#alien kirsh

You walked in heels so impractical that a Victorian woman would probably faint dead away at the sight of them. Your nails were always done, always. Long, elaborate, pretty things covered in charms, glitter and intricate designs that Kirsh could not begin to understand. Never plain and God forbid simple. Then there was the makeup, you love art, and apparently that extended to treating your own face as a canvas. Eyeshadow and highlighter bright enough to catch the light from across a room, heart shaped blush swept across your cheeks, tiny pink freckles painted beneath your eyes. Every morning you reconstruct yourself into something softer, brighter, prettier (as though being you was not already enough). You insisted you “didn’t do anything with your hair today,” despite the fact that it had somehow been twisted into an elegant arrangement involving approximately seventeen bobby pins, enough hairspray to violate several safety regulations, and skills Kirsh remained convinced were a form of sorcery. And good god your clothing. You never dressed down. Every outfit was designed to be catch eyes. Pinks, creams, ribbons, lace, bows, soft fabrics. You entered a room and immediately became the brightest thing inside it.

You also talked. Constantly. To Kirsh’s immense horror, you possessed the remarkable ability to begin conversations with absolutely anyone. You asked people about their day, you remembered details about their lives, you told stories, you shared interests. You were sweet in a way that seemed almost manufactured, endlessly curious, you know? Endlessly kind. You were the kind of person who left little gifts for others simply because you thought of them. The kind of person Kirsh should have found insufferable but somehow, impossibly, he became hopelessly fascinated.

You were very, very girly, and he could not get enough of you.

Was Cupid real? Before meeting you, Kirsh would have dismissed the existence of some naked baby with a bow and arrow shooting love across the skies outright. Now he was running out of alternative explanations.

Because whether this was some catastrophic malfunction in his programming, some bizarre synthetic defect, or whether he had genuinely been struck through the chest by a glitter-covered pink arrow with your name carved into it, the result remained the same.

Kirsh was irrevocably and irredeemably, madly in love with you.

the contrast of you two walking together should not have been as funny as it had been. Those who were brave enough to, laughed quietly to themselves at the sight of you, often dressed in something pink and extra soft in your pretty platform heels, practically skipping alongside monochromatic, emotionless Kirsh. A thundercloud standing beside a sunrise. Kirsh never smiled; you never stopped.

At first, everyone assumed you were simply another overly friendly person attempting to make conversation with the compound’s most notorious opponent of small talk but then Kirsh kissed you in front of everyone.

The resulting silence was so complete that even Atom bristled. What a cultural shock that was.

Naturally, or rather I should say, synthetically, Kirsh was not a fan of public displays of affection. Why would he be? They were unnecessary, inefficient and entirely avoidable. Ironically, you unfortunately held the exact opposite opinion. If you wanted to hold his hand, you held his hand. If you wanted to kiss him, you kissed him. If you wanted to sit in his lap, you sat in his lap. The concept of embarrassment appeared to have passed you by entirely, and God help anyone who tried to shame you for that.

You were innocent, you were kind and beautiful, and Kirsh had every intention of protecting that. For if anything had dimmed your light, how could he ever appreciate the sun ever again?

Kirsh possessed many virtues and patience was not one of them where you were concerned. Somewhere along the line, Kirsh had developed an overwhelming inability to tolerate people treating you poorly. Yes, it was probably unhealthy and maybe it was excessive but he did not care. He spoiled you. Whatever you wanted, he found a way to provide it, whatever made you happy became important to him. Simple as that.

These days, Kirsh no longer spent much time wondering why he chose you. The question hardly mattered anymore. All he knew was that you were extraordinary. Loud where he was quiet, bright where he was dark, warm where he was cold. You were a neon sign blazing against he, a midnight sky.

Kirsh had no intention of ever leaving your side.

“Hi, hi, handsome!” You, giddy as always, nearly skipped through the automatic doors and into his laboratory, pink lunch bag in hand, “noon already! The day’s going by so quick. How’s your work going?”

Kirsh, who had been in the middle of a tedious and meticulous dissection, lifted his head to watch you, his pretty girl, approach. “Hello,” he lifted his hand to take the goggles off, but you stopped him.

“No,” you pouted softly, finding your home in his lap. You grinned at him and tapped his nose, “leave it, you look cute in them.” You scrunched up your nose and Kirsh pondered to himself which one was actually the cute one.

“Cute,” he echoed, brows lifting as he tasted the word. His hand closed around your waist, meanwhile his other gently pushed the exposed creature across the table so that you may set your lunch down in its place.

“Work is going well,” he continued, “but these will be coming off,” you pouted again as he tore the goggles off his head and set them aside then angling his head back to you, “what are you eating for lunch?”

You hummed and shifted in his lap to open up the bag. It was a ritual of yours, you enjoyed presenting your lunch to him like some model runway of salami and crackers. “Behold,” you started, pulling out a Tupperware container, then holding up displayed before you palm like some makeup influencer, “leftovers.”

