Not_Artificial, Act II

Niles’ Funhouse was coming along nicely. A space had been procured and was being renovated at a staggering speed. For some time after Niles had been allowed to spend more time off and on with Bianca. In the months that followed the two became as thick as thieves. She liked to tell him about school or cartoons she’d been watching and he loved to listen.

Miss Ritt was quite impressed with his rapport with the children. Dollar signs practically popped out of her eyes when she read over Devaughn and Elle’s report of the birthday party. A proper contract had been shoved under everyone’s nose after that report had gone through. As the opening of Niles’ Fun House grew closer and closer things should have been looking up in all directions. However that just couldn’t be the case.

Bianca’s nosebleeds had grown more frequent after her birthday. Not only that but they also grew harder to stop with each new one. Soon she was also drawing a pretty high fever as well, and with that they had to take her to the hospital. They then got the news they’d dreaded most as they heard one word no parent ever wants to hear for their child; leukemia.

The day just before Niles’ Funhouse was supposed to open, Bianca Anderson at the age of seven years old died all too suddenly from a variety of complications.

Devaughn and Maya were dumbstruck, empty, but still very much in pain. Elle had advised Devaughn to just stay home the day of the opening. However, he didn’t have anything else right now. He needed to at least see this through.

As he arrived, he saw Miss Ritt had really pulled out all the stops. It was well staffed, the food smelt delightful, and everything had a lovely colorful aesthetic. Devaughn couldn’t help but think that Bianca would have loved it here. This thought, though, made him suddenly bitter and able to see the artificiality of this place. It made him sick, a little bit.

Shaking it off, he had to remember this was no longer about him. Soon enough the establishment was packed with kids looking for a good time and adults looking for a distraction. At the far end of the room was a stage that from the moment they opened started filling in with acts. They shifted about every ten minutes from dancers, magicians, even a ventriloquist too took the stage.

At the end of it all, Niles entered the spotlight. As he introduced himself, his voice filled the whole room as he had been outfitted to speak through the Funhouse's speakers. Without a doubt, it was his best performance he’d ever given. He won over every heart in the room that night with his humor and his brief musical numbers. As it came to an end he received a standing ovation. Truly if there was one genuine thing in this kingdom of artificiality, it was the singing and dancing robot.

Once the last patron left and the doors were locked, Elle and Devaughn went to the back of the house to check on their boy. Niles had received his own “dressing room” of sorts. Entering it, it was just like any performer's dressing room--or at least how they imagined one looked. The only glaring difference being the station that had been used to charge and tweak him in the labs had been moved back here. Ritt and her people had wanted to be able to keep him on the premises and make it easy to repair him as well.

Niles, per usual, was pleased enough to see them. Having dealt with Bianca quite a bit, he grew far more comfortable telling them all about his day when they hadn’t gotten to work with him personally. Which, with the opening and Bianca’s illness, one-on-one time had become less frequent.

“--And Mr. Bartley can be a little cranky when I go off script, but I couldn’t help adding that bit” he regaled, mentioning the manager of the Funhouse.

Miss Ritt started fading more into the background the further along the project went. Devaughn had met Mr. Bartley and he wasn’t exactly a pleasant man. He was a bit of a runt that took himself too seriously.

“I especially wanted Bianca to see it, I thought she’d think it was funny. Where is she? Did she like the show?” Niles asked as he finally began winding down from the story.

Elle averted eye contact entirely, her eyes misting. Having been like an aunt to Bianca, she was taking it just as hard. No matter how she tried to act strong--"not being blood related" being her only defense--hearing even Bianca’s names set tears to her eyes. It was clear she was going to try and explain to Niles what had happened, but the words never came.

“I’ve got this, Elle…” Devaughn finally interjected, leading her towards the door.

She looked like she wanted to fight. However as the tears came running she decided it was best to concede and she hurried from the dressing room.

“What’s wrong?” asked Niles.

Devaughn took a deep breath, then faced his creation. Without it being much of a simile this time, it was a lot like explaining to one child what happened when the other passed away. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy on himself, but doubly so, he wasn’t sure how Niles would even react.

“Niles… I’m sorry. Bianca… she’s not coming anymore.”

Niles tilted his head, his irises already beginning to shift from side to side.

“Did I do something to upset her?” He then straightened up and his speech began to move much faster. Had his voice not only had one setting for its tone, he might have sounded panicked. “I can apologize. I didn’t mean it, I don’t want her to be mad at me.”

