A/N: I am so sorry it's taken so long to update. I realize It hasn't even
been a week, but my goal is to update at LEAST twice a week. Anyway, I
meant to finish this chapter this weekend, but after 50 frickin' hours at
work in five days with split shifts and all, I needed a couple of days to
recuperate (i.e, sleep). As always, thank you to everyone who reviewed. I
went back and edited the first three chapters, and wow, you guys have a lot
of patience (Saro hides in embarrassment over so many stupid grammatical
errors). Now, on with the show!
Disclaimer: Inuyasha is not mine, he belongs to someone else, and what's more, he does not belong to me. Alright, I think I made myself clear.
Synthetic Emotions
Kagome woke up with a sore back and a kink in her neck, but also warm and safe.
'Safe?' she thought, stretching, her brain still muzzy with sleep. 'Why does safe matter. . .?'
Then she realized that she wasn't in bed, she didn't have her blankets, and that she was leaning against something that didn't make the best pillow in the world. Her eyes snapped open and she found herself looking up into the face of Inuyasha. She pulled away in surprise and stared at the startled hanyou. Her shoulder popped with her sudden motion.
'He might be beautiful, but he isn't very soft.' Kagome didn't know what to say, so she gave a lame, "Good morning."
"Good morning," he replied.
'Wait, did he just let me sleep on him?' Kagome blinked and felt her cheeks grow hot. She was blushing. Yesterday came back to her in a rush, leaving her more than a little stunned. Inuyasha had saved her from Eiji. Eiji was dead.
Inuyasha had comforted her. Maybe he did like her a little after all?
"It's a good thing you woke up when you did," Inuyasha said, breaking the silence. "You'd be late for work if you slept in any longer."
The girl jumped up, looking around frantically for a clock. When she found one, perched on the mantle where it always was, she saw it was already almost seven.
"Inuyasha, why didn't you wake me?" Her voice came out louder and higher than she meant it to.
"Keh. Do I look like and alarm clock to you?" the hanyou asked sarcastically. Kagome shot him a glare over her shoulder as she rushed out of the room to find her work clothes, and saw he was smirking.
*~*~*
There were, needless to say, no more protests about Inuyasha accompanying Kagome to work. In fact, after hearing about the incident, Kagome's boss and co-workers practically insisted on keeping him around. Over the next few days, the dog hanyou became a fixture at the cafe, and in the rest of the girl's life, really. It startled her how fast she grew accustomed to having him around. The two of them finally seemed to have reached a truce.
Which wasn't to say they didn't argue.
"I don't see what you're getting so damned upset over," Inuyasha said, exasperated.
"You shouldn't pick on Shippo," Kagome explained with more patience than she felt. This was one of their more common arguments. For some reason, the two youkai refused to get along. She could almost understand this sort of jealous behavior from a children's model, but she would have thought a Companion youkai above such things. She would have thought wrong. The fox youkai in question stuck his tongue out at Inuyasha, who snarled predictably in response. "Shippo," she chided gently, "you don't have to provoke him, either."
"He started it," Shippo pouted.
"I did not!"
Kagome ignored the fact that neither of them ought to be able to lie to her, even though one of them very obviously must be.
"Listen," the girl pleaded with Inuyasha, "is it too much to ask that you guys try to get along? Please?"
"Why are you telling me," the hanyou asked, a frown darkening his features. "Tell the runt."
"Inuyasha, you have to be adult about this."
"Why? He's been active longer than I have. He only 'looks' like a kid, you know."
Kagome hadn't expected that line of attack, so she was still trying to find a proper response, when the phone rang. The girl shot her hanyou a glare so he knew he wasn't of the hook yet, then hurried to discover who had saved him for the moment.
When she hit the speak-button, a little video screen set in the phone blinked on, and the image of a familiar face coalesced before her eyes. Deceptively serene expression. Tousled hair pulled back into a tail. Miroku smiled at her benignly.
