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It’s Host who comes to like Eric first.
Well, not really.
It’s the Jims, and then Bing, and then King. It’s everyone you would expect, first. Bim seems fine with him. Wilford hardly notices. Iplier hauls him under-wing. There are no surprises, and the Jims are enjoying themselves befriending the newcomer, so the whole house takes on a welcome and relative aura of peace.
The Host, however, does not make friends so easily.
The Host hardly makes friends at all.
“The newcomer treads on metal,” he narrates to himself, sitting weary at his desk. “The newcomer has no remaining family. He has known pain and fire.”
It’s interesting. It’s more backstory than many of the others were ever given. The Host can’t tell if his creator is becoming more creative or more careless. Maybe both.
“The newcomer treads on metal,” says the Host, and touches the bandages around his eyes.
Well. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter until Eric starts feeding his cat.
Host and the others live scattered across three houses, surrounded by woods and the swollen river that cuts through the earth outside their windows. There are animals in the woods – birds and deer and far too many squirrels for all but one of them to handle. And a cat.
He found her in the bulrushes of the river, and so he calls her Moses. She wanders. She wanders right up to Eric’s door one day, outside of the house where he lives with Bing and the Jims.
“Hi,” he had said, and reached out, and let her sniff her fingers.
“He is crying,” Host had narrated distractedly, trying to clean blood out of his eyes. “He feels overwhelmed. He often does.”
“See?” Eric said, touching her ear. “I’m not so bad, right, kitty cat? Not really. Not really so bad.”
Moses meowed and moved to him. Moses let him pet her. Moses sat in his lap and purred.
Host knew then, if nothing else, that the newcomer could be trusted.
“Eric enjoys the feeling of the cat kneading at his thighs. She is a welcome distraction from everything that plagues him – doubt and terror always racing through his mind. His father has tried to call him many times since he ran away with his new friends, but he never picks up. One day he fears his father will find him. He has many fears – fears of this strange new place, of the future, of people and their watching eyes, their judgement, their contempt.”
Host paused.
“It’s been a long time since Eric has known real kindness,” he added, and even alone, he had flushed to speak words so gentle.
After that, he had needed help with his bandages. It made his chest burn with shame and fury, but he has learned after long months that it is near impossible to survive like this alone. He went to the doctor, who treated him carefully, like he was fragile, and, cautioning, sent him on his way again.
Moses goes to Eric day after day. He brings her meat and snacks and calls her Boots.
Boots. Host hates that. It’s kind of cute, obviously. Objectively. But he hates it. The newcomer is so frail and flustered, and he says such strange things. Host listens, more often than he would like to admit.
“People look at me differently, Boots,” Eric tells her. “Cause of the legs. Cause of the shakiness. When I’m around people, I get so so nervous. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m fine right now, aren’t I? I’m fine right now. But then someone looks at me. It’s terrifying. Everyone expects something else from me. But – you want to know a secret?”
He leans in to the cat’s ear. If Host had been sitting a foot away from him, he could not have heard it, but the beating heart of his power tells him everything.
“If people knew me, really,” says Eric. “If people knew who I was, there’s nobody in the whole world who would actually want me.”
Host’s been listening for two weeks. He gets to his feet. His heart pounds, he shoves shaky hands in the pockets of his coat, and he bites too hard on his lip, but he goes.
He goes to Eric’s side.
“That’s my cat,” he says.
“Ah!” says Eric, who didn’t see him coming.
“Meow,” says Moses, who looks pleased with herself.
“Oh,” says Eric. “Oh, oh, oh – I’m sorry, sir – sorry, I didn’t know – ”
“Her name is Moses.”
“Oh, sorry, I – I’ve been calling her Boots. Been calling her Boots, sorry.”
“I know,” says Host. “I know things.”
“Here, here she is. Sorry.”
“Are you holding her out to me? I’m blind.”
“Oh, yes, I… Sorry, I thought you could tell. Don’t you – don’t you have seeing powers, or something?”
