Work Text:
from Dr. Rush POV
Day One Impressions
Rae can speak and hear. No bugs were found in the running software so far. It feels a bit strange after so much work to see that everything is going smooth for once.
After ten years of hard work, I finally see part of the project realized.
There’s still a lot to do.
Even if we had uploaded the entire encyclopedia in its mainframe, I don’t think it’s safe to maintain Rae’s head operative without a body.
Rae’s like a child who needs to learn and get experiences. It’s quite difficult without actually doing something. As it is, it doesn’t know how to recognize a sensation. We doesn’t even know if Rae can feel something. But I absolutely have to study the learning mechanisms of a Quantic Robot to proceed with my research. And I fear that the neural product I synthesized will die without external stimulus.
Tomorrow we’ll run some more tests regarding eyes, ears and taste. Maybe we’ll be able to check its ability of rationalization and conceptualization. If we are lucky.
Then we’ll proceed to fix torso and arms, and see if it can move and grab things. But that’s for another day.
There is one thing though, that really, really amazed me today. Rae tried to copy my smile. I wasn’t able to create mirror neurons and still…
Never once, my other creations had such a response.
I definitely need to run more accurate tests concerning this phenomenon.
And I have to check again my papers about the neural quantic research so far.
Rush finished writing the to-do list on his pocket paper. Then he pulled out his glasses and sighed, staring blankly at the wall. He felt so exhausted.
“Are you coming?” Mills’ muffled voice reached him from the bedroom. He grunted. Not that night. That night was for his son.
“I’m going out” he answered back.
And without waiting for a reply he took his coat and left for the hospital.
His sweet boy was lying on the white bed sheets. He looked so frail. And pale. Almost peaceful if not for the purple bags under his eyes and the scrawny figure, nearly a ghost in the moonlight shadow.
Rush sat down in the closest chair to the bed. Delicately, he took one of Bae’s hands between his and kissed it, leaning his wrist against his temple to feel the steady and calm beat beneath the thin skin.
That night was the anniversary of the accident when Rush’s drunken wife died and his boy fell in a coma. A persistent vegetative state, the doctors said. But Dr. Nicholas Rush wasn’t the kind of man to let it drop. To let his son live a non-existent life. He would fight for him.
But not tonight. Tonight was for sorrow and sadness.
And for the 10th time in those ten years, he burst into tears.
Bae would have been 20 the day after.