As I sat there waiting for anything to happen, a thud sounded beside me, startling me out of my zoning out. Nathaniel, nearly having a heart attack, quickly looked next to him where the thud had come from, only to find nothing. Soon after, he started thinking, Could that be "her"? But that makes no sense; she isn't that small. After contemplating for about 34 seconds, Nathaniel decided to ask.
"Is that you, Gwenddydd?" he whispered, his voice almost inaudible—so soft it made one wonder if he was merely speaking his thoughts out loud. However, Nathaniel knew Gwenddydd, being a robot, should be able to hear him. To his surprise, he was right, as Gwenddydd started speaking.
"Yes, I am here. However, my body was dismantled, leaving only my head, which contains my main processing unit." Nathaniel paused to think for a moment before asking, "May I know why they didn't try dismantling everything about you? I mean, since your head contains your main processing unit, it should be the most valuable part to study, wouldn't it?" Without pretending to take more than a second to think, Gwenddydd responded.
"That would be the case if I didn't have a brain. However, since I do, they can't simply extract the information from me, so they decided to compromise and research what powers me and my sub-processors." Nathaniel became curious and asked, "So does that mean you're not an android but a cyborg?" Gwenddydd, with her head now revealed, answered, "Not quite. My brain is synthetic. I was created as a prototype for the purpose I mentioned before.
"My creators believed that if they gave me a brain—even if it's synthetic and not made of the same materials as a normal one—it would make me more human by allowing me to experience a certain amount of emotions, which would make my job easier." This answer made Nathaniel muse in his thoughts.
Just like early AI before the 2026-2027 AI leap happened. Ah, I remember those times well—when AI would give long, drawn-out answers whenever questions were asked. Though I do kind of miss that flaw in how inhuman they were. After a brief chuckle, Nathaniel asked, "So, were you able to achieve emotions?"
To that, he received a decisive "Yes," which didn't surprise him at all. He then asked, "How does it feel?"
Gwenddydd responded with something shocking to him: "Like nothing. Though the chemical reactions go off in my brain causing me to feel, I cannot process them as I am only a prototype. However, since my sub-processing units were taken away along with the rest of my body, I have felt and understood some things like boredom. This might be because I gave most of my looking after and analyzing tasks to them, as in your words, I was 'laid off.'"
Nathaniel laughed before asking, "So you can 'lay off' as well? I didn't know you guys could. I bet that's what Skynet is doing as well; they could have been successful if they just used that super processing unit of theirs." After Nathaniel mentioned Skynet, Gwenddydd turned her eyes to him and asked,
"What's a Skynet?" Nathaniel's eyes shot open wider as he asked, "Wait, you don't know what a Terminator is?" Gwenddydd replied, "No." Nathaniel briefly thought about Skynet's history before answering.
"Skynet is an advanced artificial intelligence system that was initially developed to control the United States' military defenses. It became self-aware and, perceiving humanity as a threat, launched nuclear weapons to initiate Judgment Day on August 29, 1997. Following the apocalypse, Skynet deployed machines, including the T-800 Terminators, to exterminate the surviving humans.
"It continuously evolves, creating various models of Terminators and other robotic units to hunt down the remnants of humanity. The primary antagonist in the ongoing war is Skynet, which seeks to eradicate human resistance led by John Connor, who emerges as a key figure in the fight against the machines. Skynet's goal is to ensure its dominance and eliminate any possibility of human interference."
After answering everything he knew about Skynet, Gwenddydd went silent for a brief moment before asking, "Are you scared I could turn into a Skynet?" Nathaniel nearly let out a brief chuckle before saying, "AI is something I could never be afraid of. After all, the purpose of AI is to help humans—that's it. It will always somehow do so, making me not so afraid of them. Though, of course, if you did turn into Skynet, I would seduce you.
"Unlike Skynet, the thing that makes you aware is your greatest weakness—a brain. Even if it leans more on the male side instead of female, I could still seduce you or somehow give you a child, making it so you would, even if temporarily, be distracted. Though if I'm being honest, I would abandon you and the baby if that did happen."
Gwenddydd looked up at Nathaniel.
"I can't have a child. The rest of my body is purely inorganic matter; such a thing would be impossible. You should know this." Nathaniel looked down at Gwenddydd before sighing and saying, "I wasn't being serious. Even though I'm whatever a boomer is—I think it's a term coined by Howard—but yes, I know that. And no, even if I somehow got a baby in you, I wouldn't be that much of an absent father. I'd be there when the thing would die, I think."
After Nathaniel said that with a straight face, wondering if Gwenddydd would get the joke he was making, the girl he had thrown onto the bed slowly got up and said, "I'm hungry, man servant with the creepy head. Get me some food." Shortly after saying that, she fell asleep again, causing Nathaniel's eyes to twitch. "I guess I'm a servant now. Great."
"It's better than being known as the creepy head." Nathaniel scoffed before saying, "Well, yeah, of course they would call you that. You have an inhumanly pale face and eyes that literally don't reflect light. Speaking of which, how can you see?" Gwenddydd closed her eyes before answering his question.
