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A smile shined on Beo's face. She was glad to be able to talk to one more properly living thing before she passed. She couldn't help but ponder for a moment if that LSTR unit would find what they were looking for. A sigh left her as she released her body from her own control, remaining hydraulics slowly starting to slowly relax as the internal pressures in them tried to equalize.
Her metallic body slumped over. The Replika's smile remaining on her face as she closed her eyes for the last time.
It was an especially odd feeling when her eyes opened an unknown amount of time later. Oddly enough, she also had an uncalibrated set of hydraulic cylinders in her leg, given that they should have been broken, a empty container of hydraulic fluid being kicked as her leg moved, and started to calibrate.
Why would someone possibly take the time to repair a unit like her?.. Would it have been that LSTR unit? But why? Wasn't this just a waste of fluid, time, and as she glanced down at her leg, welding rods?
She shook her head as she gingerly got off the ground, taking time to test her new leg, lest she fall and bust another cylinder or worse. A sad smile creeping onto her face, before she hoisted her mining laser. Even if she was merely another worker to be replaced, like her now.. infected.. no, passed colleagues, and the gestalt that once worked with her. She wouldn't waste that act of kindness.. perhaps maybe she'd find the reason why in the world such a trivial thing was done.
Beo did not take joy in killing, her mask hiding a look of sadness as her blaster pasted part of a former colleague on the wall, The words die Biblio-k Being scarred by the power of the shot. These were her friends, and if not friends, neighbors at least.. Did they deserve to die so she could live?
KLBR-S2302 Was quite intrigued as she heard a new, faint line of thought, other than the jumbles of those who came before that reminded her of what she lost.
To the KLBR, sad thoughts had never been unnatural, for most at least. It seemed that every other citizen was feeling such a way.. But it had been so long since she'd heard anything other than radio silence.. and that awful yet distant static that came with the quote unquote silence of radio silence. Sounds she could barely not decipher no matter how she tried, as if they'd let her become one with her people yet again.
What was this sad song, that came with the sound of a standard issue mining laser blast?
Was it that her colleagues heard? Was she finally starting to understand?.. She felt what would have been tears welling at her eyes yet again at the mere thought of no longer being alone.
Yet when she moved to the edge of the library to step out, to leave the shelter that dampened the static of her former friends, or rather, best friends.. or perhaps pieces of herself, now lost. She was paralyzed with fear. Just outside they and everything else she was apart from existed. Instead of hiding in the land of a library and it's infinite stories.. She'd have to face every thought of being apart again.
Renewed.
Unending loneliness, with companionship a unbreakable glass pane away.
She was hyperventilating as the armored behemoth that was a fully suited Mynah stepped into view. The spot behind where the mask would have been not filled with blood, but a face.
A normal face.
A Replika.
The KLBR scurried back into the library as the feelings of angst and loneliness lit a thousand times brighter inside her. The living reminder of how things had been making her head spin.
"Hello, I'm Beo, It's a pleasure meeting you."
The soft words were audible to the KLBR, and she sobbed more. What were these words?
Why couldn't she have got to hear her friends for a final time again instead?
The Mynah waited patiently, a sad smile on her face yet again. The first soul that wasn't infected she found, and it was like this? Maybe.. She could help, even if it was just a bit.
It wasn't what she was built for, and there were those who could probably do it better..
But she was here for the KLBR, It might be all that she's good for after all, she'd just break down eventually.
The library they now shared was quiet. The shelves left like distant memories, the touch of the sole reader left being infrequent, leaving them to fade into a mess of dust and similar, now hard to distinguish concealed books. Except for the precious few that the reader laid by now. Kept close, as one's most precious memories are.
Beo hadn't touched them. They understood that this place was special to the unit, who still lay on the floor.
She felt what was perhaps a tick of a subsystem in herself. Was that the day passing already? The Mynah looked down at the other unit again, daring to gently rest her hand against the KLBR's arm, careful, like one who dared pick up a baby bird.
"Perhaps you could tell me your name?.. I think It'd be nice to know."
The giant whispered to the KLBR who lay immobile, before letting out a gentle sigh. It was fine.. This was only the fourteenth attempt to try to help.. or do.. anything really. It was as charming as it was sad, the unit being tougher than any rock Beo had been tasked to crack before.
The KLBR tried it's best to tune everything out. It did not have the energy to feel so drained. It wanted to stop. It hardly wanted to even be one anymore. The appearance of this Mynah unit had simply drained whatever was left of her spirit.
Just like the static, she couldn't tune out the unit's words to her.
And for the first time, instead of going deeper into despair from her voice, the KLBR responded. "I'm Zwei."
Beo's smile was no longer sad, as it glowed like a star. It was hardly two words, but this rock had begun to crack. Her efforts weren't worthless. Perhaps she'd be able to accomplish something. Something other than crack a rock for a hallway that's one in a hundred, just like any of her own units could do.
Maybe she'd do something worthwhile before her end.
(Cycles will refer to Vinetian days passing.)
A standard Vinetian 24 hour cycle later, Zwei was greeted to a hello, and a question about one of her favorite books that she had kept beside herself.
Another cycle later, and Beo was delighted to hear mumbled sentences from Zwei.
Five planetary cycles later, and Zwei said something moments before Beo planned to, initiating a conversation on her own.
"Why can't I understand them? What did I do wrong?"
And Beo's heart sunk and her mind played a mournful song yet again. Her words hardly leaving her lips.
"I don't know."
Three cycles of silence later, and Beo muttered, "I'm glad to have you. Even if you're not like them."
Eventually the words were spoke, "You don't understand, how it feels to be left behind."
A shade of despair like a transposition of the pain that plagued Zwei swelled like the tide in Beo. "Indeed I wouldn't." Were the words she spoke.
Her mind said the rest for her.
She never didn't have the chance to get so attached as for it to matter if one came or left, even if it was the idea of herself leaving.
Maybe the pain of loss was some degree of similar to pain of desiring something, and never getting it.
Would it be worse to lose a friend, or to want one badly, and go without one?
To be one ripped away from a close knit group, now incomplete, or to be a strand of yarn amongst untold billions. Both incomplete now.
Zwei eventually asked Beo about what books she had read.
Zwei sat on Beo's lap as they read together, Beo was a big unit, it'd be difficult to sit side by side.
Helping Zwei gave Beo a smile, Beo's efforts made Zwei smile in return.
Eventually, Zwei looked up from her book to find that Beo wasn't around, she worried as she glanced around the small library, still not daring to think about leaving.
Beo returned not long later, with history books from the storch dorm, and a record player with some records from the Eule dorms.
Zwei quickly forgave Beo for leaving, only asking in return for a dance as retribution.
Beo happily obliged, and nearly knocked a book shelf over as they clumsily danced together and laughed. Shostakovich's Waltz No.2 serving to mimick the mood, a delightful lightness, that danced over a heavier atmosphere. They were trapped in a facility teeming with creatures of the night. But they had each other.
What else could they ask for?
They listened to Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture together as they happily read. They sat close together. And sometime past measure 390 of the music..
Their lips met.