"Hello, Kagome," he said. "How've you been?"
"Just fine, thanks," Kagome told him warily. It wasn't like Miroku to call without a reason.
"And Shippo is working properly?"
"Shippo's fine, too," she assured, waiting for him to get to the point.
"Glad to hear it! Listen, I was just calling because I was thinking about that hanyou of yours and decided to see if I could dig anything up on him incase you did decide to sell him--"
"I'm not selling him!" Kagome interrupted. She couldn't help but be horrified by the idea. He'd saved her life, and while the last few days hadn't been smooth, she still wasn't going to sell him. He was. . . he was. . . Inuyasha.
The young man cleared his throat. "In any event, I was looking into some of the press releases that Inutaiyoukai was making at the time, and at some of the prototype specs and all that good garbage, and I found out some really--interesting--things. There are some very surprising designs here, Kagome. I mean, some really innovative things. I don't even know what they were trying to do with some of these youkai! And the hanyou," Miroku shook his head, letting that thought trail off. "Kagome, I think you should come over and see for yourself."
"What have you found?" The girl asked, her curiosity engaged.
"Nothing specifically about Inuyasha at this point, but I'm still looking. I have Myoga running through all his data to see what he might come up with. Have you ever heard of Tetsusaiga?"
"What?"
"Tetsusaiga," Miroku repeated. Kagome had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently, he saw this, because he continued. "It was a program Inutaiyoukai was talking about putting it their hanyou once they perfected them."
Kagome stared at her friend through the little video screen. "Well, what does it do?" she prompted when he said no more.
"I think you should come over."
"Inuyasha and I will be over in about an hour," she said after a moment's deliberation. "How's that?"
"Wonderful. See you then," he said before his image vanished, replaced by the phone's stand-by screen.
"Hey Kagome," Inuyasha said, appearing next to her with Shippo dangling by his tail from one hand. "What was that?"
"We're going to visit Miroku," Kagome told him. "Now put Shippo down."
*~*~*
As always, Miroku was behind the glass counter when they arrived. This time he was reading a pamphlet with the letters AYC printed prominently across it. On the counter top was another magazine with that same activist woman on it. She was posed over a catch line about the Anti-Youkai Coalition, arms set firmly on her hips, looking very formidable in a pink tee shirt and blue jeans. Kagome was mildly impressed. It's hard to make pink look formidable.
Also on the counter top was the smallest youkai Kagome had ever seen, Myoga. Myoga was one of Miroku's favorite projects. He had originally been designed to retrieve information for his owners. He had access to literally hundreds of data banks and search engines, and his own memory was nearly limitless, based on revolutionary work in the field of prism storage. . . or something like that. Around there, Kagome had tuned out. Miroku had bought the little youkai from one of the scrapping facilities where he scrounged for parts, and returned the flea youkai to almost perfect working order. Almost, because Myoga's memory was sometimes not completely accurate.
"Are you becoming an activist?" Kagome asked, taking in the pamphlet and the magazine speculatively.
"Of course not," Miroku scoffed setting aside the pamphlet. "It's all propaganda. But this young lady," he gestured to the girl's stern face, "is really putting new life in the AYC, and those religious groups that frown on youkai are getting behind her. Very interesting, actually."
"Who is she?" Kagome asked, once again struck by the impression that the girl in the magazine looked very sad.
"Her name is Hiraikostu Sango. Allegedly, her whole family was slaughtered by a rogue youkai," he explained. "As I said, she's the source of the anti- youkai movement's new fervor."
"Rogue youkai?" Kagome couldn't quite suppress a incredulous smile. "Isn't that just an urban legend?"
Miroku shrugged. "She doesn't think so."
"Ahem," Inuyasha said pointedly. "Is that why we came all the way here to see this grab-ass?"
"Inuyasha!" Kagome hissed at the same time Miroku snapped defensively, "I am a gentleman."
Inuyasha snorted to both, making his opinion very clear.
