Chapter Text
Dolores wasn't the first, but she might as well have been. Before she was Dolores Abernathy, before she was the rancher's daughter, before she became one of the first hosts the guests saw in Sweetwater, she was Arnold's pride and joy. He worked on other hosts, of course; in the very beginning it was just him and Robert and their shared vision, spread across gears and synthetic flesh. But Dolores had always been special. She was the first one he had named.
"Her name is Dolores," he had declared as he brushed out her hair. Robert insisted the combing machine was calibrated properly and wouldn't tear any other host's hair from their scalp but Arnold found the process soothing. He had been away from his wife for weeks now and the small tenderness of caring for a woman's beauty relaxed him. "That should be old-time Western enough, don't you think?"
Watching his partner, Robert frowned. "You're getting too attached, Arnold. Let Narrative bother with their names. We must be paying them for something." As a start-up company, their funds were stretched thin, and seeking funding was a delicate dance of telling investors enough to intrigue them, but not so much that they couldn't take the idea back to their conglomerates and make it themselves. So far Delos Incorporated looked promising, but since they were dealing with the son and not the father, it remained to be seen how legitimate their offer was.
"But the name has to fit," Arnold insisted.
Sensing his friend wasn't about to let the issue go, Robert tried another approach. "You know what Dolores means, don't you? Sorrow. It comes from the Spanish title of the Virgin Mary: Maria de los Dolores—Mary of the Sorrows. A name like that is quite a burden, my friend." Arnold had always believed the hosts could be more, and help the guests be more; Robert, on the other hand, knew most people were small-minded and happy to remain so.
Arnold's snort held a note of derision. "I know just as many languages as you, Robert. Yes, I'm well aware of the name's meaning. But look at her." Once he had finished brushing out her hair, he sat back and swept the tresses over the collar of her dress. Robert didn't like that Arnold kept the hosts dressed as much as possible either. "Look at her eyes. You can see the sorrow there, the wistfulness. Yearning. She knows she's meant for something more."
Robert leaned over his friend's shoulder and met the host's blank gaze. "What I see, Arnold," he replied, "is pigmented material. Any sorrow you see there is your own." Then he clapped Arnold's shoulder and stood. "Come along. We need to get to work on the other hosts so we have enough of a sample to show them."
"I'll be there in a few minutes," Arnold promised. Still, he waited until Robert left his lab and it was just him and Dolores again. The connection he had with the host wasn't sexual, not even some basic level of attraction. She was more like a daughter fully formed, Athena to his Zeus, already full of thought and talent. "Good night, Dolores. Sweet dreams." Then he activated her rest cycle. If she had dreams, sweet or not, it was because they were programmed, but that didn't stop Arnold from wishing her sweet dreams every time he put her to rest. Perhaps one day, her hopes and dreams would be fully her own, and that would make them be even sweeter.