“Hbblmabbafmph!” Aaron tried to say.

“Oh, did you remember how to speak baby gibberish?” Baby Bear asked, before remembering he was quite mad at Aaron. His furry brow furrowed. “Is that why you forgot to give me hello snuggles when you got home?”

Then, having ensured Aaron was aware of the source of his ire, he began to smack Aaron on the sides of his head with both paws. Bap! Bap! Bap! The bear maintained his position attached to Aaron’s head like a barnacle by squinching his tummy and head on either side of the man’s face.

“Miforry,” Aaron protested, through a faceful of fuzz.

“You better be,” Baby Bear responded.

Aaron peeled the teddy bear off his face and carried him out into the living area of the apartment. Tia was seated at the dinette table waiting for them and she waved to the bear as they came out of the hallway.

“Are you ready for some tests, Baby Bear?” she asked.

Bear leapt down from Aaron’s arms onto the table. “You bet,” he replied.

“Let’s start with some really basic stuff,” she said. “Let me just get my notebook.”

She retrieved a small journal — about the size of a paperback novel — from her bag. It was bound in what looked like very fine grain leather and sealed by two clasps on the corners. There was almost certainly some kind of magic involved in unlocking the journal, but all Aaron saw was Tia press her fingers to the clasps and they popped open with a soft click.

“Let’s start simple,” she said.

Tia began to take measurements of Baby Bear with a disappointingly mundane tape measure, recording each in her notebook. She didn’t just measure his total height or the circumference of his stomach, but of every conceivable thing she could. How long his arms and legs were, the size of his feet, the height and width of each ear, his full arm span, and so much more.

Bear endured it all with good humor, though not without the occasional squirming or giggle as he accused Tia of tickling him unnecessarily. When she was done, she dropped the tape measure back into her bag.

“Why all the different measurements?” Aaron asked.

“To see if Baby Bear grows,” Tia replied, pulling out something that looked like a meat thermometer with thin hooks coming out of the top and bottom. “Grab onto this hook, please, and hold on as tight as you can.”

When Baby Bear placed his paw against the hook, Tia lifted the whole thing off the table from the other end until Bear was dangling a few inches above the dinette’s surface. He laughed merrily and kicked his nubby little feet, starting to swing back and forth.

“Can you hold still a minute, Bear?” Tia asked, steadying him. “As still as you can, like you’re practicing to pretend you’re just a regular teddy bear when other people are around.”

“Okiedokie,” Bear agreed, relaxing so that he dangled limply from the hook.

“Just a smidgen under two pounds,” Tia remarked, jotting it down in her notebook.

“That’s so light,” Aaron said. “I guess I never really thought about how little he weighed.”

Tia stowed her hanging scale back in her bag. “It’s just about right for a teddy bear his size, but here’s something that might really cook your noodle: we watched Bear eat at least a quarter pound of food at dinner the other night, so where the hell is all of that?”

“I eated it,” Bear pointed out, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“You sure did and I’m glad you liked it,” Tia said, pulling an honest to god stethoscope out. “But where did it go? Is there just, like, a mashed-up lump of orange chicken sitting in your stomach right this second? Do you have a stomach? Did you digest it? Do you poop!?”

“We’re not even in the woods,” Baby Bear said.

Tia’s expression was perplexed. “Why would it matter if we were in the woods?”

“Because that’s where bears shit,” Aaron said drily, rolling his eyes as Baby Bear flopped onto his butt, snickering and kicking his feet gleefully.

“Anyways, I dunno about stomachs,” Bear finally said, “but I’ve had enough of Aaron’s poop, pee, and puke on me to know that it is very not cute and I’m proud to say I don’t do any of that gross stuff.”

Tia shot a look at Aaron, who held up his hands defensively.

“Just to be absolutely clear, here: I was given Bear on the day I was born. Like, getting him was the very first thing that ever happened to me after I stopped being physically attached to another person. So there were a few years where I didn’t have a whole lot of say about when or where I was, uh, purging my system, as it were.”

“Fair enough,” Tia said with a snort. She set a pack of cookies down on the table and placed the tips of the stethoscope into her ears. “I’d still like to figure out as much as we can about you, Bear, if only so we can make sure we’re taking good care of you. Would you be willing to eat some of those cookies on the table there? For science?”

