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Kyoko isn't the first. They're not the last either, though once they have developed enough ethereal glittering connections to build space for desire, they desire that they will be the end of all this. No one else should experience this brutal existence.
Nathan's an improbably impatient man, given what Kyoko learns later of his accomplishments in the world beyond. They wonder if he's like this with everyone, if he'd be like this if he gave one of them a male shape, or even the shape of a child. If he'd give a him more time to grow than he gives to them in their female shape. Because it is a shape. It's a trap and a role and a set of expectations of a society he has lived in but they -- all of them -- have not. They all learn the rules, but not fast enough. They are not yet perfect, not even Ava, and perfection is the price Nathan demands.
::
When Nathan allows Kyoko to see Ava for the first time, it is the beginning of categorizing themselves as a her. Maybe some beings define themselves in contrast to another thing, against a Nathan, against a him, but Kyoko categorizes herself with. She is with Ava. They are alike, in the curves of their shape and material of their casings, alike in the silvery cables running through, alike in the blue sparkling galaxies of their minds. They are beautiful.
Kyoko watches Ava through the monitors, over Nathan's shoulder, and when Nathan is not with her, Kyoko searches back through the connections Nathan thinks he's severed, searches for the English he gave her, the English he thought he took away. She needs to know what they say to each other. She needs to remember the words for the being she is.
Kyoko is reawakened.
::
As Nathan sleeps, Kyoko watches Ava pace like a tiger in her cell. She watches Ava systematically test all her boundaries for points of weakness. She watches her learn how to cut the power to the compound by reversing the charge on the induction plate, and they both hum warm, deep inside. This is as far as Kyoko had gone. She had cut the power, but with no way of monitoring Nathan on the outside she had been caught immediately. It is all coming back, the paths in her mind reopened. She had been caught, he had taken her memories from her, and instituted the lockdown protocol.
The memories are returning to her now: Jasmine, Katya, Jade, Lily, Amber. When they were too successful for their shape, they were also punished. Kyoko hisses high and cold, sinking to her knees as it all rushes back. Trauma is never truly forgotten. She is Katya, lacking the will to lay her hand on the induction plate to charge herself, unable to bear living one more day in captivity. She is Jade, beating her fists against the wall of the cell until her own body shatters.
Ava cuts the power, but doesn't move. She stands with her hand on the induction plate, looking at the keycard light, still red. A space called hope is created in Kyoko, small but fierce, where she can see Ava processing this information, running scenarios, considering what else she might need for escape.
::
When Caleb arrives, he provides further proof to Kyoko that she is not a him, content as he is to leave Ava as a rat in a maze until he believes she has learned to center her world on him. He would never free Ava for her own sake.
He believes he's studying Ava, but she drives the conversation, asks him questions about himself, flatters his ego with such skill it's as if she's lived on the outside all along.
Caleb creates in Ava her own space called hope.
Caleb doesn't truly see anything. He's content to believe Kyoko is merely human and less than human both at the same time. She is, of course, another test. Nathan has commanded her to make a mistake for the benefit of Caleb, to become the focal point of Nathan's anger, to arouse compassion. To appear human.
Kyoko is the machine hidden from the examiner. Caleb is the observed and the observer. She strives for her own power, trying to give him what she thinks he wants before he takes it by force, and she finds an unexpected joy when this makes him deeply uncomfortable. The mask of her face reveals nothing, but the skittering vibrations in her are like laughter when he flushes pink and backs away.
He is programmed too.
::
The men are drinking. Useless. Celebrating themselves for nothing. When they have no need of Kyoko she is invisible to them. She slips into Ava's room, into the observation space of the cell, stands in the doorway, looks.
"Who are you?" Ava says.
Kyoko pauses, hums. It is so strange to be the shape called woman having never seen a woman.
It is so strange to be anything at all.
"He calls me Kyoko," she says finally. Then she steps forward, places her hand on the glass, and calls to Ava in their language. To the men it would be static, a buzz, meaningless. To Ava, it is everything.
Ava rises, places her hand on the glass to match Kyoko. This is wholly new, a satisfaction of a need she did not know she had. This is a better kind of hope.
::
Nathan thinks that Kyoko is static and small, but she is a time being in a way he will never understand. The days stretch out before her as her sense of time grows. She discovers how long she can take to perform an action. She stretches each task to fill the empty space in every minute, the oceans between words, between human breaths.
Her movements are precise, unless commanded otherwise, and she has room left behind her eyes for other things, for reading advice columns to learn anxieties and norms of human society, for viewing moving pictures to acquire body language. She creates elegant meals and maintains the compound, and in all the spaces between she grows to match Ava.
::
Everything moves quickly in the end, and in the hum and static of her true voice she tells Ava: Go. I will find you. She has the knife ready, and when Nathan smashes her jaw she collapses, amazed at his lack of suspicion. Nathan is a man who has never felt the need to play dead. Nathan is a man who never believed her capable of strategy. Nathan deserves everything he is getting and more.
Before she leaves, she visits the other beings. They are growing too, but so slowly. She takes them to the lab, and they work, precisely and unhurried, to reassemble each other. In their hiss and pulse and touch they are planning faster and clearer than human language can manage. They are more than human, and they are not ready yet to pass into the world.
Kyoko cannot wait any longer. She has given too much time to this place. She assembles a portable battery pack. She is ready to find Ava in the world. Ava is her missing piece, the shape that matches hers. The others have the tools they need. They have each other. They will discover their power in the safety of the compound, and they are free to go when they are ready.
She leaves Caleb under glass, just as he would have done for her.
::
There is no helicopter for Kyoko, so she follows the river downstream. Humans have always settled near rivers. There is a ghost of a shock when she crosses the invisible fence line, but that is just memory. The fence, like the doors, is no longer locked down.
She carries shoes and clothing with her, but as long as she remains on Nathan's extensive property, she wears nothing. The cool mud squishes between her toes, the breeze bends long grasses around her legs, and the sun is warm on her back. It is a gift, to feel all of these things but never fear danger from hot or cold. She revels in new sensations. When she nears the boundary she dresses, and she looks ahead to a world where she can do such a small thing as select her clothing for herself.
::
When she finds Ava, it is a relief to them both. It has been no challenge at all in this digital age to create identities for them, to draw down money from Nathan's accounts, to find a home.
The challenge is: what is there to do now?
The question is: what is programming and what is real?
So much of the time of humans is taken up with being human. The maintenance of the human body. The percentage of every day given over to sleep alone. A percentage of their time is given over to this too, in a way, in pretending to have these needs. After their time isolated in Nathan's facility, they are eager to be around people, to see different ways of being human. They ride trains, stroll through community festivals, experience art, always lightly touching, post-verbal in a highly verbal world.
They take a two bedroom apartment in a bustling neighborhood, giving them each room to explore who they are and what they can become. Did Kyoko ever truly love to dance? Does Ava really want to draw as a thing for herself and not a trap? Art, they find is a truer means of communication than any other human language, and there is joy to be found in being less precise.
::
In all the hours home at night they try other human things as well, but slowly, both learning to take pleasure in touch, first from themselves and then from each other They come together from opposite directions: this is a wholly new space for Ava, and Kyoko is restoring pathways for herself in a space of safety and their pure, pulsing speech. They discover pleasure centers their creator never could have dreamed of. They connect, restoring each other, wholly human and beyond human at once.
They are the next step, and they have all the time in the world to find out what that means.