Then Miroku's face split in a grin. "You know," he told Kagome in an amused tone, "seeing him I can almost believe Inutaiyoukai succeeded in making a youkai with emotions. Or a hanyou, at least."
"What?" Kagome nearly gasped. She wasn't sure why, but it didn't seem like a good idea to let too many people know Inuyasha could feel. Some groups had enough problems with artificial intelligence; she didn't want to know how they'd respond to the idea of synthetic emotions. Her eyes returned to Hiraikotsu Sango's unhappy face.
"That's what Inutaiyoukai's CEO started trying to do over sixty years ago and he kept at it until he died," explained to her happily, awe tinting his voice. "I've come across some of the old interviews with him, and I'm not sure if the guy's a crackpot, or my new hero. Maybe both. He was definitely brilliant, and it was his obsession to create a 'living machine.' He was directly involved in developing many of his company's most experimental prototypes. When he died, Inutaiyoukai gave up on making a human-youkai and started pumping its resources into commercial production.
"There's a picture of him here," Miroku said as he finished, turning to his computer and pulling up an article from some old periodical. Within seconds, Kagome was looking at a handsome, gruff looking man in his forties. He had a strong, cleanly made face, dominated by fiercely determined eyes. Actually, Kagome realized, he looked rather like an older version of Inuyasha, except his coloring was that common to a Japanese human, instead of the hanyou's striking youkai appearance.
"It's sad that they quit trying when he died," Kagome said softly. "What else did it say about him?"
"Myoga," Miroku said, and the diminutive youkai jumped on Kagome's shoulder.
"Taisho was a visionary man," Myoga said, his small, tinny voice conveying something akin to worship. "He not only strove to create a youkai with human capabilities to think and feel instead of acting on programmed responses, thus leading to the creation of numerous hanyou models, he also is responsible for the learning engines found in almost all modern youkai. He invented the emotion simulator as it is known today, and made huge advances in the--"
"Is there a point to all of this?" Inuyasha broke in, annoyance written in every line of his body. "The guy's dead, so none of this matters anyway. So he invented a few gadgets. So what?"
Kagome frowned. "I want to hear about him, Inuyasha."
"Keh," he responded, looking away.
"Go on, Myoga," she encouraged the flea youkai on her shoulder.
"Thank you, my lady," it responded. "As I was saying, he made huge advances in simulating human external features, like skin, hair, even respiration, body temperature and pulse. Without a doubt he shaped the face of youkai production, and set the bar for all those who would follow. He--"
"That's enough Myoga," Miroku interrupted. "Now tell her about Tetsusaiga."
"Tetsusaiga?" Kagome asked, remembering her friend mentioning that before over the phone. "What's Tetsusaiga?"
*~*~*
A/N: Have I done a bad thing? Hm, probably, but how can I not end on that note? Besides, I try to keep my chapters around two thousand words, and this is at two thousand forty-odd.
Alright, now I have a couple of dilemmas I thought I would share with my wonderful readers. The first is this: In the beginning, I had a plan for this story, but due to random chapter mitosis and sudden, spontaneous muse intervention, my plan has been shot to hell. I meant to have Sango actually in here by chapter eight, and, as you can see, I failed miserably. I'm not really unhappy with this--I like it when stories take on a life of their own--but I thought it only fair to give warning. I still know how everything ends, I'm just not sure how I'm getting there.
My second dilemma involves the possibility of a sex scene. I have pretty much decided that Kagome and Inuyasha will sleep together during this story's timeline, but I'm not sure if I'll actually write a scene for it, or leave it implied. I'm not really reluctant to write a sex scene, because I feel it could be useful for plot purposes, but it would be most effective if it were from Inu's perspective, showing how he (as a hanyou) responds to the situation, and I have absolutely no idea how a robot would experience sex! He can feel, but can he experience physical pleasure and satisfaction? Can a machine lose himself in the moment, even if he can feel emotion? Can a machine sweat? And about a thousand other questions ranging from disturbingly insightful to incredibly stupid. In other words, my head hurts.
