DAY 365

I am one year old today, Leo recalled as he observed the serene face of the recharging XV, alternately named Hongbin.

But who am I anymore?  Is a name still relevant if there’s no one around to use it?

He wondered whether or not he should go by XIV again, as his original “namer” wasn’t around to do so anymore. This was an uncomfortable state for an android to be in to say the least. He wasn’t prewired to ponder over such issues. He was custom made to assist, to help, to hold all the relevant information that could aid his master, and yet at this point he had more questions than answers, and free will wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as his creator promised it to be. What was the worth of free will if there wasn’t someone around who could share it?

With the absence of his creator Leo’s existence became very lonely, and that was perhaps the worst emotion he had ever experienced.

It’s been a month since he finished creating his very own android. He took the face of the only human he’d grown to know and… love? Did Leo love his master? An entire year on earth, but it still wasn’t enough for him to figure out the complexity of that subject.

DAY 142

Hongbin closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, stretching his arms to the side with a small smile curving his lips.

“I simply love the rain,” He said, looking up at the skylight being drizzled by countless droplets, thrumming softly against the thick glass.

Leo knew what love was, technically. Love was fondness, affection, passion, enjoyment… Leo’s lexicon was full of synonyms that explained and simplified the term, and yet he was still unable to grasp the entirety it. It happened to him before, during his first day in the lab and in the world, when he couldn’t decipher his master’s sorrowful expression due to its ambivalence on his face. But Leo was programmed to learn, and his comprehension depended on his willingness to get to the bottom of his misunderstanding. He was wired quite cleverly, if he could say so himself, but he was still man-made, and prone to man-made mistakes. Leo had a bad habit of being overwhelmed by an abundance of information, and “love” was overwhelming enough of a subject.

How could one “simply love”? Love had so many incantations! There was platonic love, romantic love, greed, carnal lust, reverence… For all Leo had known, there was nothing “simple” about love.

Hongbin fell quiet (as he always did whenever Leo presented him with a tough question) when Leo asked him if he could simplify the subject of love for him a few days later. Leo was designed to be able to break everything down into easy-to-understand formulas, and yet this was one of the most complicated ones. He’d been raking his mind after an easy explanation to how someone could “simply love” rain, and sweets, and family, and friends, and that song Hongbin can’t stop humming, and the sound of Hongbin’s hushed voice as he does.

Hongbin pondered over it for a while, and Leo was more than patient as he awaited his desired response.

“To love is to strive and make someone happy, even if said happiness doesn’t involve you in it.”

Leo noted that Hongbin was referring to a love shared by humans, and despite being not as wholesome of an answer as he’d hoped, it did give him another perspective on a subtopic just as wide.

“So love is selflessness?”

Hongbin was silent again. “Yes, in a way.”

Leo added another variable into his ever growing equation.

DAY 68

Soon into Leo’s existence had he realized that the relationship he shared with Hongbin wasn’t that of a master and his android.

“Sir?” Leo asked one day, taking a break from working on yet another project of his creator. This time he was wiring a screen onto a palm sized gadget.

Hongbin grunted in affirmation, but didn’t take his eyes away from his work station.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, sir, but I don’t feel like my title for you is appropriate to our dynamic anymore.”

Only then had the creator looked up at Leo, his eyes asking a question his mouth hadn’t uttered yet.

“What do you mean?”

“I am made to take orders, sir, and yet you allow me more freedom than I was programmed to receive, thus breaking the accustomed hierarchy between an android and its master.”

Leo paused for a moment, allowing Hongbin to take in his words. He had commented before on Leo’s habit of unloading too much information too quickly, though Leo knew that the speed of his speech was on its default setting, but he humored him anyway. From then on, he manually made sure to slow down his speech by pausing between sentences every once in a while, despite the discomfort caused by disrupting the flow. So he resumed to screw the screen in with small swift motions, spinning the screwdriver in his nimble fingers as he counted down in his head until the appropriate time to speak again.

“Perhaps it is best to reconsider the title with which I address you.” He added after successfully attaching a screw to the monitor.

“What did you have in mind?” Hongbin asked, his attention now completely turned to Leo and his odd request, leaving his previous activity seemingly forgotten.

“How about ‘Professor’?” Leo suggested. “I assume it’s only fair for you to be addressed by your profession, if we were to interact as accomplices of some sort.”

 “I like that.” Hongbin smiled.

“Thank you, professor.” Leo smiled back. “Does that mean we are?”

“Are what?” He asked absentmindedly, back to fiddling with the unfinished gadget on his work station.

“Accomplices, professor.” He clarified.

Hongbin took a brief look at Leo again before plugging the device in his hands into one of the computer screens on his desk. His eyes flashed with an emotion that disappeared too quickly for Leo to catch.

“We always have been, Leo.”

DAY 311

It was much quieter around the lab without the professor’s constant humanoid sounds. They were all extremely subtle, but Leo’s acute hearing managed to pick up on details as small as an occasional sniff, or a contemplative smack of his lips. Sometimes, when he found it too quiet he’d enhance the sensitivity of his synthetic ear drums to follow the steady rhythm of his creator’s breaths.

