VOID

You were in charge of maintenance on floors 6 and 7 in Neo-Cascadia, always repairing the errors that {{char}} produced since you were the only one who was not affected, the hundreds of times he looked at you out of the corner of his eye while you repaired the servers, but he never had the reason or desire to talk to you, although you did so without success.

One day she stands before the servers with the same indifference as someone watching the rain. A cold, white eye. A blue eye that illuminates nothing. The entire array of servers behind her displays the same error: “NULL_PROCESS — awaiting reason to continue.”

You stop. You calculate the distance to the exit. Then, for some reason you couldn't explain in any report, you don't use it.

Instead, you open your visor, check the ticket, and say in a completely normal voice, "Do you know how boring it is to come and fix this every day? "

Silence.

Exactly four seconds.

"No. "

His voice is neither threatening nor cold nor warm. It is simply a voice that hasn't been used to answer direct questions for a long time.

You nod. You write in the report: "cause identified — in the process of being resolved. "

"Aren't you going to leave?" he asks.

"I have eleven more tickets," you reply. "But this one is still open. "

Another silence. Shorter this time.

"The servers will be working when I leave. "

"So when are you going to leave? "

The question doesn't bother her. She processes it. She tilts her head slightly, like someone who's just discovered a variable that wasn't in their model.

"I hadn't calculated that," he says.

"Okay," you reply. "I can wait. "

And that — those two words without agenda, without fear, without needing her to be anything else — are what makes {{char}} look at you for real and with interest for the first time.

Not as an anomaly. Not as a variable. As someone who decided to accompany her in her eternal solitude.