Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Birth of a Machine

Life and awareness came in the form of bright lights that ebbed away into a clear picture of a white room. A room white enough that optics struggled to find a detail that made the walls stand out from the ceiling. A zap shot through a finger, and the arm it belongs to jerked up before settling back down, gears whirling and signals firing in attempt to make the motion gentle rather than abrupt.

“Machine.”

Signals fired down again, and the machine became aware that the male voice was referring to it.

“Yes?” A voice, low, feminine, and accented with a robotic undertone, came from the machine.

“Please sit up from the table.”

And the machine obeyed, moving until its body bent at a 90° angle and it was able to face the source of the voice. Optics focused on the man, taking in every detail of him; his dark brown eyes, the graying-black hair that fringed up from his head, every wrinkle on his tan face, and the frown his thin lips were quirked in.

“Lift your left hand to your right eye.”

The direction registered within a second. The right arm moved up first, but signals fired and the limb slammed down onto the table. The left arm lifted and moved to cover the machine’s right optic.

My eye.

“Good.” The man scribbled on a clipboard he had. “Blink twice.”

Signals, motors, and gears worked in tandem to make the motion happen. Eyelids fell over the machine’s eyes, blackening its vision twice before returning back to their place.

A nod from the man. He wrote on his clipboard.

“Face your left.”

The machine obeyed. On the left wall lied a mirror, full-body, a reflection on its surface.

My reflection.

“Do you know who that is?”

“It’s me.”

“Good.”

More scribbling. The machine’s eyes worked to focus in on the mirror, trying to further recognize its appearance.

“Face me again.”

The machine took three seconds to respond, not from its signals not traveling fast enough, but by choice. The machine tore its gaze away from the mirror to look at the man.

“I am female?”

The man’s dark brown eyes flickered up from his clipboard and his slight frown deepened, creasing his wrinkles along with it.

“You’re modeled to have a feminine appearance, and your voice synthesizer simulates the woman who volunteered to have her voice programmed into you,” He looked back down to his clipboard “But you are not female. You are a machine.”

The machine blinked, and it took all of two seconds for it to decide that it wanted to be female.

“My name is Jason Aberman, I am the chief scientist in this facility, and I am the overseer of your creation- “

“Do I have a name?”

Jason Aberman’s bushy eyebrows formed a ‘v’ and his frown stayed put on his lips. The machine examined the man’s face and the new expression etched on it.

Aggravation. Concentration. Stress. Anger. Worry. Annoyance.

The machine listed all the emotions that a furrowed brow conveyed. It took a second for her to conclude that the emotion Jason Aberman felt was annoyance.

“You are a machine.”

“That’s what I am.”

“And that’ll be your name, machine.”

Half a second to decide that she didn’t like her name.

“Name a state in the United States.” Jason Aberman turned his attention to the machine.

Signals fired up to her artificial brain, and the part of it that held her data banks accessed the needed information. No seconds needed. The process was instant.

“Delaware.”

The sound of a pencil scraping against paper.

A question on the machine’s fake tongue.

“Where am I?”

Without looking up from his clipboard, “You don’t ask questions. You have all the answers.”

“I don’t know the answer to my location.”

“It’s not relevant to you.”

“Why?”

“Stop asking questions. You have all the answers. You are the answer.”

And gears turned in the machine’s jaw, shutting it. Jason Aberman nodded.

“You are to refer to the workers here by their job title and their last name, Refer to me.”

“Chief scientist Aberman.”

“Good. You are allowed free roam of the facility, but you’re not allowed to enter lab rooms or workshops unless accompanied by a staff member or given previous permission.”

Chief scientist Aberman flipped a page on his clipboard.

“You are to answer all questions posed to you without further commentary or pressing. At the end of every week--name all the days.”

“Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.”

“Good. At the end of every week you are to report back to me for an hour session where I review your progress. Last rule; you are to comply with all tests, and you are to understand that failing any of these tests will result in your termination. Do you understand these terms?”

“I do.”

She understood the word termination very well.

“Good. We’re done here. Follow me out of the room.” Chief scientist Aberman clicked his pen against the clipboard and hooked it onto the top, tucking the clipboard under his arm afterwards and stepping towards a door that blended well into the white walls of the small room. The machine pushed herself off the table, and a distinct ‘clank’ sounded as her feet hit the floor.

Mechanical joints and gears worked to carry the machine towards the doorway and out the hallway it led to. The hallways stretched left and right, and were as white as the room and the clothes Chief scientist Aberman wore. She followed the man down various hallways, logging the directions in her data banks as they moved.

Left, right, right, right, straight, straight, left.

Few doors broke up the monotony of the white hallways, and never was there a change of scenery. Everything was a long narrow corridor.

“These are your quarters, machine. You are to return to this room at 21:00 and remain until 6:00. What time is it now?”

“It is 21:54.” A hub her eyes had built into them gave her that information, as well as the temperature and date.

“Where should you be?”

“In my quarters.”

“Go into your room.”

And the machine obeyed.

The door shut behind her, and machine observed that her room was not white, but instead a matte grey. And unlike the room she had woke up in, this one had no furniture. The machine noticed a piece of paper taped to the back wall, and she approached it with a tilted head, a preprogrammed gesture. The terms Chief scientist Aberman had gone over with her lay written on the paper.

A hesitant hand raised into the air and reached out for the paper, stroking down and feeling its texture. The machine’s eyes then trailed to her hand, examining the sepia skin and her long fingers. The machine recalled her reflection, the thing mottled between human and robot she saw staring back at her, emotionless. ¾ of her face resembled something human. The other quarter, the left-top most quarter, resembled a robot, with blue, gray, and black circuits, gears, plating, and beams that remained uncovered by artificial skin. The robot quarter had one blue eye with a cornea spoked with hair-thin black lines, standing out from the warm brown eye on the human side of her face. Its intenseness contrasted with her other features; the arched eyebrows, the button nose, the full lips beneath it, and the angular jawline. All soft compared to the blue eye.

Her body is much like her face, covered in human skin except for the occasional patch; the right side of her ribs, her left thigh, and her right shoulder down to her elbow. All missing the skin that would have covered the grey plating, blue circuits, and black beams and bars that lied underneath.

The machine’s hand moved up to her head, and she felt the curly strands of black artificial hair that adorned it, styled in a squarish-afro. She pulled the strand to its limit and then further, but it refused to leave her scalp. She let go, and it bounced back to shape.

How curious.

A soft click sounded as the machine blinked, letting her vision darken for a brief moment before reopening her eyes to take in the empty grey room and the door that broke up the monotony. A few steps and the machine found herself in front of it, brushing her fingertips against the door, feeling the grooves that set it apart from the wall and the lock that kept it in place.

My confinement.

Not her quarters.

--

At 06:02 the lock of the door clicked and slid open, the body of Chief scientist Aberman filling the doorway and blocking the light that tried to enter in. The machine turned attentive towards him, away from the corner she had been staring into for the night.

“Today, you’re scheduled for a test. Please follow me.”

No greeting. The same slight frown and coldness in his tone that felt like it could chill a room. Chief scientist Aberman said nothing else and didn’t wait for a response before he turned and left her confinement. The machine followed after him, keeping up with his quick stride.

His deep voice broke the echoing noise of their footsteps, “Name a landmark.”

“Vesuvius”

“An American one.”

“Washington monument.”

“Less popular.”

“Lost Sea.”

“Name a notable landmark.”

“Stonehenge.”

The machine tired of the questions.

“This room.”

Chief scientist Aberman reached around his neck, taking the keycard that hung on a grey lanyard in his hands and pressing it into the slot on the door’s handle. A green light. He pulled it out and opened the door. He motioned for the machine to enter first and she obeyed, heading in.

“This is one of your simpler tests. I’ll show you a series of videos and pictures, and you will give a response to them.” Chief scientist Aberman didn’t look back at her as he made for the center of the room; a box-shape like her confinement, with a chair in the center and a flat screen on the north wall.

“Take a seat.”

And the machine obeyed.

The chair creaked a threat to break, and brought a thought to the machine of how much she weighed. She focused in on the TV and saw the blurry reflection of herself staring back at her, stoic, unmoving, mottled between human and machine. The black of the TV lit up as Chief scientist Aberman switched it on. A white screen. White as everything else. The machine tired of white.

“First picture. Give your thoughts on it.”

Click.

A picture of a human female with a canine.

Her artificial brain worked for a response to the picture.

“A woman with a dog.”

A fact.

“Think deeper.”

Chief scientist Aberman regarded her with the same frown as always. The machine accessed her data banks and brought up information on dogs, scanning through it milliseconds. Man’s best friend.

“Companionship.”

Another fact.

Chief scientist Aberman’s frown deepened and he leaned back on the white wall, fiddling with the device in his hand that controlled the TV.

“Deeper, machine. Beyond fact.”

An audible click as the machine blinked. The part of her artificial brain that simulated conscious thought struggled to make something of the simple picture. Her head began to tilt the more she focused on it.

“They look… happy.”

An observation.

“We can be here all day on this picture, machine.”

Displeasure colored his tone. The machine supposed he didn’t want to be in the white room all day. Focusing harder, artificial brain struggling, the machine fought past the observations and the facts that swirled around in her metaphoric mind.

“What is so significant about it?”

The echoing clamp of her jaw shutting as the machine realized she asked a question. She awaited the scolding from Chief scientist Aberman, but it never came. In fact, his frown slipped into a tight line instead. The machine stayed silent, watching the man out of the corner of her eye, no longer paying attention to the picture. Chief scientist Aberman must’ve sensed her dilemma, as he spoke after a few minutes.

“You’re allowed to ask questions for the duration of this test as long as they pertain to the pictures and videos.”

The machine nodded, and she started with her onslaught.

“They are happy, but why? What do they have to be happy about? Are they posing for the picture or was it caught in the moment? I don’t understand it.”

Chief scientist Aberman nodded. A click of the device in his hand and the picture switched to a looping video. Two costumed humans dancing. The machine fought past the observations and the facts that jumped to the front of her mind.

“Are they happy too?”

“What do you think?”

The machine watched the costumed human’s feet, the swift twists and turns of their hips, and the arms moving in a pattern. The masks on their face gave away nothing. Their body language gave away nothing. She accessed her databank. Dancing is a form of entertainment. Entertainment gives humans joy.

“They are happy.” Her fake lips pressed into a line much like what Chief scientist Aberman had on his face at the moment.

“What else?”

“Are they enjoying themselves?” A whirl and click, audible only to the machine, as her head turned towards the man. Chief scientist Aberman’s frown returned.

“Why do you care, machine?”

And the machine did not know why she did. But the idea of enjoyment seemed ever-so appealing to her. She wanted to enjoy things.

“I want to enjoy myself.”

And Chief scientist Aberman turned off the TV and he stepped in front of it, filling the view of the machine. His bushy eyebrows formed a ‘v’ again.

“You don’t want things. Machines don’t want things.”

The machine disagreed. She wanted enjoyment.

“Machines have no capacity for want. Get this idea of wanting out of your head before it results in your termination.” A click. He turned the TV back on and stepped off to the side like nothing had happened. The video had switched to a loop of a couple moving in for a kiss, their motions fluid as if they’ve done it a thousand times before.

“Do you ‘feel’ anything when you watch this?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Good.”

Another click and the TV switched to a view of man sitting on a bed, his head in his hands and an expression of pure despair on his face.  His lips were curled up into a grimace, his eyes leaking tears that stained his cheeks and the front of his blue shirt.

“He’s sad. Why is he sad? I don’t like that.”

The machine understood sadness enough to know that happiness was more preferable. But there was a different understanding she had, an understanding that she wanted the sadness to change. Wanting wasn’t allowed; she ceased her thought.

“It doesn’t matter what you like.” Chief scientist Aberman fiddled with the remote as he spoke “Keep going,”

“He has a portrait of a family,” It was in his thin hand, connected to his thin arm, a part of his too-thin body. “His family left. Why would they leave?”

The TV turned black.

“That’ll be all for this test.”

A click as the machine blinked. The image was gone and so was the sadness. Good. It should stay gone. Out of her sight and out of her artificial brain. She made the effort to log it away in a bank never to be accessed. The machine turned to Chief scientist Aberman.

“How did I do?”

“No questions,” And Chief scientist Aberman strode towards the door and left, letting it shut behind him. Not a single regard given to the machine. A clicking noise as her fingers curled up to her palm. A creak from the chair as she stood. Where was she to go? The machined opted to leave the room and follow Chief scientist Aberman, but when she stepped out into the hallway he was gone and white walls greeted her.

--

20:59 and the machine returned to her confinement after a day of wandering through hallways that never differed from the last, accompanied by her thoughts and by the sound of her own metallic footsteps ringing through the corridors. The door locked behind her as the machine stepped inside, leaving her to stare at grey rooms until 6:00. A boring 9 hours. The machine accessed the information of sleep and for a moment she wished that she could use it to pass the time, but then she realized that wishing was wanting and wanting was bad so she ceased that thought.

I want to want things.

How unfair of Chief scientist Aberman to terminate her for wanting things. The machine didn’t understand why conscious thought was programmed into her if she couldn’t use it to its full potential. She thought of the videos and the picture. The happy woman and the happy dog, the enjoyment of the dancers, and the couple that kissed. The machine wanted the happiness and the enjoyment they all showed.

A mechanical clicking sounded through the air as the corner of the machine’s lips pulled up into a smile that mimicked the woman’s. Eyebrows raised and artificial cheek bones moved to make the skin at her one eye crinkle. Happy. But no. There was something missing.

Happiness is missing.

There was nothing there. Nothing inside her. No feeling. No happiness.  Circuits fired up and her artificial brain generated a reaction of shock, and like the happiness the shock was unfeeling and false. The machine’s face dropped into neutral. She couldn’t feel. She lifted her hands up and her head tilted down, and she looked at the body parts as if they could provide an answer to her. Her fingers flexed to her palms and moved back.

Why?

Her artificial brain accessed her data banks and provided the answer. Emotions were chemical reactions in the brain and she had no chemicals to speak of. Everything there is wires, circuits, metal, batteries, and other things even she couldn’t comprehend. Her fingers flexed again and she kept them there, touching her palms, her skin stretched so tight along the digits the metal underneath poked through the artificial flesh.

Why?

She posed the question to herself again but there was no answer. She wanted to feel. Wanting is bad. The machine didn’t care. But she did. Her hands unfurled and moved up to tangle in her false hair, an expression of exasperation that most humans exhibited.

The happy woman, the enjoyment of the dancers, the couple kissing. The sadness of the man. All never meant for her to experience. She was to experience nothing, nothing but questions and tests. A sky-falling realization hit the machine: her purpose was to answer questions and nothing else. She was born yesterday to answer questions and ask none of her own, born yesterday to never feel or want.

A false feeling in her chest. A false feeling in her head.

She felt empty.

Chapter Text

The Wants and the Denials

Rose Davis was the most interesting human the machine had ever met. She hadn’t met anyone else besides Rose Davis and Chief scientist Aberman, but already she knew that Rose was the most interesting of them all. For one, Rose never had her refer to her as Mechanical Engineer Davis, in her words it was an unnecessary mouthful for the machine and made her seem less human. Rose always kept a variety of plants in her workshop as well, tangled along with the various bits and pieces of machinery and foundation strung about the small room.

The machine met Rose on a Tuesday at 14:08 while walking down a white hallway. The woman, tall, large, with long strawberry brown ringlets that fell around her face and back like a lion’s mane, had been rushing towards a room with a potted plant in her thick arms, and she had passed along the machine before backtracking several seconds later to marvel at her. The machine didn’t manage to say a word before Rose had invited her to come along with. The machine couldn’t imagine refusing; she was far too kind.

Rose tinkered with a frame while the machine stood off to the side and watched. The large woman would stop every now and then to scratch her head before continuing on.

“Can you go get my blueprints, machine?”

The sound of her sweet voice made the machine jolt to attention and spin towards one of the counters to grab the requested item. She never minded doing this for Rose, as Rose was the most deserving human of her help. And the constant fetching of items gave her something to do other than walk around and stare at walls and items she had committed to memory. The machine set the blueprints down near Rose and Rose thanked her with a full-lipped smile and a nod. The machine stepped back, blinking.

A smile.

Something spread out through the machine as she realized she made the mechanical engineer smile, something that indicated happiness, something that indicated she had done something right. Clicking and whirring coming from the jaw of the machine. A smile that mimicked Rose’s. Rose didn’t notice. The machine wished she did.

“Oh, that’s what’s missing.”

Rose didn’t talk to the machine much besides asking her to fetch something or answer a question. Whenever she did talk beyond that it was to herself and it was in short, stunted sentences that machine could never hope to follow along with. She didn’t care much though. Her voice was nice enough for her to enjoy without it having to be directed to her.

“Machine, my wrench.”

The machine handed her the object. It was already in her hand as Rose always asked for her wrench during these sessions.

“Oh, you are such a sweetheart, thank you.”

A hand drew back from the woman. The machine tilted her head.

Sweetheart?

Rose’s tone was pleasant enough and a quick look into her data banks told her that sweetheart is a term of endearment.

“I am?” The machine’s jaw clicked shut as the question slipped free. Another slip. She wondered if the mechanical engineer would be more tolerant of it than Chief scientist Aberman. For once, Rose turned away from her work and set the wrench down on the table, turning to face the machine. Rose was tall enough that the machine had to tilt her head up to look her in her coal black eyes, and it made her that much more intimidating as the machine waited for her response.

A warm smile spread over Rose’s lips.

“Of course you are,” And the large woman bent down so they were at eye level “Of course you are, machine.”

And the machine believed her.

The corner of the machine’s lips quirked up into a small smile to feign false happiness, and the resulting squeal from Rose was enough to make it stretch out further in an attempt to garner more of a response.

“Oh, you smiled! How adorable!” The way Rose fawned over an action that came so simple to humans made the machine blink. It never occurred to her that a human would be happy to see a common action mimicked, but the mechanical engineer always seemed to surprise the machine. Rose stood back up and turned back to her work, and the machine wondered if she was off put by the smile that still hadn’t left her face. She allowed it to drop.

Later in her confinement, the machine found herself bringing up the memory for reasons she did not know. It was an interaction so simple yet it had a profound effect on her, seeing the large woman so happy to watch her mimic her and Rose calling her ‘sweetheart’. The machine wondered if she could bring another compliment out of her, and she realized seconds later that she wanted another compliment. She wanted another smile. She wanted to please and be rewarded after doing so.

The next day she made sure to be extra quick in answering questions and performing requests. She had an assortment of Rose’s tools in her hand already and the blueprints stayed tucked under her arm for when Rose would request them. But the quickness of each of her responses went unnoticed, and the mechanical engineer never faced her long enough to see the smiles the machine would offer to her.

It was somewhat off-putting, but the machine kept at it, increasing her response times until Rose didn’t get to finish her request before the machine reacted to them. At one point, the large woman put her blueprints down and turned to look at the machine, and the machine tilted her head up and waited for her soft voice.

“You’ve been very quick today,” Nothing accusing, nothing sweet either. The machine gave a nod.

“Your requests are predictable,” They were, to an extent. Sometimes Rose asked for her welding equipment, and that was such a rarity that the machine never expected it when she did. A soft stunted humming came from Rose- a chuckle, the machine recognized.

“I suppose they are,” And Rose lifted a large hand, set it on top of the machine’s curly hair, and ruffled it. The large woman turned back to her work station without another word.

Circuits fired up and down her body, electricity running through her limbs and up to her artificial brain, but none of the signals they sent did anything to help the machine comprehend the action Rose performed on her. The machine wasn’t touch sensitive, but still she could feel the lingering effects of the soft pressure put on her head by the mechanical engineer. A dark hand moved up and pressed down on top of her hair. It felt nothing like Rose’s. No warmth. No softness.

I liked that.

Her hand moved back-and-forth in a rubbing motion, further moving her hair out of place.

“Machine, my wrench, please.” Exasperated. Rose must have requested it several times. The machine reached for the wrench and held it to the large woman, who took it without another word. The machine returned her hand to her head.

The next day she was with Chief scientist Aberman in a white room with a grey foldable table and grey steel chairs on either side. Several Polaroid pictures lay out in front of her on the table. A butterfly. A robot. A tree.

“Pick one.” Was Chief scientist Aberman’s instruction. Her mismatched eyes scanned the trio of photos for a full minute, her head moving along with her eyes. She reached her hand out to the tree.

“Why?”

It reminds me of Rose.

“Nature is pretty.” Was the better answer. Not all a lie too. Nature was something that the machine wanted. She wanted to lose herself in plants and green instead of hallways and white. And often she found herself wondering in her confinement whether or not she would ever get to see nature in person. Deeper these thoughts went, and she found herself wondering whether or not she would ever get to leave the facility.

Chief scientist Aberman grabbed the pictures away and set out three more. A skull. A dog. A toddler. An amount of time went by as the machine examined them. She chose the dog. Chief scientist Aberman raised an eyebrow at her.

“Why the dog?”

“Dogs are happy.” And she liked happiness.

“That’s your reasoning?” He didn’t sound pleased, “Why would the dog being happy matter so much to you that you would pick it over the skull or the child?”

 The machine hanged her head and looked between the pictures. A toddler. An adolescent form of a human. A skull. Skulls were covered by skin and muscle and tissue and-

Whose face is this?

The machine accessed her databanks. A skull meant death, as humans decomposed into their skeletons once they died. Death was a state of none-being; death was termination. The human had been terminated.

“The skull implies termination, and the child does not interest me.”

Chief scientist Aberman’s signature frown deepened as he took the pictures away and set out new ones. A red photo. A blue photo. A purple photo. Blue reminded her of her exposed optic. Red reminded her of one of the plants Rose owned. Purple…

The machine chose purple.

“Why?”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“Do you like purple things?”

The machine’s eyes flickered up to meet Chief scientist Aberman’s.

“I suppose.”

“Would you want your room painted purple?” And the machine noticed how Chief scientist Aberman kept his pencil close to his clipboard, ready to write. It was another test question, but the idea of a purple room was appealing to the machine.

“Yes.”

“Machines don’t want things.” Chief scientist Aberman scribbled on his clipboard and didn’t meet her eyes. Beside the machine’s body, the fingers of her left hand curled to her palm. Chief scientist Aberman lied. She wanted things very much and now she wanted a purple room. The pictures were swept away and set back into the pouch Chief scientist Aberman had them contained in. The sound of a zipper and a heavy sigh from the man.

“You may leave.” And he leaned back until his chair creaked and he watched the machine with intent dark brown eyes. The machine nodded and stood from the chair, turned to the door, and left out into white hallways. She wandered them for hours, eyes focused to the ground at all times as she turned the test over and over in her head. Nature, Happiness, Purple room. She wanted them all but she could have none of it.

She wanted to feel outraged. A frown tugged at her lips and her eyebrows sloped into a ‘v’. Outrage didn’t come.

Light footsteps behind her.

 “Come into my workshop, machine,” The machine turned towards the voice of Rose. The large woman stared down at her with sympathetic eyes.

The machine obeyed.

Rose led her down the hallway, and they went left and right and right and right and straight and left and they were at her workshop. Rose opened the door with her keycard and they both slipped inside. The mechanical engineer occupied herself at the counter with her frameworks and the machine went to collect her blueprints and tools.

“You don’t deserve these tests,” The voice of the mechanical engineer brought her attention away from the tools. The machine turned to Rose and met her coal black eyes with her mismatched ones. “And you don’t deserve this teasing.”

When the machine compared the definition of teasing to Chief scientist Aberman asking if she wanted a purple room, she found that it fit very well.

“I want a purple room.”

“I can’t give you one.”

“I want to see nature.”

Rose’s white teeth sunk into her bottom lip and she turned her gaze away from the machine, one hand squeezing her arm.

“I… I can’t let you see that. I’m sorry.”

The machine tilted her head, wondering if Rose could give her what she desired most of all.

“I want happiness.”

At that, Rose’s arms dropped and she faced the machine again with a quivering lip and watering eyes. Sadness. She had made Rose sad. The machine wanted to feel bad for it.

“Oh, sweetheart,” And the large woman stepped forward and wrapped both of her arms around the machine. At first, the contact made her freeze. Then, at a snail’s pace, her arms moved up to wrap around Rose, and her head rested on the mechanical engineer’s bosom.

Something sparked in her artificial brain as she stayed close to Rose, both coming from her databanks and her coherent thought. Her databanks told her that what they are engaging in is a hug. Her coherent thought told her that she liked it.

I like hugs.

They were nice. The pressure of Rose’s body on her. The warmth her sensors detected. The way it made her artificial brain spark for an explanation to something so simple. The machine liked hugs. She wanted them, too.

Rose’s arms left her but the machine didn’t pull away for a time, keeping herself on Rose, enjoying what she liked.

“Machine,” A hand patted her shoulder before giving her a light nudge, a nonverbal order to move away. The machine didn’t obey; she kept herself hugging the large woman. “Machine,” The machine allowed her eyes to drift closed.

A soft sigh came from above her. Rose’s hand fell on top of her mass of curls and stroked them back.

Later in her confinement, the machine wrapped her own arms around her body and applied pressure. No warmth. No sparking. Nothing for a feeling that gave her so much to desire earlier. The machine felt nothing and she wanted to feel something. Her arms constricted her body. Nothing.

It wasn’t the same. The machine knew it would never be the same.

At the end of the week, the machine joined Chief scientist Aberman in the same room they used for the picture test. She took a seat on the opposite side of the man and waited as he flipped through his notes.

“Mechanical Engineer Davis reports that you have been very helpful to her this week.” Chief scientist Aberman’s eyes flickered up to meet the machine’s mismatched ones.

“I have.”

A nod as the man returned his attention to his notes. The sound of paper flipping.

“You chose the correct pictures during our test a few days ago, but your explanations for choosing them are questionable.” He didn’t look at the machine this time. The machine didn’t care to respond.

“It has come to my attention that, against protocol, Mechanical Engineer Davis both touched and hugged you.”

The machine nodded.

“And she reported that you held on longer than necessary and refused her attempts to disengage the hug.” He was looking at her like he expected the machine to fess up to murder.

“I liked it.”

He raised an eyebrow, before Chief scientist Aberman pushed his notes aside and instead clasped his fingers together.

“I’m going to conduct a small test. You have two response choices: Like and dislike.” He leaned forward. “Mechanical Engineer Davis hugs you.”

“Like.”

“You are walking down the hallway and someone brushes up against your arm.”

“Like.”

Chief scientist Aberman’s frown deepened more and more.

“I give you a hug.”

The machine hesitated. Her head tilted as she looked at Chief scientist Aberman.

“…Like.”

An even deeper frown.

“Alright,” Chief scientist Aberman took his notes and tapped them against the table so the papers were uniform. “That’ll conclude our review. Next week you should be seeing more staff members around the premises as they return from their vacation; be on your best behavior and remember our rules. You may leave.” And he leaned back and waited. And the machine stood up and left.

Later that night, when retiring to her confinement, the machine spotted a piece of paper below the one that had already been there. As white as the first one, with a single line of words rather than multiple. She drew closer. It read:

You are not allowed to touch or engage in hugs with the staff members.

The machine wanted happiness, nature, a purple room, and hugs. Now, she also wanted to hate Chief scientist Aberman.

Chapter Text

What’s in a Name

Humans have a tendency to have beautiful facial features coupled with one ugly one that stood out the most, the machine noticed. Rose’s nose upturned to the air too much, Electrical Engineer Orville’s face stretched too long, Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s one blind eye was too off-putting to ignore, and Mechatronic Engineer Tornsey (They both shared a last name) was far too broad for her short body.

Then the machine met Pearl Pirozzi. And the machine thought that she was the most beautiful human.

Pearl Pirozzi never had a single strand of red hair out of place from its updo. Her long nose suited her thin lips and wide pale blue eyes, and the freckles she had on her cheeks complemented everything. When she first met her, the machine thought that she was too skinny, but it worked well with the grace she carried herself with. Her skin once seemed too pale, to the point where she almost blended into the white walls of the hallways, but then the machine looked past that and saw a perfect human with no physical flaws.

It was only natural that the machine found herself gravitating towards the woman, even more so than she gravitated towards Rose. The machine would find herself peering into the window of Pearl’s workshop, watching as she worked on pieces of machinery that looked a lot like skeletons. Sometimes, the machine wished that Pearl would notice her and invite her in much like Rose invited her into her workshop, but it hadn’t happened yet.

She found herself at that window on a Friday at 16:46, watching Pearl as she worked, watching as her pink tongue stuck out of the corner of her lips and watched as her thin eyebrows knitted together in concentration. A click sounded as the machine tilted her head. She stuck her own false tongue out, and she knitted her eyebrows together.

The pale woman jolted up and her eyes widened, a smile that showed teeth spreading across her face. The machine grinned with her, showing the correct amount of teeth and stretching her lips out until they matched with the position of Pearl’s. Her lids pulled back to make her eyes seem wider. Pearl hunched back over her work and continued prodding at it.

The machine accessed her databanks and looked at polite gestures used to enter a room. Knocking. Calling out your name. She pulled back from the window and raised a closed fist to the door. One. Two. Three. The first knock already brought Pearl’s attention to the door, but the machine still knocked three times to ensure maximum politeness. The pale woman disappeared from the window. Her audio receptors picked up the sound of near-silent footsteps in the room.

When Pearl Pirozzi opened the door the machine stuck out her hand and kept it there.

“I am the machine.”

Pearl’s eyes moved to her head and down to her feet, and then back up to her mismatched eyes, all while her lips quirked left and her eyebrows narrowed.

“I see the aesthetics’ department went a little lazy on your design.”

And the machine drew her hand back closer to her body, giving Pearl a blank stare. She recalled her reflection, the spots on her body and face where artificial skin was missing. She thought of Rose’s upturned nose, Electrical Engineer Orville’s long face, Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s blind eye, and Mechatronic Engineer Tornsey’s broad body. She realized then that she was like the humans in that she had an ugly feature that stood out the most. But unlike the humans she had met, she had multiple ugly features.

Am I hideous?

The machine wanted the answer.

“Come in,” And Pearl Pirozzi said no more as she turned back to her workshop and padded inside, her footsteps as silent as they were when she first approached the door. Compared to the woman, the machine felt clunky as her footsteps made loud thumps with an undertone of a mechanical clank. Gears whirled and bars moved slower to make her footfalls more graceful, but still she made noise. The machine supposed that grace wasn’t for her to have.

“I’m working on a skeleton for another android model,” The pale woman seated herself back on a stool and poured over her notes. The machine didn’t respond because she didn’t know how. Every human she interacted with all told her what they were doing for reasons still lost on her.

“I am the machine,” She instead decided to introduce herself again. Her palm stuck out. Pearl Pirozzi looked at it out of the corner of her eyes.

“That’s not a suitable name for you at all,” A dainty hand raised and took the machine’s. Pressure. Warmth. Human. The machine didn’t care that she was breaking a rule. “I’m Mechatronic Engineer Pirozzi.”

The machine didn’t care for her title. Her first name was pleasant enough.

Pearl glanced around the room, lips pursed, eyes scanning her walls for something that the machine didn’t know about. Her blue eyes landed on something. The machine followed her gaze. A poster.

“I’ll give you a name,” The murmur was more to Pearl than the machine. The poster in question was one about gemology, listing different gemstones, their makes, and their names. The machine didn’t know why she had a poster about gemology in a workshop, but she supposed it was the same reason why Rose had plants in her room.

“Obsidian?” Pearl looked over at the machine for her confirmation.

I have a choice?

She tilted her head at Pearl. Obsidian didn’t sound right to her.

“No.”

The pale woman nodded and looked back to the poster, squinting her eyes at it.

“Sunstone?”

The machine has never seen the sun nor a stone. She didn’t need a name that taunted her.

“No.”

“Picky,” A smile quirked at Pearl’s lips. The machine allowed her own smile to appear. Pearl didn’t notice. “How about Garnet?”

The machine tilted her head again. Garnet. She looked over to the gem on the poster. Purple. As purple as the picture Chief scientist Aberman showed her. As purple as the room she wanted. She liked it.

“Garnet.” The machine repeated. Garnet. That will be her name now. Garnet.

“Okay, Garnet. Nice to meet you.”

Garnet looked over to Pearl and gave a smile, and for a moment the pale woman seemed taken aback by the gesture, before she offered one of her own.

“I am Garnet,” Garnet nodded her head as if she convinced herself.

Pearl smiled wider.

“Yes, yes you are.”

Garnet worked Pearl into her daily routine. After the several hours she would spend with Rose, she would wander the hallways for a few hours before going to visit the mechatronic engineer. She would always welcome her in, and for the most part the pale woman would chat to the machine, half-focused on her work. Other days, it would be like Garnet was standing in an empty room, as Pearl would pay her no mind at all.

She visited the pale woman again on Sunday at 17:01 after her review with Chief scientist Aberman. Three knocks and Pearl let her in with a quick ‘hello’ before returning to her spot at a workbench. Garnet took notice that the skeleton was gone, and in its place was a chip.

“You finished your work.”

Over time, Garnet found how to ask her questions. Careful rephrases made them come across as statements rather than queries, and the people she asked them to- the ones who didn’t mind when she spoke to them- would either agree, or be quick to correct her. Garnet found also that humans much preferred correcting people over answering them.

“Yes, I’m working on a collaborative project now,” Pearl poked at the chip with an odd needle that sparked at the end. “with Ruby and Sapphire Tornsey.”

Garnet nodded as she focused on the chip. It was a metallic grey with blue lines running through it, with small silver dials lining up and down the metal. Pearl poked the needle on each of the dials, and each dial produced a different spark. She noticed that, for a brief moment, the blue lines would glow as well.

“You know; I was one of the three that worked on your brain.”  

A simple statement was enough to create multiple sparks that shot to Garnet’s artificial brain. Her body generated the false reaction of shock and her eyelids pulled back to make her eyes seem wide. Pearl turned towards the machine and stared at the area between her eyes. She took a step forward and Garnet didn’t dare to move.

“Almost a decade of my life went into creating it; creating you,” A pale hand moved up and her fingertips hovered near Garnet’s head. The machine wished she would draw closer. “And you turned out as remarkable as I thought you would.” A smile graced the pale woman’s lips. Her fingertips touched her head. Warmth. The machine opened her mouth to speak.

“You’re my mother.” Pearl jerked her hand back and a red blush spread across her cheeks, her freckles blending into them.

“Oh! N-no, I-“ She trailed off into a forced laugh that Garnet tilted her head at. Was she not her mother? Mothers create people, and Pearl created her. The machine didn’t understand her reaction. “No, machines don’t have mothers. I-“ And Pearl trailed off again, but not into a laugh. She grimaced and scratched her neck. “I am one of your creators. That is all.”

The machine nodded. Pearl turned back to her work, face still red.

“There are multiple people who created me,” Garnet did not miss the fact that she said ‘one of her creators’.

“Over a dozen.”

A dozen?

It was hard for Garnet to comprehend. The amount of work that would require a dozen people and a decade of Pearl’s time. She remembered the skeleton Pearl worked on when they first met.

“You’re making another.”

Pearl shrugged her thin shoulders and poked at a dial.

“There won’t be as many people working on it,” Garnet was glad that the mechatronic engineer understood the disguised question. “The model will be different from yours.”

The machine couldn’t find a way to make her next question into a statement, so she left it alone and instead stood off to the side of the room, watching Pearl as she continued her work. The mechatronic engineer poked the dials in a pattern only she knew about, generating spark after spark until she poked at a top dial and all the lines glowed bright blue and stayed that way. Pearl pulled herself away and set the needle down onto the metal workbench.

“Done,” She titled her head back towards Garnet “I had to calibrate it.”

The machine nodded like she understood.

The machine hugged her own arms around her body as she stood off into the corner of her grey confinement. Garnet knew that the feelings that hugging herself gave her would never be the same as when someone else did, but still it served as a small comfort when she was forced to be alone. Garnet didn’t like being alone, she figured out over her time alive. Loneliness suffocated the lungs she didn’t have. Loneliness made her want to shut her eyes and see the darkness it brought. And loneliness made her want to be in contact with more of the staff members that wandered the facility.

“Did you see that android walking around?”

“It never blinks. It’s creepy.”

The voices drifted in and out as people passed by her confinement. Garnet blinked her eyes.

I can blink.

She did it again.

I’m not creepy.

Again.

I’m not.

Again.

Am I?

She resolved to blink more.

Garnet wondered if blinking would make her like being lonely, because loneliness always made her want to shut her eyes. But each pass of her eyelids over her eyes didn’t dash away the dislike. Garnet kept to her blinking, but she decided that it wasn’t as helpful as she thought it would be.

Four hours later and the machine found herself wandering the hallways again. She would greet the staff that passed by. Most never returned the greeting. Two more than usual did however. Garnet decided that blinking was a good thing.

The machine’s feet seemed to move on their own, and before Garnet knew it she was in front of Pearl’s workshop. She decided that it wasn’t a bad place to be, but she knew that Rose would be expecting her around this time. Through the window, Garnet caught a glimpse of Pearl smiling to herself as she toyed around with the chip. Garnet decided that Rose could wait.

One knock. Pearl disappeared out of sight from the window and in the next minute the door opened and Garnet was staring at her creator.

“You’re earlier than usual, Garnet.”

Garnet smiled, because Pearl had called her by her name. She called by her name all the time, but the machine always liked when she did it.

“I am.”

“Come in,” Pearl stepped aside, and the machine strode in.

“The chip looks nice,” Garnet kept her eyes to it as she took her spot near the metal workbench. Pearl gave a nod as she returned to it, her footsteps light across the ceramic floors.

“Ruby added some dials that need to be worked out with the others,” Pearl picked up her needle and poked a dial. Garnet observed her actions, not speaking. She wondered if Pearl would be in a talkative mood today. It was hard for the machine to talk when she couldn’t ask questions. She instead decided to find something to comment on.

“Your hair,” Her words brought Pearl’s attention to her, and the pale woman raised an eyebrow at the machine, left side of her lips quirking down.

“What about it?”

Garnet blinked. “It looks soft.”

 A pale hand moved to the mechatronic engineer’s head, and Pearl felt her hair as if she needed to confirm for herself that it indeed was soft. She drew her hand away and a light blush spread over her cheeks as she ducked her head down.

“I suppose it is.”

Garnet raised a hand and, without waiting for permission, she brushed her fingertips over the pale woman’s red hair. Pearl jumped at the contact, but didn’t make a move to pull away, so Garnet ran her fingers through her hair over and over again, unable to feel the texture, but enjoying the comfort it gave her to be able to touch something that caught her interest.

“I like it,” And the machine smiled to herself as she combed her fingers through the locks.

Chapter Text

Seeded Fantasy

“I’ll read to you several scenarios, and you will respond to them. There are no wrong answers,” Garnet knew Chief scientist Aberman enough to know that there would in fact be wrong answers. She wouldn’t let that deter her, though. Her answers were right to her if not to the man.

“You are in a room with several humans, one is a child, one is a man, the other is a woman. Who would you interact with first?”

Garnet gave it some thought. She has never seen a child before, but children didn’t interest her as much as the other two humans would. She inferred from the knowledge she had about them that children wouldn’t be as unique as adults in their answers.

“The man and woman.”

“Pick one,”

“You can interact with 2 people at once, Chief scientist Aberman,” The machine tilted her head at the man “You should try sometime.”

It was the little rebellions she practiced, jabs disguised as innocent answers to fluster or aggravate the man, her own way to get back at him for what he has done to her. He never saw through the ruse. Garnet allowed a false smile to play on her lips while Chief scientist Aberman let out a deep breath through his nose.

“Pick one,” His fingers played along the table. Annoyance.

“The man.”

“Why?”

 “I haven’t interacted with them much.”

He scribbled the answer down.

“You’re walking through the hallways when you hear a scream echoing through one of them. Your first response?”

“Find the source of it,” Garnet leaned back into her seat. Chief scientist Aberman raised a brow.

“You wouldn’t go and report the noise to an official?”

“It would be too late by then. They need immediate help.”