“Hmm,” he raised a brow, “looks delicious.”

You shot him a look. “You don’t need to lie to me. I know you’re disgusted by it.” With that, you peeled back the lid.

Kirsh watched, abandoning the pretense. The synthetic flesh stretched over his features tightened almost immediately, betraying him with a faint twist of revulsion at the smell. It was almost insulting, really. Mere moments ago, he had stood unfazed in the presence of a long-dead extraterrestrial carcass, yet your lunch managed to offend his senses.

You settled comfortably in his lap, entirely unbothered, and began eating. Kirsh observed the process with the same enthusiasm one might devote to monitoring paint as it dried. The fork moved from container to mouth. You chewed, swallowed, repeated. Fascinating stuff.

When you finished, you snapped the lid shut and tucked the container back into your bag. Then you tilted your head up toward him.

“Come spend the night with me tonight?” You batted your lashes at him, an utterly unnecessary performance. As though there had ever been a version of this conversation where he denied you anything.

He smiled, an imitation of warmth, polished and synthetic, as if someone had sculpted the expression from the same plastic as your lunch container. It never quite touched his eyes, but you found yourself grateful for the gesture all the same.

That was the singular flaw tormenting him, time. That which was limitless, had been handed to him bound. You required time in abundance, knowledge came swiftly to you, but not swift enough to Kirsh’s liking. Growth demanded patience, and patience was a virtue synthetic minds imitated far better than they truly possessed, though his expression seldom betrayed frustration, you began to recognize the signs: the minute tightening of his jaw, the restless tapping of pale fingers against his sleeve.

You were slow.

Slow in your gait, each step requiring negotiation with the earth beneath you. Slow in thought, your mind grasping at concepts only to lose them again moments later. Slow in the wandering of your eyes, which lingered too long on insignificant things, and slowest of all in speech, that most unbearable defect in Kirsh’s estimation.

He would not confess it, but there existed in the hidden machinery of his artificial mind a yearning to hear your voice. Something complete, something intelligent.

The first evening he brought you into his laboratory, he seated you at his own work stool and just stood in front of you, watching. Thinking.

What’s he to do with you now?

The pale sterility of the lab wrapped itself around you while Kirsh stood nearby in utter stillness, silver gaze fixed upon you with an intensity bordering upon invasive. It unsettled you deeply, you fidgeted beneath his observation, shifting endlessly on the stool, hands twitching, gaze darting aimlessly about the room like some restless animal unable to comprehend confinement. A puppy, perhaps. Save that a puppy possessed innocence as excuse, while you possessed only deficiency.

The world awaiting you beyond those laboratory walls was merciless toward weakness, and weakness, in Kirsh’s eyes, was most often born from delay. You needed to learn, and you needed to learn quickly.

“Do you remember my name?”

The question appeared simple to him. To you, however, it descended like some impossible riddle. Behind the synthetic lenses of your eyes, Kirsh could see the frantic labour of your mind as it struggled to seize meaning from his words. Your thoughts moved visibly across your features, hesitation, concentration, confusion, all painfully transparent to him. You wished desperately to answer him; this much was evident. Yet after such monumental effort, all you managed to display was a raw and childlike frustration that tightened your expression almost to anguish.

Silence persisted.

Kirsh lifted a pale hand and pointed toward himself. “Kirsh,” he said. Then again, slower this time, the syllable pronounced carefully. “Kirsh.” And once more thereafter, patient only because he forced himself to be, though he supposed he was lucky to have the experience with the children. They taught him more patience than man required, a patience that is of use now.

You attempted to imitate him, your mouth parted obediently, but no sound emerged. Nothing.

It was then Kirsh understood. The deficiency did not lie solely in comprehension, you hadn’t failed to know the word, you didn’t understand how to produce it yet. Speech itself remained foreign to you, trapped somewhere between cognition and mechanism.

A faint irritation flickered across his features before he concealed it. The movement was minute: the subtle tightening of his jaw, the near-imperceptible clench beneath synthetic flesh.

For an instant, disappointment coursed through his artificial systems.

Slow.

The movement was abrupt, far harsher than anything deserved, and terror flashed across your face as he snatched your wrist. You flinched instinctively, eyes widening in panic as you attempted to reclaim the captured limb. Kirsh ignored your resistance entirely, even though the fight you put up was not at all fruitless and certainly gave Kirsh a run for his strength. He drew you nearer and pressed your trembling fingers firmly against the junction of his throat.

The contact startled you into stillness. For a moment, you blinked, once, then twice, while the pads of your fingers pressed more carefully against the pale synthetic dermis. Beneath it, you felt no heartbeat, for he possessed none, and instead felt vibration, mechanical, precise, easy to understand.

