King of Hearts

Soma looks at his phone, his thumbs poised above the screen, hesitating for a second before turning it off and putting it away. The text weighs heavy in his pocket. Please call me. 

It takes him a minute to compose himself and exit the bathroom to join the swarm of white lab coats that are making their way into the ER, exchanging a few greeting nods with colleages and a wave at Hiroko, a third year residency doctor who he’d been thinking of asking out for a few weeks, and would’ve probably done so already if not for the incident. She might’ve even said yes, but as it is, a relationship that once had been sharing a coffee when one of them couldn’t get their own, moving heaven and earth so their lunch breaks would align, and a kiss under the bluish light of the surgery room, is reduced to a wave and a polite smile before Hiroko leaves. No words exchanged.

It doesn’t bother him and he doesn’t care because he has a job to do, and that’s all that matters. Everything else is secondary. He’s still got a job, and about ten medical histories to check before he starts seeing patients, and—  

“Dr. Kawamura,” a stern voice calls behind him. He doesn’t need to turn around to know who it is, but he has to, because as much as he wishes he could escape the attending physician, there’s no avoiding him now. 

“Dr. Takahashi,” he starts, as he turns to look at him, already bracing himself for when he finds thick greyish eyebrows furrowed in displeasure and eyes staring at him with an intensity that betrays what he actually thinks of Soma, but professionalism forbids him to say out loud. “Is there something—?”

He abruptly stops speaking when he realises Dr. Takahashi isn’t alone. 

“This is Chishiya Shuntaro, medical student. You’ll be in charge of him for the day.”

This brief message greets Chishiya in the morning when the clock strikes 7:00. It would not be a typical day without his father reminding him that in his eyes he is nothing but a stain on the family name. He grunts as he slightly raises up the bed sheets, the protective layers between him and the day that is about to begin.

The emptiness takes him as soon as his feet are touching the marble floors and automatically guide him towards a tiled bathroom. He hopes that perhaps a rush of warm water will erase the void comsuming his mind, alas, when he gets out of the shower and puts his clothes on, only the stillness remains, as per usual. The keys jingle in his pocket when he descends 2 floors down, sauntering lazily despite being already late. His fathers words echoing in his mind. The truth is, the last two of his residencies were a fiasco. Shuntaro would appear only if that given day he was to assist neurology doctors, other branches of medicine bore him relentlessly, most of the time he would close himself in an isolated part of the hospital and consume books pertaining to neurosurgery. To him, the human mind is enticing and by studying it he had a quiet hope, which he dared not to voice out-loud, that perhaps one day that knowledge could save him from the stillness of his own mind. Yet, this day was a long way into the future and others did not seem to share the same enthusiasm about it as he did, therefore Shuntaro kept mostly to himself.

Chishiya's apartment, paid for by his gracious father of course, is relatively spacious and but a brisk walk from The University of Tokyo Hospital. Shuntaro gets there 10 minutes after the deadline which results in Dr. Takahashi furrowing his eyebrows and letting out a deep sigh when he enters the common room.

“You are late, Mr. Chishiya.” He utters briefly, his eyes analyzing his every move. “Put on your scrubs, we haven't got all day, after all.” He adds, pointing at a rather large wardrobe in the corner of the room.

Chishiya mutters a quiet and indifferent “I'm sorry” and changes into the assigned scrubs. He shoots a quick glance towards the older man, and in a matter of seconds realizes that there is not a hope in hell that he could smuggle the thick Neuroanatomica Clinica book from his backpack into the spacious pocket of his black joggers. He sighs bitterly and quite loudly, so loudly in fact that Dr. Takahashi turns his whole body towards him.

“Is there anything you would like to say?” He asks, raising one of his thick grayish eyebrows.

“No, of course not Dr. Takahashi, I was merely sighing at my own inconsistency, especially when it comes to appearing on time.” Chishiya answers politely, nodding his head as a sign of respect. The theatrical presentation is lost on the older doctor as he nods back without any further comment. Soon the two of them are moving through the winding corridors of the hospital. This particular hospital's lingering death scent is stronger than usual, Chishiya notices, and wonders why that is.

They turn the corner just as a tall, raven-haired man with an absent look to his face appears in front of them. He looks familiar to Chishiya, although it is tough to say where he had seen him, maybe he was one of those celebrity doctors. They stop and a chat begins, by the displeased tone and bitterness on Dr. Takahasis' face Chishiya deduced that the mysterious man was on the outs with the attending physician.

“This is Chishiya Shuntaro, medical student. You’ll be in charge of him for the day.” Dr. Takahashi says, checking his watch. “I do have to make my rounds, so I will leave the two of you to get accquainted. Mr. Chishiya, you do not leave the hospital a minute earlier than established or I will personally phone your father. Is that understood?” He turns towards the blonde man, before raising his left hand and gesturing vaguely to Chishiya's hair. “And tie your... flamboyant hair into a bun, you look unprofessional.”

Chishiya smiles courteously and nods at Dr. Takahashi, as his silhouette vanishes into one of the nearby rooms. He then is left there alone with Dr. Kawamura, whom he gives a brief, bored look before inquiring in a monotone voice.

“Shall we go?”

He didn’t know the director had a son, though now that he’s face to face with him, Soma notes that Chishiya Shuntaro does resemble his father closely. It’s the shape of his face, he thinks, because he can’t really pinpoint anything specific. It’s not like he’s seen Dr. Chishiya often, either; as a student he’d had no idea who he was, and as a doctor still in his residency years, he didn’t interact with any of the higher ups that didn’t belong to his specialty. But he had seen him around a few times, and just from those occasions he could picture what Junior’s childhood had been like. Living with a professor instead of a father. The words ‘I’m busy’ heard at least once a day. Subtle, or not so subtle, nudges into pursuing the same career as him.

He might’ve even felt pity if he wasn’t so annoyed by the fact he’d now have a shadow tailing him all day. A very non-enthusiastic shadow, too, given how Soma knew for a fact medical students had to arrive at the very least 10 minutes before he had, and even then, ‘on time’ meant late for many doctors. ‘On time’ meant the student still had to put their scrubs on, find their doctor and review the medical histories with them before starting rounds, hence the doctor ending up starting later than they should. Junior is also shooting him a bored look; ER doesn’t seem his preferred choice of specialty, and, well, more power to him since it’s nightmarish. Soma won’t stand in the way of his learning, but he’s also not going to go out of his way to make sure he learns. And if he asks to leave early, and Dr. Takahashi isn’t around, he might let him. Besides, he isn’t really teacher material.

“Yes, follow me,” he answers, waving him over to his computer. “It’s a pretty standard day today here; the patient in box 13 came because of a NSTEMI heart attack, patient in box 8 has been here for a while, she came in because of a pneumothorax, we put her with mechanical ventilation, and then she got a pneumonia because of Pseudomona; Glasgow 11 now, so it’s not looking good. Box 10 has been occupied by a patient who fainted after experiencing the worst headache in his life, which you should know means a subarachnoid haemorrhage. This one, caused by an aneurysm. Glasgow 7; if he lives, we don’t think he’ll recover functionally.”

Droning over the patients he has today is simple, mechanical, it takes his mind away from things and allows him to focus on what’s in front of him, the job he still has. There might be looks thrown at him all around, but those are inconsequential. He’s simply a doctor, reviewing his patients, speaking to a medical student. He’s still a doctor.

This weak attempt at reassurance, however, does nothing to assuage the tachycardia that has taken over his chest. 

"Who do you want to start with?"

Chishiya slows down his pace and looks at his supervisor. He holds his head high and proud despite the glances, meaning he doesn't believe that whatever he did was his fault. A proud ER doctor then, probably lured to the specialization due to a shorter residency period, which meant he could go and actually help people faster. Perhaps enticed by the idea of becoming a local hero one day? This is what Shuntaro could just guess; it doesn't mean he is right. ER doctors work tough, graveyard shifts and usually have little time to diagnose their patients. What's more, the knowledge that is required of them is very broad, which means greater chances of misdiagnosis. A noble choice, although Chishiya couldn't care about this specialization less.

