It was Sunday, Dr. Wily`s day off, and by extension it was Blues`s day off too. That meant no tests, no cameras, and no netscreen chats with Judith either. Before he`d learned about his failing power core, Blues might have spent that precious free time in front of the piano, reading a book, or playing cards with Dr. Light at the kitchen table. This morning, however, he found himself lying on his back on the living room floor, warming his legs under the kotatsu and watching the second hand of the clock on the wall as it made its unrelenting revolutions.

Two days, eighteen hours, thirteen minutes, and six seconds. Blues counted down the estimated time remaining until he would again lose consciousness with a kind of morbid fascination. Catherine`s urn was a few paces from his head; once in a while he glared at it, and the picture of the smiling dark-haired woman next to it, as if they might be secretly laughing at him.

He heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, then the turn of the lock to the basement door. With a pang of anxiety, he pushed himself farther down into the warm embrace of the kotatsu. He knew Dr. Light had been talking with Takayama just now, and that, whatever the topic of their conversation, they hadn`t wanted him to hear it.

Dr. Light emerged. Blues, looking up from the floor, saw the man`s face enter his field of vision, upside-down.

"You're still here," Tom said, "right where I left you an hour ago."

"Conserving energy, I guess," Blues said.

With a sigh, Dr. Light lowered himself to the floor, and placed his folded hands on top of the table. Blues saw the shaded outlines of dark circles under his eyes, and thought he appeared older. "It`d be better for you to keep doing your normal activites," he said. "That would give us a more accurate picture of..." His voice trailed off, and he forced a smile which, to Blues, looked unintentionally grim. "Anyway, why don`t you play something on the piano? You`ve been making good progress recently."

At that moment, they heard another screech in the distance. Blues rolled out from under the kotatsu, jumped to his feet, and made a dash for the sliding glass door. Without even bothering to put on his coat or shoes, he ran into the garden and squinted up at the sky. He saw a huge bird hovering on broad brown wings high above him. For a reason he couldn`t comprehend, the sight made him angry, and he picked up a rock and hurled it into the air. It soared over the top of the stone wall and landed with a dull thud on the other side: a futile gesture.

"Blues." Dr. Light stood in the doorway, his brow furrowed. "That`s not like you."

"Maybe it is." Blues took a few brisk steps toward the door, and watched Tom`s eyes widen. "You said I`m not finished developing yet, right?"

"You like birds."

"I hate them."

"No." Dr. Light slid the door shut behind him, and came down the concrete step with his arms crossed. "You`re unhappy," he said, "and rightfully so. And they can go wherever they want, while you`re stuck here."

"Take me somewhere, then." Blues had said the words without thinking, but the sound of his own voice emboldened him. He took another step forward.

Tom sat down on the step and lifted his face toward the sun. To Blues`s astonishment, he didn`t answer outright with a "no." Instead, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He appeared to be thinking it over.

"Dr. Light?" Blues felt his anger dissipate. His eyes followed Tom`s to the sky, where the hawk continued to float unperturbed. When he lowered them again, Tom was still gazing upward with a faraway look.

"Take me somewhere," Blues said again. "Please."

"You know I shouldn`t," said Tom, and let out a wistful sigh. "Your existence has to be kept a secret, for now. You understand that much, don`t you?"

But to Blues, the words sounded like a tired recitation, and he saw no reason to give up now. "Yes, but I don`t understand why," he said.

"A time is coming, much sooner than you realize, when I`ll be free to take you wherever you want," said Dr. Light. "You`ve only got a little while longer to wait. If you could just be patient..."

"How can I be patient when..."

Dr. Light gave him a questioning look. "When what?"

Blues had wanted to say "when I`m dying," but he`d stopped himself just in time. He stammered and looked down at his bare feet, and for the first time realized he was cold. Shivering, he wrapped his arms around himself. "Take me somewhere without people, then," he said. "No one will have to know."

Dr. Light patted the spot beside him on the concrete step. "Blues, come here," he said.

After a moment`s hesitation, Blues sat down. He continued to shiver, and Dr. Light removed his own house coat and wrapped it around his shoulders. Blues, feeling compelled by a force beyond his control, leaned into the momentary embrace.

"Somewhere without people," repeated Tom. He let out a long sigh through his nostrils, looked down at the ground, and narrowed his eyes.

Just then, a minor jolt of pain surged through Blues, and he winced and put his hands on his stomach. He turned toward the man beside him. "Three," he said, without having to be asked.

Tom nodded, drew in a deep breath, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked back up at the sky. "It`s a clear day," he said. "No clouds. Not too cold, either."

Blues couldn`t understand what was taking so long. He heard crows cawing in the distance, and watched as a breeze picked up a few dry leaves and dragged them from one side of the garden to the other. As the moments ticked by, he felt a twinge growing in the pit of his stomach—but it was nervous tension, rather than pain—and he couldn`t hold back the feeling that he`d already won.