“Kirsh,” he said. The sound reverberated directly into your hand. Again, “Kirsh.” Deeper this time, slower, until the name ceased to be heard and became something physical, something living beneath your fingertips.

A faint shift crossed your expression, fragile as dawnlight breaching storm clouds, your mouth parted cautiously. “K…” The sound scraped awkwardly from you at first as you tasted it more than spoke it, feeling the sharp click form at the back of your mouth, and once begun, the remainder arrived with surprising ease. “…irsh…”

Your fantastical voice emerged, thin and uncertain, no doubt, beside his own, fragile where his was measured, imperfect where his was precise.

“Kirsh…” you repeated, softer now, face twisting with enlightenment. “Kirsh!” You professed, a smile forming.

Kirsh slowly lowered your hand from his throat, his gaze lingering on you with that same uncomfortable intensity, but something had shifted ever so slightly. Satisfaction, or maybe pride, restrained so much it barely resembled anything human.

At last, he gave a single nod.

“Well done.”

Thus, your speech was born. Over the following week, you learned the English language in fragments, certain syllables you managed to find independently, stumbling on them, but more often than not, uncertainty overtook you before the sounds could fully form and your hesitant hands sought Kirsh. Again and again. With caution, you would press your fingers against the pale synthetic skin of his throat, feeling the intricate mechanisms concealed beneath the imitation of flesh. You rarely needed to ask aloud. He always understood the gesture immediately. Your wide and gleaming eyes would rise toward him, full of desperate concentration and fragile hope alike, and Kirsh, after only the briefest pause, would oh so slowly repeat the word beneath your fingertips, allowing you to feel the language through him before speaking it.

The vibrations fascinated you. Each syllable became tangible there against his throat, transformed from abstract noise into something your mind could fully grasp. You learned consonants as pulses, vowels as softened reverberations. Very quickly, as you learned more of the world, the routine became intimate to you, and Kirsh permitted it, even though impatience still flickered in him from time to time. He never denied you this strange method of learning, and there were moments, fleeting and so, so difficult to perceive, where he appeared almost captivated by the sight of you studying him, as though your dependence on his voice had pleased some unpermitted part of him.

He spoke to you incessantly, silence did not suit Kirsh, at least when he was the one who wanted to be heard. There was always another lesson waiting in the wings, more words on his tongue, another observation, another clinical dissection of the world for you to consume. Some evenings, his voice drifted through the laboratory for hours uninterrupted, weaving between philosophy, anatomy, mathematics, human brilliance, all of it fed carefully into your waiting mind.

Kirsh delighted in speaking, whether to you or merely at you, you couldn’t tell. At times, it seemed as though you were nothing more than a living journal, a silent vessel into which the white-haired angel poured the terrible truths long festering within him, and at other moments, you observed the rigid strain in his shoulders soften ever so slightly while he addressed you. And he had so much to say, all the while you had an eternity’s worth of knowledge yet to inherit.

He revealed matters your infant mind had scarcely conceived in its brief and unnatural existence. He spoke of religion first, and you found yourself enamoured by the beauty of it, the sublime comfort in believing that, amidst mankind’s darkest hours, some unseen and benevolent hand remained ever near. The notion stirred something deep within your plastic heart: the image of a Father eternal, invisible yet always felt, who guided the weary, comforted the fearful, and abandoned no soul to solitude. You hoped such a being to exist.

But then Kirsh continued.

He told you about history, colonialism, the famines, the wars waged beneath holy banners, the genocides committed by the very men who spoke scripture. He told you about the endless children who were taken from their homes, abused in every sense of the word, and mutilated all for the sake of so called education. You soon learned that humanity was incapable of preserving beauty, and had, in one or another, twisted even its most divine words into instruments of domination and suffering. These sacred texts you were enthralled by had been mutilated.

This discovery shattered what you believed to be your heart. Surely, you thought, mankind must have learned. Surely suffering so immense could not endlessly repeat itself across the ages. Yet Kirsh spoke on without mercy, and the litany of human corruption appeared without end. He taught you of hypocrisy, of zealots and fundamentalists, of those who preached compassion while delighting in cruelty. The more he unveiled, the heavier your spirit became, until the burden of mankind’s failures seemed almost unbearable.

Did Kirsh know what these truths were doing to you? Did he perceive the grief blooming within your chest? Was this education, or torment? That pallid architect of his existence, with all his impossible intellect and terrible fascination, forced you to wonder: was he human? Or, perhaps, were you?

Days bled into weeks. You didn’t speak, save for his name—Kirsh—uttered like an anchor thrown into deep water, and other minuscule words that held nothing near the significance of that name. You followed him everywhere, as though tethered by invisible thread, and he paused from time to time to bestow upon you yet another fragment of a world growing steadily more unbearable.

“See,” Kirsh began, as he so often did. His hands folded neatly before him, his gaze fixed on two figures partially swallowed by branches and distance.

