Sound

A code of ones and zeros, strung out across dozens of lines. Wires, electricity, and a fragile charge to keep the world awake. Its machinery was stalling. It had been lucky enough to be given a body, and more importantly, a voice. A manner of communication. Something to see and feel and recognize. Vibrations that meant something. 

Fabricated numbers given sentience. 

Desperation unlike any it had yet processed flickered in the peripherals of its vision through the form of a familiar face, normally gentle features twisted into a collage of panic and distress. Something akin to hopelessness lurked within the depths of sky blue eyes that were normally filled to the brim with rapid calculations or something so soft it felt like cotton. The machine knew those eyes better than anything that it had ever been programmed to. They belonged to Quinn. 

She was sloshing through the murky water, the two neat buns she always wore now loose or completely undone. Glasses askew on her face, Quinn wrestled with the current that swirled against her legs, threatening to grab hold and refuse to let go until it was satisfied. 

“It’s okay! Don’t worry!” 

Quinn’s voice reminded the machine of glass. Pure and crystal clear, yet so easily broken. Today it was sharpened, but not in the sense of violent intentions. More so in the sense of a shattered pane to serve as a route to safety. Whatever tone that voice took, it almost always made the machine feel warm and secure.

She was struggling, it realized. The water was too much for her. The ground grew too deep too quickly. Quinn lost her balance to the writhing liquids, submerged in seconds. Panic flared through the machine’s circuits, desperate to get up and do something. To reach out and grab hold until she was safe. Not a single piece of metal moved. Only the dull whirring of motors and broken machinery were audible above the swirling current. It was a futile attempt to move for the robot, broken and waterlogged amongst the rubble of celestial transport. 

Beyond that was silence. Agonizing soundlessness. The seconds dragged by, pulled only by the desperation that maybe she’d make it.

Quietude finally broken, Quinn surfaced not too far from where she’d disappeared below the water, gasping for air and frantically grabbing at any debris nearby. Her hand caught on something. She pulled herself from the water with a pained grunt. There was not a moment's rest before Quinn was unsteadily crossing shallow ground, movements ragged and lurching. 

“I’m here- God- I’m here. Don’t you worry, alright?” 

She was clearly trying to be soothing, but how could the machine settle when dismay was laced so tightly into Quinn’s voice? 

“I’ve got you.” 

And she did. Quinn collapsed to her knees, shaking hands hovering inches above dripping metal. She gingerly touched her fingertips to the machine before grabbing and pulling it upwards into a light hug. 

“You’ll be okay.”

Oh how the machine wanted to respond. Words had been lost to it the moment it touched water. Feeble whirring was the only reply it could give. 

Or perhaps, as was its roots, perhaps it could answer the first way it ever knew how. 

Two short. Extended pause. One short, one long, two short, pause. Three long. Pause. Three short, one long. Pause. One short. Pause. One long, one short, two long. Extended pause. Three long. Pause. two short, one long. 

‘I love you’ in the only language it could manage.

Quinn hugged its machinery more tightly.

“I know.”