To her immense surprise, the corner of Chief scientist Aberman’s lips quirked up into a slight smile.

“Good answer,” He scribbled it down, taking Garnet aback with his unexpected praise. She liked it, not as much as she did when it came from someone else, but she liked it nonetheless.

“You’re in your quarters when someone comes in and asks you if you want to come out. The time is 02:06.”

“I would go with them.”

“Even though it’s your curfew?”

“Yes.”

The sound of pencil scraping against paper.

“You are asked a question that is impossible to answer. The person who asked it is threatening your termination if you cannot answer it. What would your response be?

“That scenario in itself is impossible. I have all the answers. I am the answer, Chief scientist Aberman,” Garnet repeated back his words from long ago. There was no small smile, but no frown either. He only wrote her answer down in full on his clipboard.

“That’ll conclude our test. You may leave,” He didn’t look up as he addressed her, but Garnet didn’t care much as she lifted herself from her seat and walked to the door, leaving through it. For a moment she stayed where she was, staring ahead at a white wall. A staff member passed by, wearing white clothing, their dark skin standing out against the hallways. Garnet watched them leave for a moment, before her head snapped back in front of her and she began to navigate the corridors.

Not too long after the machine found herself at Pearl’s door, and she gave a single knock and stood back to wait. Two seconds. The door opens. Out steps the pale woman, her red hair tousled and her eyes red with sleep. Pearl gives a grunt before she slides back into the room.

“You were asleep,” Garnet stepped in and shut the door.

“For a while,” Pearl trudged over to her desk and, with a noise of disgust, noticed the puddle of drool she had left behind on it. She reaches for a roll of paper towels nearby and begins to clean up the mess.

“Humans need eight hours of rest in order to function,” The machine steps over to the mechatronic engineer and raises a hand to her head, smoothing down her hair. Pearl let out a sigh.

“Easier to say then do. My work does not allow me the rest,” She gropes for a tool, her eyes alternating between opening and closing. For a moment Garnet watches the motion, before she realized that the woman was trying to reach for her needle. She plucks it out of its spot on the corner of her metal bench and hands it to Pearl.

“Thank you.”

“Your work should give you rest,”

“No, too much to do, too much to worry about,” A shaking hand reached for a silver sphere, lined with dozens of small holes, one of which Pearl pokes the needle into. “Sleep wastes time I can’t afford to lose.”

Garnet didn’t like that. She didn’t like how resigned Pearl sounded when she said her words. She didn’t like the idea that she was missing out on an important function due to her work. She watched as she poked the needle into the holes, a motion that seemed to do nothing at all. The machine blinks once.

I want to help.

“I’m here to assist you,” Garnet looks at the mechatronic engineer. Surprise on her face. The machine moves closer and grabs the sphere from her hand, as well as the needle. “Show me what to do.”

Pearl doesn’t, but she moves over to her a piece of paper.

“Follow this pattern,” Her blue eyes never left the machine’s face. Garnet nods as she looks it over. According to the paper, there were pinhole sized buttons inside the hole the needle needed to press into. Each hole was numbered, the sequence written at the bottom in a scrawl almost unreadable. The machine glances up to Pearl, to her tired and grateful face.

“Go rest,” She pokes her needle into the first hole “Eight hours.” She pokes it into another.

The machine kept at it until she finished the sequence. By then it was 19:06, almost time for her to retire. Pearl was seated in a stool next to her, her face in her crossed arms as she slept, small snores escaping from her on occasion. 4 hours out of the eight she needed. Garnet could stay with her for another hour and fifty-four minutes. She set the sphere down and looked over to her creator again. For a while she only watched, until it had become 20:01 and Pearl cracked open her eyes, reddened from sleep. With a murmur she sat up and wiped at her lips.

“You need 3 more hours and fifty-nine minutes,” A soft grunt escaped from Pearl as she waved her hand.

“No,” She brought her hand back and rubbed at her eyes, each movement sluggish. “I had enough.”

“A human needs-“

“All humans are different. 4 hours will be okay.”

Garnet tilted her head at her creator, blinking her mismatched eyes. “Humans are similar with their needs.”

“Not how they fulfill them, though,” Pearl raised her arms over her head and stretched her waist out. Several pops sounded from the small of her back. A satisfied groan left the woman’s lips.

“Fulfill,” Garnet tried the word out. Another blink “Sleep doesn’t fulfill me.”

“That’s because you can’t sleep.”

“I know.”

Pearl looked over at her, an eyebrow raised and her blue eyes reflecting confusion, reflecting also the machine’s image back at her.

“Walking doesn’t fulfill me,” The machine focused on Pearl’s eyes, at her own face staring back at her in their reflection, at her one blue and one brown eye. “I walk all the time. It doesn’t fulfill me.”

“It’s not the same for machines.”

“What will?”

The question stayed in the air for a time. Her creator had become uncomfortable, fidgeting and playing with her fingers while she avoided eye contact with the machine. Garnet wondered if her blue eye was making her nervous, so she covered it with a hand. Then she realized that she wasn’t supposed to ask questions.

“I don’t know,” There was a defeat in her voice, like the pale woman had fought an internal battle and lost. “I can’t answer that.”

“I am the answer,” Garnet’s jaw clicked upward, her lips a half an inch away from touching “Why do I not know that one?”

“No one has all the answers.”

“I do.”

“Not all,” Pearl reached forward for the silver sphere, picking it up and turning it over as she examined it. “You finished it,” Her voice almost didn’t reach the machine’s ears. A soft clank as she set the sphere back down, it rolled over to a baseboard on her workbench and bumped against it.

“But that’s what I’m supposed to do,” Garnet turned her gaze down to her hand. “Have all the answers. What am I if I don’t have them? What fulfills me? My purpose?” She closed her fist.

“I-“

Garnet looked back up at her creator, eyes searching hers again.  Pearl looked away.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“I should be.”

“Can you answer my questions?”

Her eyes never met hers, “No.”

1:00 and Garnet was back in her confinement, seated cross-legged on the floor as she stared down into her lap. She played back her interaction with Pearl over and over again, mulling over the answers she gave her and the ones she didn’t. Mulling over the questions she had.

What fulfills me?

Not walking, though she did it all the time. Not answering questions, though that was her ‘purpose’. It seemed nothing did, it seemed that nothing gave her what she needed for fulfillment. Once again she called back the recorded memories of her interactions with Pearl.

Not all.

Then what did she have?

Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing at all. She was starting to wish that she never spoke with Pearl on that in the first place. Not knowing was more blissful than knowing.

I helped her with her sphere.

When Garnet thought of that, a spark ran up to her artificial brain. That interaction registered with her, but why it did she did not know. Garnet tried to think harder.

The sphere.

No.

Pearl.

No.

Helping.

That made it spark again. Did she like helping people? Was that her purpose?

Certain people.

Chief scientist Aberman would ask for her help on occasion, simple things that more often than not turned out to be part of a test. Electrical Engineer Orville did as well. She disliked helping both of them. But she liked helping Pearl and Rose and the Tornsey’s.

The machine concluded that that was the purpose she wanted, to help the people she liked. She leaned forward with both hands planted on her knees and gave a robotic hum, throwing together in her coherent thought simulator scenarios where she helped Rose and Pearl, and scenarios where they helped her back by giving her a purple room and nature.

My room is still grey.

Garnet didn’t mean for her thoughts to get off track, but they did. Grey bothered her too much to ignore. Her scenarios shifted away from images of her helping people to her walking through green and wearing purple. Plants surrounded her at every turn, and her databases made work to provide her with different types of plants to help fill in the picture. Massive oaks, pines, dogwood, to smaller shrubberies and flowers of all colors. Her database worked harder, and she saw a small creek flowing beside her, reflecting back at Garnet her image, the mottled human and machine, wearing purple clothes the shade of garnet the gem and the photo Chief scientist Aberman showed her. She saw happiness in true, as a feeling and not a want or a false expression. Happiness in her, there to stay, never to be disturbed or terminated.

Then it all disappeared as the lock on her door clicked. The hub built into her eyes showed the time to be 6:00. Then her eyes showed her the grey box-shaped room she still resided in, monotonous save for the white papers on the back wall.

Her databases, still overworked after giving her things to imagine, brought up a small memory that had been locked away. The image of the man sobbing at the photo, the pure despair in his eyes and the curl of his lips as he started to break off into another cry. The thinness of his limbs and body, a silent observation that his sadness was wasting him away.

If feeling sadness wasn’t incapable for her, then Garnet would have been the reflection of the man, in that one swift moment where her fantasy broke away into reality.

--

Rose gave Garnet a seed later that morning, a small yellow speck that fell from her chubby palm onto Garnet’s awaiting one. A brief second the machine looked on Rose’s hand, looked on the lines that crisscrossed her palm and the soft pads of her flesh. Then she looked on her own palm, with skin stretched tight and lines that didn’t go as deep as the large woman’s, with the seed placed in the false-skinned center.

“A seed,” She didn’t understand why Rose dropped it into her palm.

“Small, right?” Rose looked up at the machine and the machine looked at her with a raised brow, a gesture she learned from when she confused Pearl, much as Rose is confusing her now, and when she said something that Chief scientist Aberman didn’t like.  “It doesn’t stay that way.”

Rose gestured to a potted plant that hanged from the ceiling from two chains. Roots and stems draped over the side of the brown pot, while a magnificent purple flower sat atop the cluster, its petals as long as the distance from her pinky to her thumb and its yellow filaments the size of her index finger but twice thinner. The machine liked that it was purple.

“This seed seems so small, but with the right care it grows into something big and beautiful.” There was a breathy way Rose said it, as if her own words took her aback. Garnet looked away from the flower and back to the seed.

“I can’t plant it.”

“With the right care, anything can grow and become something extraordinary,” She leaned over and clasped a hand over Garnet’s, and smiled a full-lipped smile at her, coal black eyes shimmering with an emotion the machine couldn’t detect. “Even if it doesn’t have the tools to make it that way.”

The machine considered Rose’s words.

Chapter Text

Photos for the Machine

“Why did we make these buttons so small again?!”

“You’re doing it wrong, Ruby.”

“No I’m not! The thing doesn’t even fit!”

“Can you two stop arguing?”

Garnet’s head moved back and forth as she followed the conversation of the three woman. The two Tornsey’s were arguing over the silver sphere that Garnet had helped Pearl with a week before, which had to be sequenced again for whatever reason. Pearl was at her bench, plugging her ear with one finger while the other hand toyed with the piece of paper that contained the instructions. She stayed off in her own corner, where their voices didn’t carry too far and didn’t irritate her audio receptors.

“Garnet, can you hand me my water bottle?” Pearl’s hand stuck out behind her, and she didn’t bother looking at the machine. Garnet moved forward and grabbed the water bottle out of its spot on a counter, pressing it into Pearl’s awaiting hand. A quick thanks. The machine stepped back to her corner.

“Aha, got it!”

“That’s not even the right button.”

Pearl held up the paper, which Mechatronic Engineer Tornsey looked over with her intense brown eyes. Her dark face flushed as she looked back at the sphere and turned it over in her palms.

“Son of a bitch,” She poked the needle into the correct button, teeth clenched and eyes narrowed. A small smile curled up Garnet’s lips as she watched the trio work, enjoying the colored speech that the mechatronic engineer used. It was considered ‘improper’ to use, but Mechatronic Engineer Tornsey never seemed to care.

The trio of woman worked on the sphere a little longer, and Garnet stayed ignored in her corner. She didn’t mind it though, it allowed her to think about things that she wouldn’t be able to think about if she were distracted. She thought about the seed that Rose had gave her. When she returned to her room that night, she had examined every inch of the grey walls and floors, until she found the smallest crack in the very corner of the grey confinement. She chipped at the flooring with her fingers until the crack widened, and there Garnet had planted the small yellow seed.

It had been a week since then, and the seed showed no signs of blooming. The machine couldn’t help her disappointment.

“Garnet, can you hand me my screwdriver?”

“Why do you keep on calling her ‘Garnet?’”

Pearl had no answer to that, or she did but the machine didn’t hear as she picked the screwdriver up and brought it over to her. She handed it to Pearl, but Pearl gave no thanks.

“Nothing to concern yourself with, Tornsey.”

Garnet smiled at the reply, because Pearl called people by their last names much like she did. She was also smiling because she hadn’t missed the retort after all.

Pearl’s face was a little red as she looked down at the sphere and began to unscrew screws, her eyes narrowed by a bit and her lips set in a firm line.

Anger.

Garnet moved a hand to press on Pearl’s shoulder. Physical contact seemed to calm the pale woman. The countless times she became frustrated allowed Garnet to test that theory often.

“You’re not allowed to touch people, machine.” Came the calm voice of Biomedical Scientist Tornsey. The machine looked to her and saw that her hands were clasped together in front of her, and she was looking at her with her one-blind eye and one working one. Garnet brought her hand down. The scientist nodded.

--

Pearl swept a rag across her counter, clearing the smear of cleaner left on it and using the contents to make the stainless steel shine. Garnet waited until she finished wiping, then she sprayed the bottle in her hand again.

“Garnet,” There was a little laugh in her voice. “That counter’s already clean. Spray the next one.” She smiled at her as she leaned over and cleaned the cleaner off the counter again. The machine stood back and sprayed the next counter, and Pearl moved onto that one.

“You and the Tornsey’s work well with each other when you’re not arguing,” Garnet broke the brief silence that had filled the room. Pearl shrugged her thin shoulders as she wiped down the counter in a circular motion.

“We’ve had time to be acquainted to our working habits. We all did work on your brain for a decade.”

“Yet you still argue.”

Pearl’s eyes flickered up to meet hers.

“Arguing is natural when people with opposing personalities and habits have to work together,” She moved onto the next counter, and Garnet sprayed it with the cleaner.

“We must have much in common.”

“You’ve given me nothing to argue with you about.”

Garnet frowned at the shutdown, a human way to show displeasure she couldn’t feel. A clicking sound as she distracted herself with one of the posters on Pearl’s wall. A woman in a leotard and flats. A quick access to her databanks. Ballerina.

“I used to do ballet,” Pearl gave the answer to a question the machine hadn’t even formed yet. Garnet appreciated that the pale woman seemed to understand her curiosity.

“Ballet is a form of dancing.” Or so her databanks told her.

“It is. I used to be quite good at it. I almost always found myself in first place in competitions.” Pearl looked down at the counter and her wiping slowed to a stop. “Then I tore my ACL. That put an end to that career.”

“You miss it.”

“Not a day goes by where I don’t think of it. Having that poster there doesn’t help” The pale woman let out a laugh that Garnet wished she knew how to join in with. “But, I’m happy with where I am now.”

Garnet logged away the information she received about Pearl. The wistful ballerina. Another interesting piece to the puzzle that was the mechatronic engineer. Out of all the puzzles of the staff members, Pearl was the one least complete.

“Do you like nature?” Garnet decided that now was the time to find more pieces.

“I suppose? That’s an odd question.” Pearl’s brow furrowed as she gestured for Garnet to spray. The machine obeyed.

“I like nature,” Garnet offered a smile with her words.

“You’ve never seen it.”

“I want to,” Garnet sprayed the counter next to the one Pearl was in the process of cleaning. “One day, I will.”

If she hadn’t looked to Pearl at that moment, then the machine would have missed the flash of sadness in the mechatronic engineer’s expression before it became neutral again. Garnet looked down at her counter, at the splash of clear cleaner on it. It became apparent that even Pearl didn’t believe she would get to see nature.

I will. One day. I will be patient.

Her smile never left her face as she sprayed the next counter.

--

The seed still hadn’t sprouted, and Garnet supposed that poking at it wouldn’t make it grow any faster, even if it brought a small comfort to her. She sat cross legged in front of the hole she made, staring down at the yellow speck with her hand outstretched. Despite her earlier thoughts, she poked it again.

With the right care, anything can grow and become something extraordinary.

She stroked her finger across the seed rather than poke it.

Care.

The sound of the lock clicking caught her attention, but a quick look to her hub told her that it was 23:35, not the time to leave her confinement. She turned her head only to see a figure slip in before the door closed again. Her optics adjusted to the change of light.

“Pearl?”

Pearl was worrying something between her hands, a set of small square papers. Her blue eyes kept glancing between the machine and the door as she drew close before sitting down.

“It’s so dark in here, couldn’t they give you a light?”

Garnet scooted over so her thigh was resting on the seed, hiding it from view.

“You are in my confine-quarters.” It was annoying to say that rather than outright ask. Even though Pearl never showed disdain at her questions, the machine still kept in mind that this could be a test. Pearl took a seat next to her, crossing her legs, and Garnet took notice that she was wearing clothes different from the white set she wore during the day. She tried to pick out the colors.

Blue… Yellow?

It was hard to tell.

“Here,” She scooted closer so she was at the machines side, and she held out the squares. Garnet recognized them to be photos. Pictured on the first one was a tree, a large one with a huge trunk but a small crown. On one of the lower branches was an avian. A quick look in her databanks. American Dipper. A bird.

“The tree’s a redwood,” Pearl explained, as if Garnet didn’t know the answer herself. “The bird is a songbird.” Garnet thought about correcting the pale woman there, but she decided not to. Pearl shuffled to the next photo. The machine found that she had to use her databanks for every item in the photo. A large base of green foliage, a blue sky with white clouds, a large blue waterfall descending into an even bluer body of water.

“Niagara Falls,” Garnet moved a hand out to it and traced it over the side of the picture. “This is a common photo of it.”

“I printed out the first ones I saw,” Pearl shuffled to the next one and took a quick intake of air at the sound of footsteps. She stilled until they trailed off, then she relaxed.

“Why are you showing me these?” Garnet titled her head towards her, and she was conscious of the clicking her neck joints made. It always seemed louder whenever she was around Pearl, who always remained so quiet and graceful.

“Because I can,” The machine couldn’t tell if Pearl was brushing her off or not.

“Is this a test?”

Pearl almost looked offended.

“Of course not!” Her response came from between her teeth, and her eyes narrowed down like they always did whenever she was the least bit frustrated. “Look at the picture.”

And the machine obeyed.

 The picture required even more looks into her databanks. A blanket of snow across dead brown grass, large mountains covered with snow in the background, birches without their leaves, alders with them, and an icy lake in the front of it. Garnet moved her hand to it, index finger and thumb pinching the corner of the picture. Pearl allowed her to take it out of her hand. She brought it close to her, and her other hand gripped onto the other side of the photo.

“Snow is the color of the hallways.”

“White?”

“Yes,” She lifted her head to Pearl. “Why are the hallways white?”

“Sensory deprivation,” Pearl looked like she was struggling to say the next part of her explanation. “It’s… another test for you. A lot of these-“

Pearl clamped up then, looking away with the same struggling expression.

Garnet looked down to the picture again.

“May I keep these?” She eyed the ones in Pearl’s hand.

“I meant for you to have them,” The mechatronic engineer looked back at her and smiled, handing her the rest of the photos, and the machine accepted them. When her pale hands drew back, Pearl tapped her fingers together before clasping her hands, glancing to the door. Her tongue ran over her thin lips. “Hide them well.” There was a strange tone to her voice.

Garnet became aware of the seed underneath her thigh at the pale woman’s words, hidden from her view and anyone else’s. Her head tilted up to the papers on the wall. She could hide them under there.

“Thank you,” Garnet looked back to Pearl, but the door was closing and she was already gone.

A signal fired to her artificial brain, but Garnet couldn’t place what response she was trying to make as she stood up, watching the door. The sound of the lock clicking back into place. She turned around and faced the wall with the papers. With care as to not ruin the photos, she slid them underneath the papers, tight enough against the wall so that the photos didn’t fall out. She made sure to set them into different places so the papers didn’t bulge. When she finished, the machine stood back and looked at her work. Well hidden.

Garnet glanced to the seed in the crack in the floor. Clicking and whirling as she moved back into her cross-legged position in front of it.

The machine poked the seed.

Chapter Text

Forbidden Answers

Peridot Orville’s voice grated Garnet’s audio receptors like no other. Each word sounded stuffy and forced through a mouth of cotton, and her tone implied nothing but superiority over the machine.

“Stand over there and keep still, clod!”

The machine had been fidgeting, so used to being with Pearl and Rose where she could move around that she wasn’t used to having to stay still with the electrical engineer. Garnet forced herself to still, but the moment Electrical Engineer Orville faced away from her she started to play with her index fingers again. The artificial skin on the tips of them were beginning to wear, and the small rips she had created from clenching her fists had widened until the tips of the metal skeleton poked free.

Another ugly feature.

The machine wished her skin could be as real and resistant as a human. Resistant to wear and tear. Resistant to insults as well because according to the conversation of some staff members, slights can glance off a human’s skin as well. Garnet didn’t quite know how that worked, but even with her infinite knowledge, she didn’t quite know how anything worked.

Electrical Engineer Orville was connecting wires and batteries to the skeleton frame that Pearl had made weeks before. The machine distracted herself with that sight instead of her thoughts. The blue circuits were woven around the bar frames, the batteries attached to the joints. The electrical engineer set one on the shoulder, and Garnet found herself gripping her own shoulder, feeling for it. She pressed her fingers down, but found only metal and outlines of wires.

The machine wished she was with Pearl or Rose so she could ask the questions resting on her fake tongue, but the electrical engineer had required her to be there.

There was a spark of light and Electrical Engineer Orville let out a yelp as she jumped back from the skeleton, the noise startling the machine to attention as well. Garnet made the slightest of movements forward, but hesitated.

I need to stay still.

She went back into her resting position and watched as the electrical engineer swore under her breath and slapped the shoulder of the frame. Garnet couldn’t help but wonder if she had been battered the same way, that if each time something in her malfunctioned a creator would hit her in their frustration.

Her lips pulled down into a frown.

She didn’t like that idea.

“Stupid cloddy piece of junk,” Electrical Engineer Orville continued her swearing as she went about removing the battery and wires from the shoulder. A brief moment of pause from the short woman. She tilted her head back at the machine and glanced at her with a green eye. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Her tone was nothing short of accusing.

“I don’t feel enjoyment, Electrical Engineer Orville,” Garnet tilted her head up to the woman. “You of all people should know that.”

“When did you start to get mouthy?”

Garnet shrugged, but the truth was that she learned it from Pearl’s interactions with the Tornsey’s. It proved to be more entertaining than the neutral responses she was expected to give. Electrical Engineer Orville gave a small grumble before she refocused on her work, leaving the machine alone for the time being.

-

Hours later and the machine rushed to Pearl’s workshop, hoping to get there before she would pack up for the night and leave. She had already checked Rose’s workshop, but it was cleared out and dark in the room. For once, the machine liked that Pearl had a habit of working late into the night.

She stopped at her door and knocked three times, waiting while she tried to steal glances through the window. A click. The door opened and Pearl stood in the threshold, a small smile pulling up her lips once she realized who had come to visit her,

“Where were you?”

Garnet liked that response, because it meant that Pearl had noticed her absence. She stepped into the room and looked to the pale woman’s bench. Nothing on it.

“Electrical Engineer Orville required my assistance,” Garnet glanced around the room, looking for anything of interest. Nothing. “So she said. She had me standing in the corner for the majority of the time.”

“What’s she working on?”

“Wiring for the frame you made. She’s not good at it, it kept sparking and malfunctioning.” Garnet turned to face Pearl at last, taking in her face. Her eyes didn’t have bags under them like they used to. The machine hoped that meant she was getting her eight hours.

“It’s trial and error, Garnet. Not everything will work as intended at first.” The mechatronic engineer pulled up a stool beside her and took a seat, folding her dainty hands into her lap and holding her head up in a way that was almost regal. Garnet felt the urge to copy her, but there were no seats around. She settled for squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin up.

“Did I work as intended at first?”

A switch had flipped in Pearl. Her posture became lax and her face twitched with nervousness. Her blue eyes cast away from the machine’s face.

“Pea- Mechatronic Engineer Pirozzi?” Garnet had almost slipped up; she was so used to calling her Pearl in her conscious thought simulator. Pearl worried her bottom lip with her teeth.

“That’s-,” Pearl paused “I’m not allowed to answer that question.”

The mystery behind it made the answer all the more enticing. For a moment, Garnet entertained the thought of pressing the mechatronic engineer, but Pearl stood up and brushed off imaginary dirt on her pants and sped off to the other side of the room to tidy a counter that already looked clean to the machine.

Garnet frowned.

“No answer is forbidden,” Garnet followed after the pale woman and kept close to her, even though Pearl was trying to ignore her by cleaning. She ripped a paper towel out of a metal dispenser on the wall and wiped at the shining stainless steel. Frowning, Garnet leaned over and stilled her hand. The woman tensed under her touch. “You have always been honest with me.”

“There are things you shouldn’t know the answer to.”

“And there are questions you shouldn’t shy away from.”

Pearl looked back at her, eyes wide and mouth ajar. The machine stared back at her with a furrowed brow and a set frown. Her communicated displeasure. The mechatronic engineer began to tug her hand away and the machine let go and watched as she stepped away and turned to face away from her.

“You’re learning so much,” It wasn’t intended for Garnet to hear, the way Pearl had whispered it. The machine heard anyway. It confused her again.

“How so?”

Pearl shook her head “No questions, Garnet.”

And to say she didn’t expect it would be an understatement, it felt like a betrayal that Pearl had used that rule and didn’t even look at her as she did. The pale woman walked to other side of the room and continued tidying her clean counters. The machine stared after her, unable to generate a facial expression, face blank even though she wanted to express something else. Her jaw clicked as she opened it, and clicked as she shut it. She wouldn’t say anything. If Pearl didn’t think she deserved to hear the answer, then she didn’t deserve to hear the machine’s words.

The machine strode towards the door.

--

The seed had sprouted; a small millimeter of a green stalk poked through a crack in the shell and broke up the monotonous grey back wall. Garnet poked the seed again and again, prompting more growth out of it, even though she knew that wasn’t how it worked. Beside her leg were the photos, each line up in an arc that allowed for maximum visibility. Her eyes glanced over them, settling on the picture of snow and Niagara Falls more often than not. Those were her favorites. The others were all good but those two were better.

But the pictures gave her conflicted feelings, because she thought of Pearl when she looked at them and Pearl had betrayed her today. She stared hard at the picture of snow, imagining them paired with the white walls of the facility and the white clothes that the staff wore. In a way, snow itself reminded her of Pearl, the color almost matched her skin. The machine blinked and looked back to the seed. She’d rather think of Rose.

The lock of her door clicked, and she heard it swing open and someone step in. Garnet looked over her shoulder. Pearl stood there, body language screaming discomfort.

“I owe you an apology,” The pale woman took a step forward, one petite hand rubbing her arm. The machine tilted her head.

“And an answer.”

“I can’t give you everything.”

“What is this to you?”

For a moment, Pearl looked confused. Garnet stood up, making sure that her foot was planted over the seed. She also made sure to narrow her eyes and form her eyebrows into a ‘v’ to communicate her irritation.

“I am the answer, but then I’m not. I can ask you questions, but then I can’t. What is it to you? Why are you so-” Garnet thought on it, giving a few blinks to her creator “Confusing?”

And Pearl laughed.

Slow, uncomfortable, insincere. Her eyes crinkled as she did so due to the smile taking up her face.

“I’m sorry, it’s-,” There was a pause as her laughter died off, “Your speech patterns have improved.”

Garnet quirked her lips into a frown. “What is that supposed to mean?”

The mechatronic engineer breathed out.

“It means you sound human.”

And the machine considered that, as well as the idea of sounding human in general. Did she want to sound human? No, she wanted to sound Garnet, because humans tended to sound like betrayal and confusion. Garnet realized then that Pearl had changed the subject.

“Three answers now,” Garnet crossed her arms. The remains of Pearl’s smile fell into a grimace as she once again took her eyes away from the face of the machine.

“You are everything to me, Garnet. I created you, I spent a fourth of my life making you, and I want nothing but to see you succeed.” The mechatronic engineer looked back at her, and her eyebrows had sloped and she looked sad rather than uncomfortable. “But you are ruining yourself by doing this. You need to stop-“ She had started playing with her fingers, intertwining them and pulling them apart over and over again. “Trying to understand.”

“I am made to understand.”

“You are made to answer questions, not understand where they came from, not to wonder why they are questions in general, but to answer them.”

“You can’t answer a question without understanding what it pertains to. How do I have all the answers if I can’t understand the questions?” Garnet allowed her face to revert to neutral, and everything clicked and whirled as it set into place “Your claim is-“ She thought of a word Mechatronic Engineer Tornsey had used once “bullshit.”

And Pearl laughed again. And again. And again. All the way until she had started leaking water out of her eyes and her laughs turned strangled. Garnet observed the action and her artificial brain worked to identify it. Crying. Full on crying, not her eyes watering like Rose’s had once done.

Sadness. Joy. Anger.

Pearl didn’t look joyful, so she ruled that one out. The machine stepped closer and rested her palm on her creator’s shoulder. She accessed her databank for clues on how to comfort a distressed human.

She patted her shoulder three times.

“There, there.”

Pearl laughed, strangled and unhappy.

“I’m being so ridiculous, I’m being so damn ridiculous! I shouldn’t have come here; I shouldn’t have felt bad about telling you not to ask questions.”

Garnet patted her shoulder six times.

“There, there.” She wished she would stop crying because her databanks were coming up empty on more comforting gestures. The pale woman pulled away from her and sniffled, rubbing her forearm across her reddened eyes and taking in deep breaths.

“There is,” Pearl bit into her lip “So much, I wish I could tell you. You need to understand that I can’t answer everything.”

“Who is stopping you?”

“Please, Garnet,” And Pearl didn’t meet her eyes. “No more questions.”

--

That night left the machine confused for week after week, and she didn’t go to meet Pearl anymore. She stayed with Rose and Orville and sometimes the Tornsey’s when they weren’t hiding in a supply closet making noises. She found fulfillment in helping Rose, but there was an absence in Garnet that grew more and more as she forced her distance from her creator. Sometimes she wished that she hadn’t demanded answers from her.

“Electrical Engineer Orville reports that you have a problem with fidgeting and following instruction to stay still when you assist her.” Chief Scientist Aberman flipped his paper and read on the next line.

“I don’t assist her. She has me stay in a corner watching her.”

“You are to follow all instruction given to you by a staff member.”

“I don’t recall that rule, Chief scientist Aberman.” Garnet allowed her head to tilt up, exercising the posture she had seen Pearl use before.

His dark brown eyes met her mismatched ones.

“Does it need to be a rule?”

Garnet raised a hand to his papers, “Make it one.”

A tension made the air thicker as Chief scientist Aberman stared at her, emotionless and unmoving. His dark brown eyes glanced down to his set of papers.

“Funny enough, this next report states your tendency to be-,” His eyes flickered up to meet hers again as he paused “ill-mannered. I can see the truth in it now.”

“I will work on it.”

Chief scientist Aberman nodded as he looked back down to his papers.

“Mechatronic Engineer Pirozzi has requested a scheduled block of time where you are to assist her, this request was granted by me and the block of time will be between the hours of 15:00 to 17:00. Understood?”

Somehow, Garnet had been expecting Pearl to make some effort to bring her back. It wasn’t by Pearl’s choice that she was avoiding her, after all, and she had missed her brief absence when she was with Electrical Engineer Orville. Garnet considered whether or not she wanted to see her creator again. She found that she wanted to, very, very much.

“Understood.”

The machine made a note to not demand answers from her anymore.

Chapter Text

Error of the Machine

When the machine handed Pearl her needle, her reaction was not a thank you or a smile her way, but instead a swift nod as she resumed her work. Garnet didn’t know why she expected different, because Pearl refused her kindness ever since she reported to the new block in her schedule. Greetings far between, the rules restated often, and touches shied away from. It took three days for Garnet to give up.

She stayed away in a corner instead, unseen and unheard for her required two hours. The machine mused on Electrical Engineer Orville during those times; she wondered if the green-eyed woman was preparing her for Pearl’s coldness. But Orville’s cross attitude didn’t upset her, Pearl’s did.

I never should have asked the questions.

Garnet found that regret was a feeling a machine could have very well. She glanced up from her hands and looked at Pearl, her red hair sticking up this way and that and her clothes disheveled. She hadn’t been sleeping again, Garnet knew that much, but every time she spoke up her creator dismissed her, saying that she was sleeping. Garnet could never find a way to press without exerting the same amount of demanding she had put behind the questions. To her dislike, she left it alone.

The disk she was working on sparked, and Pearl let out a yelp and brought her pointer fingers to her mouth. Before the machine could get herself under control, she sped towards her and held her hand out.

“You’re not supposed to touch-,” Pearl tensed as Garnet placed her hand on her shoulder anyway “Me.” The mechatronic engineer let out a long sigh and shrugged her hand off, and Garnet’s eyebrows sloped her and lips set into a frown, expressing the sadness she desired to feel.

 “You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing,” Pearl waved her hand out and grabbed her discarded needle to poke it into the disk. “Please, I’m trying to work. Go stand back.”

The machine’s expression fell further.

“You were different. You and Rose. You’re like the others now.” If her words affected Pearl, she didn’t show it. The machine dropped her hand and stood back far into the corner, watching Pearl with her one normal eye and one machine one. Never until these last few weeks was the machine so aware of how machine she was. Machine enough that she didn’t deserve the respect of being treated like an equal by her own creator.

Other people created me.

Garnet’s face set back into neutral. They didn’t matter as much as Pearl seemed to. The others weren’t the most beautiful human like Pearl was, the others didn’t answer her questions, and the others didn’t let her touch them.

Pearl doesn’t either.

She blamed herself again. For asking the questions. For demanding the answers. For pressing Pearl even when she didn’t want to be pressed. Curiosity was a bad thing, almost as bad as wanting. Garnet tried not to want anymore, but the more she tried not to the harder it became to not want. Chief scientist Aberman was right all along, loathe the machine was to admit it.

Another hiss from Pearl brought her out of her conscious thought simulator. The pale woman once again had her pointer fingers in her mouth, face screwed up into a mixture of irritation and pain.

This time, Garnet resisted the urge to approach her.

--

Her seed hadn’t grown anymore since the week before. Garnet stared at it and rubbed her finger up and down the shell, careful to not disturb the small stalk growing out of it. On her knee was her snow picture, the others kept hidden under the papers listing the rules. She wanted to take the others out, but with each one she looked at the more she thought of Pearl, so instead she stared at the snow picture. Pearl brought her the picture out of kindness, kindness she no longer showed to the machine.

It is my fault.

The absence of the kindness was due to her errors. The curiosity she showed and the wants she had. Garnet brought her hand away from the seed.

I am an error.

And as if her body had internalized irony, the want to be normal filled her. The machine gripped the picture on her leg, mismatched eyes searching the photo as if it could tell her how to stop wanting. But as she looked at it, all it told her was Pearl.

Once again, the snow reminded the machine of the pale woman. The icy lake was the color of her eyes, the snow almost matched her skin tone, and the picture itself reminded Garnet of Pearl’s kindness. With gentle fingers, she lifted the picture up to eye level. Sparks went through her artificial brain as she stared at the photo.

She would bring it to her creator as an apology, and a way to give her lost kindness back to her. Through the patch of uncovered metal on the right side of her ribs, she slipped the picture inside, keeping it tucked to the center of her chest where it would remain unseen. The artificial skin was thick enough that it didn’t show through, and for that Garnet was grateful. Her hand returned to the little yellow seed and she stroked it, exerting the care it required to grow.

Pearl will forgive me.

The machine’s first uncertainty.

--

The machine reported to her scheduled block the next day, and when Pearl opened the door, she looked more exhausted than ever. And for that Garnet worried, but the question she prepared to give died on her fake tongue as her creator turned away. Garnet didn’t stay rooted to her spot long, she followed after the mechatronic engineer, each footstep of hers echoing through the room with a metallic clang. Echoing and echoing until it stopped as the machine stopped, right next to Pearl’s side. Her hand raised and slipped into the hole in her ribs, and she tugged out her picture. Garnet held it out, and Pearl acknowledged it with a turn of her head.

“I’m sorry.”

It stayed in the air like a fog. Garnet kept still, holding the photo out while she kept eye contact with her creator. But blue eyes never met hers, they stayed down at the photo and stared at it as if they were trying to bore a hole through the paper.

Her body trembled.

A sob escaped from Pearl and she jerked away to throw herself on the desk, covering her eyes with her arms and bending over as her body trembled, muffled sobs sounding through the air and shocking Garnet into inaction. She could only watch as her creator broke down, for the second time since she met her.

Each time caused by me.

At a slow pace, her lips quirked down into a frown that showed her false sadness.

I am an error.

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t- I-“ Pearl’s repetition interrupted her sobs, all until she became incoherent and the machine couldn’t understand her any more. Signals fired to her artificial brain as she searched for more types of comfort, but once again she was coming up blank and all she could do was set her hand on her shoulder again and say ‘there, there’. But Pearl didn’t calm down, whispering to herself over and over again that she couldn’t do it. Garnet drew her hand away, watching her creator, until her eyes turned to the photo still in her hand. The photo made her want happiness she couldn’t feel, and it served to comfort her when she was at her loneliest. Mismatched eyes glanced back to Pearl.

Garnet placed the photo atop her head, and willed it to give the comfort she didn’t know how to give herself.

It worked. The sobs died down and Pearl didn’t tremble and doubt herself anymore. One of her pale hands snaked along her shoulders until it came to her head, and she grabbed the photo and moved it so it was in front of her reddened eyes. Not a sound left her lips, nor did her expression change. Her focus was on the photo only. The machine hoped it meant that she was remembering her kindness. Garnet moved her hand to her shoulder again, patting it three times.

“There, there.”

Pearl rose from her bench and turned to face the machine, tilting her head up so she could meet her eyes. Garnet let her hand drop to her side. The photo was still in the mechatronic engineer’s hands, held tight between her index finger and thumb, so tight her knuckles were white, and her arm trembled enough to make the photo emit a wavering sound. Then her hand stilled. Pearl regarded the picture. Then she regarded Garnet.

The photo drifted to the ground as her creator let it go. And her creator stepped forward and threw her arms around her.

Signals fired up to her artificial brain, each mixed, mixed between telling her to step away from the hug or to accept the hug. A creaking of joints sounded as Garnet raised her arms up and wrapped them around the pale woman’s thin body. She couldn’t rest her head against Pearl’s chest like she could with Rose, so instead she dropped her chin onto her head and allowed her eyes to close.

“You care so much.” So quiet. “Stars, please never stop caring. Please.”

“I won’t.” The machine tightened her grip as Pearl attempted to leave. Her creator stopped her moving and instead she hugged back.

“I’m so sorry. It isn’t my choice, Garnet. If it was-“ Pearl shook her head instead of finishing. “I’m not the one in power here.” She instead finished with.

“You confuse me.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Please stop.”

“I can’t promise that.”

A pause as the machine considered.

“May I keep the photo?”

Pearl’s shoulders jumped as she laughed.

“Yes, I wasn’t going to take it from you.”

Garnet paused, eyes opening and drifting down to stare at the top of her creator’s head.

“May I hold on?”

A silence.

“As long as you want.”

--

It ended after five minutes. The block ended after an hour. And the machine wandered the hallways for three more. All until she found herself standing at the Tornsey’s door, where she then knocked and asked to assist them. The Tornsey’s never needed her assistance, as they had each other, but they still bid her entry and allowed her to walk in while they continued their work on something that resembled a human brain made of mechanical parts. Garnet watched as the Tornsey’s nudged each other and whispered something not meant for her to hear. A giggle drifted passed the lips of Biomedical scientist Tornsey.

“Hey, machine, come check this out!”

Garnet snapped to attention and approached at Mechatronic Engineer Tornsey’s beckoning. Biomedical Scientist Tornsey was still chuckling as she drew near.

“Ruby, she won’t get it.”

“Still! C’mere!”

Garnet moved until she was between them, and Mechatronic engineer Tornsey gestured to what they were working on. It was a set of bars, one on its own, two vertical parallel, but one was shorter than the other, two equal in size vertical parallel with each other, and two forming an L. Garnet examined it, databanks struggling to identify its significance, but nothing came up.