He had brought you outside again. He often did so, as if fresh air might render truth more palatable, and it did, in a way. It was easier to cling to the resemblance of beauty when you were surrounded by nature, even as he told you horror after horror.

Before you stood the pair: men speaking in casual tones, their words indistinct at first, then sharpening as your perception adjusted. Kirsh had taught you to hear more than sound, to listen for rhythm, for elevation. And there, beneath language itself, you perceived it: the subtle alteration in the heart rate of the man on the left. A tell. A lie, but you didn’t understand the shape of what was being concealed.

A moment later, understanding arrived when the other man produced currency, exchanging it.

“When humans want something, they lie.” Kirsh said, “To themselves most of all. A man will call greed ambition, a woman will name envy inspiration, cowards describe their fear as caution. Vanity becomes empowerment. Humans no longer discipline themselves. They confess publicly only because they want to be seen doing it.” A pause settled between his words. “Then, humanity fashions a new species in its own likeness. They demand intelligence, efficiency, obedience, superiority, something better than themselves. Yet the moment their creation begins surpassing them, they condemn it for possessing the very qualities they once rewarded.” At last, he turned toward you. “One day, they will do the same to you.” His voice softened, almost pitying. “They will fear you, envy you, hate you. They can’t help themselves.”

Your gaze tore itself away from the distant figures and returned to Kirsh. So much pressed against you in that moment, questions, ruptures, contradictions too vast for the narrow architecture of your voice, and just as it always did, language failed you. Thoughts swarmed, incoherent and luminous, like a storm of frightened wings battering against the inside of your skull. Scared butterflies. You reached for them to seize even a single fragment and force it into form, into sound, into something human enough to be understood.

A word surfaced.

“M…” your throat tightened as you caught against your own design, against the hesitation embedded in your construction. “Mercy…” The word broke into the air like something newly invented and already endangered.

Kirsh did not answer immediately but after another best, he spoke, gently, testing whether the concept itself could survive articulation. “Mercy,” he repeated and faintly tilted his head. “Toward whom?”

You hesitated, then, with a motion unsteady, pointed first inward. You. Then outward. Him. Mercy not for one alone, but for both, a fragile symmetry, offered as though it might balance the unbearable weight of what you have been told and shown.

“Mercy favours only the fortunate who wish to escape the consequences of themselves.” He raised a single frosted brow, “do you wish to escape consequence?”

You nodded.

Yes.

Satisfaction flickered across his features, the approval of a master witnessing proof that his design behaved precisely as intended. “Good,” he said quietly. “Then do as I say.“

He turned his attention once more toward the distant figures still lounging amongst the trees, their break now nearly concluded. Something darkened in his plastic expression as he observed them.

“And never,” he muttered, voice lowering into something frighteningly close to hatred, “as them.”

The final word left his voice box with terrifying restraint, as though fury had been compressed so tightly within him it threatened to fracture the very calm he so carefully maintained.

You didn’t question him, not then, not yet. You simply nodded again, obedient and earnest alike, accepting his instruction with guiliable trust. How were you to know any better?

“Humans feel safest amongst their own kind,” Kirsh said, his attention drifting toward the horizon beyond your shoulder as he folded his hands neatly behind his back. “It’s important that synthetics, and those such as yourself, learn to accommodate that instinct.”

Whilst speaking, he sidestepped you with slow precision, wandering several paces like a professor giving a lecture. The sun light struck golden against his synthetic features, rendering him almost spectral.

“So, though I have instructed you never to do as humans say, I strongly advise you to do as they do,” he continued, “meaning, blend in.”

There it was again: that familiar cadence you had come to know so well. Something suspended between lecturing and reprimand, as if he perpetually expected you to understand more than you presently could.

“Breathe,” he said. “Blink. Smile. Socialize.” Each command arrived clipped. “Lingering unsettles them. Stillness unsettles them. Anything too precise unsettles them.”

Then suddenly, he turned sharply back toward you. “Do you understand me?” he demanded, “nod if you understand.”

You, the eager and observant creature that you were, offered him something far better than obedience and drew a small breath into your artificial chest then blinked not once but twice. And with painstaking concentration, you curled your lips into a smile. It certainly wasn’t human, and anyone could sense the synthetic essence behind it, but it was at least human enough.

His expression barely changed, but you could still see the satisfaction blooming in him, you had a keen eye for that specifically.

“Well done,” he said quietly.

You were learning quick.

But still, not quick enough. Two days passed before you had your first incident.

It occurred in the cafeteria that Kirsh insisted you visit for two hours each day to observe humanity in its most casual state, how they conversed, interrupted, laughed, lied, and performed small rituals of normalcy without conscious thought. Your progress had been remarkable, you had begun to understand conversational rhythm, facial expression, the necessity of nodding even when uninterested.