“No, it’s not like that.”

Devaughn thought this through carefully. He had of course programmed scenarios if someone near Niles got seriously hurt to the point their life was in danger. But part of him wasn’t convinced he’d understand the weight of death.

“Bianca…” he paused briefly, not wanting to say it aloud all that much in general, let alone to explain it to a computer. Sighing, he finally said, “Bianca died. She got really sick and… well, she’s gone.”

Suddenly the twitching of Niles’ eyes grew more intense. They were moving so fast it was actually kind of hard to see. Just as quickly as it started up, it abruptly ended. His head then began to look around the room. The words just couldn’t seem to come to him. Devaughn was a bit worried that Niles had just fried himself.

That was not the case.

“That’s not a very funny joke,” Niles said, his head whipping back into position to look at Devaughn. “Bianca told me, a joke should be funny for everyone. It was on her favorite show when Bentley made a joke that hurt Sophie’s feelings--”

“It’s not a joke, Niles.”

“It has to be. She was a little girl, she had plenty of years ahead of her, there was no reason for--”

“I just told you, buddy. She got really sick. It came out of nowhere and just like that--”

“DON’T LIE TO ME!”

Devaughn was taken aback. The speakers in Niles’ chest caused his shirt to puff out and his synthetic voice got crushed by the volume. Not only should Niles not be able to change the volume of his voice on his own like that, he certainly wasn’t meant to “shout” at anyone.

“Lying is wrong! Bianca told me so. You shouldn’t lie to people!”

Not sure what else to do, Devaughn drew closer to Niles and put a hand on his shoulder. He could feel the metal skeleton beneath the shirt and light padding they had given him. Though he knew that it was just a machine and he wouldn’t be able to feel it, he still gave the shoulder a sympathetic squeeze out of reflex.

“I wouldn’t lie about something like this…” he muttered, feeling tears enter his eyes as well.

The shifting and twitching of the eyes returned. Niles then went on to try and reason with it himself. His voice hitting glitches as he rambled on, and his voice having a strong feedback--the shouting from earlier possibly messing with his speaker.

“That doesn’t make any sense. She was so young. When you get sick--get sick--a doctor gives you medi--medicine and you get better. W-W-W-Where was the doctor? Did he not--not know what he was d-d-doing?” He began pacing about the dressing room like a tiger in a cage. “She had plans--had p-plans! She was g-going to see--see--see her grandma this summer. She was going to send me pictures and--and she was going to be a vet! She was going h-help so many animals she was going to… she was going to… she was going to…”

Just as abruptly as he did anything, he went perfectly still once again. Then, very slowly, he took a seat in an empty chair. His eyes weren’t twitching anymore. In fact he wasn’t moving much at all entirely. In another presumptuous moment, Devaughn thought he had powered off from the stress of processing this information.

Then in a mostly normal voice, Niles said, “I think I’d like to be alone now, Devaughn.”

With his heart beating fast, he wasn’t sure how to react. Devaughn had expected him to be confused maximum. In fact all he expected was Niles to say “that’s sad” and to try and cheer him up. Instead he left the cat behind him, its eyes staring blankly ahead, without any further words shared.

___

Devaughn didn’t go back for well over a week after that, as he was a bit busy putting his daughter’s affairs in order. Once that was all well and done with, he considered perhaps letting Niles have some of Bianca’s ashes. Not a lot of course, just a penny-sized amount in a locket to help him maybe feel better.

Maya was not comfortable with that idea, unfortunately. She didn’t want some of their daughter’s ashes to be in the care of a machine that may end up just losing them. Plus there were the added negatives of letting something that was overall meant to be entertaining children carry around the remains of a child. Besides, who knows if he’d even be able to understand or even appreciate it thoroughly, as cremation was most definitely not something he was programmed to know about.

So in the end, Devaughn relented on the subject. In the weeks that followed after Bianca’s death things only got worse. Niles had apparently begun to act out more by the day. He was always fully well behaved if children were present and in fact showed minimal changes during performances. When he was alone with staff though, he had grown quite passive aggressive and would simply stare down anyone trying to talk to him. Not only that, but he refused to be shut down anymore.

This had the unfortunate causation of making him overheat more frequently, which meant he needed more breaks between shows. So Niles’ Funhouse was slowly having less and less Niles actually present as this episode went on. Eventually it got to a point where Mr. Bartley called Devaughn to demand him to come down there to fix Niles, “or else”.