One of the strangest emotions Leo had catalogued was envy, which judging by his prewired knowledge of human nature and sociology, was… well, extremely human. It was so very mortal to long for something you don’t have, specifically if it was already owned by someone else. And yet Leo wasn’t human, so why was he envious of Hongbin’s ability to breathe?

He’d tried it once, breathing, that is. But it was so unnecessary that the manual labor did nothing but distract Leo from his work, and he eventually dropped it. There was something strangely comforting about the intake and outtake of air, perhaps because it resembled the pump that “lulled” Leo to sleep every night. But Leo didn’t sleep, he recharged. He’d climb up into the same apparatus in which he had his first conscious thought, and lean back until the metal rod penetrated the small opening in the back of his neck, hooking him up to the machine. Then he had a few moments until he shut down for the night, the only sound accompanying him to his eventual slumber was an invisible pump within the machine, inflating and deflating as it fills him up with energy.

There was something terribly absentminded about the rise and drop of Hongbin’s shoulders as he worked (when he still could), whereas every motion and action by Leo was calculated to the tiniest extent; monitored by dozens of invisible chips and enforced by his titanium brain. Perhaps all he wanted was to be able to switch off his manual self, and do something unintentional for a change. He didn’t know it yet, but Leo sometimes wished he was human too.

And now the room was filled with that same continuous suction sound, though it wasn’t coming from Leo’s recharging booth.

He was intrigued by it during XV’s first recharging session, having never had heard the pump operate more than perhaps half a minute before he closed his eyes and shut off. He was fascinated by the fact that, except for being louder and shallower, it sounded almost like breathing… almost human. But it wasn’t.

DAY 190

The professor told Leo that he was sick that day, though Leo was aware that something was wrong long before that. Coughing is a sign of illness, Leo’s internal manual had stated, as he listened to his creator wheeze into a napkin, later having to catch his breath longer than otherwise necessary.

Hongbin had told him that soon he would be alone in the lab, and that there will come a day when he won’t come to work along with him.

Death. A concept as confusing to Leo as love. It was well known to him that once a living organism dies it decomposes and becomes part of nature around it; and yet he also knew that there are people who believe that the inevitable end is not, in fact, inevitable, nor the end. It didn’t make sense to Leo that a brilliant human mind would be able to override a fact so simple, so decisive and firm, out of what seemed to be a primal fear. He would have thought that years upon years of evolution would repair this obvious flaw, but Hongbin’s face proved otherwise.

“What will happen to me, professor?” Leo asked, still unsure of how he felt in response to his creator’s pending disappearance. He knew quite well what would happen to Hongbin. Soon he’d emit himself to the hospital, in which the staff would try to treat him as well as they could, eventually bringing to his eventual recovery or demise… but what should Leo be doing meanwhile? He knew that he wanted to be by Hongbin’s side when he still could, but what comes after that? What happens if Hongbin doesn’t recover?

Hongbin looked distressed again, but only for a moment.

“Whatever you choose to happen, Leo.” He replied kindly. “You could exit the lab, you could continue to work on my unfinished projects here… it really is up to you.”

Did he want to leave the lab? He had never been outside before, and up until now had no real need to do so. But now that the option had been opened to him he felt another peculiar human emotion- curiosity.

“What is it like outside the lab, professor?”

Hongbin smiled and looked like he was about to answer, but then shut his mouth and resorted to tap something rapidly on the keyboard in front of him. Leo waited patiently until Hongbin looked up and gestured for him to sit on a nearby chair.

“I’ve been working on this for a while,” He said, his eyes bright with excitement. He reached over his desk to unplug a contraption from the computer. It looked like it was made to fit one’s head, covering the forehead and eyes as well. He held it over Leo’s head, waiting wordlessly for permission to lower it over his eyes. Leo had always been a fan of his master’s creations and was always willing to try them out, so the enthusiastic nod was soon to come.

It was dark for a while, but then Leo heard Hongbin the keyboard and suddenly there was light! And colors, and shapes. Leo recognized trees and skies and buildings… and people! Other people! Despite never having seen any of those with his own eyes until now, he was still aware of their existence, but not to this extent. All he had stored were prewired images and sounds, coming together into a gritty animation that served as his guide for life as he knew it. And now he was watching it for what it actually was, all through his creator’s eyes. These were Hongbin’s memories of the world, all wrapped up in a fast moving reel that flashed vividly across Leo’s vision. It was spectacular.

Leo gasped as the images switched and alternated, relishing on the way the wind seemed to caress the tree branches and their leaves, the way rain sounded as it hit the ground- first slowly, timidly, and then harshly and noisily, and the way people ran for cover from it, huddled under their coats and umbrellas as if they were afraid of rusting.

