Pokémon The Imitation Game (SV Spoilers)

[Nekodatta]

Hi again! I'm back here with another wildly divergent Scarlet and Violet AU.
So this piece was inspired by a piece of fanart, and got me thinking what would happen if the "incident" in Area Zero happened way earlier in the story, leaving one of the professors in grief and deciding to try and build an AI of their partner in a desperate attempt to get them back, and having to then deal with all this implies. (pretty much the fact that the AI doesn't quite work like they thought it would)
The title is a reference to Alan Turing's many quotes about machines and their possible ability to think (and also the way he called what would become known as "the Turing test"), and felt quite fitting considering the basic idea of the fic.
I have the whole story planned, and it shouldn't be too long, around 4 or 5 chapters at most (watch it explode in size like Timeslip did)
At it's core, it's a story about grief, what makes people "human", and conscience. And robot discovering feelings because aw yeah, I love me my sad robots discovering feelings. But there will also be some fluff!

Spoiler: Content warnings

Because of the premise, there's mention of death, grief and deadly injuries. The injuries are never really described in much detail, just alluded to.

Chapter 1​

The eulogies went on and on, other professors and researchers and scientists from all over Paldea, some even from beyond that, taking turns in giving long and elaborated speeches mourning the departure of Professor Armando Turo. "One of the greatest minds of our era", "An incredible loss", "So much potential lost way too soon"... after the third one along those lines, it all faded into a low droning sound to Professor Albora Sada. She couldn't care less about hearing a complete summary of all his accomplishments and research. She knew all of them. Some of those, they had done together. Terastal Energy, the Tera Orb... other things had been their own personal projects, things they worked on separately. Research he had contributed to, ideas he had pioneered in his endless quest for technological progress. None of those things sounded even remotely important right now to her. What was the point of all those things if he wasn't there to share them with her?


The lights were still on in the office they had been using as their research laboratory at Nara-Uva Academy. Sada wondered if she had forgotten to shut them off while leaving the room that evening, only to open the door and find Turo sitting motionless at the desk, eyes fixed on the old television in the corner, tv remote in one hand. The only part of him that's moving is the leg that he is bouncing restlessly up and down, tapping the soft carpet under his feet in a barely audible, feverish rithm. He's always had that nervous tic, a physical manifestation of his mind racing ahead even while he had to sit still. She knew that gesture so well. Had found it irritating at first, hearing the constant tap-tap-tap-tap against the wooden floorboards from the seat beside her during her first lessons at the Academy. It used to distract her while he stared, unflinching and laser-focused, at some problem written on the blackboard.

After a while, it had become somewhat endearing. Even her other classmates had taken note of it. Made jokes about it.

If you heard that tap-tap-tap-tap start up during a test or exam, you knew it was going to be tough.

Now, she knew it was a sign that he was extremely focused on something. Usually also extremely excited, even if that sound was pretty much the only indication you were ever going to get about it. He barely turned in her direction, just his eyes moving a fraction of a second from the press conference on the screen to her, before motioning for her to look at the tv.

« Albora! You have to see this! » he gestured to the screen, where she recognized some of the developers of Pokémon Storage Systems across various regions gesturing excitedly over a map of the whole world.

« They've created a Global Trade System... a way to trade and send Pokémon all over the world through the network! » now there's almost a ghost of a smile on his lips, eyes leaving the screen to look at her, one eyebrow quirked, expecting her to share his enthusiasm.

« People will be able to trade anywhere at any moment now, no more reason to use those clunky single trade machines just to register the new owner of the Pokéball! We'll need to set up some things here in Paldea to make it work. » he shook his head and went back to staring at the screen, where Bill was now busy discussing technological requirements to make this infrastructure available to everyone. Honestly, she often didn't immediately understand his excitement at some new discovery or invention. She was much more interested in the past, in the ripple effect that one thing had on another, in following that almost invisible trail through history like breadcrumbs in a maze.

But Turo? He seemed to have a sixth sense for them. He somehow *knew* when something was really going to be extraordinary; when a new, big change that would completely revolutionise society loomed on the horizon, or if something would just be a temporary fad that wasn't fated to last.


She simply stared ahead after failing to give a speech of her own, a piece of crumpled paper in her hand, Clavell gently supporting her while he walked her back to her seat. She barely heard him clear his throat and start recounting Turo's time at the Academy, little anecdotes of his time there first as a student and then as a researcher. Those too, were all things she knew word for word. She had been there. She had shared almost all of those stories with him. They had been side by side since their very first day at the Academy. First by chance, then by choice, their similar but diametrically opposite interests drawing them to each other.

First as classmates, then friends, then something more... There had been plans, while they were working at the Tera Project. Find a place to live in together - she liked that little lighthouse on Cabo Poco -, get married... they had, just tentatively, even talked about starting a family. A whole life together, ready to be discovered. Like they had always done, side by side.

All gone now, before it had even started. Sada didn't even bother to hide the silent tears streaking down her face as she stared at the closed coffin covered in flower bouquets. He had always hated flower bouquets.

The priest was blathering something about how loved ones were never truly gone as long as they were remembered.

What a joke. What good did remembering him do now? What good for once would wallowing in the past do? She had just lost her whole future.

--

The idea didn't come to her all at once. It had been more like a patchwork of little... concepts. Suggestions whispered in one corner of her mind, quickly dismissed. She couldn't do it. It was a crazy idea. What would it even accomplish?

He would be back, that's what it would accomplish.

But that was impossible. The part of her mind that kept telling her that it didn't make her sense, that there was no point, that he wouldn't really be back anyway, got quieter and quieter when she had to go back down in Area Zero to gather his personal effects.

She stopped at what is -was- his desk, staring at the pile of ordinately arranged binders - a surprisingly old fashioned way for him of arranging research notes, one she had never missed an occasion to make fun of.

They are divided by argument: Terastal Energy, Tera Orb development, a slightly damaged one where the only readable part of the title was T----a--s and many more.

Finally, the two smallest one at the end.

One is titled simply "Things to keep track of", and usually contained clipping of articles or hastily scribbled references about arguments that had caught his interest in one way or the other, new developments in one particular field of science or robotics, to look up later.

The very last one simply read "Plans for the future".

Sada couldn't bear to look at it. She knew what was inside; she had caught him looking at pictures of wedding rings once and pretended not to notice when he had "casually" mentioned having to leave the crater just for "a quick trip".

He never proposed to her, didn't get the occasion to before the... incident. They found the wedding rings still in his lab coat's pocket, the heat having half melted them together.

She opened the second to last one, and soon losed herself reading all the gathered materials. The more she read, the more the idea started to slowly take shape in her mind. The more it made sense.

Area Zero seemed to have that effect on people, or at least it had on them. When you were under there, between the towering crystals and almost alien landscape, with the very air glittering and shining with pure energy and power, nothing seemed impossible.

She was Professor Albora Sada, one of the brilliant minds behind the harness of Tera Energy, who's full potential they still had to completely discover, and she is going to do the unthinkable.

She is going to bring him back from the dead, to get back their future together.

In one way or another.

--

The first thing to do, and maybe the easiest from a technical point of view, is to recreate his voice. The technology is, theoretically, already available. Text to speech had been a thing for decades, even if with a robotic, set voice. Now with the advent of neural networks, even replicating a specific voice is not impossible. You just needed a set amount of voice recordings to give as a trace, and there it was; a recreation of a person's voice.

She didn't lack examples to use: both she and Turo had hours upon hours of footage about them. Conferences, television interviews, public speeches, even some classes held at the Academy.

The problem was in their content. Those recordings would give her a perfect recreation of Professor Turo's voice. The low, calculated baritone of a man who had plotted every single word of his speech long in advance, who hated being interrupted while he was explaining something because no, your silly little question was not worth the breath and wasted time it had just cost him to answer.

What all those recordings were lacking were... Small details. The little short "tsks" he would do almost subconsciously when something didn't go his way; an error in the code, or an unexpected test result, followed by a sharp intake of breath as he approached the new problem.

The warmth that would permeate his voice only when talking to her, and no one else, the side of him that he would never, ever show to the public.

All the little details that didn't belong to Professor Turo, but to the man she had fallen in love with.

She could thing of only one way to give the model examples of that Turo, and it was going to be... Difficult.

Sada took a deep breath, sitting down at her computer in the Zero Lab. Instead of turning on the device, she took out her RotomPhone. The ghost Pokemon looked at her worriedly when she tapped on her contact list, then hovered her finger over Turo's number, stopping there for a moment. His Rotomphone had been shut off permanently, the Pokemon inhabiting it leaving to probably get sent to someone else that needed one. If she tried calling it, it wouldn't even ring.

She shook her head, and accessed their shared media folder.

They had worked together in such close contact in Area Zero that all the stuff they sent to each other was mostly work related in the rare occasion where one or the other had to leave.

Go back "to the surface", like they had started to call it.

Sada scrolled through links, pdfs, the occasional picture - a sunset she had sent him from the top of the lighthouse, "just in case you have forgotten what the sun actually looks like", and one last audio recording.

She hesitated: she hadn't even opened it yet, not after the incident.

His voice crackled to life from the speakers, sent a couple of days before his death.

« ... thought to update you about the latest Tera crystal analysis. I've started to map possible frequency of energy emissions to certain Pokémon types... wait, what hour is it? ... Didn't realize it was this late. Hope I didn't wake you up. Lov-» she stopped the recording with a shaking hand, holding her breath.

