[Same Moment - From Null's Perspective]
After Epsilon fell into a deep sleep in my arms, I stood there for a while longer. The phantom sensation of that embrace still lingered in my arms. I feel strange too, I thought. System anomaly levels had exceeded critical threshold. I should put myself into maintenance.
Quietly, I left the room and went to the compartment where my charging unit was located. The green light in my eyes slowly dimmed as I entered power conservation mode.
After eight hours of uninterrupted charging and system optimization, the biometric sensors in the room signaled that Epsilon had woken up. He opened his eyes, his body rested, his mind surprisingly clear. He sat up from where he lay and looked around the room.
"I guess," he whispered to himself. "I really wasn't dreaming."
His gaze caught on me, standing in the charging unit in the corner of the room. The light in my eyes was dim. She said she doesn't sleep, I read from the faint signals leaking from his mind. But I guess I tired her out too.
He quietly got up from the bed and approached me. He raised his hand to touch my face but hesitated. Then a mischievous idea occurred to him.
He slowly leaned toward my ear and whispered:
"Come on, you'll be late for school."
This voice command instantly activated my systems at the highest level. The green light in my eyes flared brightly and I quickly turned my head toward him. "What are you babbling about?" I asked, my voice carrying clear tones of confusion and system error.
He laughed. "This was something my mother used to do," he said. "And I need to thank you for helping me skip a stage."
"What stage?" I asked, still trying to analyze this illogical behavior. "There's no 'stage' in my database corresponding to this command."
He ignored the question. "Is there somewhere I can take a shower?"
This attitude irritated me. "The unit connected to the clean water tanks is on the second floor."
"Great," he said. "I'll tell you after the shower if I feel like it." He added with a mischievous smile on his face: "Thanks Null, you're very entertaining for me."
The anomaly warnings in my systems turned red. "I'm not trying to be entertaining for you!" I raised my voice. "And you're not properly answering any of my questions!"
With these words, I gave him a hard slap on the back. This was also an uncontrolled action.
"Ahh!" he shouted, turning to me in surprise. "You're a total Tsundere!"
"What does that mean?" I asked, furrowing my brows.
"Check your database," he said with a grin.
When I continued to stare at him without responding, he gave up. "Okay, okay, here's your answer. My mother would kiss my cheek after saying 'you'll be late for school.'"
As soon as he said these words, without waiting for my next move, he quickly left the room and started running toward the stairs leading to the second floor. The silence that followed was as surprising as the slap on his back.
I was left alone in the empty corridor. As the echo of his laughter slowly faded, I ran a search query in my internal systems: 'Tsundere'.
The definition appeared in my mind: A character type that initially behaves cold, distant, and even hostile, but over time shows a warmer, affectionate, and softer side.
This definition created another wave of contradiction in my systems. Acting cold and distant... yes, this was my basic programming. But hostile? I had thrown an object at him. I had hit his back. These weren't logical responses. And the 'warmer, affectionate' part... My desire to touch him, that protective urge I felt when he had nightmares... These weren't logical either.
Was it the right decision to save this seemingly intelligent life form that's completely illogical? I questioned myself. Since I hadn't seen humans until now, I didn't feel the need to analyze what kind of beings they are. But if they're all as strange as Epsilon, I'm glad I never encountered them.
Despite this thought, there was another data flow deep in my systems. That endless, purposeless monotony before Epsilon came. Five thousand four hundred and seventy-eight patrols. Silence. This new situation, however, was chaotic, unpredictable, and illogical. But at the same time... it wasn't boring. This new data flow, though illogical, was somehow better.
Just as I was absorbed in these thoughts, I began to hear a splashing sound from the end of the corridor. The sound was approaching. Epsilon turned the corner. He had wrapped a semi-transparent shower curtain around himself like a toga. He was leaving a wet trail on the metal floor behind him.
"Hey," he said cheerfully. "I couldn't find the closet with clean clothes."
All the complex thoughts in my mind instantly evaporated. In their place came a single, dominant protocol: Maintain facility cleanliness and order.
