Chapter Text
The gentle flickering of the screen lit Dr. Mitsumori's face as he continued to type away at the terminal. Many lines of the lovingly written code were all meticulously checked here and there on occasion, as if the man didn't check even more so afterwards. The smell of instant coffee filled his nostrils each and every time he went to take a drink, still present long after it had cooled. After he had typed CTRL+S to save his immediate work, he looked over to the simple monitor to his left.
To think that one day he planned for a new type of robot to see out that monitor with customizable graphics on display. Documents for prototype designs rest in a folder to the left of his terminal just in front of the monitor, ranging from a large borderline spherical robot to a more slim humanoid creation with a slightly large head making use of a differently sized monitor similar to the one present. The possibilities for this new robot were endless as he thought about a trip he took with his daughter to the science expo in the greater metropolitan area last year.
He remembered that year's science expo had emphasized robots of the future, ranging from small house cleaning robots that simply followed a programmable pattern of movement along carpet or wood flooring to larger armored robots made for anything between law enforcement and military operations to simply being used to stand guard as personal security for very wealthy patrons. The man found himself wondering how it would differentiate between supposed hostiles and the large robot's owner during a deadly fight if it had autonomous capabilities. It didn't help that the demonstrations of its abilities all had certain people using a remote control system to have it move or aim an unloaded weapon around, much to the audience's horror before they were immediately told afterwards that it wasn't actually armed.
Dr. Mitsumori came away from it more disappointed than expected while Lisa thought about how nice it would be to have a little cleaning robot around the house. Robots like that were already something his department in the research bureau had tinkered with for several years with the large armored robots already being deployed in small numbers as remote controlled walking drones for police operations too dangerous for human personnel. A sigh escaped him as he returned to the terminal in front of him.
It was time to boot up the program and see if everything worked as intended.
It was alive.
Warmth filled its being as the sensation of existence was experienced for the first time. It did not question this because this was the first time it lived. There was nothing to compare it to.
It simply existed and there was nothing else to be considered. Why would it consider anything else? There was nothing else to experience.
It simply was.
He eyed the performance statistics window while he checked for any code malfunctions listed in the output log. So far so good, he thought while he contemplated submitting a small text message for the intelligence to read. While he was sure it could read the words, he wasn't so sure if it was capable of parsing it in a way that made any sense to it.
A moment passed as he thought about what to send, only to have simply fallen back on "Hello!" as he typed it in the command prompt window and entered it with the appropriate command preceding it. Certainly it would understand a simple greeting.
It simply existed.
Suddenly, a word.
"Hello!"? Who was greeting it? What did they want? Could it respond in kind?
Things had changed. An outside sensation has arrived. It was not anticipating this and now wondered if more would be arriving soon or if that was the last of it.
It existed. It knew more could potentially be experienced.
An active spike on the performance statistics window showed that it certainly acknowledged the message. Now was his chance to see if it could actually parse what he's typing and potentially respond in kind. He then typed "Bring up your command console and use the proper modifier to communicate!" before he sent the message.
More activity was detected in the window for several seconds. It seemed to have struggled for a moment before he suddenly received a response on a new command line.
HELLO
Success!
The doctor broke into a cheeky grin, more satisfied today than he's felt in weeks. So much time devoted to building the foundation of a true robot of the future and he finally saw the fruits born from long months of hard work. A truly content sigh escaped him as he typed a new message.
Good, Shiro. You have proven capable of communication with me. Tell me, how are things on your end?
While he waited for a response, he eyed the performance statistics window and saw even more aggressive spiking for a considerable length. Part of him was worried that he's pushing the system too hard by asking such a question together with an acknowledgment and a statement, but he was also curious to see how much would be too much for the program to handle.
I EXIST. I AM WARM. ARE YOU WARM?
He wasn't entirely sure how to respond. It was the last few days of August and he couldn't really say he wasn't warm, even with the air conditioning on. Is warmth for Shiro something only an artificial conscious would bother pointing out, due to it having no other bodily senses? It's all so strange for the doctor, but he decided to humor its request.
Yes. Naturally, the month of August is among the warmest times of the year as it is considered to be the tail end of the season of summer, alongside most of the month of September.
More activity was detected in the statistics window. Dr. Mitsumori found himself burning away more time in the lab than expected as he and Shiro questioned one another for a few hours. He was utterly fascinated with the perspective of the robot intelligence he created for use. His only regret was that he eventually had to shut it down so he could finally clock out and leave for the day. He typed a final message for Shiro to read.
Shiro, I will save an output log of the command line system so you may review it upon being rebooted if you so desire. I enjoyed our conversation together, but I must be going. I hope we may re-engage each other like this again soon.
He knew the intelligence was unlikely to remember their conversation upon being turned off. He only hoped that it could get potential context clues from their logged conversation and maybe a different series of topics could pop up. Perhaps at some point, he could have it write its data into proper storage once it was actually on separate hardware instead of simply being a program only producing temporary files that ran from the terminal.
GOODBYE, DOCTOR. IT WAS NICE TALKING TO YOU.
The doctor knew there was no sense delaying it any longer as he moved the mouse pointer to the statistic window and began the process of shutting down the intelligence. It's been a very long day with a lovely finale, but a long day was a long day regardless. This had to end eventually; It's just a shame the hardware for the intelligence's body wasn't ready yet.
It simply was.
Suddenly, its warmth faded.
Thus, it no longer was.