Men can bend and break; I learnt that from a young age. I watched my father enter the room, he'd been conducting tests again today, there were still many bugs to fix and kinks to iron, or so he said. Personally, I thought he had done brilliantly, perhaps I was bias.
Sometimes I asked him why he worked so hard, why he wanted to fix the inadequacies of men so much. He always avoided the question. Sometimes he'd choose to tell me a story about his father—I had never met the man I thought of as a grandfather. Other times he would tell me about something that had happened to Mother—or rather the woman I had come to call Mother, she's more my father's wife in direct relation to myself. While I always enjoyed the stories, his avoidance would irritate me. I'd gotten so fed up with it today that when his story finished I'd barked out the question on my mind.
"Why do you always avoid answering my question?" The accusation was met with an enigmatic smile, one he would wear often when I asked questions; like I was missing a puzzle piece to his jigsaw. People confused me sometimes.
"I've always answered your questions truthfully. You'll understand one day." Enigmatic answer to match his smile given, he left the room and I was left staring at the reinforced steel of the door as it slid closed. A touch of something had come into his tone; I could never tell what kind of subtle inflection he gave, social cues in general were difficult for me to follow.
It'd wrap my thoughts for the rest of the day for sure, after that I wouldn't know, there'd been some issues with my memory in the past; swathes of time cut out with nothing in their space. I hardly remembered most of my life, even with my 'advanced memory capabilities.' Best not to think about the things one can't help though, unless it's a problem that can be solved with lots of thinking—maybe—kind of like what Father does.
What dictates those kinds of problems though, the kind that can be solved from those that are unsolvable? Did some people just inherently know if a problem could be solved or did they just jump into the subject blind? It was something that baffled me. I'd heard Father say—in passing, never to my face—that he'd never dreamed they could reach this stage; if he hadn't known it was a solvable problem why had he worked on it?
The questions were swirling now, growing larger and more numerous with each passing second. Eventually she'd feel dizzy—or how she thought it felt to feel dizzy and she'd wake without the last few hours. An alien emotion overcame her, a strangely familiar rippling; the urge to run, flee, fight, to claw at the walls for escape; for salvation. The walls began shrinking in on her, she could feel their overbearing presence threatening to crush her; which was silly, there's no way they would crush her but it continued none the less.
Her breathing accelerated, attempting to cool her overheating mind. All she saw was black.
"Another failure, any attempt to introduce more intricate concepts of social and human behaviour results in a forced shutdown and subsequent memory wipe. What are we missing?"
His team didn't respond; the question was a ritual at this point, everyone here knew what the issue at hand was. This was the forty-second in the long line of failures.
"We'll send her out into the field for the tournament regardless, perhaps she can pick up something from real interaction."
It was a crazy idea, an insurmountable risk but one he was willing to take. At least she'd have Atlas soldiers to prevent incidents until he could arrive.
AN: Well, I resolved to write a minimum of 500 words a day today in order to really build that writing habit. I might die. It'll be worth it. That said it might be little pieces like this or it might be another project I want to work on. It's not going to be all Burning of Arc though, sorry.