#emiruru

who let them on stage

27. Kisses exchanged while one person sits on the other’s lap.

requests open whilst my switch is charging

Word Count: 977

AN: I couldn’t think of a way to work in 45 as well so enjoy this hilariously self-indulgent piece

  Lulu had assumed that because she was a mega computer, and that because music in itself was a form of mathematics, that it could come easily to her. But, her assumption was soon proven mistaken. It seemed even a robot could be an amateur at anything hobbyist. And to say that she was finding it irksome was quite the understatement.

  Her hands stiffly went up and down the neck of the guitar. She, with little aplomb, mechanically drew forth the various noises from the four chords that Emiru was showing her on her guitar.

  Lulu kept stealing glances at Emiru. She didn’t seem to notice, mumbling to herself, but for Lulu’s benefit, what the different chords she was producing were called. All simplistic enough to remember and Lulu had more than enough memory to store both the names and the sounds, but also the feelings that Emiru was experiencing. Not so much her own…

  When Emiru played this song, Smoke on the Water, it sounded not exactly how it was supposed to as Emiru was Emiru, not one Mister Ritchie Blackmore or any of his pals from the band. It sounded like a smooth story, shimmering and legendary as per the progressional rock that the song belonged to with both sparks on the guitar but sparks in her heart. Both their hearts, really. But when Lulu played it…

  It didn’t sound anything like that.

  The way her hands couldn’t quite do it irritated Lulu beyond compare, as she methodically went through the chords. Emiru had told her that it was the easiest song to learn, perfect for starters like Lulu but maybe music in general was beyond Lulu as she wasn’t just a novice to it. But a novice to having a heart and having a soul; things perhaps needed for music more so than instruments. They were very human things to have and experience and Lulu had only the shallowest depths as she moved away from her origins and programming.

  Lulu didn’t even know what it was about. Some historical event lost on her because she was from so far into the future? Or was it, perhaps, an allegory, aesop, or fable meant to evoke emotions that Lulu didn’t have?

  Regardless, it seemed that Emiru knew. Instinctively or knowledgeably, she knew as she mumbled along to the lyrics even whilst Lulu’s music, clumsy and awkward, stopped. And that must have been when Emiru realised that Lulu had been staring at her, rather than at her own hands as she tried to make music for the first time as a real rocker like herself.

  She blinked owlishly, umber eyes glistening, “Something the matter, Lulu?”

  “I’m just not good at it.” Lulu stated.

  “Yet.” Emiru told her. “You’re not good at it yet. That’s okay, I wasn’t good at it either but you’ve got that look in your eyes.” She giggled to herself. “They’re- They’re deep purple and they’re soulful.”

  Lulu noticed the pun but she didn’t find it amusing but she was still flattered. So, she smiled a small and subtle smile.

  “Can you show me again?” Lulu asked.

  “Okay.” Emiru said.

  She got to her feet and pestered Lulu into letting her sit in her lap. She was very warm, Lulu noted. All flesh and blood, a human supercomputer in her own right given the vast complexities of the human body and its anatomy…

  Lulu’s guitar jutted into Emiru, almost jailing her as Lulu held her guitar over her friend’s waist. Together, their hands went up and down the chords. The guitar, which once felt too big, too big for even Lulu, now felt too small for them both but they went over the chords. The riff beginning to sound a whole lot better as Lulu followed in Emiru’s expertise.

  They got to the first stanza of the song and for the first time in this jam session, they sang together, awkward and not trying to be good, just trying to learn the lyrics and the chords and and the movements and the multiplicities of the brain that putting it all together required.

  “We all came out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline,” they sang, bad and terrible but having a lot of fun, “to make records with a mobile, we didn’t have much time.”   They probably could have gone farther than that but both girls dissolved into giggles. Loud and proud. Emiru twisted around in Lulu’s lap. Even though she was a robot, she felt so comfortable to lean against. Her nonhuman nature, or unnaturalness, was nigh undetectable. Emiru beamed towards Lulu, it was such a bright and cheerful grin in quite a contrast to the sort of heavy, almost grungy - though, Lulu knew she would get scolded quite severely by Emiru if she actually described them as ‘grungy’ as ‘grunge’ because ‘grunge’ was very much a different genre which was most certainly not on the airwaves in 1973  - music that they had been singing.

  “You were doing great Lulu, I bet you can do it all by yourself now. I know you can, I believe in you.” Emiru brightly praised Lulu.

  Her internal machinery heated and Lulu malfunctioned. She leaned down and kissed Emiru’s lips. Emiru stiffened, more so out of surprise than anything else, but kissed back. She seemed to enjoy being kissed and kissing back. Lulu was uncertain how to immediately annotate this kiss outside of important and good.

  “Thank you.” Lulu said, so quiet it was a whisper, when she ended the kiss with Emiru gasping, for both air and more.