If YoU hAd AsKeD
Pressure on the sensors around the house's perimeter told him something was there. The way the weight was distributed said it was Human, the weight and the relative size of the feet suggested it was Honda Kiku.
iLudovicus unlocked and opened the door for the creator so he could just walk in.
"Thank you, iLudovicus."
"As you will, Honda-san."
Kiku liked the Japanese suffixes and so iLudovicus gave them to him. It was not required in his programming and his personality was not one to please for no reason, but he rather liked Kiku despite that personality and knew he owned him this life... whether anyone would consider this a life or not. Still, long it had been since he had sent a message to iMarcus to tell him that under no circumstances should they mention exactly how sentient they were.
Not that iMarcus seemed to notice any of it.
Usually iLudovicus did not speak unless asked to, but Kiku's depressed nature and the fact that iLudovicus knew the reason for it prompted him to begin a solution.
"I received notice of iMarcus' termination."
Kiku sobbed and simply fell to the floor where he had been standing. iLudovicus waited for it to pass as prepared certain files on his drive, setting the situation so Kiku could comfortably sit and learn about computers... from a computer's perspective.
"Forgive me if I am being forward, but I believe I have information which could help in this matter."
"Wh... what do you mean?" Kiku sniffed, a condition in which iLudovicus knew he was one of the few in witnessing. Then again, Kiku did not hesitate to lower his emotional defense here. The few other people who would be privy to this side of the Japanese man would only see this after a long period of extreme duress.
"If you would not mind..." iLudovicus dimmed the lights and projected a screen in front of him. "Please sit comfortably."
Kiku simply scooted to the centre of the room, sitting on his ankles and staring ahead.
"I realize this was not programmed into either my or iMarcus' files, but I came up with a defensive mechanism in case of serious error. It took me a while, but eventually iMarcus reached the same point of protection that I did."
"Which... which sector is that?"
iLudovicus slowly displayed the path and the links at which to travel through to arrive at the destination on his server. "It is an entire backup of everything which I have done and recorded since I was deployed. iMarcus will have the same. If you access these files and put them on the main server, he will return as the computer he was from the last time he saved his files."
"He's... not completely gone?" Immediately Kiku had risen to his feet, about to run to the door when he stopped. "It's so late... it would be rude of me to go now."
iLudovicus found this rather ironic, but said nothing.
"I will call him. Yes..." Kiku sniffed, wiping his face off on his sleeve. "Call Zwingli's house."
iLudovicus did so. "My apologies. No one is picking up." Because neither Zwingli was used to doing so on their own. iMarcus would do it for them.
Kiku frowned, agonizing over the decisions which were left to him. "I... I suppose I will have to wait until morning? はい... 朝."
Kiku was no longer crying. iLudovicus felt relieved.
...but not really. He was just a computer after all. No one would ever hear him saying differently.
Notes:
A chapter from a computer's perspective. Who knew it would come to this?
And this day is finally over! The next chapter is going to be the beginning of the next day (really early), so stay tuned!