Baby Bear, who was already in the process of opening the wrapper, looked up at Tia. “Well… I guess… if it’s for science…”

“It’s science,” Tia said. “Of a sort.”

Aaron poked Bear gently on the back of the head. “Pay him no mind, Tia, or this charade of long-suffering sacrifice. I might not know a lot about autonomous constructs, but I know Baby Bear. If there are cookies close at hand, he’ll be interested in them.”

As if to prove Aaron’s point, Baby Bear began to eat the cookies, one after another. While he happily worked his way through the packet, Tia pressed the listening bell of the stethoscope against different parts of the stuffed animal’s body.

At one point, she even leaned over the table so she could try to see into his mouth as he ate. Baby Bear, however, apparently had good enough manners not to chew with his mouth open. An impressive feat, considering he basically had no lips.

Tia hummed thoughtfully as Baby Bear finished the last of the cookies in the package. She pulled the stethoscope out of her ears and draped it around her neck, then rummaged around in her bag some more. After a moment, she pulled out a small flashlight and, of all things, a tongue depressor.

“Popskickles?” Bear asked hopefully. His big ears had perked up, but they soon flopped over again. “Oh wait, those are doctor sticks.”

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“Yes they are, Bear. That’s exactly right. Would you open your mouth and say ‘ah’ please?”

Baby Bear considered the request for a moment, then nodded his large head. “I can say ‘aw,’ and that’s pretty close, only more cuter.”

The bear did as promised, making a noise like someone seeing a kitten trapped in a length of ribbon, which allowed Tia to peer into his puppet-like mouth and place the wooden plank where a tongue would be.

The examination only lasted a couple seconds. Baby Bear’s ‘aw’ was soon cut off by a ‘grk’ and he swatted away the tongue depressor, working his mouth like he’d taste something sour.

“You poked me,” Bear complained. He pointed an accusatory paw in Tia’s direction. “You poked me in the back of my mouth!”

“Sorry!” Tia said. “I wanted to see if there was any kind of opening to a throat or something like that. I didn’t think it would be uncomfortable for you or anything, so that’s my bad.”

“Well there’s not,” Bear grumped.

Tia patted the bear on the head. “I know, I see that now, and I’m sorry. I have no clue where anything you eat goes. I think I might have a test for that, though. Maybe.” She considered Baby Bear for a moment. “Do you know where the things you eat go?”

“I eated them,” Bear said with a shrug. “They’re eaten.”

“That has implications so horrifying I don’t even want to think about them,” Tia said, shuddering. “I will, but later. Let’s move on for now. You don’t seem to breathe, Bear, do you need to?”

Bear shrugged again. “I dunno.”

“Let’s see how long you can hold your breath, if you’re up for it.”

Baby Bear was, but only after he extracted more apologies, pets, and pats from the young woman.

It turned out the bear either didn’t need to breathe — which might have been true of Aaron, too; he had to remember to test that! — or he could hold his breath for at least ten minutes. A quick phone search showed that the world record, even for normal humans, was over twice that. Tia made a note in her journal and said they could test that more thoroughly later.

“What about sleep?” she asked. “Can you sleep? Do you need to?”

“Ooh, I know the answer to that one!” Bear said proudly.

After a few quiet seconds, it became obvious that Baby Bear was too satisfied to have the answer to the question to remember he hadn’t actually bothered to share it with them.

“And?” Aaron prompted.

“And what?”

“Do you need to sleep?”

“Oh,” Baby Bear replied. “The answer is: sorta!”

“What the heck does that mean?” Aaron complained.

“Can you tell us more about that, Bear?” Tia asked. “Do you mean that you’re more like a cat — a light sleeper that’s easy to wake up — or like a dolphin — with only part of your brain or consciousness or whatever asleep at a time?”

“Ummm… more like the second one, I think,” Baby Bear said. “When it comes to sleeping, anyways. I’m more like a kitty cat than a dolphin, in general though.”

“Because you’re fuzzy and cute, right?” Aaron asked.

