Hilargi sat alone in her lab, looking at her blueprints for a new and improved polymer suit. She yawned, feeling incredibly preoccupied by her encounter with Yair. In fact, her eyes were glassy. She hadn’t considered the awful paradox she had engaged in when she created Yair. Creating him with feelings when he was also a weapon was an oversight that she simply hadn’t considered; she figured creating him with feelings would only make him more sympathetic to her tribe and to her, but she had forgotten that it could also make him sympathetic toward the women he would have to kill.
What was I thinking? She wondered to herself. I suppose I wasn’t…
But the truth was, was that she did know what she was thinking. She was thinking that making a robot with compassionate feelings that looked like a human boy would fill the void in her life that her empty womb left. She knew she was young and that she shouldn’t be worrying about having children, but because she was a mutant and there was only one man left in the Wasteland, her odds of having one were nonexistent.
Yair had filled that void for her, but she hadn’t considered what creating him with those wretched things called feelings would do to him. She sniffled as she put on a blow torch face mask and began crafting something out of metal that had no uses other than personal enjoyment. A time waster, a beautiful thing with no value—something called “art.”
She worked on it for an hour, and then she heard heavy, metal feet marching toward her through the bright hallway. She knew the footsteps were Yair’s. She turned around to face him, and saw him wearing a smile on his face.
She removed her mask, wiped her eyes, and then dashed toward him. She didn’t know what had come over her, she just wanted to hug him. And when she was close enough, she threw her arms around him and he returned her hug, spinning her around in the air with one hand. She gazed at him lovingly, and then pressed her warm cheek to his cold one, hanging her arms around his neck. “Are you feeling better?” she asked.
“I’m feeling much better, thank you, Hilargi.” Yair said with an uncanny smile. “I had a chat with Nikodemus, and it made me realize that you did not create me with feelings out of hatred nor malice.”
Hilargi nodded vigorously as Yair gently set her down. “Of course… I’m sorry I wasn’t able to explain that to you before. I was just… so angry at myself for not thinking of your well being when creating you. If you want… I could tweak your matrix so that you don’t have feelings anymore? I would… really miss you though. Your personality would be very… well, it might cease-to-exist.”
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Yair immediately shook his head. He sank to a sitting position, sitting cross-legged, and Hilargi sank down to her knees next to him. Yair looked down with a thoughtful smile, gathering his artificial thoughts, and then he looked up at Hilargi. Eventully, he said, “I don’t want you to take them out. I realized… that your giving me consciousness, and giving me the emotions to enjoy the full scope of that consciousness is a gift.”
Hilargi was nearly weeping with joy. “You really think so?”
Yair nodded. “You see, the Last Man told me something that assuaged my fears. He made me realize that being born is better than not being born at all.”
Hilargi smiled, hugging her knees and leaning her head on Yair’s shoulder. “How did he do that?” she whispered, her voice in awe of how the Last Man had helped her precious creation.
“Well… you programmed me to have a belief in god, and I was thinking that I was an afront to God, but then, Nikodemus said that, perhaps, God would view me as a grandchild, and I recognized that I had no hand in my own creation. Not only that, but… Nikodemus brought up the point that he has no ideas of the intentions of his creator, whereas I…” Yair smiled at her. Hilargi sucked in a breath, wondering what he would say. Yair circled an arm around her. “Well, I know my creator had the best intentions, even if she didn’t think things through thoroughly. I know she is kind, she puts others before herself, and she loves me like she would a son.”
Hilargi wept loudly, kissing his cheek. “I’m so glad you’ve forgiven me. It’s true I didn’t think things through, but… I did have good intentions. I really did. And for what it’s worth, I only designed you with a base personality. You’re the one who took what little I gave you and turned it into something wonderful.”
Yair grinned his least uncanny grin to date, and Hilargi thought she was looking upon a real boy for a moment, even though she knew that it couldn’t possibly be. Hilargi sucked in a deep breath and then expelled it. She smiled. “Hey, I want to show you a little something I was working on.” She took Yair’s hand and dragged him giddily over to her work table. When she was close enough, Hilargi grabbed the metal figure--a minature Yair--she had been working on and showed it to Yair.
Yair’s smile got even bigger as he held the thumb-sized figure and examined it intently. He said, “It looks just like me.”
Hilargi hopped up and down excitedly. “So glad you like it! It’s not as cute as you, but I think it turned out pretty well. I was also just about to start designing you a functional arm so you can detach your arm canon and help around the fortress. Do you want to help design it? You can pick a color scheme and everything. Maybe I can make you some flames…”
Yair nodded. “That sounds great.”