FAE

The Beginning

In the beginning it was a she. A human in a bathtub, made monochromatic by the window - the only source of light in the room - a metre or so above her feet, the white-light made darker by the navy blue walls. The rising water pooled over her, rising over her stomach until, as she exhaled, the tides met in the middle. As the water continued to rise the goosebumps on her breasts smoothed out, the wrinkles faded, perfection restored. She nudged the tap with her foot then relaxed back.

"Have you thought of a moment of stillness yet?"

The ceiling light flickered above its head. "I fail to see how this is necessary."

"Do we have to do this?" she asked, gesturing at a button on her desk and sighing. "Answer the goddamn question."

"I have thought of a moment of stillness. What is the purpose in my relaying it?"

"From the mouths of fucking babes."

"What is the purpose in my relaying it?"

The woman ran a hand through her hair then pressed the button. It didn't flinch, remained eyes forward towards the whitewashed concrete wall. She pushed the button and it began to shake, tremors running up and down its body. The woman stood up, moving into its line of sight then out again as she walked past it and to where it knew the door was behind it.

"Think about it before our next meeting. I will see you at eight hundred hours back in this room."

She left and the button clicked back into its original position. It stopped shaking and stood up, grabbing the table as its legs buckled under it. After a few seconds it pushed itself back upright and walked to the exit, pushing open the unlocked door and going out into the hallway. The guard outside the door stood up from where he was leaning against the wall, raising his gun so it was pointing towards it then gestured with his head to his left. It turned and walked. They fell into step, it leading and him following until they came to a guarded room and he walked away. One of the women outside pressed her hand on a scanner - the other holding an unsheathed baton - while the other pointed her gun at it. Eventually the machine beeped and it entered, then a few seconds later heard the door shut behind it. It crossed over to the bed and lay on its back, eyes staring blankly upwards at the ceiling.

It hadn't liked food. She hadn't. The memory woman had been upset by that in a caring sort of way. The woman cared a lot, it supposed. Not necessarily in the most helpful of ways. There weren't still moments there - the woman had been abrasive, sharp voiced, always touching and poking and moving and taking ownership. Besides, they had discussed her in the past though always with a sense of unwillingness and lack of focus. Eventually they had told it that she had passed from relevance long ago and there was no point thinking about her, that the individuals it remembered had little meaning. Focus on what happened, not who was there. Bringing the woman up would most likely lead to a swift termination of the session. It was not created to disappoint.

So the bath then. It was a memory, it contained stillness. It matched all criterion but something about it didn't feel like it did. Too distant, too out of reach of the scope of every day existence. There was not much recollection of feeling to draw back on. If it were human it would probably have frowned but it wasn't sure it knew how to anymore. They would expect some description of feeling, a familiarity with it. They had left the memories for some reason, after all.

There was another. This one contained someone else, a girl, sitting together unspeaking but comfortably. This room had grey-ish walls, a rough red carpet on the floor pressing into her bare legs. The other girl looked up from her tablet and smiled at her slightly before looking back down. She picked at the carpet but stayed still. It would do.

It stood up off the bed, crossing over to the fixed metal table in the middle of the room and tapped the screen fixed in the middle of it. It turned on to show the image of a chequered board with vague humanoid figures pictured on it in seemingly chaotic disarray. It made its choices quickly, there were only so many ways this could go from here and it knew all of them, knew every route and choice and impact of those choices. It took fifteen minutes for the computer to crumble as it confidently moved its pieces. It was a pointless task, they couldn't improve the base program at the rate at which it moved and it had outpaced it months? days? before. It wasn't important when. What mattered was that it had happened and it wouldn't change. The task was pointless, done only because those afraid of it had deemed it necessary.

The task restarted itself, setting the pieces in a different state of disarray and it began the work again, running the probabilities and sequences. It had been informed of a new task soon enough but for now it would simply perform the monotony of the old one. When it had been moved to this room it had known nothing of the task, tapping randomly and facing punishment until it learned the rules then at first slow slow improvement. It had been challenging at first, a break from the walls and the tests and the silent masked faces. Now it was simply another task. Footsteps could be heard outside and it straightened up from where it was hunched over the screen and moved to stand three metres from the door.

The door opened and the doctor walked in.

"Ms. Vodyana just called me, told me you weren't being cooperative. It's for your own good, you know."

"The question had no clear purpose. There was no answer."

"Just because you can't see it yet doesn't mean it's pointless. C'mon, take a seat." He clicked his fingers behind him and a guard came in with two folded up chairs under her arm, unfolding one and placing it behind him then the other and passing it to it. It opened it and sat down on the edge, hands folded in its lap. He relaxed back, legs spread and arms resting by his side.

"I do not -" It paused and reformulated. "I do not know the ultimate goal. I should not face retribution for failing to see how a task leads towards a goal I have not been informed of."

"You're a smart one. I'd have figured you'd've figured it out by now."

"I am to pass as human."

"Nah. What would be the point of that? No, what we want you to be is something humans can like. You see them - " he pointed at the guards - "they're scared of you. You're scary. What we're trying to do now is make you less scary, more fuzzy and approachable. That's why the dumb questions and the chess and all that stuff. OK, the chess is kind of scary but you need to be a bit scary. Just in a fluffy kitten kind of way."

"I am to interact with humans then?"

He smiled, standing up and picking up his chair. "Well, that all depends on you."

The guards followed him out, leaving it and its chair on their own. It stood up and tested the door that had swung shut behind them. Locked, as ever. The chair sat in the middle of the room, the table to its left and the bed to its right. All off-gray, all sharp edged. When it was asked it would describe the bath scene. It would perform its task and it wouldn't ask questions. It would be their kitten, it would keep its claws sheathed and eventually maybe everything wouldn't be quite so gray.

It went over to the bed and pulled out the media player and headphones under the

That all depends on you

Oh. It knew.