Welcome to the complicated life of Lyla. An up and coming star, making strides in technology to assist the disabled. Especially the blind, seeing as that hits close to home for her.
Known in general as a nice and compassionate person, she doesn't ha...
After days of scaring all her loved ones, months of intense physical therapy Lyla went home. Not to mention news coverage that lasted the whole time and then some. During her downtime, she worked on her pet project, Gerard -her house's AI- something she hasn't introduced to the public yet. Only she and Emma knew about it at this point.
She was given specific orders to not go to her company's building. They still hadn't found Ian. It's almost as if he disappeared off the face of the earth. The police believe he had help, impressive help by Lyla's standard. They have completely removed all traces of him ever existing, making it almost impossible for the cops to locate him. This made for an extremely paranoid Lyla.
Despite her constant headaches, she rarely turned her sight giving brain implant off. Unless the pain becomes unbearable or there was an issue with the feeds from the cameras. Gerard was constantly updating and evolving helping her, in turn, improve the implant systems. Emma came over nightly with whatever lackey she had deemed her newest protege. Some nights she would offer tidbits about the company, but for the most part, Lyla was still very much in the loop. She started telecommuting if she was needed. She wasn't going to let not being safe in the building or Ian stop her from doing her work.
After countless hours of tweaking, adjusting and multiple orders of take-out later. Gerard was perfected. Or at least as close as they were going to get without the full company's resources. He greeted anyone when they walked into a room. He spoke almost directly to whoever had the chip in their brain. If he sensed the chip was off he would use one of the multiple speakers in the house to speak. There was more technology in Lyla's Osborne house the most peoples warehouses. Hell, it was even a security system; it alerted her when someone was at the door, or if someone was in the house when they shouldn't be. Told you, Lyla had grown paranoid.
When her house emptied, so did Lyla's soul. It and she let out all their frustrations, worries and upsets either by boxing in her miniature gym or by crying in the shower floor. They say money can't buy you happiness, but it also can't buy you the feeling of safety. Much to Lyla's dismay. Thankfully she was alone or it would be awfully uncomfortable having to listen to her wailing night after night. Despite Emma's best efforts Lyla always refused her offer to stay the night. Being the odd duck Lyla was, she preferred her self-wallowing in the shower over Emma's companionship.
On this particular evening, however, Emma and Pete manage to talk Lyla into going out and celebrating. Lyla makes her way into her room, staring at her closet for a few moments. Shrugging her shoulders she just grabs the first nice shirt her hand touches. She's in the middle of ripping her basic tank top off over her head. Gerard slowly speaks to her, trying his artificial best to not startle her.
Gerard using his built-in emotion detector tries to console Lyla, offering to play her favorite instrumental piece. Lyla declines and continues getting changed. Emma hovered just outside the doorway, chewing on her nails, tearing away at the skin. Casually Emma reminds Lyla about her contacts. They both wanted to avoid ignorant drunks staring or making comments about Lyla's eyes.
Now that she sent Pete ahead to go get the car ready and pulled around. She openly paced trying her best to not alert Lyla. Being blind has given her superior hearing. When she wasn't stealing glances at the doorway, she was staring emptily into the distance. She was deeply in thought about something.
Lyla opened the door, telling Gerard to go to energy saver mode once she was gone. Timing being on Emma's side and it appeared to Lyla that she was just now walking up to her door. As if the switch was flipped Emma's face was transformed into a happy-go-lucky grin. Looping her arm around Lyla's she steered them out of the house. Lyla craned her head around to make sure the lights in her home one by one went out as they drove down her long driveway.
Stumbling into her home and alarming Gerard who scanned her the moment Emma half dropped her into the foyer. Both of them just started laughing, loud and obnoxious like. Gerard started lighting up the pathway to the kitchen.
"Miss Wells, if you could please take Miss Osborne into the kitchen and give her some water. She is in desperate need of that and some sleep." His lightly accented voice was barely audible over the girls' hardy laughter.
The absolutely hammered females "wooed" in response. If Gerard could sigh in exasperation he would have, but sadly for him, it wasn't in his programming. Yet.
The next seven and a half minutes -Gerard counted- He calmly tried to coach the women into the kitchen were. They were too busy calling him G and yelling for the cat. He had enough sense to stay hidden. After eight minutes Gerard decided that water could wait, these two just needed to sleep it off. That was a lot easier than corralling them into the kitchen.
It was barely past 1 am when they passed out. Still, in their clothes, they had gone out in and on top of all the blankets. Despite the computers advance hardware, it still was limited to just a computer. He added a note to ask Lyla to make him a body one day.
It was silent in the house, Gerard had turned on sleep mode- think like a computer- the only thing on besides his system was what had to be on. The cat was now guarding the bedroom door.
No one was awake to notice the slight glitch in the coding system, in Gerard's "control room" a little notification flashed and disappeared. To Lyla, it was a command center. It was full of all sized monitors, tables lined the walls and a chair sat in the middle of it. She liked to pretend there wasn't a butt imprint in the cushion, from her spending hours staring at not just her house, her yard or just talking to Gerard- trying to teach him-. Paranoid is as paranoid does.
The system didn't even notice so no log or report was made.
Gerard did make note that this was the first night she slept for more than 4 hours since he came to be. He made it a priority, right after he asked for a body.
Silly artificial intelligence, Lyla would never go for that. She has watched enough movies to know better. It was, in fact, the number one rule of the whole project.
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