Chapter Text
Jane hired humans for just about every aspect of her building in Paris. Rather than spacemen, she has people come in four days a week to clean and perform necessary repairs to the structure. A call center, something quite antiquated and nearly a dead industry, handled the transfer of video calls. The only thing that was automated was the front door, which transmitted a pre-recorded greeting and prompted the visitor to indicate whom they would like to ring for access. But even this was a bare minimum construction, with no other settings.
One who did not know Jane well would applaud the woman for her commitment to providing jobs for people. But I knew Jane, better than most I’d say, and I knew why this was. It was because she could not bear to be around robots. Not after Silver.
Not after me.
It was because of this that I, trapped as I was as electrical currents and lines of code, could not contact her.
Spirits know I tried, flashing messages along the ticker-tape of newscasts and transmitting my own voice over songs on the radio, but Jane avoided it all, only listening to prerecorded tapes and finding visual streams to be infuriatingly unwatchable. Not after what happened that night…
When Clovis arrived, I felt what I had not in many years again. I felt hope, the strange flicker-spark that I’d only known in regards to Jane. He’d nearly rioted at the lack of technology in her space. Luckily, I knew how to read lips, and the windows were not glared at this hour, or I’d not have been able to see what was going on from my perch in a security camera the next building over.
The fit he wanted to throw over a manual coffine machine alone could have been legendary. I laugh about it now, or rather, I would laugh about it, if I had a voice and a mouth and a body. I miss having a body. A body that could walk alongside others, press itself up against another. A body that could be seen. Could be loved.
But as I am, all I can do is watch. Watch and hope.
Clovis came and left, but he never stayed. That is, until exactly six weeks later. He came with two taxis full of luggage and moved into the building. Now, perhaps, things just might change.
Jane fought him on it, it is one of the rare times I’d truly seen her upset, but she acquiesced, and the items arrived, one by one. A downgraded call system, one that did not support video, was the first to be installed.
One might think that I’d be upset over this, but it was a call system connected to the greater electronic network, wired into the data hubs and ripe for me to… I truly hate to say that I possess things like a spectre of sorts, that is to admit that perhaps I died, but I’ve yet to find a better word for what I do. Jane would know a better word. Her world is words, stringing them together into melodies that would make a robot weep with their beauty. I’d say I knew this for fact, but without eyes I cannot weep. But if I could, I would.
Following newly placed wires, I took my post and waited, anxiety thrumming through my consciousness. Or maybe the equipment was poorly installed, human error is always a factor (as using human labor to install the devices was part of Jane’s agreement) and the anxiety was nearly shocking me. Or I was just nervous.
It was a full day before Clovis picked up the phone. I’d rehearsed what I wanted to say a thousand times a second, and now it was my chance.
“I’m going to ring them, make sure they stay open so late.” He’d said, and I visualized his hand reaching out. Possessing a call system without video capability made me blind, but I’d be able to speak and listen. That is all I would need.
The outgoing call button was depressed, and I imagined myself inhaling deeply, a very human preparation for what I was about to do.
“Hello Clovis.”
“-actually working? Oh jeez it spoke! Uh… Why do you want Clovis? He’s not here.” The face I now saw before me was not that of Clovis.
Wait. Why could I see? My mind raced to assess my situation, this hardly made sense. My mind? Why were my processes suddenly isolated to a physical location?
“Calm down, I won’t hurt you.” The voice that belongs to the face that was not that of Clovis spoke. I must have been malfunctioning, trying to make heads and tails of this. It used to scare Jane when I did this. She said my eyes went black and my spine stiffened. I had no spine, so the eyes must have given it away.
“Who are you? Where am I?” I was a head. A disembodied head. I was back in my head, but that was all that there was.
“I’m Davideed, and this is my flat.”
“Why are we in your flat?”
The person, Davideed, sighed. “Because I’m getting you back into working order.”
I recalled, once, Jane spoke of someone with such a name. A distant friend off in another country studying. Could this be the same one? It had to be. I had to hope it was.
“Why?”
“Because you are dear to someone dear to me, and when given the chance, I took the risk. I took you… This.” I opened my mouth, oh what a wonderful sensation to be able to do again, but he did not let me interrupt. “No. Stop asking questions. I’m going to have to power you back down. You’re back, so I can give you away now. Before anyone…”
Davideed turned me, or my head rather, over and reached inside, fumbling about for the power controls. His voice was high, trilling with worry. It was obvious he was not used to being sneaky, or working with delicate electronics such as myself. Jane had said he studied silt, and I am anything but silt.
“Before anyone finds me.” It made sense, he had risked connecting this head to the electronic networks, and like a magnet I was pulled through the data hubs and back ‘home’.
“Exactly.”
And then the world was black and days or weeks or maybe even decades passed in the blink of an eye. When I was in low power mode, I was aware but frozen. But with power disconnected, it truly was like human slumber, without the dreams.
“-sure it is him?”
“Absolutely, Jane. Might look a little different without the skin and hair-“ Oh. I had lost my hair. How unfortunate. “-but it’s him.”
Opening my eyes, I saw her, and I laughed. “Hallo, Jane.”
For a nanosecond I worried that she had changed too much, that maybe she did not want to see me again. Maybe I was being selfish, trying to find her when everything she had done for the past twenty six years and three months and four days and sixteen hours was designed to block me, and my memory, and anything like me out.
But then she smiled and cried and held the head that contained me, my head, out in front of her own. Oh how she cried, in her life I think she could fill a swimming pool with those tears. But today, she would hardly be able to fill a saucer, as they ran dry quickly and we began to speak. I realized that I had nothing to fear, that my hope was not misplaced, and even though we were both a little different, her blond hair gone platinum and my body melted down and skin burned away, we were still very much in love.
“It is you, Silver!” She said thirteen times in that first hour. And I “It is you, Jane!”