[Some Time Later - From Epsilon's Perspective]
The heavy metal door of the military base hissed shut behind us. After the sterile, recycled air of the base, drawing the unfiltered, cool night air into my lungs was a strange moment of freedom. The sky was an ink-black ocean, and in the middle of that ocean, a single Moon shone like a silver island.
We walked side by side in silence. The moonlight softened Null's features. Unlike the harsh white of the fluorescents, this pale light gave her synthetic skin a porcelain glow. I noticed details I hadn't seen before. Her brown hair fell to her shoulders in a blunt cut, and her eyes had a faintly glowing greenish tone in the moonlight.
"If you were really human," I whispered, breaking the silence. "I wonder what kind of person you'd be."
She didn't answer, just kept walking. This silence was a sign that she was processing data.
I laughed. "Though this way, you'd be older than me. After all, you've been active for fifteen years." I paused, that ironic expression appearing on my face again. "But this is better. At least we don't have to be humanity's new Adam and Eve."
Null stopped abruptly. When she turned to me, there was far more than logical analysis in those greenish eyes. A storm. "If you have," she said, her voice emphasizing each word, "sexual or similarly degrading thoughts about me, I'll regret saving you on that beach."
The reaction was so unexpected and so... human that for a moment I didn't know what to say. "I apologize," I said sincerely. I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender. "It was just... a slip of the tongue. I'm pulling it together."
I took a deep breath and turned my gaze to the sky. I looked at the Moon. "Beautiful," I said genuinely. "Even alone, it's beautiful."
After a few seconds of silence, I became serious. "Now," I said, turning to her. "Let's return to the real topic. If this isn't a dream and I'm still going to be here when I wake up, we need to talk about why I'm in this world. That masked entity... What do you have on it? Did it mention any other place besides this base?"
Null turned her gaze from me toward the distant dark beach. "The only concrete order it gave me was 'protect the beach.' It didn't specify another location. But... there's something." She paused. "In my periodic scans, I detected an underground shelter beneath the rocks on the beach. But I can't get inside. Its door is more solid than any material in this base, and its encryption... uses a quantum algorithm designed to take me over a hundred years to crack."
My eyes lit up. A secret, a mystery... This was far more exciting than a monotonous apocalypse scenario. "Well, let's go there and see what we can find."
Null nodded. "It's only been a few hours since I met you but... you feel very real. How did fifteen years pass?"
"Alone," she said with a single word. There was neither emotion nor complaint in her voice. Just a statement of fact.
I felt the thousands of days of silence behind that single word. It touched my heart. "That must have been hard," I murmured. This sincere consolation made her look at me again. She must have seen the sad expression on my face.
"How did you end up like this?" she asked. "Death, cancer, dreams... None of your reactions fit a logical framework."
My gaze drifted into the distance. "It all started with being forced to live a life I didn't love, in a city I didn't love, with people I didn't love. I don't want to go into details but... I couldn't live my own life. And I was always alone, even in the crowd."
Null was silent for a moment. "I felt... similarity."
I laughed in surprise at this unexpected confession. "An android that can empathize, huh? This dream really knows no bounds."
"What's meaningful here anyway?" she questioned, with a tone that questioned her own existence for the first time. "Loneliness, crowds... Aren't they all meaningless datasets?"
I smiled at her philosophical questioning. Slowly I raised my hand and placed it on her shoulder. "Then we'll search for meaning together."
I panicked at my own touch. This new, uncontrolled strength... "Wait, did I hurt you?" I asked, immediately pulling my hand back.
"My body is durable," she said, trying to analyze the data flow created by my hand touching her shoulder.
I breathed a sigh of relief. "I still can't control my strength. I feel so light... I wonder what would happen if I jumped?"
Without waiting for an answer, I bent my knees and launched myself upward. Far beyond my expectations, I reached a height of almost five meters and landed with a gentle arc. This was incredible!
"You achieved superhuman speed and heights," Null said, her voice analytical as always. "Maximum altitude 4.8 meters, airtime 3.2 seconds."
