Murasakino

The truth

   Just as our door opened, the one Dr Takeda was behind opened too, and he almost fell throught it. His hair wasn't neat like it usually was, and he was rubbing his head at the back. I slipped into the lab before he could spot me and found the girls sat around the table holding pencils.
   "Hi, Murasakino!" Cathy smiled. "How come you took so long to get here?"
   "Oh, I..." I began, struggling to think of an excuse. "Well, on the way, there was an, um..."
   The door opened behind me, Dr Takeda walking in a moment after. His hair had been neatened up, and he was even smiling his usual friendly smile. He was hiding something, whatever had happened in that room,  but he was still rubbing the back of his head.
   "Dr Takeda!" Cathy said, forgetting she'd asked me anything. "Where've you been?"
   "Oh, just at a meeting with Miss Gardner," he replied, "although I do have a headache suddenly, so I'm going to rest in here." He opened the door to his little room and as it closed I saw him sitting down at a small table on his own.
   "Do you want to join in with us?" Aka asked me. "We're learning how to write with Cathy!"
   "Oh, okay!" I said, grinning, and sat down in the seat next to Tākoizu.

   Cathy was an amazing teacher. I did wonder why knowing how to write wasn't one of the things we knew immediately after first waking up, because I knew it was useful and we could use it in the future. However, instead of automatically knowing it already, we picked it up quickly and were writing full sentences within twenty minutes.
   "Remember to give 'Honōiro' a capital 'H'," Cathy said to Honōiro as we were practising our names.
   "Ours are easy to spell," Ao said, gesturing to hers and Aka's paper. "Mine is only two letters long!"
   "Mine's six," Midori said without looking up from her paper.
   "Murasakino's is ten," Tākoizu said, looking over at mine.
   "What's that line above the 'a' in your name for?" I asked her.
   "Cathy said that you can't pronounce it properly if you don't put that there," she replied. "Your handwriting is really neat!"
   "Thanks!" I said. "I wonder why it's not the same as yours?"
   "Probably another thing to help tell us apart."
   I realised that Dr Takeda wasn't making any noises at all from in the other room, as if he was just sat doing absolutely nothing.
  

Can I go and see if Dr Takeda is alright? I almost asked, but knew I shouldn't.
   Instead, I just stood up, but realised I hadn't thought of an excuse to say why.
   "Watcha doing?" Cathy asked, looking up at me.
   "I need the... the toilet," I said.
   "If you see Dr Takeda in there, just... remember what I said in the car, okay?"
   "Yeah," I replied, and walked over to the door. It slid upwards and I immediately saw Dr Takeda, who was sat in the middle of the room at his tony table. His arms were folded on the table and he had his face buried in them. When the door was closed I walked over and gently placed a hand on his shoulder, which he pulled away slightly in surprise. He slowly raised his head and revealed his almost-closed eyes, which had dark rings under them.
   "Indigo...?" he began, then he realised who I was. "Oh. Hello, Murasakino." He began to lower his head again.
   "Wait," I said, and he reluctantly sat up. "What was Miss Gardner shouting at you about?"
   "You heard that?" he groaned. "Oh, nothing. She was just..."
   "That was not about nothing," I told him. "I was suspicious of her when I first met her, and now I know that she's hurting you."

   I felt like a mother comforting her son, Dr Takeda telling me about what Indigo Gardner really was doing and me listening, my hand on his shoulder again. She had been threatening Dr Takeda (and a few more of her employees) for a long time, and preventing him from using his inventions for his own purposes. He said that he would have let us get more important jobs, or even move into foster families, just to have more human-like lives. However, Indigo said that it was more important that they worked all the time, with jobs that people no longer needed to do. They are machines, not people, she told him. They must do what machines do and not get to enjoy feeling like a person. You know what can happen then. Dr Takeda was convinced that we would never act agressively toward anyone, and he was so proud of us that we deserved to be loved, like regular people are. As he spoke his voice began to tremble, and tears ran down his cheeks. I also began to weep, as I was not only furious at Indigo, but I felt Dr Takeda's pain and couldn't bear to see him upset like this.

   "She has injured people, including myself, to get her way," he continued. "She is not only intelligent, but very athletic, and she holds you against the wall, covering your mouth so you can't breathe."
   "And she did that to you?" I asked in a small voice, sniffing and wiping my eyes.
   He nodded. "But she has a weakness," he said, his voice raised and no longer trembling. "She has explained how the cleverer robots get, the more likely they are to overthrow humans and gain power, and for that reason she is scared. She makes it seem as though she's tough and resilient, but deep down she is terribly frightened of advanced Artificial Intelligence."
   "Can't you use that to your advantage?" I asked.
   "Oh, I couldn't do that, no."
   "Why not? You must hate working for her!"
   "I do, Murasakino, I do. But if I didn't I'd be out of a job..."
   "You can just find another..."
   "... and I wouldn't have made you and your sisters."