Everything is born of something. Human young are born of a man and a woman. Plants are born of seeds. Ivan.. He.. Well, he was born of a single man's loneliness. Yao had been a talented young engineer with creativity and ambition. He had survived lower school without any company, always focusing on his work. Did all work and no play make Jack a dull boy? No, the opposite, in fact, he was very bright. He was just always so achingly lonely.

As he went through college, Yao delved deeper into electronics and robotics, studying both on course and at home. It took him a few years to create I.V.A.N.. That, of course, stood for Intelligent Virtual Android Network. Yao would write his notes about I.V.A.N. just as 'Ivan', as if the android were a real person. He would bond with the robot daily, programming it with new commands and teaching it new things. With a receptive memory processor, Ivan would remember things that happened, and would learn from his mistakes. Almost like he was human.

Yao grew old as each year passed, and Ivan did not. As an intelligent android, he would ask why. Yao had always thought that if Ivan knew that he was not a human, and was in fact a robot, something in his brain would malfunction. Of course, Ivan was under the total impression that he was real. He didn't have the capacity to notice the times when he would black out and Yao would perform an upgrade or maintenance check on his mainframe.

Yao now sat in his home, resting wearily in a chair with Ivan, his only friend, by his side. "What are those called?" asked Ivan in his programmed voice, the metallic tones soft on Yao's old ears.

"What are you talking about, Ivan?" Yao asked wearily, closing his book. "Is there something you'd like to know?"

"What are those called?" he repeated, lifting a hand and pointing it to the wrinkles that creased Yao's skin aside his eyes.

"Oh," Yao smiled. "They're called wrinkles. They're folds in skin that happen to old people like me."

"Can I have a ring-kull?" Ivan asked bluntly. He couldn't, of course. He was still as baby-faced as the day Yao had given him a skin over his metal body. He had the image of a teenager, although he was just as old as Yao.

"When you get older," Yao answered, leaning his head against the back of his chair. "Then you can have a wrinkle."

"When is my birthday?" Ivan asked, sitting down beside Yao, ligaments and 'muscles' chinking with every movement.

"December 30. You might get a wrinkle then."

Yao didn't make it to December 30. He had been old, and his family had experienced a lineage of heart disease. He had suffered a heart attack one evening in his home. Ivan sat by his body for quite some time. As an android, he had no understanding of the fragility of human life. Yao had no-one else who cared for him, other than Ivan. Even that was questionable, as Yao had always wondered if Ivan could actually register feelings. If he could, Yao had made a breakthrough in technological science. He would never be able to show his findings now.

"Are you having nice dreams?" asked Ivan, sitting by his creator's body. He rested his cold hands on Yao's, and picked them up in a few mechanical movements. "Your hands are cold like mine." He said. "It is my birthday soon. The date today is December twenty-eight. I might get a ring-kull." He tilted his head down, looking at Yao's closed eyes. "I will have a ring-kull, like you, Wang Yao." He lay down beside Yao, and stared up at the ceiling. He would sit up later and go and charge his battery as Yao had always told him to.

The days passed, and December 30 came around. Ivan sat up from his spot beside Yao. "It is my birthday," he said, putting his hands on Yao's stomach. "It is time to wake up." He shook Yao gently, but Yao still didn't wake. "I will let you sleep in this time. But you must wake up in," he paused, and made a quiet beep. "Thirty. Minutes." Every half hour, Ivan would say the exact same thing, and shake Yao a little. He did that all day, actually. He wondered why Yao was sleeping so much today. When Ivan called upon his memory processor, he recalled that Yao had slept for almost two weeks. He ran it through his database, and found out that Yao was going through a process called hibernation, like that of the brown bear species would do. "You are hibernating through the winter," observed Ivan, laying down and not touching Yao again. "I will hibernate too." He set himself to power off, and to wake when the spring had come.

When he did boot up again on the first day of spring, he wondered why the lights were off. He rolled over to face Yao, finding him looking very pale as he had been before hibernation. Ivan sat up, taking a moment to put his hands down on Yao's stomach. For some reason, Yao's skin was very dry and loose, and Ivan logged this in his database. He recorded it as an after-effect of hibernation. "It is time to wake up." he said, shaking Yao gently. Yao didn't wake up. "I will let you sleep in this time. But you must wake up in. Five. Minutes." His processor whirred and he stood up to go and plug his charger in. He assumed that all humans had one. Of course they did. He was a human. When he did plug it in, he found that his battery wasn't charging at all. There was no power in the house. Bills couldn't be paid by a dead man.

Ivan walked around the house, turning on and off every light switch and device. He found that he was using too much of his remaining energy doing this, and he returned to Yao, laying down beside him on the floor. "I do not know what to do," he said. "Please give me an order." Yao did not. "Yao. Please give me an order." Ivan lay there, looking at the body of his creator, wondering why he would not wake up. "Please give me an order."

He repeated those words over and over, unable to stop speaking them. After exerting the switches in his jaw and vocal chords, he found that he could only talk quietly now, as he was losing battery power fast. His senses told him that he was close to powering down. He had only powered down once, and that was because Yao was experimenting with how his system operated. He moved a little closer to Yao, taking his cold and wrinkled hand between his own two. "Please give me an order."

Just as his lights and sensors began to shut down, Ivan said something that would have been rendered scientifically astounding, had anyone alive been around to hear it. "I miss you." And his world faded to black.

sorry