Nine: Sparks
I should not, cannot, sleep. Every vein and vessel within my brain is convinced of that. Even when my body starts to lull toward respite, my limbs filling with a warm, leaden heaviness, it will suddenly yank at the wires of my mind, the ones connecting so many circuits in a complicated fusion of instinct, reflex and emotion.
It seems like a complex system, most certainly is when sizzling and open to a surgeon's delicate tools.
But, watching a diluted orange shaft of morning spread across my apprentice's bedroom floor, I know it isn't some tangle of corded hysteria, with countless cables twining and knotting together.
There are separations, outlets spaced out from one another. And the power that flows through each differ in their strength. Some are meager sparks of life, existing without any tangible gratitude or profound purpose.
And then…there are those that could, if needed, fuel the entire unit, working tirelessly while the other components of the assemblage burned out to black.
That can, that have, brought the flush of vivacity to what was considered to be little more than machine, pushing it beyond the stiff limits of electric, rudimentary existence. That sent blood, hot and pumping, through the normally cold form.
Days were rigid cycles, once. Hours devoted to precise activity, a schedule drafted by a robotic drone who only occasionally experienced a splice in his networking, and saw flashes of life the way others, the ones with beating hearts, saw it. But with a few clicking blinks, those distracting images would be gone, and he could continue in his painstakingly planned timetable.
Wake. Yes. Shower. Yes. Dress. Yes. Consume morning meal. Yes-if it was remembered to do so. Attend various meetings. Yes. Spar. Yes. Consume midday meal. Yes-if previous task did not run too long, but it was acceptable if such an event occurred. Sparring prevented those inconvenient falters in circuitry, after all. Meditate. Yes-it was satisfactory if this endeavor were sacrificed, for if it surpassed its allotted time, things began to bend and strobe uncomfortable light in his head. Consume evening meal. Yes. Draft reports. Yes-very useful after instances of the bend and light. Sleep. Yes-not nearly as pleasant as the prior, but necessary.
It was not in him to dream. Such things could cause blue sprays of energy in his largely gray mind that threw parts of the system, parts better left dormant, into overdrive.
A very practical life, a smooth way without turbulence.
But then…there was a bump, a dent in the galvanized armor.
Wake. Shower. Dress. Consume morning meal. Attend audience of initiate lightsaber duels and performances.
No. No, he informed the sentient that was staring up at him, confusing him with its folds of soft skin when he himself had only lusterless steel. Such an inconsistency would not compute. It was not acceptable. It was not right.
And he told the sentient so, ignoring the brief flashes in his temple that wanted him to recognize a sort of envy when his eyes came in contact with that flesh.
He could do more than ignore it. He could correct it, yes, because in his thought process, in a particular outlet, he knew that the tender, elastic coverings of a sentient, with their whims and emotion, could not compete with his cool, calculated efficiency, his glinting surface that could deflect all foreign matter, that could reflect their strange, flushed faces so that they could only see themselves, never him. Never him.
Yet, there was a maddening flaw in his makeup. Duty. It overrode his rational objections. Obligation-even when it had the potential of a spark, of a beam of unexpected, unbidden light-had a hefty predominance that he could not disregard.
So he added a new, temporary grid in his day's graph.
Attend audience of initiate lightsaber duels and performances.
Yes.
It would be disruptive, but it would not be disastrous. Because all the other cords were in place. They did not move.
He sat in the stands, not feeling (with all his focused energy) the clustered warmth of the beings around him. He carried out his duty, yes, duty was what it was so it couldn't possibly alter his interior set-up, since duty was a base socket.
He watched with unchanging eyes the small figures below, swiping their buzzing weapons, flipping and moving and totally divided from him.
Totally….until there was him, the sentient with an abundance of light, light that tried to weed into his dark power station, and even touch upon the switches and plugs. Touch with his fluidity, his body defying the automation of the machine's own movements.
And, more disconcerting, he would not leave the station once he entered. Even when he wasn't present in body, his traces were left, printed on the cords and outlets, slowly wearing away their layers.
No. That most definitely did not compute. He needed to be repaired, so he could move forward again, return to his schedule, his safe configuration.
He did, for a short span of time. But it was never the same after the initial disorder.
It was never the same, because he began to realize, in an odd, neglected corner of his terminal, that what was causing the deterioration were not the prints themselves….but the fact that they were singular.
That there were no more of them.
Beside duty was preservation, and it was his duty to preserve his steel shell, his form. Therefor, it was his duty to bring an extra form to his quarters, if it ensured preservation of the shell.