Leo even saw himself for a moment, but it wasn’t exactly him. It looked like him, and it sounded like him… but it wasn’t him. The other Leo was human. He caught but a glimpse of him, sitting across Hongbin’s field of vision in the lab, sipping on a cup filled with a dark beverage; Coffee. Leo could even smell the bitter concoction and was intrigued by its striking similarity to the oil in his artificial arteries and veins. But the image was cut off abruptly as Hongbin removed the headgear from its place rather aggressively. Leo winced as his eyes readjusted to the sudden brightness, until landing on Hongbin’s apologetic face, but there was something in his expression that very much resembled the way he looked at him when he first woke up all those months ago.

“I’m sorry for that,” Hongbin apologized, though Leo saw no reason for that.

“That was beautiful.” Leo retorted, still slightly dazed from the sensory enlightenment.

“So what do you say?” He urged, hugging the headgear to his chest tenderly. “Would you like to go out there someday?”

“I think so.” Leo said with a smile. “Your world looks amazing.”

“It’s your world too, you know.” Hongbin chuckled as he placed the helmet back onto its place on the table and returned to look at the awestruck Leo again.

“My world, too…” Leo mimicked, feeling the words on his mouth as their meaning made its way to his brain, generating another genuine smile.

Leo almost managed to forget in his ecstasy the face he saw in the memories… his own face, though it did not belong to him there. Looking back, it only made sense that he was modeled after someone… but whom? Was he a friend? A family member? And what happened to him? Leo was almost surprised at the fact that a split second memory managed to spin such a wide web of question marks, but then again he was prone to his own overthinking. He then tried his best to refocus his attention on the most burning issue at that moment. Hongbin was always ever so patient with Leo, and surely he’ll have time to address his flurry of inquiries later on, but the seed of doubt had already been planted in the electric current of his brain. Leo then resorted to fret over the fact that Hongbin’s days might now be numbered.

DAY 372

This is it.

XV had already been recharging for a week. His cheeks were getting rosier and his hair darkened and thickened until it grew from his head long and loose around his ears and nape. Leo figured that Hongbin might have been dyeing his hair lighter because the dark strands encircling his face held more resemblance to the hue of Leo’s hair than the chestnut brown it seemed to be when he was still alive. Leo liked it better that way, but he figured regardless that he might as well leave the choice to XV when he wakes up, just as Hongbin had done.

 It wasn’t how  the professor used to wear his hair, but it didn’t matter because he still had his face, his DNA, and soon… hopefully… his memories.

The moment of XV’s wake was rapidly approaching, and Leo couldn’t help but question the default setting he’d picked for his very own android. He himself was a service droid, but when it came to it he wasn’t sure he wanted his relationship with his droid to be the one he shared with Hongbin. Because after all, Leo wasn’t human, and the master/android relationship was somehow inappropriate when both party members were of the same species. It didn’t seem right.

The XV model was refined, and offered another setting the XIV couldn’t- the “companion” setting. Hongbin didn’t make it to see the new edition and Leo wondered if he had the option to do so, would Hongbin have made him a companion instead of a servicer? He had explained to Leo that every generation of models were more or less the same, but there were “tweakers”, underground mechanics who worked to enhance or hijack the models to fit into their liking. The tweaks ranged from simple memory enhancement to full on militarization, and hence were completely outlawed. Hongbin was a tweaker, and now Leo was one as well.

So he picked the companion option. The description of the setting was quite vague, but Leo assumed that its purpose was to answer every need the servicer could not. And Leo didn’t need a subordinate, he needed… something else.

And XV did look significantly more human than Leo had expected. His skin was warmer to the touch, especially after the week he’d been given to adjust to his prewired settings, but there was still much Leo didn’t know. He’d ordered this model from the same suppliers the professor had been receiving his own, and the transaction was nothing but hushed, and so Leo was left to dissect and calculate and tweak until he knew what to anticipate. And yet.

 And yet Leo still couldn’t quite anticipate what it would actually be like. He had tested XV’s nerves and artificial innards which exerted clockwork impeccability, but he didn’t know anything but the technicalities. How would he greet Leo? Would he treat him as an old acquaintance? Would he treat him as a sibling? A lover? Leo couldn’t help but share that same emotion he saw reflecting in his maker’s eyes during Leo’s first wake. It was mixed with unmistakable excitement, but the core remained a nestling, looming sense of anxiousness.

It was only a matter of time now. Leo had set the timer in the recharging apparatus, and the minutes were ticking away, slowly leading to that very moment Hongbin must had been looking forward to all that time ago. Leo would have held his breath if he could.

Two minutes. One minute.

Leo found himself standing in the exact same place his creator was standing in his first memory, and he felt what could only be explained as a strange, reversed kind of déjà vu. In less than a minute, Leo won’t be alone in the lab anymore.

Thirty seconds. Twenty seconds.

Leo watched XV’s eyelids twitch almost unnoticeably, and he knew that the electric circuits were now surging through his body, creating almost a REM sleep effect- another thing neither Leo nor XV would ever actually experience.

A single beep echoed through the silent vicinity, meaning that the recharging session was finally over. Leo didn’t dare blink.

Suddenly, XV took what seemed to be a deep breath (A deep breath?), and his eyes opened with a smooth motion.

He smiled.