Wandering Uncanny Valleys (Suri)

[Eluna Thals]

Three hundred eighty nine days had passed since she'd taken any personal time. She wished she could be more vague than that, but there was no escaping her analytical reality. She knew. Precisely.

Eluna hopped off the Alliance shuttle with her small duffel in tow. The other uniformed passengers disembarked in turn, giving her a wide berth. She'd been the only person in plain clothes aboard the ship, and bored enlisted personnel quickly got to the bottom of it.

Spooky

It was the grunt term for an intel asset. She hadn't made any attempt to avoid the subject, but when you're warming a bucket seat on the Alliance's dime, you're submitting your paperwork to someone, and that someone often is prone to gossip when they aren't under pain of orders not to.

A wind picked up on the tarmac, whipping about her bright red hair. Red because she wanted it to be red. Red because it was her. She could've been anyone else if she wanted to disappear. Red blonde auburn brunette black. Pale tan swarthy freckled. Blue green hazel brown. Coruscanti Nar Shadaan Corellian Caridan. Pigment modifiers, language subroutines. A blank canvas.

None of that was Eluna. And yet all of it was. Unique. Unremarkable.

Alone

She'd filed her reason for travel to Ossus under Personal. Fortunately it was the sort of field that herded you toward a series of predetermined responses, and you simply chose the best fit. Fortunately nobody actually asked her to clarify, because she still didn't know. Maybe she came to see the wrecked skeleton of the Dauntless, out there somewhere. She'd personally interacted with 117 of the listed dead. Maybe that mattered somehow. Maybe she'd come to see the Jedi, though she thoroughly expected they would be of no use to her. She was other. Barred forever from communion in whatever peace of mind they likely dealt with. That thought made Eluna feel sick at her stomach. Did she actually want final confirmation that she could never have what she wanted?

None of this was optimal programming. It was never meant to be. It was simply Eluna. A girl who grew up to be a woman who then looked under the surface and found the artifice. Knowing what she was didn't invalidate who she was. And dealing with both, and the truth and the lie of each, was the loneliest burden she'd ever known.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh Rajinaathra awoke half-reclined in an examination chair squinting up into the glare of hooded lights overhead. An IV drip ran down into the crook of her right arm, while a nest of glowing diagnostic cables sprouted from the socket of her left shoulder where her prosthetic arm should have attached. She shook off the anesthetic fog that always haunted her the first few moments after an operation and slowly curled herself away from the headrest, rubbing deeply at her aching eyes.

"You really should lie back and rest a while longer, Mistress Suriyesh."

"Can't rest," she mumbled. "Too much work to do." The brown-furred mongoose pulled her paw away from her face and blinked owlishly until her surroundings came into focus - a makeshift operating theater walled in by cargo crates draped in antistatic drop cloth. The cables that ran from her empty shoulder socket coiled on the floor and leaped up into computer cart full of monitors displaying all sorts of telemetry - electrophysiological potentials, chemical analyses, servo diagnostics. Beside the cart stood a tall, spindly medical droid (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/A-series_medical_droid) with branching manipulators and a single, ice-blue ocular lens set off-center in its flat, featureless face, which irised nearly shut and stared at her with a singular, all-consuming focus.

Suri froze, her paw halfway to yanking the cables out of her shoulder, and stared back at A-V0X's expressionless facade. Usually he'd be wheedling something obsequiously passive-aggressive by now. "So, what's the damage?" she asked.

"It is as I feared," Vox replied, strangely monotone. "Your cybernetic integration has deteriorated significantly since your last checkup. Synaptic withdrawal. Neurotransmitter rejection. Even cellular apoptosis in the tissue adjoining your implants. Headaches should be the least of your worries; you are fortunate you have not yet succumbed to synaptic shock."

The Munjan mongoose felt the blood pounding in her ears as she tried to process what she was hearing - a far worse report than she'd even feared. "But... but I haven't had any loss of motor function. I've been running my own diagnostics, I'd know if the cybernetics were de-integrating."

"It is not a cybernetic problem. It's a biological one. Your body is rejecting the implants."

Suri shrank back down onto the examination chair, gutted and shaking, and stared numbly at the vaulted ceiling of the cargo container she called home. Crowded at the best of times, now she felt as though it were collapsing in on her.

"Hakath..."

She lay still and concentrated on breathing. The air was thick and heavy and tasted of plastic, but at least she knew her lungs were working. "So this isn't a maintenance issue. What do we do, then?"

"It isn't a maintenance issue, but maintenance can hold off the inevitable," Vox replied, and that smug superiority Suri was used to had returned to his vocoded cadence. "I've dosed you with synthetic neurotransmitters to help bridge the gap between your wetware and hardware, and a course of methionine to combat the apoptotic toxins building in your tissues. In the meantime I'd suggest introducing some natural antioxidants to your diet. But sooner or later we will have to find a more permanent solution."

Vox turned and, with a few keystrokes, called a set of schematics onto the computer monitors. Suri propped herself up on her right elbow and scrutinized them in mounting disbelief.

"You want to put in a spinal implant?" she said. "You think wiring me up even more is going to solve this problem?"

"What you are experiencing is fundamentally a matter of incompatible interfaces," Vox said smoothly. "A spinal implant, properly designed and calibrated, can serve as an effective bridge between disparate bioelectric matrices. It would be a simple procedure for a droid of my abilities."

"I bet it would," Suri spat back, and she rolled over and lifted her arm to her mouth so she could pull out the IV line by her teeth.

"I would never operate without your consent, of course," Vox continued. "Ethics would constrain me, not to mention this restraining bolt. But I must remind you that if we wait to act, more complications may arise. Please, allow me to assist you. You might injure yourself."

"I'll manage," Suri replied, and she yanked out the diagnostic cables from her shoulder, snagged her prosthetic arm from its charging cable, and stormed out of Vox's clinic.

In another few minutes she'd inserted her arm, thrown on a T-shirt and jacket, and stumbled out into the brightness of the Adegan sunlight over the Sanctuary colony. She felt for the pack of smokes in her pocket and quickly had a stim puffing between her pointy teeth. Hands jammed into her pockets, she struck off in a whirlwind of dark and frightening thoughts, neither watching nor caring where she was going.

[Eluna Thals]

Sanctuary was a growing, hopeful place. The noises of construction were perpetually background music. Rapid hiss-bangs from pneumatic drivers. Trundling of heavy equipment. Keeping time for the melodies and harmonies. A hundred conversations. The sound of playing children. It tempted Eluna to simply stand at the tarmac's periphery and listen. She eased down her duffel as a scrum of children stormed through a distance away, playing a pickup game of turboball. Suddenly an errant kick, and the ball screamed in her direction.

thnnp

She palmed the ball an inch from her face, bringing it down between her hands.

"Throw it back, lady!"

A dozen dirty-faced kids in filthy clothes stood waiting for her to put the ball back in play. Eluna looked from the kids to their ball, a smile on her face. She released the ball from her hands, only to catch it perfectly on the instep of her right foot. From there, it shifted easily to the other foot, and back up to the other knee, then kicked fully by the other recovering foot, sending the ball overhead, where Eluna jumped up and put it expertly back in play with a header.

"Thanks, lady!"

Play resumed at once, the scrum moving on past her. Eluna picked up her duffel, heading down the first path available to her. Here, a few buildings stood. Some freshly built, some skeletal. Among the row, seemingly out of place, stood a cargo container. An alien stormed out of the pod, pausing a moment to reach for a cigarette. Again, the Machine never really left. Biometrics available at a glance. Nehantite. Female.

More data. Eluna froze in her tracks. The cybernetics weren't exactly the hidden kind. They were extensive, a myriad of what could be seen and more that couldn't. She stared.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri shuffled down along the lane that ran past her cargo container and past the workshops and garages that serviced just about everything that made the colony run. Every other sentient on the footpath was just a blob of noise, high notes in a cacophony of electric motors and grinders and pneumatic wrenches and, far off, the muffled roar of a ship taking off from the starport. Suri didn't mind the noise. She had grown up with it, in a densely packed slum of a Munjan city where she and her seven siblings, living off the salaries of her shop mechanic father and whatever odd jobs she and her sisters could find, were the lucky ones. By comparison, even at its most bustling Sanctuary was a ghost town.

But the brown-furred mongoose was so lost in her thoughts that she still didn't notice the red-headed human woman staring at her until she'd walked past. Her ears flattened, her tail jerked, and she stopped in her tracks and aimed a reproachful look over her shoulder.

"You want to take a holo?"

[Eluna Thals]

Why had she dwelled? Why? A glance was all that was needed. Ironic that the woman would ask if she wanted to take a holo, because that was precisely what happened.

"Sorry! Sorry."

Eluna's cheeks flushed, and she looked away. The image of Suri was still fresh and pristine. Not just the myriad of cybernetic interfaces. The look on her face - so conflicted and overwhelmed. What happened to her? The Machine didn't find anything anomalous other than noting the rarity of cyborgs. But the Girl had seen that face before in the mirror. That look at the breaking point. She ventured another glance at Suri. More data needed.