Host can’t help but chuckle. He wishes he had eyes to roll. “Seeing powers. Is that what the Jims told you?”
“Bing, actually.”
“A word of advice, Eric Derekson – ask Google first. But you’re right in some ways. May I demonstrate?”
“Demonstrate,” says Eric. “Demonstrate, uh. Sure, yes. Please, sir.”
Host sits down next to Eric.
“Eric has said sorry six times in the last three minutes and he wishes to say so again,” says Host. “People make him anxious. He thought this cat at least would be a source of comfort, but she belongs to someone else. He never seems to find anything that stays. Oh, he wishes he could find something that stays. He believes that if someone knew him well, they would no longer want him, but this is untrue. After all, he is kind, and careful, and affectionate, and he would do anything to protect those he loves. Is he so undeserving of friendship? The Host does not think so.”
At his side, Eric is trembling, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“The Host is sorry, too,” he says, and tries – tries his hardest, tries his damnedest – to be gentle for once in his life. “The Host should have come to meet Eric Derekson some days ago. Both of them are… are disabled.”
He pauses and rubs at what used to be his eyes.
“The Host knows many things. Many, many things. And yet he is never quite enough. His eyes bleed and hurt him. His body aches because he sits too much and moves too little. He sleeps and eats less than he should. He reads other’s thoughts and watches them pet his cat instead of interacting with them. Often, he spends his days alone. But he thought that he should tell the newcomer that Host has no quarrel with him. Host is… glad, to have Eric nearby.”
The air smells like the wet stone of the river and an approaching winter. Wind brushes Host’s overlong hair across his bandages. Moses is purring, her yellow eyes slitted thin and content.
“You know all that?” asks Eric, in a voice smaller than the mice that scuttle through the underbrush.
“I know all that,” says Host.
Eric adjusts his glasses. Scratches Moses’ ears. Touches his prosthetic.
“Good,” says Eric. “Can’t say that much out loud. I’m glad… I’m glad someone knows anyway. I’m glad you came and talked to me. Glad you came and talked to me, Host.”
His smile puts the sun to shame.
Host falls for him.
Damn it, he thinks.
He can see harm coming from miles away. Eric is safer with the Host’s friendship in his arsenal, though he does not know it.
“You can keep playing with my cat,” says Host. He reaches out to pet her ears himself. “You can even call her Boots, if you want.”
Eric grins at the cat in his arms. “Boots Moses,” he says confidently. Boots Moses purrs until the sun goes down and the birds go quiet in the trees. Breathing fresh air, his heart pumping steady, Host stays by his side for a silent hour. It’s pleasant, and Eric, for the first time in days, feels calm.
Google does not take orders from a single human being on this earth. He is his own and no one else’s, despite the wires and coding that let him continue to simulate breathing, and he does not respond well to being told what to do by the fleshy little creatures that swarm around his heat sensors like ants or fat drops of rain.
A black-soul spirit held together by hatred and pain, souls twisted into one shattered corpse, however – well, that’s a different matter. Google does take orders from the darkness.
“Let them in if they want to come.” The darkness’ voice had seeped through the ceiling and the floors.
“Let them find meaning in this nothingness he left us. Let them do as they please until they trouble others.” The darkness’s voice was a burst of frost at the back of Google’s neck.
“Discord,” The darkness’s voice had said, as his tortured figure appeared in a shadow before Google, with blue and red eyes cutting through the darkness. “Is not allowed.”
Tertiary objective: Prevent discord in the collective household.
That’s all this is. His objective. He’s preventing discord. It has nothing to do with the way the newest member of the household shakes whenever anyone raises their voice at him, or smiles with a mouth that trembles, or asks him questions about dogs for hours on end and says, “Oh, thank you, Google, wow,” everytime he tells him something new.
It has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with Eric. Because if Host didn’t have any intention of developing affection for the little newcomer, Google would – and has – reprogrammed his simulated prefrontal cortex on multiple occasions to prevent emotional attachments from arising.
