SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

thirteen ━ memory lane

"No," Mia let go of the corner of the picture and let her hand fall instead onto his forearm, her body turning to face him properly. "I didn't mean you should stop. Your smile is pretty. I like it."

He didn't know how to answer or even if he should attempt to at all. The corners of his lips seemed more responsive than his processing unit in finding the appropriate reply to be a simple and gentle smile.

She seemed to like that because, letting go of his forearm, she dropped her gaze once more to the picture itself, "What do you like about this one in particular?"

"I think," Connor started, raising the picture back to its original place on the shelf, "it has something to do with the fact that you were so young in it. I have never thought much of the fact that you were once a child." His hand lingered near the pictures on the shelf, his eyes moving to the next one down the line.

Seeing his attention shifting, Mia reached out ahead of him and took the next picture herself. "I remember this day," she admitted, looking down at it. Leaning closer without however letting his chest touch her shoulder, Connor corrected his gaze downwards as well. "Science fair," she ran a finger over the silhouette of herself back when she was twelve years old. There was a small, box shaped robot on the table next to her and behind it, written out in colored markers a tagline she read out loud for Connor, "Come say 'hi' to your new best friend, A.C.E.." After a short break, she looked up at Connor, "Advanced Conversation Engine. It wasn't really that advanced. Just a little sequential programming to make it seem smarter than it really was. But it did win me the competition. Actually..." She turned around to look at the stairs leading upstairs, where there was really only one room, Connor had noticed.

She handed the picture back to Connor as soon as she returned her attention to him, but most importantly, there was now a distinct look in her eyes, one he recognized all too well — she had an idea.

"I might still have it," Mia announced, a thoughtful hint to her voice. "Dad doesn't seem to have touched the dolls I kept on my window sill, so I doubt he moved anything else from inside my room. Would you like to see it?" She knew she would like to revisit that little thing and given how fast Connor placed the picture back in its place on the shelf, she assumed he was willing to meet it as well.

"It should still work," Mia continued, leading the way upstairs. "I made it with voice activation, but I believe I've been gone too long for that to still work. Little thing is definitely not in stand-by anymore, so I'll probably have to reboot it to get it working again. It really shouldn't take too long." In the pause of a fast paced speech broke through by ragged breaths from the abrupt stairs they climbed on, she stopped before the door to her childhood bedroom. Mia looked back over her shoulder and could not deny, her heart swelled at the way Connor looked up at her, eyebrows raised, eyes trying to show eagerness.

Looking at Connor made opening the door much easier than it would have been, had she been standing before it alone. It was only once she was inside that her composure was momentarily gone. Even with a blanket of dust coating everthing, the room which greeted her was still the room she had left behind. Nothing changed, apart from the person walking inside.

She took it all in, everything ahead of her that the passage of time had touched, everything which remained resilient against it all. It felt as if the room had waited for her to come back and it's been waiting since the day she left hoping the next one to walk up those creaky stairs, to touch that cold doorknob would be her.

She turned around to apologize for the dust to Connor, but instead found him marvelling at the fish tank next to the door that she hadn't even noticed when coming in. Perhaps some subconscious part of her did not want to see the dirty water container, nor the corpse of a fish floating around, hence her shock to find that none of those grotesque images awaited her there. The water was clean, the glass was pristine and her fish was still swimming around, now interested in the android watching its loops. Mia wasn't dumb enough not to know what a clean and taken care of aquarium meant, but she pushed away those thoughts of her father to instead walk beside Connor and also observe an old friend.