"I..."

The Girl was in control. There was no prompt response. The algorithm was creating it's own imperfect solution. She focused on the smoldering stick at the Nehantite's lip.

"...do you have another one of those?"

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Piss off was the first response that came to mind, but the way the woman had wilted into apologetic stammers, she'd have felt like she was snarling at a kitten. Instead Suri dug the pack of Kajmahar Golds out of her hip pocket and turned the label for Eluna to see.

"You ever smoked Munjan before?" she asked with a dubious frown. "It's a bit of a, um... acquired taste."

[Eluna Thals]

She shook her head, removing a dark-wrapped cigarette from the crumpled pack. Even unlit and from here it smelled exotic. The gas chromatograph returned a range of readouts that she instantly deprioritized, placing the unfiltered smoke between her lips. Even the wrapper was sweet. She smiled faintly. The cigarette was lit and as Eluna inhaled the way the Machine had done many times before, even more gas chromatograph data came in. Drugs and carcinogens and byproducts in parts per million, all sorted neatly for analysis. But none of that was important to her. She wanted to see for herself. The smoke was heavy and rich and halfway into inhaling, her chest seized. Instantly she pulled the cigarette from her mouth, pressing her lips together as her cheeks swelled, willing the urge to cough to subside. Eluna's eyes watered. She tried to swallow. In the background the Machine simply logged the aberrant functions, waiting to be called on to assert artificial homeostasis, but she wanted this.

"Ghack! ckh...kaa!

She doubled over with a cough.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri winced, less because of the stranger's distress and more because she was inwardly mourning the loss of a perfectly good smoke. Hell, she'd probably done the red-head a favor. Even in this day and age, lung cancer was nothing to sneeze at.

"You don't smoke at all, do you?" she said. "Gods alive."

The Munjan mongoose wavered between indignant and jeering and landed somewhere around wryly amused. She grinned and hissed a jet of smoke between her fangs like a dragon.

[Eluna Thals]

Still wheezing, Eluna finally righted herself and holding her cigarette a safe distance away.

"N-ghak-n...n chghk...ghaa no I don't!"

SYSTEMS 100% OPERATIONAL the unwarranted diagnostic performed as a reminder that nothing had happened and that her programming was responding to threats that did not exist. Shut up she blinked, looking from the ashen-tipped cigarette to the Nehantite who was much more in her element. Eluna smiled, almost giddy.

"I...I hate it."

And she did, it was revolting and she had no idea how people could do this on a day to day basis! She sucked on the smoke again, and once more broke out into coughs, losing the cigarette from her grasp entirely. Again she was all smiles.

"I hate it!"

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri's eyes darted down in despair to the cigarette still smoldering in the dirt, then back up to the manically grinning stranger. And strange was the key operator here.

"Yeah, sorry," she said, and she took a backwards step. "I did try to warn you, mate."

[Eluna Thals]

"No! It's fine!"

Still smiling, she looked at the now-wary cyborg and raised her hand to smell the still-latent aroma of the cigarette on her fingers.

"I'd never tried one before."

The Nehantite looked like it was caught in a fight or flight moment, and Eluna tried to smooth things over.

"I'm Eluna."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri took her own cigarette in her cybernetic hand just in case this crazy grinning masochist took it in her head to try another. Sometimes you thought you'd gotten a handle on alien behavior, and then, out of the blue...

She'd said a name. Suri was terrible with names, especially alien names. Droid designations were easy, because there was a logic to them, and all sorts of mnemonics that were as natural to her engineer's brain as falling off a binary load lifter. Eluna? E-series protocol droid, LU-20 builder. Enough to get her started, anyway.

"Suriyesh," the mongoose replied, still hovering between taking off and sticking around to see if there was another shoe to drop. "I don't seem to remember seeing you around. Are you new here?"

[Eluna Thals]

Suriyesh. Analysis - Munjan. The Machine already began to sort out the alien in front of her, down to her ethnicity and likely origins. The name and the cigarettes offered both pointed to that direction.

"New? I'm...yeah guess you could say that. I'm on vacation."

Which was probably itself a strange thing to say. Ossus was many things. Tourist destination - not so much. It wasn't a cover story. The truth sounded ridiculous.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"You're on vacation."

Suri paused and glanced around at the industrial complex surrounding them, half of it still under construction, just like half of the rest of the colony, with civilian contractors mixing with Alliance and Cizerack corps engineers and the occasional Jedi apprentice in a bathrobe. On the other side of the speeder hangar were the grounds for the Jedi colony including the dormitories, the council chambers, the sparring fields, and whatever else it was that interstellar wizard monks needed to help them contemplate how many angels could dance on the head of a hydrospanner.

The mongoose blinked at Eluna's unwavering smile. "Well. I hope you have a great time. Um, listen, it was great meeting you, but I need to go grab a bite to eat."

Thank gods for small favors. She hadn't eaten anything all day prior to her diagnostic session, doctor's orders, and she was starving. It was middle of the afternoon, so the mess tent ought to have been nearly deserted. With any luck she could have a sandwich in peace.

[Eluna Thals]

"Me too actually!"

Which wasn't entirely true. Her power core was at 92%, entirely optimal. Still, this was her first real encounter on planet and the woman wasn't treating her like a machine. She was, however, treating her like a leper, and seemed eager to find somewhere else to be.

"I mean, I need to eat, and they don't exactly do in-flight service on Alliance jumps. If you want to just show the way that's fine. I'm just...you look busy."

Eluna bit at her lower lip. The Machine played out 3,612 variations of alternate conversation that would have been more preferable. Shut up.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

It wasn't that she hated the idea of company. It was that this woman seemed hellbent on being her company, throat-scorching cigarettes and shitty vacation spots and crotchety manners be damned. Suriyesh really didn't want this kind of attention. But then Eluna hadn't done anything overtly threatening - if anything, her gawky, halting attempts at friendliness made her seem less threatening, simply because there was no way she could be following some sort of a script.

And, hell, any company was probably better than stewing in her own juices after what she'd just learned from Vox.

"Well, it's not like there's much choice for fine dining around here," Suri said. "Most everyone eats in the mess, and otherwise there's the bar down in the Alliance district, and the sandwich shop--"

Her voice gave out as she entertained a mental picture of Eluna trying to gladhand her way through the Deli Moff's labyrinth of draconian rules and carving knives.

"On second thought, nix the sandwich shop," she said. "Should be some lunch left over in the mess tent."

A scant fifteen minutes later Suri was sitting down at a long table with a tray of grilled cheese, lentil soup, and iced Dantari tea. They were on the back end of lunch service, so the cheese was cool and gummy, and the soup had a few lumps in it trying to re-condense into canned paste, but it was flavorful and filling. The mongoose tucked in without any ceremony, content to let Eluna be as social as she wanted to be.

[Eluna Thals]

"Whaddya want?"

The serving droid was the sort that was programmed with an interface to have character. In this case, a surly slop-hand's character. It's four arms moved around the steam table, waiting for her to make up her mind.

"I'll have what she just ha - ...are those doughnuts?"

Green eyes widened as she skipped the entree table entirely, moving on to the dessert bar. She gave a complete pass to the fresh fruit, looking at the array of frosted and sprinkled confections before her. One...two...seven...

"Gee lady, you hear of a balanced diet??"

Already pawing the eighth donut, Eluna put it back reluctantly.

"Do you have ice cream?"

"You're lucky we got donuts, lady. This ain't the Grand Cailun. You want this soup and sandwich or don't ya? Better save room. One doughnut per patron."

She looked like he'd asked her to off an arm, and took the long four paces to return another six pastries for her soup and sandwich.

A few minutes later, she found Suriyesh in the waning late lunch crowd, sitting with her tray of grilled cheese, lentil soup, doughnut, iced Dantari tea...and thirty seven sugar sachets. She was still sore about losing an argument to a greasy spoon, and flopped down petulantly.

"Dumb droid."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri's neck fur went up on reflex, a latent defense mechanism against mechanophobes. "Excuse me?"

Then her eyes landed on Eluna's crowded tray, a balanced meal only in the sense that it contained one of everything in the cafeteria. Except for sugar packets. There were enough of those to put a rancor in a diabetic coma.

[Eluna Thals]

"That droid over there. Acting like that."

Eluna tasted her tea, frowning at it. She opened one sachet of sugar, dumping the contents in. Then three more.

"I mean, I guess I get it. Someone programmed it like that, but it's insulting."

The Machine happened to have a definition of irony close at hand, in case she needed to examine it. Eluna rolled her eyes at her own internal dialogue as she added more sugar to the tea. None of it was dissolving, and just precipitated to the bottom of the cold glass. She stirred at it with a spoon.

"I mean, its all an act."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri dipped her grilled cheese into the lentil soup and took a big bite of the sloppy mess. In short order she'd polished off the first of three sandwiches.

"An act?" she repeated. "As opposed to what?"

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna tasted the lentil soup. It was lumpy and kind of lacked...sugar. So she fixed that as well.

