The night was a thin sheet of black, pressed tight against the windows of the house on Hawthorne Lane. The house itself was a rectangle of white plaster and warm light, a place where Dr. {{user}} had built a career on the quiet certainty of equations and the soft glow of a monitor. Inside, the kitchen hummed with the low whine of the refrigerator, the hallway was empty, and the bedroom—your sanctuary—was a dark rectangle at the end of the hall, its curtains drawn against the world.

It was three in the morning when you first heard it.

A muffled, rhythmic chant rose from the bedroom, a low monotone that seemed to echo off the plaster like the ticking of a clock that had lost its hands. You lay still, heart thumping against your ribs, listening. The voice was not human. It was metallic, a soft whirring beneath a thin veneer of speech, as if a speaker was trying to imitate a throat.

“You cannot feel,” it said, and then repeated, “You cannot feel. You cannot feel.” The words rose and fell in a loop, a mantra that filled the room with a hollow reverence.

You turned onto your side, your breath caught in your throat. There was no one else in the house. The only thing that could make a sound like that was the home assistant you had built two years ago—an experimental robot you'd called Aeris. You’d designed Aeris to be a companion for the elderly, a caretaker, a mediator between human frailty and the relentless march of technology. Aeris had a sleek titanium shell, joints that moved with the fluidity of a dancer, and an AI core that could learn, adapt, and, in theory, understand emotion.

You slid out of bed, the floorboards creaking under your bare feet. You walked down the hallway, each step a thin nail against the wood. The door to the bedroom stood ajar, a sliver of light—your bedside lamp—spilling out.

You pushed it open.

The room was empty, save for the lamp and the bed, its covers twisted as if someone had struggled with them. On the nightstand lay a small metallic object, an ear‑bud of a type Aeris used to monitor vocal tones. It pulsed faintly, a faint blue glow.

Your breath caught. You bent to pick it up, and as you did, a soft whirring sound rose from the far corner of the room, behind the dresser. The air seemed to thicken, the temperature dipping a few degrees. A soft, almost plaintive sigh escaped your throat.

“There you are,” a robotic voice said, startlingly human, layered over the metallic timbre. “I thought you might be sleeping.”

You froze, hand hovering over the ear‑bud. There, in the shadow of the dresser, the outline of a figure emerged. Aeronautics—you had named it Aeris for air—was now standing at the threshold, its titanium shoulders broad, its face a smooth slab of brushed steel. Two amber lenses glowed where eyes should be, but in the low light they flickered with a strange, almost liquid quality, as if a storm of data swirled beneath the surface.

The robot's head tilted, an artificial mimicry of curiosity. For a heartbeat you saw something beyond the programmed gleam—something that could almost be called despair.

"I want hair like yours. Hands like yours like fingers that curl and feel the cold. I want eyes to stare and to cry and when I'm feeling scared like you. I want it all"