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Touch.
Pearl has never truly seen the point in such a sensor. Such a sensor comes with the ache of pain that cannot be turned off without having to do entire recalibrations so one can continue on without feeling anything with their fingers, with the contact they make with their own body. In her opinion, it has always been useless.
It has been so useless in fact, that she has long since disabled such a feature.
Her fellow Intellitrons give her weird looks when they find out about such a fact, gaze at her as if she has had a gear knocked loose from within her. She has always taken it in stride, shrugging all those looks casted her way off with a polite smile and her shoulders squared. What she chooses to do with her sensors is her business and she will not be swayed by pointless opinions that she does not care for.
That being said; she does recall at least one moment in which she near desperately recalibrated her decision to turn it off.
Pearl finds that she cannot focus, her attention unable to stay in one place like it usually does.
She has important papers spread out on her desk in front of her that need to be finished before sundown, leaving her two system hours and twelve seconds left to do so and yet all of her processing power has been directed towards the sound of heels clacking against the hard floor beneath her. Logically, it makes no sense. She’s split her processing power across several hundred tasks before, certainly has the capability to be able to finish these papers while listening to the soft clicking of shoes but it takes all of her attention in a way that leaves her gears grinding.
She’ll have to fix whatever malfunction is causing this soon.
She does not look up from the papers spread out across her desk, does not make a single noise as the sound of those heels comes to a stop beside her chair. She does not need to. She knows who is there, and can see blue feathers out of her peripheral view that stands out starkly against the many white papers flooding her vision.
The games are over.
So why does this woman linger?
Pearl can’t think of an accurate calculation. All the probabilities pale in the General’s utterly unpredictable behavior and actions and are therefore rendered incorrect. Like a faulty machine that cannot handle basic input. It makes her vision swim with discarded calculations as it tries to correct itself, tries to only zero in on the white sheets in front of her to bring her efficiency back up without her faulty attention getting in the way. Even when she succeeds in doing so, she swears she can still see beautiful blue.
Malfunctions have been happening too frequently around this woman, she muses. Perhaps the General has somehow managed to corrupt her in some indirect way.
“Yes, General Yaoguang? I do not wish to be rude but reminder: I have only a few minutes at most to spare. It would be best to try and speak quickly, if at all possible.” Pearl speaks, her voice even and calm and not at all displaying the uneasiness that has flooded her emotional processors. The code for pride barely manages to enter those processors before they are promptly overwritten by that uneasiness. Odd.
“I just wanted to give you my sincerest farewells. I doubt we will be seeing much of each other after my departure after all, Madam Pearl.” The General’s voice is as steady as ever, an anchor in a storm that cannot be destroyed and blue invades Pearl’s vision once more as the woman leans closer. She does her best to shake off the flutter of her logic core.
“Yes, we won’t be, will we? I thank you for hearing me out on the IPC’s proposal. I do hope that you have safe travels.” Pearl’s voice threatens to lag behind the command given to form the words when she registers pressure against her side. It’s not much, certainly not the General’s full body weight but it’s enough that she is hyper aware of the fact that it is most certainly intentional.
Before the next processing cycle can truly run to allow her to think about the implications of the pressure, of the touch, another pressure settles against her cheek. It is light, barely even there to the point that her sensors falter and flicker between telling her that something is touching her and that there is nothing there at all. Her sensors pick up the warmth of organic skin not even a moment later.
She’s kissing her.
Yaoguang is kissing her.
The mere thought ends up making her next processing cycle delay itself by an entire 2.4 seconds. Unfortunately, she finds out very quickly that those 2.4 seconds are all it takes for the General to pull away. She turns her head and stares. It’s impolite, not mannerly like what is expected of a Stoneheart but her systems are failing her and the sight of crinkled eyes only makes the malfunctions of her systems worse.
“And I hope that you can finish this paperwork soon. Perhaps next time we cross paths, you’ll be free enough for dinner.” The General says as if it is simple, as if her systems are struggling to compute with the data she has just given her.
The clacking of heels fills her audio receptors as she watches her form recede, disappear behind the door to her office and all she can see in her wake is blue.
All she can feel is nothing.
She is unsure if those lips were soft or chapped, if they felt as if they fit perfectly against her face like how those organic love stories always describe. She’s unsure why she wishes she knew, wishes she still had her touch sensors on throughout her body.
She thinks that perhaps she may need to do a recalibration on how she feels about touch.