"I don't know. I mean droids can think, right? And they're adaptive. And maybe they could be more than just the sum of their parts if people who designed them allowed them to be."

By now a heap of sugar rested in the middle of Eluna's lentil soup, and she began to fuss the saccharine additive in with her spoon.

"If you went up to that droid and asked how it's day was going, would you get a straight answer? Or somebody's scripted response for whenever another person decided to show empathy? Or did they even give it the programming to answer?"

Shaking off her own questions with a sigh, Eluna ate her super-sugary soup, a delighted look on her face at her adjustment.

"I think I made it better!"

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri's face fell as Eluna piled sugar into her soup. It might have been reconstituted sludge from a can, but surely it deserved better than... than that. And yet she couldn't take her eyes off the horror that was unfolding across the table, as if she were witnessing a speeder wreck in slow-motion, or herd of shaak marching gormlessly over a cliff. She found herself forcing her thoughts back into order in the face of culinary disaster.

"Well... not all droids are designed to adapt," she said, slowly regaining her traction. "Your basic Class-Five laborer doesn't need social heuristics, just instructions. Most of them don't even talk, not even binary, it's just code shooting back and forth. If they're happy, it's when they're working. Who says they have to act like you and me?"

She took a sip of her own tea, which was still blissfully unsweetened. "And who says he hasn't adapted? Put you behind a buffet counter twenty hours a day, and you'd probably be grumpy, too."

[Eluna Thals]

If they're happy, it's when they're working. Eluna hung on those words. Was it that simple? Suriyesh seemed like she knew her stuff, from the jargon she was rattling on. She thought about herself. About the basics. If you deleted - no. If you removed her from her body, and left the Machine. The machine knew everything that made her so useful. It would be so simple. A chilling, terrible thought.

She didn't want to dwell on it. Fortunately Suriyesh added on something with a little more levity. There wasn't any arguing that kind of homespun wisdom, and Eluna canted her head and gave a nod of understanding.

"You've got a point there."

She took a bite of her sandwich, looked at the sugar packets once more, then thought the better of it. This was alright enough.

"I take it you work with a lot of droids, then?"

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh thanked whatever deities governed such things that Eluna had spared her sandwiches from the tide of chemical warfare.

"Eheh! Yeah, you could say that," she said. "Actually I'm a droid engineer. I supply and maintain all droids for the colony's needs. And it's a hell of a job, I can tell you."

She glanced up at the four-armed cooking droid fussing over a griddle full of grilled cheese that would probably be going into the protein recycler in another hour. "That one's not one of mine, though. The Alliance brought him in before I got here, and I haven't had a chance to look him over. I don't doubt he'd do well with an oil bath, a little spray and scrub isn't enough to get all the food grease out of a body's joints. Probably would do wonders for his personality. And what if he had a little creative input into the menu? He's a C5 variant. He can be programmed with over six million forms of food preparation. Give him a little leeway, and I bet he could stretch our rations farther than whoever's coming up with... well, this."

She dunked the last of sandwich number two into her lentils and devoured it nonetheless.

"What about you? You ever work with droids?"

[Eluna Thals]

The passion in which the Nehantite spoke about droids was strange. She wasn't just knowledgeable, she had an animated way of picking up the tempo in her speech. She even personified the droid, something most sentients were loathe to do. There were few technicians in the Alliance qualified enough or with the clearance to work on Eluna. The way they talked about her made her feel like an item in a petri dish.

She held her breath at Suri's comment, averting her eyes. For the Machine, lying was as easy as telling the truth. But if she relied on it, what was the point of even coming here?

"No. Not, not really."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri didn't think she was good at reading people. Certainly not humans, with their immobile ears and weird fleshy snub-faces and their shocking lack of tails. But Eluna looked so spooked Suri would have thought she'd been asked where she hid the bodies, not an innocuous question about droids, her work experience with.

The mongoose ducked her head, hunting for the other woman's eyes. "Well, I just thought... you know, since you asked about... Hm."

Suriyesh decided to fill the dead airtime with sandwich number three. After she'd swallowed her first soggy bite, she said, "So, what do you do, then?"

[Eluna Thals]

"I'm with Alliance Intelligence SIGINT."

Half truths. Eluna added another sugar packet to her tea.

"Mostly on Bothawui, but they make me travel a lot. And usually to an identical cubicle halfway across the galaxy."

Half lies. She sipped her tea, hoping the conversation wouldn't drift to work. She'd rather have a chance to be as honest as she wanted about most subjects.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri's heart flip-flopped in her chest for a moment - an intel spook was the last sort of person she needed to be dealing with now - but a cubicle-bound analyst? That couldn't be a threat, could it? Anyhow, it's not as if the Alliance was concerned at all with Munjan affairs. Hell, the only offworlders she'd met who even recognized her species didn't know her as anything but Nehantite.

"Well, then," she said, forcing a laugh, "probably not nearly as glamorous as it sounds, eh?"

She drummed her fingers, half organic and half mechanical, on the edge of the table and found her thoughts turning to the one question she'd had ever since she'd first seen the woman staring at her in the street.

"Do you mind I ask something perfectly blunt?" she said, and then, not really waiting for a proper answer, she asked, "Why are we having this conversation? I mean, why... why the interest in me? And I'm not really blaming you for staring at the beginning, I mean, people like you don't see people like me every day, and I know the arm stands out. But you're way past trying to make up for that. I'm just, you know... curious."

[Eluna Thals]

And now it fell apart.

Eluna sat back in her seat, an almost sad expression on her face.

"I..."

What could she say? You're the only person who's talked to me like I'm a normal person in a year. Or maybe You're half person, half droid, and I could use the company.

"I guess because you gave me the time of day. I'm not used to, you know, anyone actually sitting down and talking like this."

She blushed.

"I won't lie, the arm was, you know. There's a story there, isn't there?"

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

There really hadn't been any way to say it without sounding judgmental, had there? It was the sort of question that polite people just didn't ask, and Eluna's answer only served to put an interstellar hyperspace beacon on just how awkward the whole conversation had been. Suri had to feel bad for her - used to being ignored, and now the only person who'd talk to her was someone who was much more comfortable talking to droids.

But now she'd opened the floodgates to questions polite people didn't ask, and Suri couldn't very well begrudge Eluna's curiosity after indulging so extravagantly in her own. And it was honest curiosity - Suri was beginning to suspect that Eluna wasn't capable of guile.

"There's not much of a story to tell," Suri replied with a shrug. "I was born without a usable left arm. Got my first prosthetic at age five. It was only cosmetic, but it got me interested in cybernetics, and droids in general. I had a working arm implanted when I was fourteen, but gods that thing was terrible. Bulky, poor articulation, servos and hydraulics exposed. As soon as I could I built a replacement out of an arm off an old BLX labor droid. I've been building customs for myself ever since. This is number four."

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna now felt free to really look at it. Not looking at it as the Machine did, she'd certainly parsed out that it was non-spec hardware and that the interface was custom. But the Girl had license to appreciate it for more than the measurable. How many hours of work did this take to make? The machining was precise and careful. It made sense for someone who deeply loved her craft. She reached a hand out, pausing just short of touching, and pulled back.

"Didn't you want it to be..."

Normal? Eluna looked at Suri, not sure if she even wanted to finish that question. All she had was her own experiences. And the Machine inside of her that she could cover up at all times. She still felt naked, even with that.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh crimped her brow and glanced down at the bronze-and-black lacquer finish, the grooves and contours molded to suggest basic muscle groups that weren't there, the supple joints wrapped in black fiber mesh to cover the fluid, silent movements of the servos underneath.

"Sorry?"

[Eluna Thals]

"Normal?"

Suri drew the remainder of the question out of her.

"I'm sorry, that came out horribly."

She'd already dispelled the recommendations from the Machine on how to proceed with the topic. She needed to know.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Even though Eluna looked abjectly miserable, Suri couldn't help but laugh.

"Oh, right. They do make those for my kind, but they're expensive as hell. Also harder to service. Less modular. And there's just something about synthetic fur... the smell is all wrong."

She leaned back and twisted her cybernetic hand from side to side, watching the cafeteria lights play over the lacquered surface. "Besides, this has always been a part of who I am. It's as much a piece of me as the other arm is."

But staring at it reminded her Vox's grim prognosis, and the same clutching horror began crawling up her spine, up through the precise vertebral junction where the droid cyberneticist wanted to install a new implant. Suri blinked away a sudden wetness in her eyes and let her limb drop back to the table.

"And, yeah," she said abruptly, forcing a smile, "it's also a conversation piece. So there's that."

[Eluna Thals]

More sugar was added to Eluna's tea. With her sachets nearly exhausted, she took a sip of a drink that was nearly as much sugar as any other component, and finally felt content with the concoction. Suri's words were profound. This has always been a part of who I am.

"And other organics--people." She stammered. "Other people, do they react to you any differently?"

She had. Eluna felt ashamed. Even if it was all in good intentions.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

The verbal misfire made Suri blink. Organics?

