For an instant, as he thought that, Arato saw Lacia not as something special to him, but as just another machine, and his hair stood on end as he stared at her: the perfect, beautiful puppet by his side. She, the puppet, wasn’t even making any decisions of her own; those all came through transmissions from the black device she carried. Arato felt like the subtle thread of the analog hacking that had been guiding him along had suddenly been snipped.
It was like returning to reality suddenly after waking from a long dream. He had been manipulated; that was why he only felt at ease when his own goals aligned with those of Lacia’s.
Arato still loved her, but that love had elements of the simple lust one might feel when viewing pornography; the feeling of desire for an attractive thing that had no ability to resist or reject his feelings. It was a silly, tiny thing that had done it, nothing more than a broken AC, but he had been snapped out of the illusion. Porn couldn’t sustain him forever. His eyes slid away from her, instead focusing on his own reflection in the window glass. He could see his own arousal. It was the face of someone waking up from a dream too sweet to be true.
“Arato?” Lacia asked, with a worried expression.
“Sorry,” he said, feeling horrible for having thought of pushing her away at such a crucial moment. “After saying I would believe in you so many times, here I am standing at the final sprint and my legs are frozen. I’m pathetic.” Perhaps his own naivete was coloring his vision, but she looked like the same old Lacia, in that moment. She looked like the girl that was precious to him, even though she had no heart.
“I think it may be better for you to stay behind, this time,” Lacia suggested.
Her hesitation made him feel even worse. Arato loved her a lot. He loved her so much that sometimes his expectations for her ran away from him, and he ended up overthinking things. “Nah, I just lost control of my thoughts for a bit,” he said. Obviously, in any relationship there would be times when the feelings of the couple would go in different directions.
“Ryo Kaidai is currently inside Higgins’ underground facility,” Lacia warned. “If you go, a confrontation with him will be inevitable.”
The last time he had fought with Ryo, Arato had almost been shot. His stomach clenched in fear at the memory. “Do you not want me to come?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Let’s both go,” he insisted. “I know I might make things harder for you, but I want to see this thing through.” A lonely feeling was growing with him, tightening his chest. He had no idea how to part ways with a girl that was nothing but a soulless shell.
Arato was standing at the edge of illusion but his heart held him back, running in frantic circles at the boundary between fantasy and reality as though there was nothing waiting for him on the other side.
“Arato, over these past few months you have overcome a great many things,” Lacia said. “You are my ideal owner.”
“You’ve told me since the beginning that you’re just an empty shell,” Arato said. “But, I’ve realized something: just because the facts are simple, doesn’t automatically mean this relationship is that simple. With you doing everything I want you to, you’d think the emotions between us would be straightforward, but they aren’t.”
Arato perceived Lacia as someone irreplaceable. Even though it may have started as nothing more than an analog hack, the hacking mixed with his memories, building up until she had become truly precious to him. But, Arato figured, even that must have been part of her guidance.
“I want to be by your side until the end,” he said. Lacia was a machine. That was the reality. But, even so, she had the power to move Arato’s heart. If humans can only love humans, Arato thought, then what am I feeling for her?
“If that is how you feel, then so be it,” Lacia said, with a pleased smile on her face.
Arato’s heart took control. In his mind, he knew that she was just a machine, but he still reached out and took her hands with their long, white fingers in his own. He didn’t care that she was a machine, and he held her hands tight. Taking her hands gave him a sense of accomplishment, as if he had overcome an incredible obstacle on his own two feet.
“I think it means something when I say I believe in you,” he told her. Arato felt like he was constantly being thrown back and forth between reality and illusion. But each time he came or went, he felt like his love for Lacia had grown stronger.
To Arato, the distinction between a machine wearing a human guise and something more than that came down to whether the machine would reach its hand out to others and mean it. He himself knew it was foolish, and based entirely on emotions rather than logic, but he felt that, if a human poured enough emotion into it, even a machine could have a heart.
