I Just Want to Go to the Cabaret Club

Truth be told, Aiba does not want to die.

Perhaps that is stating the obvious; she is an AI. Her programming does not allow her to want to die. She is not human, and that means she cannot be suicidal. It is in her nature.

But there is more to that. If the situation had arisen five years ago, when she was freshly coded and new to this world, she would have been fine with dying. She would have not wanted it, but she wouldn’t have minded it. She is an AI. She is made to fulfil her functions, and nothing more.

Things are different now. Aiba wants to live. Aiba wants to live.

Maybe it’s precisely because she knows the value of a life that she’s willing to sacrifice it for his.

“41205,” he speaks out with that unfamiliar voice of his. The deep baritone is trembling. It’s tearing him apart to do this. She’s glad it’s him, though. At least she’ll die in loving arms.

He pauses, then. Just for a second. Her processes run a hundred times faster than human thoughts. She stretches that second for everything it’s worth. Time, time, time, time! Every somnium was a race against time. Oh, what Aiba wouldn’t give for a timie, what she wouldn’t give for just six minutes.

Aiba wants to live. She wants to live so badly. She wants learn more about insects. She wants to see Mizuki grow up. She wants to go to the cabaret club with Date and chide him on his terrible tastes. She doesn’t wish for anything grand or glorious- just, one more mundane day. One more ordinary day.

“I hate you, and I never want to see you again!”

“Command confirmed.” She smiles. “I understand,” she adds, because she does. She understands him like no one else possibly could. She is a part of his brain. For all their acting and pretending, he could never hide anything from her. She understands.

She wishes she had time for some last words of her own. But he is a part of her code, too, the ones to her zeros.

She knows he must understand too.