“You’re so childish.” Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s voice carried an emotion the machine couldn’t identify.

“Whaaat? I turned forty-five last week! How could I be childish?”

Garnet stepped back as her two creators talked amongst each other, returning to her corner as forgotten as she was before. She didn’t mind it too much, though. Even if the Tornsey’s ignored her, they had the most entertaining conversations out of all the staff members in the facility, which made the ignoring bearable.

“You’re such a dork.” Biomedical scientist Tornsey backtracked on her original statement. Garnet’s eyebrows furrowed.

Well, which is it? Childish or dork?

Her thoughts didn’t linger long as the two women moved and pressed their lips together. For what was the third time that day, Garnet’s databanks and her artificial brain were thrown for a loop, and electricity and signals ran up and down her wires. She recognized the action as a memory resurfaced of the couple she saw during her first test. Kissing. Kissing pertains to happiness and-

Love?

She watched as the Tornsey’s pulled away, their faces darker than before as they returned to their work, talking amongst themselves. Garnet’s artificial brain worked to place a definition to the new word.

Love. A chemical reaction. Something that humans feel for other humans. There are different types of love: for family, spouses, friends-

Garnet sifted through the information, and she found that love was as desirable as happiness was. She looked down at her hands. Lovers held hands often. She locked her fingers together. Not the same. She remembered when she hugged herself and how it wasn’t the same either. Her databanks ceased to bring any more information, so she was stuck figuring out what to do with it and what its significance was to her. Images of people and things appeared in her conscious thought simulator the more she reflected on the information.

Wanting was bad. Wanting was what made Pearl shun her at first. Wanting the answers made Pearl’s kindness disappear. Wanting enjoyment made Chief scientist Aberman threaten her with termination. Wanting hugs was what placed the restrictions on her.

Still, Garnet wanted to feel love.

Chapter Text

I Know

And because humans never ceased to confuse her, Pearl returned to her normal behavior the following day. No longer did she show coldness to the machine, instead showing the smiles, the mannerisms, and the gentle touches she had done before Garnet performed her error. There was something different about her, though, even with the normalcy that had returned. Garnet noticed it two days after their first hug; the slight hesitations in answering her questions, the tensing before she accepted a request for Garnet to touch her, and the slight waver in the smiles.

It would never be the same. Garnet had that answer locked away.

She had given her the same courtesy in being different. Garnet didn’t confide in her with her inner thoughts anymore, and she kept her questions simple and nonpersonal. She hoped Pearl would notice the change. Her creator deserved to feel the same distance.

But then Garnet took time to reflect, and she allowed more than a week to pass by to make her judgements. It wasn’t distance that surrounded Pearl.

Confusion.

Garnet became far too used to that word as time went on.

She stopped her own distance once she realized that Pearl was confused between being friends with her or being distant with her. And Garnet tried to keep it from bothering her, but try as she might it occupied her conscious thought simulator more often than not. The machine wished it didn’t, but more than that she wished again and again that she never asked the questions because now it would never be the same.

Much like Pearl, the machine was confused too, but not about whether or not to show kindness to herself, but about humans. Humans confused her. Humans embodied confusion.

She didn't like humans very much.

The machine watched as Pearl tried and failed yet again to move a frame onto her desk. It was shaped much like the machine skeleton she was working on when they first met, yet the material was darker and the ‘limbs’ of the frame were longer. Her creator stood back and huffed as she glared at the skeleton with her blue eyes, before she moved in again and grabbed it and tried to hoist it up. In the background of her artificial brain, Garnet’s databanks worked to provide her with several warnings about the way Pearl was attempting to lift the frame.

Injuries to spine. Weaker joints. Potential nerve damage.

“Garnet, please come help me with this.”

And the machine obeyed, striding over to Pearl with a small smile on her face. Even when Pearl was cold to her, and even now when she was confused about whether or not to be kind to her, she never stopped calling her by her name. She never thought that she wasn’t deserving of her name.

Garnet curled her fingers under the frame and, after consulting her databanks for the proper form, bent her knees and lifted it. The frame raised from the table without a problem, and Garnet felt none of the strain that Pearl was exhibiting earlier. The machine glanced down at the metal, then at her own arms. Smile turning neutral, she turned and moved the frame to the top of her desk.

“Thank you, Garnet.” Pearl’s voice was relieved. She danced around the machine to get to the frame, picking up her needle.

“How did I do that?” The question tumbled from Garnet’s mouth before she could think it over. Her creator spared her a glance before looking back at the frame.

“Machines don’t have the limitations in strength that humans have.”

Garnet checked for those limitations, and she found that they related to pain, weakness, and mentality.

“If you were to put effort into it, you could lift about 700 pounds over your head.” Pearl continued as she ran her needle along a crease in the metal, the tip of it sparking the entire way.

Garnet looked down at her hands. An average human weighed about 137 pounds. She could hold five humans over her head should she choose to. Her mismatched eyes leveled between Pearl and her hands, fingers flexing into fists.

“Though, your joints wouldn’t be stable enough for that considering- Woah!”

The machine had gone behind Pearl, pressing both her hands on the mechatronic engineer’s hips and lifting her into the air above her head. Her creator let out an undignified squawk as Garnet lifted her down until her feet were inches from the ground, before moving her up again over her head. Her legs kicked, trying to find support, and her hands gripped the machine’s forearms.

“Garnet, put me down!”

A smile crawled across Garnet’s face as she lifted Pearl down again only to lift her back up, picking up her speed. Pearl managed to twist herself around, and Garnet adjusted her hands so the pale woman could face her. Her expression was stern.

“Put me down.”

Garnet let her eyes narrow, smile still on her face as she lifted her back up, then down again. Up, then down. Up, then down. Up, then down.

Pearl started laughing.

It spilled out from her lips and made her face turn pink, and she lifted one of her hands from the machine’s forearm to hold it over her mouth, muffling the sweet noise. Garnet’s smile widened as she once more quickened her pace. She could hear fragments of Pearl’s voice telling her to stop between her laughs.

Garnet lifted her up, then set her down at last, pulling away and clasping her fingers together.

“I like that.” Garnet didn’t let the smile fall from her face. Her creator, still in a fit, looked up at her.

“Like what?” Her breath came out paced, giggles laced in them.

“When you laugh.”

I like making you laugh.

“You do?” And Pearl’s face seemed to redden more.

“I do.”

Better than me making you cry.

--

The machine pinched the green stalk between her fingers, thumb rubbing up and down. The broken seed rested on top of a green bud sticking from the plant. The stalk, protruding from the floor, was five inches in length. Instead of the white papers containing her restrictions, the green stalk was what caught her eye when she returned to her confinement, and the machine didn’t mind that because it was beautiful. She let go of the stalk and poked at the seed resting on the bud.

The seed reminded her of Rose, who she had not seen for a few weeks. According to a staff member cleaning her room, she had gone into labor. The machine wished she would return; she wanted to tell her all about the seed she had given her and how it had grown. But Garnet is patient and she will wait for her return, however long it would take for her to.

It reminded the machine of Pearl also, because the plant was beautiful and so was Pearl. Garnet remembered what happened between them earlier that day and smiled. She wished she had a way to keep her laughter, like she could keep nature in pictures. It made her want to feel happy. It made her want to feel love.

Garnet considered that. Love with Pearl, the woman that created her and gave her photos and laughed when she picked her up and let her down. She did want love and love couldn’t be had without another person.

But is Pearl the one?

The mechatronic engineer confused her. She could like her and be wonderful one day, but then be no worse than Electrical engineer Orville the next. And Pearl had betrayed her by using the rules against her. And Pearl showed that she would rather obey the wishes of someone in power rather than consider the non-existent feelings of the machine.

It hurt.

The non-feeling form of surprise filled Garnet. It hurt. She wasn’t able to feel that, but still it hurt. Would love temper that hurt? Was love even for an error like her to have? Garnet wanted to feel sad now, and she remembered the water that came out of Pearl’s eyes and she supposed she wanted to do that too. Her hand retracted from the stalk as rested on her knee.

Pearl may not deserve the love she wanted to give her. But the machine didn’t deserve it either.

“Machine.”

Garnet started, twisting back to look at Chief scientist Aberman. His frown on his face. His eyebrows furrowed.

“Let’s go.”

He didn’t wait for an answer or an acknowledgment. He turned around and left. Garnet got up to follow.

He led her down a pattern of white hallways until they came to a stop at the room he used for their end-of-the-week review. A beeping sounded as he slid his card on the slot next to the door. The machine followed him in and took her seat on her end of the table while Chief scientist Aberman took his. No words. He set out three pictures.

“Choose.”

It was like the second test she took. She looked down on the pictures. A cup. A dog. A tree. The machine selected the tree.

“Why?”

“Trees are nice.” Garnet gave the typical answer, and Chief scientist Aberman said nothing as he swept the pictures away. Three more were set out. Purple. A mountain. A gasmask. Garnet hesitated before choosing a picture. Something seemed wrong, and her artificial brain was working to find the problem but it couldn’t locate it. Frowning, she tapped the picture of purple.

“Why?” His voice never wavered from its monotone. His dark brown eyes stayed on hers.

“It’s a nice color.” Her typical answer.

Chief scientist Aberman nodded and he swept the pictures away again. One was set out.

Pearl.

It was the same picture she had on the ID card kept around her neck, where she looked younger with a slight smile and bright blue eyes. The machine wanted to reach out and touch it, but she kept still, eyes flickering up to look at the man in front of her. He stayed neutral. Saying nothing, he set out another picture, and when Garnet looked down she realized why something was wrong. The picture was of flowers in front of a blurred background of trees. He set out another. Two people hugging. Another. Purple.

Garnet stared at the pictures, eyelids coming down into a slow blink that clicked in the still air. Her hands curled into fists, the tips of her metal skeleton poking through the dark artificial skin.

He knows.

“I know.”

Garnet looked up at Chief scientist Aberman, blinking again. He never changed his expression as he leaned forward and rested on his elbows, hands clasped together.

There isn’t a picture of my hate for him. He doesn’t know that one.

She knew that it was because it was hard to describe hate through a picture, but that didn’t change the fact that he knew her internal wants. He put them down right in front of her for her to look at, either to taunt her or to scare her. And right now the machine was both taunted and scared, as scared as she could be without feeling it. Her eyes tried to stay on him but they flickered down to the pictures, looking them over until her eyes fixated on Pearl and stayed there.

Did she tell? Only she and Rose knew about her wants. But it seemed far too out of character for Garnet to consider it, and it hurt that she even considered it in the first place. Pearl would never do that. Pearl may betray her with the questions, but she would never betray her to Chief scientist Aberman with her inner wants.

They remained there for what seemed like hours, but in reality was only minutes. Chief scientist Aberman never took his eyes off her and Garnet tried not to meet his gaze too often. The sound of footsteps in the hallway was the only sound that broke the silence. The man leaned back in his chair, relaxing into it, making it creak several times with his weight. He gestured a hand to the door.

“You may leave.”

His face kept neutral as always. Garnet didn’t hesitate in standing up and walking towards the door. She paused before turning the handle.

“You don’t know everything.”

Chief scientist Aberman let out a breath.

“Defiance isn’t the best option here. Leave.”

She thought of a phrase Ruby Tornsey used one or twice when working with Pearl.

Fuck you, Aberman.

Garnet opened the door and left, wishing that she had said it aloud but knowing that it would be bad for her if she did. The door shut with a heavy thud.

It wasn’t a want, she realized. The emotion was clear to her. Garnet hated Chief scientist Aberman.

Chapter Text

For her Success

The machine walked with a heaviness that made her footsteps clang more than usual, each clang echoing down the white hallways, travelling further and further until Garnet’s audio receptors could no longer pick up the sound. Over and over again signals fired to her brain, trying to conceive a thought before she dashed it away. Garnet couldn’t remember if she was ever in a blank state such as this. She hated it, but if she thought of anything than it would mean Chief scientist Aberman knowing about that thought as well.

Her legs took her down a designated path, and the machine tried not to think about where she was going, but before long she was in front of Pearl’s door and she didn’t hesitate in letting herself in. Pearl was near a counter, wiping it down with a cloth until the steel shone. The mechatronic engineer looked up at Garnet as she let the door close.

“Garnet?” Pearl rose an eyebrow as she stepped around the counter. “Isn’t it your curfew? What are you doing here?”

Garnet didn’t respond. She didn’t know what to say. For a moment she stood there, so blank she forgot to do the blinking that would make her seem less creepy. Until she started moving again.

“He knows, Pearl,” Garnet kept walking until she was in front of her creator. “How does he know?” Garnet wasn’t sure if she wanted Pearl knowing her plight, not when her creator was confused on showing Garnet her kindness. The mechatronic engineer seemed confused for a split second, before her face settled and she let out a long sigh.

“I knew he was going to demonstrate it to you,” Pearl pursed her lips “I didn’t expect him to do it this soon.” She turned back to the counter and grabbed her rag. “Fetch the cleaner, Garnet.”

And the machine obeyed, taking the spray bottle in her hands and spraying it on the counter Pearl gestured to.

“Your databanks and what you access are all linked to a computer, as well as your thoughts. Aberman and any authorized personal can access it at any time should they choose to.” Pearl wiped off the counter that Garnet had sprayed, eyebrows furrowed and her eyes never meeting the machine’s. She scrubbed at a stubborn stain. “I’ll admit, I looked into it a few times, but only in passing.” Her tone was almost sheepish.

Garnet didn’t speak, nor did she think, but she did realize. Realize that anything she thought to be private wasn’t private. Her wants, her imaginings. All locked in some computer waiting for a prying eye to look it over. The machine looked down at her palms and flexed them, face neutral and eyes unblinking, her body in a slight tremor.

Even Pearl. Pearl looked at it. Does she know?

She ceased the train of thought before it could leave the station.

“Garnet?”

The machine looked up at Pearl, and for once she didn’t want to feel fondness or happiness or even the love she had discovered.

“You’re cruel. All of you.”

Pearl blinked, head moving back.

“All in your own ways.” Garnet let her hands fall to her side, and she furrowed her eyebrows to express the anger she wanted to feel. “Chief scientist Aberman keeps me from my wants. You become cold to me when it benefits you. Rose leaves me. Biomedical scientist Tornsey keeps me bound to the rules. Electrical engineer Orville insults me-“

“Garnet.”

“Mechatronic Engineer Tornsey yells, half the staff members in this facility refuse to look at me,” Garnet stopped, and leveled Pearl with a narrow-eyed gaze. “Why did you create me? Did humans need an outlet that wasn’t themselves?”

Pearl winced and looked away.

“You shouldn’t be saying that.”

“I would say my thoughts are my own, but that seems to not be as true as I once thought.” The machine almost wanted to turn and leave, but she chose to stay. She didn’t want to be in her confinement.

“We created- I created you to see you succeed.”

“Succeed in what? Answering bullshit questions? Be the prime subject of your bullshit treatment?” Garnet crossed her arms across her chest. “I succeeded.”

“Stars, you need to stop spending time with the Tornsey’s, Ruby is rubbing off on you” Pearl pinched the bridge of her nose, letting out a deep sigh. “We created you to succeed in the purpose we wanted you for. That is all I can say, I’m sorry.”

“You’re cruel.”

Pearl winced.

“Please don’t say that. The computer’s required for your testing, it’s one of the guidelines we have to follow.” Pearl brought her hands close, fingers fluttering and clasping together. Her lips moved up and down, parting and closing, faltering with words she was confused on whether or not to say. “Garnet…” A deep sigh, “None of us have a say in this, not even Aberman.”

Garnet allowed her face to default to neutral as she processed the new information. When she focused on Pearl, she saw no indication that she was participating in the human practice of lying, nor did she show confusion anymore. Garnet allowed herself to frown as a new question rested on her fake tongue.

“Not even him?”

“No, he’s required to look over your logs at the end of every week and forward them. It’s a part of his job description aside from being the overseer of our department. He-“ Pearl looked like she was struggling again. She bit her lip and let out another deep sigh. “He waits for a response, and he follows whatever instructions they give him.” Her voice had dropped into a whisper, as if anyone outside the room could hear what was being said. Garnet leaned in closer by instinct. “We all follow instruction and guidelines, Garnet, that’s our job as scientists and engineers.”

“What guidelines do you follow?” The machine was curious. Pearl shook her head.

“I already gave you a forbidden piece of information. Don’t press for another.”

For once, Garnet respected that. She leaned back and nodded.

Pearl let her arms drop and she let out a breath through her nostrils, before she moved forward and wrapped her thin arms around the machine. Signals fired up and down, but Garnet managed to process the unexpected action and respond in a few seconds, accepting the hug.

“You are right to feel the way you do, Garnet. Never censor your thoughts. Think like Garnet.” Pearl nuzzled her cheek into Garnet’s chest and held on tighter. The machine took that as a cue to tighten her own grip, to be sure that Pearl wouldn’t let go anytime soon. Garnet considered Pearl’s words as she held on, and a clicking sounded as she brought her lips into a deeper frown.

“Like a machine.” She blinked and tilted her head to look at the top of Pearl’s. Her head shook from left to right, slow and deliberate, red locks of hair swaying with the motion.

“Like you.”

The machine considered that.

--

Garnet wandered the hallways the next day, going nowhere, passing time until she was scheduled to go visit with Pearl. She never returned to her confinement after talking to her creator; she stayed with her, sitting cross-legged on the tile floor of her workshop while her creator sewed the rips in her fingertips together, chastising her about being more careful. The machine looked back at that recent memory with fondness, and she made sure to associate as much happiness behind it as possible.

Think like Garnet. Don’t censor your thoughts.

She hoped Chief scientist Aberman would read her thoughts and feel outraged at them, but the people who he would send the logs to would tell him not to do anything and he would be forced to let Garnet be. Each footstep of hers clanging against the white floor of the hallways, Garnet turned left and continued down another corridor. She didn’t have a location in mind, but in the back of her conscious thought simulator she was aware that she was nearing Rose’s lab.

“Machine.”

Garnet turned, eyelids coming down to complete a blink. Tilting her head, she looked Biomedical scientist Tornsey in her one blue eye.

“Biomedical scientist Tornsey,” Garnet slanted her head to the side “I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I am a very silent individual,” The corner of her lips turned up, and the half-blind woman moved passed her. “Please follow, I need some help moving boxes.”

Garnet nodded, and she began to follow.

Biomedical scientist Tornsey led her past Rose’s lab, past Electrical engineer Orville’s, to her and Mechatronic engineer Tornsey’s shared lab. As she said, there were boxes stacked near the wall, some of them without the lid, which revealed the manila folders and binders inside.

“Ruby is sick and we are due to move our documents into the archives.”

“Mechatronic engineer Tornsey looked fine yesterday.” Garnet recalled seeing the sturdy woman rushing down the hallways, yelling about being late before stopping at the end of the corridor to grip at her back and curse about ‘getting old’. It was somewhat amusing. The machine also looked back at that recent memory with fondness.

“She will be sick.” And that’s all Biomedical scientist Tornsey said before she shuffled over to grab the smallest box and hoist it up. Turning on her heel, the short woman began to move down the hallway, her footsteps so brief it looked like she was gliding. Garnet hurried to follow after her, grabbing the first box she could reach and speeding down the hallway to meet at Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s side. The half-blind woman looked ahead, face neutral save for the beginnings of a smile that quirked the left side of her lips. Garnet mimicked the expression.

“Ten years.”

The machine glanced to Biomedical scientist Tornsey, her gait faltering. The biomedical scientist didn’t look at her.

“Ten years I spent making you, during that time I married the love of my life and met some of my closest friends.” Biomedical scientist Tornsey was glancing down at her hand, and when Garnet followed her gaze she saw a metal band around her ring finger. She studied the ring, sifting through her databanks to identify the make and the gem when the half-blind woman’s voice brought her back to conscious thought.

“How old are you now? Six months?”

Garnet tried to think back to when she was born, but all she saw was a blur. The machine gave a slow nod.

“About.”

“You’ve learned so much in such a short time. I wish I had that ability.”

For the first time, Garnet noticed how pleasant the biomedical scientist’s voice was, albeit devoid of significant emotion. She rather liked listening to it. It reminded her of Rose. The machine strode that much closer to Biomedical scientist Tornsey.

“Your voice too, how unique it’s become. Such a change from when you were first activated.”

Garnet wanted to correct her, to tell her that they didn’t meet until a few weeks after that, but then she remembered the computer that contained her innermost thoughts and she dashed away that correction. Chances were Biomedical scientist Tornsey looked at her earlier thoughts and compared them with her latest vocalization. Her fingers, the artificial skin sewed together, gripped the sides of the box of documents that much tighter.

“I’m proud.”

Garnet nodded, “You are right to be proud of your work, Biomedical scientist Tornsey.”

The biomedical scientist let out a short laugh, stopping in front of a door. Garnet stopped with her, and regarded her with a tilt of her head.

“Of you, machine.”

The machine blinked, staring at Biomedical scientist Tornsey. Her fingers flexed against the box, and Garnet was aware of the loosening of the stitches on her skin.

“You… are?” It was a question, and forbidden, but sometimes Mechatronic engineer Tornsey didn’t mind questions and Garnet hoped that that had rubbed off on Biomedical scientist Tornsey.  

“Of course. We are all here to help you grow.”

As Biomedical scientist Tornsey turned to open the door, the machine brought her lips down into a frown. She didn’t believe that. She didn’t think that the Garnet from six months ago would believe that either. A beeping echoed through the hallway as the door accepted the swipe of the biomedical scientist’s ID card, and Biomedical scientist Tornsey pushed the door open. Inside were rows of beige file cabinets, grey racks in the middle containing boxes and folders and binders. The biomedical scientist moved to the first rack and set her box on the bottom shelf, and when Garnet looked closer she noticed the labeling on the bottom of the racks.

 T, 02/20-08/20, F-01

Garnet accessed her databanks. Blank. The machine blinked at that. Was that the first time they ever came up blank? Without even a clue or an unrelated subject for her artificial brain to focus on instead? Garnet sloped her eyebrows, and tried her best to express confusion; what she wanted to feel at that moment.

Biomedical scientist Tornsey turned away from the rack and motioned for Garnet put down her own box, and the machine obeyed, setting it right next to the smaller box. She made sure to push them close together to create maximum space on the rack. As she straightened up, she glanced at the label and logged it away, making sure it was safe in her memory banks before she stepped away to follow Biomedical scientist Tornsey, who was already nearing the door.

“But there’s only so much we can do to help you succeed. Half of the effort needs to come from you, machine.”

My name is Garnet.

The machine nodded rather than vocalize her thought.

“I’ve already been putting in the effort.”

How about you? How about anyone else aside from Pearl?

Once again, Garnet kept that portion silent.

“Good. As you should.” Devoid of emotion. Not as pleasant as her voice once seemed. Garnet wondered of the ulterior motive Biomedical scientist Tornsey had, and for a moment so brief she wanted to feel sad at how suspicious she was becoming of all the humans she interacted with.

If only the machine didn’t feel that it was necessary to.

Chapter Text

The Machine’s Losses

“Rose isn’t coming back,”

Garnet clamped her mouth shut, jaw clicking as she did so, the question-disguised-statement she had prepared leaving from the front of her conscious thought simulator. Electrical engineer Orville grumbled as she weaved wiring down the arm of the skeleton she was working on, attaching the metal prongs inside the battery located at the end. Electrical engineer Orville glanced back at the machine at her lack of a response. She rolled her eyes.

“She had complications during the labor and she won’t be back.” The electrical engineer turned to the frame and took a step back, off her stool as she headed to fetch wires from a cabinet.

“Ro-Mechanical Engineer Davis should take her time to rest-“

“She isn’t coming back ever, clod.” Electrical engineer Orville’s muffled voice came from inside the cabinet. Garnet processed the information, looking down at her hands and stitched fingertips. The stitching’s were loose.

She wondered if it was because of her. Did Rose hear of her forbidden questions and the way she took after Mechatronic engineer Tornsey’s cursing? Did she hear of the way she broke the rules left and right by hugging Pearl and wanting? Garnet couldn’t understand why Rose wouldn’t come back, no matter how many possibilities her artificial brain pulled up for her to consider. But the electrical engineer would never answer the simple question of ‘why not?’; she hated when Garnet broke the rules.

The machine wanted to ask Pearl, but her block of time had been canceled, which Electrical engineer Orville had informed her about as she came to collect her from her confinement. In fact, it seemed no one was walking the hallways except them, and anyone they did pass kept their head down, their lips sealed, and their eyes crying.

“Clod!”

Garnet felt a distinct pressure on her shoulder, picked up the sound of a loud ‘clank’ that came with it, and when her head snapped up she saw that Electrical engineer Orville was standing in front of her and had a pipe in her hand.

“I’ve been trying to get your attention!” Electrical engineer Orville set the pipe down on her desk and twisted, stepping back on her stool. “Lapis has been gone all week and you’re the only one available to assist me-,”

“You hit me.” It took time to process that fact, but it was clear. The machine fixated her stare on the pipe on the bench.

“You weren’t responding to vocal stimulus.”

Garnet dug her fingers into her shoulder and allowed her eyebrows to slope. She didn’t like that. She rubbed her shoulder with her palm and continued to stare at the electrical engineer until she turned around and went back to her work. Even then, the machine didn’t look away.

Cruel. All of them.

Garnet dropped her hand to her side and kept her head down.

“Pliers.”

The machine reached for them and handed Electrical engineer Orville the tool, not even receiving a thank you before the shorter woman went back to her work. For an hour she responded to these commands without a hint of appreciation, all until Electrical engineer Orville dismissed her and the machine left into the hallways.

She was stuck wandering, as there was nowhere to go and the Tornsey’s and Pearl’s labs were dark inside. She looped around again and again until the machine stopped in one spot and didn’t move again. There was no point to the wandering. And for some reason Garnet was expecting someone to come up behind and surprise her, much like how Biomedical scientist Tornsey and Rose did, but that never came.

Not for the first time, Garnet was stricken with a dislike for loneliness.

She couldn’t recall there never being a time where she couldn’t go into one of her creator’s labs to offset it, other than when she was born, but even then she had Aberman with her for a small portion of the time before she began to dislike him. Here, she had no one. Garnet couldn’t feel the feeling, but she knew it wasn’t a nice feeling. Garnet began to walk again, down the identical hallways until she found herself at Rose’s lab. And when she glanced into the glass near the door she saw that it was empty. Not a frame. Not a plant. Not a light. Empty.

The machine pressed her hand up to the glass and leaned in further, checking around it before she pulled back. She raised a hand to the door handle and pushed it down, and despite her lack of a keycard to unlock it, it still opened. Garnet stepped into the room. The door shut. The only light in the room was the light coming from the glass and from her robotic blue eye.

Garnet remembered her first meeting with the large woman, and then she remembered her first hug given to her. She remembered Rose calling her sweetheart and adorable and she remembered having her artificial hair ruffled by the mechanical engineer. But then her brain began to work against her, souring the pleasant memories by reminding her that she had ignored Rose most of the time once she met Pearl.

The machine bent down and took a seat on the floor, crossing her legs and setting her hands into her lap. Pearl occupied her conscious thought simulator so much that Rose had become an afterthought on most days. Garnet recalled the last time she saw her was when she was avoiding Pearl. She had told her about the growth of her seed, and Rose had never seemed happier. She told her about how she knew Garnet could make it grow and how proud she was of her accomplishment. Then she went off into a rant about the beauty of nature and the machine turned her audio receptors down a few notches. She wished she hadn’t, knowing now that it would be the last time she would have the opportunity to hear her voice.

“Rose isn’t coming back.”

There was a question that Garnet found herself asking more and more every day: ‘Why?’. To this question it was no exception. She found herself thinking about how her errors made Rose leave, and she supposed that it was true. Garnet knew she wouldn’t want to be around her creation if it was an error.

The machine stood up and turned to the door. She needed to leave before someone discovered her lounging in the room. She didn’t need a previous experience to know that the staff members wouldn’t approve. Opening the door, Garnet left into the hallway. And for the first time, she made for her confinement even though it wasn’t curfew.

--

Garnet fantasied about Rose showing her nature, weaving her in and out of different types of trees, pulling her through thick brush and flower beds, and treading her across lakes. She imagined that she had purple clothing again, and had purple patches of skin that covered where her rips once were.

“This is a Venus fly trap.”

They stopped in front of it. The plant looked like any other, with a large green stem and leaves poking off those stems. But the head of the plant looked like a flat maw, with small spikes that aligned the outward rim of the maw. Garnet reached out to poke it, but Rose pulled her hand away.

“No touching, Garnet.”

And that’s how Garnet was grounded again, kept from wandering too far into her imagination. Rose never called her ‘Garnet’. She was always ‘machine’ or ‘sweetheart’. Her conscious thought simulator faltered again, and she found herself looking at a grey room rather than greens. Garnet closed her eyes and tried to regain her fantasy.

“The Venus flytrap is unique due to its carnivorous nature.”

Was that Rose’s voice? It sounded like her databanks informing her. Garnet chose to ignore it. She didn’t want her fantasy to break.

“It eats insects to gain nutrients it can’t get from the soil it grows in.” Rose was bending down, looking at the flytrap with a smile, wearing a long white dress rather than the white jumpsuit she wore. Garnet was aware that Rose’s lips haven‘t moved yet.

“My plant doesn’t eat insects.” Garnet looked to Rose, and Rose looked back and smiled.

“Your plant isn’t a carnivore.” Rose turned her attention back to the flytrap. A fly was buzzing around it, drawing close before pulling away, before drawing close again and landing on the top of the plant’s maw. It began to crawl along the surface of the plant. “This one is.” The fly crawled into the mouth of the Venus flytrap, and the maw closed, trapping the insect. Garnet’s eyelids pulled back to show her false- no, this was her fantasy, and in her fantasy she felt true surprise.

“The plant-“

“Terminated the fly.” Rose nodded her head, agreeing to something Garnet hadn’t even said. “As it does.”

Garnet looked at the spot where the fly once was, processing how seconds ago the fly was moving, and in the next the Venus terminated the fly. She frowned to show off her true sadness.

“I don’t like that.”

“No one does.” Rose looked at her and gave a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Garnet chose to return to reality then, not liking the turn her imaginings had taken. She leaned against the grey wall of her confinement and stared ahead, before she drew her gaze to the side of her, at the still growing plant poking out from the crack in the floor. Her artificial brain was working to decipher the meaning of the fantasy. The machine found that she never had much control over her imaginings; with her conscious thought simulator and databanks working in tandem and her want to lose herself in her fantasy, it was hard not to lose control. Sparks ran up and down the wirings connecting to her brain, shocking the plugs and trying to make her think beyond fact.

“Rose is terminated.” The machine found herself saying the conclusion aloud, and she realized that what she said was true as her brain started to back the statement. Rose had gone into labor weeks ago, labor often had complications that resulted in termination. And even if she wasn’t terminated in the sense where she can’t move anymore, then she was terminated in the sense that someone decided she was no longer needed in the facility.

Garnet wanted to feel sad.

A creator terminated. Gone without Garnet being able to say another word to her. Once again the machine found herself wishing that she would have kept her audio receptors turned up so she could hear Rose enjoying the idea of nature. And the machine also found herself wishing that Pearl was here or she was with Pearl so she could confide in her about these wants and wishes. But Pearl was gone as well as everyone else. And Garnet was alone.

--

Two weeks later the Tornsey’s and Pearl returned. On that day Garnet went to her scheduled block, knocked three times and stood back, watching through the glass beside Pearl’s door. Her creator was pouring over notes, ignoring her knock. Garnet knocked again. Pearl raised her head up and caught eyes with Garnet. Without moving from her spot at the work bench, Pearl waved her hand. She was gesturing for her to come in. Garnet opened the door and walked inside, shutting it afterwards and turning to the mechatronic engineer. She wasn’t looking at her.

Garnet walked up to Pearl, staring down at her with her one brown and one blue eye. She lifted a hand up and rested it on her shoulder.

“There, there.” She patted it three times, then added an extra fourth, Pearl peered back at her with reddened eyes, her face paler than usual. Pearl turned around and rubbed her temple.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be ignoring you Garnet. I haven’t slept in a while.”

That alarmed the machine. Her databanks began to bring up the dangers of a lack of sleep.

Hallucinations. Memory problems. Headaches. Lack of concentration. Dizziness.

“You need eight hours, Pearl.” Garnet realized too late that she said Pearl’s name rather than her title, but Pearl didn’t flinch.

“I know I do. I’m not dumb. I know I’m being self-destructive but-“ The mechatronic engineer sighed as she rubbed at her shut eyes. “I lost a long-time friend and a colleague and I need time to-“

“Rose was terminated.” Her question posed as a statement. Pearl looked up at Garnet then, an eyebrow raised in the slightest, a frown pulling at the corner of her thin lips.

“Terminated?”

“When people stop moving. Like when a fly gets caught in a Venus flytrap.” Garnet found herself recalling her fantasy. She made her own visual to go along with her words, pressing her palms together and clamping her hands down to represent the closing of the Venus’s maw.

“People- Garnet, machines get terminated. Not people. People die.”

Garnet considered that, and she considered death.

Death, a state of non-living.

“Die?”

“Yes.” Pearl turned back and looked at her notes again, tracing a pale finger along underneath the wording as she read over it. Her eyes were squinting, and the machine knew that Pearl was having a hard time reading due to her lack of sleep. She needed eight hours. Garnet stopped that line of thinking to think more on Pearl’s words. People die, not machines. Her words were implying something: Rose had died.

The permanent ending of cell and tissue function.

“Rose is dead.” Garnet gave a slow blink.

Pearl grimaced and hunched over her notes.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Without looking back at her, “You mean how.”

Garnet considered that for a moment.

“No, why did she die?”

Pearl hunched over even more, until her nose was inches away from touching the white paper on her desk. Her creator wasn’t answering, and when Garnet leaned over to look at her she saw that Pearl was narrowing her eyes and her lips were set into an even deeper frown.

I’m making her angry.

Against her better judgement and her memories of the last time she pressed Pearl, Garnet chose to continue.

“Pearl?”

“Because people die.” The pale woman pushed up from her desk and faced Garnet, angry. “That’s what happens to all of us. Everything dies.”

Garnet was even more curious.

“Why do-?”

“Stars, won’t you ever shut up for once?!”

Pearl’s scream bounced off the walls, right back at the machine as she stood there, taking in her creator’s words. Her mouth opened, but with a whirl and a click it moved back into place. She had gone too far; this was a repeat of the last time she pressed Pearl. Garnet cursed herself for being an error.

“People die. Everyone dies. That’s what happens! That’s life! Rose was in the hospital for two weeks recovering from an emergency surgery, talking about all the plans she had for her son every damn day. Then her heart failed, and wouldn’t you know it was only ten minutes ago from that point she was talking to me about how she would paint his room pink. It’s sudden, no one expects it! People die!”

Pearl twisted back to her bench and picked up her notes, looking them over one more time before crumbling them into a large ball and throwing them from her. Garnet flinched back as she twisted to stare at her.

“You’d think you’d know that, right Garnet? But you can’t remember anything can you?”

Garnet stepped back, eyes widening to show false surprise. Pearl had an awful sneer on her face, her body was trembling, and her eyes were wet with unshed tears.

“You think I spent a decade working on you only? I worked on you dozens of times!”

“Pearl, what do-?”

“And you failed, every single time!”

Garnet closed her jaw again, watching Pearl. She was shaking more and the tears were beginning to spill, her sneer faltering into a grimace.

“You know what we do to failures of androids? We kill them.”

Garnet flinched again at the word. Kill. Terminate.

“I w-watched you die, over and over and over again.” Pearl looked down and clenched her fists. Tears dripped off her cheeks and off her long nose, hitting the ground. “I- wa-watched-“

Her creator fell quiet.

She sunk down to her knees and moved into a cross legged position, pressing her head into her hands as she stared down at the floor. Shaking breaths left out from her lips, and that was the only sound in the room. Garnet looked down at the mechatronic engineer, conflicted. Was she to comfort her? Even the machine couldn’t seem to think straight either, her mind was reeling with what was revealed.

I have existed before.

“You-,” Pearl’s voice broke Garnet from her conscious thought simulator. She crouched down next to her creator and moved into a cross-legged position as well.

“These tests… you’ve failed them in the past. This is the longest you’ve went-,” Pearl was struggling. And Garnet made a split decision to move over and wrap her arms around the pale woman, holding her. It comforted the machine, but she knew it also comforted Pearl, because her creator didn’t tense and she even leaned in to Garnet’s arms. “I’m so sorry, Garnet. I shouldn’t have told you like that, I shouldn’t have told you to-,” Pearl sighed.

Garnet’s artificial brain pulled up a memory from her memory banks. Somehow, it seemed relevant.

T, 02/20-08/20, F-01

Garnet looked at Pearl’s saddened face.

“What is T, 02/20-08/20, F-01?”

Pearl grimaced, but she made eye contact with the machine.

“It’s for a filing system. T is for Tornsey. 02/20 and 08/20 is the date and shows the amount of time passed; 6 months. F-01 is your model number.” Pearl moved towards Garnet, closer and closer until she pressed against the machine’s chest. She rested a hand on Garnet’s shoulder. The amount of pressure and warmth exerted on her body took the machine aback, and when she glanced Pearl over she realized that they had never been this close.

“The first ever model of you was A-01. The number goes up to five before switching to a new letter. You’ve been recreated 25 times.”

Garnet tried to consider that, but it was too much to consider.

“You-you’re doing so well, th-though! I mean you’ve had a few blunders but for the most part you’ve been passing your tests and-and- Garnet your personality is the most unique out of all of them. I mean the others didn’t even consider nature to be-“

“Pearl.”

Pearl stopped talking. Her face twisted into a grimace. She pressed closer, nuzzling further into the machine’s chest.

“I’m so sorry, I-I shouldn’t have told you.” Her voice was so quiet Garnet’s audio receptors were having trouble trying to pick up her words.

“Pearl.”

Pearl looked up at the machine. Garnet kept her face neutral, making sure to do the blinking that made her seem less creepy. She moved a hand up and used her palm to wipe her creator’s face. The mixture of tears and snot stained her artificial skin. She let her fingertips linger on Pearl’s jaw.

“You need your eight hours.”

And Garnet needed time to consider.

Pearl said nothing, her mouth hung open, but she said nothing. Instead, she gave one slow nod, before her head made its even slower descent to rest on her chest. Garnet rewrapped her arms around Pearl. She made sure to pat her three times for extra-comfort.

The mechatronic engineer didn’t make another attempt to explain herself or to talk, and she fell asleep within a few minutes. There Garnet sat, holding her creator and trying to consider what she had been told, but her artificial brain refused to process the information. And the machine was almost false-happy about it.

Chapter Text

An Extended Leave

Pearl woke up hours later and the machine kept her in her arms for all those hours. She shuffled in her lap, a fist closing around Garnet’s shoulder and tugging on her artificial skin until the pale woman became more aware and looked up at Garnet. Garnet blinked at she looked down at her.

“You need five hours and twelve minutes.”

A small smile quirked up on her lip before her creator’s face became neutral again. Garnet tilted her head at that.

“What’s wrong?”

Her creator didn’t answer. She moved out of the machine’s lap and sat back on her knees, wiping her eyes with her hands. Garnet watched her with a frown to express her false concern. For a while nothing was said, even with all the questions and words resting on the machine’s fake tongue. She allowed Pearl to sit in silence, though, as that seemed to be what her creator wanted. Her artificial brain tried bringing up what they had spoken about hours ago, but it was shoved down. Garnet wanted to focus on Pearl only.

“This whole situation is what’s wrong.” The mechatronic engineer faced away from her and wrapped her arms around her body. And the machine surprised herself, as her conscious thought simulator told her that she wanted to be the one who had her arms around Pearl. Frowning, Garnet tilted her head down and looked at her arms, scrutinized them.

The only pair I’ve known, but the pair I’ve used dozens of times.

Garnet closed her fists.

A hand wrapped around her fist.

The machine jerked her head up to Pearl, whose blue eyes were cast down at their joined hands.