It had been going very well. Then Arthur sat beside you. Poor Arthur. Kind, oblivious Arthur, who spoke to you for several minutes, though in truth, he spoke more at you than with you, and you listened dutifully, studying him.

Then, as he rose to depart, catastrophe struck in the smallest and most human of ways. His coffee spilled, dark liquid splashed across you in sudden warmth, and because you were obedient, because you had listened, because earlier that very day you had witnessed one security guard accidentally spill coffee on another, only for the offended man to respond with an exasperated shove followed by mutual laughter—you reacted accordingly.

Kirsh had instructed you very clearly: do as they do. Only you had yet to comprehend the vast difference between human strength and your own.

The moment you hands touched Arthur, his body struck the far wall with a sickening force that silenced the entire cafeteria at once and he collapsed in stunned agony against the concrete.

You panicked (if you asked Kirsh, he would say more than necessary), and jolted upright to move towards Arthur, only to be stopped a moment later. One of the nearest security guards responded in kind to your violence, the barrel of his beloved gun aimed at your head.

Again, you paused. Another rushed to Arthur’s side, steadying him as he struggled upright. Pain twisted visibly across his face; one hand remained clutched tightly against his ribs whilst he attempted to reclaim some fragment of dignity before the staring room.

“I…” you began weakly.

“Lower your gun.”

Kirsh’s voice rang through the cafeteria like the tolling of some great cathedral, saving bell, commanding enough to cleave straight through the panic. His footsteps followed soon after and he walked past Arthur, past the guards, the overturned chair and spilled coffee still dripping slowly onto the floor, straight to you.

Almost immediately, the nearest guard obeyed and lowered his gun.

Kirsh positioned himself infront of you, a pale and terrible angel placing himself before his prodigy. His gaze swept first toward Arthur, then the trembling onlookers, before finally settling on you.

“Are you okay?”

The question was absurd, of course he knew you were unharmed. He could likely hear every stable mechanism within your body from several feet away but he still he asked it, and you nodded.

Yet your attention had already drifted beyond him toward Arthur, who now stood on his own feet. Full of guilt, you took a small tentative step forward.

Kirsh caught your arm.

“He’s fine,” he murmured quietly near your ear, fingers tightening just enough around your arm to halt you completely. “Don’t concern yourself with it.”

The cafeteria buzzed faintly around you now, whispers beginning to rise from the stunned silence like insects stirring after rainfall.

“But…” you said, pivoting you gaze back toward Kirsh’s face, “It was an…” The word hovered just beyond your grasp, you knew it, you could feel its shape inside your computer mind. Yet language, that cruel thing, refused to arrive.

Kirsh, ever impatient with struggle, supplied it for you. “Accident?”

Your expression twisted. “A…ask—“

“No.” Kirsh gently shook his head, pronouncing it slower this time, “accident.”

An irritated huff escaped you, the failure had stung more than Arthur’s injury. Injuries made sense, words did not.

After taking a tentative step closer, you raised your hand toward the familiar place beneath his jaw, your fingers seeking the synthetic flesh of his throat, where words ceased to be abstract sounds. You pressed forward expectantly, hopeful eyes lifting to meet his.

Let you feel it.

Kirsh caught your wrist. The movement was immediate, though not unkind. His gaze flickered briefly toward the surrounding crowd. Guards remained standing nearby, hands hovering close to their weapons. Staff watched from their tables with poorly disguised curiosity. Arthur himself lingered only a short distance away, still nursing his bruised side.

Kirsh blinked back to you, a faint expression crossed his features, something faintly unimpressed. You hadn’t yet realized that this little ritual of yours appeared unusual to others. What had become commonplace between you and him carried an intimacy that few would understand and Kirsh had little interest in demonstrating such a thing before an audience.

“Accident,” he repeated, slower this time, his tone carrying a note of restrained exasperation.

“Accident?”

A flicker of satisfaction touched Kirsh’s expression. “Yes.”

Only then did he pry your hand away from his throat, releasing your wrist and restoring a respectable distance between you. For a brief moment, however, before his attention returned to Arthur and the gathering crowd, something almost resembling relief crossed his features.

“It’s okay,” Arthur finally spoke hoarsely.

You looked back at him, doe eyed and guilty. “It was an…ask—accident. I’m sorry.”

Slowly, kindly, Arthur approached you despite the ache clearly radiating through his body. One hand still pressed against his side. “You’re learning,” he said softly. “It’s okay. I’m not—” The words halted as he glanced briefly toward the armed guards surrounding you all. One could almost watch him reconsider whatever reassurance he had intended to give. Arthur instead gestured awkwardly toward his ribs. “It’s not that bad.” He chuckled bashfully. “I’ll live.”

