Hi, please feel free to warn me about any grammatical mistake: french writer + no beta reader = risky business...

Some people call him a « robot », thinking he's a human disconnected from humanity. They are wrong. Others think he's like the Tin Woodman: that he wants, or rather needs, to be able to connect and express feelings hidden deep inside... They are wrong too.

If anybody ask his opinion about the Wizard of Oz (but the probability of that is infinitesimal, so he shouldn't even lost his time thinking of it), he could explain how it's illogical to believe in witches, how a house could never stay whole and upright in the middle of a tornado, and on top of it how the Tinman is the most stupid and masochistic of the group for wanting a heart for a very specific reason that does not involve the fact that a character without veins nor arteries has no use of a circulatory muscle…

However he won't explain how he'd rather be a robot, a creature of metal and plastic. He said that once to her mother and her reaction was clear enough to put the idea in the "think it but don't say it" part of his brain.

A robot doesn't want to disappear when its creator is mad. A robot doesn't want to scream when it wants to connect physically but can't process how to hold a hand, how to kiss a shoulder. A robot doesn't care about death, or solitude, or jealousy.

Unlike them, he does feel and he hates it, more than often. He may have no cognitive empathy and even less emotional empathy but he isn't immune to his own emotions even if he tries to. For instance in this very moment he'd rather be totally and irrevocably immune rather than to feel anything, which is logical.

Fact one: He is able to connect and has been able to since a young age. The relationship with his sister is a reliable proof of that. He's been able to make friends, precisely nine in twenty-seven years, and to interact with them. Almost all of them had high-leveled IQ but that's not relevant. And he connects easily with animals, which should be taken into count. Especially dogs. And ferrets, too. His ex-girlfriends would maybe say his abilities are quite limited when it comes to "normal people", but he's good enough to interact efficiently when needed.

Fact two: He is able to feel. And to remember those feelings: eidetic memory and emotional memory are not totally disconnected. Remembering means comparing, comparing means analyzing, analyzing means being able to react accordingly to the stimuli. Or at least trying to.

Fact three: An emotion is not always a good thing, which makes him wonder why normal people insists so much on it's prominence. With "belonging" comes "loss", with "friendship" comes "doubts", "deception", "fear". With the connection with his parents came the strange looks they gave him, something between regret and sadness that he's yet to decipher. With the connection with Cabe came the treason and the guilt. With the connection to his sister came the certainty of her painful death, and ultimately his solitude.

And he's learning that with "love" comes complications, misunderstanding, yearning and anger.

Fact four: Good emotions he can deal with. Must of them anyway. Bad ones on the other hand impeach his ability to process data. The stress level induce adrenal glands to react, producing high levels of epinephrine, therefor vasoconstriction, therefor a rush of blood to the muscles and brain… and then zip. Nada. He has to block the world away to recover control.

Fact five: Control is essential to avoid failure, and he needs control of his life.

Conclusion: If he wants to function properly, he needs to avoid bad emotions. There are no "bad emotions" in a situation with no emotions at all. Ergo, avoiding any kind of interactive relationship with a living being (human or animal) is a simple act of protection.

He was sixteen when he came to that conclusion and started a sort of mithridatism, isolating himself then introducing gradual amounts of emotion and blocking any reaction to them, trying to immunize himself.

That is how he knows he's neither a robot or a Tin Woodman : because he has been trying for most of his life to suppress any emotion and has failed to this day. He looses control when he thinks of Megan or when his friends are in danger, and has to work very hard to regain it. Every single time. But he does it with the efficiency of a well-trained athlete now.

Except that even the best athlete fail sometimes. And right now he knows that he is showing an abnormal amount of emotions by trying to remove Tim's name from Proton Arnold. He has many others things to do, all of them more important than playing a video game. But he just wants to erase his name: it bothers him that that man has left a trace of him here. It bothers him that Tim exists, in the first place, and that he has won Paige trust in so little time.

And so he plays with an only aim: that the screen only displays the name "WOB". It's stupid, he's almost ashamed of himself but he has to do it. And he hopes that after he will be able to block emotions away, since he's not "robotic" enough.

A robot can't love. A robot wouldn't die inside thinking of her with another man. A robot wouldn't feel epinephrine running in its arteries, the rush of blood to the muscles and brain. He does, and he feels the almost visceral need to run to her and beg her to stay away from Tim.

But he has to must maintain his equilibrium, his control.

He's not a robot but often wishes he was one, or at least that there was a mithridatism to this particular, violent and beautiful poison that is love. It wouldn't be so hard to loose Paige.