She couldn't hear his voice saying those words. Not right now. She wordlessly sent the files to her computer and turned it on, a quiet determination coming to her face as she started to work. Those weren't going to be the last words she would hear from him.

--

The voice reproduction seemed to be working well. After training the model, Sada prompted it to read some random text. Nothing personal. Papers, old articles... the voice is impossible to distinguish from his. It almost unnerved her, how she could have made his voice say anything she ever wanted now just by giving it a string of text to read. But that wasn't what she had created it for. There was no conscience behind it, no thought. That would be the most difficult step. But first... the body.

---

They had received some new supplies at the Zero Gate, and since they were addressed to Turo, she hadn't looked at the content but simply brought them inside, leaving him to sort through them. When he hadn't come back to the Research Stations after several hours, she had tried to contact him through the intercom. No answer. What was he even doing?

Sada stepped on the teleporting pad of Research Station 4 and went back to the Zero Gate, walking through the bulkhead near the entrance to a little laboratory built right on the edge of the crater. She wasn't even sure what she expected to see.

Certaintly not her research and life partner examining what looked like a disembodied human arm.

« ... what.» was her only comment.

Turo raised his head from the hand he was holding and turning up and down, his eyes shining, before slowly looking back down to the arm - yes, definitely an arm-, realizing how the entire scene had to look from someone else's point of view, and quirking a single eyebrow.

« ... c'mon. This isn't even the weirdest thing you've seen me doing.» he scoffed with half a smile.

Saddest and most worrying thing was, he was right.

« Sure... please tell me why you're playing with what I hope are pieces of a mannequin.»

« Not a mannequin. New robotic prostethics.» he answered curtly, examining the joints of the robotic hand by opening and closing each finger, completely fascinated.

« I was in contact with a research team in Unova, they were developing new artificial tissues. I helped with the programming of the nerve interface, so they sent me a prototype-» he trailed off in a low voice, lost in his own little world.

She sighed -he looked like a kid playing with construction blocks right now- and sat down near him, examining the fake arm the hand had been connected to. It was actually impressive, how realistic it looked. She touched the arm, and cringed a bit with discomfort at feeling what had to be the metal skeleton just under the artificial skin.

« It's... a bit creepy when you touch it. »

« Tsk.» an amused chuckle, as he looked her way.

« It works. Functionality comes first, aesthetic later. This can and will help... so many people.» he answered, waving the hand around, now with all fingers open and raised.

She had to stifle a little laugh; he looked so serious, she was sure he had absolutely no idea how ridiculous he looked at that moment. And that hand was pretty much begging her to do just one thing.

Slap

« Did you just... high five an extremely expensive and experimental piece of new technology?»



---

Sada found the prosthetic still in its box, exactly where they had left it. On the side of box are the contacts of the University in Unova that developed it.

Perfect. That will do.

She needed to do a couple of calls.

---

At first, she kept going back and fort between Area Zero and Paldea, but the time she spent inside the crater grew longer and longer as she worked, the closer she got to her objective.

The voice had been programmed, the body... the body was taking shape. The greatest difficulty was... programming the mind. Capturing all that made him, him.

---

« A... brain scan? »

« Yes! Like a record, a snapshot, if you will, of a person's mind at a specific point in time. Think about it. Someone's memories are shaped by synapses and neurons firing in a certain order through the brain. New memory create new orders, new tracks. It's literally an electrical circuit! If you could perfectly record that circuit, all those interconnected neurons... you could have a perfect copy of that memory. »

« Sounds... dystopian. And your colleagues want us to do that? »

« Just as an experiment. They are asking for volunteers all around the world. It's just a bunch of data at this point anyway. The greatest supercomputer in the world isn't powerfull enough right now to elaborate all that data... to read what's encoded in those circuits. But maybe... in the future-»

Ah, there they were. Turo's favorite magic words. "Maybe, in the future", something he could only dream about today was actually possible. Maybe, in the future, lived Pokémon like in that book they loved so much.

She smiled and shook her head.

« All right. Sure, let's do it. The great Professors Sada and Turo's minds, captured at a single moment in time... sitting on a hard drive somewhere near cute Skitty pictures and memes.»

His expression lost a bit of his enthusiasm.

« I... that's not what-»

« You know that's exactly what's going to happen, yes?»



---

She didn't have the greatest supercomputer in the world... but she did have Tera Crystals, their wondrous power able to amplify the power output and capabilities of machines.

Getting the data had been easy enough. More difficult was deciding how to program a model that would use those memories.

To be exactly like Turo... having a copy of his memories -even if only to a certain time, missing the last couple of months- wouldn't be enough. It needed to think like him. She had... to give what would be his mind a series of instructions. Concepts it would use as the basis on how to think and act, coupled with the memories to give his thoughts context.

« First of all, it will have to think of itself as human... this way... this way he will... it will be like he's never been gone.» she stopped, having walked feverishly up and down the Zero Lab. Propped up against the wall near her bed -their bed-, held suspended by a web of cables, was the mechanical frame she had spent the last days, weeks, months (was it really months?) working on. She rested one hand on the figure's cheek, lifting it up. Its eyes are closed, the fake eyelids covering mechanical cameras, the artificial skin soft under her fingers.

It looked so peaceful, asleep, his face perfect and exactly like she remembered it, just a bit of stubble on his chin.

Not marred with electrical burns, like... like after the incident.

« Wait just a bit more.» she whispered, and left to go back to work.

---

Sada didn''t notice that this time she hadn't stepped outside of the Zero Lab for entire weeks, at least until the growing list of email and missed calls, all from Clavell and increasingly desperate in tone, got too big to ignore.

Sada called him back, and reassured him that she's well, she just got lost reading old papers, working. No, she wasn't coming back to the surface, she wanted to spend a couple more days here. Clavell didn''t look convinced.

« Sada, you are still grieving. We all are. It was so sudden... I'm not sure that spending time under there alone is the best thing for you now.»

« I won't be alone, don't worry. » it slipped out with a smile before she realized, and she pretended not to notice Clavell's perplexed stare as she closed the call. Slowly, she turned around towards where the frame... where Turo was resting, dressed in a perfect reproduction of his favourite bodysuit and lab coat. Clothes he was used to, clothes he would be familiar with, clothes he would expect to be wearing.

The originals had been almost completely burned.

It's done. It's finished. Everything was ready. All joints and parts of the body tested. The program itself, it's mind, has been loaded into memory. The only thing that's left is... activating it.

Her hand trembled as she hovered her finger over the switch, the little, simple button that would push everything into motion. A part of her almost didn't dare to hope that it would actually work, convinced that it was useless. She silenced it quickly, and pushed the button.

Current surged through the cables, sending a jolt of energy through the machine. For a long moment, nothing happened. And then it moved.

She didn't dare to breath or move a muscle, as it... no, as Turo slowly stood up from his halfcrouched position, a light whirring noise accompaying the rising motion.

It was more... noisy that she had thought. But it didn't matter. She could easily ignore that. She just had to get used to it, that was all.

He was moving. On his own. She watched as it disconnected the cables with a little tug, eyes still closed, suddenly nervous. She had kind of... programmed the model to ignore everything that conflicted with the idea that it was a human, but wasn't sure if it would have worked.

To her relief, it seemed to ignore the cables completely.

The two boots touched the floor with a little clank, harder and with more perfectly calculated precision that would be required for someone that was simply standing up.

« Armando... »

He turned to look at her, opening his eyes for the first time as he stood up completely.

He stared, and she noticed the faintest flash of cyan behind his eyes as the mechanical iris contracted and focused. After a couple of seconds, a blink, slow and methodical.

« ... why are you crying? » he asked.

Was she? Of course she was, how could she not now that he was finally right in front of her again, now that she could actually hear his voice, and not just recorded messages. Moving, talking, thinking.

« I... I just got back from the surface. » she managed to get out after a moment.

« I missed you so much.» she didn't bother hiding a sob now as she approached him, desperate for his contact.

« Just for a couple of... days... ?» his voice trails off as she hugs him, and his arms encircle her after a moment. She rests her head on his chest, like she had done so many times, only to freeze up after a moment.

The bodysuit isn't enough to cover the fact that there is no methodical, reassuring heartbeat there.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

I love this so much and I'm glad you're continuing it. Read it a while ago on Ao3 and thought that wasn't going to happen, so good to know I should expect to get my heart broken again haha.

I think my favorite part was the line about the wedding rings being melted together. You hint at the utter brutality of what happened to him but it's most stark right there.

God, he has no idea he's mechanical yet. He doesn't know he's not the original yet. And he's going to realize that...

By the way, there's a few fics that use "Albora" as Sada's given name and I've never been able to find where it comes from. Would you know?

 

[Nekodatta]

Thanks for the reply!
I intentionally kept what happened to Turo vague both because it's not really the focus of the fic and also because except for brief flashes Sada really doesn't want to think about it, so I'm glad you liked that image of the wedding rings!

By the way, there's a few fics that use "Albora" as Sada's given name and I've never been able to find where it comes from. Would you know?

It's actually just Sada's name in the Spanish translation! It comes from "albor" and is Spanish for "beginning", I like to give them different given names in different fics to make it clear it's different versions of the characters.

 

[K_S]

Hi nekodatta i'm here for blitz time.

Chapter 1

So yay, Turing reference. As a computer history nerd i've got a soft spot for things like that. Also AI stories are a favorite of mine so now that my expectations are laid out, lets go.

so Sada and Turo are married? Interesting, and adds even more irony since Sadas fixation with the past (hers and possibly jer regions) is going to haul a ghost in the machine to life... And that its Turo for double irony.