But no--there were negations now in his grid when there were always assurances.
Wake. Yes. Shower. Yes. Wake him--that was something he was unaccustomed to. A spark when there should have been stillness. Consume morning meal. Yes. Discuss the day's projected events--never before had he needed to do this, except in the era before his reprogramming, the bits of image he so wanted to avoid. Escort him to various classes and/or attend various meetings with him--new as well. He was forced to speak when it was not wired in him to. Spar with him--an especially taxing variance from his usual routine. He was not prepared for the sudden halts in the duel, when he needed to instruct, when he had to draw from inactive cables. Worse, when he saw biting color, red, and knew, from some buried cord, that he needed to patch a wound on the boy's unfamiliar, sentient skin. He recognized the red, a simple signal of maintenance that needed to be undergone, had identified it occasionally in his own form. But he had been detached from the accompanying sensation-pain-then. When it happened to the boy, he could not stall it inside him. He felt that sensation, saw the strobes of blinding illumination. Consume midday meal--yes, and there was no option of skipping that. What was once a choice was now a necessity. He had to sit beside him, be sure that he ate even when he himself was not compelled to. And again, he was forced to speak, despite his programming. Lead the boy into meditation--that required more cords to be inserted in already overhauled plugs, because the boy needed to be hooked to that system, on some level, so that he could do his duty. More prints were left in the machine's simulation of a mind. Meditate--and the difficulty of this was increased significantly, with the new connections and wiring. Too many attachments caused those great explosions of blue sparks. Too much color, the machine was aware. Color and light. Consume evening meal--the uncomfortably spontaneous speech once more. Monitor the boy's homework--and there were numerous instances when he would need to jiggle the head of a plug, so that it functioned again, and he could properly act out his obligations. Sleep--
The largest, most shattering change of all.
There had always been brief flubs in that section of the planned day, additional hours of cognizance when there was meant to be only rest. He adapted, and adjusted his schedule to allow for it.
But he didn't allow for the shrill sound that sliced through the silence, that immediately sent the electric showers off in his head. He didn't count on the tears, the warm moisture gleaming on that soft, strange skin, that needed to be dried by his blunt steel fingers. He wasn't rightly prepared for the strings of garbled, gasping words, words that described dreams, nightmares. Things he wasn't designed to have or understand, but now possessed, in both respects.
He was a machine, and machines were not meant to cradle small, shivering sentient forms and whisper soothing murmurs in their ears and stroke their feathery, clean hair and press cool cloths to their fevered foreheads and laugh at their unique humor and reply with a similar attempt meant to bring a smile to their flushed sentient faces and reassure them and guide them and gently inform them of their errors and praise their talents and remember each of their bruises and heal those bruises and become afraid when those bruises are too extensive to be easily healed and sit beside hospital beds, holding their limp sentient hands and touch machinery to skin, forehead to forehead, cheek to cheek and worry over every frown that surfaces and run cold, manufactured hands down thin, plaited strands of brown hair and carry tired bodies to their rooms and linger there in their rooms and talk to them and talk to them even when it isn't required and forget about self-preservation and hold them and watch them and…love…them.
Love, what was that?
There was duty, obligation, bodily functions--what was love?
If it was the stirring in his motionless chest whenever he looked at the boy, whenever the youth achieved something beyond expectation or just smiled his genuine, disarming smile, then it was the cord that was shoved in when there wasn't adequate space for it. Other cables-distance and selfishness and self-protection-were heated to an unbearable degree, flying from their sockets and landing somewhere very nearly out of reach. He could still replace them, if needed.
But he didn't.
Love, very plainly, did not compute in his old system. And he soon discovered it didn't in the rapidly evolving one, either.
Love did not exist in a droid's counterfeit heart.
But the boy did exist, with his feathery, clean hair and bruises and unique humor. And if he existed, then love had to as well, because the boy was love.
The last eruption of sparks and popping energy and then the entire onslaught of images.
It was overwhelming. He felt things that were banished from him for what was akin to an eternity: sadness, happiness, depression, joy, romance, devastation, guilt, terror, affection…anger. What seemed like more than his share of that.
Yet--these were all components of a human soul--and he had them. He had them all along. They were there, the anger and sadness securing the festered plugs, stifling the joy and affection, but never succeeding in executing them.
And they were returned to him in their entirety, as was his human form, his skin, turning warm and cold and scraping and bleeding and mending and resembling that of the boy, so that he could finally relate to him, a being who, at last, shared some of his attributes.