A slow change came over Tom`s face. The lines around the corners of his eyes deepened, and his mouth turned upward into a slight smile. "I know a place we could go," he said at last, "a little off the beaten path. With any luck, the tourists won`t discover it today."

Blues felt his eyes getting wider. Dr. Light looked at him, and for a half-second Blues saw his own excitement mirrored in his creator`s face.

"You mean..."

Tom nodded, but his expression had become solemn. "But if we do this, you have to promise me that you won`t tell anyone—not even Albert, or Judith—and you have to do exactly as I say."

"I promise," said Blues. He couldn`t believe his own ears.

"This is important. It concerns your life and your future. If we get caught breaking our part of the contract, the other side will be freed of their obligation to uphold theirs."

Blues nodded, though he didn`t understand what it all meant. Dr. Light pushed himself to his feet, turned, and went inside. Blues, too shocked to realize what was happening, hesitated on the step.

"Well, are you coming or not?" There was a hint of mischief, the merest suggestion of conspiracy, in his voice. Blues snapped back to himself, leapt up, and scrambled in after him—stumbling over the bottom of Dr. Light`s house coat the whole way.


To an outside observer it would have looked ridiculous, but Blues hadn`t needed any convincing. For the first time in his life, he was being taken into the world beyond the confines of Dr. Light`s property, and it didn`t bother him that he`d been asked to spend the ride stretched out on the floor of the car, in the backseat, wrapped from feet to chin in a down blanket. He`d been allowed to peek his head out on the condition that he kept his hands firmly clenched to the edge of the blanket—just in case it suddenly became necessary for him to hide.

"Are you all right back there?" called Dr. Light.

"Yeah." The humming of the engine, and the gently vibrating floor beneath him, soothed his racing thoughts. From his vantage point looking up, he could see a procession of treetops flashing by through the window, and behind them, the muted outline of the sun. Once in a while, the trees parted just long enough for the full force of the light to hit him in the face, and he shut his eyes until the brilliance faded. Rather than being annoyed, he regarded it as a kind of game. Novelty had put him in a generous mood. Just for now, his fears, and his fledgling acquaintance with mortality, held no sway. Every few minutes a slight pain pulsed in his stomach, but he paid it no heed.

"Want to listen to some music? Beethoven, or Brahms, maybe?"

He heard the ffoom of unseen vehicles driving past, and, as the car slowed for a left-hand turn, cheerful human voices: phantoms from a parallel world.

"No, thanks," Blues said, and he watched the side of Dr. Light`s face as he nodded in sympathetic recognition.

"You`re not the only one with cabin fever, you know," said Tom. "I`ve got a case of it too, though it`s not as bad as yours. I haven`t been for a drive like this since the day you were activated." He paused, and let out a chuckle. "Now that I think of it, I`ve barely even left the house. It`s been too much work keeping an eye on you—not that I`m complaining."

Blues had never thought about it before. For as long as he`d been alive, Dr. Light`s groceries had either been delivered, or brought over as a favor by Albert. Every month or so, he spent an hour leaning over the bathroom sink with a pair of ordinary household scissors in hand, trimming his own hair—not well at all, Blues figured, if symmetry was the desired result. Some of his clothes were faded, or even coming undone at the seams, but he wore them anyway—if necessary, with a carefully placed safety pin or two. Blues knew these habits had to be recent developments. Compared to his present self, Dr. Light`s past images in his album photographs looked thinner and significantly better groomed.

Blues then remembered the heating pads that Dr. Light sometimes held to his lower back, the occasional grunting and groaning when he got up from a sitting position: no big deal, Tom had once explained—just the natural consequence of years of poor posture.

"Poor posture, huh?" Judith had said, and laughed, when the subject had come up during one of their netscreen chats. "More like years spent hunched over a table building you. Or bent over his desk, typing your code one line at a time. And his lumbar region isn`t the only thing that`s suffered. If long-term sleep deprivation can cause permanent damage, he`s got that also. He was... obsessed, to say the least.

"He wouldn`t tell you any of that, of course. He`s not the type to use guilt, and he doesn`t want you to feel you owe him something for a sacrifice you never asked him to make. When the project began, he was already well aware of the facts of Nature: the creation of new life—no matter how it`s done—always comes at a price.

"Nevertheless..." There had been a pause. When Judith resumed speaking, her voice had become quiet. "Blues," she said, "I know you`ve got quite enough on your plate at the moment, but perhaps when you`re a bit older, and when you`ve grown to care about Tom like I do... I`d be very grateful if you could look after him a little for me, when I`m not there... at the minimum, make sure he eats a vegetable once in a while, goes to bed at a decent hour, and gets the garbage out on time. These nitty gritty necessities of daily life—as I`m sure you`ve seen firsthand—well, they tend to just slip by him unnoticed."