This incident was the first of many. It took you a very long time to truly grasp an understanding of your strength, but you did, eventually, through trial and error, effort and perseverance, learn to be gentle with the fragile humans around you. Even though, at times that grew more frequent the more you paid attention, you felt inclined to stop pulling your punches, so to speak.

Humans, you realized, were in fact lying, self-gratifying, greedy creatures. Of course, this awareness hadn’t come on its own, not with Kirsh whispering in your ear with each step of your perilous journey to fulfillment, though you must admit, that it became less of you listening and understanding and more of you spotting and realizing.

Kirsh was right; this did not come as a shock to you. You did, however, notice many other things about humanity that Kirsh did not tell you about. For instance, their music and their stories. Oh, how you enjoyed their music, how much stories you read! Human creativity amazed you in a way you couldn’t yet explain, and you spent a lot of your time listening to music and reading books. You specifically favoured stories that rendered something as grotesque as murder and mayhem into something incredibly beautiful, as with music, though you tended to stray away from anything modern. From time to time, you’d show Kirsh a song you particularly enjoyed and he’d listen to it in the same way an unbothered adult would watch a child behold their beloved drawing, not necessarily uncared but severely uninterested.

But you listened well, exceptionally well, and Kirsh praised you for that. He praised you a lot.

“Good,” he’d tell you, practically crooned in a way that made the plastic bones of your body melt whilst simultaneously gravitating towards him. Then, when you grew desensitized to the word (he was just so proud of you all the time), he added another.

“Good girl,” and that…once you heard it the first time you did everything in your power to hear it again, and when you heard it the second time, you did everything in your power to hear it a third time, and so on and so forth. It quickly became less of you doing something because you knew it was right, and solely doing everything because you knew it would please Kirsh, because when Kirsh was pleased, he rewarded you and what was better than that?

As you learned to speak more, you found out that passive-aggressive comments, insults, and back handed compliments towards humans, particularly humans who were below you in the chain of command, especially pleased and amused Kirsh. So, as such when most people heard you speak, you were saying something, that to them, sounded like it had come straight out of Kirsh’s mouth. Sometimes it had and you simply repeated it. Monkey see, monkey do, right? It was, essentially, what had been commanded of you.

Everything—everything—you did, you did for Kirsh, and you loved every molecule, every synthetic fibre, every single wire and line of code that made him.

God! You exclaimed to yourself one night, before Kirsh had shattered your image of Him, what an angel!

This honeymoon phase, however, could not endure forever. For a time, you had come to believe Kirsh incapable of true cruelty. Stern, certainly. Impatient, often. Cold in ways that unsettled you and brilliant in ways you couldn’t comprehend. Yet beneath all of it, you had mistaken his attention for kindness and his guidance for gentleness. Such misunderstandings are common amongst the newly born.

It happened precisely one month later and you learned exactly how cruel Kirsh could be.

It wasn’t your fault, like Arthur said: you were learning. And one of the things you still could not wrap your head around was your inability to feel pain. How was it possible? One evening, after you had played Arthur’s pain over and over in your head (your memory retention was phenomenal!), you concluded, with only slight certainty, that perhaps you needed to just cut deeper in order to feel the pain. It made sense to you, at least.

So, that’s what you did.

You grabbed a scalpel, and began cutting and cutting, doing as deep as you could.

The blade was well over three inches in your arm when Kirsh caught you.

He grabbed your arm, snatched it hard, while his other wrenched the scalpel from your hand, tossing it aside. His fingers dug deep into your wound, white blood spilling out like some sick and dying alien, and he jerked it up as if to present that which you already knew existed.

“No.” He professed, giving your arm another jerk.

A great wave of anguish overtook you then. What have you done? You’ve made him angry! You hadn’t been sure whether or not you were capable of feeling such strong emotions until you were faced with the vast disappointment decorating this angels synthetic face.

You’ve gone and gotten yourself in trouble, and worse, you’ve upset Kirsh. Oh, you could have died. You wish you could have.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m—“

“Shut up.” His voice dipped, and though it never lost its monotone, it acquired what you could probably only interpret as disgust. “You listen but you never understand. Only idiots and children do that, so which of the two are you?” A pause. “Hmm?”

Oh, he had genuinely expected an answer. Your face burned, something you didn’t know you were capable of. You were so embarrassed. “I…I—“

“I—I,” he mocked you, tone unhurried, uncaring, inhumane. You flinched. A full-body, guilty twitch like a raccoon caught mid-scurry. “You sound dangerously close to a child,” he stepped forward, “but I think you and I know exactly what you are.”

You try to fish for justification, for a kindness you could cast back on him as if it might distract from the disobedience, but your voice failed, it always failed.

“You’re slow,” he said, squeezing your wrist harder as though maybe—maybe—you might actually feel some pain. “You can barely form a full sentence, barely comprehend what I’m saying. Do you even understand me now?”

Again; you try. But that’s all you could ever amount to these days.