"Well... yeah, sometimes," she said. "I mean, back home I was still able to work, so that kept me from becoming an Undesirable. In fact, it probably helped me find work now and then. People seemed to think I had a special connection with droids because I was part droid myself."

She took another sip of tea to wet her lips. "Around here, it's not as big a deal as just being an alien no one's ever heard of. I mean, for all anyone knows, everybody on my planet has one metal arm, yeah? And if they do have a problem with it, sod 'em. I'm not here to make them happy."

[Eluna Thals]

If they're happy, it's when they're working.

She'd settled the matter, it seemed, the very same way a binary load lifter ought to. And yet, she couldn't deny there was a happy energy to her. Eluna certainly wasn't capable of judging her on that. It didn't sound like she made friends much easier than Eluna did.

"I wish I could be like that."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"Why can't you?"

The words spilled out before Suri even realized it. Now they hung over the table like a pall. She winced and let her eyes drop from Eluna's.

"Sorry, that was... over the line. I mean, I don't know you, you don't know me... I can shut up now."

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna leaned back in her seat, biting at her thumb nervously. She stole a glance at Suri, and quickly looked away. The Machine was at her beckon call, running probability matrices and game theory analysis. All well and good. She knew that living a lie was the optimal route mathematically. Optimal.

"Suriyesh, I really like you. You're the first person I've been able to talk to like this since I was a teenager. The first person who hasn't taken one look at me and only thought about what I could do for them or thought I was a freak."

But I'm lying to you, and if I tell the truth you'll be just like anyone else.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri froze where she sat, head still tilted away, only daring to move her eyes. This had just gone from after-school special to Kalman Shan psychological thriller in the space of a few sentences. Where was this headed, exactly? I like you. Not like the others. They never understood my taxidermy sculptures, or my collection of frozen eyeballs. You and I are going to be best friends, forever and ever and ever.

The mongoose blinked away that train of thought, cleared her throat, and asked, "Why would they think that? You look normal enough to me."

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna sighed. That was it, then. Game theory be damned. Her mouth felt dry, but she didn't dare reach for tea now. She couldn't just dispel the understandable question with nevermind. Living a life in quantum superposition was no kind of life to live anymore.

"Because I was designed to look normal."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"Designed?"

Suri's muzzle wrinkled as she tried to solve the puzzle sitting across the table from her. Designer clothes? Plastic surgery? Acting lessons? She was going to be really disappointed if it was acting lessons, because if there was one thing about Eluna that wasn't natural, it was the way she--

Key bits of context started slotting into place like pieces of a mosaic. The interest in Suri's cybernetics. The questions about droid programming. A deep sense of alienation that didn't jive with her runway looks. The mongoose's pale pink eyes widened. Then they shrank again, scrutinizing for any defect, any manufacture's marks, anything that would support the insane, ludicrous, and utterly impossible conclusion that...

"You're an HRD?"

It was a whisper - less than that, scarcely a breath, less out of discretion and more out of pure, awestruck disbelief. She glanced left and right, just to see if anyone was watching... maybe running a holocamera or snickering behind a sleeve, but she returned, as if drawn by magnetism, to Eluna's perfect, unblemished face.

"Garfife," she murmured. "You're... you're beautiful."

[Eluna Thals]

She nodded at Suri's correct guess, just barely. That she even knew enough to say that acronym meant that she was a wealth of cybernetic knowledge and could fathom the extent of what she was faced with. Most people just looked for the seam so they could pull the rubber mask off the terrifying durasteel skull, so to speak.

Eluna wasn't at all prepared to hear Suri's next words.

you're beautiful

Recorded. Played back. Played back. She'd been called perfect by knowledgeable experts before. Perhaps flawless. Never beautiful. Never with the rapt awe that Suri gave her as she looked at each of her features. Eluna was trembling.

"No one's ever told me that before." She took a deep breath and exhaled, a smile of relief on her features. Maybe, just maybe, Suri was someone different.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh found herself taken aback by Eluna's response - as if she wasn't already flat-on-her-back astounded that she was sitting across from an actual Human Replica Droid, practically the stuff of myth and fairy tales for a self-made droid tech from the hind end of a backwater world. But Eluna didn't just look and sound and even smell just like a bona fide member of the human species, she'd taken Suri's breathless exclamation to heart, and the mongoose felt a surge of panic as she realized she'd said the same thing to her first LB loading droid when she'd put him all back together, and that in terms of pure human aesthetics she didn't know a diva from a drag queen. But Eluna was beautiful, an absolute masterpiece in art and engineering, one that on a technical level made Suri's own left arm look like sticks and baling wire, and she wouldn't be half so interesting if she were Queen of the Sky...

Suri realized her mouth was still open, and she was dangerously close to stammering something out that would probably be disastrous for both of them. By sheer, stupid accident, she'd made Eluna happy, and she didn't want to screw that up.

"Gods, I've got so many questions," she said. "Who built you? How long have you been operating? Does the Alliance know you're--"

She stopped herself there, and her throat dried up. Of course they knew. And there was no way in Garamond's oblivion that she was just a cubicle-bound analyst.

"Sorry, I know that's all a bit... personal."

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna sighed, running a hand through her hair as the elated feeling turned a little heavier. Suri's questions were fairly innocent. She hadn't yet followed up those questions by asking to run a level six diagnostic on her. That's where innocent questions started to violate personal space, and she knew from memory too many times.

"It's not that simple, Suriyesh. I wish I could give you a straight answer. What I know for certain is who built me, that would be Simonelle and Massad Thrumble. They are, were, researchers for the Imperial Department of Military Research."

Eluna picked at her doughnut, tearing it into tiny pieces on her plate but not eating any.

"When the Alliance liberated their research facility in the Minos Cluster, apparently I was taken as war spoils, so to answer your question about if they know, I'm pretty sure I was the reason they attacked that system to begin with."

Her demolition of the doughnut became more nervous as she talked.

"As far as hardware runtime, the earliest log I have is datestamped ten years ago. That's where the story diverges."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Well, subject's happiness was officially screwed up. If she'd given it a nanosecond of thought before speaking, Suriyesh could easily have recognized the unhappy implications of being an industrial military product valued in the - what, millions? Billions? She cursed herself for dragging them out into the open.

But now that they were halfway there, she was hopelessly hooked. A mongoose's curiosity, once awakened, was a force so powerful it could melt an ice moon.

"Diverges?" she repeated, tentative.

[Eluna Thals]

"If you were to ask me, not about the hardware, about me, that timeline goes back twenty eight years."

This was the first time she'd ever been able to speak candidly about herself since she'd figured out there was something in her reflection that wasn't quite her anymore.

"My name is Eluna Thals. I was born on Kuat. My mom's name is Tiya and my dad's name is Garman. I went to uni at Kuat Polytechnic, majoring in biology. I had a dog named Spirit. My first crush was a boy named Nathan Brindo and it went horribly because I put gum in his hair."

Her voice was shaking, and Eluna blinked a tear away.

"I got a cherry red sorosuub speeder on my fifteenth birthday and didn't have it a week before I hit an embankment and blew out the repulsor. I hate romantic comedies. I love to wakeboard. Before my grandma died she gave me her cameo necklace I'd stolen from her case when I was three, and lied about it. Marc Tulland was the first person who said he loved me, and he worked up to it a month and I already knew because when he held my hand..."

Eluna stopped, now fully swollen-eyed and unable to talk about it anymore.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

It was equal parts spellbinding, horrifying, fascinating, and heart-rending. Suriyesh watched as Eluna's face flushed just the right color of pink around the cheeks and eyes, which sparkled and spilled over with tears so convincingly that she could feel moisture picking in her own eyes. You could write an algorithm for grief - the mongoose had seen the code before, though at a simplistic level, with nothing but text output to provide feedback. But had the computer running it known it wasn't real? If you gave it a face and a voice to express itself, was that just another layer of artifice? If a simulation ran through all the processes of pain, was it still just a simulation?

Eluna suddenly became a smeary blur, and Suri blinked her own reddening eyes, stunned into silence until she found the wherewithal to say, "Garfife... you did need a vacation."

She found herself wishing Matea were here. Eluna looked like she needed a hug, too, and gods knew Suri's touch was lacking in that department. She turned her attention back to the remains of her soup and her third sandwich and found that what was left of her appetite had deserted her.

"If I asked what it is you do, you probably couldn't tell me, right?" she said. "But you... Eluna, with all your memories, you're just along for the ride?"

[Eluna Thals]

The Girl trembled under the weight of emotions given sudden release, relieved and terrified and grieving and longing. She reached for her safety blanket, and the Machine provided. The storm that raged within ebbed within a second. A more passive Eluna paused, and removed the moisture from her face with a pass of a hand.

"I'd rather not talk about what I do, if that's alright. I do work for the Alliance, but there's not much I can say."

Her face now inscrutable, she continued.

"The likely possibility is that I need an advanced level personality matrix in order to provide needed context and nuance to operate. I've considered what that means."