By Blues`s reckoning, they drove for an hour at least. Every so often, a sharp turn pushed him one way or the other. Toward the end of the ride the road became bumpy, and on one occasion the back of the car jerked upward, flinging his entire body into the air.

"Sorry about that," said Dr. Light.

"Where are we going?" said Blues.

"You`ll see," Tom answered, with a smile. "We`re almost there."

"In your log, you wrote that I don`t like surprises."

"You`ll like this one."

The car took a wide left turn, slowed, coursed over a short stretch of gravel, and came to a stop. Blues heard the sound of the key turning in the ignition. The engine lulled, then was quiet. There were no trees in Blues`s one and only visible window, just a uniform rectangle of blue sky. Outside, all he could hear was silence, big and heavy.

Dr. Light craned around in his seat and gave the blanket a gentle pat. "Well, we`re here," he said. "Stay put for just another minute while I check to make sure we`re alone." He turned his head in every direction, his eyes squinting into the distance. Then, he opened the door and stepped out, and Blues listened to the sound of his footsteps crunching against gravel as he circumambulated the car.

At last, Tom returned and shut the door behind him. "It`s okay," he said. "You can come out now."

Not knowing what to expect, Blues sat upright and wriggled out from beneath the blanket. As he hoisted himself up into the back seat of the car, a shock of white pulled his eyes to the window, and he froze.

Bright and conspicuous against the clear blue sky, Mt. Fuji loomed, belted by a row of lesser hills.

Blues let out a gasp. He didn`t have to ask Dr. Light what he was looking at. He`d seen representations of the mountain, both real and stylized, on the netscreen, in Catherine`s photo album, and on the hanging scroll that Tom kept above the alcove in the living room—though none of those things had ever made him feel the way he felt now. In person, the mountain was immense.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Tom watching him. "A penny for your thoughts," he said. There were no cameras, no netphones, and nothing to write with. It was only a request for Blues to let Dr. Light into his mind: communication for its own sake.

Blues pressed his hands against the window. "It`s beautiful."

Dr. Light gave him a knowing nod. "I thought you would say that." He leaned back in his seat, and emitted a little hum of pleasure. "And now for the full experience. Watch your fingers."

The windows rolled down, and a flood of cold air poured in. Tom took a deep breath. Blues, with his eyes still on the mountain, wrapped the blanket around himself. For a few minutes they sat together in silence, with nothing between them and the view, sharing a feeling of wonderment for which no words were adequate.

Finally, Tom was the one to break the ice. "So, you think it`s beautiful?" he said. "Would you believe me, Blues, if I told you that what you see is an illusion?"

Blues turned toward his creator, his hands still gripping the blanket. "I don`t understand," he said.

"There`s nothing inherently beautiful about a mountain," Dr. Light said, and crossed his arms. "Fundamentally, it`s just a mass of igneous rock pushed upward by tectonic forces—in the case of this particular mountain, by the meeting of three continental plates. It`s been whittled into its present conical shape by thousands of years of volcanic eruptions. And it happens to be covered in snow for most of the year—just a lot of crystalized water droplets. Tell me, what`s beautiful about any of that?"

Blues glanced at the mountain again, wondering if he had missed something. Dr. Light`s question seemed to him like a kind of challenge, and he felt he was losing.

"I... don`t know," he said.

Dr. Light flashed him a playful smile. "If you hadn`t been such a success, you`d be able to see this mountain for what it is, and nothing more." He sighed. "But you`re conscious, and what`s more, your mind is human—or very close to it. Everything you observe gets muddled up with context: your feelings, and your past experiences. It all has to be connected, and to mean something.

"This beauty you think you see: it isn`t really there. What`s there is just a mass of rock. The beauty is a product of your mind."

"This beauty in my mind... is it real?" said Blues.

"It`s real to you, at least," said Dr. Light. "Just as mine is to me. But in spite of everything science has revealed to us about how the human mind works, we still haven`t found a way to prove it exists. Consciousness, subjective experience: these are things which, for the time being, we just have to accept on faith.

"Do you understand, Blues, why Albert, Judith, and I are interested in your sketches and your piano playing?" He heaved himself around in his seat, and gave Blues a fond smile. "It`s because, when you draw a picture, or play music, you don`t draw or play only what you see. You add something of yourself to it. When we began our project, many years ago, that made you, that `self` is what we`d hoped to create.

"We can`t exactly prove that it`s there, but we know it when we see it.

"There are nine billion people on this earth. If they all came to this exact spot on a day like today, and looked at this mountain, every one of them would see something different."

Blues looked at the mountain, then back at Dr. Light. "Why am I here?" he said. He locked Tom`s eyes with his. The question was a leap of faith. For the first time in months, Blues felt there could be a chance, however small, of receiving an answer.