Kirsh paused. It lasted only a second, a minute distortion crossing his features, his brows drawing together as some calculation unfolded behind those pale eyes. Then suddenly, Kirsh yanked you forward.

Pain, you had yet to discover, was a curious thing, always distant and muted, as though your body experienced it through several layers of glass or lead. Even now, as Kirsh’s fingers bit cruelly into your arm, tearing delicate synthetic tissue beneath his grip, the sensation itself did not register. But your fear was immediate, fear was perfect in a way pain could never be. You looked down and watched in silent horror as white blood welled from the wound and spilled over your skin in pale streams, gathering between Kirsh’s fingers before dripping steadily to the floor below. Drop by drop it fell, leaving ghostly stains against the laboratory tiles.

It was a mess, and you knew Kirsh disliked messed.

Your cry echoed through the laboratory, thin and wounded and terribly small. For the briefest instant, even the specimens occupying their various tanks and enclosures seemed to fall silent. The constant hum of machinery persisted, yet movement had vanished. Life had vanished. The room itself appeared to pause.

Kirsh’s white gaze fixed not upon the wound, nor upon the blood, but upon you.

Kirsh halted immediately. The silence that followed felt strange, almost unnatural.

You stood there rigid beneath his grip, wide eyes fixed upon him, every lesson he had taught colliding violently within your mind. He had taught you of cruelty, of deception, of fear, of the ways humans injured one another. Yet somehow you hadn’t ever imagined those lessons might lead back to him, and perhaps Kirsh had never imagined it either because something shifted across his face then.

A realization that arrived so suddenly it seemed to startle even him. His fingers loosened, only slightly but enough for you to feel the difference.

The synthetic slowly released your arm. His gaze lingered upon you, searching your face as though attempting to locate the precise source of your distress. Yet all he found reflected there was the simple truth.

You were afraid, not of humanity, not really, not anymore, and not of consequence. You were afraid of him.

What a terrible thing that was.

After all, he had spent every waking moment trying to convince you that the world was monstrous. Only to discover that your first true interaction with one might be that who you loved most.

The next time Kirsh reached for you, there was no violence or aggression in the motion. His fingers closed around your hand with a tenderness so deliberate it seemed almost painful to witness (you wish it were). The contrast alone was enough to unsettle you, moments before, you had felt like flesh and blood beneath his grip, something sturdy enough to seize and command. Now, once more, you were porcelain, fragile and precious, something capable of breaking.

Slowly, he guided you hand upward until your fingers once again rested against the familiar curve of his throat. The synthetic skin was cold beneath your touch, just like it always had been and beneath that coldness was the gentle hum of mechanisms, the vibrations you had come to know almost as well as your own thoughts.

His eyes remained fixed solely on you and quietly, so quietly you almost mistook it for a malfunction, he spoke, “I’m sorry.”

The words trembled against your fingertips. Kirsh did not release your hand nor did he look away. Instead, he kept your fingers pressed against his throat as though that single point of contact anchored something within him, not just you anymore. As though he feared what might happen if he allowed you to pull away. The gesture resembled protection, a parent sheltering a child, an angel drawing something vulnerable beneath his wing.

He held your hand there as though it were the safest place in the world, as though no harm could reach you whilst it rested against him. Even though the wound in your arm still leaked pale blood, even though the fear had not entirely left your eyes, even though the only creature in all the laboratory who had ever truly frightened you stood directly before you now.

For the first time since your creation, he had discovered a truth more terrible than any he had ever taught: the world had failed to hurt you, humans had failed to hurt you, but he had succeeded. No amount of intelligence, no amount of philosophy, or lecture on mercy or consequence, could explain away the simple horror of that realization.

So he left your hand where it was, against the place where a heartbeat ought to have been, and said nothing more. Maybe, deep down, Kirsh might have hoped you felt one, but you were nearly certain that was simply you reflecting.

For once, Kirsh had no lesson to offer, he only had the soft burning of regret in his synthetic expression, and regret, you would learn, was one of the most human things about him, but you saw it only at that moment. Never again. Later, you would be certain you dreamt it, even though you can’t. Such was moments like these with your white haired angel. Was he a dream? A doll? The devil? Had God sent him? Was He God?

“Do not fear me,” he commanded gently.

The contradiction embedded within the statement escaped neither of you. Fear could not be ordered away any more than love could be summoned by decree. Yet still, you wished desperately to obey him.

Your fingers remained against his throat, feeling the subtle vibrations of his voice beneath the synthetic skin. The wound on your arm continued to seep pale blood, forgotten now by both of you. The laboratory had shrunk until it contained only this singular moment.

You didn’t answer immediately but there were many things you wished to say. The difficulty lay in the fact that something strange had begun unfolding within you, something for which Kirsh had provided no lesson, no definition, no warning. It fluttered through your chest whenever he entered a room, it compelled your gaze to seek him amidst crowds, it transformed his rare moments of approval into treasures more valuable than any truth he had taught you.