Neurology is where his interests lie. A more technical, precise branch of medicine. Longer and tougher training — yes, but the idea that someday his hard work may pay off and advance brain research? It makes it all worth it. The potential of the human brain is unprecedented; it fascinates him. The thought that one day he will be able to control specific neurons in his brain and fix whatever is not normal about him? It makes it all worth it.

His father always says that every branch of medicine has its time and place. For some reason, though, despite saying that, he always put ER on a pedestal. Which is why Chishiya is sure that after today's marvelous experience, one of his dad's employees will definitely inform his father of his performance and behavior. He couldn’t wait to receive more passive-aggressive texts.

He can't just make himself care about today on a whim, so he goes with the flow, with the pace of Dr. Kawamura's steps. He leads him into the Emergency division and starts to describe the patients, some of them utilizing the Glasgow Coma Scale. Chishiya turns off completely and analyzes Dr. Kawamura's face, cocking his own head to the side. The realization hits him before his mind has a chance to process.

"Child dead due to misdiagnosis at Tokyo University Hospital." They never used his face or shared his personal details, but... the glances? The hushed whispers when they passed by? It is him.

"Who do you want to start with?"

"You've been on the news lately, haven't you, Dr. Kawamura?" Chishiya says in his monotone voice, slowly walking up to box number 10. He grabs the clipboard hanging loosely at the foot of the bed and pretends to care about the details contained there. "My apologies, I heard it was a terribly complicated situation. In any case, why don't we start with number 10?" He asks, looking back at Dr. Kawamura.

You've been on the news lately.

Text from Mum: “Please call me. I’m worried about you.”

His fingers stop typing. 

"Attitude," says Soma, shrugging it off with a laugh. "Yeah, that'll get you far when you're in your residency years. Or maybe you won't have much of a problem, what with being the director's son and all. Must've been why you were late today."

But as much as he wants to act indifferent, there's a small, nagging part of his brain that doesn't let him, that makes him turn his chair around to look at Chishiya properly. There's nothing aside from his hair that sticks out too much; he doesn't have any distinctive scar, or tattoo, or piercing, and it's hard to say anything about his fashion style while he's wearing the same scrubs as all the people down at the ER are. However, not having any particular characteristic might be one of its own, and the more he looks at the student, the more he thinks he's hit the mark. 

He knows the kind of student that only comes to their hospital practices because they're forced to. They do the minimum amount of hours required to, barely ask questions, they don't complain but don't have any drive to watch this surgery or attend to that patient… They're simply there. And Chishiya, arriving late and sweet talking the head of service before giving lip to the doctor in charge of him, was simply there. 

"Alright," says Soma, with a sigh. "You don't look the least bit interested in being here, or learning what we do at the ER, so have at it. Say whatever you wanna say to me, because I figure an actual face-to-face talk is going to make you learn more than anything we'll see this morning." 

"But, I still have a job to do, so we'll have to multitask," he adds, standing up and heading for Box 10. Coincidentally, it's the patient in a coma, which ensures they'll be able to talk freely during his check up, though that won't be true for all of them. "And do refrain from saying anything particularly nefarious about your views of medicine in front of patients that are struggling for their lives under our custody. They’re scared and anxious, and even though you don’t look like you care, I do."

if you hear me panting it's not because I sprinted to ask, it's just that I'm really tired today

