The soft beeping of the heart monitor was the only indication that she was still in his world. Still in the world that they both deserved to be in together. She had been unresponsive for the past several hours. According to the doctors there was no saving her. There was nothing to do but watch as she slipped away. He waited, hoping for one last moment, one last chance to say goodbye.
It started out slow and quiet. The tears softly dropping from his face grew to a full out cry. His sobbing turning into pained wails. Steven's body heaved as he tried to control himself. He had to. In public people expected you to keep yourself together for the most part. Even when you were an absolute wreck and everything was not alright.
In that moment he wanted this to be over and yet he wanted it to last forever. On one hand, she'd 'live forever'. Granted it was in a state of being half alive but mostly in the process of dying but she wouldn't be 'dead'. On the other hand that would also mean she would suffer in this half state forever as well.
"It's alright. No matter what happens, I still love you."
He looked up, his vision still blurred and his eyes still stung from the tears. He tried to say something, anything but his throat was still raw from crying.
She looked so alive. Was still alive. At the realization that this was a dream it all faded into black, leaving Steven with nothing more than the dimness of his room...their room. Light poked through the curtains. A reminder that there was still a world outside. A world full of life. A world she wasn't in anymore.
It wasn't healthy to be all hung up over one person. It wasn't like she was gone forever. If this...project worked out right, then she would -hypothetically- come back. She would be alive and they'd have cheated death. Everything would just about be back to normal and the two of them could go back to living the life they had envisioned. Everything except the having children part but that was ok- they could always adopt, right?
The calendar was old. It hadn't been changed in over-he didn't even know what day of the week it was, much less what month. Steven sat back down on the bed, trying to figure out what month it possibly was. The android had taken two weeks to arrive after he ordered it. It had taken him another two and a half weeks to modify it to the point where he was satisfied with how it looked. That was already a month.
The programming itself had taken god knows how long. He was just about finished with it though so he supposed it didn't matter. The endless near sleepless nights were about to be over. He looked over at the clock. It read 9:05 am. Leslie would have been prodding him to get out of bed an hour or so ago. Unlike him, Leslie had a work schedule to stick to. He worked free lance but got about half his funding for his research from a company who had been kind enough to supply him with a lab, among a handful of other supplies. They had been so impressed with some of his earlier work and were in the process of trying to recruit him. Steven preferred working freelance, by his own rules and his own agenda rather than that of a company. He didn't appreciate the thought of having someone breathing down his neck waiting for results.
He had been in limbo with them. Straddling the line between interested potential employee and free loader. The deal was that he still had to show that he was worth something. He had to show that he was indeed making some sort of progress. Truth be told he needed this money and so he played along with them. He had taken some time off from work to mourn the loss of his girlfriend.
Oh how he missed her. They had been an unlikely match. She was a strict, no nonsense type of lady. She may have been a blonde but she was quite capable both mentally and physically. If there was something that needed to be done, she'd have it done. He on the other hand was more of a dreamer. He too was smart but he tended to get distracted and wander off topic now and again.
There was no time for mourning, for acting like she was already dead. There was work to do. Physically, she was dead but mentally she would live again. He was going to bring her back. He had promised her that he would.
When no one was looking at the hospital, he had uploaded her conciseness, her memories into a special flashdrive. Was it too small? The computer didn't say so. He had gotten the largest flash drive he could find. Would it work? Well, this kind of work existed only on a theoretical scale as it had been deemed illegal and immoral. He could get kicked out of the scientific community for this. It might even land him in jail.
Did he know what he was doing?
Again, only in publicly and privately shared theories did he have anything to go off of. He could only pray that what he was doing was right. He had combined those theories along with everything on advanced robotics he could find and worked with them.
For months he slaved away, neglecting just about everything else. These questions and many others plauged his mind constantly. They still did. If it worked would she be truly aware? Would it really be her or would it only be like a doll, repeating a limited amount of phrases and reactions? Would she be sentient? Would she remember him?
It hurt in an oddly comforting way, knowing that she was so close yet so far. There had been nights when he had just wanted to give up, give in. To just accept that fact that Leslie was gone. He continued on though.
It was almost noon now.
Steven grabbed something out of the fridge and hurried back to the room. Waking the computer out of sleep mode he did a final check of the programming. He didn't have to worry about the android as much as it was a mass produced, coustomizable model. It was built for this kind of work. Granted the other users weren't uploading their loved ones into it but they were still uploaded complex personality programs into it. There wasn't that much of a difference between the two. The only difference is that his had been organic at some point.
Everything was ready. Or as ready as it was ever going to be. Leaning back in his chair he took a deep breath. He plugged his flash drive in.
Reading device.
...
Device installed ...
After several more clicks and such it was ready to go.
Downloading.
He was so close.
Installing.
Steven waited.
and waited.
and waited.
Hours passed and he eventually fell asleep.
If only had stayed awake for a little longer.
He would have caught the error that would end his dream, that would turn all of his work, effort and suffering to naught.
Error, program unable to be installed. Data corrupted.That was the message Steven woke up. And that was the message that broke Steven's heart. He had known that it was a long shot. That the odds of success were against him. It still hurt. It meant that she truly was gone.
A/N: A present albeit rushed for one of my friends who ships Steslie. I tried to make it sad but it's hard to show that they were in love when one of them is dead. I found it hard to put in flash backs and had to resort to just having Steven/the narrator tell about Leslie instead of 'showing'. Also I've never tried to write something like this and I think the technical stuff tripped me up. -I never took programming but I have a vague idea of how it works.-