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It was an early Thursday morning and you had to leave for work in four hours. Unable to get any sleep since you went to bed, you decided that getting up and trying the living room couch was better than suffering in your room.
You took your pillow with you and arranged a throw blanket over the cushions. You turned on a nearby lamp and grabbed a Sudoku book from the coffee table, flipping to a random easy puzzle. You weren’t good at Sudoku, but boredom sucked more.
It didn’t take you long to write all the 7’s into the correct squares. Before you could move on to the 4’s, your concentration was interrupted by two glowing orange eyes in the pitch black hallway.
M2 emerged from the darkness, looking vicious as it stalked towards you. It would’ve scared anyone else shitless to watch a murderous metal skeleton come at them early in the morning, but you knew M2 could never actually hurt you now.
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You were put in the position of having to unwillingly keep M2 in your house. It was only temporary but you were sick of dealing with the endoskeleton’s attempts to harass you.
While a programming update kept M2 from being able to kill, it would grab you and try to cause pain by squeezing and shaking you around. You’d shove the machine off of you as best you could, using a broom to shepherd it back into the guest room you kept it in.
“Play with the toys or games I left in here for you!” You told it once. “Instead of trying to squeeze me to death, why don’t you play a round of UNO with the Birthday Puppy plush?”
You would close the door and try to go back to whatever tedious task you were doing, but as long as you were at home M2 would come back out within minutes to pester you again. At least it avoided bugging you during the night, even if it could hear that you were still awake.
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M2 was grabbing you, knocking the Sudoku book and pencil to the floor and tangling you in the blanket draped over your legs. You grabbed it back, making sure to keep your fingers out of its mouth.
“Stop it, asshole.” You growl, your patience limited by exhaustion. M2 didn’t listen and succeed in pulling you to the floor. You landed on your ass, feeling the pencil poke into you.
Shooting back up on your feet, a surge of anger allowed you to push the robot to the floor. It stayed put as you stared it down, breathing heavily and clenching your fists.
Within a few seconds, your anger died down and you backed off. You picked up the Sudoku book and pencil, putting them back on the coffee table as M2 stood up. It didn’t try to grab you again, choosing this time to just look at you. You wondered sometimes if M2 could think and not just act out based on its programming, and in this moment you considered that there was more to the machine than mimicry and aggression.
You decided to make amends.
“Hey.” You started. “I forgive you for pushing me to the floor.”
M2 didn’t respond or move.
“I forgive you for all the times you grabbed me since you started staying here.”
You walked up to M2, looking into its glowing eyes as it adjusted its head to look down at your face.
“I’m sorry for calling you names. I’m sorry for making our fights worse and choosing to ignore you when I’m at home.”
You did feel genuinely ashamed as you apologized to M2. Even if M2 couldn’t feel real emotions, it was still programmed to need people on some level. It needed you right now.
An idea came to you suddenly.
“I had a grandfather who lived too far away to visit in person while I was growing up.” You go over to the coffee table and pull open a drawer, pulling out a cassette player. “To make up for the lack of time we could spend together in person, my grandpa would record stories on cassette tapes and asked my parents to play them at bedtime for us kids.”
You smile as you reminisced a specific night of listening to your grandpa’s deep and reassuring voice explain how the brave bunny was able to slay the tyrannical snake. The room you shared with your sister was always peaceful as long as you had a bedtime story to help you sleep.
Maybe one of those tapes could fix a night that had already gone wrong.
M2 had moved to stand across the table from you. You looked down at the player and noticed that it already had a cassette inside, labeled "The Story of Krispy Bear."
“There’s a box with more tapes in the attic.” You tell M2. “It might take me a few minutes to dig out, but you can listen to the tape already in here while I grab it.”
You press the play button, walking towards the hallway M2 came out of and leaving it to listen to your grandfather start the story.
“Tonight, we’ll hear the story of Krispy Bear…”
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“...and no sooner than she climbed to the top, she saw something new, and died, her last moments of terror still frozen on her face.”
You came back with the dusty box of tapes as the Krispy Bear tape was ending. M2 was sitting on the couch now, fully focused on the story and not even looking up to acknowledge you until it was done.
M2 stood up and walked towards you, brushing your arms with its own as it took the box out of your hands. This was the first time it touched you without the intent to harm.
“Did you like that story?” You asked sweetly. M2 looked back at the player, then down at the tapes in the box. It looked back at you. You walked over and picked up the player, rewinding the tape before plucking it out and dropping it into the box M2 still held.
“While you’re here, I’ll let you borrow these and you can listen to them as many times as you’d like.” You walk down the hallway to the guest room, M2 following you. Careful to not step on any toys or scattered game pieces, you find an empty spot to put the player down. M2 actually put the box down carefully, already reaching in to grab a new tape.
You walk to the door and slowly close it, watching as M2 got the new tape playing while reaching for a nearby Hedgehog Hudgie plush.
You go back to the living room, deciding that you’d return to your bedroom. You turned off the lamp and returned your pillow to the bed, pulling the blankets to cover your shoulders.
You felt a sense of peace as you were finally able to drift off, for as much time as you had left before the alarm would go off.