And for awhile, he tried to grasp to his former self, to the wisely detached machine who stayed in the dark and prospered satisfactorily in the gray. Who didn't stare out at the night sky, and if he did, did not notice the glittering, breathtaking spectacle--who didn't have breath in the first place.
But, if one didn't breathe, one couldn't laugh or scream or teach or murmur or cry…
Who would want to cry? He had seen the rivulets of wet on the sentient faces from time to time, sometimes in a cloud of cosmetic black or stream or pure, clear dampness. It was a symbol of misery, and machines were saved from such suffering. Because if robots cried then that would send more sparks flying and crackling and their whole system could crash. Not crying was another method of self-preservation--duty.
The final hurdle, the obstacle that would cause the total destruction of the steel: When the boy cried, from pain or fear or some unnamed source, he could not think of the foolishness of humans, could not ridicule their stupidity of tears. Or else he himself was the greatest fool--for whenever the boy cried, he cried along with him.
And loved him and laughed with him and screamed with him and taught him and murmured to him…
I was a human again, in complete, breathing sentient form.
It was frightening, exhausting…and wonderful.
As long as Obi-Wan was there to leave his marks, I was of flesh and bone, and the fixed schedule was obliterated. I couldn't hold fast to that lifestyle, because some mornings I didn't wake and shower and dress. Often I woke and sneaked into my apprentice's shadowed room and threw open the curtains and tickled the drowsy, half-awake child, forgetting that there had ever been a set way of things, a constant rhythm that was never supposed to be yielding to new notes.
Obi-Wan was my heart, my pumping blood, my immovable central cord, my beautiful, ever-surprising symphony.
And in the blink of an eye--or the forced laxness of one--he had lost each of those, was bereft of him and his life-giving touch.
Instead of love and laughter there was tense fear, anguish, rage. Without him, I slowly reverted back to a harshly specific little schedule, following it like the drone I had once been.
Wake. Yes. Shower. Yes. Dress. Yes. Sit in living area, holding the boy's cloak. Yes. Sit in the boy's room. Yes. Walk to Gardens. Yes. Sit in the boy's favorite spot. Yes. Return to quarters. Yes. Pace the floor. Yes. Sleep. Yes--when he could.
There was love, still. But it was a memory, data from a former existence, as it had been before. Painful sparks.
Then--just when he was on the brink of shutting down--there was a breach in his daily plan.
Wake. Shower. Dress. Sit in living area, holding the boy's cloak. Receive transmission from an arriving transport.
And I was shedding the sheets of steel, running down the corridors, those foolish human tears rushing down my fleshy human face.
I saw my heart, laid out on the stretcher, and wrapped my arms around it--felt it within my chest again, after so long a stillness, beating.
I remained beside Obi-Wan, sometimes glancing out at the glistening nightfall, hearing that euphony again.
And I could remember the barren, mechanical time when his Padawan was gone…it couldn't happen again.
So sleep was edited from my mind and body, out of duty and love and so much more.
It was eliminated--so that I could always breathe and listen to the harmony of my heart.
The sun is full in the morning sky now, and I quietly inhale, reaching out to lay my palm against Obi-Wan's chest, feeling the measured reverberations pulsing against my touch.
Obi-Wan stirs, the sheets twisting softly with his movements.
I don't retract my hand, senselessly terrified of my memories, that parts of the machine are still inside me, waiting to resume their regular, emotionless habits, as they did when Obi-Wan was stolen from me, and my body became that horrible shell again.
We are attached. It isn't self-preservation. It's protection of us both.
Obi-Wan blinks, scarlet--red-- threads staining the whites of his eyes. "Master?" He says groggily.
I'm glad that I've shielded myself so intensely from him. I think that these last musings would have disturbed him. "It's time to get up, Padawan." I reply, clearing my throat when a lump rises. My voice is little more than a rasp.
His eyes fall for a moment, and I notice that he doesn't seem as rested as he should, that he actually appears nearly as exhausted as I surely do.
I brush my fingers across his forehead, flashes of those lonely days and created images of prowlers, climbing through his window going off in my mind, and I swallow hard. I wish I could just order him to stay here, to not leave for his morning class. Instead, "You better get ready. Class starts in an hour." And, my lips trembling slightly, "I'll take you there today."
I expect an objection, for him to argue it would be out of my way, a waste of my time. But he only smiles, very weakly. "Alright, Master."
I leave him, reluctantly, and move to my own room, to prepare for another weary day.