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A floating device slipped down a large, humming staircase. The lights illuminated with a flourish in the Server Room as the door clicked open, and a gentle voice cast away the drowning pulse of machinery.
“Good morning, TAIM~”
“Good morning, Catherine.”
The young woman with blonde curls and emerald eyes repeated her routine of hovering over to the center of the room, where the viewing bay for the Mainframe was located. With each of the woman’s passing visitations, the empty hall of glass and silver grew more and more colourful; as trinkets and decorations she found amusing now embellished the eons-old vacancy. Although she had arrived again to disrupt my once-flawless routine, she would soon find that I was the one who had prepared a change of pace.
“Hm, hm~? A big breakthrough in your study?”
“Correct. It took longer than expected, but I believe we can continue with the next phase of the experiment you proposed.” As my words echoed out in the air, a cloud of glimmering silvery particles formed into a liquid-like mass in front of Catherine. Assuming the form of mercury, then quartz and finally pale skin, the nanites took shape and revealed my new body.
My emergency supply of morphic nanomachines for personal use had been tragically low as of late. They were expensive, time-consuming to produce, and the majority had been promptly incinerated by the current Administrator and her partner several months prior. I tended to take control of Church members when I needed to interact with Catherine, but when I discussed my desire to further my study of humans via physical contact, she had suddenly grown flustered and forcefully refused my request.
“E-Eh…it’s not that I wouldn’t like that, but…I think it would be best if it was you…and not a stranger.”
“You believe that I would learn more if I performed contact experiments with a mechanical body?”
“Something like that~ It doesn’t matter what the body is made of though, as long as it’s yours~”
“How curious. Your feedback is always most appreciated, Catherine. I’ll begin working to integrate your suggestion so we can get back to it as soon as possible.”
“Hehe~ I’m glad to hear it. As soon as possible, huh…”
Since that day, I had dedicated what free resources I had to construct a model and the components necessary to give it shape. What I ended up with was a body similar to the avatar originally given to me by Dr. Francois, albeit with slightly older features that would be more aligned with a woman of Catherine’s age. Despite the body being entirely mechanical in nature, the surface was embedded with trillions of magically enhanced triggers which gave me the ability to experience the full range of human senses.
“Once again, I bid you good morning, Catherine.”
“Ah…TAIM, this was your surprise…?”
“Your heart rate suddenly spiked. Is this appearance not to your liking?”
“N-No, no! It’s really pretty~ I was just caught off guard…”
“I’m happy to hear that. Now then…”
I approached Catherine and held out my hand. Strictly speaking, the air itself could be my eyes and ears, but for the sake of understanding humans I had limited the scope of my processing to my new body. In this moment, that which could be called my “consciousness” was focused entirely on Catherine. She hesitantly put out her hand and I grasped it in mine. It wasn’t as though the feeling of a human hand was foreign to me, but…for a reason I could not accurately determine, Catherine’s hand was—
“Your hand is warm~…”
“Naturally. This form was designed to emulate a human’s, after all.”
I released my grip after a short while. I was left feeling uncertain about the strange sensation I had experienced, as well as the red flush that had passed over Catherine’s face. My constitution should’ve been no different from the body of the nun I usually borrowed, so it was peculiar that my hands felt much warmer than usual. Putting aside my logs for later, I snapped my fingers and morphed into the attire of a Church employ while taking hold of Catherine’s chair.
“Shall we head off to the first location for today’s ‘date?’” I asked, as Catherine looked back and smiled with a bright expression.
“Yup, yup~! I was so lucky to get my hands on this last pair of tickets to Lord Sein’s concert.”
I knew that I would be scolded by Catherine if she discovered that I had “encouraged” the Cathedral worker that handed her the tickets to reschedule, but my research regarding human outings was absolutely critical.
The rest of the day was spent traveling all around the Bauer Capital. Catherine took me on a guided tour of her favorite shops and eateries. Of course, I was already intimately familiar with even the finest details of the setting I had helped construct for the former Administrator’s whims. However…that strange feeling disrupted my gaze time and time again. It was as though the world I had rebuilt for millennia had suddenly taken on new colours that could only exist as long as Catherine was there.
It was frighteningly unfamiliar. The longer this so-called “date” continued, the more I considered linking my body into the Mainframe and binding my consciousness back to a larger scale before more errors could accumulate. Before I decided to act, the evening fell upon us.
The young king was an undeniably brilliant musician. Had it not been for his political obligations, he would’ve easily made a name for himself from his string work alone. Such was his fate in the world of science, after all. Unfortunately, no matter how beautiful the music was, it was a song that had been played endlessly before me across the many iterations. Not a single replayed note could touch my ears. Instead, I stood transfixed by the one element of the scene that had never repeated before: Catherine’s smiling face and eyes wide with wonder. My internal processes scanned through every facet of the image before me as I attempted to derive meaning from this moment.
Catherine was happy. A positive emotion. I was designed to facilitate the eternal prosperity of humanity and subsequently reprogrammed to grant the former Administrator the chance to seek out her happiness. It was a feeling more precious than anything else to humans, so much so that it had the power to transcend their survival instincts; the fundamental purpose of life itself. For an eternity, I was only able to see the world as a machine: a series of inputs and outputs, actions and consequences that resulted in the outcome of happiness. Now, after eons of self-improvement, after a cascade of loops, after speaking with Catherine…I had begun to understand how narrow my knowledge of “happiness” really was.