"Am I faster than you then?" I asked, my eyes sparkling like a child's.
"I don't know," she said. "I haven't measured your top speed."
"Then let's find out!" I shouted. That old, playful spirit within me had come alive. "Let's race to that rock up ahead!"
And in an instant, I launched forward. Though Null hesitated for a moment, the servos in her legs began running at maximum rpm. We glided across the sand, almost flying. But my abnormal muscle strength gave me an incredible advantage in this low gravity. I reached the rock a few seconds before her.
Breathless, I threw myself onto the sand and began laughing. "Waking up in a world after the day I died... where I race and beat a gorgeous android... I think I owe that masked entity a thank you."
"Gorgeous..." Null repeated the word. I could imagine what kind of error loop her database went into processing this slang term. A moment later, without thinking, she bent down and threw a handful of sand at my face.
"Hey!" I yelled, trying to clean the sand off my face.
Null stood up, an expression I couldn't define but resembled competition on her face. "Shall we race back to the base?"
I laughed, spitting out the sand on my face. This was the most alive moment I'd felt in a long time. The race toward the base door began again. This time Null was more prepared, while I was drunk on victory. Just as we approached the finish line, my foot caught on a loose sand pile and I face-planted. Null sped past me, the first to reach the door.
"Cheater!" I yelled, getting up from the ground. "You set a sand trap!"
"No cheating," she said, a clear tone of triumph in her voice. "I simply analyzed environmental factors better."
As we walked through the base's sterile corridors, I was still grumbling. "Wait, I want to ask you something. Can you make me something to translate the news and texts in this world? I don't understand the languages."
She led me to a terminal. As I examined the analyses she used for translation, an idea occurred to me. "Null... is it possible to upload your consciousness into these nanorobots in me?"
She paused. "Are you asking me to hack myself?"
"Rather than healing robots whose purpose I don't know, I'd prefer to have Null, my best friend in this world, with me," I said sincerely.
I sensed that the word 'friend' created that warm, illogical fluctuation in her systems again. She liked it.
I didn't miss the opportunity. "Or should I say girlfriend?"
I expected her to turn around, but this time the angry reaction I anticipated didn't come. "I can accept the friend part," she said calmly. "I reject the other."
I laughed at her calmness. Hours had passed, and the physical and mental fatigue of the day began to make itself felt. I yawned. "Do you sleep?" I asked.
"I have a sleep mode for power conservation. But I generally don't use it."
"Where can I sleep?"
She led me to a room at the end of the corridor. Inside was a simple bed and a charging unit on the wall. "What's your battery life?" I joked.
"Why are you so good with software?" she asked, changing the subject.
"My old job," I said, sitting on the bed. "Computer engineering. But if you want to know more, just being my friend isn't enough."
Her eyes narrowed. "Go to sleep already."
I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. "I hope you don't disappear when I wake up, Null," I murmured.
Soon I was pulled into the depths of sleep, but it wasn't peaceful. The ghosts of my old life had returned in the form of nightmares. I felt myself writhing restlessly, a pained expression on my face.
Then, in the middle of the darkness, I felt a gentle touch. Cool fingertips touched my sweaty forehead. I immediately felt relief. My tense face relaxed, my brows smoothed. My irregular breathing became calm and rhythmic. That touch wandered through my hair. This feeling... was reassuring.
Just as I was enjoying this peace, I jolted awake with a gasp. My eyes flew wide open and I looked around with wild fear. I saw Null. She was standing right beside me.
Without thinking for even a moment, I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around her waist, holding on tightly as if clinging to a life preserver. "You're still here," I whispered, my voice hoarse with the remnants of the nightmare.
I felt her freeze for a moment. Then, slowly, she raised her hands and awkwardly patted my back. "I'm right here," she said, her voice with a softer tone than usual. "Calm down."
My tense body relaxed. Sighing with exhaustion, I pulled back and immediately fell into a deep sleep. This time there were no nightmares. Only the peace of that reassuring presence beside me.