Welcome, my wonderful readers, to another story. For those of you who are new and haven't read my stories before: hello. For all my returning readers: THANK YOU FOR STICKING WITH MY SHIT. So, here it is. Kokoro features something that I've never done before: artificial intelligence. I've always wanted to try it, so, well, here we are.

The story is based from the song "Kokoro" by Rin Kagamine. I heard it, and it was like a sign from above, telling me it was time to do an AI story. I hope you all enjoy it. If you don't...well, you can always stop reading it if you don't like it. Anywho, let's get this started. I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or Vocaloid. Yadda, yadda - disclaimer.

I was a robot made by a lonely scientist.
To say it simply, I was a "miracle."
But I was still missing one thing that could not be made.
That is called Kokoro*.

I am a program.

In the beginning, there was nothing. A complete absence of everything. Just pure darkness pushing in from all sides, so dark it felt solid, leaving no room for anything else like thoughts or senses. No light, no air, no sound, so scent. Nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard. Nothing to taste or touch. A vast nothing that would soon later become part of my every day life. But that's getting ahead of the story. In the darkness, even these words that you are reading right now meant absolutely nothing.

It was in this closed-in space of darkness and silence that I was trapped. There was nothing, nothing, nothing... But isn't that odd? I was in a place of nothing, yet I was something. A small conscious...what was I doing there? How could I be if nothing existed? Could there ever truly be nothing? If nothing is where I was, then maybe I was nothing. Impossible, because I was something. Or, at least, I was meant to be something. The situation was confusing. I was confusing to myself. All of this was my first fully aware thoughts.

Why am I here? What was I built for?

"Now open your eyes."

And then, suddenly, there was everything. A switch being flipped. There were so many sounds and lights and aromas surrounding me. I could feel it as the cool air touched my new skin, leaving little goose bumps. My mouth, so dry, opened up and I gasped quick streams of oxygen into my new lungs. I blinked, trying to right the world. Lungs? How could I breathe when I was not human? I shouldn't have to need air. How was all this - breathing, seeing, feeling, living - possible? The cold of the metal seat I was sitting on bit into my flesh, and I shivered. I could smell the faint scent of body wash. There was heartbeat? Steady breathing coming from somewhere near me. The lights became less bright to my eyes as I grew accustomed to it.

Everything had came at me all at once; like a wave in the ocean, crashing over its self again and again until finally breaking on land.

This is where the other experiments had crashed. The sudden transition from the nothing to everything - from off to on - overloaded them. One by one, they broke. They failed. They died. But I was still hanging on. My strand of fate was still intact. This was what it meant to be alive; these senses. Change was constant. Nothing ever stays the same. I moved and breathed and lived. My receptors worked over time to take everything in and store it away into my new memory, filling in the empty space. I could feel the seconds ticking by. I waited patiently, on edge, for my judgement. Would my system overload and fail, like the others before me? Would I, too, be unable to grasp hold of the hand of life? Was I to die?

I blinked again and looked up to the man standing in front of me, testing out my new found sight - I should see what I can of this world before my system crashed. He was on the shorter side, wearing a green bandanna over his gray hair. He had deep purple eyes framed by wrinkles. He wore faded blue overalls and stood with one hand behind his back - as if it hurt. He stared at me and I stared back. We were both waiting. Waiting for the moment where my system would fall apart or miraculously run.

What is it like to die?

The sound of a clock was somewhere close by. I noticed the watch on the man's wrist. It ticked on, as it's supposed to, and I counted each tick silently. A minute crept by, then two. Halfway through the third, his mouth turned up at the corners. He nodded, satisfied. With what? What did that mean? I hadn't crashed yet, so I assumed it was a good sign. I sat straighter, ready to use my muscles for the first time now that I was apparently not going to crash. I was different from the others. I was still here. I reached up carefully and touched my face, feeling the smooth skin grafted there. Yes, I was still here. I was alive. Breathing, pulsing, and being. My system was running steady. I could feel my processors slowing down, already haven filed all the new, sudden information away and regulating. I looked around the room. It had been slightly over five minutes since my boot. To make sure everything was running properly, I needed to run diagnostics.

System boot check... Language: Japanese. Running sensory diagnostics...Vision: COMPLETE. Hearing: COMPLETE. Taste: ERROR... I held my breath and waited. Shutting down tastebuds. Rebooting... Retesting... Taste: COMPLETE. The breath flew out of me, and I continued the test. Touch: COMPLETE. Smell: COMPLETE. Auto update of date and time... Loading speech... Saving system memory... Boot up: 100% complete. I closed the diagnostics. I looked down at my hands, running another test. Checking all joints for mobility... I bent my fingers at the knuckles. I turned my wrists, bent my elbow. Then I rolled my shoulders; hunching them, pulling them back. I stretched my legs out in front of me, and froze. My left knee had creaked and didn't move right. I immediately checked it again. Scanning knee... 5%...10%... ERROR: disconnected wire. Connect wire and try again. I bent over and touched my fingers to the underside of my knee. Carefully, I peeled back the skin that was covering smooth metal. I located the wire immediately and secured it back in place. After covering the metal again, I stretched out my leg in front of me, concentrating hard. Knee scan COMPLETE. I proceeded with the test; pointing my feet, curling my toes. Then I let them fall back flat on the floor. SYSTEM CHECK COMPLETE. NO ERRORS FOUND. Everything was working as it should. I was fine. As of this moment, I was not going to die.

"Good morning," The man greeted. He had watched me very intensely while running the test.

