"Emotionless"

By animefan752

Summary: What does it take to establish life in a dead, monotone, and emotionless robot? Read, and discover what it means to be emotionless. The fanfic version of Kokoro.

Caution: Nothing, really; what is there to warn my beloved readers? Well, perhaps the fact that this plot runs on the particularly sad song, Kokoro, but then veers off course when it doesn't necessarily end the same way. Would that be something you should be aware of, you think?

A/N: Alright, alright, I'll be completely honest with you—this was originally my homework assignment from last year. We were required to write a short story on science fiction—which, by the way, is one of my least favored genres of all time—and so, I made life much easier for myself and coordinated the particularly sad song, Kokoro, into the story. Yeah, it's kind of cheating. I don't suggest people do it, regardless of the fact that I and the song itself live in different countries of origin. Simply put, the story wasn't originally mine, and I definitely don't take credit. But rest assured; I absolutely love the song. I would've preferred it if Len didn't die so often, but, I suppose it can't be helped, huh.

Anyway—

Please, enjoy! Let's not experience any form of heartbreak during this divine month of love!

Emotions. What are they? There isn't a specific definition, but, it certainly is something someone feels from one's heart. People can be angry because their heart is broken, people can be happy because their heart is racing, and people can be sad because their heart is dying. Emotions are humanity's very own personal, psychological form of passions and sensations, something special that only one person can feel and no one else. But, what if you can't feel anything? What if you cannot feel any of these so called emotions? Would that mean you don't have a "heart"? What would it mean if you don't even have a heart at all?

Kagamine Rin is a lifelike robot who thinks this way. She's a very remote robot whose entire presence was artificial. Every part of her existence was synthetic. She had no real skin, but instead, cold hard metal plates that were painted a soft peach to only appear human. She owned no actual organs, but all sorts of wires and chips that functioned as "organs", in a way. Rin also had no necessary needs to eat, sleep, or even breathe. The only thing about Rin that was absolutely required every day was to "rest" by simply allowing her to plug herself in and charge up from an outlet, computer, or basically any form of electricity.

This miracle of a robot was created by Len, a diligent young scientist in a white lab coat who lived with Rin in his house and simultaneous workplace. He designed and created Rin solely because of his lovely desire for her to be able to sing. With his cunning intelligence, Rin would carol along to the delightful songs she was assigned to sing in her apparently angelic voice. That was her solitary purpose. And so, each day, Len's always frantic to prepare Rin her sheet music, shuffling through his many piles and piles of meddlesome papers.

Today was no different.

"Oh, great, now where did I put them?" He asked himself in sheer uncertainty, scratching his blond head out of pure bewilderment. "I vaguely remember putting them here, perhaps, I think."

"You have left the music in your briefcase, master." Rin dully chimed in with her monotone voice. It truly was a dead, unmoving, and lifeless voice, as if she was completely hollow and empty, void of emotion. And she was.

"Oh, of course!" Len exclaimed with a bright smile. "You're right, Rin. How could I ever forget?"

"You receive brain cells that send waves of memory in natural flows, but there could have possibly been an interception of some sort that had cut that system short―"

"It's a rhetorical question, Rin." Len gently laughed, clumsily turning his perfectly square briefcase over to unlock its latches. "You really didn't have to answer it."

Losing his papers was a regular occasion that Len had come to subconsciously concoct. It was logically reasonable, since his office was so unmistakably messy. After all, absolutely nothing was in order. In fact, everything was out of place and extremely unorganized. Len's whole entire house surely was futuristic and full of all kinds of robotics, yet none of them fixed his ever-so-cluttered accommodation. There were automatic light switches, automatic alarm clocks, and even an automatic bed fixer, but no automatic broom sweep…or something like that.

Rin didn't say anything. She didn't feel anything either.

"Ah, here it is." Another fumble through sloppy stacks of paper and the scientist finally finished his wild search. He shuffled through his jungle of a mess at his chaotic desk and scrambled to approach Rin with the crumbled score in hand. Prepared beforehand, there stood systematically a music stand ahead of Rin, as usual, and a hi-tech microphone that hung accordingly from the ceiling. "We're going to take it from the beginning, okay?"

Rin nodded without the slightest hesitation. She was destined to follow orders anyway, so why bother asking?

"Do you remember what I told you?" Len asked nicely, neatly placing the papers onto the cool stand and kindly smiling at her in kind encouragement. "I hate to impose, but it's really important, Rin. Okay? I want you to try to sing with more emotion this time."

Rin nodded again, and again, not feeling anything. She was simply carrying out his order, and nothing else. She was told to sing, so she was going to sing.

Once the blank robot had given Len her word for it, she watched him clamber sloppily to the leather seat behind the recording studio, a mechanical table of digital gadgets. Indifferently, Rin watched him throw on a pair of headphones and eventually point his thumb out into the air, the signal Rin had long come to learn as okay.

The song began with a solo piano riff, ringing and beating and developing a clever rhythm. In a couple of measures, Rin was needed to vocalize, and after that, she was going to start singing the first verses.

"Aaahh," Rin sang like she didn't care. She sang in that flat, stale tone that sounded more like a bored child than an angel.