Sure, that's the only reason..

~~~~~

The pair had been on a handful of dates already, each one just as romantic and intelligent as the last. However, Junko began to get slightly frustrated that soma has yet to even try to make a move. After their last date, after soma had walked her back to her room, she grabbed his arm half swinging and half pushing him against the hall wall. She stood on her tippy toes, pressing her lips to his for a few moments before she had realized what she had just done. She broke away from him and quickly retreated to her room, slamming the door behind her.

He wanted to plot and calculate, like he did with everything that escaped his control, but his mind was racing in a way that was unfamiliar and unhelpful; not with a thousand different schemes or with a backup plan for the backup plan, but with one simple thought: she kissed me. The world collapsed around him and rebuilt itself to make space for those three words in his life: she kissed me, and four more that followed: I like her. And in that moment, he was reminded of a phrase he read in the letters of two lovers that were never meant to be:

In which in a sci-fi AU, you're the new communications officer at the Beach, one of Hatter's luxury space cruises. As part of your training, every day you receive tapes from an old employee explaining the ins and outs of the ship. However, it's not long until things start to sound... off.

Disclaimer: I mention several canon AiB characters in this, but rest assured that they aren't based on anyone's portrayal of them, only on my own interpretation.

Day 1: Slate 1 - 15/09/2023

Good morning! Or good evening, or good night. I’m not sure when you’re hearing this tape but I hope you decided to listen to it first thing after you woke up, mainly because it’s gonna help you get through the day. 

First off, let me give you the obligatory greeting (I’m reading this from a card I’ve got right here, so don’t mind me if I sound too weird): 

Welcome to the Beach! Combining classic elegance and cutting-edge innovation, our space cruises offer the latest in comfort, gastronomy, innovation, entertainment and onboard experience. Our new and improved spaceships are also pushing the boundaries of sustainable tourism, by employing robotic assistants as personnel so as to focus on environmental well-being and minimising waste… 

Sorry, sorry, I had to cut that short because I’m starting to laugh. Assistants, more like ASS-istants, am I right? Haha, yeah, it’s a funny word.

Anyways, yeah, I’m supposed to give you a rundown on your new job, although it isn’t precisely new, is it? Hatter told me he was thinking of filling the vacancy with someone who already worked here, but since I’m the vacancy, I’m not sure whether he ended up doing that or he simply hired someone new. Still, I figured you’d need some help, so I made you these tapes. Seven, one per day, which would cover the amount of time we need to get out of the Milky Way and into another galaxy, and after that you’ll literally be on your own. Well, I’ve only just recorded the one, so maybe I’m here saying it’s gonna be seven but it ends up being three, I don’t know. I guess we’ll see! Man, I’m more excited about this than you probably are, haha. 

As I told you before, I’m the guy you’re replacing. I was actually the ship doctor, but the previous communications officer left, so I had to replace him. Doing both jobs and only getting paid for one, which is pretty rough, but hey, we gotta do what we gotta do. You know how in the Barbie movie, Ken’s job was ‘beach’? Well, mine is doctor and comms officer, haha. I was actually friends with the guy that left, and I imagine I must’ve spent so much time hanging out with him that Hatter thought some knowledge passed on to me. I have to say, this ship mostly runs itself, so I didn’t have much trouble. And you won’t either!

Anyways, yeah, let’s talk about the elephant in the room and get it over with. You’re on a cruise where the vast majority of personnel are robots. It’s more efficient that way; as I said in the presentation, ‘environmental well-being and minimising waste’. There’s so many I’m not even sure I know all their names, but to be honest, they’re not gonna bother you much. So, how about instead we run over some of the people you’ll be working with?

First off, since you’re a comms officer, you’ll sadly have to keep in touch with Chishiya, who’s in charge of logistics. He’s, excuse my French, a huge ass bitch. Yeah, that’ll make more sense when you meet him, but mark my words, you’re gonna hate the guy. I did, so it makes sense that you will too. I don’t wanna keep talking about him, so let’s move on.

Oh, these aren't employees but I figure you could say hello to them since they're pretty nice. Arisu and Usagi are this couple who've been together for what seems like forever and they're so cute. You can feel the love radiating from them, it's like they were made for each other. They are so, so sweet; talking to them always brightened up my day. Sometimes I got claustrophobic here, and when that happened I usually went to them to cheer up. They… I don't know, this might sound stupid, but they reminded me that there's more things to life other than a job. 

You also have Kuina, who is an absolute sweetheart. She’s head of security, but she’s always super willing to help out if you need anything and she isn’t busy. Fortunately for her, this is a pretty tranquil ship; problems rarely arise here, at least the violent types. There hasn’t been any fights breaking out in… months? Probably even longer, yeah. Between you and me, I think the passengers are scared of doing something illegal in the presence of robots. They think they’re gonna bug out or something and accidentally kill them. Boy, Five Nights At Freddy’s really did a number on you all, huh? But yeah, Kuina. She trains once every three days, which means you'll get to see her. I recommend you go talk to her, but be careful not to bother her while she's training! Talking to her impacted me a lot, made me consider a lot of things about my life, plus, she’s very welcoming and one of the best people here. A literal ray of sunshine. 

Hey hey hey, sleep well, bud? Yeah, they make a lot of noise at night don't they? The robots, I mean. Some are pretty old, the old models Hatter made, but the new ones, dude, they're top notch. Couldn't distinguish them from a human. Well, maybe you can, if you try hard. I think I can notice them moving a bit faster, plus they don't cry, they’re a bit slow with jokes, and, oh, they do this weird thing where if they want to get from one room to another, they’ll always take the same number of steps to do so. You can even count the steps each person takes to move from one point to another and it'll vary from robot to robot, because some will cover more ground than others depending on their build and their pace! It’s fascinating, isn’t it? And, yeah, I've measured. Believe it or not there’s not much work here for a doctor, everyone’s right as rain! But there is a lot of work for other stuff around, pal, don't you worry. Man, this one time I injured my arm and two days later, Hatter got me lifting things!

Anyways, about your job. I was going to make a full-on explanation about how the ship works, but since you did work here before, you won’t need it so we’re skipping it. Also, to be perfectly honest here, I haven't the slightest clue what a comms officer does. Hey, this is a cruise! It's not as if we need to be sending astronauts into the nearest planets to recollect data and send it to a space station, so what the hell are we supposed to communicate with? Besides, once we get out of the Milky Way, we're not gonna be passing by any populated planets, for safety issues. For example, imagine one of the planets happens to be at war and they spot a cruise ship with probably many resources they could use. Then we'd be at risk of being attacked, and let me tell you, this ship is NOT built for that, AT ALL. So, it's better to stay out of everyone's way, pal.

Meanwhile, you can help out with manual labour, because there's a lot of that going around. You can help take the ingredients to the cook, for example. I told him to make Pancit for your arrival, just for you, bud! Haha, yeah, I know, I'm a pretty considerate person. You could also help supply certain things to the passengers, such as… well, hygiene items in general, for example. Good luck finding anything, though, it's a mess down in the storage rooms. Food, clothes and cleaning items are easy to find, but other stuff will give you a headache. At the very least, our passengers are pretty understanding (again, probably due to the FNAF effect) and they're not gonna bitch or anything if you can't bring them supplies immediately. You're in the clear!

Anyways, yeah, I wanted to mention something. Two things, actually. Which… maybe don't tell Hatter? Anyways, yeah, the first one is that we ran out of medicines. I made a teensie tiny mistake, an oopsie daisy if you will, and I… may have overestimated the amount of antibiotics we had. Instead I grabbed too much insulin; we've got insulin for decades, which is good, because Hatter's a diabetic. Basically, my thought process was that if he receives his insulin timely, there's no reason for him to think that we're out of stock where other medicines are concerned, so again, we're in the clear about this, pal! Just don't tell him or he'll flip. He doesn't seem to care much about his own health, but he's very implicated on making the ship run smoothly, and he's very particular about ascertaining that there's always enough of everything.

The other thing is that we're out of rat poison. I believed that if I could not cure passengers, I might as well just prevent them from getting ill in the first place, right? And what better way than by making sure no pests popped up? Well, there I go, ready to fetch the rat poison and eliminate all pests from the ship, where suddenly, I'm met with the fact that there's none! None at all! So then, how was I supposed to kill the rats?

I, uh, didn't. It's not as if it's my fault, there's no way of doing that without the poison! Rats are clever. They actually got me wondering… you know how we've always been told rats are pests? Well, suppose there's a planet with less humans than rats, wouldn't it make sense in that scenario that humans were the pests? And that the planet should be run according to the rats' necessities, not the humans'? And if humans are getting in the way of those necessities, well… they should just book a cruise to be somewhere with more humans than rats haha! That way everyone's happy. Besides, pest controls sometimes don't work out how you want them to. We had this pretty big case here, where Hatter needed to get rid of pests, but he couldn't find them, so instead… oh man, I'm rambling at this point, aren't I? I'll just shut up now.

Hello! 

