The robot aimlessly trailed around in an odd circular motion. The bright thing above it, what was that? It was big and colorful and cold, the sky. Sky, the robot didn't know the word for sky. It didn't know the word for... anything at all. Perhaps that was to be expected. It was basically a baby after all. It hadn't learnt anything besides what it had just seen. But somehow, it had a deep awareness that children its age don't often have. Small children don't know things in a conscious way, they only feel, but the thoughts are not quite what we would recognize until they reach a certain age. However, this child, it had full awareness and understanding without any of the information someone of its continence deserved.

The outside-of-the-lab world was cold. It should have been colder on the inside, with all the metal and air conditioning, but the robot knew that despite this bizarre contradiction, it was colder out here than in there. There were strange and tall green things surrounding the lab and- ah! The floor was green too. And spiky. The robot could not feel it fully through its shoes, but it had a sense for its texture just from looking at it. Intuition, unfinished as it was, was still ingrained in the creature. As it tried to walk forward some more, a strange emotion crawled up its neurons. Emotion? Was that the correct word? Maybe not, as it was more a logical and clinical reaction to a bad situation. Perhaps.

It felt strange, lonely, and a little scared. Scared. That wasn't real, and it didn't know what it meant to feel scared, did it now. It was natural to "feel" that way though, because sentient creatures desire being with another. It needed more.

It knew about language, that the concept itself existed. Logically, how else would its creator have made it? The thought crossed its mind, but it had no way to verbalize it. It was more like a collection of memories and visuals than a thought formed of words. One was supposed to use language to communicate, correct? But it didn't know any of it. All it knew was that it wanted its creator back, and noise was king.

The robot let out a bizarre, undefined, electronic scream in the hopes to get someone's attention. No one responded. There was nothing. Well, no matter. It'd just have to keep moving forward until someone, or something did respond. The large green things were scary, but there was nowhere else to go. And so onward it marched. As it tottered along, letting out scream after scream, it wondered to itself whether it would ever find someone in this seemingly endless wood. It also kept bonking its head on branches, despite its shortness. Why had it been made so short? Maybe its height was unfinished as well...

Eventually, however, the robot did find someone. A short person. quite like itself, was hobbling around carrying a wooden stick. They seemed to need it to walk. It screamed once more to get their attention and the person turned their head towards the robot. At first, it seemed confused, tilting its head slightly. The robot was enraptured by the way their gray hair tumbled in front of their face, and it noticed that its creamish beige hair acted similarly when it mimicked the head tilting motion. The person finally conceded to check out the strange humanoid creature lurking in the forest, and painstakingly staggered over.

The person looked it over, trying to decide how to address it. They finally settled on, "Hello there, young man..." Another cursory glance at the robot's vacant expression struck a nerve in them, and they croaked out an, "Are you lost?"

Man... young man. The robot had heard of gender before, at least, the idea of it had been one of the things pre-burned into its brain. He supposed he was a boy then, since that's what the person called him. The person looked like a girl too, although he wasn't sure due to lack of a database. Best not to make assumptions when he didn't even know what he was a few seconds ago.

"Oh! You have an ink body," they continued. Huh, if they only noticed it just now then they must be half-blind. "You must be an object, not a human then." There was an odd twinge to their voice when they said that. Objects and humans are different things? Well, he guessed he was an object then, since that's what the person called him. So that's two things figured out now.

"Er, do you speak English young man?"

English... well he could understand it... but not speak it. His creator had used it for certain, and now he knew the name of it. But if he couldn't speak it, how could he refute that? Thinking back to his creator's own nonverbal expressions, he remembered one important one. He shook his head no.

"Oh my! You're a lost child all alone in the woods, and you can't even speak English?"

Child? Hmm. That didn't seem right. Something told the object that that was the first thing they'd assumed wrong about him. Oh well.

"This will never do, not a'tall! Do you have any parents at all? D- Did they just leave you here?" Their voice was so terribly strained from emotion, it almost hurt the boy's ears. Parents? Very unsure... but his creator did just leave him there so... He shook his head yes.

"Oh, how horrid!" Something in the object's chest called him to question their sincerity, but at the same time, it didn't seem right to do so. "Do you have a name young man?"

No.

"Oh, dear... alright. Er, perhaps I should take you to my house... I'll make sure that everything will be alright, a- and we can work something out. Does that sound nice?"

Yes.

"Wonderful. Here, let me help you along. Your arm doesn't look so good."

...

The old woman took the confused boy home and decided to take him as her own child. His parents were nowhere to be seen, even after weeks of waiting, and he seemed to be suffering from amnesia by the looks of things. After all, how could a child of his age not have a name or way or any knowledge of any language? She'd noticed after a while that he had a few... visual oddities. He had a visible spine connecting his chest and his hips with nothing else in between. A banged up arm dangled at his side. Perhaps that was a result of being an object? She'd never really gotten to know much about them, as she'd always lived alone. Maybe their anatomy could allow for injuries like that.

The old lady wondered what kind of parents would leave an amnesiac child in the woods with nothing but a pair of shorts and shoes. She'd tried to ask him if he knew anything after she began to teach him English, but all he would talk about was his "creator." She had a few speculations, like a crazed cult or a science experiment, but she never bothered to give them much thought.

He always expressed his gratitude for teaching him language, but not much else. He never commented on anything, not the house, not the woods, not anything at all. He was so quiet most of the time, and the one thing she knew about him was that he didn't like being suddenly startled or touched. He would freak out and scream for a moment, then fall into his silence again. While he seemed intent on consuming all the information he could from books and the like, he never used this information or even seemed to retain it well. She would occasionally test him on the things he read, but he only seemed to take in about 45% of it permanently.

One day, he had gone into the woods and came back with a fixed arm and shirt that seemed perfectly fitted for him. It tapered to his body, with a checkered pattern on the front consisting of green, red, blue, and yellow, and a single stripe with what looked like a computer screen on it. The sleeves were half length and dark green, with bright green lines spiraling around them. When the woman touched the screen, she was surprised to find it was real glass and not a pattern, and even more shocked that he could display things on it. He said it came from "the lab" but didn't tell her anything else. She didn't want to pester him about it much more. Whatever place that could produce such things was not somewhere she was terribly interested in anyways.

She had always wanted a child though, often wondering what she would name them if she did. Luckily, this meant she had a name stocked up just for this occasion. It was a human one, of course, not quite fitting of the traditional object naming scheme, but surely nothing bad could come of that. The boy's name would be...

Colin.