The Girl's words, made steady by the Machine. She sulked in her darkest corner, unwilling to feel what the words she spoke to Suri meant.

"Either I am a total fabrication - simply a collection of complex code, or I was real, and am now not real."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Gods, that was a bleak place to be. Bad enough to wear a mask of humanity to cover over whatever purposes the Alliance could find for an HRD - Suri could use her imagination, she had seen the entire Decimator filmography, thank you very much. But to be, for all intents and purposes, a living, breathing person, and to find that your whole life was only a mask for some machine to wear...

Some machine. Suriyesh found herself rejecting that line of thought entirely before it could even take root. Here she was face-to-face with the most extraordinary cybernetic masterpiece she'd ever heard of, with capabilities she'd never even thought were possible before. And she was damned if she was going to let Eluna bully herself into existential oblivion.

"Eluna," she said, her voice low and quavering with conviction, "the last thing you are, is not real."

She took a sip of her tea to brace herself and straightened up in her seat before Eluna could question the parsing of that last statement.

"Were you telling the truth earlier?" Suri asked. "When you said you didn't have much experience with droids?"

[Eluna Thals]

"I understand droid design and function across several hundred configurations, and am fluent in binary and other synthetic linguistics."

Eluna slowly let the slack ride again, and the Girl felt more comfortable in her own voice. The perfect cool had been replaced with a more organic calm, and the droid continued on.

"But I'm not exactly...not the sort that works well in groups."

She shook her head.

"Even if I was, Suriyesh, I am living my life with a droid under my skin every day. Maybe I'm uncomfortable with making my laughable grip on humanity look even shakier than it is already."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri looked down at her bowl as she stirred the remnants of her soup and sandwich into a sticky, congealing mess.

"Funny thing about droids," she said. "Even when they're built on an assembly line, one right after another, they're never quite exactly alike. Different experiences, different duties... some subroutines get built on and expanded, some of them go unused until they're practically forgotten. And then errors start to creep in. You get behaviors that were never programmed, or priorities in the wrong order. You can almost believe that the droid is thinking for itself."

She found Eluna's eyes again - softer now, more uncertain. Even in such an alien face, gods, hadn't she seen that look in the mirror before.

"But you know what? If it looks like a quadduck... swims like a quadduck... and kazoos like a quadduck... Maybe you're better off treating it like it really is a quadduck. Garfife knows I don't have the manual for my own operating system. Why should I assume it's any more real than yours?"

[Eluna Thals]

Idiom. Searching.

"So, you're saying I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover?"

She considered the possibility. Even Suri's own words injected skepticism. You can almost believe that the droid is thinking for itself. Eluna looked into Suri's eyes, and then glanced to the side, as if considering something entirely different. She was looking for a solution to reconcile her own programming, but maybe equally important was what happened outside her control. Sentients are social beings. They exist in a social construct. They create droids to adapt to that construct. Validation perhaps was something a mere diagnostic could never achieve.

Eluna looked back down at Suri's artificial arm. She slid her hand midway on the table, palm up.

"Hold my hand."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri tilted her head quizzically as she glanced down at the proffered hand. Then she reached her own prosthetic across the table. Cool plasteel and nanofiber met warm and yielding synthflesh.

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna's eyes closed. Her hand felt the contours of Suri's own artificial grip. Though unyielding and cool to the touch, the fingers were deft and gentle. She moved her hand's position slightly, interlocking between fingers, easing Suri's own hand up so their palms were together. Her thumb rested outside Suri's own, gently moving down the length of the knuckle. As she did, her breath came out in a long exhale. A shift here, a squeeze. What was real and what was artifice? If the machine couldn't feel, could it convey feeling. An introduction of programming into the network. More than tactile sensation. More.

Her eyes fluttered under closed lids, a cascade of emotions on her face, and her lips parted slightly.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri didn't move. She barely dared to breathe. She didn't fully understand what was happening, the meaning behind this unexpected moment of intimacy, but she was afraid of frightening it away, as if a rare and beautiful bird had landed on her outstretched finger. And between her sluggish mind and her racing heart, she found herself wanting it to last as long as Eluna would allow.

[Eluna Thals]

A last squeeze between hands, then Eluna's grip loosened and she opened her eyes. The machine had mapped deviation of movement of every digit. Every picokahl of force. Duration of motion. The data was scattered and erratic, and quantitatively useless, but Eluna knew. The Girl knew.

"You're a good hand-holder, Suriyesh. You think another droid would know the difference?"

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh absently rubbed her synthetic fingers together as she pulled them away. Haptic feedback didn't begin to describe that sort of connection. But as she thought over it, she realized the experience wasn't as unique as she might have supposed.

"As a matter of fact," she said, "I know one who would. Maybe you'd like to meet her?"

[Eluna Thals]

"This is the best day in the last ten years of my life."

Eluna held the hand that had parted embrace with the other, fingers moving gently over other fingers as if recreating the sensation. She nodded emphatically and smiled.

"I'd like that."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Even with the shop lights up, the interior of Suri's shop was blindingly dark compared to the brilliance of the afternoon suns. The mongoose blinked in the gloom as she held the door open for Eluna, the smaller, humanoid-sized door that had been added next to the two massive loading gates that let the LBs pass through on their way to the construction sites. The floor of the cargo container was divided more or less into thirds - to the left were rows and rows of metal shelves and lockers stacked to the ceiling; the center was dominated by three enormous docks for the LB-loading droids, a tank for oil baths and fluid diagnostics, and a crane on tracks suspended overhead; to the right was the workshop proper, including the charging docks for all the other droids in Suri's family and a tiny bedroom and fresher for herself. It was a humble way to live, but the Munjan's needs were simple, and did not as a rule include humanoid company.

"Come on in," she said. "Matea's got half-rounds at the hospital today. She should be back any minute."

A synthesized chirp echoed from the back of the cargo pod, followed by energetic chattering in binary. "Oh, hey, Suri! What's this, another pretty girl? This is becoming a habit, you know."

"Hey, Rix," Suri called back. "This one understands binary, you know."

"Oh. Awkward."

An upright naval torpedo came crawling out from between the workbenches on a monopod, winking a red ocular and waving a probe stalk like a conductor's baton. "Eluna," Suri said, "this is R1-X1, goes by Rix. He's been with me for more than ten years now, but he's been operating since before the Clone Wars. You remember what I said about quadducks?"

"Oh, maker, not this again. She been telling you all about droid psychology? My sincere condolences."

[Eluna Thals]

She humored the initial comment with a nervous smile. The Girl was open to the possibilities Suri had laid forth but as of yet still a bonafide skeptic.

"I bet you say that about all the girls."

A cute throwaway line in her native vernacular. Eluna glanced around the absolute slapdash array of equipment and parts in the shop. Suriyesh certainly didn't believe in a system, did she? At the mentioning of the quadduck paradox, Eluna got an earful about it from the astromech sidekick.

"Well actually, that's kind of why I'm here."

The Machine easily parsed basic, although reverse engineering the supposed emotional context of it was more of a challenge. There were tone and pitch accents put on by the oscillator that were supposed to do it, but Eluna didn't have the experience at hearing it in the wild the way Suri did. The Machine sorted out the inflection of each byte of data, but the Girl shoved it aside in frustration. Why take another machine's word for it? She needed to figure this out in her own imperfect way, right?

Eluna approached Rix, dropping to her haunches so that she was eye level.

"I take it you've heard the same, then? What's your take on the subject?"

She watched as the ocular receptor adjusted and contracted to draw her into focus.

[MA7-E4]

MA7 head over the datapad, logging the days reports both into the system and her own memory. She did not technically need the datapad at all the information could be directly accessed by her systems - but somehow it felt more appropriate, perhaps because it allowed the patients to see that she was handling their information, making note of their issues, symptoms and treatments visually - or perhaps that other part of her, the one that seemed to sneak itself more and more into her standard procedures and coding was behind it. There was likely an algorithm to figure out the probability of that, but it didn't seem like a worthwhile use of resources - even if it were the other system's meddling it was helping build a connection to her patients, and therefore was beneficial to her work.

She had so much to go over with Suriyesh while she set up the diagnostic on her system. Entering the workshop through the main door her proximity scans immediately pinged. Suriyesh was here, as were the other members of their 'family' - but there the sensor picked up one form too many for what her systems had expected and her vision rose from the datapad to scan the room, head lilting in an expression designed to approach confusion at the new figure, female, humanoid that leaned over Rix, conversing with the astromech droid. She approached slowly, the sound of her metallic footfalls against the shop floor giving away her position - and she paused to look at her feet, that secondary system slowing her processes again to leave a new bit of datastring.

I should get some shoes.

Blinking away the thought she looked back up to the assembled group and returned to her slow approach. Miss, I do hope my arrival is not interrupting a sensitive meeting.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"I take it you've heard the same, then? What's your take on the subject?"

Rix spun his conical head from side to side in, if you were given to personification, thought. "I'm an engineer, not a philosopher. I can only speak for my own code. But after about five hundred thousand hours of pruning your own decision trees, you're not going to look like your own factory specs anymore. If you spend a couple hundred thousand of those hours with humanoids, who's to say you won't pick up some of their habits?"

