Awaken September's Gods: II

II

The Archivist watched the monitors closely. Lorcan was a favorite, endowed with just enough emotion to make him desire humanity, but not enough to ever achieve it. He would forever flounder in the sea, drinking in the waters and finding only salt.

Lorcan had been created as an experiment. A way of creating life, playing God in the most literal sense. There had been tiny memory chips embedded in his, partially human, brain to give him a constant feeling of déjà vu. He had the desire to be human, feeling that a part of him was real in that sense. However, he would never achieve humanity. It was impossible.

Eventually the Archivist would bring him, and Niamh, home to the Cells and deactivate them. The data would be collected and stored, the human parts of Lorcan's brain would be "de-commissioned" and Niamh would be reset.

The Archivist found it amusing that Lorcan enjoyed physical sensations so much. No other experiment had been so enamored with the pleasurable sensations of "living." Lorcan had exceeded all their expectations. He had gone so far as to ask Niamh for sex, though she had refused. It was almost disappointing that she had no interest, but then again, most gynoids were frigid to the point of ridiculous. Something in the design made them that way, no matter how many pleasure sensors were created for them.

It was also interesting that Niamh, no matter how much she found Lorcan's "desire" distasteful, continued to follow him. She surrendered to his kisses and hugs, his attempts at human contact. She followed him, though her program read-outs noted her "dislike" for this. There was some obscure note, amongst the miles of data retrieved, that she viewed him as her elder and therefore a leader.

Niamh, unlike Lorcan, had only been endowed with positive and negative responses. She did not feel them as a human feels them, though she felt them on some level. Her belief that she should follow Lorcan simply because he was the leader was odd in that she was fully equipped with intellectual brain function and should have rejected the idea as baseless. There was nothing in her programming that dictated that she follow Lorcan. Quite the opposite, in fact. She should've left him months ago and returned to the Cells. She knew where they were.

Wasn't it fascinating how their "minds" were working? Almost like attaching electrodes to animal brains to make them jump.