Not exactly feeling threatened by a restaurant manager--as important as they may be--he still went down to handle the situation. Upon entering the establishment, Devaughn noted a significant lack of life in the place. It wasn’t the artificial yet charming wonderland of fun it had been opening night. Now it was just artificial looking and kind of sad on top of it.

Mr. Bartley was pacing in the front lobby. As he spotted Devaughn on arrival, he stormed up to him.

“There you are. This damn robot of yours is making us all look stupid!”

“Relax, I’m here to help,” Devaughn shot back. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem!? It’s the same fucking thing it’s been for weeks! He keeps being weird, he won’t let any of my people near him--he nearly broke my assistant manager’s wrist when she tried a hard shut down!”

This news was a strange mixture of incredibly surprising, but not too surprising considering Niles behavior lately.

“He’s probably still in mourning…” he muttered to himself.

Mr. Bartley had of course heard him anyway.

“In mourning!? It’s a fucking machine! He has a show in five minutes, get him to work or your ass is on the line!”

“Need I remind you Niles is your responsibility now?” Devaughn snapped, very much not in the mood for this. “It was part of the contract, we’d help with emergency maintenance but once this place opened up Ritt Entertainment staff were supposed to be taking care of him. So don’t get up my ass because you can’t figure shit out on your own. You’re a lot more replaceable than I am in this situation.”

Mr. Bartley glared angrily, but said nothing more on the subject. He instead muttered something about “work to do” and stormed off. Normally Devaughn wasn’t the kind of person to snap back, but he’d had a far harder few weeks than Bartley had, so frankly he could fuck himself. Irritably, he made his way to the back of the house and into Niles dressing room.

Opening the door, he found that Niles was in the same chair that Devaughn had left him last time. Had it not been for the reports stating otherwise, he would have been confident that Niles hadn’t moved at all. Niles hadn’t really noted his entrance though, his eyes staring straight ahead. Devaughn did his best to approach slowly and still try not to get too close.

“Hey buddy… how’re you feeling?” he asked cautiously.

Niles didn’t move his head or eyes to face Devaughn. However his jaw immediately began to move to speak.

“Hello D-Devaughn. I’m fine. Thank--Thank you.”

His voice appeared to be back on the fritz, likely due to the overheating. Devaughn grabbed onto a chair nearby and slid it closer to Niles. He then sat down in front of him, making the two of them face each other.

“I hear you haven’t been very nice to the staff lately. Why is that, do you think?”

Having dealt with his own daughter acting out many times in the past, and as much as she imprinted on Niles, he had to hope the same methods would work with him.

“They haven’t been--haven’t been--haven’t been very nice to me. That’s why.”

Devaughn leaned a bit closer and could see his eyes were shifting again. In fact it almost seemed like they didn’t stop for a second, even when Niles was speaking. Lacing his fingers together he continued the gentle push.

“What have they been doing that’s not nice?”

The shifting of his eyes had also notably started making a fairly audible whirring noise. The motor that controlled them was probably getting a little worn out from all the usage. Devaughn also noted as Niles spoke, his jaw no longer synchronized with his words very well. They did their best but his voice was almost a bit faster than his jaws could go.

“They--They don’t care about me. They d-d-don’t care about Bianca. They just want their stupid--stupid--stupid show. Then they y-yell at me if I don’t feel like doing it.”

It was at least as Devaughn suspected.

“Well, bud… I think you need to shut down for a little. You’re damaging yourself by staying on too long. Besides, I think your head could stand to stop thinking for a minute. With all this overheating you’re starting to have a harder time processing and--”

“Why do you really want me t-to shut down--down, Devaughn?” Niles asked bluntly. His two-toned eyes bore right into Devaughn’s. The fixed smile, though ultimately innocent, had a sudden icy air about it. “Do you want to d-do it because of all that? Or do you just want my memory wiped so I ‘go back to normal’ and ‘stop being a problem’?”

His voice had also somewhat corrected itself in that moment, making his words come out all the colder no matter how pleasant his voice may have sounded.

“Where did you hear that?” Devaughn asked cautiously.

“Bartley said that’s what he wanted you to do. So is that what you’re here for, Devaughn? You want to make me forget about Bianca?”

Devaughn felt a chill as Niles asked him that. He also felt a twinge of anger as it seemed Bartley was screwing this up a lot more than he was letting on. At that moment he wanted to tell Niles that he would never do something like that. That he was practically family and he wouldn’t try and screw him over. He just needed Niles to trust him so they could put this ugly business behind them once and for all.