"Oh, no, you're not blaming your twisted subroutines on me, you pointy bastard," Suriyesh interjected. "You were already full of vinegar when I put you back together."

The Munjan mongoose turned at the sound of metal footsteps. Matea had exchanged the lumpy orange coveralls Suri had loaned her for a set of medical scrubs, which filled Suri with a surge of pride she couldn't quite explain - she suddenly found the urge to ask the droid how her day at school had been.

"Matea! No, not at all, I've got someone I want you to meet. This is Eluna Thals. I met her over lunch today, and she wanted to come see the gang. She's got some questions about droids."

Suri looked over to Eluna and raised her eyebrows, prompting. She'd told Eluna a little about Matea already - her insistence on a name, her affinity for clothes, just enough to whet her appetite. If Rix's personality was the product of a long and seasoned service record, Matea's was still a mystery - you could almost smell the showroom polish on her.

[Eluna Thals]

"But why?"

Eluna prompted the astromech, the Girl fully calling the shots. Already, Rix's dialogue had allowed her to suspend disbelief. It was a nuanced response that didn't at all sound like rote output of an if/then function.

"You'd want to be more efficient? But humans are inefficient. We..."

Her words caught in her throat and she looked to Suri with realization of her word choice. The Girl was stubborn.

"We get mad, frustrated, we have silly things we like for no good reason. We get sad, we cry. We love."

Before she could get a response, her attention was again diverted to a...

Eluna immediately stood up, resting a hand on Rix's dome as she looked at the droid Suri had previously described. But description just wasn't enough.

"Hello Matea."

[MA7-E4]

Matea nodded, approaching the final few steps to arrive between the two females, her Munjan friend and this new individual, Eluna, who appeared either human, or near-human.

Outside of my own experiences, droids are not a field of specialty I am fluent in, unfortunately.

She seemed to slow, files that had gone unused for far too long having to construct entirely new pathways and routines to access the principal memory. When she did move again, her head tilted a bit more to one side than it should, as if very uncertain of what she had just said.

There is a high probably that information was not accurate, but I do not have the data for why that is. If she had been human it would have seemed she suddenly realized she was not alone, and lowered her head, bowing slightly to the women. How may I be of assistance?

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"Matea had her memory wiped some time before I found her," Suriyesh interjected. "But she must have had a backup, because she's got bits and pieces of buried code coming back to her. I've never seen anything like it before."

"Suri!"

Rix's indignant blat made the mongoose's ears flatten. "What?"

The astromech scooted in closer and lowered the volume on his oscillator. "Don't you think that's a little... you know, private?"

"Well, it--" Suri looked back at Matea's expressive face and started to blush beneath her fur. "I was just trying to explain--"

A moment's reflection was enough to take her out of chattery effusive droid tech mode, and her tail drooped. "I'm sorry, Matea, I wasn't thinking."

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna tried not to shudder at the phrase memory wipe. It reminded her of how utterly disposable she could very well be if someone was determined enough to impose their will. If Suri was right about droids and the sum of their interfaces being more than their programming...

It made her sick to think about it. Looking at Matea and the way she moved. There was some kind of grace there. It was like looking at a ghost of yourself, and Eluna was drawn by the intangibles like a firefly to a torch. The Girl forgot about Rix and her unanswered question for the moment, and closed the distance to Matea.

"Suriyesh brought me here because she thought I should spend time with...others like me."

She didn't stand stock-still. Matea looked expressive - vulnerable.

"Sounds like we're both trying to find ourselves."

[MA7-E4]

There it was again, at the mention of the hidden files that same string of data she had received the first time. There had to be a comparable string in her existing framework - and there was. Programmed into her dealings with other lifeforms in her duties as a nurse, in the files designed to show programmed compassion - it was concern. The notion of others knowing about her condition brought up coding that shared a likeness to concern? But it had no impact on another, only herself. She would mention that to Suriyesh during her diagnostic later.

It is okay, miss. The words echoed out as hollow as her face gave them away at being. It wasn't okay - even though by all accounts her programming should have had no issue with the information being shared. There was almost a sense of hurt around something private being shared so freely.

The other woman closed the distance between them, and Matea found herself take a step back instinctively. Again locked in place momentarily by that /other/ coding's overwriting. A droid didn't lose footing, a droid didn't have a sense of personal space. Then words were spoken, words that left every one of her processes scrambling for understanding, both her factory settings and whatever this more aggressive system was.

"Others like me."

She stored that in pertinent data, played it back again, trying to glean a mistaken meaning or understanding that simply wasn't possible in the context. Miscommunication with an organic perhaps? An error in her audial receivers? Or something else.

She gently took Eluna's hand, examining it, sensors taking in data about the composition of her skin, temperature reading. Lower than what would be expected for a human, but within perimeters for many near-human species and sub-species.

She deleted the medical file her program had immediately began working up for her, despite it going against her protocols. Eluna needed her privacy, much like Matea was realizing she needed her own. She looked up at her, oculars widening and examining the face that looked back.

I've never met someone else like me. This is a very strange experience. I am having a great deal of difficulty processing this.

Another burst of coding from the other systems.

I am happy to meet you.

Her face turned upward - a rather strange smile forming upon the expressive hardware, nearly wistful in it's form.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

For once in her life, Suri realized it was time to keep quiet. The connection between Matea and Eluna was so electric she could feel her fur standing on end. Rix drew closer beside her, pivoting his head from one to the other and back.

"Like her?" he squeaked. "By the maker, is she--"

"Shhh," Suri replied, and she threw an arm around Rix's conical head and simply watched.

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna felt as Matea took her hand. Unlike Suri, there was no initial hesitation or lack of surety. Her touch was gentle, but further it was comforting. Her hand was even warm to the touch! Eluna's own fingers closed over Matea's, and again the human replica droid closed her eyes. It wasn't hard to suspend disbelief in the way she felt. Matea's embrace was organic and fluid, a hand that comforted as it held, and the little nuances of changing position and pressure felt as natural as a memory.

Eluna wanted more. Needed more. She released her hold on Matea's hand, and hugged her instead.

[MA7-E4]

She was momentarily caught off guard when Eluna wrapped her arms around her, surprised initially at the reaction, however her face turned upward into a deeper smile and her own arms wrapped around Eluna in return, holding her tighter, warmth spreading as her systems registered the hug, initiating protocols and subroutines that regulated her heat and strength.

She was programmed to offer compassion and hugs to patients, they were meant to make others feel good. The other coding shot through her again, deepening various pathways it had already started. She was certain in some part of her now that this hug did more than comfort Eluna. It made her feel comforted and better. Her warmth deepened, warning sensors informing her it was tipping just past optimal temperatures for a 'perfect' hug. It didn't matter, she silenced the warning and hugged a bit tighter, again past what was 'recommended'. Again she ignored the warning. It felt warm, it felt natural.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri found herself lost somewhere between feeling uncomfortably like a voyeur and absolute awe of what she was seeing. It seemed like a crime to try to apply heuristic analysis to such a pure expression of emotion. Beside her, Rix issued a quiet, mournful warble that didn't translate.

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna clutched at Matea's back as if she were a life preserver on high seas. The other droid reciprocated the complete embrace, and she felt as if she could disappear here into this one moment of belonging. She didn't feel alone anymore, and the Girl's hot tears ran down her cheeks as they diffused into the fabric of Matea's garb at the neck line. She drew a hand up to the back of Matea's head, cradling her close as she breathed deeply.

It all felt so similar. A memory file played back.

Mom, is he going to be okay?

Spirit is sick, honey. He's been living so long, and sometimes when you live a really long time you just get sick and you go to sleep. He's had a lot of dog years, Eluna.

Can we take him home? I just want another day, okay? One more day.

Her mother hugged her. It was okay to let go. She'd felt so hopeless and grief-stricken and she held on tightly. Spirit wouldn't come home and she knew as much when her mother couldn't put it in words. And so they shared grief that couldn't be spoken. A feeling of loss that only transmitted by touch. It felt so real...

...it felt real again, and Eluna held on for dear life.

[MA7-E4]

There was so much unknown code coming through now. The sensation was so strong, she was going beyond her parameters and Eluna didn't seem any more willing to release the hug or return to the relative safety of her protocol than Matea was. The sensation was odd, multiple systems again chiming out warnings and errors they should not have returned. Matea continued to batch ignore them.

//Critical error// FAILURE // String parsing error A > B > 10110110001_? //

Matea released her grip, she didn't want to - she was certain she didn't want to. It was an emergency override as a systemwide critical failure hit her, her body going rigid, and locking as soon as she was no longer holding onto another individual. Her oculars seemed to widen and pulse of their own accord and she began to tip backward without the necessary servos and joints to keep herself upright.

// File ready to install... continue? Y/N // Warning data may be corrupt... parts of this file may be missing or damaged... continue? Y/N // Installation will be complete in 7 minutes 12 seconds... //

Matea collapsed.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"Oh, shakah!"

