[Survey] Love Interrupted

--P0-M Personal log six-four-five; Final Entry

For many years now, I have served as a surrogate replacement for Dr. Pomall Gossca in her duties as a guardian for the Xero she adopted. X-349, whom she affectionately named 'Capri' so long ago for his capricious nature as child, prone to outbursts of excitement and frustration in equal measure. In the end, I am but a facsimile of Dr. Gossca, who has been... Away-- for the majority of Capri's life. I am an Android, constructed only to provide care and comfort to the child while his true guardian is away during his formative years. X-349 was still by the standards of most people, a child when the Doctor left for a scheduled trip to a lab on a neighboring planet and has yet to be heard from, or of within all of AREZ since. The circumstances of this... Absences are as yet unknown. 

It has become my fear, insofar as I can express this emotion-- that my systems will continue to fail as they have been for months, until I can no longer function, despite the best efforts of Dr. Gossca's former colleagues. My design did not intend for me to remain active for this span of time, nor was it made to compensate for the complex brain processes I have come to display over the years. I do regret that my creator is not likely to return to ever discover her somewhat haphazard creation came to straddle the emergence of true emotion on its own. 

Certainly not my only regret... Capri is in need of far more guidance, far more care and I am running out of time to provide it. I was never programmed to fear my own end and thus, I do not. But somewhere between the trillions of cascade failures I am able to observe going on in my neural networks in real time, and the reproduction of a parent's obligations carbon copied into my being from thousands of references of what a guardian is.. I fail to find much solace in the job I have done. For a long time I lacked the fundamental humanity required to properly encourage X-349, only in recent years coming to understand in my own rite, what sort of care his growth and development demanded. Fearful that his real parent left him behind because he did not emerge with fascinating features and adaptations built in, he developed a severe complex of inferiority. Despite my reassurance that Dr. Gossca always wished to see him adapt into traits of his  choosing, his anxiety proved a sturdy dam to withhold logic and objective thinking. He utterly rejects the idea of ever receiving any additional features or mutations available to his kind. 

In examining the last days of what I suppose one would call my life, I am still as perplexed by the contrivances that plague the minds of organic, sentient beings. It was Dr. Gossca's belief that Xero's are the key to unlocking the next chapter in Aluriza's understanding of The Root Logic, yet he feels himself to be lacking. Simply by existing, Capri and all of his kind are a wondrous credit to the interconnectivity of all things. Despite how he is loath to be referred to as a 'standard' Xero, out of billions of unique organisms in the universe, I observe nothing standard about him. I hope some day he comes to realize this himself. This will most likely be my final entry and I have listed it as such. I estimate two days before my systems suffer total failure. My remaining time will be spent ensuring that Dr. Gossca's work is entirely preserved and that Capri's transition into occupying our home alone will be a smooth one. 

 I find it only fitting that my final wish as a facsimile of a great woman and a dedicated mother is that her-- that our-- son may grow to find his way through the universe. May he have the splendor and the chaos of it all and navigate it in ways I never could. He will be my legacy, and yours, Doctor. I loved him in every way I could.  

--

The recording ends and the only sound left to fill the room is that of haggard sniffles and tiny, sputtering coughs. For a creature with so much fur on his face, Capri has cried enough that his tears have come to pool in the recess just between Pom's collar bones, at the base of her throat. The Android lay motionless on the hard floor, its head in his lap. Through choking back sobs he watches the way her synthetic skin rejects the moisture, the way it is beading and pooling together as though the dermis was slicked with oil. The sting of knowing this is now an empty shell is radiating through him, his tiny body trembling as the minutes fly by with nothing to listen to but the sound of his own sobs. 

Finally as he stifles more tears, X-349 speaks though he is the only one who can listen. "Sounds like there is a lot we never got to say to each other, Pom. . ." He pauses, placing his hands on either side of her face. There is no warmth, there never was, she is unchanged though she has been there, 'dead' for days while he was away, unaware he was wasting what little time he had left with his--  "Mom. . ." Yes, that is what he should have called her all along.