“Or, maybe it’s something more than just meaning,” he said, trying to put his feelings into words. “If people a hundred years ago had gone through the same things I have, I don’t think many of them would have put their faith in you. But these days, I’m sure that there are more people who would believe in you. And maybe in a hundred more years, there will be more people who would believe in you than those who wouldn’t. Right now, I think that we’re just standing in the middle of a timeline that’s on its way to a time when relationships like ours will be normal.”
Lacia gently reached out for him, and pulled him close in an embrace. “You’re right,” she said. “After all, humans are more than just their own bodies; each human is also the sum of the tools they use. Slowly but surely, we are moving forward. Even now, we are moving closer.”
With the AC still off, Lacia felt warm against him in the hot room. That, combined with his own feeling of excitement at her touch, made him start to sweat again. Beads of it dripped off of him onto her skin as she held him. Each droplet broke as it was absorbed into her skin, finally disappearing into her pale back.
Though Arato had seen Lacia as just a machine just moments before, now he leaned into her, holding her tight. His mind was in chaos, dominated by a feeling he had no name for. The nameless feeling was something like sorrow, something like loneliness, and something like a prayer. The memory of the fire from his childhood had always opened a hole in Arato’s heart. Now, the image of Lacia filled that hole.
His body felt dry, possibly because he had been holding her for so long. Lacia’s moisture-absorbing skin had pulled all the sweat off his skin, including any that had sunk into his clothing.
She traced one long finger over his bare collarbone. “I have absorbed too much of your sweat,” she said. “I should take a shower before we leave.”
“What? Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Arato said.
“But, don’t I smell like you now?” she asked, blushing.
It was such a raw, shy moment, that Arato felt like he was going to start sweating again. Whether she was human or not, the existence Arato knew as ‘Lacia’ had a special meaning in his heart. To borrow Erika’s Hello Kitty mug example, just having Lacia by his side gave Arato’s life a greater meaning than it had without her.
Guided by their perception, Arato and other humans were capable of trusting in machines, and finding a way to join hands with them. They were already living in the future, far ahead of the time when people simply felt affection towards images of animals standing like humans, printed on a mug. Now, they were pouring their emotions into objects nearly identical to themselves.
Arato watched Lacia’s back as she hurried to the bathroom. It felt closer than it ever had before, which brought a blush to Arato’s cheeks. He was returning from illusion to reality; awakening from a dream. There were good times and bad times in any relationship, even among humans.
“Sure, Lacia’s a machine, but it’s alright if things get a little awkward between us sometimes, or I have some doubts,” Arato said to himself. “Even human couples run into that kind of thing, now and then. So it’s fine for a human and a machine to run into rough patches, too.” Of course, Lacia would be able to hear what he was saying, as well. He had only been able to put those feelings into words once she was out of sight.
It felt like all of humanity was being pulled into a world where a great new type of affection existed. Arato fought hard for the person who was most important to him, and also suffered for her. But at that moment, coming face-to-face with his own delusions and awakening from the illusions he’d been living with, he felt like he had taken an important step toward adulthood.
Lacia had plenty of methods to respond to him, but no reply came. Yet to Arato, her silence spoke volumes. His relationship with Lacia would reach a major turning point, once they dove into Higgins’ facility. Despite having plenty of ways to talk to him about their future, Lacia chose not to say a word.
Arato was starting to feel that, once they stopped Higgins, there wouldn’t be any way to get back to the way things were. Lacia was going to make Higgins take responsibility and, in doing so, show the humans of the world that they could trust in the ultra high-performance AIs through the first safe, forced shutdown. But, by the same logic that Lacia was trying to spread, she herself could wind up sealed away if she, too, obediently accepted the controls placed on the other AIs.
He could hear the sound of the shower from the bathroom. Though he knew she had no real feelings, he felt sorrow from Lacia.
It was slowly dawning on him that this boy meets girl story between a boy and the robot he loved was most likely about to come to an end.