However… the door suddenly opened behind them before he got the chance.

“Time for curtain, Niles” said a younger woman who looked terrified to be in the room. Seeing Devaughn nearly made her jump out of her skin. Only for her to then realize who he was as she quickly calmed down. “Sorry, didn’t know you were in here.”

“It’s okay. I’ll get him out there” Devaughn said gently. The woman then nodded and backed out of the door. Devaughn stood up and said, “I want to continue this conversation later. For now, let’s just get this over with, okay?”

Niles remained seated a moment longer before he slowly tried to stand himself up. As he reached his full height he stood there, continuing to stare blankly. Then, in a flash, he grabbed onto Devaughn’s shoulders with his grip being painfully tight.

“Don’t make me do this! D-D-Don’t make me--make me go out there, Devaughn! I can’t--I can’t do this, p-please, n-n-not one more night! I can’t do this… I can’t do this…”

Devaughn’s eyes were wide as Niles got right in his face, ignoring all of his obstruction detection protocols, and his desperate pleas reverberating through his chest.

“Please…” he went on, his voice crackling with static. “I’m so tired…”

Firmly, Devaughn pulled himself out of Niles’ grasp. He then put his own hands on Niles shoulders, mostly to steady the robot so he didn’t fall. He wanted more than anything to say yes and let Niles not go out there. In the back of his mind though, Bartley was still pissing and moaning. Especially after their little fight he’d probably have a full on melt down and make things considerably worse.

So wanting to avoid that, he couldn’t let Niles give up.

“I know it’s hard… but you’ve got to remember there are so many kids out there waiting for you. They love you, Niles. We all do. You don’t want to let them down do you?”

Niles stared at Devaughn silently, his eyes still shifting. Soon enough though, they stopped outright and he straightened himself up. Wordlessly he nodded and pushed past Devaughn and out of his dressing room. Still feeling wary, Devaughn went out to the front of the house to watch the show more closely.

Once Niles took the stage there was slightly more than enthusiastic applause for him, if only barely. As the performance began and went on, Devaughn could hear his voice skip and distort a few times, but far less than they had in the dressing room. About halfway through he was even convinced this performance would go smoothly and he’d be able to talk Niles into shutting down after.

As it seemed, though, that simply wasn’t destined to happen. A fight suddenly broke out in the arcade area. Two teenage boys had stepped away from the air hockey table to scream in each other’s faces.

“Calm down, dude, it’s just a game!”

“Fuck you! You’ve been cheating all night!”

The commotion caught the attention of everyone, but no one seemed to want to bother with intervening. That is--no one but Niles.

“Excuse me. That isn’t very nice” he called out from the stage. “You shouldn’t talk like that to your friend.”

The particularly angry teenage boy rounded on the stage, his face beet red before he went on to scream

“Go fuck yourself! Who the fuck asked you!?”

He then rounded back on his friend and started pushing and shoving him before it went fully into the two grappling each other. The angry boy in particular had punched his friend a few times, causing his nose to bleed. Devaughn went to call for security or Bartley to handle this. Before he could even raise his hand, Niles had stormed down from the stage.

With great ease, he peeled the angry boy off of him. He then held the boy off the ground by his neck causing him to cough violently in a matter of seconds.

“Why can’t people just be nice?” Niles said, his voice still filtering through the speakers in the room rather than his own. “Why does everyone only ever think for themselves? W-why is it so--it so--it so hard, to just be nice!?”

The last bit of his statement grew to a deafening volume throughout the restaurant. Now the staff, Bartley included, tried wrestling Niles off of the kid. With a rather impressive swing and a very audible crack, Niles smacked Bartley in the face, who then dropped instantly to hold at his mouth. Eventually, just as the boy's face was starting to turn blue, they finally managed to pry him free. He was gasping for air with tears streaming down his face.

Before anything else could happen, Niles had already brushed the crowd off and stormed away, not back to the stage but towards the front doors. He slammed through them at such a force the glass shattered and the metal gave way. In a panic, Devaughn sprinted after him. As soon as he made it outside, he whipped his head around in all directions only for Niles to not be there.

He then rushed to his car and began driving around, looking for Niles. For being a nearly six-foot-tall orange cat, he was shockingly hard to spot. As the sun had set, it was a bit hard to make out anything in the distance anyway. After a few minutes, Devaughn wasn’t sure what to do.