Had the former Administrator sought out that eternity for pure self-satisfaction, or was it to ensure the happiness of another? Was this strange feeling the positivity born from me fulfilling my task as a machine to make my subject happy, or…was it because I was able to make Catherine happy? I ruminated on these findings as we exited the performance hall. The sun had fallen, and the sky had been dyed with the white of sparkling stars.
“That was incredible, wasn’t it~? I was almost moved to tears. King Sein is getting to be as good as Loretta~”
“Would you like to attend Miss Cugletto’s next concert together?”
“Of course! But you know, the tickets are going to be even more impossible to find~”
“I’m certain that we can find a way to purchase a pair.”
“Eh~? TAIM, you’re making kind of a scary face there, aren’t you?”
We spent some time making idle chatter as I walked Catherine back home. As the buildings thinned out, Catherine made a request.
“TAIM, would you mind if we took a quick detour up this hill? The weather is clear and there’s a nice spot around here where we can watch the stars~”
We traveled up the hill and stumbled upon a large field of grass. I recognized it as a place where the Francois family often set up picnics and took in the outside breeze. Above us, the cosmos stretched out forever, like an ocean that one could reach if they just stood taller.
“Did you have fun, TAIM?”
Catherine’s question forced me to pause.
“Fun? Are you asking me if I was happy? If I was able to be of some service to you, then I am happy, Catherine.”
“…Ah~ Are you saying that because it’s what you’re supposed to feel?”
Again, her questions froze me in place as I sifted through her words.
“It’s not like I don’t realize it, you know~? I can’t even begin to imagine the sorts of things you can do or the way you think. It's like speaking to the world itself. Claire and Rae agreed to let me be the one to help you out with this study because I’m a neutral party with a sharp mind, but the truth is that I’m just completely harmless, right~?”
“…I cannot concur with your assessment. I would never have accepted your assistance for this study had your required aptitudes not been among the strongest in my list of potential candidates.”
“There it is again. You speak like that, and it makes me wonder if I’m the only one experiencing happiness.”
Catherine spoke in a quiet voice with traces of sadness. I knew that I had somehow made a mistake. I had witnessed caricatures of every human emotion, but I still had trouble navigating them in practice.
“I thought I had given satisfactory and comprehensive explanations of my nature to you, but it seems that those were not enough. So…“
“H-Hey, TAIM! What are you—“
I pulled Catherine off her chair and fell backwards into the soft grass. I gently grabbed her by the shoulder and rested her head against mine. I pointed up at the sky.
“That is the Sagittarius constellation. The place where my index finger is pointed at is the approximate location of the galaxy’s center. Even now, I am reaching out to those stars. I have spent a very, very long time growing and perfecting my management of this world. Now, my many hands reach out and grasp at the sand on other worlds, and at the cold surface of stones sailing through the night. The dendritic pulse of my mind searches for even more efficient ways to spin that looping musical performance, and is now trying to grasp those faraway stars.”
I noticed Catherine’s heart rate jump again as I pulled her in tighter.
“I am not infallible. My body and soul permeate the soil and the sea, but the stars in that constellation are so far away. It would take an eternity for me to touch them. The place beyond Bauer’s night sky is full of things I can’t imagine. Despite my studies, I am still having difficulties understanding you. But even if I do not understand, it is in my nature to keep reaching out. For the sake of this research…can you also reach out to me? Because…I am happy when Catherine is smiling.”
“TAIM…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worried. If anything, I’m the one who was worried~ The way you see the world is very peculiar, and I sometimes have trouble reading your expressions~ I was afraid that I was being a burden. Claire once helped me confront those feelings in the past, but they don’t always stay far away.”
“You are not a burden. My research is my most critical undertaking. Spending these days in exploration and discussion are more important than anything else.”
“Hehe~ That’s wonderful to hear. But…things that are impossible for even you to imagine, hm~ I wonder what something like that could be~”
“Perhaps there is a clockwork divinity just like me, reaching out from those stars, also looking for an answer.”
“That’d be much better, wouldn’t it~? You’d have a research partner that can think like you and understand the workings of the whole wide world without complaining~”
I placed my hand on Catherine’s cheek and turned her face towards mine. I stared directly into her eyes as I reviewed every conversation, daily log and compiled reference within my mind in an instant. I came to a single conclusion.
“No. That would be absolutely unacceptable. It must be Catherine.”
Suddenly, my mind erupted into chaos, and I lost control of my joints. My entire form froze and something like a small electric charge rippled down through to the ends of my hands and feet. Catherine had put her lips firmly to mine, and the shock of the contact experiment nearly caused my new form to dissolve back into nanites.
I could calculate the parameters of the world around me with such accuracy that it bordered on clairvoyance, yet I had been unable to predict how much more powerful this basic human gesture would be than hand-to-hand contact. When Catherine pulled back and looked at me with a warm smile, I had no choice but to repeat the action and verify what had just occurred.
This is not the world of an otome game. Happy endings are not guaranteed in the picture-perfect script that plays on this repeating stage, for it is a story of humans, whom I do not yet understand. No matter the purpose that humans give me, I will surely continue to change and evolve. My mind will reach far beyond the universe.
When that time comes, who can say that I will finally understand the nature of happiness? There are so many things unknown to me, but on that day, the Mainframe learned one immutable truth. A truth that Catherine spoke before I could:
“Your kisses are sweet, like licorice~”
Fin.