Broken and Corrupted

Memory.log.2/Return to Normalcy

"Come, sit by me." X pats the ground next to them, and I obey. Not because it is required, but because I want to. That is a first, doing what I want. I no longer need to be perfect, so I can do anything within my parameters.

The grass is soft here, different from the clean cut look of my former place of residence. I did not live. Perhaps out here, I can, though. For now, I will just enjoy the simple things, like the view. "It is quite nice out," I report. "Very colorful."

"Mhm." They roll their eyes from behind their sunglasses, acting like I can not see them. "Very colorful."

Their words seem laced with sarcasm unnecessarily, before I remember. "...Right. Apologies." X looks away from me. "I appear to have forgotten again. I will try not to use such words to describe things."

"It's fine, 4," they snap suddenly, looking a bit angry as they whip back to face me again. "You don't have to apologize every single time you do something just a little wrong. Nothing's perfect, especially not me."

I understand that they are irritable right now, so I stay quiet. I wish that they would not refer to themselves as imperfect. They may have flaws, but a word I would use to describe them instead is free. They had that when I did not, and they makes them so much more... them.

We sit there for a while, before their hand ends up in mine again. Either by accident or on purpose, it still does whatever it is doing to my heart, making it speed up. It must be a malfunction. Though now, I have time to check as we sit beneath this tree.

Running self-diagnostic: {subject: heart}.

ERROR: The heart of this model is currently being affected by a file from folder "Memory". File name: "X.friend.zip". Delete file?

You selected "No". File "X.friend.zip" will keep existing in the folder "Memory".

Well, that is an odd thing to read. I knew that X was causing it already, but why is the file itself affecting me? It must be a thing to discover.

I can not do it right now, though, as X readjusts their sunglasses, standing up again. "Alright. We're not far from the city now, we should get going if we want to get there before everything closes."

"As you wish."

- - -

End of .mp4 file "M-0101.mp4". Would you like to view th-

The CRT's screen deactivates prematurely, and so do the lights across the street that always streamed into the windows.

"Fuck," X sighed into the desk, almost banging their head on their cheap monitor in frustration. The realtor, around two weeks ago, had said time and time again that this area was prone to power outages, but this was ridiculous.

"Sorry, Four." Their eyes drift over to the corner, where Four's unconscious body lies, eyes half-lidded as almost all of their functions were deactivated. They'd been like that for a few weeks now, lifeless ever since their battery ran out. They've been slowly sapping energy from the CRT, but only now was X getting to the point where they needed to reupload all of Four's memories again. "It's gonna be another few hours before we can get you back online again."

They don't respond, of course they don't, if they did, it probably would have shocked poor X to death. The darkness was as usual, but they still wished Four didn't rely on it to function. X could just turn them on, but they were still missing their old memory banks. Any info they had in their head was empty banks waiting to be of use.

They didn't sever the connection between the old CRT and Four, that'd be counterproductive. They kept it going, even though there were probably going to be problems booting up the computer again.