John’s head rose from the counter, eyes blurry from his tears, and he saw his daughter’s doll, next to his arm, trying it’s best to hug him. Before he could do anything, another wave of sadness rolled over him, remembering his daughter. He closed his tear-filled eyes, drops falling down his cheeks, and went and got hold of the doll, gently holding it.

When he grasped hold of the doll however, this time he felt something. He felt… sadness in the doll? No, the doll itself wasn’t sad. It was more like the doll itself was powered by the sadness. He could somehow feel the doll was taking the sadness from somewhere to sustain it.

He tried to follow the sensation, and noticed that he couldn’t. It seemed to reach the edge of the doll that he was holding it from and then stopped. It was easy to conclude then that the sadness likely was coming from him.

As his sadness faded into curiosity, he set the doll down, and watched it toddle back to his arm lying on the table, and then wrap its plush little arms around his forearm. He smiled sadly, seeming to reminisce about better times.

John then looked around the room, and noticed the fake flower he’d bought with his meager savings to try and liven up the place. He got up and took it back to his seat, where he then contemplated over it.

John then tried to replicate the feeling he had of sadness entering the doll, and he felt the small remaining undercurrent of sadness he had drain slightly, and some energy enter the false flower.

He then felt it subtly shift in his hand, and he let it go into its empty bowl, and watched it almost gyrate around, in a melancholic dance. He looked to it, almost entranced by the slight moments, and found himself almost imperceptibly draining of sadness.

When he took the flower back into his hand, he noticed that it had a little more power than it had previously. Less than what had been drained when at the distance, but still more then what it had when he let it go. Curious.

John’s sadness fell away to a more bountifully growing curiosity, and he then noticed that the doll that he had animated had fallen. When he picked it up, he noticed it had been nearly entirely drained of power, and the last motes it had drained before his eyes, and the doll stilled.

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John then enchanted it again, this time with curiosity, and the doll stood up and started walking. It turned its head around, and looked around the counter. It noticed the slightly moving flower, which had seemingly slowed down in the absence of sadness, and wandered over to it. When the doll had reached the flower, it started to inspect it and the bowl it was in, looking over all of its features.

John laughed at this, and decided that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try and animate one more thing. He looked around for something to animate, but couldn’t settle his mind on any one thing. Then John had an idea. What would happen if he animated technology? Deciding it would be better to go big or go home, John got out his cell phone, an old IPhone 4, which he had gotten for cheap.

John then tried to channel his curiosity into the phone, and he felt some resistance. He tried and tried to push his emotion into the phone, and it was making little progress, when all of a sudden it seemed to break through, and his emotions rushed into the phone, as if they had found a void to fill.

The phone immediately turned off, and John’s emotions wouldn’t stop rushing into the phone. First, his curiosity drained, and then it started reaching for the minor emotions that John didn’t even recognize he had, the minor ones that go about in small amounts. Small amounts of anger, sadness, happiness, and other more secondary emotions, like love, and jealousy drained into the phone, one by one. He tried to cut off the flow of emotion, but it just kept going. When John tried to let go of the phone, it seemed to supernaturally stick to his hand, sucking out his emotion.

One by one, the minor emotions fell, and then it reached his humanity. It rained away at his humanity, and as it did so, John felt more and more tired, and more and more faint. Just as he was on the verge of passing out, the phone fell from his hand onto the countertop (Thank god it had a protective casing). Its screen then turned on, only to show a black screen and text reminiscent of a desktop’s command prompt showed up, and appeared to go through a booting process, which was strange, considering that phones rarely, if ever show such a screen.

The phone then seemed to boot completely, and showed up on a completely white screen. John, in his tired state, picked up the phone. He inspected the screen, and saw that there was a small point of blue in the center, when suddenly that blue expanded out into a ring, and a voice rang out of the phone.

What was unmistakably Siri’s voice emanated from the phone, saying “What is going on? What is happening?”