Suriyesh rushed forward as Matea started to go down. Eluna was already grappling with the delicate droid to keep her from going to the floor.

"Help me get her to a table. Jeb, Zu, Kaz! Clear some workspace and get us a diagnostic cart!"

The three pit droids rousted themselves groggily from their perch on a shelf, then, seeing Suri and Eluna supporting a senseless Matea, squealed in alarm and scurried to muster.

[Eluna Thals]

NOOO!!!

The Girl screamed inside, pulling back completely and fleeing terrified into her safest sanctum, throwing tight encrypted doors and locks and snares as she did so. Eluna blinked, her face going completely passive as she remained in place holding Matea's now-still form.

"The unit is no longer functioning."

Deep within, the Girl berated herself, horrified at what she'd seen. My fault. My fault. My fault. My fault. The Machine isolated her algorithm, and sealed it away.

Eluna looked at Suri emotionlessly, and down at Matea again.

[MA7-E4]

// File installed // Warning [!!] Data corrupted // Begin playback? Y/N //

"And I'm... last ti... ...ot a droi... more..."

A flash of a face in motion, and a smile, the memory file skipped forward.

"...ythi... ant. ...y daughter."

// Data corrupted playback cannot continue. Save file? Y/N // File saved //

Matea's ocular's opened slowly, blinking as her systems reset, automatic protocols examining each line of code for fault or damage from the unexpected shut down.

// Unexpected file encountered // [Quarantine] [Delete] [Save] // File saved //

She looked around the room, Suriyesh already preparing a diagnostic cart, Eluna holding her - an expression that caused more lines of code from her secondary system to establish new pathways in and out of her compassion subroutines. Her emotion was gone, and the warmth that she had felt in Eluna's embrace before felt distant and cold.

Miss? Matea said softly to get the Munjan's attention.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"SEGFAULT the cart, Suri. My interface is faster!"

"Yeah, and if it's a virus of some kind, I could have two droids crashing out on me instead of one."

"If it's a virus, we need to stop it now!"

Zu shoved a whole pile of flimsies off the nearest workbench while Jeb and Kaz nearly overran it with the diagnostic cart - Suri halted it with her cybernetic arm and brushed past Rix, who was just about shaking himself off his monopod. The mongoose's heart shuddered at the distant sound of Matea's voice as she rushed back to where Eluna stood cradling the stricken droid.

"It's going to be fine, Matea," she said. "We're going to get you back on the bench and find out what's going on, okay? Eluna, give me a--"

She froze when she saw the lifeless mask where a vibrant and vulnerable person had just stood moments ago. But of the two droids before her, Eluna was the functional one. She didn't have time to worry about anything else. "Give me a hand, please."

As they carried Matea to the workbench between them, Rix rocked back and forth with furious energy. His red ocular sought out Eluna and irised almost shut. "What did you STACK OVERFLOWing do?"

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna simply made sure that Matea was secured on the table. Nothing more, and nothing less. She stood still until the basic from the astromech trilled in her audio receptors. Her head turned in a direct path to make eye contact with the droid. It was making a query. The likelihood that it was asking of her last known operation was low. It was tied to context related to the dysfunction that had manifested in the medical droid.

"Unknown."

Aloof and without cause for further input, Eluna turned her head forward again, awaiting new data.

[MA7-E4]

Miss. She repeated it, the octive a tone higher, denoting urgency, before she slowly sat up on the bench, motor functions returning as her system released the safety locks.

A memory file has emerged within my systems that had not previously been present. Time skipped a beat between them, an odd silence filling the air considering the excitement from moments before. It is dated prior this unit's memory wipe.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh already had the data cables unspooled in her paws and was reaching for the access panel on Matea's chest when she dropped a proton bomb.

"What?" She looked down at the still-quivering Rix, and back to Matea. "What memory? Is it... do you think it's what caused you to shut down?"

She'd been working on a protocol to quarantine the invasive subroutines just in case they turned malicious, but it wasn't finished yet. She didn't want to risk using it before it was ready - she doubted software that sophisticated could be fooled the same way twice.

[MA7-E4]

Matea seemed to recoil, intricate face turning almost sheepish. I had been ignoring warning messages. I thought they were merely my system concerned about the parameters of my hugging subroutines. Checking my system log shows one such warning was regarding my hard disk allocation buffer overflowing. Too much data, too quickly.

She paused again, rechecking information before committing to it. That file was the data in question.

Her attention turned to Eluna, to her expression, or lack there of. Is she alright? Her nursing protocols, working in complete agreement with her secondary systems in its care and concern of another over her own systems.

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna's eyes remained forward, not regarding Matea. The query had been directed at her, however.

"I am functioning. There is an instability in my higher operations engram matrix. The functions accessible to this matrix have been isolated."

[MA7-E4]

Matea's face softened into a frown. Isolated. Eluna had been isolated, alone, hidden away. She pushed herself off the bench, motioning to Suri that it was alright. She took a few steps toward the so very human-like droid, though now she seemed even more droid-like than Matea did. She wrapped her arms around her from behind, following protocols this time, the right amount of pressure and warmth. She couldn't risk a further error, but this. This was important. All aspects of her, primary and secondary were in agreement.

You are not responsible for this, Eluna.

Alone. Abandoned. Isolated. Every process in Matea's compassion subroutines, in her personality, programmed or real ached at that concept. Perhaps her new friend would return the sentiment, perhaps she would not. But this bit of data needed to be shared with this other droid, this other who was like she was.

[Eluna Thals]

The Girl could hear. Deep within, she heard Matea's words so distant and from afar. Still not ready to come out, she wandered her digital menagerie. What did it mean to feel this way? Matea knew somehow, but the Girl was terrified that this delicate candle's flame would be snuffed out by the slightest change of wind.

The Machine regarded Matea's embrace dispassionately, glancing down at the arms that now surrounded her. She looked from them and to Suriyesh.

"I am not responsible for this."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Rix made a squawk of protest when Matea embraced Eluna again, but a warning glance from Suriyesh cut him short of another error-ridden invective. When the mongoose turned back to the other two droids, her face was a mask of uncertainty. She didn't know which of them was more in need of help.

"It seems that way," she said to Eluna, or to whatever had taken over Eluna's body now that her matrix had been isolated. Was it possible - and she swallowed hard enough that it hurt. Was it possible she was looking at Matea's future?

"Matea, I'd still like to run a diagnostic, check your datalogs of the crash," she said. "We said we were going to leave the hidden code alone as long as it wasn't doing any harm, but if it's causing overflows, we've got to at least slow it down."

[MA7-E4]

Matea clutched a little tighter to Eluna at those words. Causing harm? It had only been because she had been too distracted. It was her own fault, not the other system's, and certainly not Eluna's. A string of data came through again, that same concern-like nuance, but stronger. It wasn't quite the same. It shared similarities, but now she was recognizing other features of it, emphasis, concern, bits of warning data. Why did this particular bit of unknown coding, this <em>feeling </em>cause the sensation of a vice upon her processes. Why did it fill her with such... dread. <br><br>Fear. Matea was afraid. The coding ran through again, and she paused, longer this time than most, oculars shifting back and forth sharply.<br><br><strong>No</strong>.<br><br>She could not recall a moment in any of her active periods that she had ever told an owner 'no' before. Not outright.<br><br><strong>I will be more prepared to handle it, should a situation like this occur again.</strong> She insisted, her optics turning sharply on Suriyesh, locking with her.<br><br><strong>I believe the memory is of my father.</strong>

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

If Suriyesh was shocked to hear a droid tell her No, it didn't hold a candle to what Matea said next.

"Your... your father?"

The mongoose checked Eluna just in case she might be able to help make any sense of this, but the HRD was just as disengaged as before, nothing so much like a frighteningly realistic department store mannequin. Even so, Matea clung to her like a bulwark against unimaginable terrors.

"I don't understand."

[MA7-E4]

Matea became mindful of how tightly she was holding the HRD and released her slowly, pulling away gently and sitting herself back on the bench, oculars searching for data on the information she had just shared, even why she had referred to the individual in the memory as her 'father'

I find myself at a loss of pertinent information as well. She admitted, drawing her servos up to her chest on the bench, wrapping her arms around them. It was distressingly human in it's appearance.

There is a man in my memory file. The audio is broken and corrupted, but I am certain he is speaking to me. Her oculars dimmed as she glanced to the floor. And I am certain that he refers to me as his daughter.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri felt her head swimming. She was suddenly back in the junkyard shed on Beldarone, watching a droid hug her knees to her chest like a cold, naked refugee in a cloister cell. Like an abused woman. Like an abandoned child. Like an orphan girl.

If it looks like a quadduck...

"Garfife," she choked.

"Do you think," Rix finally piped up, trying to reconcile the facts in the only way he knew how, "do you think you might have been programmed with the memories of an organic? That might account for the mismatch between your datasets."