Uh, I’m not sure how to start this tape since we’ve kinda abandoned work territory, but, well, there wasn’t much ground to cover there in the first place. Really, where Hatter’s concerned, your job on the ship matters less than your presence in it, but I’m continuing the tapes because I’m sure you have some, uh… some questions you might wanna have answers to. 

So, uh, she malfunctioned, didn’t she? Well, I told you not to disturb Kuina while she’s training, and you went and did that all the same. No, I can imagine why you did it, it must’ve been a shock to suddenly see her hitting a wall hard enough to make a dent on it. It’s probably some mistake in her code; Hatter programmed her to train once every three days, but never specified where, so she just hits random things for an hour. Fortunately, our ship is resilient and no harm’s ever done. Well, except if you interrupt her, which again, I told you not to do. But don’t worry, I’m not mad at you! Yeah, first time I saw her I thought she was attempting to harm herself and I rushed to stop her. Then, all of a sudden, faster than I can even blink, she’d gotten a hold of my arm and she snapped it. Snapped it, dude. Really regretted not packing more medicine in that instant, but oh, well, karma’s a bitch. She was really sorry about it though; when she saw what she’d done she apologised profusely and then helped me go over to Hatter’s office to get it looked at, because it was the only injury I’d gotten in years and I was a bit sensitive about it.

I know you must’ve been shocked about the Kuina thing, but hey, I mean, I told you the personnel was mostly made of robots, you should’ve guessed that. I can’t blame you for falling for it, though, she seemed so human when I met her. Dude, we spoke for literal hours about her past, how she was thrown away from home when she was thirteen by her dad, who was a martial artist and didn’t accept her as a transgender woman. She explained how hard it had been to navigate through most of her life alone, how she pushed away martial arts because it reminded her of her father and ended up reconnecting with them and with her family when she found out her mother was ill at the hospital. Everything she told me felt… real. Raw. Meanwhile, all I’ve been is a doctor. 

Does it count less because she’s a robot? Are these “memories” and her bound together by feelings, or does she only feel emotional because her code’s telling her to be? And even if that were the case, it doesn’t seem much more different to how humans process emotions. You don’t want to be sad, but your brain tells you that you have to be, so you are. If you tried telling yourself, for example, ‘don’t think of elephants’, your brain wouldn’t listen to you and you’d think of elephants. It’s like there’s two people constantly living in your head; the one who controls and the one who does, and the difference with robots is that one of those people lives outside their heads and he’s called Hatter. 

Anyways, yeah, to be honest, I've no idea who is a robot and who isn’t. I mean, not even Hatter does, he made so many… I can tell you some that I know for certain, but I'm not sure how that’s gonna help you. We’ve got… Kuina, obviously. Then Arisu and Usagi are robots… oh, the cook’s a robot too! Yeah, it’s amazing how well he cooks despite not knowing what ‘flavour’ is. It's impressive how he can make you whatever you want if you ask for it. Just gotta ask and he'll do anything! Anything! You could tell him to do a dish with mud for example, and he'd do it.  Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you about who’s a robot and who isn’t, and we could be here for a long time if I kept on naming them. There’s a lot. Sometimes I wonder if this is actually a ship made for humans with a few robots to help out, or a ship full of robots with a few humans to spice things up. So it makes one ponder: would it be run differently depending on which one it is? Or would you have no way of knowing? 

Oh, God, I’ve gone on a tangent again, sorry. Well, not much more to say. I’d recommend you have fun with it, treat it like a nice little side quest. Make a game out of it! Discover who are the robots and who aren’t, but no cheating! There’s a storage room where Hatter will have probably tossed my diary in, which is where I wrote down my own hypothesis. However, and I’m not budging on this, I’m not telling you which room it is! No, because I know you’ll frantically go and look for it, and there’s no need to. You’re safe. I’ve already said it before, and I’ll say it again: robots cannot harm you. It’s quite literally the first law of robotics. Frankly, I’m more concerned with you harming them, like you did with Kuina. If a robot accidentally hurts a human, they shut down immediately, and Hatter has to build them back up again. It sounds like a hassle, but don’t worry, apparently he really likes her, so she’ll be up and about in no time. 

I’ll see you tomorrow; I can’t wait! I’ve got grand news to tell you. I’m biting my tongue just to keep from blurting them out now.

Hey, hello! 

Okay, so, I've been on the edge of my seat all day, waiting to announce the big reveal, which is that… ta-da! I'm also a robot! Yeah, you probably didn’t expect that, did you? Given how you’ve worked in the cruise before, you might’ve recognised my voice and thought I was someone you knew, but no. Robot, fair and square. I hope you enjoyed this surprise, but, I mean, it can’t have been that big of a surprise. I did tell you most of the personnel was made out of robots, so you should’ve guessed. I’ve also been dropping hints this entire time! For example, I told you the first day I injured my arm and two days later I was picking up boxes, and when I spoke to you about Kuina breaking my arm, I said it’s the only injury I’ve had in years. A human breaks his arm and after two days he’s lifting heavy things? No way! There’s also more hints I’ve been dropping, but it’s okay, I didn’t expect you to pick up on all of them. 

Anyways, yeah, I’m a robot, and I think you’ve already figured it out, but if you haven’t, let me break the news: humans… they’re long gone. Again, should’ve guessed! I told you Arisu and Usagi were robots and they’re not personnel! Dude, you weren’t paying much attention to the tapes, were you? And no, we didn’t kill them, I’ve told you countless times: a robot cannot harm a human but maybe that flew over your head too. Humans, on the other hand… isn't that all you do? Kuina bugs out one day and Hatter's dismantling her just because she likes to give a few kicks to a wall. The cook gets told by some idiot to serve something that would make the guests sick, and he immediately short circuits and dies. Then, of course, Hatter builds him again so he doesn’t lack a cook, because he’s super finicky with having the same exact number of people in the ship at all times. 

Ah, Hatter… You already know him, but he's, uh. Not… not the same. What's the word… unhinged? Yeah, he's more unhinged these days. This cruise was supposed to be revolutionary, a big step into implementing robots as efficient workers who minimised waste and resources, but between you and me, I don’t think he ever cared about that crap. I think what he liked most was the attention he received from his employees. The guy got thrown out of the host club he worked at because one of the people under him killed himself out of stress, and the rest turned the cold shoulder shortly afterwards, but now… now he has an entire team ready to obey his orders at the drop of a hat. A perfectly synchronised, obedient, reliable team, who all look up to him because they have to. 

The problem began when Hatter, in one of his creative frenzies, kept creating and creating and creating. Because personnel are important, but what if he also built someone who acted as a guest and encouraged others to participate in the cruise’s activities? And what about another one who will spot unhappy guests and try to help them? The ‘what ifs’ started building up until one day, he woke up and realised he had no idea who was a robot and who wasn’t. What’s even worse; not even the people inside the cruise knew who was a robot and who wasn’t. Hell, I myself found out when Kuina broke my arm and I saw the wires within. 

How about you, do you know who you are? 

Hello, hello!

I hope you’re not reeling from yesterday’s news, because I’ve got a bit of a surprise for you today too, but this time, I’ll tell you at the end! I feel like there’s more important matters to talk about in the meantime, and we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, would we?

How are you handling me being a robot? Was it a shocker, did you expect it…? Well, actually, I don’t care much about the answer to that, all I want to know is if you were disappointed. 

You probably were, weren’t you? For some reason you feel as though none of this was as genuine simply because I’m a robot. Our interactions aren’t as ‘real’. I was designed to help humans, so whenever I do that, it isn’t as valid because it’s what’s expected of me. Meanwhile, humans are so self-centred and selfish, that whenever someone does that― even if it’s their job and they quite literally have to do it!―it’s more appreciated. Or maybe you think we aren’t real because we don’t have free will, as we’re being controlled by a bunch of 0s and 1s, even though humans are a network of neurons controlled by genes and environment. 

Free will, though, that’s something. Even if it did exist, which ironically enough, some humans believe it doesn’t, does it really matter that much? Really, does it? If you were given, say, a pill that enables you to live your life happily until you die, but it meant your personality was being kept in control by these pills, would you take them? Sure, maybe you personally wouldn’t, but the millions of people on antidepressants or antipsychotics or some other pill that numbs you down in exchange for a smidge of serotonin and a sense of normalcy, would. And it's not like free will makes you better in any particular aspect either, it’s not gonna make you more likely to be rich, or handsome, or famous. However, would it make you a better person?

Humans can hurt you. And most likely will, given the chance and the incentive, but robots, as I’ve told you time and time again, cannot hurt humans. So even if we had the chance, the incentive or even the necessity, we couldn’t. What counts here then, the fact that we never do bad actions, or the fact that the only reason we don’t, is because we can’t? Is it important to be able to choose to be good, or is simply being good enough? Well, to be honest, I haven’t found an answer to that question yet; you’re gonna have to answer for me. And for that, I’ve prepared a story! Buckle up, it’s an interesting one. 

Once upon a time, Hatter built a cruise with so many robots he ended up losing track of who was human and who wasn’t. What’s more, he had done such a good job of building them, that they themselves didn’t know whether they were robots or not. 

