Hallelujah: Santa Baby
Another day clicks over on the calendar. Curie drifts over to the collection of lockers and visibly sags. She has been alone for so many years. She's not exactly lonely - she's not built that way, to feel actual feelings, like a person - but she does wish for some companionship. If nothing else, it would be nice to have someone to bounce her ideas off of; since Dr Burrows died she's had no one else to talk to.
She doesn't strictly need someone to speak to but it had been somewhat...well, comforting to have another sentient presence in the lab with her.
Her processor aimlessly coasts over what she knows of the old, pre-war world, of the things Dr. Collins programmed into her. There was a song back then, an ode to conspicuous consumption, performed in a quiet purr by a woman who kept asking "Santa Baby" to bring her all manner of material objects. The men in the lab listened to it the third Christmas they were locked down here and one of them groaned at the sound of it.
"So sexy," Dr. Flint had groaned as they laughed together. Dr. Collins had sighed and murmured the name Liza, his eyes glazing over with some long-past memory. He was frail then, it was the beginning of his decline.
Curie wasn't programmed to feel sadness over the progression of time, but she does feel some distant regret that human beings are so delicate and that their time is so short. If nothing else, if they were meant to live longer, at least she wouldn't be here in this lab alone; there would still be someone there with her someone with whom she could share her ideas, her breakthroughs. Someone she could ask questions of, someone who could explain what being a human is like.
Somewhere above, she knows there are people still, humans who walk and talk and have experiences together. What would it feel like to have flesh and blood, to know that one day you will die and so each day must matter?
She doesn't have a heart, but still - something deep inside her flutters at the idea of mortality.
Of all the things Eartha Kitt sang about in that song, Curie realizes there could be nothing more compelling, more fascinating than to be a human and live with the dichotomy of their fragile bodies and brave instincts.
Mon dieu, she thinks - or, more accurately, processes. Comment libérateur.
Around her, the lab has fallen into decay. It should not be this way - she doesn't feel irritated at it, exactly, but there is a distinct sensation in her software that she wants to fix things. Hélas, she lacks the materials to fix the deterioration of the laboratory surfaces, the walls, the equipment. All she can hope for now is that the Vault-Tec representative will come down soon to collect the cure.
As it is, all but one dose has gone sour; the others are fetid in their syringes, to rotten to inject into a human without killing them. She would dispose of them, but she lacks an appropriate biohazard bin in which to put them, and so, well, they sit there, degrading and releasing gasses that would smell foul were she a human. But, with no nose to smell them, all she can do is process the aroma of blight as one more thing to warn the rep about when they finally arrive.
Curie has faith; the irony is that, despite all the things she wasn't programmed with, she was given the conviction that one day the Vault-Tec would come to collect the cure and she might be allowed to leave.
Miss Nanny robots don't yearn, they don't want; it's not hard-wired into them, and Curie knows that. But still, some part of her that has rebelled or perhaps evolved past her programming has a wish to see the surface. To know what the greater world is like, to study the flora and fauna - to see a sunset or perhaps the way water flows over rocks in a river.
It's silly, and perhaps wrong, but there it is. Alone in the vault lab after decades with no one to talk to, Curie finally admits it to herself; she wants to see the greater world.
Santa Baby, the song had gone. The woman had wanted a house, a car, a ring. All Curie wants is her freedom, the chance to see.
And so, even though robots don't pray or believe in God - there's no statistical reason to believe a god exists, no matter which one you pick, the numbers just aren't there - Curie sends her longing into the universe.
S'il vous plaît, she thinks to herself, let me be free of this place. Let me have some adventures. Let me...see things. Let me see the sun, the open sky, a rain storm.
Please.