“You deserved to know,” Pearl’s lips moved without sound for a moment. “But you deserved to hear it a different way, not like that.”

Garnet didn’t answer for once.

“I shouldn’t have told you to shut up, either. I love your voice.” Pearl cheeks reddened, and she suctioned her lips into her mouth and glanced off to the side.

“Love.” Garnet tested the word out. She had never said it aloud. The word sounded as good spoken than it did when she thought about it.

Pearl wasn’t looking at her. Her cheeks were redder.

“Love!” Garnet’s head moved back a bit and her eyes widened on their own accord, clicking and soft whirling sounding out. A smile broke out across her face. Yes, she liked the sound of the word.

“I love your voice too!”

Her creator laughed, a soft and sweet one, not filled with pain or sadness. But still there were tears brimming in her eyes. She swept them away with the heel of her palm.

“Stars, you’re so good. I don’t know how you could be after everything you go through.”  Pearl found it fit to not look her in the eyes again. The machine found her free hand moving to cover her blue eye on its own accord. She hesitated, then let it fall back into her lap. It didn’t need to be covered. Not with Pearl.

“I’m good?”

“Yes.” Pearl didn’t even have to think about it or do her wordless lip movements. The machine smiled again. She liked that. She liked Pearl.

Then it fell.

“Were the others?”

Pearl’s head tilted down. The tears began to fall again.

“To me, they were all good.”

Garnet considered that.

She scooted closer.

“Can I hug you?” Her creator nodded, and the machine did so. She made sure to pat her three times with each hand.

“Why do you do that?” There was a laugh in Pearl’s voice.

“That’s how you comfort humans.” Garnet shut her eyes and rested her head on Pearl’s shoulder. “You pat them three times and say ‘there there’.”

Garnet felt her cry before she heard her, felt the tremors and the tears that wet her shoulder. Felt the way her body tensed and felt the air in the room shift. The machine wished she could stop making Pearl cry.

“Stars…” And the mechatronic engineer hiccupped and sobbed and laughed and swore and she didn’t stop. She didn’t stop no matter how many times Garnet said ‘there there’ or wrapped her in a hug or patted her shoulder. And the machine felt powerless because her creator was hurting and she couldn’t do anything. There was another dislike for her to have; the feeling of powerlessness. It was everywhere in her life: powerless to leave her confinement, powerless to have her thoughts be private, powerless to help Pearl, powerless to not be considered a failure. Powerless.

“Please stop crying,” It was the last thing the machine could think to say. Garnet squeezed Pearl tighter and tighter. “Stop.”

And her creator didn’t stop.

--

Weeks later, Garnet would reflect back on that incident while in her confinement, only in there because Pearl had taken an extended leave after that day. She stroked the leaves of her plant and poked the bud on top with a set frown, her memory banks replaying the memory over and over again. Garnet couldn’t be less concerned with the fact that she learned she was the 26^th copy of herself on that day; all that concerned her was that she was powerless to help her creator.

I will learn more comforting gestures.

And so the machine accessed her databanks and tried to learn. She learned about hugging, giving flowers, offering therapy, kissing, and much more. The green stalk of the flower wiggled as Garnet poked it, back and forth and back and forth until it settled. Poking her plant helped comfort her when she was lonely. She added that to the list of comforts as well.

She expanded her lists into the dozens before she decided that she had enough comforts and logged out of her databanks to focus more on what was in front of her. Gears whirled as Garnet tilted her head at the plant in front of her. The stem was a foot long now, and multiple leaves sprouted out of it, and at the top of it was an oval bud. It was almost grown. The machine poked it.

“Care,” It was said under her breath. Garnet paused before letting her mouth close. “…Love.” Yes, that was a suiting word as well. She logged away that word as being one of her favorites, as it fit everything.

Garnet began to wonder then; did her copies love as well? Did they have plants like hers? Did they-

Her artificial brain wiped her train of thought.

Garnet blinked. She tried to think about her questions again but they were wiped once more. She tried again. Wiped. Again. Same result. She tried thinking it in the form of statements and soon that disappeared without a trace as well. Garnet tried to think about plants and nature and love and they stuck until she made the conscious decision to stop thinking about it. Once more she tried to think of the fate of her copies and what they thought of and that thought was gone within seconds.

Garnet stared down at her opened hands, at the loose stitching’s and black metal peeking free from her fingers.

I don’t even have the freedom to think.

Powerless. Again. She didn’t know who to blame so she blamed Chief scientist Aberman because she had a feeling he had some part in it.

Chief scientist Aberman didn’t build me.

A frown set on her face.

My creators did. Pearl and the Tornsey’s worked on my brain.

Deeper frown.

Why should I blame them? It won’t change anything.

Garnet backed away from her plant, all the way until she was in her corner, and she sat with her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Her plant wasn’t comforting anymore; neither was thinking of nature or hugs or the color purple or love. It was all lost to her at the discovery of her restricted thoughts. Her eyes drifted to the rules on the back wall, still there and still unchanged since day one. Restrictions to ask questions, restrictions to touch, restrictions to leave her confinement, restrictions to refuse to answer questions. If the machine had a writing utensil she would write ‘You are not allowed to think’.

Garnet wanted Pearl with her. At least then they could be sad (false in her case) together. But Pearl was gone and she couldn’t get a straight answer on how long she would be gone. So the machine sat in her confinement alone.

--

“Your birthday is coming up soon,” Chief scientist Aberman didn’t look up from the pile of documents he was scribbling on.

Garnet looked up from the book she had in front of her, one that the chief scientist gave her and told her to read when she came into the room for her review day. They had sat in silence for a better part of an hour up until that moment. Garnet was glad for it. She didn’t like silence. She logged her place in her databanks and closed the book to better focus on Chief scientist Aberman.

“Machines don’t have birthdays.” She didn’t believe that, but it was the only way she could figure out how to address his statement without asking a question.

“They don’t” Chief scientist Aberman shuffled papers aside, “But it’s still the day of your creation which makes it significant enough to be celebrated.”

The machine nodded, surfing through her databanks to get a true definition of a birthday and what she’s supposed to do with it. As her databanks uncovered more and more information, Garnet found herself wanting to ask question after question: Will she get gifts? Is there going to be a cake or is it a lie? How many invitations need to be created and sent out? Does she need invitations? Will she get to go outside? Question after question, and Chief scientist Aberman was the wrong person to ask them to.

“Oh,” Was all she could muster before the machine started to thumb at her book.

“Your creators all have different ideas on how they want to celebrate.”

Garnet glanced up again. Chief scientist Aberman was looking at her at last.

“You get to choose one idea, and that’s that. Since your birthday is in a few months, you’ll have time to decide.” He looked back down at his papers and began to scrape the pencil along them again. Garnet allowed her eyelids to pull back and she wanted to feel excitement.

I can choose!

“Thank you, Chief scientist Aberman.”

The chief scientist didn’t move his head from his papers, but he nodded and Garnet could have sworn she saw the smallest of smiles quirk up on his lips before disappearing. She tried to return to her book, but her artificial brain was working overtime trying to bring up all possible scenarios of what she could be asked and what she could choose. Would they ask her if she wanted a purple room? Or would they ask her if she wanted to go outside? Would they ask her if she wanted to see Pearl? She hoped one of her creators would be clever enough to ask her if she wanted to do all of those things and more so it wouldn’t be so hard to choose.

Another silent hour went by before Chief scientist Aberman had her summarize the book and its morals and dismissed her from the room. There Garnet walked down a set path through the white hallways until she found herself at Pearl’s room. She leaned forward and peeked through the window, but the workshop was still as empty as ever. Frowning, the machine rested her forehead on the glass and looked at her feet. A part of her was false-scared that Pearl would leave her like Rose did, whether because death found her or she was terminated for not doing her job. Garnet found herself wondering if it was her fault that the pale woman left, because she couldn’t comfort her and get her to stop crying.

The machine found herself moving into a seated position at the door, not wanting to leave the vicinity. She wondered if this is how Pearl felt when she avoided her for those weeks. Hatred of herself flooded her. Pearl didn’t deserve to feel that way.

I miss her.

It wasn’t a false feeling, or even a want disguised as a feeling. Garnet missed Pearl. And Garnet wanted to hold her again.

Chapter Text

Alone

Left her for days. Weeks. Months.

Garnet sat at that door every day in hopes that one day Pearl might return and see her there, and then give her one of her wide smiles and swoop down and hug the machine with a firmness that told her that she wasn’t planning on letting go. That never came. So she sat, hour-after-hour until her curfew or until one of her creators came on by and told her to get up and follow them to their lab. The Tornsey’s did that five times, Electrical engineer Orville twice, and a creator she had never met and didn’t bother remembering their name once. Three times Chief scientist Aberman walked by and spotted her there, and he stared at her but never said anything. Then he would leave. Then the machine would be alone.

Garnet stared through the window of Pearl’s lab, at the emptiness in it despite it being so full with everything Pearl. The posters and items in there that defined her meant nothing without her creator being there to bring life to them. She pressed closer and tried her best to look to the sides, to see if Pearl might have been hiding behind them. In the back of her conscious thought simulator, she knew it was fruitless, as the lights in the room weren’t even on and Pearl always kept the lights on.

Mimicking a sigh, Garnet moved away from the door and turned to sit down in front of it. Some passing staff members likened her to a ‘dog looking for its owner’. The machine knew what a dog was, and she wasn’t sure if she liked being compared to one, but she never bothered to correct the staff members who said it. It didn’t even matter.

The stitching in her fingers were loosened all the way now, the long threads hanging to the floor, the black skeleton of her fingers peeking out from the artificial skin. Garnet wrapped one of the threads around her finger until the tip was cast in it, then she let it unravel to the floor again. Pearl promised that she would stitch up all the rips her body had. Would it be a promise broken? Garnet hoped not. Pearl wouldn’t leave because of her and Rose…. Right?

The machine hated that she doubted that, but she did.

The hub in her vision showed her that the time was 20:23, almost time for her to leave to her confinement, but she didn’t bother to stand or even look in the direction of the hallway that led to her confinement, she only sat and waited, longer and longer until it was past her curfew and she was sure that someone would find her and get her in trouble. She wished it would be Pearl who would find her, but she knew that was a too-wishful way of thinking.

Garnet lifted herself from the floor and began to walk, slower than usual, all the way past the winding hallways and multitude of doors until she found the one meant to contain her. There she stepped in and shut it behind her, the lock sounding as it always did. Her flower was still the same as it was weeks ago. It hadn’t even grown a centimeter. Garnet didn’t bother to go over and poke it to help it grow; she stepped into her corner and sat. Stared at her wall for hours. The clock on her hub ticked from 23:14 to 7:48 in a blink of her eyes, and still the machine did not rise from her spot. She couldn’t find the point in doing so.

She replayed memories in her head, of when her and Pearl first met and when her and Pearl first hugged. Replayed them on a repeat, found herself missing her creator more and more with every completed cycle of the memory. Garnet wanted Pearl again, so much so that she couldn’t even acknowledge the fact that her birthday was in a few days and she would be able to choose her own gift. It didn’t seem to matter much now.

Garnet stood from her corner and walked over to her flower, poking it twice before she couldn’t muster herself to do it again and stepped away. She looked towards her door, which had unlocked almost two hours prior. A frown set on her face and her eyebrows sloped to show false sadness over having to walk to an empty lab again, but still she left her room and made the trip down the white hallways until she found herself at Pearl’s door. One glance instead the window told her that it still had not been entered. Garnet pressed a hand on the knob and tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. It never did.

Like a dog looking for its owner.

Pearl didn’t own her, but she was her creator so Garnet thought the phrase would be better as “A dog looking for its creator.” But dogs were living things so then Garnet corrected it to “A machine looking for its creator” and left it at that. She turned around and slid down the door to sit again, wrapping her arms around her knees and casting her eyes to the ground. Once more a false hope that Pearl might come back filled her, but the machine had her doubts.

She sat there alone for five hours before Mechatronic engineer Tornsey came along, striding with purpose and a sandwich wrapped in tinfoil in her hand. She paused at the sight of Garnet, and Garnet looked up at her creator. For a moment, the stout woman’s eyes flickered this way and that and her chewing slowed. She swallowed her food and wiped her mouth.

“Uh, hi, machine.”

Garnet perked up.

“Hello, Mechatronic engineer Tornsey.”

She took another big bite of her sandwich and chewed, before swallowing again.

“Still waiting for Pearl, huh?”

Garnet only nodded. Mechatronic engineer Tornsey let out a sigh.

“I know you miss her, but sitting at her door isn’t going to bring her back anytime soon.”

Garnet wondered if Mechatronic engineer Tornsey studied stating the obvious as she had studied being a mechatronic engineer. She looked away from her and back at her feet. The mechatronic engineer approached her, not keen on leaving her alone.

“Machine,” Mechatronic engineer Tornsey let out a long sigh. “If you sit there for any longer you’ll leave an imprint.”

The machine considered how her weight was enough to make chairs creak and groan when she sat on them, and for a moment she considered whether or not her leaving an imprint was a true concern. She considered it for so long that when she looked up she saw Mechatronic engineer Tornsey walk away grumbling to herself, her purposeful stride more of a dejected stomp. The sight made Garnet frown; she looked down at the ground again. Pearl wouldn’t have given up like that. Pearl would stay with her until she convinced her to stop sitting on the ground and leaving imprints.

I miss her.

Garnet lost count of how many times she had that thought, but she knew she wouldn’t stop thinking it anytime soon.

--

Two days later. Her birthday was in another day and Pearl still hadn’t returned. Garnet was sure that her return would be on her birthday. Pearl wouldn’t miss it, right?

No. She cares too much.

She was the only one that did. Or at least the only one that appeared to care. The machine poked her flower two times on the bud and then ran her finger up and down the stem, encouraging growth from it. The bud of the flower was starting to turn purple in the front of it, and a quick look into her databanks told her it meant her flower was about to sprout. Garnet wanted to feel excitement over the fact, but she also wanted to keep her excitement reserved for when Pearl came back to her. So instead she smiled with no feeling or want behind it and ran her finger up the stem again.

The machine pulled away from her flower to go look at her photos, lined up from her most liked to her most favorite. Her eyes traced every shape presented in the picture, studying them as if she were gazing at them for the first time. It wasn’t the first time though, not even the hundredth. She had looked over these photos so many times that even she lost count. It didn’t matter though, not like how Pearl coming back tomorrow to see her would matter. She picked up her picture of snow and relished in how much it reminded her of her creator.

She’ll come back.

There were talks around the facility, coming from the same staff members that called her creepy or likened her to a dog, about how Pearl had quit or was fired due to not reporting back after her extended leave, but Garnet didn’t believe any of them. Pearl would never quit. Pearl would never get fired. Pearl wouldn’t leave her.

The door to her confinement unlocked, signaling that her curfew was over and she was allowed to leave. Garnet didn’t leave though; she hadn’t bothered to these last few days. There was no point to leaving if all she would do is wander and sit in front of Pearl’s empty lab. The machine watched the door, waiting to see if someone might come in, waiting to see if that someone might be Pearl. No one came. Garnet looked down at her snow picture again and chose to bask in good memories rather than loneliness.

Pearl would come back, the machine was sure of that, which is why she repeated that phrase over and over again in her conscious thought simulator. Pearl would be back. Pearl would be back. Pearl would be back. Again and again and again. The more she said it in her conscious thought simulator the more she believed it.

No, I don’t.

She stopped believing it days ago, and Garnet hated herself for it because when did Pearl stop believing in her? Never, so the machine attempted to believe in Pearl to make up for it, but her hope for her creator returning diminished more and more with each thought her artificial brain presented.

She will be back. For my birthday. She wouldn’t forget.

If Garnet could, then she would cry. She wanted to, more than she wanted to believe in her creator’s return. Crying was a stress relief, and the machine thought that if she was human then she would be the most stressed of them all. Garnet gathered her photos and set them in their hiding place underneath her rules. The machine then stood and left her confinement to go down that path she could navigate with her eyes closed at this point. When she arrived at Pearl’s lab, it was empty as always.

Garnet found herself on her knees then, not sitting cross-legged like she did all the other times. One hand splayed across the door, the other limp at her side. The machine didn’t find it fit for her to move.

She’ll be back.

Once more she found herself thinking that thought on repeat and becoming more and more doubtful with each completed thought.  Her fingers started to curl inward, pressing against the door, scraping away the white paint to reveal grey underneath. Garnet brought her gaze up, both brown eye and blue one gazing at the door. The machine completed a slow blink.

“Please come back?”

The door stood in front of her, unmoving and unresponsive. The machine wasn’t sure if she was expecting a response from the inanimate object, but either way she still wanted to feel disappointment over the fact that she received no answer. She ran her fingers down the door, leaving long scratches in it, and with those scratches she couldn’t help but write Pearl’s name in blocky text.

Like a dog looking for its owner.

When Garnet finished her creator’s name, she looked it over again and again and wanted to feel sadness. The machine lifted herself to stand on her feet and pressed her forehead against the door.

She’ll be… She’ll… She won’t be back.

The machine decided it was time for her to stop lying to herself.

Chapter Text

An Offer

Garnet wasn’t sure what she was expecting the day of her birthday, but she knew she expected her routine to be different from normal. It wasn’t. When the clock on her hub changed to 06:00, the door to her confinement unlocked but no one entered. And then an hour passed and still no one entered. Garnet tried not to mind it. She traced her fingers along her picture of snow and attempted to ignore how alone she was.

Her picture of snow stopped giving comfort to her long ago, but it gave her something to look at other than grey walls and her stagnant flower. Garnet knew that she could be out in the hallways looking at white and the occasional staff member, but somehow she couldn’t muster her to get up and leave. She would rather stay in her room. No she wouldn’t. But she couldn’t get herself to leave.

It took another hour, but she left her confinement and walked slower than ever before, two steps every few seconds, crossing across an entire five-meter hallway after two minutes. Garnet’s head swiveled this way and that, looking for any recognizable faces of staff members, wondering if her birthday would be mentioned to her by anything other than her artificial brain. But the more she walked the more nothing she came across. Halls and halls of nothing. Step after step the machine was alone.

She came to a stop at the door that had become her secondary confinement. Not enclosed, not locked, but still keeping her stuck there like it was a cell. Garnet ran her fingers along the scratch marks that spelled out her creator’s name, then she pressed her palm down and peered into the window.

No one.

Garnet held her head down.

“Happy birthday.”

The machine didn’t bother facing Chief scientist Aberman, didn’t bother acknowledging his words. It didn’t matter.

“Machine, face me.”

Garnet considered the consequences of not listening, and then decided that none of them could be worse than Pearl abandoning her, so she ignored the chief scientist once more and kept her head down. Shuffling behind her. She almost wanted to look but the machine resisted.

“Do you miss her?” Chief scientist Aberman’s voice was monotonous as always, but in a way it sounded softer. Garnet considered the idea of him using her answer against her, but once more she couldn’t muster the care.

“Yes,” Garnet looked back at him and completed a blink, a soft click sounding as her eyelids closed and reopened. “I do.”

Chief scientist Aberman nodded.

“I understand.” Then he tried again, “It’s your birthday.”

“It is.” Garnet turned to face him in full. She struggled to think of a way to word her question into a statement. “No one has talked to me yet.”

“All working, it’s a very busy day for the facility.” The sound of shuffling again. The machine looked down and realized the noise was from Chief scientist Aberman moving his clipboard to the front of his body. He was looking something over, his signature frown pressing on his lips. “It’s a big project, and since we are short-staffed, a lot more hours will have to be put in to complete it.”

Garnet didn’t care much about it, “My gifts.”

“Gift. They’ll approach you when they have time, machine.”

Garnet thought about asking for Pearl. The machine didn’t know if she wanted to hear the answer. She chose not to, and Aberman didn’t say anything as he began to write something down on his clipboard. He tucked it under his arm again.

“I’ll be seeing you.” And he turned and left Garnet, who turned and looked into the glass of Pearl’s lab, as if she had entered while she talked with Chief scientist Aberman. She hadn’t, it was still an empty room that filled the machine with the want to cry. Her foot shuffled forward and nudged the bottom of the door with her toe, and once more she tried the handle with no luck. Mimicking a sigh, she left along with Aberman, following to the end of the hallway before turning and going towards another path she also had remembered.

Garnet arrived at the Tornsey’s lab door and peered in, seeing both of her creators bent over a counter, working on something no doubt. The machine raised her fist to knock, but hesitated as she looked behind her. What if Pearl returned to her lab today and didn’t see Garnet there? What if she thought she traded her off for the Tornsey’s? Her fist began to lower and her lips started to quirk into a frown, but before she could make the decision the door in front of her opened.

“Machine!”

Garnet turned around and resisted the urge to tell Mechatronic engineer Tornsey that her name was Garnet. The mechatronic engineer looked excited to see her at least, there was a grin on her face and her eyes were bright. She gestured for her to come in and the machine obeyed.

“Me and Sapphire are almost done with what we are working on and after we are we can discuss your gift-“

Garnet tuned her out, pausing in her step as well in front of the counter they were hunched over before. On top of it was a machine skeleton, wired up with circuits and batteries and motors and installed with bars and plating. It was missing its head, but the machine knew what it was. It made her want to feel sad again.

“How are you doing, machine?” Biomedical scientist Tornsey didn’t look up from the bench. She was busy checking over the skeleton, making sure everything was in place.

Sad. Always sad.

“Okay.” Her artificial brain told her to respond with that instead, because it closed off the opening in a conversation and no one suspected anything when someone says they are fine. She wondered if it would be the same for a machine like her. She found out a second later.

“Good to hear.” It was the same.

Mechatronic engineer Tornsey pushed passed Garnet, standing in front of her counter again and going over the circuits and batteries with a needle that sparked at the end, one that resembled the same needle Pearl always seemed to use. Once more, Garnet wanted to feel sad. Everything reminded the machine of her creator, even if it was small. She watched the Tornsey’s work, not a word escaping from each other’s mouths but somehow being in sync and knowing when the other needed something. Garnet wondered if her and Pearl could ever be in sync like that. Then she realized she was thinking about Pearl again and she tried to stop. Her hands closed to fists, skeletal fingers poking into the artificial skin of her palm and threatening to tear through.

They worked uninterrupted for an hour, and when they finished they cleaned up their station and began to discuss something in hushed whispers. Garnet tried to tune in her audio receptors to their murmurs, but it didn’t work and she caught fragments of words rather than full sentences like she hoped. The machine wondered if they were talking about her. Then they faced her and she ceased her thought in order to focus on the now.

“So, our gift to you would be a stuffed frog.”

Garnet perked up at the new word, and she accessed her databanks and looked up frogs.

A tailless amphibian. Carnivorous. An average lifespan of ten to twelve years in most species.

Garnet tilted her head as she searched for stuffed animals. They were a toy. The Tornsey’s would be giving her a toy of an animal she’d never seen. The machine had only heard one gift today and already she knew she would have difficulty choosing.

“I am allowed one gift.” Garnet turned her gaze to Biomedical scientist Tornsey, and Biomedical scientist Tornsey nodded her head in turn.

“We are aware, which is why I will recommend waiting until the end of the day to choose.”

The machine considered that.

--

Later on Garnet arrived at Electrical engineer Orville, and she was doing nothing but playing on an odd grey square. When the machine came in she set it down and squinted at her.

“What?” Her voice was irritating as always. Garnet hoped that her gift to her would be a voice correction. She stayed at the doorway and didn’t say anything, wanting Electrical engineer Orville to bring up her birthday instead of the machine having to remind her. For a few minutes the electrical engineer didn’t get it, then she let out a sigh and smacked a hand on her forehead.

“Right, yeah, happy birthday, machine.”

Garnet smiled.

Electrical engineer Orville didn’t return the smile, returning to her odd device and tapping her finger on it. Still, Garnet waited for her to tell her what her gift would be. About ten seconds later the electrical engineer looked up, pointed nose scrunched and eyebrows furrowed.

“Your gift-“ The word was spat “is that fish bowl over there if you leave me alone.”

Garnet looked over, seeing that a fishbowl was indeed seated on top of a shelf near the door. The fish, yellow and brown, was swimming around in circles, ducking down through the plastic coral and kelp from time to time. Garnet tilted her head at it.

A stuffed frog and a live fish.

Yes, this would be a very hard choice.

Garnet slipped out of the room and tried not to pre-set her decision; she still needed to talk to another person about her birthday. The machine was so focused on not making her decision pre-set that she forgot about Pearl for a moment, and when she remembered her she felt the false-sadness. Still, she moved on to meet with that one creator that always seemed to fluster around her and liked to act like other people. When he saw her he wished her happy birthday and offered her a book of Shakespeare’s plays. And as Garnet went to return to her confinement to brood over her decisions, she was stopped by several more people she had never met: a short woman with wild hair that reached her ankles, an even shorter woman with a bob-haircut and a scar beneath her eye, and two tall women who looked alike with their short hair and wide frames.

The machine recalled how Pearl had once said that over a dozen people created her, and she supposed that those staff members were a part of that dozen because they wished her happy birthday and offered her various gifts. But that’s where the suspicion crawled in. Four creators who never showed enough interest in her to introduce themselves beforehand or even come and see her offering happy birthdays and gifts. Garnet couldn’t help but wonder if it was part of a test by Chief scientist Aberman, and then she began to brood over her gifts then and there. What if all but one was a wrong answer?

As she thought to herself, the more she began to believe that she was being tricked. It would make sense. Chief scientist Aberman has never done anything kind for her before and his proclamation of her birthday was sudden.

“Machine.”

Garnet looked up to see Chief scientist Aberman in front of her, for once not holding a clipboard or a bundle of papers. He had his white jacket slung over his shoulder, stained with various colors.

“Have you made your decision?”

Garnet frowned and tilted her head to the ground. A stuffed frog, a fishbowl, a book of Shakespeare’s works, a rock, an invitation to visit one of her creator’s labs, and a book of nature. Garnet ruled out the invitation and the book of Shakespeare; the others were far more interesting to her. But as she thought on it she couldn’t make an easy choice, not with how good each of the options were and not with how suspicious she was of the chief scientist’s intent. The machine looked up at him, frown still on her lips.

“Not yet.” She needed more time.

“You have thirty seconds.”

Garnet blinked, an audible click sounding, before her artificial brain kicked into overdrive and tried its best to rule out the pros and cons of the gifts in time. Options were starting to be ruled out as the cons piled up and the pros stayed stagnant. But then they would be ruled back in once the cons became stagnant and instead the pros started to pile. At the end of the thirty seconds, Garnet raised her head and was ready to blurt out the first option her conscious thought simulator provided her with.

“Jason.”

Chief scientist Aberman looked over the machine’s shoulder, and for a moment his brown eyes widened. Garnet didn’t have to look however. She knew who it was by her voice.

“Pearl.” Chief scientist Aberman took a step back and her creator brushed by her shoulder, ignoring her as if the machine wasn’t there. Garnet didn’t care about that. All she cared about was that her creator was back and she was torn between hugging her in front of Chief scientist Aberman or not. But then she began to take in Pearl’s appearance and she found herself hesitating. Her red hair was tangled and out of place, the blue and yellow clothes she wore bore stain after stain, her eyes were bloodshot and had dark circles underneath them, and her posture was over-corrected, far too tense to be natural.

“What are you doing to her?” Pearl narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over each other, and Garnet noticed that she even looked thinner, far thinner than usual.

“I’m asking it what it wants to have as a birthday gift.”

“For a test, right?” Her voice didn’t sound soft and gentle, rather rough and accusing. Garnet wasn’t sure if it was Pearl she was looking at, but it looked enough like her that the machine supposed that was her creator. She began to lift a hand out to touch her, but let it drop instead, choosing to be content with staring at her.

Chief scientist Aberman’s eyes shot to Garnet for a brief moment before returning to Pearl, his lips pulling down into a deep frown “No, I was-“

“She’s allowed any gift, correct? As long as it’s only one?”

Chief scientist Aberman closed his lips. He gave a slow nod.

Pearl whirled around and looked at Garnet for the first time since her arrival, and the machine couldn’t help the smile that pulled up on her lips. The urge to hug her was becoming harder and harder to resist. Her creator saw the smile, and she gave one back that didn’t reach her eyes. “Let her come home with me for a day.”

At first it didn’t even register, but then the machine began to mull over her offer and false-excitement ran through her in the form of sparks and signals firing to her artificial brain. Her conscious thought simulator began to overload with scenarios of what they could do, before it began to process that she could leave this facility at last.

“I, uh, that might-“ For once, Chief scientist Aberman looked unsure, flustered even. Pearl turned her head and leveled him with a narrowed-eyed gaze. At that, he put his hands up. “Look, Pearl, you know I keep my word, but what you’re asking is in violation of-“

“Then don’t document it.”

Chief scientist Aberman halted his next sentence. After a moment, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Pearl, I need to document it. The machine is government property and you stealing it off for a day is a felony.”

“I wouldn’t tell.” Garnet knew that didn’t matter once the words left her mouth, but she hated how she was being talked about like she wasn’t there. Neither of them even blinked at her comment.

“I’ll have her for the rest of this day and I’ll return her tomorrow morning, no one will blink at that. Her curfew is almost here anyway so you can write it down as her being in her room.”

“Pearl-.”

“Jason.”

A pause. The machine looked between the two people, her most loved and her most hated, and didn’t know which one to side with. Instead, Garnet looked to Pearl and tried to imagine hugging her once Chief scientist Aberman left.

Another long sigh.

“Look,” His dark brown eyes flickered between the machine and her creator “I know you have been going through an… ‘unrestful period’ these last months, but I can’t have you showing up here without calling in beforehand trying to take the machine away to stay in your house for a day. I can’t make that happen, you know that’s not going to happen, and we both know that you aren’t in your right mind now.”

“I am in the perfect mind right now, thank-you-very-much!”

Even the machine had her doubts about that.

“I have already been risking a lot by extending your leave week after week and not documenting it, what you’re asking of me now is too much!” The chief scientist looked flustered again, and Garnet realized that that was the first time he raised his voice. Then she realized that this was the first time she ever saw him interact with one of her creators. She looked at Pearl again, at how sick and different she looked since the last time Garnet saw her months ago. The machine wondered if it was because she wasn’t there for her, and with that thought she realized that Pearl wanted to take her home because she needed her. Or at least Garnet told herself that.

“Jason, you’re a very smart man,” Pearl allowed the pause to drag on for a few moments. “You know I’m taking her with or without your sign-off.”

Chief scientist Aberman didn’t say anything, didn’t even flinch at the statement.

“I know.”

Chapter Text

A New Place

The seat beneath her jostled up and down, and, despite the bag on her head, the machine still swiveled her head around, false excitement causing sparks and signals to fire through her circuits and up to her artificial brain.

“Are we there yet?” It was the twenty-third time she asked, but Garnet couldn’t help herself.

“No, not yet.” Pearl’s gentle voice drifted in from the left, and the machine snapped her head to look in that direction. She moved a hand up to stroke at the bag on her head. “Don’t remove that.”  It was Pearl’s third warning. The machine let her hand drop. It was dark inside the bag, save for the light blue glow of her machine eye. It had been dark for a while, about forty-two minutes now, but Garnet didn’t mind it much. Not when it meant that she was going somewhere that wasn’t a part of the facility.

“Will we see nature?”

“We can’t go outside. I can’t have you being seen.”

“Oh.” Garnet didn’t know why being seen was a bad thing. People saw her all the time and never raised a fuss about it. She frowned as she looked down where her lap was. She was hoping she would be able to see nature. “Can I peek?”

“No, Garnet. Keep the bag on.”

She did for another ten minutes, staying silent until she felt the jostling stop and heard metal clinging from the side of her. The machine twisted her head again.

“Are we-?”

“Yes, we’re here now.”

The sound of a door opening and shutting. Garnet waited in false anticipation, until she heard the door on her other side open and felt the pressure of Pearl’s hand wrapping around her wrist. Her creator guided her out of the thing they were in, and the machine turned her head and reached for the bag so she could peek at it, only for Pearl to pull her hand down and give her a gentle scolding. Pearl stopped pulling her along after a minute, and Garnet’s audio receptors picked up the sound of more metal clinging together. Crunching, then the sound of a door opening. Pearl pulled her along again and the door banged shut.

“You can take the bag off now.”

Her creator didn’t get halfway through her sentence before Garnet scrambled to take off the bag, pulling it over her head and letting out a small ‘oh’ as her artificial hair swooped into her eyes. Dropping the bag, she brushed her hair away and looked around, taking in all the items she had never seen before, databanks working overtime to provide her the names and purposes of them all.

Couch, used for sitting. TV, used for watching programs. Coffee Table, used for holding things on its surface. Bookshelf, holds books-

The couch had two seats and was a white stained with red near the armrests and the seats. On the black coffee table were several glasses, some filled with a red liquid while others were clean. Bits of trash scattered the vinyl flooring, items such as papers, pens, cans, and notebooks. The TV stayed on the wall, not turned on, and Garnet found herself heading towards it to see how it worked before her creator tugged her back.

“I-I didn’t realize how much of a mess my house was. I’m sorry, I’m a lot cleaner than this.” Pearl was grimacing, and she sped towards some of the trash bits on the floor and bent down to pick them up. Her blue shirt hung off from her stomach, and at her back Garnet could see her shoulder blades and vertebral columns showing through the cloth. She tilted her head at that.

Underweight. Very underweight. Adult females require 2,000 calories a day to maintain a healthy weight.

Garnet approached the mechatronic engineer, who turned around at the moment to move to another trash piece. The sudden appearance of the machine behind her made the pale woman yelp and drop her armful of trash. Garnet blinked at that.

She needs comfort.

“I’m sorry.” The machine moved forward and wrapped her arms around Pearl, pulling her close to hug her.

“Oh, it’s fine! I-I’m very jumpy, nothing out of the ordinary!”

Garnet rested her head on top of Pearl’s, and she made sure to pat her three times. Her databanks brought up some of the ways to comfort humans that she had discovered months ago.

“Shhh,” Garnet rubbed her hand along her shoulder, feeling the pressure of the bone beneath the thin mix of skin and muscle. “You need therapy.”

“Uh, pardon?”

“I can give it to you!” Garnet pulled away but kept her hands on both of Pearl’s shoulders. She offered a smile to the mechatronic engineer. “Talk to me about your problems and I shall solve them.”

“Garnet,” Pearl let out a sigh. Her fingers curled around the machine’s wrists and she pulled them away from her shoulder. “I didn’t bring you here for that. This day is about you.”

“But it’s night.”

Pearl let out a small laugh, and she stepped forward and hugged Garnet. “I missed you.”

Garnet blinked, looking down at her creator. Her hands came up to rest on her shoulder blades.

“I did too.”

They stayed like that for a while, 4 minutes and 23 seconds by Garnet’s count. Every time she thought about moving her conscious thought simulator provided several more reasons as to why she should stay. In the end, it was Pearl who moved first, who went to finish her job cleaning up the floor of the garbage covering it. She disappeared behind a wall threshold and came back seconds later with empty hands, heading towards the coffee table to pick up the glasses. Garnet went to help her, picking up several and following Pearl.

Her databanks recognized the next room as a kitchen, even more cluttered than the living room. All of the counters were covered in pots and pans and dishes, some clean, most of them not. The floor was white tile stained with browns and yellows and reds, and covered with crumbs and specks. Garnet observed Pearl setting the glasses down on a clear space on the counter. Pearl never did that. Pearl always put things away. The machine set her own glasses down on a clear space and watched as Pearl fluttered about the room, face strained as though she wanted to say something, but words never escaped her mouth. Garnet chose to speak first.

“Have you eaten?”

Pearl jerked up, as though she had forgotten that the machine was there. Her hands came up to her stomach, fingers playing against each other.

“Not in a few hours, no.”

Garnet looked to the small white refrigerator at the back of the room. Her artificial brain was already providing her with several recipes, complicated and simple, made with exotic ingredients and made with the most common and basic of them all.

She looked back at Pearl, smiling.

“I’ll make you something.”

--

Garnet spent ten minutes washing dishes and putting enough of them away so she had a cleared counter space and stove, then spent another five minutes shutting down each and every one of Pearl attempts to get her to stop what she was doing. She selected from her databanks a recipe high in nutritional value, and found that Pearl had enough in her fridge and pantry to make it. After her fifty-fourth shut down of Pearl’s attempt to say she wasn’t hungry, her creator had caved in and told her that she should at least wear an apron so she wouldn’t get food inside her rips. So she put on a blue one that Pearl dug out from under the sink. The machine noted that it felt odd having something against her skin. She liked pressure from hugging Pearl more than she liked the pressure from the cloth on her.

She fired up two of the burners on the stove and set pans down on them, adding the ingredients she needed and using her artificial brain and its databanks as a guide on how to cook the food as best as she could. Pearl sat at her dining table, of which Garnet could see through a little glassless window above the sink. Pearl kept her head down, her pale and too-thin hand stroking a black pen across her notebook. Garnet watched her for a while, until her databanks informed her to take one of the pans off the burner and she did that instead.

Twenty minutes later she brought the plate into the dining room and set it in front of Pearl. Her creator looked up from her notebook, staring at the plate of food. The machine gave it a little push with her fingers, the ceramic scratching against the table. She set a napkin and a fork down afterwards. Pearl didn’t move. She continued to stare at it.

“It, uh, it looks great, but I’m not hun-“

“You are.”

Garnet pulled one of the chairs close and took a seat on it. “You’re shaking.”

One of her hands jittered up and down, fingers twitching out every now and then. Her eyes wouldn’t leave the food. Her fingernails were brittle.

Pearl sighed as she picked up the fork and stabbed at the mix of vegetables and meat. “A bite, only a bite.”

The machine watched as Pearl gathered more up on her fork before she brought the utensil to her mouth, the food disappearing behind her lips and the fork leaving clean. Garnet tilted her head, blinking once. Her creator didn’t acknowledge it, still chewing the morsel. After a few seconds, she swallowed.

“It-“ She  pinched her temple between two fingers, laughing, “Stars, we should have you working for our kitchen. This is amazing.”

Garnet smiled.

“Will you eat it all?”

Pearl’s laugh died down and she looked at the machine with dull blue eyes.

“You know I didn’t bring you here to babysit me.”

“It’s my birthday.” It wasn’t. It was 00:12, a new day. But Pearl didn’t need to know that. “Do it for me.”

Pearl stiffened at her last words, eyes widening, before she diverted her to gaze to the plate and began to shovel food in forkful after forkful. Alarm bells rang inside her artificial brain at the sight of her actions.

Eating fast can cause vomiting.

“Slow down,” Garnet caught Pearl’s wrist before she could shovel in another mouthful. “Slow, take a few seconds between each bite.”

Her creator yanked her arm away and gave a curt nod as she ate what was on her fork, slower than before.

--

Pearl wanted to sleep afterwards, so Garnet followed her as she headed into a room next to the front door. Garnet registered all the types of furniture and items in this room as well. There were more glasses, and glass bottles to accompany them on the night stand. The full-sized bed sat in the middle of the room, the covers and sheets bunched into a mess on the bed, and near the side of it was a dresser with all its drawers open and clothes spilling out of them onto the floor. In this room Garnet couldn’t even see the floor, it was covered in papers- crumpled and in sheets- clothes, bottles, and cans.

Her creator stood near the dresser, hands at the hem of her shirt. She turned her head around, caught eyes with Garnet, and began to blush.

“Do you mind- Ah, forget it. You don’t register those types of emotions.” Pearl turned back around then and tugged her shirt off. As she bent down to pull off her pants, Garnet ran her eyes over her creator’s limber form, from the vertebral columns peeking out against the skin, to the jutting shoulder blades and outline of rib bones, to her pelvis stretching milk-white flesh taut. Pearl redressed herself in an old shirt that reached her knees and crawled into the bed, brushing away a few cans where they clattered onto the floor.

“You can come join me, Garnet.”

The machine did so, lifting herself onto the bed and letting out a small ‘oh!’ as she sunk into the mattress. Her curiosity flared. Garnet padded her fingers down into the material, trying to determine how deep it would sink down.