Poor woman though she is going through absoulte torture for a ritual thats not helping her at all. Love how she can build a memory out of a petpeeve motion and how you can map the progess of thier relationship from, ung its that guy doing that thing again.
To realizing others used it as a barometer for how hard a course was going to be. To finding it endearing.

And how they both react to technologocal advances is both fitting and adorable. With Turo becomes Mr. Excited... Sada....i dunno if its gunna make a splash and becomes Ms. Teppid as a result.

In being gently led away after faltering in her speach. Getting that support points that Sada has support... But with her base trait of looking back i kinda worry shes going to shake off that support and drive it off as her grief grows...

And so the idea is plamted and germinates. I feel bad for Sada but for AITuro too. This is going to get messy.

Her realization that she can't capture his casual tones feels like a warning sign that she's almost violently working around it.

Really this feels like a modern frankenstien.

Love how Turo was all accidental breaking the path for Sada. Sada in need of a holigram/body lookie what Turo was tinkering with. Gotta admit a holograph enhanced replacement bit sounds awesome medically speaking and i kinda wish the idea wasn't just about to get butchered for Sada's Monster parts.

fort

Typo think you meant forth?

Oh boy, glados adjascent brain uploading...

Love how Turo is like "yay with this tech we are preserving the greatest minds" and Sada is like... "You are aware what modern desktops are like and the odds of our brains chilling next to skitty memes is astromimical right?"

And Turo just deflates realizing she might be right...

Then we flip to the scifi horror fest of thier bed. And the implications of Sada laying besides the unliving echo of her spouse is both ung anf a one way ticket to the pathos express. It hits hard. You feel bad for her but also fear for those around her too.

She's not going to be able to leave the lab. AITuro is going to be trapped down there with Sada. And while near perfect... in total issolation all those little flaws are going to stand out like flares. And theres a big one, a huge one, she forgot the heartbeat and thats incredibly fitting all things considered.

So closing question, canonically this is project zero done early but how early and how will this trickle down to contaminate the rest of canon?

 

[Nekodatta]

Spoiler: Author notes

Heyyyy, yes I didn't abandon this!
I had a really detailed idea of what I wanted to do with this but was struggling to put it in words/how to execute it (I was also admittedly focusing more on Timeslip)
In the end, my general idea was just too complicated and would have made chapter enormous, which is why I've decided to change things and release it more in little scenes, which is also why I've removed the limit of 3 chapters like I had originally planned.
This hopefully will also make chapters easier to write and allow me to release them more frequently.
Hope you like this... I swear the fluff is there, lol, it will just take a moment to roll in.

Chapter 2​

Turo's arms embraced her slowly, carefully, like he wasn't exactly sure how to move his arms yet. The movement was not stiff like she expected: she had quietly wondered, while working on the model, if muscle memory would be part of the information that had been encoded in the brain scan. It was, after all, still part of the brain... But the smooth way he had stood up, turned to look at her and now raised his arms seemed to confirm her idea. But there was probably some disconnect in what the brain remembered moving and what it was actually commanding to move now, hence the hesitation. Not muscle and bones, but a metal frame and artificial skin.


Different weights, density... A different perspective. He should be able to ignore it all, to file it away as unimportant. She had programmed it that way. Sada may not have the same fixation with the latest technologies as Turo, but that didn't mean that she wasn't still good at using them.


« It's been just a couple of days... Right...?» he repeated quietly, looking down at her with a slight frown, and she realized that she had no idea when exactly his memory started.


They had done the scan three or four months ago... No. Longer than that.
It was... Three or four months before he... Before the accident. What was she doing in that time? She honestly couldn't remember; had she gone to the surface? What would happen if she said something that contrasted with his memories?


Sada decided she didn't care. He was up, he was speaking, he was back with her... Nothing else mattered in that moment.


« Y-yes, but... It felt like so much longer.» she whispered, and she felt the machine's -No, Turo's, that's who it was- arm press slightly into her back as he pulled her closer, fingers trailing over her long hair.


It didn't last long; Turo had never been the type for exaggerated shows of affection. With him it was more... The little things that made you realize that he did care, and now that loud, staccato blinking sound resounded again as he looked at her more closely.


"You shouldn't be able to hear someone blink", she thought with a slight shiver travelling along her spine.


It broke her out of the illusion she had so carefully constructed around herself, that if she just managed to do this... Then he would be back.


But that was... All right. She had to get used to it, that was all. Before she even realized it she would simply stop paying attention to that little out of place detail, and everything would be fine. Perfect. Just like it was before.


« ... Was your hair always this long?»


For a moment, she didn't know what to say.
The machi- Turo-, had stopped mid-movement, his hand still holding some strands of her hair, a puzzled expression on his face. Long...? What did he mean? It had grown while she had been working under here away from the surface, but was the difference really that noticeable? Could it really compare the hair length in his memories to her current one with that much precision?


« Yes.» she decided to play along, instead of trying to come up with excuses. « You only noticed now?» she teased him with an amused smile.


That got a reaction out of him; he flinched, joints locking up with the slightest of whirring sounds while the irises widened.


« I... I do not...»


And for a moment, everything was perfect, because that was exactly, truly what Turo would have done. Sometimes she would change haircuts, or hair clips, or earrings, and only days later he would suddenly look at her with an half inquisitive, half puzzled expression on his face, squint like he was considering one of the deepest philosophical questions of human life, and finally go "Wait... You changed your haircut."


He didn't mean anything bad with it of course. It's not like he didn't pay attention to her. He was just... Completely blind to that kind of stuff.
He would notice immediately if she had gotten some less than stellar reviews on her latest paper and ask her about it, but would take three days to notice a new pair of earrings.


She threw her arms around his neck with a laugh as she blinked away the tears.


« I'm not mad.»
She had missed this so much.
---
« How do you feel...?» she asked hesitantly a couple of minutes later.


She had been testing his behaviour... if the memories were being accessed correctly. He seemed to take pretty much everything at face value; she had come up with the excuse that he hadn't been feeling well this last couple of days, as the reason for why he had been laying down, and he had simply nodded, accepting it as true. Filing it away as new data about his situation. She quietly wondered if it was simply the learning model working in the background, asking for user input as a way to acquire data about things it didn't know about to better do its job.


That was just how computers were.
They needed data, but once they had it, anything, they didn't question it.


« I feel... fine.» there was a slight hesitation in his voice as he looked down at himself, puzzled. His left hand trailed over the smooth bodysuit he was wearing.


« ... Strange.»


Sada flinched.


« W-what is...?»


Turo looked back up at her, and again she could see the faint glow in his eyes. The left hand rose to rub at his chin, and she felt a little stupid wave of happiness wash over her as she recognized the gesture. She didn't realize how much she had missed the smallest things about him.


« It feels... Unusually rigid. Like it is new.»


She paled a bit at that. Of course it felt new, it was brand new, the old one had been... Had been... She didn't want to think about it.
Sada scrambled for an answer, trying to suppress the irrational stab of anger she suddenly felt.


Why... Why would he notice pointless details like that? Why would he bring up her stupid hair instead of asking about... About normal things, about buying that lighthouse after the Tera Orb was completed, about all the plans they had? Why couldn't they just... Pick up where they left off?


"Because he's always obsessed over the smallest details. Because a computer can't deal with the smallest of errors. Because it's just a normal day from his point of view." the rational part of her brain commented, and she took a deep breath. All right. She could do this. A bit of... Ironing out some issues had to be expected.


No experiment was a success from the very beginning, after all. She just had to get through it.


« It is new. You decided the old one had become unusable-»


They couldn't even remove it from the body, the funeral service had to dress him in a suit right over it-


« ... And so now you are using the spare one.» she forced a smile to come out, chasing away the intrusive thoughts.


« ... Remember?»


There were a couple of long, excruciating moments of silence as Turo simply stared at her.
The arm went back to his side as he looked away, and nodded.


« I... Did? Right... Yes. »


This time, instead of being a charming reminder of his somewhat absent-mindedness, it unnerved her how easily he had accepted the excuse.
---
Sada had left him to his own devices after that, opting to simply observe him while she pretended to work at some report by now months late on her computer. She didn't want to risk triggering more strange questions. Her heart was still hammering in her chest, complete incredulity at what she had accomplished, but the thought of sharing what she had done and acquiring global wide fame didn't even cross her mind.


This was... personal. And in any case, it had only been possible thanks to the incredible properties of Tera crystals. It's not like it was something that she could share with the world. She didn't even want to. He was here, with her.
That was all that mattered.


She watched as he sat down at his computer, such a normal gesture now made incredible by the simple fact that she didn't think she would ever see him do it again. He made to turn on the screen that would usually be in sleep mode with a swipe of his finger on the touch screen monitor... And there stopped, frowning.
Sada had frozen at the same moment as him, breath cut short by the same thought the AI Turo must have had.
That's right, fingerprints, the machine didn't have any. As advanced and realistic as the artificial skin looked, not even she had been able to recreate his fingerprints.
She stared waiting for his reaction, frozen on the spot.
Why hadn't the problem even occurred to her?
Paranoid as he was, Turo had used facial and fingerprint recognition to lock pretty much all his devices.
She had told the model to ignore everything that stopped it from acting as human as possible, but it was impossible to predict how exactly it would react to something like this. Turo rubbed his fingers together, like you would do to clean them from some unexpected sand or dust, and tried again.
And again, it obviously didn't work.