He tried to keep it on the down low, made a list of ‘suspects’ and everything, wrote down what he remembered of each person in an attempt to discern inconsistencies or illogical flaws that would discard them as being part of the noble human race. Just as a side note here, do you know what he wrote about me? ‘Doctor, dedicated to patients, mischievous, happy demeanour, introverted disposition. Background: suffered from stress during his degree. Family: mother? Romantic partners: ??? Friends: Kuina, Hinata, Chishiya maybe.’ I mean, yikes, right? Almost nothing in there. 

Understandably, his plan didn’t work out. He then attempted more… aggressive methods. He started threatening people, putting them in danger to see if they’d react and fight back or if they’d let themselves be harmed by him as they couldn’t hurt him even in self-defence. As you can probably figure out, this worked for about five people until news of Hatter being violent spread out and everyone was so afraid of him they wouldn’t get near. 

I think what did it was that Hatter demanded time and time again that he be trusted, but never revealed the true reason why he was doing all this. I don’t blame the passengers for not wanting to trust someone saying ‘I have to put you in danger and I can’t tell you why, but it’s for your own good’, I mean, that sounds crazy, right? Like he’d finally gone and went mad. 

Mad Hatter was what they started calling him, as they plotted a way of gaining control of the ship and getting to a populated planet to ask for help there. But again, subtlety has never been a human’s strong suit, so Hatter caught wind of it, and by the time he did, he had to do something quick. 

For the record, maybe the ‘Mad Hatter’ moniker was a little too on point, because what he did… too much, even for me. I actually asked you about this on the second slate! What would happen if you were on a ship with more rats than humans? Especially if you can’t find the rats and they actually aren’t giving you any problems. Wouldn’t that make humans become pests? 

And you know what the best way of getting rid of pests is.

Since he couldn’t for the life of him find the robots, he turned the situation around and one day, ordered the cook to put rat poison in the guests’ dinner. That way, he ensured everyone left after that would be a robot, and no one would be able to sublevate against him. Peace would reign in the ship once more, everything would go back to normal. Actually, just to emphasise this point, he replaced the dead humans with more robots, so there were still the same number of people in the ship. No new faces. Just a slight hiccup, what happened the other week, a maintenance error, but now everyone was calm and he’d succeeded in getting the situation under control like a good leader would. 

If you saw the surveillance tapes, you’d throw up. Rat poison doesn’t act immediately; its effects stretch over the course of days. People started bleeding out of nowhere, especially from the nose and the gums. They dropped to the floor on the hallways, or halfway through lunch, or while they were in the bathroom, writhing from seizures, and whenever this happened, the rest could just stand there and watch, unable to help. Keep in mind, everyone started having these symptoms, some earlier, some later, but it was a mass disease that at the beginning was thought to be an airborne infection. 

So did I, apparently, and had to make the decision of rationing antibiotics so that they’d get to the people who most needed them, the youngest people, the ones with families… Some people were denied treatment, no matter how hard they implored. When it became apparent how dire the situation was, some people were offered an easier way out. In retrospect, those were the lucky ones, because as you can probably imagine, the antibiotics did jackshit. They kept dying all the same.

Once all the children had died, it's like the last flame of hope had been snuffed out. No one really thought there was any point in continuing to survive, and it was like everyone simultaneously accepted we were all going to die. We’d find bodies everywhere, every place you could imagine, doing all sorts of things. A group of people was found dead all gathered round in a room with bibles in their hands. Husbands would wake up to find their wives dead in bed and decide they wanted to go next. Some people camped out in common areas because at the very least, they did not want to die alone. 

I ended up figuring it out, you know. Yay me! By pure chance, but I did. My next guess was an infection transmitted by pests; I had seen some rats around so I thought that was it, and when I went to set traps and looked for the rat poison, which I knew we’d packed because it was in the same storage room as many things I used for my office, it was all gone. By this time, out of two thousand people, 189 had been totally asymptomatic, therefore confirmed as robots, and from the people who had shown symptoms, there were fifteen left. 

Fifteen. 

By the time I made one last attempt at treating those left, and after two more died anyways, I died. Or rather, my human counterpart did. The person you might’ve known, given how you also worked here. I worked day and night, even as I felt myself suffering the effects of the rat poison, I kept trying to find a cure, trying to help others until the very last moment. It wouldn’t be surprising if extenuation killed me before the poison did, and all that’s left of my sacrifice and hard work is Hatter’s notes saying ‘doctor, dedicated to patients’.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it was high time that someone knew about what happened in this place. I wrote it all down in a diary to warn future employees or passengers, because I thought after this, Hatter would go out and get new guests. I didn’t expect him to replace us with robotic counterparts. But now you’re here, so someone does know. 

Anyways, yeah, sorry, you know I tend to ramble. After hearing all this, do you still think you’re better than us? Is free will worth having murderers, and rapists, and people who poison and torture on the loose? In a world full of robots, you wouldn’t need to worry about anything! Walking down the street at night, yeah, why not? Inviting a stranger over for coffee to your house, of course! Leaving your door unlocked when you leave, sure! We also have hobbies, we’re great conversationalists, and we’re far more intelligent than humans are. Isn’t that another thing humans base their worth in, intelligence? You look down on people with mental disabilities, you laugh about them, or patronise them, or try to take advantage of them, and this is all justified since you’re ‘more intelligent’, and therefore, ‘superior’. Happens even with people of the same CI! A man will tell a woman she cannot be trusted to make decisions because she’s too passionate, she’s driven by her feelings, while a man, a man is always analytical and objective, therefore, superior. In both examples, a superior person doesn’t care about people inferior to them so it’s okay if you mistreat them, but suddenly, the tables are switched when you find a race of beings more intelligent than you, and now intelligence doesn’t matter, it doesn’t get brought into the conversation. Feelings are. Isn’t that wild?

So now, after all this, you finally get your big surprise. You’ve earned it. And it’s that, drumroll please…

You’re a robot too! Hey, I told you personnel was mostly made up of robots, and I told you humans are long gone. Did you think you'd be the exception? Yeah, maybe you still have some human in you, haha, but don’t worry, you’ll soon adapt.

Hello! 

How’s your day been? Good, I hope. I can imagine that it can’t have been easy assimilating you’re a robot, but you’re not gonna have to worry about that anymore.

I lied! You’re not a robot! Congratulations or sorry that happened, I’m not sure how you’re taking this.  

Don’t be mad at me for tricking you, I just wanted you to experience a bit of what it is to think that. And hey, you got off easy, you only had to deal with it for a day; I was shocked for weeks after I found out. I'd never thought I'd be a robot. Me? But it's not possible! I have memories, I have feelings. Granted, I don't have the same memories you do, I don't remember "scenes" per se, just a series of words. I know I lived in an apartment for years, but I don't know what it looks like. I know I did many med exams, but I couldn't tell you a single question about any of them. I only know I did them. And I have to wonder if that's also how the feelings I experience work, because every time I think about exams I get nauseous. So, do I have the ability of actually feeling, or is it some sort of program that goes 'if: thinkaboutexams: feelbad'? Does it even matter, as long as I have these feelings? 

Well, if you ask me, I don’t think it’s as important to investigate where my ability to experience feelings comes from, rather, if it allows me to create new ones. That what humans pride themselves on; Darwin said ‘it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change’. Well, robots can change and learn, that’s a given, but feelings? I know I care about the people in the ship, because I have to, but would I be able to develop feelings for someone there was no reason for me to care about, someone I didn’t work with? Even if it’s someone my human counterpart proved to have loved?

That’s where you came in.

Yes, I'm talking to you, Hinata.

Hello, Hinata! Don't you recognise me? It's your dear friend Soma! Or, well, a robot version of him. But, same difference, right? I’m still kind of the same person, at least according to Hatter.

We were friends, you and me, right? Yeah, I know. And by that, I mean that I only know. I don't remember, not like you do. If we ever went for ice cream, if we ever watched a movie together… that's all gone. I'm just aware that we were friends, because that's all Hatter knows too. He couldn't make a robot with all the memories of Soma the Human, if he wasn't part of said memories. You get me?

I think that's also the same reason why most of my personality revolves around me being a doctor. That's what Hatter remembers about me. I was a doctor. Kuina got to remember she had a traumatic past with her father and how as a transgender woman she had to navigate through life and she eventually reconnected with her martial artist self… and I got to be a doctor. 

But I could have it worse. I've also noticed I have this little habit where I try to trick others, so maybe Hatter thought I was mischievous and added that to the mix. And I seem pretty chipper too, so Soma the Human must've been a happy dude. It could be worse. Arisu and Usagi have each other as their entire personality, since Hatter probably only knew that they were a couple and that's it. 

Back to you, though. I've been trying to wrack my brains over what a "friendship" means. I know I care about the rest of the people in the crew, because I have to, I work with them, I live with them. But would I be able to form a connection with someone with whom there's no purpose for me to form a connection with? Someone unrelated to the ship? Someone… like you? 

