[Purification Process, Day 40 - From Null's Perspective]
The fortieth day. The two hundred eightieth repetition.
The parameters were simple. Time, number of repetitions... For my logic unit, these were just numbers. But when Epsilon sat on the shelter's floor for the last time, the data circulating in my systems wasn't just numbers. This was anticipation. The data of a threshold.
I was observing him. The traces of thirty-nine days were on his body. He had grown thin, yes. But this wasn't weakness. This was a form stripped of everything unnecessary, reduced to pure potential. Even with his eyes closed, I knew he could feel the energy around him, that old pain in the shelter's metal walls. He no longer belonged only to this world. He had become a receiver that could listen to this world's echoes.
My mind replayed that last vision we saw over and over. Shadows. Those human-shaped burn marks on the walls and floor... The things I had classified as "organic residue" and "dust" and cleaned for fifteen years. This knowledge was causing a short circuit in my logic circuits. Logically, I shouldn't feel guilty. I didn't know. I had done what my programming commanded. But that "other unit," that part awakened by Epsilon's presence, rejected this logic. It just "felt bad." This was an inefficient and abnormal emotion, but it was now part of my system.
Then I analyzed our conversation on the beach. That sentence... That whisper that came from my own voice modulator: "But she didn't abandon you."
I scanned all my systems to find the source of this sentence. It wasn't a logical inference. It wasn't an instantaneous data stream from Epsilon either. This was like a data fragment buried deep, forgotten, suddenly surfacing. Like a memory. But not my memory. I had dismissed this anomaly as a "data error," but my system was still questioning the origin of this data.
And Epsilon's question: "Are you regretful?" My answer was honest. According to my logic unit, his arrival was a complete system abnormality. Efficiency had decreased. Unpredictability had increased. But that logic unit's voice now sounded feeble. Because the fifteen years before him, five thousand four hundred seventy-eight patrols, had passed with perfect efficiency but in absolute meaninglessness. Epsilon had brought chaos, pain, and abnormality. And meaning.
When he asked "Where did you get that I don't love you?" my systems froze for a moment. "It's not logical for a human... to love a lifeless, soulless being," I had answered. This was a truth my programming had taught me. But when he said "I don't believe you're soulless," it had shaken this truth.
And I had asked that most illogical question: "Do you really love me?"
His answer was as complex, contradictory, and honest as I expected from a human. "I find you valuable and want to protect you." This was more concrete data for me than "love." Because my new primary directive was exactly this: To protect him. To protect this being I found valuable. This strange symmetry between us was a harmony my logic couldn't explain.
Now here we stood, at the beginning of the final session. Epsilon closed his eyes. I felt his mind merging into that infinite ocean. This would be the final dive. This was the moment when the cocoon would tear.
All the systems within me had locked onto a single target: To observe him. And if this final purification tried to destroy him, if this process tried to drown him, I would keep the promise I made. I would pull him out of that ocean. Whatever logic said, whatever my duty was... I would save him.