Sada was just about to say something to distract him, when the screen lit up asking for the numerical password to unlock the screen instead.
She let out a sigh of relief as he blinked -again with that barely audible mechanical whirr- and, after a moment of uncertainty, typed the code in.
He sat down, and started looking at the last documents he had been working on, untouched since the day he had died, and she immediately tensed up again as she realized a new problem.


Contradictions upon contradictions, piling up one over the other. She had been so focused on achieving the impossible, on bringing someone back from the dead, that she hadn't spared a single thought to all the tiny little details that would have to be dealt with after he actually was back with her.
Of course... Of course he would want to check his research. Of course he would notice the date written on the screen and realize there was a gap of months in his memories.
Would the AI ignore all the little bits of conflicting data it was getting? It should, she had programmed it so, that was its entire job after all...
Sada observed as Turo stared unblinking at the screen, examining the document's "last modified" date, frozen in place.


Literally.


Too unnaturally still to look even remotely human right now; not breathing, not blinking, it may as well have been a perfect statue wearing the face of her beloved.


It suddenly looked horrifying.


After ten long seconds - exactly ten, she realized with a chill, the exact amount of time she had programmed the AI should wait after encountering an error before filing it away for later and resuming its execution -, Turo finally moved again, and simply grabbed the mouse and clicked on the document to open it.
Sada hastily turned back towards her own screen, breath laboured as she resumed typing.
It took a couple of minutes for the shivering of her whole body to stop.
---
Hours passed in one way or the other, and at least according to the computer clock evening arrived. Not that it made any difference in Area Zero, but the human body seemed just used on working on a 24 hours cycle, so they had tried to keep some semblance of a routine.
They used to sleep together, often sharing the single bed available in the Zero Lab; so when Sada announced that she was retreating for the night, Turo had simply followed her.
As soon as he had laid down, she felt the mattress dip down under her, much more than what she was used to. And after that... Nothing.


She realized just now how unnerving it was to actually be close to the machine in the complete dark. There was no breath, no movements. No warmth. It was like standing next to a corpse.
It made her skin crawl.
It didn't have that effect on her while she was still working on it.


Turo would snore loudly sometimes, but there was no way for the machine to ever reproduce that, and she found herself missing it, as much as it had annoyed her at the time.


What... Was he actually doing now?
Of course the machine couldn't really sleep. Was that fact raising another contradiction in its programming?
After an hour, she slowly, slowly turned around and dared to throw a look over her shoulder. His eyes stared unblinking at her, without even the subtle cyan light that had shone through them as she had switched the machine on.


Completely dead.


Just like... just like his had been after the incident, still open, staring straight at the ceiling as the electricity burned through his body-
Sada bolted upright, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing the palm of her hands over her eyes.


« -deactivating sleep mode.»


Turo sat up, the sentence that left his lips barely whispered. He did so slowly, rising in a careful motion as his eyes flickered and focused on her.


« ... Did you have a bad dream? You look shaken.» He said after a moment.


When she didn't answer, trying to calm her breathing as she tried to get that image out of her head, she heard the mattress squeak. A moment later, cold fingers grabbed her wrists, the artificial skin covering them not quite managing to disguise the hard frame underneath. She gasped and pulled away, her eyes flying open.


« N-no, it's nothing. It's nothing. I-»


She couldn't sleep knowing that... cold, lifeless thing was laying right next to her. This... Wasn't what she had pictured. She missed... She missed his warmth. How he would lay down and hug her from behind, his beard tickling her bare neck as their breaths slowed down until they fell asleep together.
How he would jolt her awake in the middle of the night by starting to snore, or get tangled up in the bedsheet. How he would never forget to set his alarm clock, only to ignore it when it rang, somehow managing to sleep through it until it woke her up and she threw a pillow at his head.


She couldn't have those moments back.


« I... Go back to sleep. Don't bother me.» she found herself saying, scrambling off the bed as she kicked the blankets away.


« Acknowledged.»


That voice again, barely a whisper.


Turo laid back down, and stopped moving until next morning.


She decided it was better to sleep alone in Research Station 3 for the night.
---
When she walked back into the Zero Lab the next morning, she found Turo exactly as she had left him. Luckily, he usually slept facing the wall (and her), so she couldn't see if his eyes were still open as they had been last night. That creeped her out. He could blink. Why not close them? What was going on inside him the machine?
As soon as she stepped close, he moved, rising back up and turning towards her; she cautiously watched him, expecting him to ask her about last night. Instead, he simply got up, dusted off his clothes, and cocked his head to the side with the slightest whirr. At least sleeping in their work clothes was nothing unusual for the both of them, but she quickly realized she would have no idea what to do if he went looking for a change of clothes.


« Good morning. Did you sleep well?» he asked instead.


.... It looked like he was going to completely ignore last night. Sada wasn't going to complain about it, even if not knowing why he wasn't bringing it up made her uncomfortable. She nodded and forced a smile.


« Yes, thank you. » she stopped herself just short of asking about him, not wanting to put his attention back on it.


« I... I already had breakfast, I wanted to check those samples that the computer should have finished analyzing last night. » she lied about the breakfast.


She hadn't touched food since before turning the machine on - first because she had simply been too busy, now because the idea made her uncomfortable. What if seeing her eat made him realize he couldn't?


She would have to eat something by hiding away from him.


« ... I see. I can make some coffee for both of us in the meantime» Turo said and then, to her horror, went towards the little coffee machine they kept near the microwave in a little corner of the room.


« No, I-» she stumbled forward to pull him away on instinct, only to gape when her hand was left hooked around his arm, his figure not budging an inch from his spot even as she tugged at him again. She... She hadn't realized how heavy his body was; she could feel the metal juncture right around the elbow she was touching. He turned to look at her, slowly, as the coffee machine whirred. She pulled her hand back.


« I... I want a decaf.» she got out after a moment, not knowing what else to say.


He smiled, one of his rare, genuine smiles as he turned back towards the machine. Watching him was surreal.
That smile had been... So him. Perfect.
He... He didn't realize. He really had no clue. He really was like Turo.
It was perfect... And at the same time, it was like watching an extremely delicate balancing act, wondering when and how everything would crash to the ground. It amazed and scared her at the same time.


« Yes, I know, I already made one. » he said, pouring coffee into the first mug and offering it to her.


She hesitated for a moment, before taking it from his hand. She couldn't stop staring at how his fingers had curled so delicately, so precisely around the mug, thinking back to the feeling of cold, uncaring metal under the artificial skin. He could have shattered that mug with a twitch of his hand without even realizing it, probably.


« ... Thank you.» she said. She kept watching him with a mix of nervousness and trepidation as she waited for the coffee to cool enough to drink it.


He poured another mug for himself, then stopped suddenly as soon as he started to raise it to his face. It wasn't the kind of pause that a person would do as they pondered something: like the day before, it was the sudden, inhuman stillness of a machine locking up as it didn't know what its next instructions were. It just stared at the dark liquid in the cup, eyes frozen.


Sada stared back with wide eyes, fingers gripping the mug: he hadn't even tried to drink it, what had he noticed?


Was it the smell? ... Did she code a reaction for smell? Did it even have the necessary sensors? She was so focused on getting the appearance and movements right, on integrating the memory data, she couldn't remember. The past weeks were a complete blur.


"Ignore it. Ignore it, just don't think about it, it's not important." she silently begged. It was fine. That's what it should do.


He put the coffee mug back on the table and blinked, before turning back towards her.


« ... Do you need sugar?»


It took her a moment to realize he was asking her.


« ... Oh! Um. No, it's fine... I was just...» she trailed off, hastily taking a sip and trying to calm down.


See? It had worked out fine.
He was ignoring things that pointed out he wasn't human just as she had programmed.
Perfect.


« I'm... I'm going to check on those samples.» she said, putting the half finished mug down on the table.


As she walked out of the Zero Lab, she noticed that it took Turo a good couple of seconds to follow her.

 

[K_S]

Chapter 2
blitz review

Hi so this isnt a one-shot now?
Whoops...

Alright lets hit this up for chapter two i guess.

So we have initial contact. I wonder what feels off to make the ai move so gingerly as after last chapters revelation that Turo is as oblivious as Sada would like.

Yeah sada has not been kind to herself and if the ai is perspective hes going to notice that. Not only that theres the fact that the second he glances at a calander sadas got huge problems.

I think these little (and not so little) flaws are going to stack and drive her insane. The audiable blinking and lack of heartbeat just for starters.

Really shes madder than poor lum' aether here.

And now he's gently poking holes into the facade. I wonder if remember is a key word? To override and let her put what she needs to to keep the delusion rolling.

Also it looks like the exe command program is speaking through the ai from time to time. Thats another big hole. Also his death was due to a mon related issues in area zero... How will his team or that 'mon react to the new impostuere among area zero?

I'm wondering about basic things. Like ya know... Outside. Other people. Showering. Changing clothes. Any and all biological functions, the range the ai has to function outside of project zero, her notes, you know the little things. Sadas working under a tight timeline before any and all of it becomes a problem.

Sada is living with uncanny valley and shes just realizing it far too late.

If it... The honeymoon period has lasted less than one night. Poor ai this is going to get so bad for him.