Any thoughts on either of these problems would be greatly appreciated, so if you have an opinion, include it in a review. Thanks.
Until later.
Disclaimer: Inuyasha is not mine, he belongs to someone else, and what's more, he does not belong to me. Alright, I think I made myself clear.
Synthetic Emotions
Kagome woke up with a sore back and a kink in her neck, but also warm and safe.
'Safe?' she thought, stretching, her brain still muzzy with sleep. 'Why does safe matter. . .?'
Then she realized that she wasn't in bed, she didn't have her blankets, and that she was leaning against something that didn't make the best pillow in the world. Her eyes snapped open and she found herself looking up into the face of Inuyasha. She pulled away in surprise and stared at the startled hanyou. Her shoulder popped with her sudden motion.
'He might be beautiful, but he isn't very soft.' Kagome didn't know what to say, so she gave a lame, "Good morning."
"Good morning," he replied.
'Wait, did he just let me sleep on him?' Kagome blinked and felt her cheeks grow hot. She was blushing. Yesterday came back to her in a rush, leaving her more than a little stunned. Inuyasha had saved her from Eiji. Eiji was dead.
Inuyasha had comforted her. Maybe he did like her a little after all?
"It's a good thing you woke up when you did," Inuyasha said, breaking the silence. "You'd be late for work if you slept in any longer."
The girl jumped up, looking around frantically for a clock. When she found one, perched on the mantle where it always was, she saw it was already almost seven.
"Inuyasha, why didn't you wake me?" Her voice came out louder and higher than she meant it to.
"Keh. Do I look like and alarm clock to you?" the hanyou asked sarcastically. Kagome shot him a glare over her shoulder as she rushed out of the room to find her work clothes, and saw he was smirking.
*~*~*
There were, needless to say, no more protests about Inuyasha accompanying Kagome to work. In fact, after hearing about the incident, Kagome's boss and co-workers practically insisted on keeping him around. Over the next few days, the dog hanyou became a fixture at the cafe, and in the rest of the girl's life, really. It startled her how fast she grew accustomed to having him around. The two of them finally seemed to have reached a truce.
Which wasn't to say they didn't argue.
"I don't see what you're getting so damned upset over," Inuyasha said, exasperated.
"You shouldn't pick on Shippo," Kagome explained with more patience than she felt. This was one of their more common arguments. For some reason, the two youkai refused to get along. She could almost understand this sort of jealous behavior from a children's model, but she would have thought a Companion youkai above such things. She would have thought wrong. The fox youkai in question stuck his tongue out at Inuyasha, who snarled predictably in response. "Shippo," she chided gently, "you don't have to provoke him, either."
"He started it," Shippo pouted.
"I did not!"
Kagome ignored the fact that neither of them ought to be able to lie to her, even though one of them very obviously must be.
"Listen," the girl pleaded with Inuyasha, "is it too much to ask that you guys try to get along? Please?"
"Why are you telling me," the hanyou asked, a frown darkening his features. "Tell the runt."
"Inuyasha, you have to be adult about this."
"Why? He's been active longer than I have. He only 'looks' like a kid, you know."
Kagome hadn't expected that line of attack, so she was still trying to find a proper response, when the phone rang. The girl shot her hanyou a glare so he knew he wasn't of the hook yet, then hurried to discover who had saved him for the moment.
When she hit the speak-button, a little video screen set in the phone blinked on, and the image of a familiar face coalesced before her eyes. Deceptively serene expression. Tousled hair pulled back into a tail. Miroku smiled at her benignly.
"Hello, Kagome," he said. "How've you been?"
"Just fine, thanks," Kagome told him warily. It wasn't like Miroku to call without a reason.
"And Shippo is working properly?"
"Shippo's fine, too," she assured, waiting for him to get to the point.