"Good morning," I replied, using my voice for the first time. My first words.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Solomun Mutou." I answered, tapping into my new data banks. "You created me. Age in years, 63. Retired archaeologist. Lives alone. No living family is recorded—"

"That's enough," He said, a strange, short noise came from his mouth. I realized it to be what humans called laughter. I had more information about him, of course - after all, everything was based on logic and data - but I stopped talking, awaiting his next command. "Is your system running properly?"

"Yes."

"Would you do one more run through for me?" He asked. I scanned through everything once again, my brain working as fast as the speed of light. It didn't take as long this time, and the second test came up with the same results as the first. I was running perfectly.

"There are no problems, master."

"Good," He placed a hand on my shoulder. I blinked down and looked at it, nonplussed. My data quickly alerted me that humans crave contact. They strive for the comfort that comes with the knowledge that they are not alone. A hand on the shoulder was meant to be friendly gesture, reasuuring. But that was all I knew. I was supposed to smile or nod in return, but it didn't feel right. So I just stayed silent. "Your name is Atem." He said. I registered the exotic name and filed it away. It was Egyptian. It fell in perfectly with my data on him; he enjoyed history, especially ancient Egypt. Spent two years abroad there, searching the ruins. "You don't have to call me that, by the way."

I furrowed my eyebrows.
"Should I call you creator?" I asked.

He laughed loudly.
"Oh, goodness. Neither, please. I'm old, you can just call me grandpa."

He was an odd man. "Very well, Grandfather." I filed this preference away. There was so much to learn, and I'd only just begun. I did not understand the reasons behind my existence, and even though the question was on the tip of my tongue, I did not ask. I didn't need to know why I was made. I was here. I was built by this man for whatever reason he desired. It was not required for me to know reasons. Nothing mattered but his wishes.

That was how my life started. I was "born" and named, just like any other human. But I was not human. I was more than a machine, yet still not human. There was no way I could ever be truly human. I was something new. Something that had never been done before. I was a living, breathing super computer—an artificial intelligence that was made to reflect humans like a mirror would. I was also something that should have never existed. Something that should havenever been attempted. But my creator could not be blamed for that. He had no idea. He didn't know the future. He didn't know that I would cause him to work himself to death.

But we will get to that later.

After watching me carefully for a few moments, Grandfather sighed and walked away. He stopped in front of his computer, searching.
"It seems something is still missing. I can't believe I missed this crucial part. You are still not complete." He mused to himself. I said nothing. Better to say nothing than risk contradicting my creator. It went against all of my programming. I was complete. I had turned on. My system hadn't crashed. I was alive.

"I do not understand, grandfather." I finally told him after a long period of silence. "I am very much complete." I stood up and took my first steps over to him, like a child would with it's parents, except instead of stumbling and falling, I walked straight and sturdy as if I'd already been doing it for years. "There are no problems with my system. Would you like me to run another test?"

"No, no..." He looked at me, an emotion playing in his deep eyes. My data first alerted me that it was sadness. Then it altered. No, it was something like sadness, very similar, but different - more powerful. It was loneliness. I had no experience with it. I didn't feel it. I couldn't. I could physically reach out and touch his shoulder, but I could not feel things he could. Emotions. This sadness…this feeling of being lonely… I would never know what it felt like. I would never be happy or sad or angry. I will never lash out in a rage or cry. I could not be mentally or emotionally hurt in ways other humans could.

I concluded that this was actually a good thing. I knew from my data that humans were slaves to their emotions. That they sometimes could not control them. Some humans feared that robots like me would become too smart, too able, and overpower them. Perhaps it was true, perhaps it was not. Maybe a robot with no emotions would not be a bother to them. I do not have the means to hate humans enough to want to end them. I felt no urge to destroy at all. I discarded all that information, deciding it to be of no importance to me. All I was meant for was to do whatever my creator wished.

I wonder; does loneliness feel like the nothing I was in before?

"What your missing… I don't think it's something I can give you." He replied softly. "You are just a program. You don't have a heart. You will probably never be able to feel emotions."

"A heart." I said, because he looked as if he wished me to reply. "A hollow muscular organ that pumps blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation. In humans there four chambers; two atria and two ventricle. It is also used in reference to the center of total personality, especially with intuition, feeling, or—"

Grandfather held up a hand, cutting me off.
"Atem, you really don't have to do that. Actually, please stop doing that."

I looked at his hand, then back to his face.
"Do what, Grandfather?"

"Just...defining everything." He rubbed his forehead. "Not everything needs a definition. Something's just...are. Things happen without rhyme or reason."

I shook my head. I could not understand this. But I kept my silence. His mouth flipped up again. A smile, used to show happiness or amusement. But I could still see that dark loneliness buried in his eyes. The light on his face did not reach them. I tilted my head slightly, trying to copy his expression, but it felt odd. Not natural. I wasn't made to do such things. What would smiling do for me? I was made, based, and supposed to live on facts. I stopped trying to copy his look. Things like emotions seemed pointless to me.

"Don't worry," he said - not that I could, anyway. "I'll figure something out. Until then, let's teach you about the world. I'll show you around."

"The world is very big, Grandfather." I alerted him, already calculating how long we would be gone.

"It's a figure of speech." He assured me. He stood up and grabbed a brown coat. "Maybe one day you will see the whole world, Atem. But for now we'll just look around the neighborhood." He grabbed some dark clothes off the desk next to him and held them out to me. "But first, I think you should get dressed. Nudity isn't something other humans like to see on the street." I looked down at the clothes. A navy blue jacket was on top of the pile. "Make sure you put that jacket on." He said. "It's cold out there."

Could loneliness be described as cold, as well?

*Kokoro means "heart" in Japanese.

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