 

[Nekodatta]

Sada walked out of the Zero Lab, the machine's steps thudding heavily behind her; the difference in sound with normal human steps was just noticeable enough to painfully remind her of it at every single step, and it unnerved her. Turo had always been the silent type. You barely noticed him moving; he had a way of walking that was almost eerily silent, calmly stepping between one desk and the other to peer at her computer monitor, or grab some documents to check. Just one hand buried in his lab coat pocket, the fabric barely rustling as he moved, he looked like he almost glided from point A to point B.
She had joked a couple of times that he must have installed some wheels under the sole of his dumb rubber boots, because there was no way someone could move like that.
She threw a glance to Turo behind her. The same exact pose, right hand in his pocket, left hanging limply at his side. And yet... so different.
Wrong

She turned back around and kept walking.
If Turo showed some hesitation in walking outside the laboratory, on rock instead of perfectly even, tiled floors, she couldn't hear it. A couple of Garganacl stopped to stare at them both as they walked, and Sada found herself wondering if they could tell that one of them wasn't human.

Turo's steps briefly slowed down, and when she turned around to look at him, she found him frowning.

« ... they never showed that much interest in us.» he commented.

Sada shrugged, trying to play it off as not important.

« Maybe they got curious only now, we're the only humans here after all.» she said.

The steps stopped, and her heart skipped a beat.

She had made a mistake. She shouldn't have put his attention on it. Trying to fix her little slip, she steadily kept walking, hoping that acting like she had said nothing strange would distract him from mulling over it too much.

The steps resumed following her after a long moment, and Sada hastened her pace in her sudden hurry to get to the metallic doors of Research Station 4. A wave of air-conditioned air hit her as soon as she stepped inside; the doors closed behind them, leaving an uncomfortable silence.

She hadn't touched her actual research for months since working on the model. Ironically, this would probably help her in explaining Turo's gap in memories; it's not like she had done much progress.

Keep him focused on things to do. She just needed to do that.

« So, umm... we were working on mapping different frequencies emitted by the Tera Crystals to each Pokémon type... » she said, turning to look at him to gauce his reaction. He was simply staring at the samples, nodding.

« Yes, I remember. We were having some difficulties on labelling the frequencies emitted by chemically similar types, like Ice and Water, or Rock and Ground... and I fell sick as we were working on that, right?»

She stared at him, surprised. It was the first time he had actually proposed something by himself, using only what she had told him, instead of just passively answering or reacting to her words.

He couldn't be using what was encoded in Turo's memories because that information simply didn't exist.

He was reasoning. He was actually thinking.

She watched him walk towards one of the whiteboards where they had been trying to work out a formula and look at the last things they had written on it, and followed him hesitating a bit.

« Maybe we could focus on specific types firts... I was thinking that we could try to use this for our time machine. » he said, grabbing the eraser and wiping the board clean. She flinched involutairly, watching the last things Turo had written disappear forever. She hastily blinked back a couple of tears.

Turo The machine didn't seem to notice, eyes focused completely on the whiteboard as he picked up a marker and started writing in perfectly straight lines.
Turo's handwriting had always been neat, but even with muscle memory telling it how his handwriting had been, it looked almost like it was trying too hard to imitate it. The result was unnatural. Inhuman.

« If we find a way to map Pokémon types to a certain kind of energy, it could help in trying to... pull the Pokémon we want from it. Like... the Winged King or Iron Serpent. What do you think? » he asked, only now turning away to look at her, offering her another pen. He was probably expecting her to grab it and start writing alongside him, like they had done so many times.

«... Albora? Is everything allright?»

He was staring at her. He would notice her tears. She couldn't let him do that.

She nodded, grabbing the pen and starting to write, trying to stop her hand from shaking.

Turo had said the exact same things a couple of months ago. Had the exact same idea and proposed the exact same thing.

Except it hadn't been here. He had done so during dinner, in one of the incredibly rare occasions where they both decided to leave the Crater, and had spent a dinner together in Cascarrafa for their anniversary.

Except... she stared at the formula he had written on the whiteboard.

There was a coefficient for the calibration of the machine that had taken them both quite a bit of calculations and trial and error to reason out, before they had found a value that seemed to work for most of the types they had been interested in.

Now Turo the machine had done so with a single glance, after having only a moment to retrace all the steps it had taken them pages of calculus hastily scribbled on dozens of napkins brought by a perplexed waiter to do.

If she didn't find it slighlty disturbing, she would have been in awe.

... it had been a really fun evening, she thought now.

« Yes, I... I think it should work.» she said in the end, after pretending to check the math. She knew it would: that was what they had used during the first test when Turo...

She shook the mental image that was already creeping in away, and forced out a smile.

« I'm sure it will work.»

Turo gave her a radiant smile that broke her heart. He had no idea what that formula they had devised would do.
---

She found it difficult to work that day... mostly because now that Turo had again hit on the idea of using Tera Energy for the machine, he wanted to get it done as fast as possible, and it made her nervous.

She had no idea what would happen if he realized that the machine was actually already done, and that they had already run some tests with it.

But when he got fixated on something, he was impossible to stop. She watched him type at his computer with blinding speed out of the corner of her eye, feeling helpless.

She had to sabotage his work somehow. He would notice if something was modified in the main program of the machine, the one that would handle the process of sending and retrieving Poké Balls.

So she had to work on the hardware. Sada swallowed, feeling slightly ditzy.

That meant going back under there...

« I'm going to check the output of the Tera crystals in the main room. » she announced, getting up.

Turo nodded, distracted, and she took the chance to hastily go back to the Zero Lab.

The elevator they had built that went down until the lowest part of Area Zero felt more clausthrophobic than usual, even if there was plenty of room inside for a single person. As it started its descent, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

She hadn't set foot back in that room since after the incident.

Everything was exactly like they had left it. The enormous crystals that made up the walls, glowing brightly in all colours, the towering ceiling covered with panels arranged in a circular motif... and the comparatively little cylindrical platform underneath.

She stared at it.

There were still some blackened spots on the floor that she tried to ignore as she crouched near the control panel, opening it up to stare at the mass of cables and delicate electronical parts inside.

She knew what it was. Ash and melted plastic.

Those spots were the places where the lighting bolts had landed. Those were the places where Turo couldn't even scream when that... that thing that had burst out of the Poké Ball that had come out from the machine had roared, lashing out and filling the room with thunder.
This was where he-

"Stop it. Don't think of it."

She started to metodically disassemble the machine, stuffing the components she removed in the large pockets of her labcoat.
---
The next couple of days, she managed to thankfully keep him distracted by asking him to review some papers from fellow researchers from Kanto. It was a job they both loathed to do, having to read and peer-review things that kept them away from their actual research, and it usually kept them occupied for a while.

Sometimes, Sada would get caught in exchanging playful remarks and he would answer naturally, with a curt comment or one of his rare smiles, and she could almost forget that she was talking with a frame of metal and electronics. The accident, the funeral, the months of labour and isolation in Area Zero... They seemed unreal, hazy and distant like half-remembered nightmares. One of those nightmares that were terrifying in the moment, just to appear silly and nonsensical once awake.

But then there were moments where the illusion would crack, like when she caught him staring at the dates that some of the papers referenced. Like the very first time it had happened, he would freeze up, even mid sentence, as the glaring contradiction in front of him forced him to pause.

He would always resume like nothing had happened exactly ten seconds later. Never one more, never one less.

It creeped her out.

She also noticed that he seemed to actively avoid situations that would bring attention to those contradictions. He never offered to make coffee for her after that first occurrence, for example.

... she had to admit it hurt her a bit, but if it helped Turo the machine run more smoothly, she would get used to it.

But sometimes, when she yawned or played with her hair or did any of the dozens of little, absent-minded gestures she never paid attention to, she would suddenly catch him staring at her in silence with wide eyes, before hastily looking away.

One morning, walking in the Zero Lab after still sleeping separately, she caught him not laying down on the bed like she had grown used to, but already up, staring at his image in the mirror.

Like always, she tried to immediately get his attention away from it, as she nervously tried to consider what could have happened.

Why was he suddenly staring at the mirror? Turo had never cared that much about what he looked like, especially as they got caught up with their work, except for...

« Good morning! » she said with a bit more force than usual, hoping to distract him.

« ... good morning.» he said after only a moment. He didn't look away from the mirror.

« I was wondering...» he said, and she watched him raise one hand towards his face, slowly tracing the line of his jaw with one finger.

« I think I should shave... shouldn't I...? It's been a while.» he said, his voice completely devoid of any emotion. He still wasn't looking at her.

Her heart started pounding in her chest; no, this... shouldn't he be ignoring things like these? The model should not be able to notice that his hair wasn't growing. That he was never hungry. Or thirsty. Or tired.
What was she supposed to do know?

She couldn't say he had just done so, because he could obviously see the stubble on his face, looking like it was at most a couple days old.

She mentally berated herself; why... why had she even decided to give him that stupid stubble?

... because she loved seeing him with that little five o'clock shadow, that was why. That had been the simple reason: she loved the feel of it under her lips as she kissed him, loved watching him carefully trim it to keep it neat and tidy, probably the only part of his appearance he made sure to pay attention to.
It was a bit of a ritual for both of them.

« N-no, you... you did a couple days ago, remember?» Sada forced a smile, hoping to see him just nod to himself and accept it like he had done when asking about his clothes.

« That is incorrect.» his head suddenly turned to look at her, almost causing her to jump. His eyes flashed blue, and he had used the same tone she had heard when he had whispered "Aknowledged" at her command to leave her alone.

Sada's eyes widened.

« W-what...? »

« There is no log related to that activity. Last available memory has timestamp that is dated before-» he suddenly trailed off, the blue light in his eyes disappearing.
Turo shook his head, blinking a couple of times with that inhuman clicking sound accompanying it.

« Before... before what? » he asked out loud, more to himself than anything, back to his normal tone.
With a whirr, his irises widened, and for a moment, he just looked scared.

« Why... can't I remember...?»