Dr. Light turned his eyes to the mountain. "My late wife, Catherine, was a neuroscientist," he said. "Her area of expertise was the subject of consciousness. She believed that human consciousness could be replicated in a synthetic brain, and she wanted nothing more than to test her theory. For that, she needed my help—and I was happy to oblige. You were her guinea pig, and also the thing she loved most in the world." He paused. "If only... she could have had the chance to meet you."

"You climbed this mountain with her," said Blues, remembering the photo he had seen of a young Tom and Catherine smiling, arms raised, above a sea of clouds.

"Lots of people do," Dr. Light said. "We were young then, and we still had plenty of life ahead of us."

Blues looked down at his own hands clutching the blanket. Glad as he was to learn about Catherine`s role in his creation, he felt something wasn`t quite right. Tom turned away, and Blues heard him let out another sigh.

"Are you afraid of dying, Blues?" he said at last, in a low voice.

The question took Blues by surprise, but he didn`t have to think about the answer. "Yes," he said.

"All living things fear death," said Dr. Light. "It`s an instinct, programmed from birth—and it`s programmed into you, too: there was no getting around it. But, for creatures like you and me who attach meaning to our experience, death also holds a special kind of terror. It means the extinction of beautiful moments like this—and of the ego that made them possible in the first place."

Blues became aware of his pain, and he sank down a little deeper into the blanket. The feeling was there to some degree almost all of the time, a murmur of discomfort in the background. Even when it wasn`t strong enough to dominate his thoughts, it remained like an unwanted visitor at the door, constantly knocking.

"Am I dying, Dr. Light?"

"Of course not," Tom said.

"I feel like I am," said Blues.

"Well, I can understand why you would think so—but you`re not dying. Not anytime soon, anyway. Your core flaw`s going to be fixed. It may take weeks, or months, for us to get it worked out, but we`ll finish in time. Do you trust me?"

Blues didn`t know whether he did or not, but he thought it would be best to answer in the affirmative. He nodded absentmindedly, realized that Dr. Light couldn`t see him, and finally managed to vocalize a quiet "yes."

"That`s good." There was a long pause. "Listen, Blues. There`s... something that I`ve been wanting to tell you... It`s important for you to know." Another pause. "You see..."

Blues stared at the back of the seat in front of him. "Yes, Dr. Light?" he said.

Tom cleared his throat. "I`m sorry that it`s taken me so long to say this. I should have done it right at the beginning—I know it would have helped you—but, back then, I tried to keep a lid on my feelings because I didn`t want to get my hopes up too much... because, well, at first, I couldn`t be completely sure... Now, anyway, there`s no doubt, so... No matter what happens, I want you to remember this..."

"Catherine and I, we..." He cleared his throat again. "...We couldn`t have children, and you... well, you were intended to be... I mean, you still are..." Dr. Light`s voice turned watery, then came to an abrupt stop. Blues heard the sound of Tom shifting in his chair. "Well, do you understand what I`m saying, Blues?"

"I..." He wasn`t exactly sure what Dr. Light meant. For several moments Blues sat completely still, waiting for an explanation to come—but it didn`t.

"Dr. Light?"

There was no answer.

Blues got up, moved to the left, and leaned his head forward into the front seat of the car. Tom was huddled in his chair, red-faced, wiping at his eyes with his hand towel.

"Dr. Light?" Blues stared, feeling himself at a loss for words. He`d never imagined that this was what he was going to see. "Are you... okay?"

"I`m fine," Dr. Light answered, in a small voice. "I thought... after all these years, I`d be able to visit this spot again and... keep myself together. Perhaps I would have been able to, if we`d come at another time of the year. But... I suppose I don`t do well with Decembers... not since..."

His voice faded, and he turned away toward the open window.

Blues forgot all about the mountain, the pain in his stomach, and the need for him to be ready to hide at a moment`s notice. He climbed into the front seat and settled down beside Tom. After a minute spent wondering what else to do, he leaned in closer, and put his hand on Dr. Light`s shoulder. Tom turned and managed a weak smile.

"You`re not dying, Blues," he said, "but I admit there was a short time, when you were unconscious, and Albert and I were still trying to figure out what was wrong..." He folded the hand towel, and set it down on the dashboard. "We didn`t know then whether we could save you or not, and there was a phrase that kept going through my mind..." Tears appeared at the corners of his eyes.

"What was it?"

"It was..." Tom looked away. "`Not you, too.`"

One of them is lying to me. Blues tried, and failed, to swat the nagging feeling away. One of them can`t be trusted. But why?

A collection of data points appeared in his mind`s eye. Lines formed between them, forging new connections. He closed his eyes in a futile attempt to shut out the picture that emerged.

One of them is going to try to hurt me.

He remembered his hand was still on Dr. Light`s shoulder. Please, he thought. Please, don`t let it be him.