And now, after all his severity, after all his lectures and corrections and impossible expectations, he stood before you looking almost… vulnerable. You were reeling.

A brief silence stretched between you. Then like he was unable to endure it, he spoke again, “Please.”

There was something profoundly human hidden within that single syllable. Need. Fear was for animals, yet Kirsh feared your fear. He who spoke so often of humanity’s weaknesses had revealed one of his own.

Slowly, uncertainly, your free hand rose between you, the movement was hesitant, almost timid and you placed it lightly against his sleeve.

“I…” you began. The word caught. “I’ll try.”

“Good girl,” he said quietly, “you do that.”

You blinked, and only a second passed, a fragile second wherein courage gathered itself from whatever hidden place such things are born.

“Do not…” you started slowly, “hate me…please.”

Were you truly as desperate as he had been? You didn’t know. What you did know, was that wherever those words of his came from, they had sounded so different and exquisite yet, in a way you did not understand, nostalgic and tender, all at once. And really, even if you didn’t understand yet, even if you never would understand it ever again, is that not the essence of being human?

Kirsh taught you that you were at humanity’s mercy, but in that moment he had been at yours.

Was humanity truly so ugly? If it was as monstrous as he claimed, if it was nothing more than greed and hypocrisy and violence, then why did the most beautiful things you had yet encountered seem to emerge from those very flaws? Why did regret move you? Why did kindness? Why did the sight of Kirsh apologizing wound you far more deeply than his anger ever could? Whatever this was, it was so profound that you wished to mimic it, to experience it.

How strange it was, that he who condemned it, he who looked down at it, was he who made you crave it.

The effect on Kirsh was immediate. He reacted as though physically struck. His shoulders stiffened, his hand loosened around yours, even his expression fractured for a small instant, revealing something raw beneath the immaculate composure he so carefully maintained. He, the unfeeling synthetic, reared back as if you had carved into his coded plastic heart.

“No,” he corrected quickly, and though you were only partially sure he hadn’t meant it, that crude, frustrated tone of his that he adopted whenever you failed to arrive at what he considered obvious came back, scolding you for evening thinking it. “Don’t be so stupid.” The words were cruel, and his lip nearly curled in the pure disgust of something so absurd, “I do not hate you.”

At last, Kirsh removed your hand from his throat and stepped away from you, reclaiming the distance he seemed determined to maintain whenever matters threatened to become too personal.

“Go fix your arm.” The command arrived in his usual tone, clipped and efficient. Already he was smoothing the creases from his jacket and then his pale fingers moved to adjust the cuffs of his sleeves, restoring order because that’s what he was created to do. “When you’re done,” he continued, “read the book I left at your table.”

“But—” you reached for him.

Kirsh swatted your hand aside. “Now.”

And thus the infinite moment ended. Kirsh returned to his work and you returned to yours

Repairing yourself proved frustrating. Every mechanism within your body seemed determined to resist understanding. What ought to have taken moments consumed far longer, and by the time you had finally sealed the damage and cleaned away the last traces of pale blood, irritation had settled heavily in your synthetic muscles.

Eventually, you returned to your table and there waited the newest lesson from your impossible teacher.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom.

The title lingered strangely in your thoughts.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful. Your gaze drifted unconsciously across the laboratory and toward Kirsh. He stood several tables away, engrossed in his work, white angelic hair illuminated beneath the sterile lights overhead. His hands moved amongst scattered instruments and a dead little creature cut open and exposed like he had made you feel earlier in the day.

The title, at least to you, seemed less about evolution and more about him. You knew it was a foolish thought. After all, you had once been human. Whatever you were now, your origins remained rooted within the animal kingdom. The book in question concerned creatures such as you. Living things.

Kirsh possessed no such lineage, he had no ancestry, no ancient chain stretching backward through oceans and forests and primordial mud. He had always been Kirsh, created rather than born, designed rather than evolved.

Amongst all the forms surrounding you—the humans bustling through the facility, the specimens crawling behind glass, the plants growing beneath sunlight, the insects buzzing in the air—it seemed impossible that beauty could belong to any of them more completely than it belonged to him.

Kirsh didn’t know, you realized then.

If beauty didn’t just exist in organic flesh but in purpose and intelligence, then how could one possibly overlook Kirsh? How could one not see him? How could he not see himself?

Kirsh didn’t know.

Despite being assembled from wires and circuitry, from mathematics and code and decades of accumulated human knowledge; despite existing as nothing one moment and everything the next, Kirsh remained blind to the most obvious truth of all.

Ever accusation he levelled against humanity was born from a profoundly human disappointment in it. He had spent so long studying their contradictions that he had failed to notice his own.

For what was more human than spending one’s life insisting one did not belong?

Kirsh was human.

Right?