Clu is radiant. His eyes are electric, burning blue as he swaggers into the space.
He's just returned from Arjia. My scans can sense it.
I sense it.
Jarvis looks up, stopping in his work to observe our mutual superior's apparent glee. His control panel, meanwhile, turns to static as it is abandoned at a crucial moment.
This cannot, however, lower Clu's mood. He waves his hand dismissively at Jarvis, who retracts himself back behind his panel, and sits down. Things must have gone well.
. . . Whatever that means.
Still jovial, unaware of the stares around him, he calls to me.
"Rinzler."
Voice like electricity.
"Let's check up on your disc."
Jarvis cranes his head over the top of the panel again, peeking out at the room at large. I hardly notice. I am all tunnel vision, consumed by the command before me.
I approach my master. I halt before him, disc in hand, presentation protocol jumping across my eyes.
Head lowered-
. . . flat palms-
I'm well accustomed to this constant instruction, this reminder that I am an accident of a being which is dependent on his superior's custom design. An individual in fragment, coiled inside a shell of code. Of silence . . .
Error.
Clu is right as usual.
I need maintenance.
My master is perched in his usual chair, raised in the center of the room. Daunting. As I present my weapon to him, I lower my head in reverence. In respect, veneration. In servitude.
I always afford him these things.
Clu is the only authority I know.
How much he tampers with me, whatever fate he would have preferred for me, whatever my opinion on the steady changes in his system, they make no difference. I will always serve him, and will always behave as such.
I know my place.
. . .
How could I forget?