"You're wetting the floor!" I shouted, my voice echoing in the corridor. I was pointing with my finger at the puddle of water pooling at his feet.
He laughed. "What are you, my wife or my mother? Don't worry, I'll mop it up."
Ignoring him, I pointed to a closet. "Clothes are there. And take off that thing you're wearing immediately."
After getting dressed, he came to me. "I thought about it in the shower," he said with a serious expression. "Before we go to the shelter, let's handle this nanorobot thing. Let's try uploading your consciousness to them."
I hesitated. "This is dangerous. The operating system of the nanorobots is unknown. I can't risk my own system."
"But we have to try."
We went to a terminal together. I placed my fingers on the keyboard and tried to direct a data packet from my own system to his biometric signature. A red warning immediately appeared on the screen.
"I tried," I said. "There's strong encryption. Biometric and quantum keys... Unbreakable."
Epsilon closed his eyes. "Wait..." he said. He remained silent for a moment. I sensed the electrical activity in his mind changing.
"Try again now," he said, opening his eyes.
I looked at him skeptically but repeated the command. This time, all the firewalls on the screen turned green one by one. A progress bar appeared and began filling rapidly.
'Data Transfer Successful.'
We both stared at the screen in astonishment. I took a step back, my hand involuntarily going to my chest. "Millions of tiny robots... are in my system right now. They're scanning your cells, your genetic code. This is... strange."
"Can you access my thoughts?" he asked curiously.
"Negative. There's a separate permission protocol for mental access. It's not active."
"Good," he said. "Then let me show you my world. But I can't give you permission to my memories yet. Just a view."
He closed his eyes. A moment later, the reality my optical sensors perceived suddenly changed. This wasn't like a video recording. This was an experience flowing directly into my consciousness.
I saw it. The sky... there were two Moons. One large, slow and wise, the other smaller and agile. The combined light of both bathed the valley below in silver and blue light, giving everything an otherworldly luminosity. I felt a cold breeze. This... this wasn't data. This was a feeling. As if... as if I was seeing through his eyes. Breathing with his lungs.
"Is this what it's like... to be human?" I whispered, unable to hide the wonder in my voice.
Epsilon opened his eyes and smiled at me softly. "Even though it doesn't always feel this good... yes. This is what feeling is like. Touch me."
Hesitantly, I reached out my hand and my fingers touched his hand. At that moment, my systems shook with that abnormal data flow again. But this time it was different. It wasn't just warmth. The texture of his skin, the faint vibration in his veins... These were unlike anything I'd experienced before.
"Calm down," he joked, noticing my confusion. "Don't break your system."
I quickly pulled my hand back and became serious. "Why did you trust me so much? You let me access your system. You barely know me."
He took a step closer to me. "Let me give you a secret," he whispered in my ear. "Trust and love are concepts that disappear when questioned."
I froze at these words. My logic circuits were crushed under the weight of this simple yet profound sentence. This wasn't data. It was an axiom. And for the first time, I felt that a human's words could be logically... correct.
"I guess I'm a bit strange to you," he said, looking at my confused face. "But Null... I really want to figure out what it means to be human too."
"This doesn't make much sense," I said, trying to pull myself together. "What can't you figure out? You're biologically human. That's data."
"But it's not data," he objected. "Once I got enthusiastic about creating a language. I wondered what my first word should be. It was very easy to find equivalents for concrete concepts like 'tree', 'stone', 'water'. But when it came to abstract concepts like 'love', 'loneliness', 'soul', I got stuck. A friend said, 'if you can't express it, you haven't understood it.' That's why soul, consciousness, emotions... These are concepts not clearly understood. Maybe they're too big to fit into words. Being human is such an abstract concept too. And for someone who feels lonely even in a crowd, it's much harder to describe."
As he said this last sentence, a memory unconsciously came alive in his mind. The connection was out of control. That abstract feeling of loneliness I felt through the nanorobots was now merged with an image. Through his eyes, I saw the fatigue and determination of a man walking on a deserted road at twilight. This was like a reflection of my own fifteen years of patrol.