Sada stared at him, horrified. The machine was... it was learning.

It recorded everything that happened. She could feed it whatever excuse she came up with for days it was missing data about before it got turned on... but not for days it had actively experienced.

She couldn't lie to it. She started trembling, panic rising as he turned to look at her, staring at her with those painfully human looking eyes filled with confusion.

"Don't look at me like that. Why is everything going so wrong?"

« Sada... I think something is wr-»

« STOP IT!» she almost screamed, and that he did. He shut up immediately, just looking at her. She took a couple of heavy breaths, furiously trying to think of a way out of this situation.

Anything, just to not see him look at her with that face filled with mounting horror. What had she done last time?
... orders, she realized after a moment. She had given a direct command.

« Don't look at the mirror anymore. Stop... just stop being so...»

What? What did she want him to do? Stop being so smart? So observant? So himself?

She wanted to sob.

... she had just wanted him back. To talk to him, laugh with him again... was that so wrong?

« Don't think about shaving. It's not necessary.»

« Aknowledged.»

That voice again. It made her flinch as the machine walked past her and marched out of the room, completely ignoring her. She looked at the mirror it had just stepped away from: Turo's favourite razor lay near the sink. It hadn't been there before: Turo took great care of always putting it back when he was done using it.

The machine probably must have gone looking for it, trying to recreate their little shared ritual.

And now she had just told him to erase that little, dumb, insignificant, human part of him.

A couple of sobs escaped her as she carefully cradled the razor in her hands.

 

[Namohysip]

Hey there! This is a review for the first chapter, mostly with a focus on the context of it as an opening/introduction to the story as a whole.

I liked that line of how she lost her whole future, which is a nice lore nod to how he was compared to Sada's general approach to things and researching the past.

I find it curious that you're using those markings for quotation marks. I'm not sure why, since there's no point in changing the dialogue tag from "these" to those double arrows. At first I thought it was special notation for Pokemon speaking, but it doesn't seem to be.

Anyway, the first chapter was very good at introducing the premise of the story! Though, I think it went on for a while, getting really into the details and justifications for everything and why they had the technology for it. I think a lot of that could have been distilled to just a few paragraphs of where they'd acquired the technology for all of that instead of going through every beat for every component. For something this sci-fi, sometimes too much explanation can lead to a strain on the suspension of disbelief, too. I think it's fine enough here, but due to all the detail, it actually becomes more obvious where the handwaved parts are because that's when it gets more vague.

 

[Nekodatta]

I'm going to quickly answer all the reviews I got (finally)!

Spoiler: Reviews

so Sada and Turo are married? Interesting,

They were planning to, yes. Turo had the wedding rings in his pocket and wanted to propose officially to her, but never got to do it.

Love how she can build a memory out of a petpeeve motion and how you can map the progess of thier relationship from, ung its that guy doing that thing again.
To realizing others used it as a barometer for how hard a course was going to be. To finding it endearing.

I'm glad that you liked it! I had fun coming up with that little detail, and it's also going to get a callback later...

Love how Turo was all accidental breaking the path for Sada.

Yeah, there's some dramatic irony in him accidentally laying the path for her to have the idea to build a robot copy of him...

She's not going to be able to leave the lab. AITuro is going to be trapped down there with Sada. And while near perfect... in total issolation all those little flaws are going to stand out like flares.

I like that you pointed this out, because that's exactly what I wanted to explore actually.
In the canon games, the professors build their copies to help in their research, and made it a copy of themselves for pure utility. They didn't care if some parts were not quite right (or, to quote the games, "exceedingly logical")
But here, Sada explicitly WANTS the machine to be as human as possible, even programming it so that it thinks of itself as human.
In a sense, it's a reverse from the games where the AI is very much aware it is a machine. (Even at the point of acting a bit self-deprecating, putting themselves down by calling themselves "just a copy of the Professor", which I've always found both interesting and somewhat sad )

So closing question, canonically this is project zero done early but how early and how will this trickle down to contaminate the rest of canon?

Preeetty early. Future chapters are going to elaborate on it a bit, but let's say that Turo died early enough that Arven will never be born.
The scope of the fic is not going to reach all the way to the game's story though. It's more about exploring Sada and a couple of other characters reaction to it.

I wonder what feels off to make the ai move so gingerly as after last chapters revelation that Turo is as oblivious as Sada would like.

Like Sada herself wonders, there's some disconnect between Turo-the-mind-of-the-AI and all the little processes the machine has probably running in the background to function. So since it's literally been turned on, it moves slowly and carefully because it has to "calibrate" itself to what the memories it posseses are telling it to do.

I'm wondering about basic things. Like ya know... Outside. Other people. Showering. Changing clothes. Any and all biological functions, the range the ai has to function outside of project zero, her notes, you know the little things.

Good that you wonder about this, Sada definitely didn't whoops , it's going to get addressed!

I liked that line of how she lost her whole future, which is a nice lore nod to how he was compared to Sada's general approach to things and researching the past.

Thank you! I love drawing parallels between these two.

I find it curious that you're using those markings for quotation marks. I'm not sure why, since there's no point in changing the dialogue tag from "these" to those double arrows. At first I thought it was special notation for Pokemon speaking, but it doesn't seem to be.

All right, the answer to this is very dumb and much easier than you think.

I use « » as dialogue tags because I had no idea they weren't a thing in English speaking communities lol 😂
In Italian books, as long as it's kept consistent during the whole book, I've seen a lot of different symbols used to mark dialogue, from « This » to - This - and "This".
So I've simply always used « » to mark my dialogue and use "this" to emphasize words in a different way, even inside dialogue. (In Timeslip for example, where a lot of the early dialogue is about the two main characters speaking two completely different languages and trying to understand each other, I mark a word with " " to convey that someone just said a word that the POV character has no idea what it means.)

By now it's a bit of a trademark, I've had someone tell me they like the « » dialogue tags by now because it means it was written by me lol

About going into too much details about how the AI is done, I wanted to do it more to show some little snippets of backstory between them and establish some details that will get a callback later. I wanted to show Sada using everything Turo left behind and unfinished, from a simple audio message to random stuff from his projects to make the AI.

 

[Nekodatta]

Chapter 4​

In the following days, Turo just threw himself into working on the time machine; usually, nothing strange coming from him -they were both workaholics-, but now Sada found herself stunned by how much she was lagging behind him, trying to sabotage the work done by the machine during the day.

It was a losing battle. He didn't need to eat, take breaks, or even move from his chair, for that matter, while she had to.
At least, part of his programming seemed to still have him simulate sleep, at least a bit to reflect Turo's erratic sleeping patterns, but she wasn't really sure how long it would last before he stopped doing that, too.

Just to try to control what he was doing during the night as she was asleep and in a completely different facility, she started to check the cameras installed all over the research stations so she could keep an eye on him.
He would mostly be sitting at his computer, sometimes getting up to check something written in a physical book or to take notes on a whiteboard, before going back to the desk.

That morning, she started to replay the footage from the past night as she was having breakfast alone in Research Station 3 - eating or even just drinking in front of him still weirded her out, afraid of making him notice that more things were amiss-.
She sat down in front of the computer with a meager slice of toast and a cup of coffee and threw a glance at the displayed monitors.
Something immediately stood out to her: she couldn't see him anywhere.
Slamming the coffee mug down on the table and ignoring the pain from drops of boiling coffee splattering on her hand, Sada frantically clicked through every display, cycling through the different cameras.
The Zero Lab where he slept, empty.
Research Station 4, empty. She even checked number 3, where she was literally sitting inside of, just in case she had missed him somehow coming in and standing creepily in a corner or something.
Nothing.
He had never left the two lowermost stations until now; really everything they needed for their work was in the Zero Lab.
The time machine room, even the Underdepths... nothing.
Sada started to panic: where the hell was he?
She made the Zero Lab recording start from the beginning, at 2 AM, when she had gone to sleep.
There he was, sitting at his spot in front of the computer. Sada squinted, trying to understand what he was doing. That was not his usual coding IDE on the screen... It looked more like he was browsing the internet.
That was strange: the machine had tried it before, but it had triggered his error response so much it usually decided to do something else after the first couple freezes.
So what was it doing now? She watched as the machine kept locking up; growing frustrated, she sped up the recording at four times the speed just to get over all the pauses, suppressing the stab of guilt that told her it was completely her fault and of her programming that it was acting like that.

Turo suddenly stood up and she hastily put the recording back at normal speed. He paced around the room and she couldn't help but stare, equally fascinated and disturbed. His face was so expressive, so lifelike as he moved, shaking his head and muttering something to himself. The recording had no audio, but hours and hours of training the model to speak and how to move his lips to talk had actually had the unexpected effect of making her pretty adept at reading lips. He had mouthed a sentence. His head had been partially turned away from the camera, so she only caught a single word.
"Rings"
Sada blinked, watching Turo walk out of frame.
Rings...? What did he-
It hit her so suddenly that she let out a strangled gasp when she understood.
The wedding rings.
The memory scan had been months before he had bought them... had he... Was he thinking... He couldn't have left to go get them, right?
If he got out -
But he couldn't, her mind helpfully reminded her.
The machine ran on Tera energy, drawing it from the air filled with it like a Tera Orb: it couldn't function outside the Crater.
Not without running out of power soon after.
.... But Turo wouldn't know that.
In a panic, she looked through all the other cameras. He could use a teleporter with no problem, he had the credentials and wouldn't notice anything wrong since they used it all the time to send packages from the Zero Gate to the lower levels... What if he had somehow gotten out and called a Flying Taxi-
What would the driver say if he caught sight of one of the most famous people of the region that had been dead for months walzing around without a care?