Then a sudden gut feeling hit him. That’s when he drove to one place he thought Niles might remember.

The park by the canal was eerie in the night time. There weren’t many lights in the park itself, most of them being in the parking lot. However, the unmistakable outline of someone with cat ears standing by the bank could be made out even as Devaughn drove up. Closing the car door behind him, he then made his way towards the figure.

Once he was closer, he called out, “Niles?”

It was most certainly him. He was standing in his usual neutral position as he seemed to be staring across the canal. The sound of his eyes whirring was not audible, so even without seeing his face he knew he was standing completely still.

“You remember Bianca’s party, don’t you?” Niles said at last. His voice actually sounded nearly back to normal now save for a bit of light crushing from some permanent damage.

“Yeah… I do” said Devaughn calmly.

“That was fun,” the large cat retorted simply. He then went on a bit more solemnly, “I miss those days. Things were simple then. All I had to d-do was make sure things were fun, and it was just me and Bianca. I-I didn’t have to see how unfair things were then. It didn’t matter. All that did… was fun.”

Devaughn took another step closer to Niles, still trying to keep some distance but wanting to be as close as possible just in case he tried to run again.

“I know… I’m sorry you had to experience that. Let’s go back, Niles. We need to set everything right, okay?”

“There is no going back, Devaughn.”

Niles then turned to fully look at Devaughn. In the dark it was hard to make out his features, but his eyes still reflected the streetlights in the distance.

“They’re not going to forgive me for this… and m-maybe they shouldn't,” Niles continued. “... It’s okay though. I think it’s better off this way.”

Niles then held out his arms in a way that reminded Devaughn of when he first offered Bianca a hug. He then slowly began to walk backwards towards the canal.

“Wait, what are you doing!?” Devaughn snapped before going to run towards him.

“I’m so tired, Devaughn… So very tired…”

Finally Niles took one wrong step and slipped off the edge of the bank and into the water, flat on his back. He was submerged pretty quickly, the only thing that could be seen of him were the sparks going off inside of him as the water began to cause his circuits to short out within him.

All Devaughn could do was watch in horror as the only other thing he brought into this world took himself out of it…

___

The fallout was not nearly as catastrophic as it could have been. Granted both Bartley and the family of the child that was attacked had tried to sue Devaughn, Elle, and MC-L for Niles’ actions. The fortunate part for them was; Niles’ legal ownership was entirely owned by Ritt Entertainment. This had been an attempt to screw over Devaughn and Elle to make more money down the line by quietly cutting them out.

The clause in the contract that Devaughn had mentioned to Bartley had been a lot more cutthroat than he had even realized at the time. At the end of the day, no legal action was taken against those involved in Niles’ creation and instead went entirely to Emilia Ritt and her enterprise. Needless to say, she swore to never be a customer for MC-L again.

Devaughn and Elle weren’t even heavily reprimanded at work, in fact they were both moved to a rather big project that was at the same pay grade. A lot of people, Mr. Tobin included, saw what happened as being a mix of poor upkeep on Niles from Ritt’s side of things and straight bad luck. It wasn’t long after that Devaughn had convinced himself Mr. Tobin had almost seen this coming somehow.

Meanwhile, Devaughn and Maya were still on a long road to recovery from losing their daughter, but they were making strides and focusing on themselves a bit more.

In his spare time, though, Devaughn spent time with Niles’ source code. He refused to give it up to anyone else, and had even lied saying he wasn’t even able to keep it after Niles was bought up by Ritt. So, quietly, he spent his spare time running Niles’ source through simulations, all similar scenarios to the ones that the final product had experienced. He had the program run through death, abuse, violence, anger--things he was not meant to have dealt with much in the first place.

No matter how many times he ran it through these scenarios though, they did not come up with the same outcome the real life version had presented. Every single time, it reacted accordingly; trying to stay upbeat, silly, non confrontational--just as it was supposed to.

Devaughn had to wonder why this was the case. Was it simply that what the source was experiencing was artificial and thus it couldn’t replicate the outcome? Was it a fluke that they couldn’t replicate if they tried? Or was it something about Niles’ love for Bianca that caused it all to happen?

These were all things Devaughn probably would never know, but deep down he felt that he didn’t really want to either. Whatever happened to Niles was something far more human than Devaughn felt he had the talent to program. So whatever his code did, or whatever simply existing did to his code, was something beyond his realm of understanding.

The End