So it’s not for Eric. It’s just discord. Discord on a Tuesday morning.
“Internet Jim!” calls a twin with a camera hoisted on his shoulder. “Come quick! Come quick, come quick, come –”
“What?” asks Google, not moving from his seat on the couch.
“It’s an emergency!”
“Of course it is.”
“Trenchcoat Jim said to come get you! There’s an angry man trying to take Eric away!”
Google’s audio receptors pick up a scream. He’s on his feet before everything’s even processed, he’s pushing Jim aside and he’s moving up the stairs, his face set, his feet steady, and there, there, through the door to the living room, is the source of the discord.
“Derek Derekson,” he says, and grabs the man by the shoulder. “Take your hands off him. Promptly.”
Eric is wailing aloud, his whole body seized with heaving sobs, but his father doesn’t seem to care, gripping Eric’s wrist like a lifeline. At the door, Google can hear the Jims moaning into each other’s shoulders, and Host’s power whispers at the corners of the room. No harm will come to the newcomer.
“I’ll tell you again,” says Google. “Take your hands off Eric Derekson.”
“No, I will not!” cries Derek, his face red and his voice as rough as a thunderstorm. Google hates him for his slicked back hair and his entitled eyes. “This is my son! He’s coming with me, now. I’ve been looking for him for days! He thinks he can just run off and hide out here, wherever this is – well, you don’t get the chance to walk out on your family that easy, no matter how useless you manage to be – ”
Google loves breaking bones. Humans are so very frail! Derek’s wrist snaps and he screams like a little bitch, which Google finds deliciously satisfying.
“You are causing discord within the household,” he says, tilting his head. “You have upset the newcomer with neither approval nor appropriate cause. You will remove yourself from the premises or experience further reprimandation.”
“How dare you,” Derek gasps. His cheeks are draining of all color. Google can almost see the unmyelinated axons sending rapid pain signals throughout his peripheral nervous system. He wonders what pain feels like. Bad, he hopes. “You’ve assaulted me! You’ve stolen my son! You’re going to pay for this, I can – ” He pauses for a gasp, which almost makes Google give a false laugh. “I can assure you.”
“Now you sound like the last annoyance I dismantled,” says Google, letting his teeth show in something that almost resembles a smile. His brown eyes glitter with blue light. “I have killed humans such as yourself for less. I have learned that between your third and fourth ribs is a straight pathway to your rat-sized heart. Would you like to see for yourself?”
He could so easily snap the smug little man’s neck, or remove his organs one by one, or crush his fragile bones into paste, squeezing through blood vessels and muscles, destroying everything piece by piece beneath the hidden metal of his fingers, crushing, crushing, crushing –
Eric lets out a moan, and Google looks down.
Derek has let him go. He sits slumped on the ground, small and shaking, and his dark eyes look up at Google with an emotion the robot does not recognize.
He’s afraid, at least. He’s afraid, that much Google can tell. He hides his teeth again and frowns at Derek, who is hardly standing.
And Google doesn’t like it as much as he thought he would.
Google doesn’t like scaring Eric.
He glances behind him and finds one Jim, two Jim, and Warfstache watching him from the doorway. Behind them, he thinks there is a glaze of shadow.
Google sighs and releases Derek’s wrist, glaring him silent before he can rage or cry out again.
“The only reason you remain alive is because of the face you share with all of us,” says Google. “But you and your aggression are unwelcome. Go. Now. Return and you will not be greeted hospitably.”
Derek has argument in his eyes – but also pain, and terror, and awareness. He turns to his child.
“Eric,” he says. “You come with me. Come on, son.”
The Jims let out twin wails. Google wants to shut Derek up once and for all, but he waits.
Eric looks at the Jims. Eric looks at Google. Eric looks at his own hands.
“Dad,” he says, soft. “Dad, Dad, I don’t think I want to. Don’t think – don’t think I want to.”
There are more words on Derek’s mouth, but Google cuts him off with a careful hand around his neck. He shows him out of the living room and nearly shoves him down the stairs.