"Glad to hear it! Listen, I was just calling because I was thinking about that hanyou of yours and decided to see if I could dig anything up on him incase you did decide to sell him--"
"I'm not selling him!" Kagome interrupted. She couldn't help but be horrified by the idea. He'd saved her life, and while the last few days hadn't been smooth, she still wasn't going to sell him. He was. . . he was. . . Inuyasha.
The young man cleared his throat. "In any event, I was looking into some of the press releases that Inutaiyoukai was making at the time, and at some of the prototype specs and all that good garbage, and I found out some really--interesting--things. There are some very surprising designs here, Kagome. I mean, some really innovative things. I don't even know what they were trying to do with some of these youkai! And the hanyou," Miroku shook his head, letting that thought trail off. "Kagome, I think you should come over and see for yourself."
"What have you found?" The girl asked, her curiosity engaged.
"Nothing specifically about Inuyasha at this point, but I'm still looking. I have Myoga running through all his data to see what he might come up with. Have you ever heard of Tetsusaiga?"
"What?"
"Tetsusaiga," Miroku repeated. Kagome had no idea what he was talking about. Apparently, he saw this, because he continued. "It was a program Inutaiyoukai was talking about putting it their hanyou once they perfected them."
Kagome stared at her friend through the little video screen. "Well, what does it do?" she prompted when he said no more.
"I think you should come over."
"Inuyasha and I will be over in about an hour," she said after a moment's deliberation. "How's that?"
"Wonderful. See you then," he said before his image vanished, replaced by the phone's stand-by screen.
"Hey Kagome," Inuyasha said, appearing next to her with Shippo dangling by his tail from one hand. "What was that?"
"We're going to visit Miroku," Kagome told him. "Now put Shippo down."
*~*~*
As always, Miroku was behind the glass counter when they arrived. This time he was reading a pamphlet with the letters AYC printed prominently across it. On the counter top was another magazine with that same activist woman on it. She was posed over a catch line about the Anti-Youkai Coalition, arms set firmly on her hips, looking very formidable in a pink tee shirt and blue jeans. Kagome was mildly impressed. It's hard to make pink look formidable.
Also on the counter top was the smallest youkai Kagome had ever seen, Myoga. Myoga was one of Miroku's favorite projects. He had originally been designed to retrieve information for his owners. He had access to literally hundreds of data banks and search engines, and his own memory was nearly limitless, based on revolutionary work in the field of prism storage. . . or something like that. Around there, Kagome had tuned out. Miroku had bought the little youkai from one of the scrapping facilities where he scrounged for parts, and returned the flea youkai to almost perfect working order. Almost, because Myoga's memory was sometimes not completely accurate.
"Are you becoming an activist?" Kagome asked, taking in the pamphlet and the magazine speculatively.
"Of course not," Miroku scoffed setting aside the pamphlet. "It's all propaganda. But this young lady," he gestured to the girl's stern face, "is really putting new life in the AYC, and those religious groups that frown on youkai are getting behind her. Very interesting, actually."
"Who is she?" Kagome asked, once again struck by the impression that the girl in the magazine looked very sad.
"Her name is Hiraikostu Sango. Allegedly, her whole family was slaughtered by a rogue youkai," he explained. "As I said, she's the source of the anti- youkai movement's new fervor."
"Rogue youkai?" Kagome couldn't quite suppress a incredulous smile. "Isn't that just an urban legend?"
Miroku shrugged. "She doesn't think so."
"Ahem," Inuyasha said pointedly. "Is that why we came all the way here to see this grab-ass?"
"Inuyasha!" Kagome hissed at the same time Miroku snapped defensively, "I am a gentleman."
Inuyasha snorted to both, making his opinion very clear.
Then Miroku's face split in a grin. "You know," he told Kagome in an amused tone, "seeing him I can almost believe Inutaiyoukai succeeded in making a youkai with emotions. Or a hanyou, at least."
