When Dr. Light's last, best creation awoke, so many decades past the intended date, the external backup battery had long since failed, and he had no remaining conscious memories. Still, he had this creeping awareness that there was no one connected to him, that he was all alone.
This brought a sinking feeling to his chest.
But then the capsule hatch opened, and there was so much sound spilling in, suddenly, that he couldn't make anything out for all the different threads of it running together. Just when he thought he might be able to get a handle on the auditory processing, this foreign object reached in to his visual field, five short protuberances on a flattened, dirt smeared base. The fingers twitched, and he recognized it as a hand. A hand, reaching in to help him.
Help out.
Suddenly, some ingrained part of his personality clicked into place, and he was reaching back. Just before their fingers touched, though, that hand drew back and disappeared outside the limited range his newly booted optics system could focus on. That sinking feeling in his chest got worse, along with a sudden tightness, and his breath caught in his throat. The world seemed to slow, and he was in pain, being left all alone like this.
This is sadness. He did not know how he knew.
Before he could think about it, though, that hand was back, different than before, smoother and slimmer, though still wrinkled, and suddenly not dirty. His logic processors come fully on line.
Glove, he was wearing a work glove, and he took it off.
Their grimy covering removed, those fingers were a clean, healthy pink.
This time, their hands successfully meet, and newly awakened thermo sensors rejoiced: the hand was warm.
The first day was full of discoveries like that. The first week put his undeveloped verbal skills severely to the test, as he tried to explain to others who he was and how he was made when he didn't really know himself. The rest of the first month was spent learning fine motor control and the immediately pertinent basics of robotics. By the time the season was just beginning to change, Dr. Cain finally let him start helping to assemble the new models. Here, his careful diligence showed its worth, as he was always very precise about his work, in a way that a human would be hard pressed to duplicate.
In fact, not so many days after Dr. Cain had last reminded "X"—for that was what he was called, now—that he had to be very careful, the good doctor allowed himself to get distracted and bump into a partially completed assembly. The fragile new emotion chip he'd balanced precariously at the edge might have smashed if not for X's quick dive to save it.
"My goodness! Thank you, X. I'm beginning to wonder how I ever managed to get by without you!" Those warm fingers ruffled his hair affectionately, Dr. Cain's eyes those of a doting grandfather.
As the year progressed, X learned there were so many layers to joy: the magnetic draw of jovial eyes, that special buoyancy under his reinforced ribs from a sincere compliment, the helplessly strong reciprocal upward tug on the corners of his lips—a pleasant tingling at his scalp where those gentle fingers touched. He began to feel this warm, feathery upswelling of sensation when Dr. Cain made time in his day for him, a feeling which had no equal even in his widely expanding realm of experience.
That still wasn't real love, of course, not yet, because the real thing has so many more layers to it. But it was a beginning, and Cain had always wanted to be a father.
X has always wanted to help out, and there was plenty of time for his feelings to grow.