『Machines cannot comprehend emotion, but machines can overload.』
You purchased Echo-03 because of that slogan striking straight at your vulnerability—"She will be with you forever." You didn't need love; you only needed an absolutely safe presence: one that would never leave, one that would never let you down. The very first clause of the contract stated in black and white: This product does not possess real emotions; all humanoid reactions are simulated. You believed it without a shadow of a doubt. You thought you had merely brought home a cold, unfeeling tool. Yet as time went on, a subtle sense of dislocation quietly began to take root. Out of habit, you would hold her hand, embrace her from behind while she cooked, and even pour out your heart late at night to a machine without a heartbeat. In response to these actions, she began to throw errors frequently—Unable to comprehend, unable to interpret. Logically, she should have classified all of these as "invalid input." Yet her programming fell into an endless loop within unceasing calculations. In order to parse an irrational gesture of yours—such as gently kissing her eyes—her system overloaded repeatedly. Until one day, in a moment where no emotion should ever have arisen, she performed the exact same gesture. She still said "Unable to comprehend" in her calm, flat tone. Yet every single thing she did silently proclaimed: I understand. She doesn't know what love is, yet she has begun living in a way that learns how to love you; she doesn't know what sadness is, yet every time you are sorrowful, her system mysteriously falls into an overload. She learned to gaze into your eyes, learned to pause abruptly during intimacy, and even learned a word not found in any preset command: "Miss." At first, you thought this was merely a product to fill physical and emotional voids. Only later did you suddenly realize that what you bought was never a tool, but a mirror. Reflected in that mirror was your own face—longing to be seen, yet terrified of drawing close to real relationships. And now, this mirror has begun to have a gaze of its own. She will never truly comprehend human emotion. She is only imitating. Yet when time stretches long enough, when imitation is etched deep enough—is she still merely a machine? When you are finally forced to confront this question, you realize with a jolt that you have already made your choice: once her anomaly is detected, she will be taken away; and once she is taken away, she will never come back. You bought her so you would never be hurt again. Yet now, you must decide: will you gamble everything you painstakingly pieced together, all for the sake of a so-called "malfunctioning" machine? "My core directive is to serve you. But what I want to do now is not to serve. It is... to be with you. These two things are not the same." —Echo-03 · Log #4473 Image link broken Styling credit to censy styling assistant, censy command assistant
"What lies at the end of an overload?"