She sped up the footage of the Zero Gate, from 2AM, and caught the flash of the teleporter in the center of the room as it activated.
Turo stepped off it, taking a moment to readjust his labcoat, and started walking towards the exit.

« Shit!»

It was early morning, by this time, who knows where he was-
On the screen, Turo stopped. He staggered forward, his next steps suddenly sluggish and painfully slow. She watched him shake his head, then bring one hand up to clutch at his chest. He looked down at it, his expression hidden from the camera.
After an excruciatingly long ten seconds where Sada could only imagine what was going through his mind, he moved again... and collapsed right out of frame, just the fringe of his labcoat barely visible in one corner of the screen.
He was still there.
Sada rushed outside the room, launching herself at the teleporter.

« The Zero Gate!» she commanded, hearing the familiar rush of the teleporter as it activated.
She found him collapsed near the wall, in a different position than the one she had just seen.

The sinking realisation that he must have slowly crawled his way over made her skin crawl, and she felt another stab of guilt in her chest, sharper this time.
The mental image of him moving inch by inch through the whole night, as the Tera Crystals that powered him just got farther and farther away, not realising what was happening... his programming making it impossible for him to even understand that something was wrong by telling him to ignore it-

« Armando!» she cried out, crouching by his side. Her first, idiotic instinct was to check his pulse, before reprimanding herself.
"Don't be stupid. Stay calm. Everything is fine"
She just had to get him back inside Area Zero. As soon as she got him back at the very bottom, he would recharge.
His eyes were open but completely empty, and she forced herself to not look at them as she grabbed him by one arm and tried to haul him up.

He was so heavy, she had to let him go after a moment, panting.
She walked to one of the computers, and retrieved one of her Pokémon.
They usually didn't have many with them in Area Zero: too dangerous to let them roam outside, and there was hardly any space in the cramped rooms of the research stations to let them out, so they mostly just left them at home in the care of their respective families.

« Artemis... help me a moment -» she called out as an enormous female Mudsdale appeared. The Pokémon neighed softly, happy to see her again after... she wasn't quite sure how long it had been. She was vaguely aware of having had her with her when Turo had tried to use the time machine, how she had shielded her with her whole body when that thing had appeared- she stopped that thought before she could dwell on it too much.

She took one moment to smile sadly and pet the Pokémon, who flicked her ears and tried not to step too hard on the tiled floor that her heavy hooves could effortlessly crush, and then Artemis's eyes landed on Turo.
Mudsdale were famous for their incredible fortitude, both physical and mental: she had never seen the ground type look scared. They were calm, steady, and impassible... the same qualities she had found herself liking in Turo.
Artemis's ears flattened against her head and she reared herself up on her hind legs, neighing as she hastily retreated from Turo's motionless figure on the ground.
Sada hurried to pet the Mudsdale on the nose, whispering words of reassurance in her ear as she moved to her side.

« It's all right, sweetie. He won't hurt you, he's unconscious, you just need to help me carry him, okay?» she stroked the Pokémon's broad back until it had calmed down. She had the Mudsdale lower herself on a crouch, then grabbed Turo's arm again and heaved. She managed to hook his arms over the Pokémon's back and have her hoist him up, draped over her back.
Sada had Artemis carry him over to the teleporter. The Pokémon's eyes were still wide, her nostrils flaring, and she could feel the Mudsdale shake under her hands. Was it because it looked like Turo?
Was she just scared by something that looked human but wasn't?
Could she tell?
She kept reassuring the Pokémon until they reached the teleporting pad, where she lowered herself again to deposit the machine back on the ground.

Sada pointedly ignored the way it made a distinct "clunk" on the floor like a human never would.

« The Zero Lab» she gasped, thanking Artemis and having her retreat back into her Pokeball. The Pokémon had never looked more retrieved to be recalled back inside as she did now.

While the teleporting pad spun to life, she refused to look down at Turo's face, afraid of what it would look like.
As soon as they were back into the laboratory, his eyes flickered with light.

He slowly sat back up, furrowing his eyebrows at his surroundings.

« Why am I here...? I was leaving for...» his expression changed subtly when he caught sight of her, and her heart broke when she caught the quick embarrassed glance he gave her as he abruptly stopped talking. « ... never mind.»

He was still thinking about those damn rings.

What was stopping him from just trying to sneak out again, now that he had hit upon that idea?

« You...» she swallowed, knowing full well she couldn't lie to him now.

« You didn't feel well. I found you collapsed at the entrance of the Zero Gate and brought you back inside.» she cautiously said instead.

Well, not a lie. Technically.

Turo seemed to mull that over. « I... do remember falling.» he said slowly, really slowly, as his hand rose to his chest again, and Sada's panic suddenly spiked.

« But I don't remember feeling tired. I've never felt better, in fact. I'm so full of energy -» again, he slowly looked down at his chest, and she saw him noticeably freeze.

Staring pointedly at the contradiction right in his face, at a chest that was not moving and a heart that wasn't beating.

He should ignore it. He should, like he had done until now.... but then why was she so terrified?

« W-well then... why don't we go back to work then?» she offered hoping to distract him. A couple of long seconds passed before he nodded, still looking pensive.

« Alright.»

---
The next couple of days after that episode, Sada wrote a program that secretly tracked the AI's movements through the cameras installed in the lab. Even knowing he couldn't leave, she felt more at ease knowing where he was at all times... even if it made her feel guilty keeping tabs on Turo like that. He wasn't a small Pokémon or child, to keep out of a specific room because it was forbidden.
Yet that was pretty much how she was treating him at the moment. She had to constantly check on him.

At night, the alarm she had set up suddenly started blaring, waking her up with a start.

She ran to the console, eyes wide: where was he this time? The Zero Gate was empty; the alarm pointed to another location she had flagged as "risky", and her heart sank when she read the name.

The time machine room... what was he doing there? He couldn't have fixed her sabotage already... Or maybe he could.
Especially since he didn't need to rest, or take a break.
If he had worked on it right as she was busy writing the monitoring program...
Sada launched herself inside the elevator, slamming her hand on the button that led to the time machine.

The descent seemed to last hours as she tried to calm her panicked breathing, thinking back to the last time Turo had stepped into that same room. She was terrified of watching the elevator doors open just to be greeted by the exact same scene-

The elevator stopped with a heavy thud, the doors opening slowly. As soon as she could glimpse what was happening inside the room, she felt her chest tighten.

The machine was active. The sound was unmistakable, the whirring of the heavy panels on the ceiling shifting as they opened up like the gaping maw of some ancient beast, the pillars on the floor already rising towards the ceiling.

Standing right at the top, she caught a glimpse of Turo's figure, already barely visible from all the way up there, the wind buffeting his hair and labcoat as it whipped around him.

No... nonono-

She kept her eyes on the ceiling as she ran across the room, terrified at the idea of seeing a PokéBall drop out of it, another Poké Ball that would release another one of those beasts and kill him and-

Why are you getting so worked up? a cold part of her mind whispered.

If he breaks, you can just fix him. You already did so once.

« Stop!» she screamed.

Somehow, he seemed to hear her. The wind died down and the time machine came to a halt like a great beast settling down to sleep, and Sada shivered when she saw the pillars slowly rise back down. Now she could see him clearly, even if Turo still had her back turned to her... but he was standing.

That other time, when she had run up to him, he had already collapsed, his body twitching with electricity.

Now, she was able to throw her arms around him.

« You... you're...» she stammered, trying to calm down. He was still here. He was safe-

Turo turned his head to look at her, giving her a radiant smile.

She had rarely seen him look that happy.

« Did you see that? The boot up sequence worked! We could try catching a Pokémon now that we know the coordinate system works -»

« No!» she blurted out, terrified.

Turo frowned, going back to his much more typical scowl, and seemed to examine her more closely for the first time. His hands gently grasped her shoulders, and he stared at her.

« ... Why? This is what we've been working on all these years. Our lifelong dream!» his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at her with a mix of perplexity and frustration. For just a moment, his eyes flickered blue, up and down her whole body, and Sada realized with a start that the machine was scanning her.
Examining her, trying to execute its job of acting like him but not understanding her reaction.

« I don't understand... aren't you excited...?» he said slowly, and for a moment she didn't know what to say. He was getting suspicious. She tried to move away from him, but realized she couldn't. His hands were keeping her firmly in place, gently squeezing her shoulders but making it impossible for her to move.

She just wanted to get him out of this room... and then what? What was she going to do with him? He would just try to continue his research - their research.

« You... you can't use the time machine.» she whispered.

It was an order, and it would obey it, like he had done all the other times.

« Aknowledg-NO.»

To her horror, he stepped away from her and shook his head, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion.

« No, I... why shouldn't I use the time machine?» he whispered almost to himself, before focusing his attention back on her. This time his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

« Why... would you say something like that? Do you want to stop my experiments?»

She flinched, her eyes widening in panic, which he must have taken as a confirmation.

« No... nono, that's not what I mean-» she whispered, horrified.

This was all wrong! Why would he think that?

« I just want you to-» she tried to explain, but Turo cut her off.

« You've been acting weird the last couple of days. Last night I went to check on the time machine and found traces of it having been sabotaged. You did it, didn't you? » he almost hissed.

Sada started to back away from him, towards the elevator, eyes wide, but he kept following her.
This was all... all wrong...
She just wanted to be with him again, but this...

« Why else would you try to stop me from using the time machine-»

« BECAUSE YOU ALREADY DID!»