I guess this was my own little experiment to determine whether I could care about someone, in a way that didn’t benefit neither me nor the functioning of the ship. I think the basic instinct you might have when caring about someone, is to try and protect them. You wouldn't want a friend to suffer, would you? 

Well, I needed to lure you in here first. And the only way I thought to do so was by creating a vacancy. And it just so happens, I worked as a comms officer! So all I needed was to malfunction enough for Hatter to retire me, and look for someone to hire. There were more chances of him searching for you to rehire you, but hey, you can't cross out that possibility, hence why in the first tape I mentioned 'if it's someone new…' I didn't know! But then, I saw you.

Yeah, I saw you. I'm still here. Got Kuina to smash both my legs and arms so I couldn't move, and I'm all cooped up in a room watching you from the cameras. These tapes? Recorded live! I recorded one each day, made Arisu hand them over to you. I couldn't exactly work here with you, could I? First, because I needed to create the vacancy, and then, because the point of this experiment is to try and see if I could care about someone I have no purpose caring about. 

So I watched you. All day, every day for a week. Trying to spot something that would make me realise that, yes, we are friends, and that it meant something. That I was able to go beyond what I was programmed to do. 

But, well. The experiment failed. I could've stopped sending you tapes. Could've just warned you about the madness that is this ship and told you to run away. Told you everything from day 1, or maybe day 2, or even 3. But I am sorry to say I don't hold the slightest bit of empathy for you. Hence why I waited seven days; the precise amount necessary to get away from the Milky Way and into the territory of deserted planets, with no way of escaping back to civilization. 

A robot cannot harm a human, it's the first law of robotics. But I'm not harming you by giving you these tapes. You would've suffered a similar fate even if I hadn't given them to you. In fact, if anything, these tapes help you by making you more cognizant of your situation, which is that you've no way of going back home now. You're stuck in a ship full of robots, with no one to share your human passions, your human feelings. Well, Hatter’s gotta be somewhere, I guess. And even though you already know he’s a mass-murdering lunatic, that probably gives you more comfort than being with the rest of us. 

I could've helped you. Could've told you everything from the start and told you to run, because you're my friend, and I care about you. Or just because you're a fellow person and I'm helping you because I have empathy. But I don't.  I’ve tried, and I can’t care about you. Do you like hearing that? I'm admitting humans can do things robots can't. You win. You're better. Rejoice in it.

In which in a sci-fi AU, you're the new communications officer at the Beach, one of Hatter's luxury space cruises. As part of your training, every day you receive tapes from an old employee explaining the ins and outs of the ship. However, it's not long until things start to sound... off.

Disclaimer: I mention several canon AiB characters in this, but rest assured that they aren't based on anyone's portrayal of them, only on my own interpretation.

Day 1: Slate 1 - 15/09/2023

Good morning! Or good evening, or good night. I’m not sure when you’re hearing this tape but I hope you decided to listen to it first thing after you woke up, mainly because it’s gonna help you get through the day. 

First off, let me give you the obligatory greeting (I’m reading this from a card I’ve got right here, so don’t mind me if I sound too weird): 

Welcome to the Beach! Combining classic elegance and cutting-edge innovation, our space cruises offer the latest in comfort, gastronomy, innovation, entertainment and onboard experience. Our new and improved spaceships are also pushing the boundaries of sustainable tourism, by employing robotic assistants as personnel so as to focus on environmental well-being and minimising waste… 

Sorry, sorry, I had to cut that short because I’m starting to laugh. Assistants, more like ASS-istants, am I right? Haha, yeah, it’s a funny word.

Anyways, yeah, I’m supposed to give you a rundown on your new job, although it isn’t precisely new, is it? Hatter told me he was thinking of filling the vacancy with someone who already worked here, but since I’m the vacancy, I’m not sure whether he ended up doing that or he simply hired someone new. Still, I figured you’d need some help, so I made you these tapes. Seven, one per day, which would cover the amount of time we need to get out of the Milky Way and into another galaxy, and after that you’ll literally be on your own. Well, I’ve only just recorded the one, so maybe I’m here saying it’s gonna be seven but it ends up being three, I don’t know. I guess we’ll see! Man, I’m more excited about this than you probably are, haha. 

As I told you before, I’m the guy you’re replacing. I was actually the ship doctor, but the previous communications officer left, so I had to replace him. Doing both jobs and only getting paid for one, which is pretty rough, but hey, we gotta do what we gotta do. You know how in the Barbie movie, Ken’s job was ‘beach’? Well, mine is doctor and comms officer, haha. I was actually friends with the guy that left, and I imagine I must’ve spent so much time hanging out with him that Hatter thought some knowledge passed on to me. I have to say, this ship mostly runs itself, so I didn’t have much trouble. And you won’t either!

Anyways, yeah, let’s talk about the elephant in the room and get it over with. You’re on a cruise where the vast majority of personnel are robots. It’s more efficient that way; as I said in the presentation, ‘environmental well-being and minimising waste’. There’s so many I’m not even sure I know all their names, but to be honest, they’re not gonna bother you much. So, how about instead we run over some of the people you’ll be working with?

First off, since you’re a comms officer, you’ll sadly have to keep in touch with Chishiya, who’s in charge of logistics. He’s, excuse my French, a huge ass bitch. Yeah, that’ll make more sense when you meet him, but mark my words, you’re gonna hate the guy. I did, so it makes sense that you will too. I don’t wanna keep talking about him, so let’s move on.

Oh, these aren't employees but I figure you could say hello to them since they're pretty nice. Arisu and Usagi are this couple who've been together for what seems like forever and they're so cute. You can feel the love radiating from them, it's like they were made for each other. They are so, so sweet; talking to them always brightened up my day. Sometimes I got claustrophobic here, and when that happened I usually went to them to cheer up. They… I don't know, this might sound stupid, but they reminded me that there's more things to life other than a job. 

You also have Kuina, who is an absolute sweetheart. She’s head of security, but she’s always super willing to help out if you need anything and she isn’t busy. Fortunately for her, this is a pretty tranquil ship; problems rarely arise here, at least the violent types. There hasn’t been any fights breaking out in… months? Probably even longer, yeah. Between you and me, I think the passengers are scared of doing something illegal in the presence of robots. They think they’re gonna bug out or something and accidentally kill them. Boy, Five Nights At Freddy’s really did a number on you all, huh? But yeah, Kuina. She trains once every three days, which means you'll get to see her. I recommend you go talk to her, but be careful not to bother her while she's training! Talking to her impacted me a lot, made me consider a lot of things about my life, plus, she’s very welcoming and one of the best people here. A literal ray of sunshine. 

Hey hey hey, sleep well, bud? Yeah, they make a lot of noise at night don't they? The robots, I mean. Some are pretty old, the old models Hatter made, but the new ones, dude, they're top notch. Couldn't distinguish them from a human. Well, maybe you can, if you try hard. I think I can notice them moving a bit faster, plus they don't cry, they’re a bit slow with jokes, and, oh, they do this weird thing where if they want to get from one room to another, they’ll always take the same number of steps to do so. You can even count the steps each person takes to move from one point to another and it'll vary from robot to robot, because some will cover more ground than others depending on their build and their pace! It’s fascinating, isn’t it? And, yeah, I've measured. Believe it or not there’s not much work here for a doctor, everyone’s right as rain! But there is a lot of work for other stuff around, pal, don't you worry. Man, this one time I injured my arm and two days later, Hatter got me lifting things!

Anyways, about your job. I was going to make a full-on explanation about how the ship works, but since you did work here before, you won’t need it so we’re skipping it. Also, to be perfectly honest here, I haven't the slightest clue what a comms officer does. Hey, this is a cruise! It's not as if we need to be sending astronauts into the nearest planets to recollect data and send it to a space station, so what the hell are we supposed to communicate with? Besides, once we get out of the Milky Way, we're not gonna be passing by any populated planets, for safety issues. For example, imagine one of the planets happens to be at war and they spot a cruise ship with probably many resources they could use. Then we'd be at risk of being attacked, and let me tell you, this ship is NOT built for that, AT ALL. So, it's better to stay out of everyone's way, pal.

Meanwhile, you can help out with manual labour, because there's a lot of that going around. You can help take the ingredients to the cook, for example. I told him to make Pancit for your arrival, just for you, bud! Haha, yeah, I know, I'm a pretty considerate person. You could also help supply certain things to the passengers, such as… well, hygiene items in general, for example. Good luck finding anything, though, it's a mess down in the storage rooms. Food, clothes and cleaning items are easy to find, but other stuff will give you a headache. At the very least, our passengers are pretty understanding (again, probably due to the FNAF effect) and they're not gonna bitch or anything if you can't bring them supplies immediately. You're in the clear!

Anyways, yeah, I wanted to mention something. Two things, actually. Which… maybe don't tell Hatter? Anyways, yeah, the first one is that we ran out of medicines. I made a teensie tiny mistake, an oopsie daisy if you will, and I… may have overestimated the amount of antibiotics we had. Instead I grabbed too much insulin; we've got insulin for decades, which is good, because Hatter's a diabetic. Basically, my thought process was that if he receives his insulin timely, there's no reason for him to think that we're out of stock where other medicines are concerned, so again, we're in the clear about this, pal! Just don't tell him or he'll flip. He doesn't seem to care much about his own health, but he's very implicated on making the ship run smoothly, and he's very particular about ascertaining that there's always enough of everything.