"What?" Kagome nearly gasped. She wasn't sure why, but it didn't seem like a good idea to let too many people know Inuyasha could feel. Some groups had enough problems with artificial intelligence; she didn't want to know how they'd respond to the idea of synthetic emotions. Her eyes returned to Hiraikotsu Sango's unhappy face.
"That's what Inutaiyoukai's CEO started trying to do over sixty years ago and he kept at it until he died," explained to her happily, awe tinting his voice. "I've come across some of the old interviews with him, and I'm not sure if the guy's a crackpot, or my new hero. Maybe both. He was definitely brilliant, and it was his obsession to create a 'living machine.' He was directly involved in developing many of his company's most experimental prototypes. When he died, Inutaiyoukai gave up on making a human-youkai and started pumping its resources into commercial production.
"There's a picture of him here," Miroku said as he finished, turning to his computer and pulling up an article from some old periodical. Within seconds, Kagome was looking at a handsome, gruff looking man in his forties. He had a strong, cleanly made face, dominated by fiercely determined eyes. Actually, Kagome realized, he looked rather like an older version of Inuyasha, except his coloring was that common to a Japanese human, instead of the hanyou's striking youkai appearance.
"It's sad that they quit trying when he died," Kagome said softly. "What else did it say about him?"
"Myoga," Miroku said, and the diminutive youkai jumped on Kagome's shoulder.
"Taisho was a visionary man," Myoga said, his small, tinny voice conveying something akin to worship. "He not only strove to create a youkai with human capabilities to think and feel instead of acting on programmed responses, thus leading to the creation of numerous hanyou models, he also is responsible for the learning engines found in almost all modern youkai. He invented the emotion simulator as it is known today, and made huge advances in the--"
"Is there a point to all of this?" Inuyasha broke in, annoyance written in every line of his body. "The guy's dead, so none of this matters anyway. So he invented a few gadgets. So what?"
Kagome frowned. "I want to hear about him, Inuyasha."
"Keh," he responded, looking away.
"Go on, Myoga," she encouraged the flea youkai on her shoulder.
"Thank you, my lady," it responded. "As I was saying, he made huge advances in simulating human external features, like skin, hair, even respiration, body temperature and pulse. Without a doubt he shaped the face of youkai production, and set the bar for all those who would follow. He--"
"That's enough Myoga," Miroku interrupted. "Now tell her about Tetsusaiga."
"Tetsusaiga?" Kagome asked, remembering her friend mentioning that before over the phone. "What's Tetsusaiga?"
*~*~*
A/N: Have I done a bad thing? Hm, probably, but how can I not end on that note? Besides, I try to keep my chapters around two thousand words, and this is at two thousand forty-odd.
Alright, now I have a couple of dilemmas I thought I would share with my wonderful readers. The first is this: In the beginning, I had a plan for this story, but due to random chapter mitosis and sudden, spontaneous muse intervention, my plan has been shot to hell. I meant to have Sango actually in here by chapter eight, and, as you can see, I failed miserably. I'm not really unhappy with this--I like it when stories take on a life of their own--but I thought it only fair to give warning. I still know how everything ends, I'm just not sure how I'm getting there.
My second dilemma involves the possibility of a sex scene. I have pretty much decided that Kagome and Inuyasha will sleep together during this story's timeline, but I'm not sure if I'll actually write a scene for it, or leave it implied. I'm not really reluctant to write a sex scene, because I feel it could be useful for plot purposes, but it would be most effective if it were from Inu's perspective, showing how he (as a hanyou) responds to the situation, and I have absolutely no idea how a robot would experience sex! He can feel, but can he experience physical pleasure and satisfaction? Can a machine lose himself in the moment, even if he can feel emotion? Can a machine sweat? And about a thousand other questions ranging from disturbingly insightful to incredibly stupid. In other words, my head hurts.
Any thoughts on either of these problems would be greatly appreciated, so if you have an opinion, include it in a review. Thanks.
Until later.