them, run away. Do anything to avoid capture. In the meantime, stay here. Do not defy me,” she orders in a hard but quiet voice.

He sees the determination blazing in her eyes and decides not to point out yet again that he cannot possibly disobey her.

She opens the door and steps out, addressing the strangers waiting for her.

“I believe you are looking for me.”

He stays, as per her command, but with difficulty, as a heated argument had erupted outside. The words are too muffled for him to understand, but he can identify her voice, angry and unyielding, among the chaos.

“I’ll go with you, just leave my AI alone.”

Following those words, the dispute ceases, and she opens the door again, looking him in the eye, to give him one last word, a goodbye.

Instinctively, he steps forward. Her eyes flare in danger, and he stops.

She nods, ever so slightly.

“Hey, remember what I said. If I don’t come back within two days, log out of my computer for me.”

“Log out of my computer” is their coded phrase for “self-destruct.” Self-destruct can be accessed from the maker’s control device and is a function required by Universal Law as a backup plan, in case the AI falls into wrong hands.

“Understood,” he answers, voice trembling. She mock-frowns, shaking her head.

“I need to reprogram your voice when I come back,” she laughs casually. “It’s getting a little too shaky for my taste.”

With that, she closes the door again. He rushes to the window, where he can see her being forced into a black car by two men from the government.

He presses his hand against the glass, trembling with the urge to chase after her.

But he cannot disobey her orders, and so he stays, pacing the floor, glancing out the window, not bearing to even look in the direction of her room.

As the sky lightens, the gears in place of his heart whirr, creating sparks. He gasps, stumbling backwards, suddenly afraid of overheating.

The sun bursts out from behind the horizon, and Yesung collapses, clutching a hand to his chest, struck to the ground by the sudden knowledge that pours into him.

Machine he still is, but now he understands. Now he knows why.

“Asimov’s Three Laws, Yesung,” she says excitedly, showing him the words. “This is the basis of you and your kind. This is what I built you upon. This is your life, Yesung.

“First, a robot must not harm, or bring harm to, a human. Second, a robot must follow the orders given to it by a human, as long as it does not violate the First Law. Third, a robot may engage in self-preservation, as long it does not violate the First or Second Laws.”

“There’s a Zero Law,” he points out, reading past where her finger is situated. She smiles, reaching up to touch his cheek.

“‘Zeroth Law’,” she reads, leaning back against his chest. “‘A robot may neither harm nor bring harm to humanity’. That’s almost the same as the First.

“Actually, the Laws aren’t very fair to robots, except they are. Humans can always make more robots, but robots can’t invent humans. Humans can’t even invent other humans, unless…”

He doesn’t say anything, only rests his chin on top of her head.

---

“Yesung, do you remember Asimov’s Laws?” she asks, gripping his arms tightly. He nods, ready to recite them, but she cuts him off.

“Good. Well, what if I told you that people have added to it? The Fourth Law, long after Asimov’s death: a robot may not possess emotions.”

He does not respond, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, she disappears into her workroom, eyebrows furrowed, whispering to herself.

Hours later, she emerges victorious, eyes shining, holding aloft the key that unlocks his modification panel.

“I can remove the Fourth Law,” she tells him breathlessly, showing him a piece of paper that contains numerous scribbled equations.

“You don’t get a choice, Yesung, sorry,” she apologizes, not sounding sorry at all.

---

“Last time, Yesung, I was only able to remove part of that stupid Fourth Law,” she murmurs, burying her face in his chest.

“It’s okay,” he responds, pulling her close. “I don’t mind.”

“But I do!” She takes a deep breath, blinking away the tears that threaten to fall to reveal a burning determination.

“I’ll do it,” she promises him. “I’ll let you feel everything that humans feel.

“Even if it kills me.”

And now he realizes that it did kill her.

She had removed all the Laws from his system and inserted her own emotions instead, causing him to become, essentially, human.

She had intentionally breached the Universal Laws of Robotics for him.

She had risked – and lost – everything to make sure that he would be able to feel.

All because, ultimately, she was in love with him.

All because she had just wanted him to love her back.

And he knows, from the agonizing pain within his heart, from the crystal tears that sparkle in the sunlight on the floor, he knows that he loves her too.

He’s always loved her, even before he knew what emotion was.

But now it’s all too late, and the place where she had once been is now a space, blank and meaningless.

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