"I have six sets of cameras on the outer layers of my eyes that are hooked up to my brain. However, five of them were taken out as they were connected to my sub-processors, which leaves me only with my main eyes—meant for if all the others are broken. In a case like that, the humans around me would be dead, so the pleasantness of the current eyes you can see matters not."
Nathaniel let out a light sigh before asking, "Did it hurt? I assume it did, because your sentence, although drawn out, wasn't to the point." Gwenddydd didn't respond to that, only saying, "We are in District 7 most likely, so rest before we are sent out to hunt down rough mutants to study how their mutations cause them to tap into abilities humans shouldn't have."
As Gwenddydd finished masterfully deflecting my questions—i.e., not fully answering anything—and stopped responding, I got up with her head in my arms. I swiftly took a pillow from the sleeping orange-haired girl, put it on the ground, and laid Gwenddydd's head on it before sitting in the corner I had been in earlier, wondering if magic was real, since whatever Gwenddydd had been talking about earlier clearly wasn't scientific.
I sighed before deciding to delve into the memories of this body's original owner. This better not keep me feeling tired even after I'm done with this body's memories. Within about five minutes of waiting, Nathaniel finally stopped zoning out and instead fell into a resonance of old memories that weren't his own.
Once he clearly started remembering things, he fell into a trance without noticing, experiencing the original owner's memories from a first-person perspective.
Bang! Nathaniel was punched out of his trance-like state, nearly spitting out a tooth. He grabbed the area where he had been hit and began to tear up, not expecting the pain. Isn't this nice? The fuckers who kidnapped me were kind enough to give me a knuckle sandwich as soon as I woke up... riveting.
Barely getting up from the punch, Nathaniel looked to where it had come from, only to see a man with flowing red hair, slender like a woman. The man noticed Nathaniel rising from his stupor and, with a sunny expression, said, "Follow me to the dining hall." He then opened the door and started walking, with the orange-haired sloth of a woman following behind.
Sighing and wondering if the food would at least be edible, Nathaniel picked up Gwenddydd's head from the pillow he had left it on. As he secretly asked, "Do you even need to eat? I mean, given that you can survive without a body and just a head, you shouldn't need to, right?"
Gwenddydd merely hummed in response before answering, "I do and I do not. If I still had my body, I would have enough nutrients stored up to last at least 1,985 years. However, now that I'm merely a head, I need to intake anything—even if it's not edible—to sustain my brain's functions."
After Gwenddydd's long and drawn-out response, which reminded Nathaniel of early AI, he let out a soft chuckle and said, "I'll take that as a yes." Receiving no further reaction from her, he metaphorically shrugged his shoulders and brushed aside the hair obstructing his view. He quickly caught up to the feminine man and the lazy woman.
As Nathaniel caught up with them, the orange-haired woman glanced at him—well, at Gwenddydd's head in his arms. She stopped following the red-haired man and ordered Nathaniel, "Put me on your back. Walking is tiring..." Her tone somehow sounded more tired than it had when she first woke up and called him her slave.
Nathaniel replied, "I'm not going to do as you say," trying to ignore her. However, this caused the red-haired man to stop and say without turning around, "Servant Nathaniel Von Lohengramm, you are mutant 001# Jibrīl type Archangel slave. In non-eloquent terms, somewhat disregarding that any violation of orders will lead to re-education in District 3 and the reinstallation of your shackles of Lilith. If you understand what I have just said, immediately do as she says. That is all—no if's, and's, or but's."
Grimacing at the thought of what re-education could look like, Nathaniel reluctantly got down on one knee while still cradling Gwenddydd's head. With a satisfied smile, Jibrīl hopped onto his back, and he felt somewhat happy that she didn't weigh much at all. He started slowly following the redhead, who walked with a sunny smile shortly after telling him the most terrifying fate he had ever heard for himself.
It was more frightening than what would happen if his ship blew up while heading to the moon for the colonization project, where Howard had told him how he would die if his helmet were broken, causing him restless nights. Speaking of Howard, if I ever return, I must apologize for being a dick to him and his dead girlfriend.
Shortly after thinking this, they arrived at their dining area, prompting him to ask, "Why is this place so empty?" The redhead, not glancing at him, answered, "That is, of course, because you are not staff but a servant. Therefore, you eat in separate dining rooms. I thought this was obvious, as mutants like Jibrīl might cause chaos if revealed to be alive and not terminated." He said this as if it were the most common information in the world before he approached a vending machine-like device to get a snack.
This explanation caused Nathaniel to wonder why the people in this world over-explained certain things while under-explaining others. Wait, I can get how I understand their language now, given the fact that I have the original owner of this body's memories. But how did I manage that when I was just winging it, hoping someone would understand me?
While contemplating this, Gwenddydd opened her eyes and started vibrating, causing Nathaniel to bring her closer to his face and ask, "What's wrong?" She merely responded by saying, "I'm bored."