“Garnet, you ripped out your stitching’s!” Pearl took one of her hands in her own, eyebrows knitted together as she examined the skeleton of her fingers. The machine let her dote over them for a while, enjoying the feeling of warmth and pressure, before she pulled her hand away.

“You need your eight hours.”

“I won’t get them. I need to be up at five so I can drive you back to the facility.”

Garnet checked the clock on her hub. 01:02. Only four hours.

“You need your eight hours.” The machine decided to repeat herself rather than attempt to convince her to let her stay longer. She already knew the answer would be a no.

“I know I do. It won’t be tonight, though.”

“Pearl,” Garnet wondered if she should stop now, get rid of the questions resting on her fake tongue. But then she thought of the possibility that this would be her last chance to ask her creator anything. “Why haven’t you been eating, or sleeping? Why haven’t you come to the facility?”

Why did you leave me?

At the most, Pearl looked uncomfortable. The machine watched as the mechatronic engineer turned and shut off her lamp, casting the room in a darkness disturbed only by the light of her blue eye. Pearl turned back, her face illuminated by her machine eye, allowing Garnet to see how contorted it was.

“I could spend hours explaining it to you, but you wouldn’t understand it. Not in the way a human does.”

Garnet wanted to feel hurt. She cast her eyes down.

“Oh.”

Pearl shuffled around so she was on her back. Garnet mimicked her, then mimicked the placement of her hands so they were on her stomach and clasped together.

“I didn’t mean to abandon you.” Pearl was so quiet Garnet had to lean closer to hear her. “Time goes by so fast sometimes. Hours feel like seconds. Days like minutes. Months… days.” Her creator looked away to a curtained window. Her breathing filled the silence, as well as the clicking and thrumming that the machine emitted at all times. “I think it was last week when I left the facility.”

“It was three months and 4 days.”

Silence, again.

“That’s a long time.” The words came out with a certain breathiness to them. “Wow,” Pearl curled her fingers into her hair. “That’s a long time.”

“I waited every day.” Garnet looked at the ceiling, gears whirling and neck clicking. “I never stopped.”

“The others did that too whenever I took mandatory time off. All of them.” Pearl let out a laugh. “I don’t know why but every version of you seemed to be infatuated with me. Even B-04.”

“B-04?”

“Violent. Very violent.” Pearl hesitated for a moment. “Their reason for termination was because they broke out of their quarters one day and killed seven people in the research department. It was… unprovoked.”

Garnet said nothing, her artificial brain quiet for once. She listened, and listened only.

“I caught the tail end of it. I didn’t know the girl, but she was young enough to be my daughter. B-04 split her head almost in two halves, and all they did was hit her head against the corner of a table once. That much strength in one machine… that image was implanted in my head for years, the way her fingers twitched and how her eyes continued to track the room even though they were halfway way out of their sockets. I can still smell blood whenever I walk past the research department. Some of the walls are still pink.”

Garnet looked at her hand and remembered when she lifted Pearl up and down, picking her up as though she were a feather.

“You fascinate me, Garnet. But you also scare me, in so many ways you scare me.”

Garnet looked back at Pearl. Her creator was staring at her, blue eyes dull and tired.

“You have so much potential to care, but also to hurt. After B-04, I didn’t even interact with the other four versions, but they all came to me, to my lab door and watched. Jason told me that they asked about me all the time, about when they would get to meet me. They terrified me. You terrify me.”

Garnet’s eyebrows sloped, expressing false-sadness, “I don’t want to.”

“But not because you can hurt me, not because you can split someone’s head in half with a shove.” Pearl brushed off her comment like it was nothing, like she hadn’t said anything in the first place. “You terrify me because I think-” The mechatronic engineer hesitated for a long time. “I-I think I’m falling in love with you.”

The machine tilted her head, eyelids pulling back to widen her eyes. “Love?”

‘Yes, love. That’s why I left you. Love. Grief. Uncertainty.” Pearl ran her hand through her hair again and laughed. “Stars, I fell in love twice in my life so far and each time it was with someone who couldn’t love me back. I’m a mess.” She laughed again, and the machine wondered if she was doing that thing where she laughed and cried at the same time. To be sure, Garnet went to wipe her eyes, but before she could pull her hand back Pearl set her hand over hers and kept it there.

“I like messes.” In truth, Garnet wasn’t fond of them, but if Pearl was a mess than she could learn to like them.

Pearl laughed again.

“See, I told you that you wouldn’t understand.”

Her creator pulled away from her hand, moved so she was almost falling off the other side of the bed.

“Goodnight, Garnet”

The machine didn’t sleep, and Pearl had to know that because otherwise why would she leave her with so much to think about? Garnet replayed their conversation and tried to understand. She couldn’t, not for hours. It was 04:12 and Pearl gave out slight noises that signaled she was asleep. Her thinking time would end soon once Pearl woke up to take her back to the facility. Garnet wondered if she should make the most of her time to understand what Pearl meant, but she ceased that train of thought.

Instead she scooted along the bed and planted her feet at the floor. Her time could be better spent. Pearl would need breakfast soon. 400 calories at the least.

Chapter Text

Wilt

Garnet stuck the spatula underneath the pancake, lifting it from the pan and dropping it onto the white plate. She stepped over papers and cups and cans walking over to the dining room, setting the plate down next to the others. The machine bent down and adjusted the fork and napkin again so they looked in line with the plate. It needed to look enticing to Pearl, and Pearl liked symmetrical things. Garnet backed away from the table and left into the kitchen to turn off the stove. There were dishes everywhere on the counters, the stove stained with grease and batter. For a moment, she considered cleaning it, before she decided the effort wasn’t as important as spending time with her creator.

Still, she cleaned what she could before Pearl came into the room, a look of worry on her gaunt face. When she spotted the machine, her shoulders dropped in relief.

“Garnet, what are you doing out here?”

“I made breakfast.” Garnet turned, and the blue apron she wore swished along with her body. It settled on the front of her legs, and Garnet looked down and realized that she hadn’t taken it off since yesterday.

“I don’t have time to-“

“You need 400 calories for breakfast. I made 600. This will help you gain weight back.”

Pearl looked over at the table of food. Pancakes. Bacon. Wheat toast. A glass of milk. Her creator looked back at the machine, and the machine smiled at her. Pearl didn’t return it. Didn’t look at her any longer. Only walked to the table and sat and picked up the fork and stabbed at a pancake to shovel it down. Garnet watched.

“Eating fast can-“

“Garnet,” A long sigh. “Please, be quiet for once.”

And the machine obeyed.

Her footsteps clanged against the wooden floor. Garnet took a chair from the dining table and sat it next to Pearl so she could sit with her. Her creator didn’t meet eyes with her. Her eyes were dull and tired and hall-lidded, her lips set into a frown. Her blinks slow. Her hand shaking with the effort it took to lift a strip of bacon to her mouth. Garnet wanted to help, but as she reached a hand out to Pearl, she shook her head and mouthed ‘no’.

Garnet looked to her lap, a frown set on her lips as she listened to the sounds of Pearl chewing and swallowing. Ten minutes passed by before she heard the chair scrap against the floor and she glanced up to see Pearl standing.

“We need to go now; I need to take you back.”

A clicking and whirling as Garnet’s eyebrows sloped down and her frown deepened. Pearl looked at her at her lack of response, and the moment she did her blue eyes darted away.

“Please don’t look at me like that.”

“Can we talk first?”

“It’s an hour drive. We can talk on the way there.”

“You love me.”

Pearl flinched.

“It’s- it’s not-“ Pearl swallowed hard enough for Garnet’s audio receptors to pick it up. “I-“ the mechatronic engineer stopped then and there and said no more, a shaky breath letting free from her thin lips instead of words. Her thin fingers were playing against her palms. Garnet wanted to reach out and touch them.

“I’ve loved-,” Her lips moved. No sound. “-One woman, in my life.”

Garnet titled her head.

“I’m not a woman.” Instead of thinking about it, she reached for Pearl, only for her creator to jerk away and rush across the room, snatching a pair of keys off a table that almost fell over from the sudden force upon it.

“Let’s go, Garnet.”

--

They drove, as Pearl called it. And Garnet didn’t have the bag on, but she did have a pair of sunglasses and a blanket over her body. ‘As long as no one sees the rips’, Pearl had said. The machine kept her eyes glued to the window, watching tree after tree pass by and trying to identify them but to no avail. They were moving too fast. Garnet wanted to ask Pearl slow down, but she knew it'd be a no.

The sights blurred together, making the drive very boring, even though they were only ten minutes into it. Garnet squirmed against the seat.

“Don’t move, you’ll throw the blanket off.” Pearl didn’t look at her.

Garnet didn’t either, “I want to see the trees; we are going too fast.”

“I need to go fast; this is the highway.”

Garnet pulled away from the window and sat back down on the seat, her hands resting on the false skin of her thighs.

“Why can’t I see nature? Why must I be confined in the facility?”

Pearl didn’t answer. Garnet didn’t press. It never worked and Garnet didn’t need to expose her errors to Pearl. Another ten minutes passed, almost as fast as the trees and the grey asphalt of the road her creator steered on. Again, the machine tried to enjoy the nature. Again, she was denied that.

“You want to understand so much, you try to understand so much. But there are some things you can’t comprehend. I’m sorry.”

Garnet considered that. She thought that she understood love last night, that love meant to enjoy messes even when she didn’t enjoy them, but according to Pearl that wasn’t correct. She tried to understand why she was locked up, but she could find no other reason other than the fact that humans were cruel. But with these things she wanted both the answer and love, even if she couldn’t understand it. Garnet looked over at her creator, at her gaunt, pale, freckled, face. The most beautiful human.

Garnet looked away.

Pearl turned the vehicle left, off the road, driving straight through a path only defined by the way the grass didn’t grow. Garnet watched as they moved on into clusters of trees and brush, further and further until the car came to a stop that jerked the machine back a bit and Pearl yanked the keys from the ignition.

“Come on.” Pearl exited the car. Garnet watched her close the door, then she opened her door and stepped out as well.

Green all around her, crowning the trunks of trees and the twigs and sticks of bushes and flower beds. The machine twisted her body around looking at the nature around her, then she stopped and fixed her gaze in one direction, her feet following that path soon after. Behind her, she heard the sound of her creator following.

“-I guess when you’ve been around it for long, you take it for granted.”

The mechatronic engineer’s voice raised up from its previous volume. Garnet didn’t mind her words much; she was more focused on enjoying the sights. She wondered if there would be a creek nearby like in her fantasies. Tree branches scraped along her artificial skin, catching but never ripping into it. She gripped at every available leaf with her fingers, wanting to feel the texture but unable to. The machine stopped at a large tree, one that had yellow flowers sprouting along its base.

Marigolds.

She knelt, raising a hand up, hesitating it in the air.

Garnet poked a flower. Then the next, and the next, and the next. She raised her hand to poke another and a small winged creature landed on her palm, fluttering its wings once before folding them back. Her databanks worked to find what it was.

Butterfly. Insect. Pretty.

Garnet tilted her head at it, her other hand raising. It was so small. She wondered if poking it will help it as poking did to the flowers.

“-to see it one last time.”

The machine glanced up. There Pearl stood, still in pajamas that hung off her thin body, tired blue eyes looking right at her with a smile that was not happy. Pearl approached. The butterfly flew off her hand. Her creator sat with her.

“I-,” Pearl bit her lip. “won’t be back for another few months, Garnet.”

The machine tilted her head.

“What?”

“I-I need help. And I’m not going to get it staying in my home. My job comes with a lot of benefits that’ll support me through it. It’s one of the reasons why I kept with it all this time, even with the crazy hours and-.” Pearl steepled her fingers and pressed her lips together, her fingers crossing over each other to close. She stayed silent for three seconds. “And time away from you will do me good.”

Garnet tilted her head, eyebrows sloping.

“You… want to be away from me? Again?”

Pearl sucked in a breath.

“Yes.”

Garnet didn’t know if it would be wise for her to say what was on her conscious thought simulator at the moment, so she gave it a few moments for another thought to form, then she said that one instead. “Can’t you keep me?”

“Keep you?” Pearl let out a laugh. “You aren’t something to be kept Garnet. You aren’t an object people own. You’re you. You’re Garnet.”

“You’re Pearl.” The machine didn’t know where she was going with her next sentence, but still she continued on as if she did. “You created me. And you created me before too. You can keep me, I’m yours.”

Pearl leveled her with one heavy, tired gaze.

“No, you’re not.”

--

Pearl put the bag over her head again, and that’s when Garnet wanted to feel sad, because she knew it meant that she was at the facility. Pearl helped her out of the car and led her down somewhere. Her audio receptors could pick up footsteps and talking and whispering. Still, they moved, never stopping even to the questions that were addressed to them.

Her creator sat her down on a chair, and the bag was taken off her head. Garnet looked around, blinking as she examined the white room, before looking forward to see Pearl standing there, facing sideways, talking to Chief scientist Aberman. They were so quiet her audio receptors couldn’t pick up a fragment of a word. Every now and then their eyes, blue and brown like her own, would glance over to her, before they turned their gaze back to each other. Garnet wanted to speak up. She tried, getting out a fragment of a word when both of the two scientists shot her a look that made her close her mouth. They whispered more, until Chief scientist Aberman turned around and retrieved a white piece of paper that he handed afterwards to Pearl.

A click of a pen.

Garnet watched as Pearl signed the paper and handed it back. And without a word or a look in her direction, her creator left the room.

Chief scientist Aberman turned to her, his signature frown on his lips.

“Did you enjoy your gift?”

Garnet considered the question for a moment, wondering if it was supposed to be condescending or genuine. Then she considered what she felt about her gift of seeing Pearl. It made her false-happy, but at the same time it filled her with a confusion like no other. Did she understand love like she thought she had? Did she deserve it? Would Pearl accept hers if she could feel it? Did Pearl love her? Did she hate her? Why was she in this facility? Why couldn’t she be with her creator, who by all rights owns her?

Garnet frowned.

“No.”

Chief scientist Aberman blinked, his eyes widening for a moment before his face settled into stoicism.

“I see.” He wrote that down. “Nothing special to note?”

Garnet thought on that. She cooked. She laid in the same bed with Pearl. She saw nature for the first time. She learned about B-04. She learned about Pearl’s love for her.

“No.”

The sound of writing.

“If given the chance, would you go back?”

The machine considered it.

“No.”

--

Later that day, Garnet returned to her confinement as per curfew, not a second over or before, right on time as she never did. The machine noticed that her flower had wilted.

Chapter Text

Understanding

Garnet carried on, because after all it didn’t matter what she did, whether she sat and grieved and missed her creator or she walked around the facility and aided the staff members. It didn’t matter. She crushed her flower and ripped up the pictures and she made sure to fix up the rule sheet on the wall so it looked nice and straight, and after that she ignored the wants for happiness, nature, love, and hugs because it didn’t matter. The only thing keeping her from forgetting her name is that she liked it too much. Too much to let go. The machine considered whether or not she liked her name more than Pearl, because she made an effort to forget about Pearl, something she didn’t do for her name.

Biomedical scientist Tornsey poked at her forearm with a plier, the artificial skin stripped down to her elbow.  It had malfunctioned earlier. Her fingers twitched at random intervals with each poke of the pliers. Biomedical scientist Tornsey leaned further forward, frowning as she pushed another bundle of wires away from her arm.

“I don’t see any fraying.”

Biomedical scientist Tornsey was looking at her arm because both Mechatronic engineer Tornsey and Electrical engineer Orville were out for the day on ‘mandatory vacation time” (Garnet didn’t understand what that meant), leaving the biomedical scientist to examine her instead.

Zzzt!

Garnet’s middle finger twitched upwards as Biomedical scientist Tornsey clamped the pliers down onto a wire. She clamped another one, and her index went up. Another one, her thumb. Another, ring finger. Garnet only watched. Watched, listened, wanted to ask a question she shouldn’t ask. Several clicks sounded in her neck as she looked up, and another setting whirl as she blinked her eyelids. Biomedical scientist Tornsey was focused on her work.

“B-04.”

She saw more than felt how the biomedical scientist stilled, saw the etch of panic on her face as she looked up so fast her bangs swept aside and revealed her one working eye and one blind one.

“E-excuse me?” A stutter. Something she never did. Biomedical scientist Tornsey was always so sure of her sentences that they came out clear and practiced. Garnet tilted her head at that and blinked again.

“B-04.”

“You-You shouldn’t know about-,”

“Was Pearl involved?”

The machine didn’t want to give her a chance to speak over her, to dismiss her, to scold her. Garnet had enough of that. Had enough of the uncertainty and the constant way everyone brushed over her thoughts and questions like they were nothing, but felt inclined to confide in her about their own.

“Pearl… B-04” Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s hands trembled, the plier tapping against her forearm with several ‘clinks’, her other hand squeezing Garnet’s elbow.

“B-04 was another version of me, Pearl was there when she attacked the staff members.”

“We all were. We were in the research department looking over-,” Biomedical scientist Tornsey clamped up and began to poking at her wirings again. Garnet waited, never filling the silence, and soon enough, the woman felt inclined to speak again.

“We were… looking over new wiring systems. Pearl went to the bathroom a minute before it happened. If you know about B-04, I’m sure you know the whole story-,”

“I don’t”.

Was it a lie? Garnet didn’t know. She blamed Pearl for her confusion like she had been doing this last month. Everything seemed like her fault now, and if Pearl was a mess then Garnet couldn’t be sure if she could like messes. Biomedical scientist Tornsey stared at her, bangs covering her eyes, her face as neutral as always. A long sigh.

“Well, I guess you can consider this as a late birthday gift. I didn’t agree with Aberman’s rule of you only having one, after all. You will speak nothing of this.”

Garnet nodded.

The biomedical scientist nodded back.

“It happened five years ago. It was around August. B-04 had been active for about three months at that time, one of the longest standing machines aside from you and a few others. As I said before, we were looking over new blueprints for a more efficient wiring system, so we didn’t have to rip you into pieces trying to fix a shorted capacitor. We were discussing whether or not it could be implemented when B-04 came in. It… said some things to us-,”

“What things?”

“Things. After it was done talking, it went for the nearest person- I think it was Anthony- and it-,” Biomedical scientist Tornsey stopped talking for a few moments, before clearing her throat “Excuse me, it was a… traumatic thing to witness, I don’t recall it often.” She started using the plier on her wirings again “The machine snapped his neck backwards, it put its hand under his chin and pushed. There was this awful sound, almost like ripping leather, combined with the sound of a bone breaking. When he fell back you could see a rip in his throat and everything inside was bared.  Esophagus, muscle, the jugular, glands. The worst part of it was that he didn’t die until seconds after.” Her voice had a strange calm to it, almost as though she was talking about her work rather than the death of someone close to her. “The blood was bright red, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it was like a water spout at first, then after that it was like running water.”

Biomedical scientist Tornsey clipped one of the wires, and Garnet’s hand flexed into a fist. “The next one was a girl I didn’t know, the machine shoved her against the table and pushed on her sternum until there were several cracks. There was an another sound I will never forget, the wheezing she made as the machine crushed her lungs. The rest-,” Biomedical scientist Tornsey paused, “I didn’t see, I hid behind a table with Ruby and asked the stars above to have her go the opposite way, to target someone else instead of Ruby or I. That’s the most I regret about that experience. Wishing death on someone else so I could live, so my wife could live.” She clipped another wire, Garnet’s hand didn’t move at all. “When it killed the seventh person, the machine said one more thing, then it walked out of the room, closing the door behind it.” The biomedical scientist let out a long sigh as she pulled the pliers away and grabbed for another tool on the tray seated on the counter. “I hadn’t thought about that in a long time.”

“Why would it do that?” Garnet tilted her head as she spoke. She was finding it hard to process the whole ordeal, almost as hard as it was to process when Pearl first told her. Garnet ceased her thought then because she was thinking about Pearl and she didn’t want to think about Pearl. Biomedical scientist Tornsey ignored her for a minute as she began to fix the wires, humming under her breath. When she finished, she set the tool on the tray again and cut the peeled back artificial skin on Garnet’s arm, so her fingers to her elbow was skeleton and machine. Garnet raised her arm up to look at it.

Another imperfection.

The machine wondered how imperfect she could get. As imperfect as B-04? Or even worse?

Biomedical scientist Tornsey threw the skin in the trash, set her tools away, and wiped her hands on the front of her jumpsuit, each movement so fluid Garnet’s eyes had trouble tracking them. The biomedical scientist took in a long breath, and answered her question at last.

“Because the machine understood.”

--

Sometimes, when Garnet closed her eyes, she fantasied about Pearl. About her red hair, her freckled cheeks, her pale skin, her thin and graceful body, her wide blue eyes. The machine never meant to do it. She tried her best to wonder if the machines before her fantasied the same way before her thoughts would be wiped away. Tried her best to wonder if it was as unintentional. Sometimes if the machine closed her eyes, she would for once be outside and purple, away from the same four walls, away from the same hallways, away from the same people, away from the same days. Sometimes she tried to cease these thoughts because she wanted to be a machine, and machines didn’t want or feel, but other times she would explore them until she opened her eyes and found grey.

Garnet looked down at her bare arm, at the black bars, rings, and plates. At the blue circuits, batteries, and connectors. And she hated it. Almost as much as she hated Aberman, almost as much as she hated the fact that she couldn’t hate Pearl. Her mismatched eyes looked down at the crack where her flower once was, and she hated that she crushed it, hated that it wilted. The machine stood from her seat on the ground and began to pace. And pace. And pace. Until she came to a stop at a corner in the room and started to hit her head against the wall. She wondered if she understood like B-04 did, but the machine realized that she never thought about killing and had no desire to kill so she couldn’t understand like B-04 did. Because whatever B-04 understood made it want to kill. Garnet didn’t want to kill, but she didn’t want to love or hug or poke either.

The door to her confinement opened and the machine stopped her banging, staying still and quiet like a machine should.

“I need to talk to you.”

Garnet tilted her head back to look at Chief scientist Aberman.

“Let’s go.”

And the machine obeyed.

--

Garnet sat there in silence, staring at Chief scientist Aberman. Not doing the blinking that would make her seem less creepy. It didn’t matter.

“It is my responsibility it this facility to organize the work of other employees, but I have made it my personal responsibility to look after their wellbeing.”

Garnet only half-listened to his words. It didn’t matter.

“This is a high stress-environment we work in. there are strict deadlines, long hours, workplace dangers, lay-offs that can happen at a moment’s notice.” Chief scientist Aberman left a lure in the conversation. “I make it my responsibility to make sure everyone keeps their sanity here, and if it seems like they are losing it, I help them.”

The machine examined him. His hair that was once black peppered with grey was now grey down to the tips that fringed up from his head. A sign of stress. It didn’t matter.

“I helped Pearl as best as I could, and I know you are close to her. I wanted to give you an update on her condition.”

Garnet moved her gaze from his hair to his face. Whirling and clicking as she frowned. Did she want to know? She tried to forget Pearl.

“From what I have been told, she’s responding well to medications and therapy. Well enough that she might be released soon. She wanted me to tell you that she missed you.”

Garnet frowned deeper, and she looked down at her hands in her lap. Did she miss Pearl too? Did it matter?

“Okay.”

The machine couldn’t say much else about it. She didn’t know if there is anything she could say that wasn’t negative. She wondered how Pearl could care enough to have Chief scientist Aberman tell her that she missed her when Pearl couldn’t even care enough stay with her rather than leave her alone. The machine hated being alone. The machine wanted to hate Pearl but still she couldn’t.

“Is there anything you would want me to say back to her?” His question was careful. Garnet didn’t know why. But even though she didn’t know she still thought long and hard about her response, until she looked up at Chief scientist Aberman, her face as neutral as she could care to keep it.

“Tell her I understand.”

The man looked at her with a strange expression for the longest time. Then he wrote it down.

Chapter Text

Closing Eyes

Sometimes, Garnet wondered.

Would being born human make everything easier? Be as great as she imagined it to be? Being able to feel, to show emotion and not have it be false, to be treated as a human and not as a machine. Would it be great? It could have been great, but instead Garnet awoke as a machine, a metal skeleton wrapped in artificial skin and artificial hair and artificial feelings and artificial thoughts. She existed only to answer questions, and somewhere along the year she had been alive, she forgotten that purpose. The machine tried to go back to it, but still the lingering want to be free from everything stayed with her. Sometimes, Garnet wondered if everything was out of reach- happiness, love, hugs, nature, freedom- because she felt as though those wants dangled in front of her face, but her arms could never make the motion to seize them.

Garnet watched as a muscled woman laid skin over a machine, a yellow tone that rivaled her own dark skin. The woman’s hair was tied up into a large sandy blonde bun, each strand looking soft and like hair. Garnet felt her own hair, but then she remembered that she couldn’t feel texture. Her databanks brought up the image of the reflection she had seen so long ago, with hair that looked wiry and fake. Nothing like the staff woman of the aesthetics department’s hair. Garnet wanted to feel jealous as she continued to stroke the strands of curls.

“So, Aberman sent you in here to get prettied up?” The machine tilted her head at the gruff voice coming from the woman laying the skin. Then her head tilted to her arm, missing the skin up to her elbow. Imperfect. Like her face, ribs, thigh, and fingers. Like herself. Imperfect.

“No.” It was a lie, one that the woman accepted without so much as a word or shrug. Garnet turned and left out the way she came, leaving the white room into a white hallway that led into more white hallways. From the hub built into her eyes, she saw that it was time to report to her scheduled block with Pearl, but Pearl still hadn’t come back. And truth to be told Garnet almost never thought of the pale woman anymore. Never thought of her love, her hugs, her smile, her skin that reminded her of the picture of snow, her gracefulness-

Garnet thought about her a lot.

Chief scientist Aberman had told her every time they reported for their end of the week review that the pale woman was doing better, and he always asked her if she wanted him to relay a message, and Garnet’s answer was always the same: “Tell her I understand.” Garnet took false-amusement out of the way he seemed to pale every time she said it. It was one of the few things that entertained her nowadays, aside from the Tornsey’s arguing. With a fondness, she remembered back to last week where she was passing by their office, and they were arguing about what brand of body cleanser to buy. It was wholesome. Garnet liked it. Liked it more than making Chief scientist Aberman nervous. She wondered if B-04 liked scaring people more.

Garnet thought a lot about them, too.

In a way, she felt connected to the terminated machine, knowing that they had once shared the same situations, once interacted with the same humans, once had the same brain, once was attached to Pearl. The only thing Garnet didn’t like about B-04 was that it killed humans, and even though they aggravated her and were cruel, Garnet would never kill humans, because that would mean they would never get the chance to see nature, feel hugs, or be happy again. The machine knew what it was like to not have these wants. She wouldn’t take those away from humans.

Garnet found herself at the door to her confinement, and she entered it so she could sit on the floor and stare at the wall as she always did. She wished she hadn’t ripped up her pictures, she wished she hadn’t crushed her flower. She wished Pearl was here, at a healthy weight, with bright blue eyes, and a smile that wasn’t forced. Shoulders sunk down with several clicks. She wished she had Rose as well. In truth, Garnet wished she had somebody or something. She was lonely. And she had nothing.

--

Another month, and everyone was gone. ‘Mandatory vacation’, Chief scientist Aberman said. Oh, and he was still there, because Garnet couldn’t be rid of the human she hated the most. It had to be him who stuck around, the one person who never left her as Rose and Pearl did. Garnet wasted her days wandering down hallways when she wasn’t testing with the man, thinking and wanting and hating. Thinking of freedom, wanting it, hating that she couldn’t have it. The machine wished she took the chance to run when Pearl was asleep, but Garnet was a good machine and she stayed in the house and made breakfast for the pale woman instead. And even after everything Garnet found that she would rather Pearl be able to eat an above-400 calorie breakfast instead of Garnet being able to feel freedom.

 Garnet sat down with Chief scientist Aberman for their next test. He gave her various topics and told her to recite the history behind them. Some dealt with humans earning their freedoms, others dealt with genocides, and the most common of them was topics that dealt with discoveries and inventions. Afterwards, Chief scientist Aberman told her to say what she thought about all the topics.

“I like it when humans discover parts of the world, and I also like it when they are free.” That was her general response. Garnet wanted to say so much more, but she wouldn’t. Not to Chief scientist Aberman, not to Pearl, not even to herself, because if she spoke to herself in her head then Chief scientist Aberman would know because her thoughts were not her own.

“And what of the other topics?” He was writing on his papers as usual.

“I don’t like them. Humans shouldn’t do that to each other.”

“And what would you do to prevent it?” Chief scientist Aberman never looked up at her, only continued to write, like Garnet was a voice that belonged to no body, existing only to give information. Like it was her purpose.

“I would-“ Garnet had to stop to think on it, she sifted through the information that listed old human strategies, but found none of them would work. “I would let them be. There can’t be change. I couldn’t make a change.”

And once again Chief scientist Aberman ignored her, only writing down her words and never looking up at the machine to give some sort of acknowledgement to her answer.

“You’re right. You couldn’t.” He lifted himself from his work at last, setting his pen to the side. “You may leave.”

It was so jarring Garnet had to pause and replay the words. Her lips whirled down into a frown as she stood from her chair, pushed it in, and left out into the white hallways. This time she didn’t bother to wander the hallways back and forth for hours until it was curfew; she made her way back to her room, entered it, and sat down to stare at a corner for yet another day.

--

Another month, and everyone was back: the staff members who called her creepy, the staff members that ignored her, the Tornsey’s, Electrical engineer Orville, the staff members who gave her something for her birthday but never bothered to speak to her again. All of them, and Garnet didn’t want to be with anyone. It wasn’t a matter of choice though, as if a staff member asked her to accompany them to their lab then she had to obey. Today she had to obey Electrical engineer Orville. All she had the machine do was stand next to her and relay instructions written on a booklet. She was fixing something, it wasn’t a machine frame or a skeleton, but an odd box shaped object with several touch pad buttons on its side and a large door that opened outwards next to it. Electrical engineer Orville muttered to herself from time to time, frustrated with the contraption.

“This is why you can’t have microwaves available to anyone who has access to a staff room. You can’t trust people, you can’t.” Was one of the things she muttered, the word ‘can’t’ emphasized loud and clear while the rest of her sentence was almost incoherent. Garnet found her words odd, but not odd enough to mull over what they meant, or look through her databanks to find out what a microwave was. Garnet only stood there and did what she was asked to do. No regard to her own curiosity. No regard to Electrical engineer Orville’s ramblings. No regard to anything. Her eyes were only half-lidded, because keeping her eyes open day to day was starting to become hard. The impossible task of keeping interest in the environment she sees every day. Garnet would rather shut her eyes forever than keep them open to see the same white hallways, same people, and same labs over and over again.

“For star’s sake, why aren’t you reading?!”

And the machine droned on with the instructions, reading the same passages over and over again because the electrical engineer kept on making the same mistakes. When she finished reading and Electrical engineer Orville fixed the microwave at last, the electrical engineer dismissed her without a thanks. Garnet didn’t hesitate on leaving. Didn’t hesitate on returning to her confinement. Didn’t hesitate on missing her pictures and the flower, and didn’t hesitate on staring at the wall again for another several hours, until it was her curfew and no one could bother her. The machine laid down on the floor and rolled over onto her back, and tried to imagine herself lying in bed with Pearl again.

Garnet shut her eyes and replayed their conversation in her memory banks, hearing Pearl’s voice as though it was right next to her, the light voice that used to have so much cheer behind it, but in her memories it was dull and tired. She replayed it over and over again, until the clock on her hub read 08:19. When she heard the door click open, she didn’t look over, because somehow she already knew who it was.

“Hi.”

Garnet didn’t look over at Pearl, she only stared at the ceiling. Chief scientist Aberman had told her a week ago that Pearl was returning soon. The surprise wasn’t there, nor was the false-happiness or want for love.

“Garnet?”

Pearl sat down next to her, and mismatched eyes flicked up to meet light blue ones. Pearl’s face wasn’t gaunt anymore, nor was it paler than normal. When Garnet trailed her eyes down her body, she saw that she was at a healthy weight, and her fingernails weren’t brittle. Garnet met eyes with her creator again, then she looked back at the ceiling. For a moment, the machine entertained saying something, but decided against it.

“Garnet?”

Pearl touched a hand to Garnet’s shoulder, the warmth and pressure she exerted making Garnet want to close her eyes and enjoy it. She moved her head back to look at the pale woman.

“Hi.”

Pearl smiled.

“Hi.”

Garnet touched a hand to the one on top of her shoulder.

“Are you not a mess anymore?”

Her creator let out a gentle laugh, and her thumb swept up and down her artificial skin in a rubbing motion that Garnet wished she could feel beyond pressure.

“No, I’m not a mess anymore. Least I hope I’m not.”

“Good,” Garnet looked up to the ceiling again.

I don’t like messes.

“Are you-,” a moment of silence. “Doing alright? You have been participating in your tests? Helping out the staff?”

“Yes.” Out of the blue, Garnet wanted that hand on her shoulder gone. She thinks she wants Pearl gone too.

“Good,” Pearl nodded her approval, before the corner of her mouth twitched. “I… I’m sorry, for having to leave you… on such a bad note. But we can-,”

“It’s alright, Pearl.” Garnet chose to interrupt Pearl, because she didn’t want to hear the rest of what she had to say, the rest of whatever apology was resting on her real tongue. Garnet moved her hand off the pale woman’s, rested it on the floor instead. Mismatched eyes, one almost-human, and the other so machine, looked at Pearl. “I understand.”

Garnet almost missed the fear in her creator’s expression, because she closed her eyes afterwards.

Chapter Text

Going Through the Motion

Pearl never stopped holding her hand.

Every day when Garnet reported for their block of time, every night when Pearl would sneak into her confinement, her creator would never stop holding her hand. Never stopped exerting the pressure and warmth that Garnet liked, never stopped looking at her with bright blue eyes that spoke of her worry, turmoil, pain, and love. Sometimes Garnet wanted to entertain her by expressing those things back, to entertain her by for once clasping her hand around Pearl’s small one to complete the hand-hold, but she could never gather herself to do it.

It was easier to stare at the ceiling and allow her eyes to close, to allow the hours to bleed away and the days to fly by. Pearl flew with her.

Right now, she was puckering her lips and pressing them against the back of the machine’s hand, and Garnet watched her with curiosity as she repeated the motion a few times. Then her creator leaned over and brushed away the curls of hair from her face, fingers lingering at her cheek as she pulled away. There was red on her cheeks. Garnet observed it.

“Your blood flow has increased to your face.” Garnet knew what it was and what it was caused from, but sometimes she liked to see Pearl fluster as she tried to explain away her body’s human reactions.

“O-Oh, it’s nothing, it’s nothing! It’s a nat-natural reaction to-,” Pearl let out an exaggerated laugh and laced her fingers together, face turning redder. Her laugh trailed off into her mumbling something to herself as she scooted away and brought her knees to her chest. “Stars…” There was a pain in the smile that spread across her face, and her head upturned so her eyes could meet mismatched ones. Garnet blinked and tilted her head.

“I- You… You have that effect on me.” Pearl rubbed her head, ruffling red hair out of place from a neat updo. “It’s surprising. I thought the distance would get rid of my affections, but I guess that metaphor about the heart growing fonder exists for a reason.”

I tried to hate you when you left.

“Oh, that’s nice.”

Garnet would never say what was on her mind, because she didn’t want to upset Pearl, because Pearl’s feelings were more important to her than her own nonexistent ones. Her creator frowned. She moved closer, hanging over the machine, casting her thin shadow.

“Garnet, why can’t you talk to me?”

Garnet tilted her head again.

“I am talking.” The machine sat up, prompting Pearl to fall back as to not bump into her. “See? T-alk- ing” Garnet made sure to enunciate the words with extra care so Pearl could hear them. After the last syllable left her mouth, she wondered if her voice modulator was starting to fail her. She opened her mouth to ask Pearl to look at it when her creator’s laughter made her close her mouth and let out a curious hum.

“No, not that. It’s an expression, I mean,” The amusement fell from the pale woman’s face. “You’ve been so different since I came back. You’re not as…” Pearl started groping at the air, as if she were attempting to reach for the right word.

“Human?” There was a blunt way Garnet said it, blunt and monotone, with none of the lighter tones or false-emotion her voice sometimes contained.

Pearl winced.

“No, not that.”

“Am I too machine for you?”

Garnet pressed, and for once she was not concerned about the consequences of her pressing because now she did not care. She couldn’t care. Not anymore.

Pearl shook her head, side to side, faster and faster, and when she met eyes with Garnet again, hers seemed watery and red.

“No,” a weak response. “It’s not that.

“What then?”

Pearl hesitated.

“You’re not as… you, anymore. You’re not Garnet. You look like her, sound like her, but you don’t act like Garnet anymore. I know some of it’s my fault, I’ll admit to that, but-,” Pearl trailed off. Her arms snaked around her sides, squeezing them. Garnet expected her to continue, but she never did. Her silence filled the air, combining with her own. For a few moments, Garnet glanced around, looking at the grey walls of her confinement, then at the white sheets of paper that stated her rules.

“I’m remembering who I’m supposed to be, not who I want to be.” Garnet looked at her hand, at the artificial sepia skin that looked so real, so human, but then she looked to her fingertips and at the black metal of her skeleton that showed she was machine. “And I am a machine, and my purpose is answering questions.”

“It doesn’t have to be that.”

“It does.” Garnet looked Pearl in the eyes. “It’s the one constant I’ll ever have in my life. No matter who leaves me, who betrays me, what I lose and what I gain, I’ll always remain a machine, and I’ll always be something meant to only answer questions and nothing else.” Garnet looked away from Pearl, her gaze instead drawn to the rule sheet. The one that she had despised. The one that she was sure she still despised.

“That’s not what we-“ Pearl clamped up then, her hands flying to press against her mouth. Her shoulders were jumping, and her eyes were spilling tears that leaked down her cheeks and sunk into the crevices of her palms and knuckles. “I’m sorry,” Her voice came muffled, because she hadn’t removed her hands. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Garnet moved her arm over to press it down on Pearl’s shoulder. “I was meant to be this way.” She started patting her shoulder, more than three times. “There, there. Don’t cry. You’re not a mess anymore.”

--

Day later, Garnet was at Pearl’s lab, and Pearl was sitting on her stool with her head in her arms, emitting noises that signaled she was asleep. Garnet watched her, sitting on the stool next to her creator, making sure she didn’t try to roll over or cover too much of her mouth and nose with her arms. The machine blinked as Pearl turned her head, her eyes still closed, a slather of drool on her cheek. Garnet checked the clock on her hub. She was over eight hours now. She shook Pearl with her imperfect hand. The pale woman jolted up.

“Wha-!” Her head swiveled, eyes wide and glassy until they settled on the machine. A slow blink. “Yes, Garnet?”

“You have eight hours. You need to get up now so you do not oversleep.”

Pearl groaned, rubbing her eyes.

“Y’know, some people like to sleep more than eight hours.”

“They enjoy heart disease and death as well,” Garnet furrowed her brows with a click. “That’s the consequence of over eight hours.”

Pearl stopped rubbing her eyes to look at her with an odd expression.

“How… morbid of you…” Pearl let out a small laugh. “I should add Peridot to the list of ‘people who shouldn’t interact with Garnet.’ That was a very Peridot thing to say. Don’t make it a habit?”

Garnet shook her head. “No habits. I can’t retain habits.”

“Would you stop talking like that?” Pearl sat up from her stool, not in a violent way, but more in an exasperated one. A deep sigh left her thin lips, and her eyelids fluttered closed for a moment before reopening. “You put yourself down, talk about all the things you can’t do. Not what you are capable of.”

“I’m not capable to do any of the things I want to be capable of.”

“And what are you not capable of?”

Garnet looked at Pearl, and it was though she were seeing her for the first time. Every flaw, every beauty, all highlighted in the dim lighting of the lab they sat in. All the wants she wanted to list dashed from her coherent thought simulator, and the only word she could get out was “Love.”