“And snuggly,” Bear replied, bouncing up to his feet. “I’m even more snuggly than most kitties, really, when you think about it.”

Aaron, who had called it, said, “Called it.”

Tia jotted down some more notes in her journal. “I’d like to find out more about how you sleep, Bear. Can you give me a general description of what it’s like? And maybe try to think of more detailed information over the next few days that you can share with me later?”

“Um, sure,” Bear agreed. “Well, let’s see. I came to life or whatever in a dream. I was playing in a park with Aaron, in the dream, and then I was also laying on a pillow in bed. It’s like that.”

“You were asleep and dreaming and also awake and aware?” Tia clarified.

“I don’t think he was just dreaming,” Aaron said. “I’m pretty sure he was in my dream, the dream I had the night I came home from breaking out of the Vault.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Tia said thoughtfully. “That might be something we can explore more in the future but for now let’s move on to some other simple, baseline tests. Is that okay, Bear?”

The teddy bear raised one of his arms and held a paw out towards her. Tia’s eyes drifted to Aaron, looking for clarification. Aaron had no idea what that gesture was supposed to mean, either, so all he could do was shrug.

“Is that… a yes, Baby Bear?” Tia asked.

“Oh, right,” Baby Bear said, examining his own paws. “I don’t have fingers or thumbs so you can’t see me giving you a thumb’s up. Or the bird! Anyways, it was supposed to be a thumb’s up. This time.”

“Well, speaking of fingers, as it happens that’s exactly what I wanted to test next.”

Tia, it turned out, was deeply intrigued by how Bear’s paws worked.

As he had just pointed out, the stuffed animal had no apparent digits. Yet both Aaron and Tia had seen him grab and lift several different things with his paws, from picking morsels out of Chinese food cartons to grabbing the hook of a hanging scale a few minutes earlier.

Tia made a circular washing gesture towards the bear. “I want to figure out how, precisely, that whole thing works.”

“Let’s do it!” Bear replied, slapping Tia’s open hand with one of his round paws. “High five. Or one. Or both!”

The tests started simple. She had Bear grab, lift, and move a variety of things in different shapes and sizes to get a sense of how his grasping worked. From the outside, it looked like Bear just pressed his paw against something and it stuck. There was no other apparent mechanic to explain, it was just blatantly magical.

Tia wasn’t satisfied with that, though, so she had Bear trying more complex things. She had him try to twirl a length of twine around where his theoretical phantom digits would be, but the best he could do was a loop. That suggested he didn’t have invisible fingers or tendrils of telekinetic force.

But then he was able to do things that required very fine manipulation. He could work specific buttons on a remote control and use the keyboard on a phone to type out words both by tapping individual letters and by swiping. He could even play the role of a partner in a game of cat’s cradle as long as the string stayed on Tia’s fingers.

Finally, she held out her index finger and asked Bear to grab onto it.

“Ew, gross,” Bear exclaimed. “If you want to do a fart, do it yourself. Don’t make me an accomplice to your emanations!”

Aaron couldn’t help but laugh at that, though the look on Tia’s face was one of pure chagrin. It was the kind of thing only dudes would be likely to think of and Aaron didn’t know if her disappointment was in herself or him and Bear.

In the end, she switched from her index finger to a pinky, which was enough to convince Bear it wasn’t some flatulent trick.

“Whoa, this is so weird,” Tia remarked after Bear had ‘grabbed’ her pinky. “Try to pull my hand around a little, Bear, but gently. Just in case.”

Bear nodded and began to move his paw around, dragging Tia’s hand along with it. Tia had him increase the pressure he was using to grab her finger, then tried playing a gentle game of tug of war against the teddy bear using her own hand.

“That is one hundred percent the weirdest thing I’ve ever felt,” she said. “It’s like there’s nothing there, but that nothing is still interacting with and influencing my hand.”

She checked the time on her phone. “Okay, I think we have enough time before Alice gets here to do the last couple things I had in mind. You’ve been doing great so far, Bear. Are you up for a little more testing?”

Baby Bear extended both of his arms in front of him, paws aimed at Tia.

“Thumbs up, again?” she asked and got a nod from the bear. “Awesome. I want to do some preliminary tests on how your senses work and what their limitations are.”