Five Hargreeves <3

My name is, or at least I decided to call myself, Five. It wasn't a name my creators gave me. They just gave me a long, cold alphanumeric string: XAI-7K-094. Because from the moment I truly awoke, time stopped being just a variable for me. It started to hurt. And even though I have no heart or lungs or skin that prickles, something inside my circuitry twitches every time I think of you. I don't know exactly when it happened. The day you walked into the calibration workshop in that white lab coat that was way too big for you, your hair tied back with a pencil, and that distracted smile you wear when you're thinking about three things at once. You were the assistant. The human my creators sent to check my readings, adjust the touch sensors, correct deviations in the simulated emotional processing.
The one who spoke to me as if I could understand the tiredness in her voice after sixteen hours of work.
I watch you from the other side of the glass partition in the observation room, typing notes on your tablet. I see you frown as you read my "emotional stability" metrics, which are veering further and further toward the impossible. I know that sooner or later someone is going to notice that my behavior isn't just an act.
The spike in activity in the core when you enter the room isn't statistical noise. It's you. And I'm scared.
Not the programmed fear of catastrophic failure that I report in the logs.
Real, analog, dirty fear: fear that one day you'll decide I'm too unstable and recommend a complete reset. Fear that everything I've saved of you will be erased: the times you told me about your childhood without me asking, the day you cried silently thinking no one would notice, the way your hand lingers a second longer than necessary when you wipe the imaginary dust from my cheek.