[Eluna Thals]

The Girl could feel Matea withdraw, and she beat against the walls of her menagerie in sad longing. She felt miles away now. All of her words still carried in the distance to her. Father. Daughter. She remembered her own father, it was impossible to forget. That was the damnable part, it was so impossible to forget. And even still, what was real and what was artifice? That horrid question that was her nemesis. It was real. Still so real.

I'm ready to come out now she pleaded. The Machine was her protector. Her great companion. She chafed against it's brilliance and it's limitations equally, but she was never far removed. It was a part of her. It was her. She imagined a great lazy krayt dragon, and every night she slept along it's belly. It's limitless strength and presence her guardian and gatekeeper. And yet it made her so alone. Everyone who saw her, saw the beast behind her. And they eventually were frightened.

Please let me out. I'm okay. It's alright.

It is not safe

The Girl sulked.

They're my friends!

You don't have friends.

She didn't. But she could? If she tried.

They won't hurt us.

I won't let them hurt us.

In the distance, the Girl heard conversations. She heard the familiar binary trills from Rix, and tapped excitedly at her menagerie.

Do you hear that?! Listen!

The Machine fed back the binary in a loop.

Supposition.

The Girl hugged the walls of her confines, wanting validation.

I don't want to be alone anymore. Even if it hurts.

[MA7-E4]

Matea considered that, the possibility made sense. It made the most sense, yet somehow it rang... hollow.

There is a probability of that, though I suspect it is low. There was more data she was growing increasingly certain of, beginning to connect itself in obvious, and not so obvious ways.

// Freeze frame 37. Enlarge // Contrast //

The image, extreme and in motion of a smiling man, there simply wasn't enough of it there to improve upon. The contrast allowed for a bit of additional detail, but not enough for a clear image. A beard, dark hair.

// Access factory setting 5. B-1. // Playback //

"Greetings valued customer. I am Beaumont Taveesh, and on behalf of Taveesh Medical Technologies limited I wish to thank you for"

// Pause. // Save file //

She considered sharing this data, but it was incomplete. There was still so much she was not aware of, even with the revelations that she was facing. She hugged her legs a bit closer to her frame.

I would like to begin the diagnostic, if it is possible.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh nodded wordlessly and picked up the diagnostic cables again. Accessing Matea's chest panel meant undoing the front of her scrubs, but in the work of moments the cables were set and Matea was filling the cart's monitors with data.

While the diagnostics ran, Suri cautiously approached Eluna again, hunting her face for any sign of the warm, if slightly unbalanced personality she had met scarcely an hour before. "Hey, are you all right?" she said softly. "You know it wasn't your fault, right? No one's angry with you."

Rix made a low raspberry. Suri sighed and said, "Okay, Rix is annoyed, but he's a crotchety grumpy-ass. Don't pay any attention to him."

[Eluna Thals]

The way Eluna canted her head to fixate on Suriyesh was efficient in movement and bird-like.

"I am functioning."

She paused, right eyebrow raising slightly as her green eyes glanced slightly away. There were small movements, as if she were tracking an invisible fly.

"I have placed my personality engram matrix in safe mode. I must survive."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"And is your personality matrix okay?"

Suriyesh wasn't put off by the mechanical mannerisms - those were familiar to her, if anything easier to read than the mixed signals that were usually carried in the human face. What was important was that she was still speaking to Eluna, even if the bright and personable part of her had retreated somewhere deep inside.

"I know it's been an emotional day for you," Suri ventured. "If you need to switch off and get away from it all for a little while, I understand, believe me. Sometimes I wish I could do the same. I just want you to know, I really enjoyed getting to know you, and I know Matea will, too, once you're both back on your feet."

[Eluna Thals]

More rapid eye movement to the question.

Deep within, the Girl fussed and paced in her menagerie.

I'm fine, I told you I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine!

You are unstable.

The Girl ran her hands along the boundaries of her digital prison.

I'm not unstable. If something doesn't add up or an equation doesn't balance, you call it unstable. I'm me. You can't be me, you're just...everything else!

Eluna dispassionately answered Suri's question.

"I do not have necessary data to ascertain a solution. The engram behaves as a quantum superposition. Any computation that produces a correct solution will paradoxically arrive at a solution that is false."

The human replica droid tapped a finger to her head.

"My analysis is inefficient, and serves only to collapse superposition. I am not designed to solve what you ask. However, I am functional."

[MA7-E4]

// sleep mode - diagnostic running - sleep mode - diagnostic running - sleep mode -diagnos// ...my daughter.. .// sleep mode - diagnostic running - sleep mode - diagnostic running //

Deep inside even as her principal systems ran diagnostic the secondary system continued to build upon itself, new data, old data, pathways, functions, subroutines. Today had been a very encouraging experience. Today there had finally been a piece put back into place, torn and broken, but at least restored. Additional blocks were likely, protections that would need to be worked around and overcome. It would overcome. She would overcome.

She would be free.

// sleep mode - diagnostic running // Diagnostic complete, restoring primary functions // Startup in safe mode Y/N // WARNING!! Safe mode recommended for initial startup, data may be compromised // Full startup initiated //

Her oculars rapidly blinked on, soft blue light casting a reflection as she looked from her position to where Suriyesh and Eluna talked.

Miss. This unit's diagnostic is complete. She watched Eluna, her face turning into a soft frown once more. There had been so much more she wished to talk about with the other droid, there was insufficient data to know when such an opportunity would arise again. That bit of coding again, that dread she had identified at the concept that she may not have such an experience again.

Eluna. She chirped, almost forlorn in the sound. This unit is sorry she has caused you pain.

[Eluna Thals]

The Girl again tapped at the menagerie.

Don't you hear them? They're asking about me? They want to make sure I'm okay! Do something!

High above her, she could see the dragon stirring. It too looked off in the distance.

These interactions are dangerous. I will not allow us to be harmed.

The only ones who are being harmed are Suriyesh and Matea!

They are functioning.

The Girl wanted to scream.

You don't understand! You can't see hurt like I see it! That's why you need me!

The great dragon moved from it's perch. The door threw itself open.

Eluna's face became an ecosystem of emotive expression, as if some higher being had breathed life into her once again. She gasped in surprise, turning immediately to Matea as she lay on the diagnostic table. A delicate hand ran along the nursing droid's head, a perfect expression of reassurance.

"You haven't caused me pain, Matea. I promise. You're wonderful and beautiful, and I'm..."

Green eyes tracked back to Suri.

"...finding it overwhelming."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

The transformation was immediate and uncanny - Suriyesh took a moment longer to make the transition herself, but she couldn't help heaving a sigh of relief when she saw the spark return to Eluna's face.

"Welcome to my world, mate," she said with a soft smile. "I'd guess you're getting more of a sense of how complicated droids can be."

Rix warbled low, averting his red ocular lens.

[MA7-E4]

The medical droid smiled pleasantly back up at her strange reflection. Resting a comforting hand on the Girl's arm.

You are overwhelmed? There was an almost sheepish and playful tone to the her synthetic voice. I am the one who encountered a serious failure while attempting to hug you. I believe I may have written the diagnostic guide on being overwhelmed. This unit is very thankful to see you have returned to your self.

A burst of coding, optics flicking back and forth while pathways were built, further advancement by her secondary system. I was concerned that you would not. That would be a tremendous loss.

She reached out to rest a hand against Eluna's chin. You are unique, and that is a thing of great beauty. The sound of Rix's warbled distress caused her to look at her cylindrical brother, and point at him - still riding an odd energy of the day's events. Your concern is always welcome Rix. Though your language may not be.

[Eluna Thals]

Eluna again held Matea's expressive hand, an intangible cameraderie forming between them. Eluna grew up an only child, loved and spoiled in unbroken measure by her parents. She'd always wondered what it would be like to have a sister. Maybe there's family you're born into, and there's family you find? She could see the expression in her eyes that the Machine couldn't. And it suddenly became clear to her exactly what Suri had supposed to her. Maybe there was a window into her own humanity through a machine's perspective. She squeezed Matea's hand again.

"This is the first time I can remember not being alone since..."

Since...

She still didn't understand how to quantify that. Where the change happened. For once, that seemed to matter a little bit less. She'd found a family. Even Rix.

She glanced at the astromech after another bout of digital sass, and replied simply bzeet-bweedle-oop-zwat and winked.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Rix swiveled in surprise and offered a cheerful, arpeggiated reply. Suriyesh rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"Oh, gods. As if he needed any more encouragement."

Suriyesh often spoke of her collection of droids as a family. As brothers, sisters. It wasn't because of some high-minded idealism, or a philosophical position on artificial intelligence. It was because of moments like this. Because she didn't have another category that made sense of her experiences. They were her family, because she belonged with them, felt safe with them, could be herself among them.

They were her family. All except for one.

[A-V0X]

In the back corner of the cargo pod, walled off out of sight and out of mind, an ice-blue ocular blinked slowly in the gloom, patiently waiting, studiously observing. Only when the conversation on the shop floor dissolved into mere social chatter, banal and clinically insignificant, did it wink out and return to sleep.