Heaven's Door

Waltz of the Flowers

Leilani loved her music teacher, Andrew with all her heart, honest, but today she had decided that he was not her friend. Raychel just seemed more important than making sure she could do scales on the piano, or proper breath control with her flute, or not purposely imposing screeching violins from a horror movie. The set of music that they were working on was one of Leilani's favorite scores, but today she just couldn't put her heart into it. She needed to get back to Raychel. She needed to set a proper connection in her wires before something short circuited. She needed to create a more powerful external power source for Raychel too, other than the energen fragments, which were starting to subtly be rejected by her system. She really needed to...

"Listen to the music Miss Blaise." Andrew said to her, keeping time with his zills. He loved those things, he loved them the same way Leilani never gave up on her current projects. Story went that he got them from an Egyptian belly dancer years ago (he used to perform music back then instead of teaching it), and that night he and that dancer brought the house down- the best performance he ever pulled off in his career. Maybe even the only performance in his career, if the other stories held true.

"You've been rather absent this session, Miss Blaise." Andrew said to her as they were getting ready to wrap up. "It's been awhile. Were you really that distracted by wanting to be more intimate with Mister Richardson, or are you hiding something again?"

Although distracted in her own thoughts, Leilani let out an uncomfortable chuckle. "You know I like my projects Andrew." she admitted, shying away from him in hopes he'd get the hint to leave. He did get the hint, but he actively ignored it.

"Miss Blaise," Andrew then said, giving a sullen sigh, "You're going to get yourself in trouble one of these days. You're the only person I know that adamantly refuses to wait to come of age before working with advanced technology. Then again, I don't know much others who openly show your apparent level of skill..."

"It's not that open..." Leilani mumbled with a shake of her head.

"You have small army Miss Blaise." Andrew informed her, quite seriously.

"Six robots is not a small army."

"Six robots, three of them with creators fully aware of your meddling, me, Mister Richardson, your father, your neighbor Della, whomever Mister Richardson interacts with to obtain the parts you need, whomever you interact with to obtain the information you need; Madam, that is a small army."

"Then why don't you guys turn me in?" the girl questioned. Her voice was tiny though, she knew the answer, and some times she couldn't believe it. Andrew gave another sigh as he placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Because we don't want to see you get hurt- especially over the thing you love doing the most." Andrew said to her. "I'll be back next week at the same time. Don't leave me waiting outside the door again, understood?"

"Yes sir." the girl quietly agreed. With a pat on the shoulder, Andrew gave her a small, worn smile before he left for the day. Leilani started to make her way back the basement to check on Raychel and make more adjustments, but was stopped by Mitch as she touched the doorknob.

"Come have some dinner," he offered, "I was working on it while you were at your lesson."

The girl shook her head. "I have to-" she started to say, but was cut off when Mitch insisted,

"Eat dinner, then you can help her."

Leilani looked up at Mitch with pleading eyes. She really didn't want to, it was only four-ish in the afternoon anyway so technically it was an early dinner.

"She's waited this long," Mitch argued, "She can wait another fifteen minutes for you to eat."

First Andrew warns her about having an army should she need it, and now Mitch technically telling her to ignore the most broken bot in America? Their hearts were in the right place, she gave them that, but that didn't mean she easily understood their concern.

"Can I take it to go?" the girl requested. "I'm not that hungry."

To say that worry was the only expression Mitch gave her, would have been an understatement. However, he couldn't just bring himself to say no to her easily. They might have been considered an official couple a year ago, but they had been friends much longer than that. They knew how to get under each other's skin, how to egg the other on into doing their bidding, and they could recognize when the other needed a break despite protests otherwise...

"Sure." the teenager agreed with a sullen shake of his head. "Just try to come back up before midnight- or I'll come drag you up myself."

"You're going to spend the night?"

"Are you giving me much of a choice?"

For a moment, Leilani remained where she was before flinging her arms around her boyfriend in a tight embrace. "I love you." she graciously muttered in his ear. "I don't deserve you either."

Mitch gave Leilani a rather sad look as he slowly started to return the hug. "Someone's gotta take care of you," he sighed with a small smile, "Even when you think you don't need it."

Beaming bright, Leilani squeezed Mitch even tighter, completely oblivious to his concern.

. . .

As much as she didn't care for humans, Ray was aware that they eat to gain energy to burn- to function even. From the time Leilani had brought the food down with her, and when she started to babble about creating some new energy based on the data she'd collected so far, the human girl had only taken three bites out of whatever food she brought down with her. The rest went cold and likely uneatable after that.

The girl kept going on about xels, and power, and those energen fragments that apparently weren't working as well as they used to.

"Your body seems to know that the energen fragments are fake, so it's begun to reject it." Leilani explained as she fervently typed something on her computer. "However, with the processing error of the xels in your body, normal xels just aren't going to cut it. I think I can create my own variation of legitimate xels, but they need to have a greater lifespan (so to speak) to keep you properly maintained. They'd need to be, like, the Superman of xels!"

"Are you going to finish your dinner?" Ray eventually questioned out loud.

"You care?" Leilani quipped without looking at the bot.

"Barely." Ray snorted. "But I know humans die when malnourished."

"I'm not malnourished." the girl rebutted kindly. "I've eaten pretty well today."

"Three bites of whatever that meal is does not count as eating 'pretty well'." Ray tonelessly spat. This caused Leilani to pause and turn around to face the bot. The girl even tilted her head as if she were confused. Ray rolled her eyes and explained; "You started working on me around nine-twenty this morning and worked until your teacher came around at three-thirty. I doubt you took lunch after, as it was clearly five o'clock exactly when you came back down with that plate. You are malnourished, considering how far you've worked in that time frame."

Leilani looked at Ray, as if deciding something. "They say, that we'll know when robots have evolved to the state of being most human when they are capable of thinking like us." she then said, slowly and carefully. "But I don't think that's true. I think there would be some other sign, a higher form of thinking that even some humans can't quite pull off all the time."

"And what's that?" Ray questioned without a thought. Leilani paused for a moment as she lulled over her words, before saying,

"The ability to lie to yourself, and believing it."