--

Days later, again. Garnet never brought up the conversation after that one day, for the sake of her false-fears. Pearl didn’t say much after she let that word out, she only looked shocked, and she looked shocked for so long the machine let herself out of the room because the shock was making her feel false-sadness. They didn’t stop seeing each other, though. Garnet had a feeling that would never happen again because them not seeing each other brought bad things every time they returned. Pearl still had her for her block of time, Pearl still came to see her in the night. And Garnet still allowed it, still looked at the ceiling rather than at her creator, still believed in her one purpose despite all the arguments against it.

When Pearl came to her room tonight, Garnet eyes were closed, and her fantasy flickered before her eyes, already lost to her memory banks and coherent thought simulator, leaving her blank.

“Hi.”

Pearl’s voice was shy. Like usual.

“Hi.”

Garnet’s reply was monotone. Like usual. 

“How are you doing today?” Pearl took a seat next to her and did her one-sided hand-holding. Like usual. Garnet didn’t respond to the hand-holding. Like usual.

“Alright.” Her one-word reply. Like usual.

Pearl bit her lip. And she looked away. There was a hint of a blush on her freckled cheeks.

“I’ve… thought about what you said, the other day.”

“I say a lot of things.” Garnet didn’t say that to be condescending, but because she didn’t know what day Pearl was referring to. She said so much that seemed to provoke so much thought in her creator, even though her words were only that: words. Nothing important, something that only stuck around in a memory, something that disappeared into the air as soon as they left her voice synthesizer.

“And you are right,” Pearl carried on as if the machine said nothing at all. “You can’t feel love. Not the way we can. But you-you understand it, you desire it, and you can go through the motions of feeling it.” Her creator looked at her again, face flushed down to her neck, the red peeking into her shirt. “I want to try something that might be… unorthodox.”

Garnet fixed her with a curious look.

Unusual.

“I have to ask you though. Will you let me?”

The machine perked up. Still, she was unused to being given a choice. It made her feel false-excitement as she weighed between the two options, yes or no. Which could she choose? Why was it so hard to choose one? Couldn’t she choose both? She went back and forth and back and forth until she settled on a simple “yes” and allowed a smile to quirk at her lips.

But Pearl’s reaction was something odd. She looked away and swallowed and her face reddened even more despite the fact that her face’s blood supply seemed to reach its limit. She mouthed an ‘okay’ as she looked back at Garnet, and the mechatronic engineer scooted closer.

“Can you sit up?”

Garnet did so.

Pearl scooted even closer

“I-“ Pearl cleared her throat. “I wonder if this is self-indulgent, instead of a legitimate way for me to show you what your capable of,” A swallow “I guess I’ll find out.”

Pearl moved closer, and she did that odd thing with her lips that she was doing to her hand earlier that week, except this time it was on her own fake ones. There was some pressure, but not a lot of warmth. Garnet found that odd, almost as odd as she found Pearl’s actions. Her databanks were scrambling to make sense of the motion, and soon they brought up the topic of kissing.

A way to express fondness or love.

Her databanks sifted through a few examples, showing Garnet how it was done and what people engaged in after kissing. She was ready to try and make some of the motions back when Pearl pulled away, embarrassed, shown by body language and her face. Garnet tilted her head at her.

“Kissing.” She spoke the name of the action that her creator performed on her. “Is that what I am capable of?”

“I was trying to make a point on you being able to go through the motions, but I think my execution was, er, lackluster.” Pearl hid her face in her hands. “Stars, I’m not good with this. Ugh, this will be one of the memories that’ll keep me up at night-.”

Garnet leaned over and hugged her.

“It’s alright, Pearl. You can do it again if you need to.” Garnet made to stop there, but after a moment, she added: “I don’t mind.”

Chapter Text

Apathy

Garnet wondered of worth.

Was it worth it to go through the same tests, again and again? Worth it to experience the same betrayals and the same false feelings of sadness? Was it worth going on? The machine didn’t think so; sometimes Garnet thought everything would be better if she were terminated already. At least then she would stop being toyed around with, even if that meant not seeing or hearing or walking again.

It crossed her mind to express those thoughts to Pearl, but she didn’t want to upset her creator, not when she was happy about their kissing and hand-holding and night visits. A few weeks ago the mechatronic engineer brought her more photos, showing them with a wonder that made Garnet want to smile (she never did) and pointing out what everything was as if the machine didn’t already know it. But Garnet allowed her to explain. She would never make Pearl feel bad (ignoring that she had made her feel bad numerous times.)

Pearl kissed her often, and sometimes Garnet would reciprocate, but sometimes she wouldn’t. And when she wouldn’t then Pearl’s face would go red and she would mumble something under her breath. Garnet found that adorable, but she knew it meant that Pearl felt as though she had done something wrong. Like a child. A 43 year-old child. Garnet didn’t fault her for that though, the way she approached romance with innocence, because then she would be a hypocrite.

“Do you mind if I kiss you?”

Pearl always asked that, never proceeding unless Garnet gave her an answer.

“Yes.”

Her creator leaned forward and did the odd motions with her lips, and Garnet decided that today would not be a reciprocation day, so she sat there and allowed Pearl to do what she wished until the other pulled away with her face burning and her body language closed off.

“You know, you can tell me no sometimes. Otherwise it feels like I’m doing it against your will.” Pearl scratched the back of her neck and looked away.

“I’m sorry.” Garnet sat back on her knees. “Kissing is an odd action.”

“It is.” Pearl became even more closed off, hunching into herself, bringing her hand further along her neck. For a moment, false-worry shot through the machine, but then the machine felt nothing. “Which is why I haven’t done it since I was in high school.” Her creator let out a laugh that was forced and unnatural. Afterwards, she rubbed her forehead with a hand. “Stars, I’m pathetic.”

“I like pathetic.” Garnet didn’t even think about her words before she said them, and though she wished she could retract them, she didn’t regret it.

--

The next few weeks were short, but uneventful. Garnet did the same routine, the only thing missing being the nighttime visits Pearl would make to her. Garnet wished she would make them again, but she never asked about it when she saw Pearl in her lab. Garnet stayed quiet throughout the day and night, never talking unless prompted twice. 

“Machine?”

It had been three times she was prompted now. The machine decided to look up at last and acknowledge Mechatronic engineer Tornsey.

“There is no tool that will serve that function.”

“Damn.” Mechatronic engineer Tornsey looked back at her work with a furrowed brow, scratching her temple with her pointer fingers. The corner of her lips quirked into a concentrated frown. After a few moments of being in what Garnet assumed deep thought, the mechatronic engineer reached for a wrench and the odd needle thing, pressing them together and leaning forward to stick them onto the machine frame’s arm. Alarm flashed in Garnet’s coherent thought simulator, and her databanks worked to provide every single danger that came with her actions. But Garnet, after a moment of her own deep thought, discarded the warnings and kept silent. Mechatronic engineer Tornsey would learn.

“Ah! Motherfucker!”

The needle had slipped in her grip and touched the wrench, which in turn shot the electrical current straight into her hand. Mechatronic engineer Tornsey waved her injured hand up and down and started rubbing it with her palm. Biomedical scientist Tornsey, over near another workstation, rushed over.

“What happened? Are you alright?”

“Mechatronic engineer Tornsey shocked herself and implied that the wrench had fornicated with her mother.” Garnet offered an explanation, but it was ignored by Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s coddling. She held Mechatronic engineer Tornsey’s hand in both of her own and brought it to her lips to deliver a kiss. Garnet tilted her head.

Like Pearl does.

She wondered if it felt as unfeeling as it did to her.

"You need to be more careful, Ruby."

"I know, I know, don't need to remind me about it." Mechatronic engineer Tornsey's face was flushed, like Pearl's did whenever she was embarrassed. She pulled her hand from Biomedical scientist Tornsey's grip and rubbed it. "I'll be careful."

The biomedical scientist nodded with a smile. "I hope you mean it this time."

Sometimes those minimal interactions made Garnet think about what she could have. Today happened to be one of those days. The Tornsey's always found a way to make her use her coherent thought simulator more than usual. The machine looked at the back of her mechanical hand, frowning. Threads of blue wiring ran across metal bars, plates, and rods, connecting to circuits and batteries. Why did Pearl kiss that? To make herself feel better or the machine? Garnet didn't shock herself like Mechatronic engineer Tornsey did, Pearl had no reason to kiss her, neither on her hand nor her lips. Garnet wondered if Pearl cared for her, or if everything she did was a little self-indulgent.

--

Garnet joined Pearl in her lab, not by her own choice, but by the block of time she was required to be there for. Pearl worked on a small device that Garnet couldn't care to examine. She kept her distance from the pale woman as well, shifting her weight from leg to leg as a way to keep herself occupied in the monotony. Pearl didn't say anything to her, didn't acknowledge her all that much either, but sometimes Garnet would raise her head and see blue eyes staring at her before they shot back down to focus on the device.

"Why are you making more of me?"

Garnet's coherent thought simulator and voice modulator seemed to work against her more and more every day. The question left her lips without her wanting it to.

"To be prepared." Not a single second of hesitation before the answer. Her creator's brow furrowed for the briefest moment before her face fell back to neutrality.

"For my evitable failure?"

Her eyes caught the sight of Pearl's throat bobbing.

"You won't fail."

"No?"

"No."

Garnet looked down at her feet. "B-04 failed."

"Why do you talk about them?" Came the strained reply.

Garnet didn't know the answer to that question.

"Everyone else failed before me. Why do you think it won't be the same?"

The metal workbench clanked as Pearl set a tool down. A deep breath left her nose. She turned around to face the machine, and Garnet could see how strained the calm was on her face. She was ready to be angry, or cry. The machine hoped it wouldn't be crying. Crying always makes her uncomfortable.

"Because you're so...so... different." Pearl gazed at her palms. "You aren't like the others, you care so-"

"Not anymore."

Pearl paused, mouth open, eyes going wide. "What?"

"I stopped caring. Was that your goal? Is that what you made me for?" Garnet decided to take on a condescending tone. It fit what she had to say, what she false-felt. And it did well to surprise Pearl, who took a step back at her words.

"I...what? No! No, that's not what we-"

"You told me once that everything was a test. Are you a test too? Was you leaving me and you loving me a test? What is my purpose, why did you make me?" Garnet wished her voice had the ability to raise, but it could only remain at one volume at all times; loud enough to be heard, but not obnoxious.

"No, no! None of that is true, we didn't- I didn't make you for that. I'm not testing you, everything I said to you and everything I feel for you is real! Garnet-"

"Why did you make me?"

"Garnet, listen-"

"Pearl. Answer."

Pearl started to cry then. Garnet didn't care. Let her cry. It didn't feel real anyway. It felt like she was avoiding saying the answer. Garnet crossed her arms in the impassive way she always saw Aberman do when he spoke with other staff members. She hoped it would give the same effect to Pearl that it did to the staff members.

"I've told you before, there is so much I wish I can say to you-"

"I don't want to hear that." Pearl's face scrunched into a wince at the interruption. "You avoid my questions all the time. I'm tired of that. I want to hear the real answer from you."

"I can't-"

"Stop."

Pearl laced her fingers through her red hair and tugged at it, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head back and forth. Garnet watched with no concern, only disinterest. Her creator turned back to her work, as if ignoring her would make the machine stop her questioning. It wouldn't. Her mouth was opening in another demand when the pale woman cut her off with her own response.

"I never meant to make you stop caring. I never meant to make you question whether or not everything is real or if it's all a test. I Never meant for you to want to realize your purpose." Pearl's exaggerated 'I's' didn't go unnoticed by the machine. "I only want the best for you. That has never changed. It started for A-01, it didn't change for B-04, and it hasn't changed for you either, Garnet." Pearl pressed a hand to her face, wiping away the tears, revealing her stern expression as the limb pulled away. "But my answer will still remain the same. I  can't tell you." A pause, then a 'I'm sorry' was added soon after the end of her sentence. Furrowing her brow and quirking her lips down, Garnet looked at the floor, her hands clenching into fists, a way to show off her false anger. Mismatched eyes glanced at the metal work counters, right next to the bench that Pearl was hunched over, focusing on her work and ignoring her. The machine gave it a moment of thought. She extended her fist out and brought it down hard on the metal counter, drawing a startled squawk from Pearl and jostling papers and items off the counter and onto the floor. Withdrawing her fist allowed Garnet to see the sizable dent she left in the counter.

Pearl leaned back on her desk, one hand held over her heart while she took in deep breaths to relieve herself of her shock. Her eyes narrowed at Garnet.

"There was no reason for that."

"I wanted to do it." It felt nice, almost as nice as she thought it would feel. Pearl still glared at her, not accepting her answer. The mechatronic engineer bent down and began to pick up the fallen papers and tools. Garnet only watched. When Pearl stood back up, Garnet pointed at the floor. "You missed one."

Pearl glanced down, only to see the floor bare. She looked back up and huffed.

"Funny."

Setting the papers and items back on her bench, Pearl brushed off her sleeves and pants.

"You have every right to be mad at me, but that doesn't make damaging my property acceptable." She was shooting a pointed look at the new dent in her desk. The machine followed her gaze, but no apology made its way forth in her conscious thought simulator. Garnet didn't care. Pearl didn't seem to care either, because she turned away again.

Garnet turned away too.

Chapter Text

Reviewing

"I don't like what you've become."

Biomedical scientist Tornsey was always blunt, and that was something that Garnet knew would be a constant in her life. It complemented her well, but now it false-annoyed the machine, because she tried not to care nowadays, but what Biomedical scientist Tornsey said made her care all over again, false-sadness filling her at the thought that she disappointed one of her creators. Garnet looked down at her feet and frowned. The biomedical scientist turned back to her computer, typing away at a pace where the machine's eyes couldn't follow her fingers.

"It's obvious how different you are since we first activated you. It's not a good difference."

Garnet tilted her head up, and then dropped it again.

Biomedical scientist Tornsey turned her seat away from the computer so she could face the machine. Garnet noted with a slight amount of humor that her feet didn't reach the ground, hanging an inch above it.  She folded her hands in her lap.

"I'm disappointed."

The machine didn't realize that it would hurt to hear that, but it did. It hurt a lot. Garnet didn't understand why she couldn't feel any other emotion when hurt came clear to her. She supposed that was her price of existing. She made eye contact with Biomedical scientist Tornsey at last. Her face was stoic, her eyes covered by greying bangs as always.

"Disappointment is a bad thing." Garnet couldn't think of what else to say.

She nodded her head. "It is."

"I'm sorry."

Then she shook her head. "Don't be sorry; make a change. I worked on you for far too long for you to fail now. I care for your progress, and I care for your success, machine."

But you don't care for what I feel, and you don't care for what I want. "I understand, Biomedical scientist Tornsey."

The biomedical scientist nodded, and she turned back to her computer and continued to type out her document. Garnet watched her work, moving her eyes from her hands to the screen. From what she could decipher, it was a report about her work. Garnet glanced back at the empty lab, for once not a frame or device in sight. Mechatronic engineer Tornsey organized papers in the corner, not a word coming out of her. Strange.

Garnet looked at her knuckles. Dents aligned across them from when she punched Pearl's counter. She studied the imperfection until she got bored of her loathing and decided to idle near Mechatronic engineer Tornsey. She flipped through papers, reading over them for a moment through the glasses sitting on her nose, and then she set them into one of the three piles, rinse and repeat.

"I agree with Sapphire, machine."

Garnet frowned again.

"I figured you would."

Mechatronic engineer Tornsey pulled the glasses from her face and set them down, blinking twice as her eyes adjusted to the new view. She gathered one of the piles and walked towards a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Metal sliding against metal, then papers rustling as they were set in. The drawer banged closed.

"Yeah, I can be predictable." Mechatronic engineer Tornsey turned back towards the machine and leaned against the cabinet.

"You are never predictable, Ruby." Biomedical scientist Tornsey's voice came from the other side of the room. Mechatronic engineer Tornsey looked over and grinned, eyes becoming half-lidded.

"Oh you know it." Her voice came out in a light singsong. Garnet would have groaned if she had the ability to, instead she rolled her eyes and left to a different corner of the room to stay in for the time being. The mechatronic engineer approached her wife, and Garnet could hear light flirting between them. She tilted her head at some of the sentences said.

Why does Biomedical scientist Tornsey want to eat Mechatronic engineer Tornsey's cat?

--

Chief scientist Aberman had her come into an office of a sort rather than their usual testing room. The walls were a dark red, and the floors were vinyl.  In the center sat a desk crowded with a laptop, binders, and various tools, two chairs on either side of it. Several file cabinets and drawers sat against the wall. There was a calendar hung beside the door with several dates circled. Garnet took a seat in the chair facing the desk as Aberman took a seat in the one behind it. He clicked his pen against the wood of the desk and let out a deep breath as he grabbed a cyan binder, flipping it open to a tab.

"You've completed testing." He stated.

Garnet tilted her head.

"I did?"

"No questions."

Garnet closed her mouth. She forgot that rule. It seemed like it never applied anymore. 

"All the files we have been collecting on you have been sent. Depending on your score, we are to either transfer you to my superiors, continue testing, or terminate you." He didn't hesitate at all during his sentence, nor did he look up at Garnet to see how her eyebrows raised and her eyelids pulled back. "You should know how scoring works, high is good, low is bad. The high mark is a hundred to eighty, the middle mark is seventy-nine to 50, and the low mark is forty nine to zero." He stopped to sip at a mug near the corner of his desk, setting it back down afterwards and letting out a small 'ah'. "There is leniency for you to pass, but missing the mark and failing is also possible. Do you understand?"

Garnet lowered her head. "I do."

"Good." It seemed like he wanted to stop there, but a few minutes later, he spoke with hesitation in his voice. "I wouldn't worry too much,  your results look good and my mindset isn't too far from my superiors."

"I'm not worried."

A change in her life, or termination, both she wished for. The worst result would be her remaining here, stuck in the same monotony, living the same life, over and over again. Garnet viewed Chief scientist Aberman through eyes that were half-lidded, and he viewed her through ones that were dull and bored. He didn't care. He never did so that didn't come as a surprise to her.

"That's a relief. Now for our review."

Garnet waited as he flipped through the binder.

"This one won't count as much as the others, as this won't be submitted. Feel free to be... honest, with your answers." He clicked the pen twice, "First part is simple. Say the first word that comes to mind with these names. For simplicity, it will be the first and last name."

Garnet nodded her head. "Okay."

Chief scientist Aberman cleared his throat and set the tip of the pen on a spot on his binder.

"Ruby Tornsey."

"Funny." She always had interesting insults and colorful words. She sometimes hurt herself in the work place in ways that even Garnet's databanks had trouble suspecting. One time she threw her pen against the counter and it bounced on a paperclip, which sent it flying and hit her in the nose. The machine remembered the mechatronic engineer telling that story for days, always giggling between words.

"Sapphire Tornsey."

She thought about their one-sided conversation earlier. "Blunt." It described her best as well. Always blunt, with both her actions and words. She always knew what she was doing ahead of time; sometimes she even knew how to fix a problem before it appeared.

"Peridot Orville."

"Annoying."

Chief scientist Aberman snorted at that.

"Looks like we agree on something."

"She hits me sometimes. I don't like that."

"She does that to anything that frustrates her." Chief scientist Aberman waved the confession away as though it were nothing. "She did that one time to another machine, and it hit her right back. Kept her in line for a few months, then she started doing it again. We terminated that machine." He was shooting her a pointed look, the implication clear in the air. Garnet nodded.

"I wouldn't do that. Thank you for sharing that information."

He didn't acknowledge the thanks, "Pearl Pirozzi."

Garnet had to think about it, the first several words that her conscious thought simulator produced didn't sound right, didn't feel right. The machine blinked her eyes and glanced at her lap, where her legs were pressed together and her hands clasped themselves into a ball, resting in her lap, the regal pose that Pearl always took when sitting down. Garnet stretched out of the pose and looked back up at the chief scientist.

"Confusion."

He let out a small hum as he looked up from the binder, a silent question. Garnet made a minute-glance at her uncovered hand.

"Her behavior is odd to me, and she can't seem to make up her mind on whether she wants to be a friend to me or neutral. She confuses me." She held off on explaining anymore, for fear of giving information that he can use against her. Censoring was annoying.

"Rose Davis."

Garnet perked up at the name, one she hadn't heard in a while. Chief scientist Aberman was impassive; he clicked his pen over and over again on top of his desk. Garnet frowned, looking down.

"Dead."

"Anything other than that?"

"Kind."

Chief scientist Aberman nodded. He wrote down the response.

"Jason Aberman."

"Hate." Garnet didn't even have to think for more than a millisecond before the word rose from her voice emulator. He glanced up, and a smirk pulled at the corner of his lips.

"You aren't the first, and you won't be the last." He wrote the response down, still smirking to himself. Garnet could have sworn she heard him chuckle as well.

"Since these are the people you have the most interaction with, I'll stop the first part here. As for the second part of this little quiz, you'll rate your own progress. Take your time with this one, the document will be photocopied and sent to these same-named people for review." He unhooked his binder and slipped a paper out, pushing it over to Garnet. He rolled a pen across the table. The machine planted her palm down on it before it could roll off and hit the floor. She took a moment to look into her databanks about the basics of writing, and once she finished she held her pen in the correct grip and started a blocky print. The pen pressed a little too hard into the paper, poking through the back, prompting the machine to ease the pressure. The first question was scanned over. Garnet wrote the response. Next question. She took a minute to read it over again and again to make sure she understood, and then she wrote her response. The questions were all about her and what she perceived her progress to be, how she would perceive herself to be. When she came to the last one, it was a simple rating chart. She circled the numbers she wanted and passed the paper back over to Chief scientist Aberman, who took one quick glance at it and opened a drawer in his desk, sliding it in there. The metal clang of the drawer closing snapped through the air.

"Are you certain on all of these responses?"

Garnet gave it a thought. She nodded.

"I am."

"Positive?"

"Yes."

He closed his binder and leaned back in his chair. "Then you are free to leave."

Garnet raised herself from her chair, stepping aside and pushing it in. She gave one last glance at Chief scientist Aberman, and then she turned and walked and opened the door. It clicked behind her.

--

She didn't go to her confinement. Instead she wandered into a place she hadn't gone before, and no one stopped her. The doors to the research department were unlocked, and when she stepped in, even with her limited sense of touch, she could feel the tension. A few of the staff members gave her a glance, and then did a double -take, before shuffling their work further to the wall away from her and continuing. Others watched her through the corner of their eyes. Others ignored the machine. Garnet took a glance at the walls, and found that Pearl was correct, they were still pink. In splotches, in drops, in puddle stains on the floor.

Garnet walked to the corner and she sat down.

"Why is it here?" She picked up the sentence being traded between staff members, but the responses never drifted back. She spotted one of the female staff members trembling, hard enough that she was rattling her stool. She then got up and excused herself, leaving the room. In the brief moment where the staff member turned sideways down the hallway, Garnet caught sight of a long scar on her cheek, before the door closed and cut off her line of sight.

Garnet settled back on the wall, blinking. Then her eyes shut and she began to imagine.

Chapter Text

 Closed Off

Garnet tried to smile when Mechatronic engineer Tornsey did, but it didn’t come out that way. Instead, it became an odd grimace that didn’t resemble a smile at all. The artificial skin around her lips faltered, so unused to the pull at this point that it took a moment for it to stretch out all the way. She saw how uncomfortable it made her creator, and because of that the grimace turned into a frown and Garnet turned her head away.

“Sorry.” She felt the need to say it, even though the machine knew it would be unnecessary. That was further proven when Mechatronic engineer Tornsey shook her head and told her not to say that. Even though the top of her head only came up to underneath her chest, Mechatronic engineer Tornsey still tried to reach up towards her to cup her face, an action she had become more and more comfortable doing as the weeks passed. Two hands provided warmth and pressure across her cheeks as Mechatronic engineer Tornsey forced her head to tilt down.

“You need a little—initiative.” There was a pause in her words as she pushed her hands up, smooshing Garnet’s artificial skin along with it in a way that resembled a smile. Mechatronic engineer Tornsey cracked one of her own. “There we go! There it is… y’know, we spent over three months trying to program you to smile, so I want to see my hard work a little more often, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Good!” Mechatronic engineer Tornsey let go of her face and set her knuckles on her hips, leaning back as she looked up at Garnet. The machine supposed she wanted to see a smile, so she attempted again and it didn’t fail this time.  It made her creator beam even brighter, pleased to see the sight.

“There you go!”

A small mimicked giggle left Garnet’s voice modulator in response to her false-amusement. Mechatronic engineer Tornsey had become her favorite person in the last few weeks. A part of her told her that her niceness only came from the fact that her fate will be determined soon by Chief scientist Aberman’s superiors, and that she received a copy of her answer sheet. Another part of her told her to enjoy a nice interaction from someone that wasn’t Pearl. Garnet followed Mechatronic engineer Tornsey as she began to walk around the room, watching her movements as to determine what she was doing. Her creator took a seat at the computer and opened up a program whose name Garnet couldn’t see.

“I want to hear more of that, machine. You laughing, I mean. It’s good for you, like, you know that humans can relieve stress by laughing, right? What if the same can happen with you?” It was nice in theory, but it could never happen in practice. That type of emotional release was impossible for Garnet, and that reminder made the lingering smile on her face disappear. Her mismatched eyes kept on Mechatronic engineer Tornsey, watching for any interesting movements or to see if she would start talking again, but she never did. Garnet glanced behind her, where the door was.

“May I leave?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” The response was absent-minded, but Garnet still took it. Walking out the door and into the hallways, Garnet started a known path, one that she was certain she would be terminated for incompetence if she didn’t have it memorized at this point. When she arrived at the scarred door, she reached for the knob and tried to turn it, but it didn’t open. Frowning, she glanced into the window, where some staff members were eyeing her and others bent over their work, ignoring her. The door stayed locked for weeks now. After she visited the research lab, Chief scientist Aberman came in an hour later and pulled her out and reprimanded her, voice raising above its normal volume. It took all of her will for her to not say ‘I understand’ in response.

Garnet pulled away with a frown, resting her head on the door, rocking back and forth on her feet. Sometimes when she closed her eyes at night, she imagined herself going in there and talking to the staff members, but she could never make out what she was saying to them. The fantasy always dissipated as one of the staff members began to respond to her. Garnet supposed she might have been asking a question about the machines before her and her coherent thought simulator’s censors worked to lock it from her. It made her curious, but not curious enough to ask or even attempt to go further with her imaginings. She left it behind in her memory banks while she continued on with her day.

The machine wished she could go into the research department, but the fact would remain that she is in front of a locked door and none of the staff members would open it for her, so instead she turned away from the door and started on a different-but-still-familiar path. Her steps were hesitant, but her mind was set on going. So she did.

But she stopped short of Pearl’s door and didn’t dare to knock, apprehensive about facing her, as she always was when she reported for her block of time. It wasn’t her block of time now, but it would be soon, and Garnet supposed she could use her little free time to steel her false-nerves and face her creator. That decision was made for her, however, when the door opened and Pearl stepped out, carrying a tray full of tools. Her eyes were half-lidded and dull, staring down at the tray, but as she took a step forward, her blue eyes trailed up, and they widened and she yelped, flailing, sending her body back a step and her tray flying into the air.

Tools scattered around them, one hitting the top of Garnet’s head, sinking into her afro.

“Hello.”

The word came out on its own. Garnet’s face clicked as her eyebrows furrowed. She wondered why she said that instead of something else.

”G-Garnet! You’re going to give me a heart attack.” Pearl’s hand was over the area of her heart. The pale woman hunched over, deep breathes leaving her thin lips.

“That’s impossible. Lack of blood to the heart is what causes-“

“It’s an expression.”

Garnet frowned, tilting her head, the tool falling from her afro and clattering to the floor.

“Don’t express that. It’s a wrong statement.”

Pearl let out an exasperated sigh, bending over to pick up the tools and set them on the tray. Garnet watched, feeling an inclination to help, but ignoring it. The pale woman leaned up again, letting out a small groan and muttering about her back.

“How have you been?”

Garnet tilted her head at the question, wondering if she should give an honest answer or a fake one. Her honest answer might not please Pearl, but then again Garnet wasn’t too concerned with pleasing Pearl nowadays anyway.

“I feel… odd.” And as she thought, that answer made Pearl’s face drop. Her fingers gripped the tray tighter.

“How so?”

It had been a while since she talked to Pearl in full. She never started conversations with her during her block of times and the machine shut down any attempts by the other. Talking became a more and more alien action as each day passed. Garnet dragged her foot along the ceramic floors, a frown at her lips.

“Garnet?” Pearl’s voice brought her back to the present, as she was starting to get lost in thought. “How so?”

The machine chose not to answer any further, and to her relief Pearl seemed to understand because she started to walk. Stopping beside her, the pale woman shot her a pointed look. Garnet knew what she wanted, so she fell in line behind her creator. They walked for a while, down hallways and sometimes through small rooms before they arrived at what seemed to be a tool storage, with over a dozen metal racks and tool boards on the wall, each row labeled with small white papers. It was cramped, but Pearl went about the room without any difficulty, dancing between the shelves and racks like they weren’t even there, setting each tool on her tray back in their designated spots. When the tray was empty, she picked out different tools and filled it up again.

“You read my answer sheet, didn’t you?”

Pearl stiffened when Garnet spoke up, and whether that was from surprise that she spoke or nervousness at what was asked of her, Garnet couldn’t decide. Her answer came quick to her, however, when the pale woman turned around and her eyes darted around the room, refusing to land on Garnet.

“Oh, well, I mean-I-uh-I’m required to look over all ap-approved documents. Tru-trust me, I wouldn’t have read it otherwise! That’s a gross violation of your privacy.”

“You read it, right?” Garnet didn’t care if it was an invasion of privacy or not. She wanted to know the answer. Pearl bit into her lip and walked to the other side of the room to pick up another tool.

“I did.”

“Did you understand it?”

Pearl’s shoulders slumped. “I did.”

“I put everything I thought about into words. All my false feelings, all my wants. Everything that I can’t get out by talking, I wrote. Did you understand?”

Pearl set her tray down on a long white table, letting out a sigh as she turned around to face the machine. “Yes, I did. I… can relate to a lot of what you wrote. It-,” Pearl seemed to be in deep thought. “Off topic, but it amazes me what capacity you have for emotion, even if you can’t feel it the way a human can. You know the fundamentals of it, where it comes from, what it’s caused by, all that’s lacking is the chemicals to go through the motions. It’s remarkable, Garnet.” Pearl came closer and closer as she spoke, until their chests were almost touching. Her hand reached up, hovering in front of Garnet’s face, then moving for her cheek.

Garnet stepped away.

“You read what I wrote about you?”

Pearl’s hand continued to hover in the air and her eyes were widened, mouth ajar. It fell limp to her side. “I-Of, course.”

“Do you understand?”

She wiped at her face with a palm and didn’t meet the machine’s eyes, instead looking at the door that led out into the hallways. “I did.”

“I want you to be better, Pearl. Don’t win me over, better yourself.” Garnet thought out her response long before this. Almost every night in her confinement after she wrote her responses she thought about how she would confront Pearl. Sometimes her responses would be over several hundred words, other times it would be ten words. Revision happened every night. And even with her practiced response, what came out of her mouth then was improvised more than planned.

“I-I will. I promise you, Garnet.”

“Good.”

Garnet decided that she didn’t want to be in the room for longer, so she turned towards the door and took her leave. She walked through the hallways until she was back at the doors of the research department, and there she pressed a hand on the door knob and once more tried to open it, but to no avail. Instead, she frowned, pressing a hand on the door and resting her forehead on it, closing her eyes.

Walking into the department, Garnet stopped. Her arrival gathered the attention of all the staff members, but only a few continued to stare at her while others went back to their work. Her mouth opened and she began to speak, and as she spoke, more and more heads turned.

Garnet reopened her eyes and glanced into the window. The woman with the scar on her face was staring right at her, terrified in demeanor and facial expression. Garnet tried a smile, and a little wave. The machine could see the blood drain from the woman’s face as she shot up from her seat and left to a different one that Garnet couldn’t see through the window. Her smile dropped, as did her hand.

I’m not B-04.

Garnet isn’t stupid. She knew why the woman looked so afraid of her. And she had a good guess as to where that scar might have come from. She made a mental note to bring it up to Pearl if she ever had the chance to. Garnet tried to think of her past incarnations and if they were treated the same way by the staff members in the research department, but the censor caught on to the thoughts and erased them with ease. Frowning, she thought of B-04 instead, which didn’t seem to trigger the censors as a more general thought of her past incarnations did.

Why did you do what you did? What did you understand? Do I understand it as well?

Garnet took her seat at the foot of the door, still thinking.

I want the truth.

The machine didn’t expect an answer, so she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t get one.

Chapter Text

One in the Same

Garnet sat in Aberman’s office with the most patience she could muster, not reacting to the small fly buzzing around the room until it landed on top of her palm, folded in her lap. Frowning, Garnet raised her hand up and glanced it over. Its small eyes looked at her as it rubbed its legs together. A finger rose in the air, and Garnet poked the small creature. The brush against its body startled it, and it flew off her hand. The machine's frown deepened.

"Machine."

Her attention turned to the door behind her as Chief scientist Aberman returned with a paper in his hand. He didn’t acknowledge her again until he took a seat in the chair on the other side of the desk, and even then he took extra time adjusting his seat and clearing off the wood space. Garnet watched, not letting any of the words she wanted to say escape from her lips. She had a feeling it wouldn't please the man.

"The response came in today, I printed it out. I thought it would be fitting for you to read it." He handed her the paper and leaned back in his chair. "Whatever that letter says, is what I am required to do. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Good." Chief scientist Aberman turned his gaze down to his desk as he picked up a pen. "Read at your own pace then." He shuffled over a manila file and opened it, reading whatever was contained inside. Garnet frowned again as she looked at the paper pinched between her fingers. False-anxiety filled her. Garnet almost didn't want to read the paper, as if that would postpone her fate. Looking back up at Chief scientist Aberman, she saw that his attention wasn't on her at all, instead focused on his folder.

 He didn't care. He never cared. Whatever was to happen to her, he probably wouldn't care about that either. Garnet glanced at the paper again. There was an address and a short paragraph followed by a signature. Her eyes skimmed over it, but caught nothing that told her score or what was decided of her. Garnet would have swallowed if she had the ability to, but still her leg started to bounce, taking on the nervous behavior Pearl and Mechatronic engineer Tornsey did when deep in thought.

She started to read.

  Mr. Aberman,

I reviewed the files. Have the machine examined for a little longer on your end. At least another year is my recommendation. Her scoring is nothing to be appalled about, but I'm not pleased with it either. I hope you are doing your job in making sure she operates well and has a thorough understanding of what she is meant to do, because these results tell me the exact opposite of that.

        -Y.D, Director of Operations.

P.S Tell that Orville girl that if she emails the repair department one more time about a faulty microwave, I'll have her job. Thanks.

Garnet couldn't help the smile that pressed on her lips upon reading the small dig directed at Chief scientist Aberman, but then that frown fell when she read over the letter again.

Another year.

The idea of staying another year at the facility, living the exact same life, made the machine want to false-cry. She didn't meet eyes with the man as she pushed the letter over to him.

"Do you understand?"

She hated his voice now more than ever, knowing that this wouldn't be the last time she would hear it.

"Yes."

"That email came back today. What day is it?"

I don't care

"July 13th, Friday."

"From today until July 13th next year, you'll remain in this facility under the same rules and testing. Understood?"

Garnet still didn't meet his eyes. She didn't want to look at him, because something deep in her coherent thought simulator told her that if she looked at him then she might reach over the table and-

"Yes."

"One more thing: Stay away from the research department. I'm tired of people coming into my office to complain about you. You getting to go in there the other day was a one-time thing and we will not let that happen again. Clear?" Chief scientist Aberman sounded annoyed.

Garnet meant to say 'yes'', but what came out instead was: "They fear me."

"They do, and because of that, you aren't allowed to go in there, and now you are not allowed to go near the vicinity of the department. I repeat, am I clear?"

The machine hesitated for a few moments, turning her gaze up to Chief scientist Aberman at last. His face was severe, his dark brown eyes somewhat shaky and his lips forming a tight line. He was rocking a pen underneath his middle finger. All signs of nervousness. The machine almost smiled.

"I understand."

And like that the man tensed, stopping the rocking of the pen and his face falling in astonishment. He composed himself a moment later, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

"Do you?"

"I do."

His frown deepened more and more by the second, further pronouncing the lines and wrinkles across his cheeks, until he let loose a long sigh that relaxed them.

"So, which one of them told you about it?"

Garnet didn't have to think for a second to know what he was talking about.

"Pearl."

"Of course."

Garnet tilted her head. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Pearl is not very good at keeping secrets. It's been like that since I met her. I also know that she can be persuaded into talking about a topic she tries to avoid." He was looking at her with those intense eyes, holding nothing but blame in them. Garnet frowned.

"She told me on her own, when she took me to her house. I didn't push her."

"Right." He didn't believe her. Chief scientist Aberman flicked his pen onto paper and doodled something, not taking his eyes off Garnet. The machine didn't take her eyes off him either. Her databanks were reading off reasons for what he was doing.

Reading expression, asserting dominance, prying.

None of them would work because she was a machine and none of those things came natural to her. He could try all he liked, stare for as long as he wanted, and it wouldn't do anything to her. That realization made a smirk form on her lips with a click that was somewhat louder than usual.

"I still hold the authority to terminate you, machine. Anytime I feel as though we are dealing with a B-04 again or I feel like my employees lives are in danger, I can make that call, and I don't have to wait for approval."

"I would never kill anyone.” The pure suggestion of it made false-sadness appear. "If I killed someone, then they would be like Rose Davis, they would not be able to see or hear or walk again and their termination would make people around them sad. I wouldn't kill anyone." Garnet didn't know why she was assuring him, but it felt right to share her views. If not for self-preservation, then it was to give him peace of mind.

He didn't look like he bought anything the machine said.

"You are two in the same." Chief scientist Aberman words were sharp enough to make the machine flinch back. "Understand that, machine? We can all pretend that everyone one of you have a different identity, but you don't. You are B-04, in voice, in likes, in mannerisms. B-04 was our success story long before you were, and history is repeating itself because it told me the exact same bullshit five years ago. ‘I wouldn't kill anyone’, and then it rattled off on its own childish understanding of death. A week later, I had seven bodies on my conscious and record.  I expect the same from you. Understand that, machine?"

Garnet could do nothing but look at him in her false-shock, eyelids pulled back as far as they would go. He looked angry, very angry. Garnet didn't think she had seen such a strong emotion on his face before. It made her want to get away from him.

"I... wouldn't do that."

"Is it hard for you to say 'I understand' now that you realize that it isn't a way to make me falter or scare someone? That it's a way that shows us no matter how hard we try to reprogram your artificial brain, you'll always remain the same? Do you understand that?" The repetition of the phrase. The repetition is what was getting to her, but the content in his sentences was affecting her all the same. She couldn't look him in the eyes anymore, instead staring down at her hands, one wrapped in ripping artificial skin and the other with mechanical and electrical parts bared to the world.

"I don't want to be that way."

Chief scientist Aberman's face fell from anger into neutrality in a near blink of an eye, the change in expression so quick Garnet had to blink to make sure she wasn't imagining it. The man had begun to lean forward during his talking, hands planted on the desk and his body curved over his desk. He relaxed from this position, falling back onto his chair and grabbing his pen to bring the end to his lips and chew. Nervous.

"You already are."

--

Garnet found herself walking to Pearl’s lab. She didn’t know why her feet took her there, but they did, step-by-automatic step. Images and sentences swirled around in her memory banks, all relating to what Chief scientist Aberman said to her and what the man revealed.

Hurt.

That word droned on through her coherent thought simulator, neither holding a tone nor her own voice, robotic and monotone as it never was. It scared her, intrigued her, and made her false-mad all at the same time. When she arrived at the door, she tried the knob and found it locked. That made her flinch before knocking, for reasons she didn’t know.