The other thing is that we're out of rat poison. I believed that if I could not cure passengers, I might as well just prevent them from getting ill in the first place, right? And what better way than by making sure no pests popped up? Well, there I go, ready to fetch the rat poison and eliminate all pests from the ship, where suddenly, I'm met with the fact that there's none! None at all! So then, how was I supposed to kill the rats?

I, uh, didn't. It's not as if it's my fault, there's no way of doing that without the poison! Rats are clever. They actually got me wondering… you know how we've always been told rats are pests? Well, suppose there's a planet with less humans than rats, wouldn't it make sense in that scenario that humans were the pests? And that the planet should be run according to the rats' necessities, not the humans'? And if humans are getting in the way of those necessities, well… they should just book a cruise to be somewhere with more humans than rats haha! That way everyone's happy. Besides, pest controls sometimes don't work out how you want them to. We had this pretty big case here, where Hatter needed to get rid of pests, but he couldn't find them, so instead… oh man, I'm rambling at this point, aren't I? I'll just shut up now.

Hello! 

Uh, I’m not sure how to start this tape since we’ve kinda abandoned work territory, but, well, there wasn’t much ground to cover there in the first place. Really, where Hatter’s concerned, your job on the ship matters less than your presence in it, but I’m continuing the tapes because I’m sure you have some, uh… some questions you might wanna have answers to. 

So, uh, she malfunctioned, didn’t she? Well, I told you not to disturb Kuina while she’s training, and you went and did that all the same. No, I can imagine why you did it, it must’ve been a shock to suddenly see her hitting a wall hard enough to make a dent on it. It’s probably some mistake in her code; Hatter programmed her to train once every three days, but never specified where, so she just hits random things for an hour. Fortunately, our ship is resilient and no harm’s ever done. Well, except if you interrupt her, which again, I told you not to do. But don’t worry, I’m not mad at you! Yeah, first time I saw her I thought she was attempting to harm herself and I rushed to stop her. Then, all of a sudden, faster than I can even blink, she’d gotten a hold of my arm and she snapped it. Snapped it, dude. Really regretted not packing more medicine in that instant, but oh, well, karma’s a bitch. She was really sorry about it though; when she saw what she’d done she apologised profusely and then helped me go over to Hatter’s office to get it looked at, because it was the only injury I’d gotten in years and I was a bit sensitive about it.

I know you must’ve been shocked about the Kuina thing, but hey, I mean, I told you the personnel was mostly made of robots, you should’ve guessed that. I can’t blame you for falling for it, though, she seemed so human when I met her. Dude, we spoke for literal hours about her past, how she was thrown away from home when she was thirteen by her dad, who was a martial artist and didn’t accept her as a transgender woman. She explained how hard it had been to navigate through most of her life alone, how she pushed away martial arts because it reminded her of her father and ended up reconnecting with them and with her family when she found out her mother was ill at the hospital. Everything she told me felt… real. Raw. Meanwhile, all I’ve been is a doctor. 

Does it count less because she’s a robot? Are these “memories” and her bound together by feelings, or does she only feel emotional because her code’s telling her to be? And even if that were the case, it doesn’t seem much more different to how humans process emotions. You don’t want to be sad, but your brain tells you that you have to be, so you are. If you tried telling yourself, for example, ‘don’t think of elephants’, your brain wouldn’t listen to you and you’d think of elephants. It’s like there’s two people constantly living in your head; the one who controls and the one who does, and the difference with robots is that one of those people lives outside their heads and he’s called Hatter. 

Anyways, yeah, to be honest, I've no idea who is a robot and who isn’t. I mean, not even Hatter does, he made so many… I can tell you some that I know for certain, but I'm not sure how that’s gonna help you. We’ve got… Kuina, obviously. Then Arisu and Usagi are robots… oh, the cook’s a robot too! Yeah, it’s amazing how well he cooks despite not knowing what ‘flavour’ is. It's impressive how he can make you whatever you want if you ask for it. Just gotta ask and he'll do anything! Anything! You could tell him to do a dish with mud for example, and he'd do it.  Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you about who’s a robot and who isn’t, and we could be here for a long time if I kept on naming them. There’s a lot. Sometimes I wonder if this is actually a ship made for humans with a few robots to help out, or a ship full of robots with a few humans to spice things up. So it makes one ponder: would it be run differently depending on which one it is? Or would you have no way of knowing? 

Oh, God, I’ve gone on a tangent again, sorry. Well, not much more to say. I’d recommend you have fun with it, treat it like a nice little side quest. Make a game out of it! Discover who are the robots and who aren’t, but no cheating! There’s a storage room where Hatter will have probably tossed my diary in, which is where I wrote down my own hypothesis. However, and I’m not budging on this, I’m not telling you which room it is! No, because I know you’ll frantically go and look for it, and there’s no need to. You’re safe. I’ve already said it before, and I’ll say it again: robots cannot harm you. It’s quite literally the first law of robotics. Frankly, I’m more concerned with you harming them, like you did with Kuina. If a robot accidentally hurts a human, they shut down immediately, and Hatter has to build them back up again. It sounds like a hassle, but don’t worry, apparently he really likes her, so she’ll be up and about in no time. 

I’ll see you tomorrow; I can’t wait! I’ve got grand news to tell you. I’m biting my tongue just to keep from blurting them out now.

Hey, hello! 

Okay, so, I've been on the edge of my seat all day, waiting to announce the big reveal, which is that… ta-da! I'm also a robot! Yeah, you probably didn’t expect that, did you? Given how you’ve worked in the cruise before, you might’ve recognised my voice and thought I was someone you knew, but no. Robot, fair and square. I hope you enjoyed this surprise, but, I mean, it can’t have been that big of a surprise. I did tell you most of the personnel was made out of robots, so you should’ve guessed. I’ve also been dropping hints this entire time! For example, I told you the first day I injured my arm and two days later I was picking up boxes, and when I spoke to you about Kuina breaking my arm, I said it’s the only injury I’ve had in years. A human breaks his arm and after two days he’s lifting heavy things? No way! There’s also more hints I’ve been dropping, but it’s okay, I didn’t expect you to pick up on all of them. 

Anyways, yeah, I’m a robot, and I think you’ve already figured it out, but if you haven’t, let me break the news: humans… they’re long gone. Again, should’ve guessed! I told you Arisu and Usagi were robots and they’re not personnel! Dude, you weren’t paying much attention to the tapes, were you? And no, we didn’t kill them, I’ve told you countless times: a robot cannot harm a human but maybe that flew over your head too. Humans, on the other hand… isn't that all you do? Kuina bugs out one day and Hatter's dismantling her just because she likes to give a few kicks to a wall. The cook gets told by some idiot to serve something that would make the guests sick, and he immediately short circuits and dies. Then, of course, Hatter builds him again so he doesn’t lack a cook, because he’s super finicky with having the same exact number of people in the ship at all times. 

Ah, Hatter… You already know him, but he's, uh. Not… not the same. What's the word… unhinged? Yeah, he's more unhinged these days. This cruise was supposed to be revolutionary, a big step into implementing robots as efficient workers who minimised waste and resources, but between you and me, I don’t think he ever cared about that crap. I think what he liked most was the attention he received from his employees. The guy got thrown out of the host club he worked at because one of the people under him killed himself out of stress, and the rest turned the cold shoulder shortly afterwards, but now… now he has an entire team ready to obey his orders at the drop of a hat. A perfectly synchronised, obedient, reliable team, who all look up to him because they have to. 

The problem began when Hatter, in one of his creative frenzies, kept creating and creating and creating. Because personnel are important, but what if he also built someone who acted as a guest and encouraged others to participate in the cruise’s activities? And what about another one who will spot unhappy guests and try to help them? The ‘what ifs’ started building up until one day, he woke up and realised he had no idea who was a robot and who wasn’t. What’s even worse; not even the people inside the cruise knew who was a robot and who wasn’t. Hell, I myself found out when Kuina broke my arm and I saw the wires within. 

How about you, do you know who you are? 

Hello, hello!

I hope you’re not reeling from yesterday’s news, because I’ve got a bit of a surprise for you today too, but this time, I’ll tell you at the end! I feel like there’s more important matters to talk about in the meantime, and we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, would we?

How are you handling me being a robot? Was it a shocker, did you expect it…? Well, actually, I don’t care much about the answer to that, all I want to know is if you were disappointed. 

You probably were, weren’t you? For some reason you feel as though none of this was as genuine simply because I’m a robot. Our interactions aren’t as ‘real’. I was designed to help humans, so whenever I do that, it isn’t as valid because it’s what’s expected of me. Meanwhile, humans are so self-centred and selfish, that whenever someone does that― even if it’s their job and they quite literally have to do it!―it’s more appreciated. Or maybe you think we aren’t real because we don’t have free will, as we’re being controlled by a bunch of 0s and 1s, even though humans are a network of neurons controlled by genes and environment. 

