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in an effort to understand her brother's lack of speech, mecha decided to allot herself a maximum number of vocalizations that day. two words before her quota of one hundred, she disabled her vocalizer - fortunately, not mid-sentence. she had already counted ahead with the expertise of a supercomputer to avoid this, for stopping a sentence would be highly inefficient of her.
when her comm link alerted her to an incoming call, she would answer it without a greeting. when another unit addressed her, she would point them in the right direction. she adjusted well to the new way.
and neo tilted its head to one side quizzically. asking silently, why are you doing this? mecha, in turn, pointed a finger at where their sibling's vocalizer laid, let it rest there for a long moment. neo's pressure sensors detected it immediately, causing them to tilt their head down to look - and suddenly it clicked. the words their sibling had spoken long ago.
i would like to understand.
neo went to sign its reply, but stopped - it knew just how much mecha desired to learn. to understand. though she could not always empathize with others as much as she liked, being able to understand her siblings was of the utmost importance to her, even if it was in her own, nonconforming way. so neo put its hand back down. perhaps the best way to explain how their lack of speech felt was to simply show his sibling.
neo gestured with a nod of his head. the brothers walked to the stairs in silence, towards the window of the second floor. neo climbed out, boosted itself up onto the roof, and then leaned down to offer its hand to its brother. mecha took it, allowing neo to use its endless strength to lift it up. sheer power used for making bonds rather than breaking them down. repurposed entirely.
they sat on the roof of their warehouse building, the one they called home, and let the stars bathe them in long-dead light. they sat quietly, merely listening. by not speaking, they could pinpoint every tiny, seemingly unimportant noise. the killing machines had no use for interpreting the sounds of a distant train, nor the stream that coursed through the earth with no language, beneath the quiet heaven above them. and yet, their priorities changed in that moment.
everything that once registered as useless to the killing machines had indeed gained meaning. importance. not just now, but long before. they taught each other to value life, to value each other’s gestures and unspoken words.
but, yes, the silence could be alienating. neo pointed to a flicky with dimmed optics, gesturing to it chirping away in a tree down below, and the two watched how the little bird invited its family to join it to perch. mecha consulted his databanks for information on bird communication. flickies in particular used singing, calls, squeaks, warbles, and clicks to communicate. the loud, carrying voices of the birds in the oak tree filled the cool night air. but as mecha observed, he pointed to an orange flicky that fluffed up its wings, its yellow patches of feathers growing out like fiery flowers - and it took off, bold wings moving in exaggerated slow motion, the red and yellow patches bursting from its feathers. this was a purely visual display. neo nodded in reply. indeed, not every flicky needed to speak to communicate effectively. that flicky was still a valued member of its flock.
mecha almost wanted to launch into a tangent about the differences between visual and vocal displays in the birds, but restrained himself. sound was a fantastic form of communcation for that species, for it could carry beyond where the birds could see. for a bird living in a thicket, it would help to use its voice to stay in touch with the members of its flock. mecha mused internally about how murderous machines like it and neo did not necessarily require use of their voices to survive, unlike the birds. there were no predators to sing about. they were the predators, in an animal-machine way. they watched, curious, as the flock took off into the night, shadowed against the moonlight as they left to find a more suitable nesting site.
looking up at the sky, mecha considered the spellbound moon for an hour. its silence, its borrowed sunlight, and the paradox of their closeness with their sibling, whom should have been long dismantled. this painful but amazing intimacy between two brothers. they had fought to shine on their own borrowed light, and when one of theirs went out, the other would hold a candle to guide them. neo pointed out the clouds as they blew across the moon, obscuring its bright light for a moment. mecha nodded. when one of their voices failed, the other could speak out for them in ways other than speech.
mecha started to understand it, then. neo had long since ceased looking for their voice. they did not want it for speaking with. rather, they made a ring of it, that their silence wore on its little finger. sometimes it would be used as a magnifying glass or a telescope. all the tiny, insignificant things of the world magnified.
the long silences needed to be loved, perhaps more than the words that could describe them. no, their silence wasn't about distance - it was closeness. a willingness to look deeper. a need to explore a world once placed behind shatterproof glass. they were never constructed to appreciate the world around them, and yet, they broke that expectation down with the same raw power that should have been destined to destroy.
mecha let their gaze fall onto neo's frame, searching for any quiet communication from them. she saw it when neo looked at her with bright, warm optics - a quiet love, a sincere adoration for a sibling. a wordless, “look at us. we are happy. do you see it?” mecha reciprocated by pressing his forehead to his brother’s. yes, they were happy.
neo had accepted their disability long ago. of course, it was isolating. of course, it was a struggle. nothing would erase that aspect of it. but neo had come to make the most of it. remote as the stars over their heads, yet as close as the two inches of space between them. the two words mecha had left needed not be used.