“May the God of the Stars protect all of you,” Igor said elegantly before turning and leaving.
A-Ka lay on the bed and released a long sigh before sitting up again. Setting aside the satchel he was wearing, he clambered onto the chair in front of the window and peered out. In the calm outside, night had already fallen, and the garden was filled with blooming calla lilies. Gentle music drifted out from somewhere unknown, echoing melodiously.
Thinking to himself that this was all far too cozy, A-Ka returned to the bed. When he saw Heishi sitting on the side of it, his mind distant as he stared at nothing, A-Ka poked Heishi’s waist with his foot.
“What is it?” Heishi blinked at A-Ka.
“It would be very nice if we could live here for our entire lives,” A-Ka told him. “The world that I hope for is just like this.”
Heishi considered this for a moment. “The world you humans used to live in was exactly like this. There weren’t any robots or computers back then, so why did you need to create them?”
A-Ka thought for a moment, then smiled. “This lifestyle has its perks, but it’s also pretty inconvenient. There’s no tap water, so they need to get water from the river, and there’s nothing to do for fun. Industrialization has its own merits as well.”
“If you like this sort of environment, I could tell the Curia and get them to let you stay within Dragonmaw City.”
A-Ka scrutinized him. “Will you stay as well?” When Heishi didn’t respond, A-Ka said, “Having a flower garden to tend to and making a few small things sounds pretty good.”
“Maybe later,” Heishi said easily.
The nights in Dragonmaw City were a little chilly, so A-Ka and Heishi wrapped blankets around themselves as they stretched out on the same bed. Through the window, A-Ka watched the starry sky outside.
“Heishi, do you have memories of your childhood?”
He thought that Heishi would say no; after all, after he had been made by the Creator, and he had always been kept in that laboratory. Unexpectedly, Heishi responded, “I remember a little.”
A-Ka turned his head to look at Heishi. Of his own accord, Heishi stretched out his arm and let A-Ka pillow his head on it, and the two of them stayed there in this position without speaking.
“What was it like?” A-Ka asked.
Heishi didn’t answer, replying with a question instead. “How about you?”
“I… Actually, since I was old enough to understand, things were the way you saw. We absorbed the training, studies, and nurturing that the robotic life-forms enforced, but there was only one thing that left me with a deep impression. It’s related to Father.”
“Related to what about Father?” Heishi’s voice was even.
“On the day before we come of age, all humans have to sync up with Father to pledge our loyalty. It’s an uncomfortable feeling,” A-Ka recalled. “It was like a monster was forcing itself into my brain.”
“This is one of the special functions that Father has. Ever since the petri dish was started, it was equipped with the power to investigate the thoughts of any living being. As long as it was able to sync with you in a mental link, it could read any of the thoughts in your mind.”
“Yeah. To be honest, in the beginning, I never had the idea of opposing Father.”
“I did find it a little strange. Technically, humans like you would definitely not be able to survive under Father’s gaze. You would have been destroyed by it before you came of age.”
A-Ka had to admit that Heishi was right. The lax regulations in the City of Steel itself didn’t mean that Father was foolish. Allowing him, a human, to secretly sneak out was not an oversight on Father’s part, but rather something that would never have happened under normal circumstances.
For the humans living within the city, their thoughts had once been, or were destined to be, exposed to Father’s inspection. Such exposure would target for preemptive elimination any human with any iota of a desire for freedom that might grow into an escape attempt. This was also the reason why, in the end, the clones created the Alliance and recruited agents on the inside by having those from the outside interact with them.
“The clones also undergo a mental inspection by Father,” A-Ka said. “It’s just that their inspection isn’t as frequent as for us humans.”
“How frequent was it then, for humans?” Heishi asked.
“About once every ten years. Really, I see now that it might be called an inspection, but in reality it’s to kill the humans that have the seed of escape planted in their hearts.”
When A-Ka was small, he had heard that many people would disappear in the process of these regularly scheduled inspections, but he had never thought about it in this way. He was starting to understand the gist of things.
“The clones have no logic to speak of, so they act on their emotions alone,” Heishi said. “Humans, on the other hand, cling desperately to living and are afraid of death, so they became Father’s slaves. There’s not too much difference there.”
“It’s not like that.” A-Ka turned over and slightly shook Heishi, whose eyes were still closed.
But Heishi didn’t open his eyes. “Continue. I’m listening.”
A-Ka began to smile, then used his fingers to pry open Heishi’s eyelids, looking at his dark, deep, gemlike pupils. Heishi started counting in a dark voice: “Three.” Afraid of being on the receiving end of one of Heishi’s beatings, A-Ka yanked his hands back.
He recalled the day he had undergone the mental inspection. A vast sea of blue light had been everywhere. “That kind of feeling is hard to describe,” A-Ka murmured. “It was very uncomfortable, as if someone had dug through every nook and cranny of my soul…”
“I know,” Heishi said. “A pair of godlike eyes take you in from head to toe, which is why Father is able to strike such terrible awe into your hearts. You humans have a saying: ‘When you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’”
“But this was not an exchange that I meant to start…”
“What did you see within Father’s thoughts?”
A-Ka was taken aback. Heishi had actually guessed what A-Ka was going to say next. “How did you know?”
That day, within Father’s mental sea, he had indeed sensed something out of the ordinary. That shaky uneasiness seemed to come from a deep foundation, but also from a secret place that A-Ka’s own soul yearned for. Initially, his brain hurt like it was being scorched by some bright light, making him feel as if he might retch, but gradually, the discomfort disappeared.
In the depths of Father’s thoughts, he’d found, hidden very far away, a soul. Its voice spoke in A-Ka’s ear as if it was saying something to him, but A-Ka’s expression filled with confusion, and he had no way to answer.
“What did it say?” Heishi asked.
“I don’t know,” A-Ka said, smiling a little bitterly. “It’s not like I could understand it.”
“What did you say?”
“Well, I… I said I was very lonely, and—I took it to be a Father that would be able to do anything, you know? In the City of Steel, the humans all said that Father was a god that could do anything. So, I told it my wish.”
“And what was that?”
“I wished…” A-Ka thought for a moment before continuing, “that there was a gege who would protect me, because growing up, I had always been kicked around and picked on by the clones.”
Heishi opened his eyes, looking at A-Ka. His gaze was bright and warm, and the corners of his lips turned upward as he slowly smiled.
A-Ka goggled at the sight. “You… You’re smiling? Heishi, you’re smiling!”
Heishi’s smile vanished as quickly as it had come, and he said solemnly, “Go to sleep.”
In that moment, A-Ka forgot himself a little because of how handsome Heishi’s smile was, and his heart filled with adoration. In the span of a second, that look had brightened the entire evening. With the fragrance of the flowers and night music, it was as if countless things had crossed paths in A-Ka’s soul before erupting within the depths of his heart. A-Ka stared at Heishi, but Heishi rolled over like it was nothing, showing his back to A-Ka.
Nevertheless, A-Ka said, “When you smile, you look really good, Heishi.” Heishi grunted. A-Ka couldn’t resist adding, “I feel like I’ve fallen a little bit in love with you, you know. Just that sort of thing.”
At this, Heishi tensed awkwardly. “Don’t say stupid things!”
A-Ka hadn’t been lying down for long, but he hurriedly pushed himself upright. “I didn’t mean that, or not like that! Like what the textbooks described, between people… Just like how I love Percy, Feiluo also loves Percy, and Percy says he loves Feiluo.”