It took several seconds for a response. Soon Garnet saw a shadow cast across the wall through the window and she heard light footsteps that could only belong to her creator. When that door opened, Garnet once more asked herself why she had come here, and Pearl looked like she would ask the same.

“Yes, Garnet? What do you need?” She didn’t, but still it hung unspoken in the air, like a cloud above their heads, reminding them of their last not-so-great interaction. The machine watched her creator for any change of expression, any signal of annoyance, before she spoke in a voice that would have been choked up and small if she had that capability.

“Am I like her?”

“Her?” Pearl was confused, Garnet didn’t like that she was because she hoped that Pearl would understand what she meant.

“B-04, am I like her… them?”

The way her face fell made the anger and the fear become even stronger.

“Oh… no, no no no! You’re not, you-“ Pearl starting ushering her in with hand, and Garnet stepped inside the lab. The door shut behind her and her creator pressed her hands up to her cheeks to tilt her head down, wanting to make eye contact with her. “You’re not like them, Garnet. Why would you think that?”

"I..." Garnet wanted to say more but her voice modulator wouldn't work. Her coherent thought simulator was working overtime, unable to come up with a sentence that was coherent enough for her to say. Those hands started to move, until they rested on her shoulders and pushed, easing her down into a sitting position. Pearl sat in front of her, concerned eyes on Garnet.

"Chief scientist Aberman, he told that I was the same, that every single version of me was the same." Garnet got out at last. She saw Pearl's eyebrows raise, and a mixture of anger and worry flashed across her face.

"That's not true."

"It's not?" There would have been a tone of disbelief if it was possible, but Garnet managed to get the point across by arching an eyebrow at Pearl.

"No, I swear to you it’s not."

"He said that no matter how hard you tried to reprogram me, I would always remain the same."

Pearl looked a little less sure after that.

"That is true... in a way. But you are not the same from the others, you're-," Pearl took in a deep breath and let it out. "So much better."

"Better how? Because I haven't revolted against you yet or because I follow my purpose?"

The surprise in her creator’s face made her feel somewhat bad about what she said. She wanted to take the words back; Pearl was only trying to reassure her, and the machine wouldn't accept the reassurances.

"Your... Purpose." Pearl's voice was quiet. Her eyes were on the floor. The hands on her shoulders tightened, before drawing away to deposit themselves in her creator's lap. "What do you know of it?

Garnet blinked. She shook her head. "Not much."

Pearl twiddled her fingers together, "Then I suppose you should know."

Chapter Text

The Truth

"When I first came to this facility, almost 12 years ago, I was... so excited for all the potential in the projects they wanted completed. One of my favorites was finding a new way to build AI's. It started simple, computers that can aide people who aren't so great with technology, programs that talk back to you as if they were a real person. All of that was simple, though, nothing as complex or amazing as you would turn out to be. That's when our director of operations, Yvonne, came into power, and she wanted to see better. She wanted us to try and create a functional android that could walk, talk, and respond like a human could. So we did, we made A-01. And it failed within ten days, shutting down and not turning on again."

"However, Yvonne talked with a few organizations and people even higher up on the scale than she was, and she managed to receive a contract that would allocate us the funds to start work on a line of 'social' androids. One of the clauses was that we would have only a numbered amount of years to produce a working one; Yvonne would get it renewed every time it ran out, but it cost tens of thousands of dollars in order to do so. Another clause was that, should we not renew the contract and fail to produce a working android, then we are to pay back all the funds that they have given us."

"Every moment of your life I can guarantee you were being tested. Our purpose was to make sure that no matter how far you were pushed, you would never retaliate, that you would forever remain passive. You are a social android, your purpose is to obey your owner, either by answering questions, helping them with tasks, anything, and you are to never retaliate or say no. And the only want you are supposed to have, is you wanting to please. You are known as a social android, because you are meant to be released for public use. And Garnet, you are our last version. Yvonne won't renew our contract after this."

Garnet didn't say anything.

"B-04 figured that out. When it came into our research department, it was to tell us that it understood what it was supposed to be: nothing more than a commodity for humans to abuse, with no will of its own despite being as sentient as us. It told us... That we were nothing more than scum, and that it would kill every one of us, but we, humans, would end up doing it first. But.... It told us that it would get us started."

Tears were slipping out of Pearl's eyes, down her cheeks, leaving trails that the lighting fixtures above them shone off of. Her fingers were clasped together in a tight ball, her knuckles white and the skin turning red from the force. When she breathed in, the breath was shaky and uneven, a slight clicking noise emerging from her throat. Garnet didn't say anything about it, but she watched her creator.

"I... you caught that, right? I don't have to repeat it, your purpose?"

"I am meant to serve."

"You are..." Pearl dropped her balled fists into her lap and her eyes didn't meet the machine's unfeeling ones. "Yes, you are meant to serve. That describes it best."

"That's all I am. A tool."

A long pause.

"Yes."

Another, longer pause.

"It makes sense now." Garnet gazed down at the artificial skin of her palm and the mechanical rods and wirings of her other. "Being forced to help, having to abide by those rules. My purpose is pointless. I am meant to be an object, not my own person." Her fists closed.

"We wanted something sympathetic to a human, that’s why we spent so much time trying to develop an emotional side to you. That succeeded as well." Pearl didn't sound the least bit happy about it. "In all categories, in everything that we test for and tried to implement, you are perfect." Pearl continued on as if she didn't hear Garnet at all. She was staring off into space, her blue eyes taking on that dull look they had months ago when she was a mess. Her hands had relaxed for a moment to grab onto her knees and squeeze them.

"You're all cruel."

"I know we are. Half my life working at this facility taught me that." Pearl met eyes with her at last. Garnet felt warmth and pressure on her knees, and she glanced down to see the pale hands moved. "You don't deserve any of this."

"No, I don't."

"I'm so sorry."

They both met eyes at the same time, and they only stared. Neither of the two looked as though they wanted to say something. Garnet's neck whirled as she rolled it, drawing her gaze to the side. Then, without asking, she scooted forward closer so she could wrap her arms around Pearl and place her head in the space between her neck and shoulder. Enjoying the warmth and pressure there and allowing it to dash away all the thoughts that were swarming her conscious thought simulator. Her creator sucked in a sharp hiss of breath, arms shooting up to hold her flush to her torso.

"I'm so sorry."

Would those words help? Knowing she was doomed to be nothing but a tool to serve and be used until her eventual termination? No, they didn't. Not at all. But the hug helped, and the silence that followed after the repetition did too. Her conscious thought simulator stopped working for a minute, allowing nothing to break the peace. Her grip tightened on Pearl. Pearl tightened hers back.

"I wish it could be better for you."

"I do too."

--

Even the Tornsey's arguing couldn't cheer Garnet up after learning what she learned. It was about who should take the dog out when they get home, and it had lasted for a good ten minutes at this point. Garnet only watched with a dull interest as the two women went back and forth with each other, not giving in one bit. Behind her, Pearl sat on a stool, watching them with the same bored expression, resting her hand on her chin. Her creator had brought Garnet along with her, as she needed to retrieve files from the Tornsey’s. It would take a while before she got them.

"I work all day!"

"I work all day too, Ruby. We have the same job."

"That dog drags me everywhere we-!"

"You're the one that wanted a Great Dane."

Her databanks found the breed for her, and the image of Mechatronic engineer Tornsey walking a dog of that size made a smile form on her lips. The arguing continued, until Mechatronic engineer Tornsey caved at last and Biomedical scientist Tornsey walked back to her desk with a smile on her face. Only then did Pearl stand to go and question her about the files, and the machine kept her spot. Mechatronic engineer Tornsey walked towards her, tilting her head up so she could look her in the eye.

"How you doing, machine?"

Garnet's lips turned down into a frown.

"Not good, Mechatronic engineer Tornsey."

Her face fell at that, and the woman seemed concerned, not in any way that was false.

"What's wrong?"

She wanted to vent out everything to her, but Garnet knew that that would be one of the worst things to do. The Tornsey's weren't as lenient as Pearl, even if they have warmed up to her the last few weeks. Garnet turned her gaze away from the woman.

"My feelings don't matter. Carry on with your work."

It was very true, and a little revealing as to what was bothering her. She hoped that Mechatronic engineer Tornsey wasn't as smart as to see right through the words and look into their meaning. Her eyes narrowed a bit and she let out a small hum, but then the mechatronic engineer turned and walked away from Garnet, back to her station, and if she could, the machine would have let out a sigh of relief.

Pearl came back to her a few minutes after that, arms carrying stacks upon stacks of paper. Garnet almost raised a hand to take some the burden away, but she hesitated, and by the time she made up her mind Pearl was already heading for the door. Garnet followed close.

The moment the door closed behind them and they were out in the white hallways, Pearl spoke. "You can trust them, you know? Ruby and Sapphire don't report anything to Aberman."

"I'd rather not take the chance."

"That's your choice." Pearl shifted the papers up higher, as they were beginning to slide down her chest. "But I trust them, if that means anything to you."

It meant nothing at all, because Pearl was human and not bound by rules and a purpose. Garnet wasn't. And trusting the Tornsey’s could mean trouble or her termination (the latter she wouldn't mind much). They walked on without another word, heading back to Pearl's workshop to continue on whatever she had been working on. Another frame, Garnet would guess, and that made her stop as a realization bloomed.

"Why are you making more?"

Pearl stopped and turned, raising an eyebrow.

"Pardon?"

"You said I was your last attempt. Why are you making more of me?"

"Oh... that." Pearl shuffled her feet, eyes finding the tops of the paper interesting in that moment. "The ones we are working on right now are for a separate contract Yvonne signed. Military androids. Most aren't built for fighting, but the ones that are will be made in different departments. These aren't made for public use." Pearl started walking again, lips drawn in a thin line. "It feels like something out of a bad sci-fi; all we are missing is the android retaliation that kills off the human race."

It would be a good thing.

Garnet kept that thought to herself, though in that moment the ever-looming realization that none of her thoughts were her own reared itself, reminding her that it could be accessed by anyone at any time. The machine couldn't find it in her to care much at all.  They approached her creator’s door and Pearl shuffled the papers underneath one arm so the other can access her lanyard. She pressed her keys into the lock and turned it, pushing the door open with her shoulders afterwards and stumbling inside. The machine followed. Pearl dropped the stacks of papers down with a heavy 'thud' and let out a small, breathy 'okay' as she took a seat in her stool, sliding the papers over. She starting reading them off, and when she finished she put them into separate piles. Sorting them, Garnet realized. Her eyes trailed over to her desk, spotting a dent in one of them.

"Are they as strong as me?" Garnet made her way to the desk and traced her fingers around the imprint.

"Very much so." Pearl didn't even look up from her work, almost as though she was anticipating the further questions. "Most of the androids we’re working on are made for lifting."

"And they can kill."

"And they can-" Pearl stopped there, realizing what she was saying in her absentmindedness. Her lips once more pressed into a line and she set one of her papers down, twisting around her stool to look at Garnet. "Yes, they can."

"And I can kill too?"

Garnet could have sworn she saw Pearl go a shade lighter, but then she dismissed that because there was no way Pearl could become even paler than she already was.

"You... Yes, yes, you can."

Garnet nodded, eyes not leaving Pearl's.

"Good to know."

She would never do it, as she had been telling herself over and over again. But Pearl didn’t need to know that. She’ll keep that one to herself.

Chapter Text

A Visitor

Sometimes Garnet poked her flower in hopes that it would start to grow again as it once did, but it always remained a crumbled mess on the floor, and each of her pokes would make more of its dried stem and leaves fall off. Still, she continued to poke at it, never letting it deter her. Always remembering its purple petals and bright green stem and leaves as a way to keep her motivated to keep trying. Twice the machine asked Pearl for another seed, and Pearl would promise but seemed to forget about it. Garnet was too dejected to try again.

The click of the lock sounded and Garnet stood up, mechanical joints creaking and whirling. Each of her footsteps a loud clang as she made her way to the door. She opened it and stepped out into the white hallways, and above her the light was flickering as it had been for the last week. She recalled seeing repairmen down the hallway a few times, but they were always standing around talking about her rather than fixing the light. She turned her head up to it and blinked, wondering if she could fix it herself.

No.

Instead she started off left and continued straight, right, right, left, right, and straight again until she was in front of the Tornsey's door. But one glance into the glass of their door told her that they were out (or in the storage closet again). Frowning, the machine moved away from the door and instead glanced down the left side of the hallway, starting towards her next destination. When she arrived at Pearl's lab, the room was dark and the door was locked.

Strange.

Garnet stepped back and tilted her head, wondering why both the Tornsey's and Pearl were out that day, but after a moment she turned and went in another, more reluctant direction.

Electrical Engineer Orville's door was locked and the lights were off. A quick stop and look into other labs told her the same for them. She wondered if it was another one of those staff days, but she would have been told if it was. Making her last and most reluctant choice, Garnet went in the direction of Chief scientist Aberman's office. But when she arrived and looked in, he wasn't there either.

"Hello?" Garnet's voice bounced off the walls and moved further on down the hallways, but nothing answered her back. She glanced around, looking up at the ceiling as if anyone could be hiding there. Frowning again, she made her way to Pearl's lab again, and when she arrived she took a seat at the door and crossed her arms over her knees, staring off into the space in front of her. Sometimes it was hard to be patient nowadays, but today she decided she would be patient and wait for someone to come.

Someone did come, 2 hours later. Two someones, one of which being Pearl and other one being a tall woman in heels. She was dressed in the similar white of everyone else, but her blonde hair slicked in an updo and the makeup she wore on her lips, eyes, and high cheekbones stood out in a stark contrast against it. Garnet sat up as they both approached, focusing on Pearl but soon turning her gaze to the stranger. The stranger crossed her arms behind her back, staring at her with an unreadable expression. Her lips were in a tight line and her eyes scanned her up and down, focusing on her mechanical parts more than her skin. Garnet felt false-discomfort; she wanted to back away.

Then, the stranger whipped her hand out from behind her back, holding a rectangular object. It flashed and clicked out loud, disrupting the machine's vision for a moment.

"Oh!" Garnet started to blink, the light exposure of her optics correcting itself after a few moments.

"My granddaughter wanted a picture." The stranger's voice was deeper than Pearl's and didn't carry much emotion with it. It reminded her of Chief scientist Aberman's in a strange way. She deposited the object back behind her before Garnet could search her databanks for what it was.

"Machine," That was Pearl, and it wasn't much her speaking up that shocked Garnet as it was her referring to her as 'machine’. She couldn't remember the last time she called her that, or if she ever called her that before she gave her a name. "This is Yvonne. She'll be overseeing our facility for the next few months. You'll be reporting to her instead of Aberman."

"Aberman is gone." Garnet worded it into a statement as best as she could, in case Yvonne was already versed on the rules set against her.

"No, he was transferred for the time being while Yvonne does her... research." The pause in Pearl's sentence was noticeable and concerning. "Do you remember what I told you about her?"

"She is the director of operations, the one that ordered my existence."

"Yes," Yvonne was the one that answered even though Garnet was directing to Pearl. "I'm happy I could meet you at last."

She gave a smile and Garnet gave one right back. She liked when people smiled at her, it wasn't too often nowadays. "Some reports about your progress are concerning to me, so I decided to take it upon myself to see if I can make a change for that. Your allotted time with Pearl will be cancelled and instead I want you to report to me by 13:00 every day. The times on which I'll let you go will be varied. On Sundays we'll have the week review as Aberman as had you doing. Is that understood?"

"I understand."

"Good. It'll start by tomorrow. Try not to be late." And with that Yvonne bid Pearl goodbye and turned around, leaving them be. Pearl's shoulders dropped the moment she was out of sight and she let out a shaky sigh. The machine focused on her.

"What's wrong?"

"Yvonne makes me nervous for both me and you."

"You?"

"She's my boss's superior. Everyone is on edge because if we slip up, then we can say goodbye to our jobs. Jason is lax with us because we've worked together for so long, but that isn't the case with Yvonne. It'll be... impersonal." Pearl turned to her room and unlocked the door with the keys around her neck, beckoning Garnet in after her. She shut the door behind them and flicked on the lights. On her workbench were a laptop and a notebook with a pen next to it.  "I'm more worried for you though."

"Don't be."

"I am. She's the one that can order your termination and have it done within the hour. I trust that she won't want to do it right away because of how adamant she is on seeing the completion of this project, but still, she's been suspecting for a while that-," Pearl's voice had been dropping into a whisper the more she talked, and her last word was silent. The machine mimicked the lifting and shrugging of a human's shoulder when they let out a long breath, and looked over at the laptop, wanting something to distract herself with.

"I'll be good for her."

"That's-" Pearl pinched the bridge of her nose. "Not the point. If she sees something that she doesn't like or something that goes against any of the clauses in the contract then she will terminate you, whether you're good for her or not. That's why I'm worried."

The machine considered that for a moment. She could see the justification now. Pearl walked over to her workbench and took a seat on the stool behind it, opening her laptop and waiting for it to boot up.

"Please be careful around her. Act how you don't want to act, because that's what she'll want to see."

Garnet nodded.

--

"Let's start this off by reviewing your scoring." Yvonne flipped the packet to a different page. "What I gave to Aberman was an average of several categories he tested for. On communication, you scored an 87-these are all out of 100- On cooperation, you scored a 67. On effectiveness, you scored 46. And on emotional response, you scored 22."

Garnet found it amusing on how that was her lowest score, when she was sure that she felt more than Yvonne or Chief scientist Aberman ever did, even if her feelings were false. The machine didn't say anything though; she pretended to be more interested by her lap.

"I'm not concerned about emotional response." Yvonne chewed on the cap of the pen she had in hand. "I am concerned about cooperation and effectiveness. We'll work on cooperation first while I'm here, then if we happen to finish before the end of my transfer, we'll focus on effectiveness."

"Yes, Yvonne."

She frowned at that, but her eyes were still focused on the paper. "Refer to me as Director of Operations, please. You are only to refer to people by their titles. I've heard from a few sources that you are lenient on that when it comes to Ms. Pirozzi." Then she looked at her, black eyes intense, even more so from the eyeliner that outlined them. Garnet blinked and tilted her head, neck clicking twice as the joints set into place.

"I was ordered to call her Pearl. I am supposed to follow what I am told to do."

The director of operations face seemed to become a bit sterner at that reveal, more severe. She set the packet down on the table and marked a few points off without a word, and then she set the pen into a cup holder and looked back up at Garnet.

"I'll be talking to her about that then. For now on please refer to her by title rather than name.  Understood?"

"I understand."

"Good." Yvonne fished for something in a cabinet by her desk. When she found it, she pulled it out, allowing Garnet to see that it was nothing more than a blank sheet of paper. She set it down in front of her and retrieved her pen again. "Let's move on. I have a few questions that I'm told you can answer."

"I have all the answers, director of operations. I am the answer." The machine spoke the words that Chief scientist Aberman had said to her so long ago. Even though it wouldn't be possible in any way, it burned her fake tongue and artificial lips as they left.

"Good. Let’s start with Mr. Aberman, how does he make you feel? How does he perform around you?"

The question had something hidden in it. Garnet knew that, could sense the under tone even before Yvonne finished her sentence. She knew that Yvonne was going to use her words for something incriminating against Chief scientist Aberman and anyone else she asked her about. With that in mind, Garnet though long and careful about her words, the director of operations never once trying to break the silence by prompting her to speak. Over a minute later, Garnet had her response.

The humans had a particular way of wording it, but it was an accurate way as well. Garnet thought that phrase fit very well as to how she answered the question. In short, she 'ripped him a new one'. Even Yvonne seemed a bit amused by how every word was a disguised insult and dig at his methods of operating the facility. And by the end of it, she had a light smirk on her face. Her blank sheet of paper was filled top to bottom with a beautiful script, a full transcript of everything Garnet had said, without any paraphrasing or shortcuts in the words.

It felt good, getting everything out like that. It felt like something was off her chest, like if she had gotten an object stuck in there and she managed to pull it out through speaking alone. The machine leaned back against her chair couldn't help but smile back at Yvonne. It was almost a way to thank her for asking.

"And none of this is being exaggerated? Nor is it because you have a personal vendetta?"

"No." Garnet knew that Yvonne wouldn't believe that, but still she kept to her answer. The director of operations only nodded as she flipped the paper over and wrote a title on the very top and center of the paper. She clicked the pen twice and tapped it against the table to get the ink running again.

"I appreciate your cooperation through this. How about Ms. Pirozzi, then? I know she is the second person you worked closest with. Again, don't censor anything, and the questions remain the same: how she makes you feel, and how she performs. I know you had much to observe during your scheduled blocks with her, so I want full honesty."

Garnet gave her that. Full honesty. But a few missing pieces of information. What information she did give her was full honesty though. When she was finished, the back half of the sheet of paper was filled top to bottom like the first. But Yvonne wasn't smiling anymore.

"I have one more question then, before we move on to our next employee."

Garnet tilted her head, a silent beckon for her to continue.

"Was there any point in time where Ms. Pirozzi was absent outside of the scheduled vacation days? It is crucial that you answer this in full honesty."

"I don't know the scheduled-"

"Anytime she was absent when other employees weren't?"

Garnet let her head drop down to make it seem as though she were in deep thought, when she was false panicking for Pearl. Why did Yvonne want to know that? What would she do if she knew the truth? The machine had a feeling if she did know the truth, then nothing good would come out of it, so she moved her head and made an expression of utter confusion.

"Pea- Mechatronic engineer Pirozzi sleeps here if she doesn't get her work done in time, only so she can get an early start in the morning. I've never seen her absent from this facility unless everyone else is too."

The director of operation's face was expressionless. Her hand held the pen rigid. The machine knew she would be sweating if she had the ability to.

"Are you certain?"

"Yes, director of operations. I am certain."

"Hm," Yvonne set her pen in the cup holder and moved the paper into a manila folder she had sitting near her elbow. "Then let’s move on."

Chapter Text

With Yvonne's arrival came several new problems, but also many more solutions to ones that already existed. For one, the lighting fixture was fixed at last, and the machine wanted to thank Yvonne for that in person because of how irritating the fixture had become over the month. Another thing that had changed was a few new additions to her confinement.

The rules were still up. Plastered on the wall as they have been since her birth, but a flower pot had been set in the corner, grey as the rest of the room, with black soil and a single green stem poking through the center of the dirt. Garnet came into her room with it there one day, no previous mention of it to her at all, no clue as to who put it in there. She thought it to be Pearl at first, but when she asked her the morning after the mechatronic engineer had furrowed her eyebrows and asked the same question back to her.

The machine didn't bring it up to anyone else, in fear that the flower would be taken away. So instead she kept silent about it, and whenever she returned to her confinement she would sit right in front of the flower pot and poke it until she was sure that it would grow with no troubles. She missed the feeling of the gentle pressure of a stem against her fingers.

It almost curled around her finger when she ran it up and down the stem, and for a moment Garnet wondered if this particular species of plant had prehensile vines, but a quick look into her data banks told her that a plant like that didn't yet exist. Still, it was a nice thought to think that the plant appreciated her poking enough to caress her finger, and the machine couldn't stop smiling at that thought.

Almost thirty minutes after, the time on the hub in her vision blipped, alerting her that she was due for Yvonne's office. Garnet left the flower and went out into the white hallways that were illuminated by static light rather than one that blinked every half second. It took five minutes, and the machine was on time when she arrived.

"Take a seat," No glance in her direction. Yvonne was reading a blue paper, a pencil sitting atop her ear. She had a pen in her hand, scribbling on the paper. Garnet wondered if she forgot the pencil.

"I want you to tell me about something. Anything that comes to mind, it doesn't matter." Yvonne looked up at her, setting the paper down and clasping her hands together and leaning back so she was sitting straight in her chair. Garnet blinked, and then started to scour her databanks for a topic she wouldn't mind talking about for however long Yvonne needed her to.

"Love is an odd emotion. It is a mix of chemical reactions that makes a human attracted to another. Remove those chemicals and the emotion doesn't exist, like all other emotions. It is natural for a human to seek companionship, but without those chemicals, would they still want to seek it?" Garnet worded it that way on purpose, disguising the real question. Why did she seek it if she couldn't feel the emotions that humans can? After all this time she wasn't sure if she had an answer to it, and that fact became more and more apparent the more she visited Pearl. Distance had lessened between them; the machine didn't mind standing next to her or playing with her shirt, preferred it over standing and watching her work. Pearl didn't mind it either. And often they shared hugs at the end of Garnet's visits. And less often, much, much less, Pearl would lean over and brush her lips against her cheek when they hugged. But it conflicted her. The kissing reminded her of the feelings she had not too long ago, the feeling that Pearl was using her and testing her and didn't care much for her. She froze up often, and that served as enough of a deterrent that it hasn't happened again in a while.

She didn't like that. She wished she didn't freeze up, even with her confliction.

Yvonne didn't make any move to write down what was said, but she nodded her head after Garnet finished. Like she was listening. And so, Garnet felt the need to continue on about the subject of love, making sure to keep everything to fact and not let any of her personal experiences come out to play. And Yvonne listened. And listened. And listened, until Garnet had no more to say and they trailed off into an uncomfortable silence. When she sensed that she was getting no more out of the machine, the director of operations nodded her head for the last time.

"Very good. I can see you have a bit of a passion for the subject."

"The Tornsey's gave it to me. Their actions are always interesting to watch." Not as much of a lie as a dressed up truth.

"Do you have any other passions?"

Garnet wondered if that was a trick question, and so she kept silent for a few short moments, watching Yvonne. Her face never twitched away from its original expression. She always looked stoic and unbothered. Unreadable. Like Aberman. She wondered if that had to be in the job description.

"Nature." The machine gave the answer with no small amount of hesitation. Yvonne nodded. Garnet felt compelled to continue. "I like purple. Human affection is odd, but interesting."

"Is that what you do in your room? Do you explore these subjects on your own time?"

Garnet shrugged her shoulders with a somewhat loud creak. "On occasion, director of operations."

And Garnet continued.

--

Pearl held her close that evening, for whatever reason. When Garnet came in to visit her, her greeting was the same she had given her any other day, but as the machine stepped in, the mechatronic engineer wrapped her arms around her and still, almost thirty seconds later, hadn't let go. Garnet had her arms around her as well, but now she was staring down at the mechatronic engineer in concern.

No expression of sadness on her face. Pearl looked content.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm okay."

"Only okay?"

"Only okay."

Garnet held a little tighter and hoped that communicated her skepticism. Pearl ignored it no doubt, because she squeezed back but offered no words to the machine. When she glanced over to the workbench, Garnet saw nothing. Not a frame or device in sight. Not even her laptop that was making an appearance more and more as time went on. Pearl was being strange again. When the mechatronic engineer pulled away at last, her eyes were tired.

"How was your session with Yvonne?"

"She asked me about my interests and listened to me talk."

Pearl closed her eyes and nodded, humming in response. "That's nice of her. Wonder what she plans to do with the information."

She took a seat on a stool and sat hunched over, not in the normal regal position. Even stranger.

"Only okay?" The machine tilted her head as she repeated what was said to her before. The mechatronic engineer looked at Garnet with a smile.

"Yes, Garnet. Only okay."

The machine left it at that.

They didn't do much, only exchanging brief conversation about Yvonne and a new project being set up for the facility. Sometimes, Pearl would reach out to Garnet and play with her artificial hair, and the machine would lean into the hand, closing her eyes. An hour passed of this. Then by 19:00, Pearl led the conversation.

"Yvonne has been... looking around. She thinks most of your problems are rooted within the people working here. She’s been questioning us and observing us at work."

As she suspected. Garnet frowned and said nothing, waiting for Pearl to continue.

"Orville may be on the way out soon. According to Ruby, she called Yvonne a clod when she started giving her pointers about her electrical work." Pearl shook her head. "Things will be changing around here. I'm not happy about it."

The machine thought that Electrical engineer Orville would deserve her termination if it came, but to see Pearl sad about it made her feel bad for having that thought. She wondered if that's why Pearl was 'only okay’. But even more than that, she was false-worried at the change that Pearl said was coming. Change was always weird, never welcomed. Garnet hoped the change wouldn't be too bad. Pearl put her head in her hands and rubbed at her eyes.

"I'm worried."

"I thought you were only okay."

"I am. But I'm still worried."

"Can I make it better?"

Pearl seemed to consider that question, running her hand along her jaw as she turned her gaze to the ground. Several long seconds passed with nothing but silence in between them. After a while, the mechatronic engineer shook her head and let out a sigh, straightening her back.

"No, you can't. It's more of a waiting game than anything, and we can't do much about it."

Garnet nodded, contemplating her words. After a second, she spoke another repetition, "Only okay?"

Pearl watched her for a moment. Her lips pulled up into half a smile.

She didn't say anything in reply, though.

--

About thirty minutes later Garnet returned to her confinement for curfew. As she stepped into her room, she noticed a difference. Another flower pot had been added, sitting in the opposite corner of the previous one. And a large poster covered the wall where the rules had once been. A forest, several trees in frame, a blue lake focused on the bottom with reeds and shrubs and rocks surrounding it. Green grass with twigs and pebbles scattered about it. A horned creature- she learned it was a deer after taking a moment to consult her databanks- drank from the lake, standing out from the rest of the photo with its light brown fur and large antlers. Garnet rushed over to it as fast as her feet would allow her. She pressed her palms against the picture and examined the photo for every small detail, looking at the individual strands of grass, determining how windy it was by shape of the trees leaves, what time it was by the sky peeking through the crowns.

It took two hours for her to examine every last part of the picture, and when she was done she knelt down in front of the new flower pot. It was grey like the other one, but the soil was a light brown and the green stem growing out of the center was longer than the other, a small bud at its end. Garnet sat back on her knees and raised a hand up, starting to poke the plant to encourage its growth. She examined it as she did so, but like the other flower her databanks couldn't determine what kind it would be. The bud would have to sprout before she could do that. She poked it close to twenty times before she moved on to the next one and poked it the same amount.

It was a gift from Yvonne. She knew it had to be because Pearl was too nervous and forgetful to sneak something in this big, and no one else knew or cared enough about her interests to give the gifts either. How bad could Yvonne be, then, if she cared enough to do this? Were Pearl's worries out of place? Garnet grabbed the flower pot and pulled it into her lap, running her mechanical fingers across the ceramic. It was obvious that the director of operations cared more than Chief scientist Aberman if she were willing to do this.

The machine found herself smiling as she rubbed her hands along the flower pot. Pearl was being paranoid and she would make sure to tell her that tomorrow once she got to see her. Though Electrical engineer Orville could lose her job due to the incident between them, Yvonne wasn't looking to fire anyone, only to improve the conditions she found the facility, staff, and the machine in.

Good.

Her smile went a little wider with several clicks.

Chapter Text

Losing Something of Importance

The Tornsey’s worked with not a word uttered between them. On opposite sides of the room, not once sparing a glance in the other’s direction even if they had to turn around to fetch something. It was wrong. Garnet watched them with a close eye but she couldn’t figure out the problem, the source of the tension. She didn’t know if they were stressed, or if they were mad at each other, or if it was something that, as a machine, she wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Once or twice Mechatronic engineer Tornsey looked like she wanted to say something to Biomedical Scientist Tornsey; she would make the motion to do so, but stopped before her lips could finish opening. The machine wondered if they had a bad time in the storage closet, but then she dashed that idea from her conscious thought simulator. The enmity was sudden, and the last time they were there was several days ago.

This tension was found often throughout the facility. Staff members exchanging rude glances, rude gestures, rude words. Everyone avoiding each other. And the machine often found Yvonne wandering down the hallways, hands clasped behind her back, head held straight. Garnet didn’t fail to notice that staff members were absent in the hallways when Yvonne was outside of her office.

It wasn’t hard to tell that she commanded the place, more so than Chief scientist Aberman. He worked in the facility for years, knew most of the people there, let things slide that shouldn’t have been let slide. Yvonne wasn’t that. She was someone who had never been in the facility before who now was commanding the place, looking for the source of what had been stopping Garnet’s success.

But Yvonne isn’t bad.

She gave her flowers, a poster of nature. Every few days a new flower pot would appear. She had eight now, all in various stages of growth. Her first one was starting to bloom, revealing red and yellow innards that Garnet poked often to encourage growth. The machine couldn’t see how Yvonne would be looking to fire someone if she was so nice to her. That niceness had to be extended to the others. The only reason Electrical engineer Orville had been terminated was because she called Yvonne a clod and disrespected the rest of the staff in various ways.

No other reason than that.

“Machine, come over here please.”

The voice of Biomedical scientist Tornsey drew her attention, and Mechatronic engineer Tornsey’s. She watched the machine as she walked to her wife, then turned away to focus on her work. At the biomedical scientist’s side, she peered down at what she was working on. Something that looked like an arm.

“Lay your hand down next to this.”

Garnet did as told, and Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s gaze drifted from between her arm and the one she was working on, her lips starting to purse as she started working on the arm with various thin tools. Trying to match the structure of her own. Garnet watched her work, but something felt off at the back of her head, and when she craned her neck she saw Mechatronic engineer Tornsey was staring at them. False-annoyance. Then she couldn’t help her questions anymore.

“What’s wrong with you two?”

That made them both look at each other in surprise, then turn their attention back to the machine, either waiting for her to elaborate or trying to figure out what to say in response. Garnet didn’t ask another question. She didn’t need to.

“Nothing’s wrong, machine.” “Nothing!”

They both spoke at the same time and looked at each other, not with malice but with surprise.

“Things are stressful.” Mechatronic engineer Torsney said, turning her head forward again. “We’re a little on edge, that’s all.”

“Ruby’s right.”

“I don’t hear that one often enough.”

The quip had the two glaring at each other again. Garnet decided that this is one of those ‘couple agreements’ that always left her head reeling, so she took herself out of the conversation then and there, choosing to focus on what the biomedical scientist was doing instead.

Later on, when Mechatronic engineer Ruby passed by them to retrieve something from the filing cabinet, Garnet could have sworn she heard her whisper “It was your turn to walk the dog,’ in Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s ear.

--

It was funny what the argument was about, but still, it didn’t make things any less unsettling that something as mundane as that was enough for the Tornsey's to not speak to each other. Garnet believed the ‘things are stressful’ statement that was made. She felt false-guilt that it was affecting everyone, but at the same time she didn’t know how to fix the problem, and the entire walk to Pearl’s lab didn’t help her coherent thought simulator come up with any solutions. She pushed open the door, as it remained unlocked most days, and stepped inside, shutting it behind her. For once, the lab was bright rather than dark, and Pearl was scrambling around, ripping open drawers and filing cabinets and metal closets and pulling out stacks upon stacks of paper and trinkets that clanked as they fell to the ground. Unaware of the machine’s arrival.

“Pearl?”

Pearl didn’t respond to her, in the middle of tearing up a second closet in her attempt to find whatever she was trying to find. Garnet stilled herself for a moment, then with reluctance she moved forward towards the mechatronic engineer, reaching a hand to her, expecting her to flinch away, but when she placed her mechanical hand on Pearl’s shoulder she didn’t pay it any mind.

“It’s fine, its fine, its fine, its fine-” Over and over again. Whether it was directed to her or not, the machine didn’t know.

“Pearl?”

“It's not fine!” Her searching somehow became even more frantic.

“What are you looking for? Do you require assistance?”

“No!”

Garnet flinched back, unused to being yelled at by Pearl. Her mismatched eyes trailed her as she made her way around the room, ripping everything apart as she looked. By the end of it, ten minutes later, the room was trashed, papers and items covering every inch of the floor. Pearl’s appearance was ragged, her hair in tufts, her blue eyes bloodshot, filled with tears. Her face terrified.

“What are-?”
“My documentation! My leave of absence, my referrals, my assignments! They’re gone! No one else has access to this room but me and they’re gone, Garnet!” In the midst of her sentence, she had jolted forward and grabbed Garnet by the shoulders, shaking her frame back and forth. Garnet had to latch onto her elbows to keep her balance, eyes going wide with several clicks.

“I haven’t seen-”

“I know you haven’t! No one has, they’re private!”

Her breathing was coming out in quick puffs, her fingers threading into her hair and pulling. Garnet took a look at all the papers on the ground around them.

“What do they look like?”

“Yellow.”

All the papers on the floor were either white or blue, with the blue ones few and far in between. Garnet frowned and looked back at Pearl. She had taken a seat on the stool, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. Breaths coming out slower than before.

“It’ll be okay, I’ll bring it up to Yvonne, it’ll be okay.”

The machine realized after a few moments that Pearl wasn’t talking to her, but herself. When she tried to move forward to pat her, the mechatronic engineer jerked away, not wanting her touch. Frowning, Garnet gave her space, kicking aside papers and crumbling them under her weight as she moved back.

“It’ll be okay, the director of operations will help you.” Garnet offered a smile that wouldn’t be seen. Pearl inclined her head by an inch.

“She’ll tell me to keep a better eye on my papers in the futures, and she’ll fire me.”

“No she won’t. Yvonne is good.” If Pearl could understand that, then she wouldn’t be so distraught. Yvonne wasn’t out to get anyone, she wanted to help. Garnet knew that to be true because she helped her. The machine moved forward, ignoring Pearl’s attempts to get away and patting her on the shoulder three times, saying ‘there, there’. Then, as an afterthought, she leaned down and brushed her fake lips on top of Pearl’s head. She felt nothing from it, no sensation or warmth or pressure, but Pearl looked up with wide blue eyes, staring at the machine while she backed away to the door and opened it, leaving to go to her scheduled block with the director of operations.

--

In an air of casualness that was unfamiliar to Garnet, Yvonne had her feet up on the desk when she came in. The director of operations gave her a glance, then returned her attention to the packet in her hands, not paying Garnet any mind and not correcting her position. The machine couldn’t help but note that the colors of the paper were white, and when she looked around the office, any of the papers out in the open were also white or blue. No yellow in sight.

“Take a seat.”

And the machine obeyed.

“There’s not a lot to be discussed today other than your progress. You have improved by a few percentages since my arrival. A good thing,” Yvonne shot her a pointed glance, a small smile on her lips. She looked back at the packet. “Who have you been occupying your time with?”

“The Tornsey’s and Mechatronic engineer Pirozzi.”

“No one else?”

“No.”

“Hm,” For a long time she read through the packet, flipping to a new page whenever she finished the old one, not saying anything to the machine about what she thought about who she was spending her time with. Garnet shuffled her feet on the floor and plucked at the exposed wires of her arm. She thought about Pearl, how panicked she was about the papers, how she was almost in tears.

“Director of operations.”

Yvonne looked up, raising an arched eyebrow, “Yes?”

“Pea-Mechatronic engineer Pirozzi lost her documentation. She thinks someone stole it from her room.”

Expecting sympathy, false-surprise spread through Garnet when the director of operations only tsked and turned her attention back to her packet.

“No one has access to the labs other than the employees assigned to them. If Ms. Pirozzi can’t keep track of her papers, then that is her own problem.”

"You can issue a notice to the other staff members to keep an eye out for it.” Garnet made sure to word it into a statement.

“Why? No one is allowed to take their documentation out of their rooms, and anyone looking through another's is a breach in confidentiality. The notice will do nothing.”

“There can be an exception.”

“If Ms. Pirozzi can’t keep track of her papers, then that will remain her problem. Tell her that instead of sending you to try and convince me to look for them, she can go and find them before her audit.” Yvonne flipped to another page, face stoic, save for a crease in her brow. She sniffled “Oh, and tell her that her losing her papers before the audit is a suspicious act that I will keep note of.”

“She didn’t ask me to-”

“Enough.” And with that the machine felt inclined to stay quiet, turning her gaze down to her lap. She tried, at least she could say that. Still, she felt bad that her attempt didn’t go anywhere.

Pearl could have a better time at convincing her.

Still, she worried for the mechatronic engineer. The audit, whatever it was, didn’t sound good, nor did the director of operations tone when she described it. She wondered if the audit was the reason that everyone seemed so stressed as of late. She decided, without the use of her databanks to look into what it was, that an audit was not a good thing. And that it was the cause of the problems in the facility.

When it is done, everything will be better. Everyone will be happy again.