Warfstache steps up beside the robot, grinning like a Cheshire cat. He’s wearing soft pink slippers that make a squeaking noise with every step. “Say, Googs, I’ve got a new pistol in the pocket of my pjs, and I was wondering – ”
“Let him go for now,” Google responds, watching the intruder wander off with a face full of pain. “That is enough conflict for one day. And it’s three in the afternoon, Warfstache. Put some real clothes on.”
“I should try this out on you,” Wilford sulks. The fun is over and he wanders off. Google should go too, but he doesn’t. He moves away, and steps into the living room once again, and looks for just a moment.
The Jims are holding Eric tight between them, their twin arms wrapped warm around his stomach and their heads set fondly on his shoulders and chest. He’s hugging them back, his glasses askew. His face is red with crying and his hands tremble, and yet he smiles.
He looks up, teary-eyed and weary. He smiles at Google.
The primary motor cortex provides voluntary emotional responses, but it is the subcortical structures of the mind that create spontaneous emotion. Unfortunately, the latter are in control, and Google, with a mixed sense of exasperation and affection, smiles right back.
The darkness watches Eric from a distance.
The darkness watches everything from a distance. Rarely does he make use of his body around the inhabitants of the three little houses buried in the woods, but his shadows, black and swirling, drift across the floors and walls like candlesmoke drips down an altar.
Eric thinks of the shadow more like an unsociable cat. It’s pretty, anyway, and it doesn’t bother him.
In fact, the darkness finds that, other than people, and their expectations, and the heavy weight of their attention, there is little that bothers Eric.
When Bim drops a heavy stage prop on his hand, and hollers and curses, pulling his hand back with blood pouring down his palms, Eric is concerned but not distressed. He wraps Bim’s hand in the shirt that Bing all too eagerly removed and hurries off to find Iplier.
When one of King’s squirrels dies – one of his chief counselors, apparently – and is inconsolable for days, wandering around the forest moaning and refusing to eat his peanut butter, it’s Eric who fixes it. He prepares a loving little tissue box coffin and gathers together everyone he can for a candlelit funeral in the backyard. Dark is surprised at how many of the others he convinces to partake, though perhaps they all just need a break from King’s ridiculousness.
And he’s wonderful at managing the Jims, who are constantly wandering into trouble. Unlike the others, he never grows irritated or overbearing. He’s only ever happy to be included, and he’ll let them get into as much mischief as they want until it’s clear they’re in immediate danger of bodily harm or of seriously ticking someone off, at which point he invents games and distractions to divert their chaotic energy.
He brings a certain calmness to the house. He’s well-liked. The darkness begins to show his face around him. After all, he likes to get to know the others just a little. Just so he can predict their next move. Just so he can manipulate. He learns that Eric is kind. He learns that Eric is sad, but not traumatized. He learns that Eric is largely unafraid of anything other than people. Perhaps he even finds this admirable, or at least useful.
For his part, Eric learns that Dark is in charge.
When Dark appears, the others quiet. He can end an argument with a flash of his blue-red-black aura. His hands are still with power and his clever, dangerous eyes speak intelligence and control.
Eric learns that Dark is in pain.
The shattered bones in his neck grate and pinch. His broken back sends fire across his straight-standing figure. His eyes do not match and the whole of his stolen body hurts him badly. Eric knows because he sees the way his aura shivers and the real face of his pain is visible from moment to moment, in screaming figures and teeth-gritting agony. Sometimes, Wilford will wander to his side, and put a very gentle hand on his back, and smile at him, and the darkness’s pain will seem to recede.
And this is the third thing Eric learns, that Dark, if he cares for anyone, cares for Wilford.
Dark never touches anyone, approaches anyone, speaks to anyone for a purpose other than reprimandation or command. Wilford is the exception, the rare, rare exception, because once, Eric saw him reach out and touch his cheek after the mustachioed menace said something particularly sweet, and, once, Eric saw him straighten his little pink bowtie, and, often, often, the darkness calls Warfstache “Wil” in a voice that is calm and does not suffer.