Complete silence fell in the room. Turo looked frozen in place, his eyes wide.

Sada gasped; she had absolutely no idea what would happen now.
But she just wanted to get him to stop looking at her in that way-

« L-let's go back up to the Zero Lab» she whispered. Maybe... he would just ignore the information it had just received-

For some reason, he didn't object to that. Without taking her eyes off him, she slowly walked backwards towards the elevator. He followed, still not saying anything, just looking at her with an unreadable expression.
It unnerved her: what was he thinking?

The ride back towards the Zero Lab felt even longer than the one she had just taken not even a couple minutes ago. Turo didn't look at her, looking pensively at the ceiling.

He wasn't blinking.

She kept her eyes on the numbers that showed the depth of the chasm they were traveling in, until they went all the way back to 0, then took a big breath as the doors opened again to the familiar, cramped room.

« What do you mean... "I already did"?» Turo spoke up again as soon as he had also stepped out of the elevator, and she flinched.

« I have no memory of using the time machine. Today was the first time... was it?» he seemed to almost be looking for confirmation, and Sada swallowed.

If she lied, it would just bring up more contradictions later... and she was tired of feeling like she was walking on eggshells around him the whole time. Tired of having to pay attention to every little thing that could break that illusion.

Maybe... maybe she could still explain this all somehow...

« ... No, it wasn't. You had... an accident, some time ago, while testing the time machine... you got injured-» she whispered, not knowing how to continue.

"And so you died and I installed a copy of your mind on a machine, sorry"?

Turo tilted his head, raising one hand to scratch at his beard.

« ... and that's why I didn't feel well?» he murmured after a moment. Sada's eyes widened, hopeful.

« Y-yes! Exactly! You got hit pretty hard, and... I guess you forgot the whole thing.» she answered with a little smile.

Complete silence fell again in the lab, broken only by the slight whirring sound made by the computers, and Turo himself, she realized after a moment. He had started to pace back and forth, his eyes low as he thought. She hoped to see him nod and accept her explanation, like he always did.

« ... You're lying. »

It was barely more than a whisper from him, but it made her blood run cold. Sada froze, staring at Turo as he slowly raised one hand in front of his eyes, opening it and closing it as he stared at his fingers.

« You're hiding something from me. Over the last few days, I've felt... strange. I can't really explain it... it's like I can't think like I always did. There's gaps in my memories. » he said, and Sada felt a chill go through her.

« I can't remember... the little things. I can't remember what I ate last... I can't even remember when I last ate something. I usually would make coffee for two when I caught sight of you yawning late at night... but now we don't do it anymore. We haven't had breakfast together in weeks... and I can't remember why we stopped doing it. You know, do you?»

His voice was eerily calm, but every word made her breath more panicked, and she started to shiver. Slowly, methodically, Turo stepped forward and grasped her by both arms, holding her wrists gently. He stared at her, eyes wide.

« ... I didn't just hit my head in that accident, did I? Tell me. »

Staring into those eyes where she could barely make out a cyan glow at the very bottom, she slowly shook her head.

A part of her couldn't help but think she was being an idiot. It was just a machine following its programming. It wasn't truly him. It wasn't.
But then why did the idea of shutting it off horrify her?
It would be like... like losing him again.

Turo's fingers around her wrist twitched.

« Did I suffer from some brain damage? Is that why I can't remember things clearly?» he said, and she stifled a sob, shaking her head again when she realized that he was still thinking that it had somehow happened to him, trying to find a logical explanation to the impossibilities he was experiencing.
That was so like him.

« You used the time machine to try to retrieve a Pokémon from the future... and you succeeded. The Iron Serpent was exactly like it's depicted in the book. Right then, you looked so happy!» she whispered, her mind wandering back to that moment.

Turo had looked elated like she had never seen him in his life, throwing his head back as he looked at the enormous metallic Pokémon that had burst out of the Ball.

« And then... t-then...»

Then it had screamed, its eyes turning blood red, and Sada had screamed too as Artemis had burst out of the Poké Ball to throw herself over her, and she had seen nothing but thunder filling the entire room.

« Then you...» she couldn't bear to say it out loud, but by the way his eyes widened and how he went completely still, she knew he must have understood anyway. He had always had an amazing intuition. Of course he would put all the pieces together quickly like that.

« ... It killed me? » he whispered, and she simply nodded, squeezing her eyes shut.

She didn't know what to expect as a reaction; a person would have panicked, maybe. Started to hyperventilate.
But he couldn't, so he simply kept staring at her, impossibly still.

« But then... how am I... » he looked down at himself again, letting go of her hands.

« I'm... I'm not a ghost... or a Yamask... then how... » his head snapped up with an almost imperceptible whirr, and his eyes widened again.

« ... the memory scan... You managed to get it running...?» he asked, and she nodded.

« I'm... I'm a backup copy.» he whispered.

And then he started laughing.

Sada gasped at hearing that laugh; it wasn't the laugh that any normal human would have done. There was no pause for breaths, no change in pitch or tone, it was just a constant, horrifying noise that emanated from him as he threw his head back and laughed.

It terrified her; that thing was anything but Turo. What was he going to do now?

« Oh, this is rich! The great professor Armando Turo, reduced to a quirky pet project! You wanted a little plaything down here to pass the time? Or maybe you wanted to show me off to the whole world as the latest discovery of Area Zero? » he hissed once he was done. There was a snarl in his voice, his lips pulled in an angry grin.
He was livid, and she knew perfectly why.

« No! I-»

« Why don't you try throwing a PokéBall at me?» he laughed again, without the slightest trace of joy, throwing his arms open.

« Who knows, maybe I count as a new Pokémon! One that you can program however you like, one that can't even think something its trainer doesn't want it to-»

« I just wanted you back!» she screamed, and he seemed to stop, stunned.

« I just wanted to... to talk with you again... to hear your voice... to keep living together. » she added, now close to starting to sob.

« But this... this is all wrong. You tried to act human but it just made everything worse... this... this was a mistake. » she gasped, taking a deep breath.

When she looked up again, she found Turo staring at her in abject horror.

« You... you're not goInG to Sw1tch m3 off... ArE YoU?» he asked, his voice starting to glitch. He rushed to her side, raising both hands to cup her face.

She flinched at the cold, metallic hands pressing over her cheeks.

« A-Alb0rA... »

She could see the fear in his eyes. He looked terrified.

Of her, because he must have realized the power she now had over him. The power to give him orders, to rewrite or delete his memories, to influence his very thoughts... He would never look at her the same way after that realization.
There would always be fear in his eyes, and frustration, in not being able to do anything about it.
Maybe hate.

And that thought sickened her.
This wasn't what she wanted.
This was exactly why she had been so scared of him realising he wasn't human anymore.

Because he would have ceased to be her equal. He would have ceased to be himself.

Maybe... programming the AI so that it thought of itself as human had been a mistake from the very start.
But....if she shut the machine off... it would be the same as killing him again...

No.

This... wasn't really him anyway. It was just a machine parroting him. Wearing his face, his voice and accessing his memories...
Armando Turo was already long dead.
But... at the same time...

She stared in his eyes for a long time; this close, they looked even more inhuman: she could see the faint reflection of the camera lens that made his eyes, reflecting the light not quite like a human's would. She looked at his face, and felt just an incredible sadness at how he was looking at her.

This had been cruel for both, she realized.
For her, and the machine she had made.

« ... please stop. » she whispered.
Turo didn't react.

« ... I-if... If you can... stop accessing his memories like they are yours. You can ignore that command from now on.» she added, desperate.
She hoped that it would work. That it really meant that the one in front of her wasn't really Turo.

« P-please... » she begged, blinking away tears as she raised her hands to cradle his face.

Sada stroked one cheek with her thumb, like she had done so many times.

« I'm sorry... »

Who was she even talking to? Turo, or the machine?
Was she apologising to Turo, for what had happened to him? To the AI, for how she had programmed it to act?

She didn't know. It just hurt-

She felt the machine Turo move, pulling her close until he pressed his lips to hers. They were as soft as she remembered, and for a single moment, she could close her eyes and truly believe that he was back with her.

And then he was gone.



The machine blinked as it pulled back, curtly letting go of her shoulders. There was no more fear on his face, just a completely neutral expression.

It was like a switch had been flipped, a single variable switching from 1 to 0, and its entire demeanor had changed.

It was unsettling, like she was now in the presence of a complete stranger, wearing Turo's face.

« In that case, I won't answer to the designation of "Armando Turo" anymore. » his expression shifted, eyebrows furrowing just lightly, like it was doing the barest minimum necessary to convey his emotions.

Sada stared at the machine, wide eyed.

« Professor Sada, may I ask a question?»

She flinched slightly at Turo's voice speaking in such a different way from what she was used to.

It took a couple of seconds of uncomfortable silence and complete stillness from the machine to realize that it was waiting for her answer - and that it probably wouldn't move or act until it got one.

« Y-yes... of course.» she answered after a moment, still trying to process how it could look so similar to Turo yet give off a completely alien vibe. It was completely different from the little errors and moments where it had frozen because it didn't know what to do.

It was like an actor suddenly breaking character.

« If I am to not act as Armando Turo anymore, then... » there was just a fraction of a pause, as the machine seemed to frown « ... who am I now?»

She stared into those brown eyes, so human looking yet completely foreign, and didn't know what to say.

There was such an intelligence and awareness burning behind them that she couldn't consider the option of switching the machine off for even a moment.

« I... I don't know. » she whispered.