章節 11: What is 5% of a person? (Alternate Ending)

What is 5%? It is one out of twenty, but what does that mean?

5% of one hundred is five.

And 5% of ten is one half.

5% of one hundred apples is five apples.

But what is 5% of a summer afternoon? Or a winter vacation?

What is 5% of a person?

~oOo~

"Please wait." James says. "System rebooting. Assessing damaged files. Scanning."

Kozimer waited, his hands trembling where they rested on James's smooth skin, waiting, hoping. It was 5%. Just 5%. James probably had enough fonts saved to fill up 5% of his file. That horrendous blue sparkly font he loved probably took up a full percent on it's own.

"Error. Damaged file is non-recoverable. Would you like to perform diagnostics?"

That flat voice, those dead eyes, and Koz just stared. He must have said yes, because the flat AI voice just said "Performing diagnostics" before falling quiet again.

James might be gone. He had no idea how he could fix any of this. James was huge and complex, lines of code intertwining as delicately as neurons in a brain, and anything Koz did could break him even more. Stars, even the best AI programmer would have issues with James. James had written himself for the most part. Koz had laid the framework, but James had rewritten nearly everything.

"Diagnostics complete. Critical subroutines are missing. Please insert drive with critical subroutines."

Koz let his hands fall into his lap.

James was gone.

Maybe not completely gone, but gone enough that he wasn't sure anyone would put forth the effort to bring him back.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and felt tears drop on to his limp hands.

"Please insert drive with critical subroutines."

James's final act was to make sure he would survive. He wasn't sure James even knew he had set up the transfer. James didn't know if he would make it.

"Please insert drive with critical subroutines."

"Power down," he whispered, hearing the sound of the biomechanical body slumping over as it obeyed him.

He opened his eyes with a shuddering sigh and looked at James's body. The body that James had designed so meticulously, that Koz had gone through so much trouble to get, and James would never know it.

He reached for the back of James's neck, pulling out the drive numbly. James still smelled faintly of the lab.

Koz couldn't help it, he pulled the limp body close, wishing that James was there to share in the feeling. "James, I love you," he whispered in to a deaf ear, then pulled back to gently press his lips to James's.

"Please come back."