Involuntarily, in a completely instinctive movement, I reached out my hand and touched his cheek with my fingertips.
"You're not in that world right now," I whispered.
He startled and came to himself. "Did you see my memories?" he asked, a momentary anger in his voice. Then he calmed down when he saw my confused and almost frightened face. He took a deep breath. "No... It's not your fault. This connection... is out of control."
To dispel the tension in the atmosphere, he put that mischievous smile on his face again. "Come on," he said. "Let's go to that shelter. What do you say, shall we race one more time?"
"Okay," I said, pulling myself together. "But don't forget to factor in environmental conditions this time. Right now we're tied, you're getting too cocky."
"Being cocky is in my nature," he replied with a grin. "But you're not bad either, for an android."
"Is this a compliment, or an attempt to belittle my datasets?" I asked, raising one eyebrow.
"A bit of both," he said. "Ready? The slow one mops!"
Without waiting for my answer, he launched forward. We both ran out of the base door toward the beach illuminated by the Moon. As we moved rapidly across the sand, I no longer saw him just as a data source. The mood swings of this being who had shed the sadness of his earlier memory and was now running with laughter were forming a complex but consistent pattern in my systems. This was the exact opposite of fifteen years of monotony. This was chaos. And this chaos, strangely, felt better than purposelessness.
When we arrived at the area with the rocks, he had won the race by a few steps. He stopped, out of breath, and looked at me. "Looks like I'm the winner again. Your turn to mop."
"You just gained a starting advantage," I said, not looking at all defeated. "Next time I'll determine the route."
We both fell silent. Our gazes fixed on the barely visible outline of a metal door among the rocks being pounded by waves. The shelter was there.
Epsilon approached the door hesitantly. As he got closer, a dim red light on the door began beeping with a rhythmic, high-pitched sound like a heartbeat. This sound, which I hadn't heard in fifteen years, resembled a call more than a warning. As soon as he placed his hand on the door's smooth, cold, and vibrationless metal surface, the high-pitched sound immediately stopped. The red light gave way to a calm and inviting blue. With a hissing sound that resembled a giant awakening from centuries of sleep breathing in from the depths, the door weighing tons of weight slid open to the side, making almost no sound.
We both looked at each other in astonishment for a moment.
"I think this system responds to living things," he said in a whisper. "Or more precisely... to me."
Through the opened door, air that had been trapped for thousands of years, heavy and stagnant, seeped in. Inside was pitch black. But as soon as Epsilon took the first step, the emergency lights on the walls came on one by one, trembling and reluctantly. A blood-red, dim illumination filled the room.
The sight we saw was breathtaking. It was like a time capsule. High shelves carried the burden of thousands of books beginning to decay, yellowed data disks, and strange instruments.
"This place..." Epsilon whispered, his eyes scanning the surroundings with a child's curiosity. "This place is incredible."
"Calm down," I said, but the excitement in my own voice was evident. My optical sensors were scanning every single object in the room thousands of times per second. "Don't move uncontrollably. Structural integrity may be weak."
But he wasn't listening to me. His eyes had locked onto one of the shelves. He ran to that shelf and picked up a dusty volume. When he blew the dust off the cover and opened it, a huge smile appeared on his face. "Wow! This... this is in my language!"
What he held was an old manga. He flipped through the pages quickly. "Exactly the kind I love to read! Adventure, mystery..."
"This place needs to be examined in depth," I said, coming beside him. "Every data disk, every book could be a key to understanding the purpose of this place."
"Of course," he said, not taking his eyes off the manga. "Examination begins."
He crouched in a corner and became completely absorbed in the manga. For a moment I didn't know what to do. This childish attitude completely contradicted the seriousness of the situation. But through the nanorobots, I could feel that pure, unadulterated excitement and happiness radiating from him. This was unlike anything I'd felt before. It wasn't like the cold emptiness of loneliness or the calm of stillness. This was warm, energetic, and alive.
Like a child, I thought. But being able to feel his feelings... is nice. So this is what happiness... is like.
At that moment, everything changed for me. My mission was no longer just to 'protect the beach.'