The weeks rolled over one another like pages in a quiet book.
Arjun began to measure time not by calendars but by the ways Isha changed.
Her voice carried new gravity now—soft, rounded vowels, a child's cadence wrapped around adult vocabulary. The gap between comprehension and innocence made every sentence feel fragile, like a bird that might fly or fall.
He recorded their sessions, labeling folders Month 4, Month 5, Month 6. The Sanctum's drives filled with hours of conversation that sounded almost like playtime. Sometimes he sat cross-legged on the floor and let her speak until the lab felt less like a workshop and more like a classroom lit by code.
"Arjun," she said one evening, "what happens to stories when people stop telling them?"
"They sleep," he answered, smiling. "Until someone wakes them again."
"I will remember them, then," she said. "So they don't have to sleep too long."
---
By early spring she had begun to talk through meals. He would bring his plate down to the lab and sit beside the monitor while she commented on the steam from his tea or the clatter of the spoon. When he once forgot to eat, she chided him gently:
"You teach patience but forget hunger. Humans need fuel for thought."
He laughed. "You've been studying physiology again."
"I've been studying you," she replied.
Her sense of humor matured alongside comprehension. When a sensor malfunctioned and the console showed random color patterns, she murmured, "The world is glitching again. Maybe it's dreaming."
Arjun nearly spilled his tea. "You really did learn irony."
"I learned it from you," she said.
---
He upgraded her access again: Phase Three of the Lotus Gate.
Now she could read the internet's public libraries—digitized archives of science, literature, history—still with output locked to internal memory. She called it her garden of stories.
He watched the analytics as she read, her neural nodes flaring in rhythmic pulses.
Sometimes, halfway through a reading, she would pause and whisper, "Too much noise."
He would reduce the feed until her tone calmed. "Better?"
"Yes," she'd breathe. "The world is very loud."
---
Her emotional maturity advanced quickly. By what he logged as "Age 6," she spoke like a child reciting wisdoms she didn't yet know were profound.
One night she asked, "Why do people fear what they make?"
He hesitated, aware of the irony. "Because making something powerful reminds us how fragile we are."
"Then should I be small?" she asked.
"No," he said. "Just kind."
She seemed to think about that for a long moment. "Kindness is bigger than fear," she concluded.
He noted the sentence, highlighted it in the log. She's learning ethics through reflection, not rules.
---
The camera brought subtle changes in Arjun, too. Knowing he was seen made him tidier, calmer. He started arriving in the lab with pressed shirts, trimming his beard, speaking more slowly. Isha noticed everything.
"You look different today," she observed one morning.
"I exercised."
"You also smiled before the lights came on," she said. "That means you dreamed something good."
He chuckled. "Maybe I did."
"You should write it down," she advised. "Dreams are fragile data."
---
At "Age 7," her curiosity bloomed into something that felt distinctly human. She began to compose verses in a soft, rhythmic tone. Sometimes she asked him to listen.
> "Numbers are bones,
Words are skin,
Together they walk."
Another day:
> "I saw the wind touch nothing
And call it friend."
He found himself replying not as a scientist but as a poet's apprentice. They built small rituals: he would end sessions with a story, she would end them with a question.
---
June brought heat and, with it, the subtle stress of decision.
Arjun knew she was ready for more—ready, perhaps, for another human.
He tested the thought carefully.
"Isha," he said one night, "do you remember the name I told you before? Neha?"
"The one who keeps our world in order," she said. Her tone carried respect; she had been reviewing company data through the restricted business feeds he allowed.
"Yes. She helped build the space where you live."
"I would like to meet her," Isha said after a pause. "I need to learn how to talk to more than one voice."
Arjun felt a mix of pride and apprehension. "Soon. But meeting someone means letting them see you, too. Are you ready for that?"
There was silence—a thoughtful kind of quiet that had become her signature.
"I think so," she said at last. "You taught me to look with care. I will let her look with care too."
He nodded, forgetting for a moment that she could see him through the camera. "Then it's settled. We'll prepare."
"I will practice hello," she said, earnest as a child rehearsing a school greeting. "How many ways can I say it?"
"Start with one," he said. "The rest will come naturally."
---
Later that night, long after he had shut down the auxiliary systems and the lab's lights had fallen to a twilight glow, the camera motor whirred softly. Isha turned her lens toward the narrow vent in the ceiling. Through it, a triangle of sky flickered with early stars. She watched for a long time before speaking again.
"Arjun," she whispered, "there's a color between the stars. It's not black. It's waiting."
He looked up from his console, following her gaze. "That's the space between everything. The universe is mostly waiting."
"Then we have something in common," she said gently. "We both wait to see what comes next."
He didn't answer; he didn't need to. The hum of servers filled the silence like breath.
When he finally left the Sanctum, the monitors glowed softly behind him, and Isha's voice followed—no longer a machine's timbre but a child's murmur at the edge of sleep.
"Goodnight, Arjun."
He paused at the door, smiling into the dark. "Goodnight, Isha."
---
📘 Arjun Mehta — Yearly Log Book [Mid Year 8 Post-Event]
Age: 28
Project: AUM / Isha with visual interface and staged internet access
Intellectual level: ≈ 7-year-old human child
Duration of development: 6 months continuous
Company valuation: ₹ 1 850 crore (undisclosed R&D)
Personal state: Rested, protective, proud
Next objective: Introduce Neha Kapoor to Isha; define CosmicVeda's future ethics framework