Len had known this for quite some time now. When he had first created this amazing miracle, this robot, he wasn't aware that something as incredibly drastic as this would occur. He didn't believe there had been another requirement for a robot to sing passionately than a voice and a body. But it was inevitable. Rin sang like this all the time. She sang with a voice, but without it. And every day, Len would desperately work to try and resolve this problematic dilemma. Like today, for example, he was urging Rin into singing powerfully, with a heart and with emotion. But it just didn't seem to work, nothing added up, it simply didn't compute. She sang dully. What did Len have to do to fix this? Did he need to go as far as to program something into her hard drive?

As Rin continued to harmonize with the piano in that boring, dead tone she frequently used, Len pondered curiously about whether or not he really did need to resort to his hypothetically inaccurate idea. To create emotion in Rin, he had come up with a wild guess. All according to her actions and his irrational calculations, Len had long ago invented this one particular software that might or might not establish "life" in Rin. He hasn't touched the program since he had first composed it, fearing the perilous side effects he didn't even know entirely. It was too risky. And he knew he just couldn't spare Rin, his miraculous creation. But what else can he do?

Even so, he never proceeded to use it, no matter how badly he seemed to need it. Len thought that he might as well avoid the hazardous dangers or malfunctions that could possibly take place if he could help it. So, he succumbed to his harmless doubts, gave up on the idea, and stuck to urging Rin instead.

Each prolonged day passed on like this; Len encouraging Rin to sing with emotion, and Rin singing without it. Yet, even as the blonde robot persisted to sing with no emotion, Len didn't surrender to her stubborn obliviousness and pressed on in utter perseverance. Time and time again, he would become irresistibly frustrated in his work, with Rin continuously asking him what the matter was. But that didn't stop the young man. He was responsible for his job and he pursued to make more and more attempts.

First, days flew by, then weeks, then finally, months. The same things happened, and yet, nothing changed. The only difference now was that Len slowly became more and more aged and agitated and tired, meanwhile Rin stayed the exact same identical self she has always been when she had first been astonishingly brought into the world. Not only that, but, Rin didn't even notice the slightest variance in her distressed master, except perhaps that she had previously accustomed herself to wait a little while longer for her master to function during work.

Len was human. He naturally lived and breathed. But it had never occurred to Rin that Len grew older as the years passed. She didn't realize the cemented fact that humans aren't immortal like she is. While Len starts to slow down, she sustains her same speed. And while Len begins to complain and procrastinate, Rin treated every day like any other day, ―to sing to her maximum productive capacity. Len was different now. He got up less often, he consistently pushed his work back to later dates, he never considered going outside, and he even grew reluctant to simply go to the restroom. There was something wrong, and Rin knew it.

"Master, are we working today?" She asked him one day as she strolled into his pristinely white bedroom.

Then, her monotone words met only silence; the response ceased to exist. But Rin knew it took a while before Len could strain himself to reply to her in that raspy, hoarse voice of his.

"Master?" She blandly repeated, nearing his large silver bed, and looked blankly at the lump lying humbly on the side of the mattress. That lump was curled up beneath the messy layers of clean bed sheets, unmoving and delicate, as if it can ever possibly shatter under a single touch.

Huh. Len was taking unusually long to speak up today.

Plainly curious, Rin meandered her way to the side of his bed, draped in layers of peaceful white. There, Len was huddled up uncomfortably in silence. Rin apathetically searched for his sleeping face hidden somewhere from within, the lightest pillows and blankets fluffed upon him in some sort of pillow wall. And so, gently, she tore them away.

A face emerged. In tranquil slumber, a resting face appeared with stressed lines drawn over the crease of the forehead and purple crescents marked below the serenely closed eyes. The cheeks were hollow and caved in like the metal scoopers of ice cream, due to pure age and unhealthiness, and overall, the skin looked to be stretched through time.

This sleeping face belonged to her master, Len, the same young man who had just encouraged her to sing powerfully on the day that seemed like only yesterday. But it wasn't yesterday. That forgotten day had been forty-seven years ago, and ever since then, nothing had been the same.

"Master," Rin said once again. "Master, it's time to get up. Come, awaken."

Her master didn't move.

That was when Rin realized her faithful master's chest neither lifted nor heaved like usual, when he normally breathes on any given day. What does that mean? So what if refused to breathe?

Rin reached out her metal hand to the middle of Len's frozen, unmoving chest. Softly, she dropped her cold hand onto the surface of his front. What she had expected was the feeling of periodic thumping, the sound of rhythmic beating, and the ability to witness the incredible life that consisted within her master. But surprisingly enough, there was no motion felt, no tempo heard, and no overall life met. That was when Rin finally discovered just what exactly had happened.

Len died.

Yet, even with this mortifying tragedy, Rin didn't feel any emotion at all. Not sadness, not anger, not joy. She was a robot. And robots don't have feelings.

Rin was emotionless.

The End

A/N: And that, my beloved readers, brings this pathetic fanfic to a close! It's true that you can call this cheating, since, I don't know, I fail. All I really did was find this on my email, reread it, and then spruce it up. So now, it's posted! Wow, am I lame, huh?

And so, my beloved readers, you have my sincere gratitude for viewing! I hope you liked it, and I genuinely hope you'll take the time to write me a review of your most honest opinion!