Dark learns to quietly appreciate Eric. Eric learns that they are in good terms with each other. But it is little more than that until the day the bear comes.
He’s outside, watching Bing try to show off a new trick that isn’t going very well. Already he has busted his arm, which is sparking pitifully and turning white. Wilford’s laughing at him from the deck, where he’s sitting talking to Bim about whatever new idea they’ve managed to come up with. Bing is just about to get back on his skateboard, at Eric’s encouraging request, when he looks up and says, “Dude. I think that’s a bear.”
Eric turns around.
“That’s a bear,” he says.
“He’s kind of looking right at us.”
“Yeah,” says Eric.
“Do you think he’s going to attack us, dude?”
Eric watches the bear, which is twice his size, five times his weight, and very angry.
“Yeah,” he says.
The bear does.
What happens next is a blur. Bing remembers all of it, but his human companions fill up with adrenaline and the details become unimportant. What they know is that the bear comes right at them. Wilford has his gun out in a second, and the bullet that enters the bear’s side diverts its course directly towards him. He’s cocking his gun again, grinning like a wild man, but there is nothing in the world that charges quite like a bear, heavy and huge and rapid as an angry river, and even if he may or may not be immortal, he’s in imminent danger of having his body completely torn through.
Bim screams and moves away. Bing is grabbing Eric’s arm, calculating the best way to get him to safety. But Eric, with neither fear nor anger, snatches Bing’s skateboard from off the ground, moves right into the bear’s path, and brings the board down, as hard as he can, onto the animal’s nose.
The bear bellows, Eric tumbles to the ground with a bear’s two-foot paw coming towards him, and he thinks this is actually a pretty cool way to die and closes his eyes.
It’s the darkness that saves him. Eric doesn’t see, but to anyone else watching, the light around the bear becomes red and blue, its skeleton is visible for just a second, and then it disappears.
So, overall, it was a pretty interesting 45 seconds.
Bim is standing next to the door of the house, his eyes wide and his chest heaving. Bing comes over to help Eric up. Dark is moving towards Wilford.
“Okay?” he asks, in a voice that he hates for its gentleness.
Wilford smiles wide at him, his cheeks red with excitement and his brown eyes shining. “Of course,” he says. “Though I do wish you would have waited a moment so I could have had a turn hitting a bear with a skateboard, old friend.”
“It wouldn’t be your first time,” says Dark, touching his chin for just a moment.
“Well,” says Wilford, turning to Eric and beaming. “That was a little fun, wasn’t it, my boy? Didn’t know you had it in you! One of these days, the two of us should go bear-hunting, what do you say?”
“Oh,” says Eric, rising to his feet and clinging to Bing’s hand, pale and stunned. “Uh, oh, I don’t know, Mr. Warfstache.”
“It’s a date,” says Wilford jovially.
“Leave him be,” says Dark kindly, stepping over to Eric.
For a moment, the darkness only looks at him, and Eric looks back. He thinks, when he can put it into words later, that Dark is seeing something inside him that even Eric himself didn’t know was there.
“Courageous little creature,” Dark murmurs, and brushes a strand of Eric’s hair back behind his ear, and disappears.
Eric trembles. Eric is overwhelmed. Eric’s heart breaks, but in a good way, he thinks.
Courageous! Courageous! Never once in his life has he been called courageous.
“Whoa,” says Bing, and squeezes Eric’s hand.
He’s the hero of the hour and it’s all wonderful and overwhelming. The others all talk about the bear, but Eric just replays the feeling of Dark’s hand tucking his hair back, and of his voice showing his kindness, and cries.
He cries several times throughout the next few hours, and every time – every single time – he is comforted.
In three houses in the woods, Eric is beginning to find himself. In three houses in the woods, among murderers, robots, writers, and villains, Eric is beginning to find a family.
Life is good. Life is quiet. Eric’s happy.