Kaila opened her eyes carefully, testing the strength of her vision. The darkness slowly faded, too slowly for her liking, but at a steady, predictable pace. As the light pierced the center of her visual field and began to chase the darkness to the edges, she focused on the flood of colors. She began to identify them, one by one, pulling from descriptions she had learned and matching them to what her new eyes could now see.

A man stood over her, and she quickly identified the white of his lab coat, the soft grey of his hair, and the deep green of his eyes. She peered closer, trying to determine the exact color of them, but either her new vision wasn't strong enough or her current knowledge of color subtleties wasn't complete enough. Her brow wrinkled as she reluctantly filed away the notion for later review. It was only one small incomplete piece of information. She could revisit it later.

Her eyes scanned the brightening room, taking in the not quite sharp corners where too many layers of paint had gathered, long tubes of fluorescent lights overhead that flickered slightly, the bright red and green lights blinking in rhythmic succession on a nearby monitor.

She turned at the sound of a shuffle nearby. "Not yet," the doctor warned as a thin, haggard woman reached to turn on another light. "Give her time to adjust to the room first."

The assistant nodded and dropped her arm, but otherwise didn't move from her position. Kaila watched her for a moment, examining her closely, taking in every detail of her rapidly graying hair, the face that was just beginning to show signs of aging, lips that were pressed tight as if she either had nothing to say, or was trying to keep from saying what she was thinking.

Kaila tried to sit and gasped, a strange involuntary sound that came deep from her throat. Either her arms were too weak to push her up, or she wasn't using them correctly. The doctor must have noticed her attempts because he leaned forward and picked up a remote near the bed. Kaila watched him with interest, noting that he seemed unusually careful to avoid touching her. The assistant waited sullenly, shifting back and forth on tired legs.

The bed jerked and Kaila grunted as her body shifted along with the bed, contorting her from a long, laid out, comfortable position to a sitting one, not nearly as comfortable. As the bed came to a nearly vertical stop, her head flooded with pain and wiped away all traces of her ability to think. Her eyes slammed shut and she heard a soft moan. The darkness, now welcome, encased her and she sat quietly with her eyes closed, trying to orient herself, to find a stable starting point to try again.

Even with no new visual stimulation she found the world was not quite as calm as it would seem. She couldn't focus through the bombardment. A breeze danced over the skin of her exposed arms and she shivered. Was that cold? Or was it hot? She didn't have a reference, there was no way to understand what she felt. There was a small noise, then another, then a third. Was that a rustle of clothing? A shuffle of leather soles on a hard tiled floor? The soft hum of a machine? Maybe a small rodent scurrying through the walls! She didn't know. Shouldn't she know?

The pain slowly etched away, and cognizance began to return. She opened her eyes slowly and the world came back into focus. It was easier to understand the things she could see.

She focused on the doctor and filtered out the surrounding flood of information. She wasn't able to handle all of it efficiently enough. He only watched her silently, waiting.

Replaying bits of the last few moments in a slower, more organized fashion, she realized she had made a sound. It was easily reproducible, she reasoned, and seemed an important skill to master quickly. She opened her mouth, and tried to speak, but only a rush of air left her throat. She opened her mouth and tried again. She frowned and tried to remember how to vocalize but the instructions didn't seem to line up properly with the implementation.

She tried again, but no sound. Frustrated, she gritted her teeth.

She glanced at the doctor and found his intrigued stare strangely unsettling. She tried to lift her arm but it didn't respond properly and she was barely able to make it twitch. She looked to the woman, who had stopped fidgeting and now watched with a strange look on her face. Kaila squinted and looked carefully, following the lines of her forehead, her uncomfortable body language, and determined it was a face of pity.

The doctor put his hand low on his throat, opened his mouth in a definite "o" shape, and made a low hum. She opened her mouth in the same shape, and repeated, then repeated again. On the third try she learned to engage her vocal chords and produced a small moan. Then a vowel. Then she was pronouncing all the vowels, moving her mouth and lips in patterns she had learned before.

After a while, she could repeat various learned sentences in technically correct manner. It was an accomplishment, and she filed the information away. Then she looked to the doctor, waiting. What did he want her to do now?

He tilted his head to the side, still watching her, not saying much of anything. His face was very hard to read, and she couldn't tell if he was bored or disinterested or simply had little emotion to show.

"Who are you?" the doctor asked. Kaila analyzed his face, but he seemed to show nothing more than a vague interest in her answer.

"I am the first Kinesthetic Artificial Intelligence Learning Agent," she replied matter of factly. Surely he should know this, as he gave her the designation. "I was designed as a test to see if Artificial Intelligence can be taught to learn human logic involving intrapersonal and natural intelligence through kinesthetic methods involving the limitations of the human body."

She frowned at her own robotic speech patterns, noticing that they didn't seem to have the same intonation and resonance that his did, and feeling oddly disquieted by it.

"I didn't ask what you are. I asked who."

Who? She frowned, trying to process the question. Who - a word that identified a particular person from others. Who was she? Was she unique? It wasn't a concept she had considered before, although as she looked at the tiny flaws in the physical human body she now inhabited, she supposed that she was. Her mind whirled in that slow, intricate, strange fashion that was unique to biological intelligence.

She looked up at him with a slightly wavering glance. "I am Kaila."