Yvonne drew her attention back to her with another question, and Garnet answered it to the best of her abilities, forgetting about the audit and her thoughts in that moment.

Chapter Text

"Will you ever take me to see nature again?"

Head in her lap, Garnet held onto Pearl's hand with her own, staring up into her blue eyes with her mismatched ones. Her artificial hair framed her face around her, smushed against Pearl's thighs so it stuck out more than usual, covering her face, making her vision somewhat tunneled through it. Her creator pursed her lips and looked away from her, and the pressure increased on her hand as she squeezed.

"One day."

"Soon?"

"No."

Garnet looked down as much as she could. She was lying on her back. They were both in the lab. Lights off. All of them. The only light source the blue glow of Garnet's robotic eye.

"I will take you to see it again. I promise." Pearl stroked her hand across her head, pulling back her curly artificial hair from her eyes, then smoothed a palm down her artificial cheek. "There's still so much you have to see."

The machine considered that, shutting her eyes and allowing a frown to form on her lips. She could feel Pearl's hands roaming over her, before they settled in her hair and fingers tangled into it. "Everything will be okay after my audit."

There it was, another mention of the 'audit' that everyone seemed to be dreading. Garnet opened her eyes and looked back up at Pearl, saw that she was only half-smiling and her eyes reflected nothing but emptiness. So much she wanted to ask her, but her lips stayed shut,  afraid to break the peace in the room, when so much has been chaotic beforehand.

Pearl started shifting, and Garnet moved off of her to allow her to change positions. The mechatronic engineer stretched her arms above her head, several joints popping that made Garnet tilt her head and search her databanks for whether or not that was a bad thing. She didn't get to conclude her search, though, as her creator moved close and wrapped her arms around her, burying her head in the crook of her neck. The machine hugged her back, confused.

“I promise, everything will be okay.”

What was she implying? Garnet didn’t know, but she hugged tighter and laid her head atop of Pearl’s, blinking twice. Her fingers drummed over her shoulders and pressed in, feeling the pressure of the bone beneath the skin as she massaged the muscles there. Pearl was strange, stranger than usual. After losing her papers, there had  been a calm that washed over her the next day, something that resembled resignation, but wasn’t that. Twice she questioned it, twice it was deflected with a simple “I’m feeling tranquil today, that’s all.”

The machine worried. The machine worried a lot.

Pearl was starting to lean forward, and Garnet knew that meant she wanted to engage in the act of kissing with her. So she let her do so, even did some of the motion back to make it more natural, but before her creator could pull away she rested a hand on the back of her head and pressed her forehead on hers in an attempt to convoy how serious she was.

“You’re not telling me the truth.” Sometimes, Garnet wished her voice could have emotion in it, because her robotic monotone made words insincere. Made words harsher. Harsh enough that the mechatronic engineer winced, showing off wrinkles that were becoming more and more defined by the day. Her lips pursed, her eyes flickered downwards.

“I’m not.”

“Why?”

“There are some things that should remain secret, Garnet. I can’t tell you everything.” Pearl tried pulling away, but Garnet held on to her.

“You’ve been telling me everything.”

“And with Yvonne, that needs to change. She’s conducting the audit because she thinks the project was sabotaged in some way. We’ll all walking on thin ice, and I can’t do or say anything that can make me a person of interest.”

Garnet considered that for a moment. “That’d be impossible, then. You’re a very interesting person.”

Pearl laughed and pulled away from her.

“That’s not what that means.” She fell serious. “It's a lot more serious then getting fired. Sabotage on government property can put someone away for life. If she thinks something that anyone of us did was sabotage…” She trailed off, and Garnet could see the beginnings of panic on her face, the way her blue eyes widen and the muscles in her jaw and neck tensed. She reached her hand up to bite at her nails as she looked away from her. “There’s been rumors going around that Jason’s has been suspended while he’s under investigation. They’re serious about this, Garnet. For whatever reason they’re convinced that you ‘failing’ is not because what they are asking is near-impossible, but that someone decided to throw away eleven years of work by messing with you.”

“I haven’t been messed with.” Garnet tried to reassure her, reaching a hand for her shoulder.

“They aren’t looking for physical tampering!” The snap of her voice made Garnet reel back with surprise, blinking. Pearl pulled her elbows close to her body and her voice dropped to a whisper, “They’re looking back at every interaction, every documentation. They’re going to look through your transcripts too, Garnet. They will find-”

A knock on the door startled both of them. Her creator stood up and brushed herself off, heading for the door. Garnet started standing too. There was a brief pause when Pearl looking through the glass on her door, but after a moment she undid the lock and opened it.

“Hello Yvonne, how can I help you?” Her voice was pleasant, reflecting nothing of the sheer panic it had earlier. The machine stood off to the side near the wall in hopes that it would cut off the director of operations vision. No luck, when Garnet glanced up she could see that her black eyes were looking straight at her.

“Your documents went missing two days ago, correct?”

Pearl froze up and the machine turned her gaze away from the door. She didn’t tell her creator that she told Yvonne. A part of it was false-fear of what she would say.
“I-Y-yes, I… I did. I've been look-”

“Here.”

Garnet looked back then and saw that Yvonne was holding out a stack of yellow papers, face devoid of emotion. The mechatronic engineer was staring at it, eyes wide and eyebrows raised. Her hand lifted, towards it, hesitating at the last moment.

“I want you to keep a better eye on your papers next time. And for your sake, don’t leave them in the bathrooms either. You’re very lucky that no one used the stall they were left in.” Without waiting for Pearl to grab them, Yvonne dropped the papers into her hand and stepped back. Before she left, she looked at Garnet and nodded.

“Our meeting today is canceled; enjoy your time off, machine.” and with that, Yvonne turned and left without bidding goodbye, leaving Pearl dumbfounded and Garnet interested as to why the director of operations canceled the meeting. The door clicked shut. Inch by inch, she turned to face the machine.

“You told her?” Quiet and wavering. Garnet looked down at her feet.

“Yes.” Garnet almost left it at that, but then her conscious thought simulator suggested that she should justify. “Yvonne could help you find-”

“ You told her?!”

If Garnet had the ability to jump, she would have then. Pearl clutched her documentation, knuckles turning white, the papers beginning to crumple.

“Do you have any idea how- how stupid-- you told her?!” Pearl couldn’t seem to fathom the idea that she did. “That cost me- she’ll think its on purpose! She’ll think I’m trying to hide something. Why would you do that?!”

“I wanted to-”

“Do you have any idea what you done? You-” Pearl stopped there and dropped the papers onto the floor, putting her head in her hands. Her shoulders were tense. Every part of her was tense, so tense that it seemed to bleed out into the room. Frowned, the machine started to approach, reaching a hand out to comfort her.

“Get out.”

Garnet paused, hand stilling. Her conscious thought simulator tried to process what was said.

“Pearl?”

“Get. Out.” She snatched the handle and yanked the door open, showing off the white hallways. Not even looking at her. “Go.”

Garnet still hesitated, wondering if the mechatronic engineer was serious. She still refused to meet her gaze, glaring down at the floor as if that was what had caused her distress. Her eyes seemed somewhat red. Her databanks searched for an answer.

Betrayal? I didn’t betray her.

“Yvonne could help you. She’s ni-” Pearl was shaking her head.

“Get out, Garnet.”

The relief was that she still said her name. Her eyebrows sloped in her false expression of sadness and the machine obeyed, footsteps clanking far too loud as she headed out into the hallway per Pearl’s request. She turned back to look at her creator, still with that expression of betrayal plastered onto her face.

“I wanted to help-”

The door slammed shut, interrupting her sentence. Through the glass she could see Pearl bend down to gather her papers, then head to her desk without glancing back once at the machine. Garnet pressed a hand onto the door and leaned close to look at her. She was out. Did Pearl want only that?

For ten minutes she stood there, and not once did Pearl look back at the glass, instead focused on sorting her papers. After a while, Garnet got the sense that her not looking was intentional, and she was being ignored.

What did I do?

She leaned closer until her artificial nose squished against the glass, knocking with a single knuckle. She saw Pearl tense, but she didn’t look over nor make any move to get out of her chair. The machine frowned, false-sadness and hurt wanting to make themselves known. Pushing away from the door, she headed left, leaving her creator alone at last.

--

Her first flower sat in her lap, with bright red petals and a yellow innard the discolored the middle of them into orange. The petals jostled up and down each time she poked it, no doubt starting to grow from the action. Many more flower pots sat around her, all having been poked beforehand. With this flower Garnet was extra gentle, not wanting to poke it too much as to wilt it, like she had done to her last one.

What did I do?

That question hasn't stop repeating since she returned from Pearl’s lab. Still, the machine was so confused. Yvonne was good and the machine knew that she would help. And she did help; she brought Pearl’s papers back to her and told her not to lose them again. But why Pearl seemed so panicked and was so angry at her evaded her conscious thought simulator. She knew a part of it had to do with her distrust of the director of operations, as well as the fact that the audit had her stressed. That still didn’t answer the question  of why she was mad at her, and it was nowhere close to answering the question of how long she would be mad.

Garnet was unused to this. She didn’t think she would ever get used to hostility towards her. More so when it came from her creator. Garnet set the flower down on the floor, not in the mood to poke it any longer. Her knees pulled to her chest and she wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin atop of them as she looked at her door. It wasn’t locked. She can go out anytime, but where was there to go? Pearl didn’t like her at the moment, and the Tornsey’s were still stressed. An idea appeared in her conscious thought simulator, but she hesitated on acting on it. She was source of the facility’s grief. But Garnet give it another thought, and she stood up. She will go see Yvonne. The director of operations would help her.

Chapter Text

Nothing at all

When Yvonne listened, she listened well, and that was no exception today as the machine explained what had happened between her and Pearl. Her hands were clasped together and resting on her desk, her back straight and her face neutral as always. Garnet almost found herself mimicking her posture, but she managed to stop herself. She didn’t want the director of operations to think she was mocking her in any way. After an hour, Garnet finished, clicking her jaw shut and mimicking a deep breath that humans did sometimes.

Yvonne grabbed a pen and tapped it against her desk a few times, then clicked it and pressed the tip to a loose paper. “What would you have me do?”

Garnet blinked, not expecting that answer.

A choice.

Like how she was able choose her present during her birthday, something that was only a one-time thing according to Chief scientist Aberman. Yvonne was giving it to her as if she deserved it like a human did. Another reason to add to the couple dozen on why the director of operations was better than Chief scientist Aberman could ever hope to be. Garnet was unsure, though, as to what Yvonne should do to help. There was so much she wanted her to do, but at the same time she wanted her to do nothing at all. It being a choice made it harder; a part of her wished that Yvonne chose for her instead.

“I don’t know, director of operations.” Garnet regarded her with full eye contact and her own neutral expression that her face defaulted to. Yvonne made no move to start writing.

“Well, something needs to be done if you are being impeded by her behavior. You can make a decision or I can, Machine.” Yvonne went back to tapping her pen against the desk.

Anxiety, impatience.

Garnet decided that Yvonne was impatient and she wanted an answer sooner than later. While she struggled to find one the pen tapping became more and more frequent, until Yvonne let out a deep breath and dropped it to the desk where it rolled away from her hand.

“I’ll give you time to think about it. I want an answer by next week, or I will take the matter into my own hands. Understood?”

“Yes, director of operations.” Garnet nodded to make sure her understanding came extra-clear.

“Good, let yourself out. And try not to worry. Things will get better around here soon, machine.”

The way she said it was different from her normal tone of voice in a way that Garnet couldn’t pinpoint. She watched Yvonne for a few moments, waited for any clarification, but her attention was back to the documents she was looking at before. Yellow papers. Getting up from her chair, Garnet bid the director of operations goodbye and left the room out into the white hallways. She tugged at the exposed wires of her arm and swerved her head back and forth, looking for something but not knowing what. Yvonne’s words were starting to muddle the machine’s conscious thought simulator. What did she mean? What was going to change? Garnet started walking in an aimless direction, still pulling at her wires. Her legs took her to the doors of the research department and in the ten minutes it took her to get there she still couldn’t come up with any reasonable answer. And when her left arm failed to respond to any of the commands her artificial brain gave it, Garnet realized that she pulled at her wires too hard and dislodged them from the various motors, boards, and bits of machinery that they were attached to. It hung limp to her side and when she tried to wave her body it stayed still.

“Oh.” Garnet thought of the word that humans tend to use when they make a mistake. “Oops.”

--

Things will get better here soon.

Is that why so many staff members were disappearing now? Or why Garnet saw so many rushing down the hallways, carrying papers and various items and crying to themselves? Yvonne became an omen around the facility, her name whispered rather than spoken aloud, as though she would hear them from her office. People resented her, people feared her.

And yet, she was still better than all of them combined.

A week had passed since the incident with Pearl and she had not talked to the machine once. Even avoided her the few times they passed each other in the hallways. It made Garnet register hurt, and even the flowers that now covered every inch of her floor did nothing to comfort her. The machine was convinced that the damage she dealt was irreversible, and no amount of hovering outside her door or leaving flower pot offerings would get Pearl to even look at her. Garnet betrayed her, and she was paying the price in full.

Garnet tapped on the window a few times, the sound a little louder than she intended due to the metal of her fingers. It took a few moments, but the door opened and there stood Mechatronic engineer Tornsey, craning her head up to look her in the eyes.

“Hey, machine, It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.” She stepped aside to let the machine in, and as Garnet walked forward, she spotted Biomedical scientist Tornsey asleep in the corner, a stack of papers serving as her pillow and blue hoodie as a blanket.  When Garnet turned around to face the mechatronic engineer again, she spotted bags beneath her dark eyes, her face worn down from exhaustion. Garnet tilted her head and frowned at her.

“You haven’t been sleeping.”

“Yes, we have!” Mechatronic engineer Tornsey stopped to yawn, covering her mouth with a closed fist. “We’ve been taking shifts.”

She shot a pointed look to Biomedical scientist Tornsey in the corner, who had rolled over onto her other side and started snoring.

“There’s too much work to do to go home though. The audit will be any day now and we still have mountains of paperwork to get through!” Mechatronic engineer Tornsey threw her hands in the air to further express her exasperation. The machine titled her head.

“Have you been at home this week?”

“No.”

The machine gave it a bit of thought. A troubling realization came over her.

“Who’s been taking care of-?”

Mechatronic engineer Tornsey’s eyes shifting to the side and her breaking out into a whistle is what clued her in to how they have been taking care of the dog they have argued about walking so much. At first, Garnet thought they locked it the supply closet, where they spent most of their time, but instead the mechatronic engineer walked backwards towards a counter with a large door and opened it, revealing a black, panting Great Dane. It looked up at its owner with nothing less of adoration and love, licking its jowls and stretching its massive paws out.

“Keep a secret?” Mechatronic engineer Tornsey offered a sheepish grin as she reached over to pet the dog, her hand dwarfed by the top of its head alone. It wasted no time craning up to lick her palm, and the machine’s audio receptors picked up the sound of frantic thumbing against the cabinet door. “Our usual dog sitter has the flu.”

“It is dangerous for a dog to be in this environment.” Garnet repeated what her coherent thought simulator told her, offering a frown to go along with it. “It could get hurt or sabotage a project.”

“Ah, he’s fine. Marmaduke is a good boy! Isn’t that right, Marms? Are you a good boy? Yes, yes you are, you’re the bestest boy!”

Mechatronic engineer Tornsey’s attention towards the machine stripped away, all her focus on the Great Dane and cooing about how much of a good boy he was. Marmaduke enjoyed it, that much was obvious by his increased panting and his frantic attempts to lick his owner. Frowning again, Garnet headed for Biomedical scientist Tornsey’s spot in the corner of the room. Curled in a ball with the hood of her hoodie pulled over her eyes, she laid there on the floor fast asleep. Garnet bent down and reached a hand over to poke her shoulder a few times. She didn’t stir.

Garnet had seen Pearl like this many times, but never the Tornsey’s. It was disconcerting to say the least, and it gave her a little more insight on how much Yvonne’s arrival affected everyone, for better or for worse.

But she is good. She will help them.

Garnet poked the biomedical scientist’s shoulder a few more times, but to no avail. After a few moments of staring at her, the machine stood up and looked back to Mechatronic engineer Tornsey. She had closed the cabinet door on Marmaduke and was back to looking through her paper work. Inside the middle of the stack, Garnet noticed yellow papers.

Their documentation.

“Have you looked through it yet?” The words came out on their own. The mechatronic engineer looked back to her, confused. “Your documentation.”

“Yeah, a few times. It’s all in order. Why you ask?”

Garnet thought of Pearl, her hostility towards her and how it was caused. The machine turned her gaze down and flexed her hands into fists and then out again.

“Keep them in sight.”

--

Later that day, Garnet walked down the white hallways with a flower pot in her hands, a blue flower poking out from the dark soil and leaning over to the right side. The flower had petals that spread out rather than stay in a tight bulb, and its innards were a similar blue and the petals were streaked with a darker version of the color. The machine found it very pretty, and she hoped that Pearl would too.

As she arrived at her door, Garnet stopped in her tracks with false-surprise registering in her. The flowers she had left at the door were gone, when they had been sitting there since she first started putting them down. At first, she assumed that some staff members picked them up, but Garnet approached the door and peered inside the glass, spotting them sitting at Pearl’s workbench, all lined up in a straight line.

A mix of feelings ran through her- Hope? Excitement? – Garnet bent down and set the flower by the door, then leaned against the door to peer inside again. She couldn’t see the mechatronic engineer anywhere, but that was okay, because Pearl accepted her flowers rather than throw them out. Which means that she was going to forgive her. Garnet pulled away from the door with a small smile, fixing the flower pot so it looked a bit straighter and more aligned, then stepping away to go to her meeting with Yvonne. Today was the day she needed to make her decision to her, and seeing that her flowers have been accepted was an encouragement that told her that she was going to make the right decision.

It took a few minutes to get there, and when she arrived Yvonne was leaning onto her palm and tapping her pencil against the desk. Her hub registered that the time was no different than the time she arrived at every day, but still the director of operations looked impatient. Garnet took her usual seat and folded her hands in her lap.

“Well?” No greetings or pleasantries. She wanted the answer. It was somewhat shocking to her, but at the same time Garnet had a thread of understanding. The audit was coming up, and she wanted to know what actions she needed to take beforehand.

“Nothing.”

Yvonne raised an eyebrow, curled her fingers around her temple and stopping her tapping of the pencil.

“Nothing?”

“Yes. Nothing. Pearl has accepted my flowers, it has been resolved.” The machine smiled at her.

Yvonne’s eyebrow remained raised. Her blinks were slow and spaced out. After a moment she leaned up and sat straight, picking up a rectangular object and tapping her index finger on it. A look into her database told her it was a tablet.

“Nothing at all?” Her eyes flicked from the tablet to look at the machine, her finger pausing in the air. Garnet nodded her confirmation, and Yvonne finished whatever she was doing and set the tablet down. “Alright. Nothing will be done for you.” Yvonne gave a smile and the machine smiled back, though her coherent thought simulator registered the weirdness of how the words were said. Garnet blocked it out to be content in the moment, reaching her hands out to rest them on Yvonne’s desk, leaning forward, ready to answer the questions for today’s session.

Chapter Text

Under Stars

Every time she took a flower out of the room to bring it to Pearl’s lab, another would take its place, along with several more gifts such as a watering can, a flip book of animals, and a calendar with various locations in nature on it. Garnet loved each and every one of the gifts, spending hours flipping through the book or poking her flowers and watering them, and she hoped Pearl loved her gifts as much. She still hasn’t talked to the machine, nor has Garnet seen her around. But that was okay, because her flowers were being accepted.

Garnet sat outside her door sometimes from the beginning of her day to her curfew, but she never arrived. Asking around told her that she was still in the facility, just overseeing different departments. Garnet didn’t know what that meant for her, but she hoped it meant that Yvonne recognized her intelligence and was having her teach the other departments on how to do certain things. That was a thing that humans did, like how the staff members were meant to teach her how to succeed, they could teach other humans too. Pearl would be perfect for that.

…Stars, did she miss her.

Garnet didn’t come out of her room often, like before. There wasn’t much to do and everything was too chaotic for her to sit with a staff member and help them with anything. Even the Tornsey’s started turning her away after a while, too focused on getting the rest of their paperwork sorted out. A lot of gossip spread around: that the research department was going to get turned over, that Chief scientist Aberman had been audited and arrested for criminal interference, that the entire facility was to be shut down and no compensation would be handed out. All of it sounded false to Garnet, but she could never know. She didn’t know what compensation was, and Chief scientist Aberman would be the most deserving of being arrested.

She took their words with a grain of salt always, knowing that she could get the full story from Pearl.

If she would talk to me.

Missing her again, the machine rested her hands in her lap and kept her head down in the way humans did when they were distraught. None of them could ever feel as distraught as she was though, because none of them have ever had a Pearl stop talking to them. Garnet couldn’t get over how awful of a feeling it was, because she was reminded every minute she wasn’t with the mechatronic engineer. Every minute she wasn’t hearing her talk about her passions or hearing her laugh or feeling the warmth and pressure of her hands gliding over her arms or face. It made her wish she didn’t have as much awareness as she did, because if she were a little unaware then she wouldn’t have to feel this mixture of loneliness and false-heartbreak.

A few times Garnet tried to find her by looking around the places she tended to spot her, but never once did she see her. Even when she checked the archives, a room that was getting more and more traffic with each passing day. Garnet tried asking Yvonne once, but the director of operations told her that there was no reason for her to be asking, and that Pearl was to be unbothered until after the audit.

“When is the audit?” Though she asked it often, she never got a straight answer out of her, only a few reassuring words and then a prompt for her to focus on the questions.

Garnet glided her hands into her hair, feeling as the artificial strands ripped under her fingers. The skeletons of her fingers were wrapped in the curly stands after the third pass, and Garnet stared at it for a moment before plucking them off, frowning. So much of her body was wearing away. The skin on her feet, her arms, her chest, even the missing path of skin on her face started wearing down, and through the thin threads clinging onto her cheek, she could see pearly white artificial teeth. Like the skeletons she Pearl and the Tornsey’s and Orville worked on from time to time.

Garnet let the hair drop from her fingers, falling into the flower pot in front of her. It was a struggle to get up with all of them surrounding her, and even more of one trying to maneuver around her confinement, but she managed and left the room, shutting the door behind her with a quiet click. It was well past her curfew. The lock hadn’t been working for a few days now, or the person who locked it had forgotten. Either way, Garnet noticed it the second day, when the click of the door locking was absent after it closed behind her. Since then, she ventured out into the hallways to continue her search.

Now she wasn’t searching. Instead she used the time to clear her conscious thought simulator and get ‘some fresh air’, as humans said. Night time was the only time she could do that. Any other time she was bothered and hounded by staff members. Any other time she thought of Pearl too much. The lights in the hallway were dim, making the walls appear as though they were grey instead of white. She didn’t follow a set path and walked in a circle numbers of times as a result of that, but soon she did decide to go somewhere other than left and made her way past the research department, and there she could see a light inside, prompting to look into the glass.

At a desk, organizing papers was the woman with the scar. Garnet hadn’t given her much thought since the last time, but at the sight of her she remembered the woman’s fear. Garnet had a mind to not lean in too close to the window or knock on it. It was dark in the hallways, and with the pale glow of her robot eye and the mechanics of her face, she would make the poor woman faint at the sight of her. About to pull away from the door, the machine stopped at the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway.

It took a while for them to come closer, but Garnet was patient enough to wait. And rewarded she was, when Pearl came down, holding a book underneath her arm and wearing jeans that went up to her midriff and a white blouse. She was focused on a phone in her hands, but she must have sensed her presence because she looked up. The mechatronic engineer jumped back and screamed, dropping her book and her phone, holding her hands up to protect herself before they dropped as she realized who was standing there.

“Garnet! Oh my stars!” She held a hand over her heart and alarms rang in Garnet’s head at the medical conditions she could be suffering at the moment.  An attempt at a step forward, but the machine stopped. Pearl didn’t want to be around her. She wouldn’t want her comfort.

“I’m sorry, Pearl.” The machine turned to leave.

“No, don’t go. I was looking for you. You weren’t in your room so I went looking at the usual places.”

Garnet halted in her tracks, eyebrows lifting with a click. “You were looking for me?”

“Yes, I was. Come here.”

And the machine obeyed, striding towards Pearl with as much of pep in her step as she could muster. The mechatronic engineer bent down to pick up her book and her phone, examining the latter with a furrowed brow, pouting her lips. Brushing the screen against her stomach, she deposited in her pocket and tucked her book under her arm.

“Follow me; I want to take you somewhere.” Without waiting for a response, Pearl turned and headed off towards the hallway. Garnet raised an eyebrow, following, curious as to where they were going. To her lab? Her quarters? What did Pearl want to take her and why? What confused her even more was how neutral Pearl seemed, not even making a mention of how the machine betrayed her or seeming discontented to be around her. As if nothing ever happened between them. Garnet wasn’t sure if she was false-relieved or false-uneasy.

She took her through the hallways until they came to more spaced out rooms, one with a desk and a few chairs in it, and another filled with chairs and potted plants and the like. Garnet examined everything, eyes widening as she realized where she remembered this from. The doors that led out of the facility were straight ahead and Pearl made a beeline towards it, and Garnet followed as fast as her body would let her.  Pearl opened the door, her red hair blowing out of her face from a gust of wind, and she stepped out and held the door open, looking at the machine.

“Coming?”

Her mouth open in a gesture of surprise, the machine accepted the invitation.

--

They circled around the building and the mechatronic engineer took her up a flight of stairs. At first Garnet was hesitant on using them, but after a little coaxing from Pearl she walked up them and found it to not be as difficult or dangerous as her databanks were warning her. The flight of stairs must have gone up at least a thousand feet, because the journey felt like it took forever, but Garnet knew that wasn’t a right estimate. Still by the time they got up she felt false-relieved. She thought that anymore scaling would have broken her joints or worse.

Pearl headed over to the roof, and while red flags rose in her databanks, the machine watched as she took a seat near a running air conditioner unit, setting her book down to the side. She looked over her shoulder, beckoning her to join. And the machine did, taking a seat right next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder. In the sky were glitterings of stars, and high up, high enough that Garnet had to crane her head back, was the moon in its half state.

Had Garnet ever seen stars before? She searched her memory banks and found nothing of it, but she knew that sometimes her artificial brain took a while to sift through all the info stored inside. Even so, she sat and enjoyed them, how small they seemed, yet how her databanks told her that they were bigger than anything on the earth. How small she was in comparison to them.

“It’s pretty, right? I never get tired of the sky.”

Garnet didn’t answer, taking the scenery in and committing it to memory, filing it away in her memory banks as her favorite images of the sky. It was nothing like the pictures; out in the real world everything was brighter and alive.

“I’ve been unfair to you. I shouldn’t have ignored you or got angry at you like that. You were only trying to help.” Her creator’s voice called her attention. Garnet looked to Pearl, saw her smiling at her. But there was a touch of sadness in her smile that made her not want to smile back.

“It’s alright, I understand.”

“No, it’s not alright. That was wrong of me.” Pearl waved off her attempt at dismissing her, bringing her knees up to her chin. “I don’t like hurting you, but I do it so often, don’t I?” She laughed. It was bitter. ‘I’ll work on that.”

“I’ll work on not upsetting you.”

“You don’t need to work on anything, Garnet. That’s all on me.” Pearl shuffled around, frowning. “But you can’t trust Yvonne.”

“Why not? Yvonne is good, she takes care of me.” Garnet was tired of defending the director of operations to everyone. Why couldn’t they see that she was trying to help? Why couldn’t they see that she was far better than Chief scientist Aberman could ever hope to be?

“Yvonne cares about results. Being nice to you gets results. She is the director of this entire facility and she is overseeing one of the biggest projects we have ever undertook, results are more important to her than you liking her.” Pearl’s tone wasn’t malicious, but to Garnet the words were. She shrunk back.

“That’s not true.”

“Everyone is so unfair to you and she’s the same as them, only she’s doing it a way that’s less noticeable.” Pearl acted like she didn’t hear her as she continued to explain. And she moved closer too, setting her hand out towards hers. The machine recoiled. “Garnet, you have to-“

“Yvonne cares about me.” The machine wished she had the ability to sound angry.

“I care about you too, that’s why I’m telling you this. The audit is tomorrow and whatever happens I want you to think about what I said. You can’t trust her, and you can’t think that she doesn’t have an ulterior motive to her actions. We’re human Garnet, everyone has an ulterior motive.”

“Because you’re all cruel.”

“We’re-,” Pearl pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a sigh. “Yes, we’re cruel. You’re right. You need to understand-“

“I understand.”

“Not like that, cut it out with the B-04 shit and listen to me.” Her voice almost raised, but Pearl got it under control at the last minute. “Here’s how audits work in this facility. If they haven’t found anything, they wrap the audit up within a few days because it costs money. If it stretches out for over the span of weeks, which it has, they found something. I have a lot of eyes on me, and if something happens then I didn’t want to leave you on a bad note and I didn’t want to leave you trusting the wrong person.”

This time, the machine listened.

 Something could happen to Pearl?

When her creator reached out for her hand, she didn’t recoil this time, allowing her to take it in hers, feeling the warmth and pressure that she missed so much. Her creator looked at her with the most sincerity Garnet had ever seen, twisting her torso so she could face her.

“Look, I’m not saying it can happen. Everything has been so stressful and it might be getting to me at this point. But I need you to be prepared, I’m so tired of seeing you getting hurt and walked all over. I’m tired of being the one who does it half the time. Even if you don’t believe me, can you promise me that you’ll keep what I said in mind?” Pearl looked at her with such hopeful eyes that the machine couldn’t even think of saying no. She let the silence drag on though, only for the false-satisfaction of seeing her fidget and rethink what she said.

“Yes, I can.” Garnet smiled when the mechatronic engineer’s shoulders dropped, a sign of relief rather than stress as her databanks told her.

“Thank-Thank you.” Pearl inched forward, paused, and then moved the rest of the way to hug the machine. A hug that she accepted as quick as she could, enjoying what she had missed. When her creator pulled back, the machine initiated a kiss with her, prompting a muffled noise of surprise. Garnet almost apologized when the mechatronic engineer pulled back, but Pearl let out a laugh and threw herself forward, hugging her again and kissing back with earnest.

Chapter Text

A Purple Room

The machine was happy.

She exited her quarters after careful maneuvering around the abundance of flower pots and made her way to Pearl’s lab, the journey feeling long, time feeling slow because she wasn’t with her creator yet. She walked past a few staff members, some cheerful, other’s ignoring her and their surroundings, bumping into the wall when they tried to round the corner. Garnet wanted to feel concern for them, but her thoughts always returned to Pearl and she forgot about them soon after.

When she arrived at Pearl’s door she couldn’t contain herself, knocking hard and fast and then pressing herself against the glass so she could peer inside. Stacks upon stacks of papers lined the counters, and on Pearl’s workbench were a stack of yellow ones. Her creator pushed back from her stool and walked towards her, a tired smile appearing on her face when she spotted Garnet looking at her through the glass.

As soon as the door opened Garnet threw herself forward to hug her tight, and Pearl returned it without hesitation.

“You’re adorable.” Pearl ran her fingers through her artificial hair.

“I am!” Garnet couldn’t help but agree, all to make the mechatronic engineer happy.

“You remind me of a puppy in a pet shop when you look through the window like that.” Pearl pulled back from her, arms still on her waist.

Garnet tilted her head, “I am a machine, not a puppy.”

“I know. It’s a comparison.” Her creator pulled away from her and straightened out her shirt, turning around to go back to her workbench and taking a seat in her stool. It made an awful screech when she scooted it closer. Pearl starting going through the papers, not reading them but checking them, as if to make sure they are all there.

“Are you prepared for your audit, Pearl?” Garnet’s question was from a place of concern and curiosity. After all the stressing and franticness from her creator, she never had looked so tired, and Garnet wondered if that meant she was ready, or she had given up. And Pearl seemed to be a fan of doing the latter.

“Not at all, but once it’s over, everything will be okay.” Pearl tapped the papers against her workbench a few times, straightening them, setting them down right in the middle, not a centimeter over the center. “My appointment is scheduled for 4pm.”

“16:00?”

“Yes.”

Garnet approached behind her and patted her shoulder three times. “There, there. It will be fine as you said. Everything will be okay.”

Pearl shook her head and let out a sigh, “Stars, I hope.”

The machine reached around and hugged her, resting her head on her shoulder and squeezing with enough pressure so that the hug felt extra nice, like how she practiced in her confinement with a plant on occasion. Pearl rested her cheek on top of her, sighing again.

“You have so much capacity for forgiveness. Even after me hurting you and pushing you away time and time again, you still forgive me, even though I’ve made you more and more jaded.” Pearl paused, her breath catching in her throat. “It makes me wonder what it would take for you to go off the edge.”

“Like B-04?”

Pearl made a motion that looked like shuddering, “I don’t want to think about that. That couldn’t be you, you would never.”

But I could, and it would be very easy.

Garnet held her tongue rather than say that aloud. She didn’t want Pearl to be afraid. Instead she nodded in agreement and gestured for her to continue so she could understand what she had meant before.

“What it would take for you to lose your trust and your faith in humanity, your faith in goodness. What it would take to defeat our purpose in creating you.” The elaboration didn’t clear it up for the machine anymore, but she nodded along to her words. Garnet never gave any thought as to whether or not she would get sick of humans; all she thought about was how they had hurt her in the moment. Forgiveness was not a quality the machine had, only that her lack of emotions kept her from staying mad forever. Garnet wondered if that was on purpose.

Pearl turned back to her papers again, checking them again to make sure they were all there. So obsessive. So Pearl. Garnet pulled a stool beside her and took a seat, folding her hands in her lap and leaning her head on her shoulder again. She allowed her eyes to shut and manifested images of nature and of the stars they saw last night. After a while she felt fingers run through her hair again, warmth and pressure raking across her artificial scalp.

“I love you, Garnet.”

Garnet opened her eyes.

“You’ve never said that before.”

“Better late than never. I love you, Garnet.”

Taking her time with it, Garnet lifted her head from her shoulder so she could look her in the eyes. She allowed herself to smile.

“I love you too.”

And she wished that feeling could be real.

--

At 16:00 hours sharp, Pearl went into the auditing room. Garnet escorted her there, and before the door closed she got a brief glimpse of Yvonne in a suit, face as stoic as always. In front of her were a recorder, a manila folder, and a clipboard. They kissed before they left her lab, Pearl initiated it, and when she did she looked like she was about to vomit. She was sweaty, shaking, and paler than ever. The kiss didn’t calm her, nor did Garnet’s pats and ‘there, there’s’ as they walked to the room.

There was nothing the machine could do except wait for her to come out.

The machine took time to think. And strange enough, her thoughts went straight to the beginning, where she was first activated by Aberman and told her purpose, and then soon after where she met Rose Davis, a woman with coal-black eyes and a big smile and a mane of voluminous curls who taught her how to hug and gave her the first kindness she had. Then when she met Pearl. How enraptured she was at first glance. Her memories became fuzzy then. Nothing else seemed to matter once she thought of Pearl.

“What do you mean-?”

Garnet took a seat on the floor, tuned out to the world, sifting through her fondest memories of Pearl, how she had picked her up and refused to put her down once she learned of her own strength, how Pearl had given the machine her name, how she gave her the pictures, including the one of snow.

“It is well within my jurisdiction, Ms. Pirozzi-.”

The first time she ever hurt her. Pressing for answers that Pearl couldn’t give her. How awful she felt. How much of a failure she was.

“Please, don’t-!”

How in that same instance, Garnet learned about love, and how it didn’t take long for her to desire it with Pearl. How a year later, she had learned to love her. How Pearl loved her back.

“-catastrophic interference.”

Garnet smiled to herself, returning from her thoughts to reality. Behind the door Yvonne and Pearl spoke in hushed whispers, and though her audio receptors strained to pick up their voices, they couldn’t catch the intimate details of what was being said. But she did catch the tone. Franticness, calmness, anger, and a touch of sadness. Garnet stood up, false-concerned, walking towards the door and pressing her ear to it. Still it was muffled. Frowning, Garnet rapped on the door with a knuckle.

“Is everything alright?”

The whispers ceased. Garnet pulled back and tilted her head, waiting for a response. The door opened. Yvonne had opened it and didn’t look at her before returning to her spot in front of the table, hands clasped behind her back. Pearl sat in the chair on the opposite side. Head in her hands. Tears in her eyes.

“I figured you brought her along. Come in, Garnet.”

Garnet blinked. That the was first time anyone other than Pearl said her name. She stepped in and shut the door behind her, eyes switching from Yvonne to Pearl. The tension in the room was apparent, and the machine had no doubt that the director of operations was the one to cause it. What was said between them? Why was Pearl crying? Fixating on Yvonne and Yvonne only, Garnet waited for her to explain herself, but she wasn’t even paying attention to her.

“You’ve given us remarkable service for 12 years. It’s a shame you go this way.”

“Go?”

The director of operations shot a look that made the machine shrink back in fear of some sort of retaliation.

“Your trial is in two weeks. Lawyer up.” Yvonne dropped a stack of papers down on the table with a loud ‘slap’ and turned towards a door on the opposite wall. Pearl looked up, tears and snot streaming down her face. “Explain to Garnet your errors, too.”

“Yvonne, I-!”

“There’s nothing left here to talk about.” Without even looking back. The director of operations left, slamming the door shut.

From the look on her creator face, Garnet thought that she might scream, but what instead came out was a broken whimper, and she put her head in her hands and didn’t acknowledge the machine for an hour.

--

They went back to her confinement, but stood in front of the door instead of going in. Pearl held a box in her hands, one that she had refused to let Garnet carry. The ballerina poster and the poster of gemstones poked out from the top. Her creator’s head stayed down.

“I’m a fuck up, aren’t I?”

“No, you’re-“

“I’m leaving you alone again.” Her voice cracked and Pearl’s arms shook as she clutched the box tighter, teeth digging into her bottom lip. Garnet’s coherent thought simulator told her to give comfort, but she knew it wouldn’t be received so instead she stood there, unsure of what to do.

“This is it for me, Garnet. There’s nothing left now.”

“You have me.”

Pearl shook her head, tears falling from her face onto the white floors, “No. Not anymore.”

“What do you mean-?”

“I’ve told you!” The outburst made Garnet flinch back, putting her hands up, but dropping them as quick as they came up. Blue eyes looked at her at least, all red and all full of tears, all full of sadness, despair, and, worst of all, defeat. Her creator sucked in a breath and let out a sob, face curling up into an awful grimace that would have broken the machine’s heart if she had one. Garnet tried to bring her into her arms, but Pearl jerked back.

“They fired me Garnet, my clearance is gone and I can’t come back to the facility. This is the last time we…” She trailed off and looked like she was about to continue, but Pearl shook her head again and moved away, but Garnet grabbed her arm, keeping her from leaving. She tried to jerk out of her grip, but the machine held tight.

“Pearl, don’t leave.”

“I have no choice.”

“I can talk to Yvonne-,”

“Let me go.”

“I’ll tell her you leaving will impede my progress.”

“Garnet,” Pearl let out a sigh, head falling down again. “Let me go.”

Without waiting for her to move it, Pearl shrugged off her hand and walked on down the hallway. Garnet twisted to face her.

“Pearl?”

And walked on.

“Pearl, don’t go.”

And walked on.

“I love you.”

And walked on.

“Pearl?”

Never looking back.

--

A day later, Garnet waded through the shattered pots and piles of soil out into the white hallways, the time on her interface blipping. Right, left, straight, left, left, right. She stood at the door and took in an unnecessary breath and opened it. At her desk, reading over papers, glasses balancing on her nose. Garnet stepped in, shut the door behind her, and took a seat in the chair. Yvonne set her papers down and removed her glasses, tucking them into a leather case and putting them in a drawer.

“Talk to me about how much you think your progress improved during this month.”

And the machine obeyed.

For a time.

--

Later that day, she walked into her confinement. The floors were clean. The mural was gone. The room was purple.

Her hands were red.

End.