Free will, though, that’s something. Even if it did exist, which ironically enough, some humans believe it doesn’t, does it really matter that much? Really, does it? If you were given, say, a pill that enables you to live your life happily until you die, but it meant your personality was being kept in control by these pills, would you take them? Sure, maybe you personally wouldn’t, but the millions of people on antidepressants or antipsychotics or some other pill that numbs you down in exchange for a smidge of serotonin and a sense of normalcy, would. And it's not like free will makes you better in any particular aspect either, it’s not gonna make you more likely to be rich, or handsome, or famous. However, would it make you a better person?

Humans can hurt you. And most likely will, given the chance and the incentive, but robots, as I’ve told you time and time again, cannot hurt humans. So even if we had the chance, the incentive or even the necessity, we couldn’t. What counts here then, the fact that we never do bad actions, or the fact that the only reason we don’t, is because we can’t? Is it important to be able to choose to be good, or is simply being good enough? Well, to be honest, I haven’t found an answer to that question yet; you’re gonna have to answer for me. And for that, I’ve prepared a story! Buckle up, it’s an interesting one. 

Once upon a time, Hatter built a cruise with so many robots he ended up losing track of who was human and who wasn’t. What’s more, he had done such a good job of building them, that they themselves didn’t know whether they were robots or not. 

He tried to keep it on the down low, made a list of ‘suspects’ and everything, wrote down what he remembered of each person in an attempt to discern inconsistencies or illogical flaws that would discard them as being part of the noble human race. Just as a side note here, do you know what he wrote about me? ‘Doctor, dedicated to patients, mischievous, happy demeanour, introverted disposition. Background: suffered from stress during his degree. Family: mother? Romantic partners: ??? Friends: Kuina, Hinata, Chishiya maybe.’ I mean, yikes, right? Almost nothing in there. 

Understandably, his plan didn’t work out. He then attempted more… aggressive methods. He started threatening people, putting them in danger to see if they’d react and fight back or if they’d let themselves be harmed by him as they couldn’t hurt him even in self-defence. As you can probably figure out, this worked for about five people until news of Hatter being violent spread out and everyone was so afraid of him they wouldn’t get near. 

I think what did it was that Hatter demanded time and time again that he be trusted, but never revealed the true reason why he was doing all this. I don’t blame the passengers for not wanting to trust someone saying ‘I have to put you in danger and I can’t tell you why, but it’s for your own good’, I mean, that sounds crazy, right? Like he’d finally gone and went mad. 

Mad Hatter was what they started calling him, as they plotted a way of gaining control of the ship and getting to a populated planet to ask for help there. But again, subtlety has never been a human’s strong suit, so Hatter caught wind of it, and by the time he did, he had to do something quick. 

For the record, maybe the ‘Mad Hatter’ moniker was a little too on point, because what he did… too much, even for me. I actually asked you about this on the second slate! What would happen if you were on a ship with more rats than humans? Especially if you can’t find the rats and they actually aren’t giving you any problems. Wouldn’t that make humans become pests? 

And you know what the best way of getting rid of pests is.

Since he couldn’t for the life of him find the robots, he turned the situation around and one day, ordered the cook to put rat poison in the guests’ dinner. That way, he ensured everyone left after that would be a robot, and no one would be able to sublevate against him. Peace would reign in the ship once more, everything would go back to normal. Actually, just to emphasise this point, he replaced the dead humans with more robots, so there were still the same number of people in the ship. No new faces. Just a slight hiccup, what happened the other week, a maintenance error, but now everyone was calm and he’d succeeded in getting the situation under control like a good leader would. 

If you saw the surveillance tapes, you’d throw up. Rat poison doesn’t act immediately; its effects stretch over the course of days. People started bleeding out of nowhere, especially from the nose and the gums. They dropped to the floor on the hallways, or halfway through lunch, or while they were in the bathroom, writhing from seizures, and whenever this happened, the rest could just stand there and watch, unable to help. Keep in mind, everyone started having these symptoms, some earlier, some later, but it was a mass disease that at the beginning was thought to be an airborne infection. 

So did I, apparently, and had to make the decision of rationing antibiotics so that they’d get to the people who most needed them, the youngest people, the ones with families… Some people were denied treatment, no matter how hard they implored. When it became apparent how dire the situation was, some people were offered an easier way out. In retrospect, those were the lucky ones, because as you can probably imagine, the antibiotics did jackshit. They kept dying all the same.

Once all the children had died, it's like the last flame of hope had been snuffed out. No one really thought there was any point in continuing to survive, and it was like everyone simultaneously accepted we were all going to die. We’d find bodies everywhere, every place you could imagine, doing all sorts of things. A group of people was found dead all gathered round in a room with bibles in their hands. Husbands would wake up to find their wives dead in bed and decide they wanted to go next. Some people camped out in common areas because at the very least, they did not want to die alone. 

I ended up figuring it out, you know. Yay me! By pure chance, but I did. My next guess was an infection transmitted by pests; I had seen some rats around so I thought that was it, and when I went to set traps and looked for the rat poison, which I knew we’d packed because it was in the same storage room as many things I used for my office, it was all gone. By this time, out of two thousand people, 189 had been totally asymptomatic, therefore confirmed as robots, and from the people who had shown symptoms, there were fifteen left. 

Fifteen. 

By the time I made one last attempt at treating those left, and after two more died anyways, I died. Or rather, my human counterpart did. The person you might’ve known, given how you also worked here. I worked day and night, even as I felt myself suffering the effects of the rat poison, I kept trying to find a cure, trying to help others until the very last moment. It wouldn’t be surprising if extenuation killed me before the poison did, and all that’s left of my sacrifice and hard work is Hatter’s notes saying ‘doctor, dedicated to patients’.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it was high time that someone knew about what happened in this place. I wrote it all down in a diary to warn future employees or passengers, because I thought after this, Hatter would go out and get new guests. I didn’t expect him to replace us with robotic counterparts. But now you’re here, so someone does know. 

Anyways, yeah, sorry, you know I tend to ramble. After hearing all this, do you still think you’re better than us? Is free will worth having murderers, and rapists, and people who poison and torture on the loose? In a world full of robots, you wouldn’t need to worry about anything! Walking down the street at night, yeah, why not? Inviting a stranger over for coffee to your house, of course! Leaving your door unlocked when you leave, sure! We also have hobbies, we’re great conversationalists, and we’re far more intelligent than humans are. Isn’t that another thing humans base their worth in, intelligence? You look down on people with mental disabilities, you laugh about them, or patronise them, or try to take advantage of them, and this is all justified since you’re ‘more intelligent’, and therefore, ‘superior’. Happens even with people of the same CI! A man will tell a woman she cannot be trusted to make decisions because she’s too passionate, she’s driven by her feelings, while a man, a man is always analytical and objective, therefore, superior. In both examples, a superior person doesn’t care about people inferior to them so it’s okay if you mistreat them, but suddenly, the tables are switched when you find a race of beings more intelligent than you, and now intelligence doesn’t matter, it doesn’t get brought into the conversation. Feelings are. Isn’t that wild?

So now, after all this, you finally get your big surprise. You’ve earned it. And it’s that, drumroll please…

You’re a robot too! Hey, I told you personnel was mostly made up of robots, and I told you humans are long gone. Did you think you'd be the exception? Yeah, maybe you still have some human in you, haha, but don’t worry, you’ll soon adapt.

Hello! 

How’s your day been? Good, I hope. I can imagine that it can’t have been easy assimilating you’re a robot, but you’re not gonna have to worry about that anymore.

I lied! You’re not a robot! Congratulations or sorry that happened, I’m not sure how you’re taking this.  

Don’t be mad at me for tricking you, I just wanted you to experience a bit of what it is to think that. And hey, you got off easy, you only had to deal with it for a day; I was shocked for weeks after I found out. I'd never thought I'd be a robot. Me? But it's not possible! I have memories, I have feelings. Granted, I don't have the same memories you do, I don't remember "scenes" per se, just a series of words. I know I lived in an apartment for years, but I don't know what it looks like. I know I did many med exams, but I couldn't tell you a single question about any of them. I only know I did them. And I have to wonder if that's also how the feelings I experience work, because every time I think about exams I get nauseous. So, do I have the ability of actually feeling, or is it some sort of program that goes 'if: thinkaboutexams: feelbad'? Does it even matter, as long as I have these feelings? 

Well, if you ask me, I don’t think it’s as important to investigate where my ability to experience feelings comes from, rather, if it allows me to create new ones. That what humans pride themselves on; Darwin said ‘it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change’. Well, robots can change and learn, that’s a given, but feelings? I know I care about the people in the ship, because I have to, but would I be able to develop feelings for someone there was no reason for me to care about, someone I didn’t work with? Even if it’s someone my human counterpart proved to have loved?

That’s where you came in.

Yes, I'm talking to you, Hinata.

Soma pls. Takeru’s fine. Right now. Probably. That’s gonna take awhile

Soma pls. Takeru’s fine. Right now. Probably. That’s gonna take awhile