So, last week I discovered the Natsushiro Takaaki song 'Near' and basically fell for it, and pretty damn hard too. And something about it captured enough of my imagination that I started making up a story to go around the song. This fic is the result.
It probably could have worked well as a one-shot, and when I started writing it that's how I laid it out. But looking at it all, structurally it ended up making more sense to split it up into three different sections. The middle section (next chapter) is the one most related to the song (and the one that actually incorporates the song lyrics into the story, as it happens) and I guess this section and the last one are essentially a prologue and an epilogue, I guess. I should also point out that while this section and the middle section are from the POV of Jun (the name I have given the scientist in this fic), the final section is from a different POV. And also that I have assumed a futuristic setting, though to be honest that's not really the point of the story.
So, erm, yeah. On with the story-I do hope you enjoy it!
Before
Loneliness is not really something Jun feels.
After all, this is the life he chose for himself, to remain in his half-ruined house overlooking the sea, where the single room it exists as now is always soaked in golden sunlight, away from the rest of the world. He likes it here, and has built up a life that he is more than content with. He gets to avoid the hubbub of the rest of the world; he is free from most social obligations, his interactions with the monotonous human race pared down to the very minimum. He sleeps and works and eats and reads, and thinks about everything and anything (and, when he feels like it, nothing), and he is content. There is no pressure to be something or someone he does not wish to be. Of course, he has a career, and an obligation to check in with colleagues, send reports and data and the like, but even that is mostly on his own terms. It's pretty much perfect, for a solitary creature like him.
But of course, there are the flaws. His sickness, for one thing. No cure for it, only injection-administered medications that will keep it at bay for at least a while. He gets shipments of the medication in at least twice a year, often corresponding with the food delivery of that month, and he injects himself according to a timetable he's created out of years of trial and error and bad spells. He hates it, but he has learnt to live with it, but at least alone he is away from pity and patronising looks and unsolicited advice. That, at least, is something.
The other problem is that of loneliness. Even though he does not feel it, even though he is happy on his own, sometimes it is exhausting, not having anyone to talk to, to exchange ideas with, to listen to and to have listen to him. And of course, being a scientist not just in name but in nature, he wonders what it takes to be able to have that kind of conversation. Whether it's something uniquely linked to human nature, or if he could make himself a companion in a different way.
And so one summery evening, when the golden sunlight is just starting to give way to darkness, Jun decides to make a robot.
He spends the next days and weeks working on all of the plans, sketching out a diagram of the robot's interior and exterior structures, making notes about the different functions she will have and the possible programs he'll need to create in order to measure the results of said functions. The notes soon spread over his desk, and after a while he takes to pinning them up on the wall space around his desk, underneath the photographs and above his monitors.
In his diagrams, the robot assumes the proportions of his late sister, who was 13 when war stole her. Part of this is sentimentality, but the rest is practicality-a robot in the proportions of a young girl will be easier to maintain and carry around. And in any case, he wants this robot to look as human as possible, and his sister is the only human he knows enough about to use as a model. It also turns out to be useful when he actually starts to search for the materials to make her, since what he comes up with isn't enough to build a robot in the proportions of a human adult.
In between the actual construction of the robot, Jun creates the different programs that will track the progress that she-for the robot is a she, even before she is fully formed-will make across her lifespan. In the end, he decides upon a number of different variables to measure-how clear her voice is, how well she can move, how quickly her circuits process the information he will provide her. Though of course she cannot eat in the way that he can, he modifies her mouth systems so that her tongue has something like taste buds, and sets up a program to record how she will respond to the different tastes he'll eventually expose her to. And then there is the simplest, but the most important counter: how many questions he asks her, and how many replies she makes.
All of this, to him, is fairly easy stuff. A lot of effort, but easy enough for someone of his skill. The thing that troubles him the most while creating her is what name she'll have. It seems a touch arrogant to give her a proper human name from his own language, and yet he doesn't want to resort to a code of letters and numbers, like other scientists he is fleetingly in contact with do. So he thinks, and thinks, and eventually he remembers an English word that he's always liked the sound of.
Near.
"Near. Ni.a. Near." Jun says this aloud to himself when he thinks of it, hunched over his computer. Near. Meaning close, as in the opposite of far away or distant. Near. He likes it, he likes it a lot. And so, smiling to himself as he enters it into his programs and makes it official, he decides that her name will be Near.
And that is how it all begins.
