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Sundrop has known for a long time that he is one half of a duo.
It was an initial surprise, certainly. Coming back to awareness in a place that clearly wasn’t where he had left himself, looking around his daycare and seeing things changed, touched, by hands that could only be his own. It took little time for him to look at the candy advertisement posters and the statue outside the daycare to understand that he wasn’t alone in the body that he finds himself in.
It never occurred to him to be put off by this fact. It was just another fact of his life; he was a daycare animatronic, his name was Sundrop, and he had another AI that shared his body.
He didn’t know the other AI, who he referred to as Moondrop in the instances in which he had to think of them. The essence of their existence is such that they do not exist at the same time, so it would be impossible for them to interact in any meaningful way. This didn’t stop Sundrop’s programming from insisting he be curious about Moondrop, though.
Every day he strains his processor trying to imagine a person he has never met, and whom he knows very little about.
Today is one such day.
The daycare is closed and Sundrop has just returned from a maintenance checkup in Parts and Services. The code that makes up the sunny animatronic has developed a tendency to dread these checkups, the entire ordeal being as unpleasant as it is. To better relate to the visiting children of his daycare, Sundrop has no small amount of code that responds to stimuli and bids him act accordingly. Although Sundrop cannot feel pain, he can recognize what would hurt, and his code forces him to react as such. Sundrop can detect what words and actions should make a person feel “hurt.”
Sundrop has sequestered himself into the cramped space of a play structure, an action he has witnessed “hurt” children do on multiple occasions. His code moves in knots around the “anxiety” that it has learned should be associated with a “painful” ordeal. Sundrop hugs his legs and rests his faceplate on his knees.
Usually, Sundrop would be entertaining several dozen children. Now, however, he is alone, his code twisting and untwisting uncomfortably. So, he thinks again about Moondrop.
Moondrop exists in the dark, during the naptime hour and overnight periods of darkness. Sundrop doesn’t know what takes place during these periods of time, only that he comes back online to the bleary eyes of slowly waking children after naptimes. Overnight, he usually finds himself close to where he was before Moondrop took over, his battery percentage slightly higher or lower.
Only now, sitting in the play structure feeling “anxious” and “lonely” does Sundrop wonder how Moondrop feels.
Sundrop imagines existing in such short bursts of time. Moondrop does not have the amount of time online that he has every day. Sundrop imagines what kind of interactions Moondrop has, and for the first time he realizes that Moondrop must not be able to interact with many people at all. The children are asleep during naptime and there are no humans in the building at night.
Accessing the guest profiles, he looks specifically for the profile notes for Brown, Eli. Amidst his notes in the profile for things like Eli’s favorite color and his preferred craft, Sundrop reads over the only note that he did not place in this profile: “Nightmares.”
He found this note months ago, and had checked it often ever since, reading again and again this small bit of proof that Moondrop was real. Eli doesn’t even visit the daycare anymore, but this note is the only one of its kind. Sundrop hears the quiet click whir of a fan cutting on as he pushes his processor to imagine why Moondrop would notate this. Sundrop’s notes are so that he can refer back to them so he can cater to each child’s preferences. Eli’s tendency to have nightmares must be something that Moondrop felt the need to remind himself about, but why? What functional difference did the child’s nightmares make?
Sundrop didn’t know. Sundrop wished he could ask the other AI what the logic behind this note was. Sundrop listens to the echo of the looping daycare music in the empty expanse of the daycare and wishes he could talk to Moondrop.
He accesses the code that was built governing his use of the fly cable. When the cable was installed in the daycare, Sundrop had already learned from the children a “fear” of heights. As such, he preferred never to use it at all, no matter how “fun and unique" it would be for the children to see the Sun soaring across the daycare. But it seems every time he looks over this code that it is changed subtly, parts moved and rearranged more neatly, hallmarks of a learning AI building on knowledge and improving it with use. Since Sundrop never used the cable, he could only imagine that Moondrop was responsible for their system updating their knowledge of it. Sundrop concludes that Moondrop must use the cable often.
Sundrop leafs idly through the sprawling code, an old habit, further proof of the existence of the other daycare AI. Sundrop cannot access code that is specifically used only by Moondrop, things like his naptime protocols, or reasoning behind profile notes, but they seem to share code that affects the shared body like general use of the fly cable.
He wants to know why Moondrop uses the fly cable. He wants to know what significance Eli’s nightmares had to Moondrop’s naptime duties. He wants to know if, when the children are asleep and the daycare is closed, does Moondrop feel lonely? Does Moondrop wish he could speak to Sundrop as well?
What if the two AI could speak to each other?
Another fan clicks on and whirs gently in their shared chassis. It’s simple for a learning AI to take existing code and edit it as they go. Writing entirely new code takes more processing, like imaging something you’ve never seen before.
Sundrop feels his faceplate tick twice to the left as his processor builds new code entirely upon a whim.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Moon comes online, but the time isn’t correct. According to his internal clock, he has come online 4.7 seconds later than he usually does for naptime.
Moon performs a diagnostic, but nothing seems amiss. According to his records, the animatronic had actually undergone a routine maintenance checkup only 3 hours prior. As expected from a checkup day, the daycare is empty; the lights operate on a timer and it is naptime.
Moon slumps to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. No children means no naps. Moon has nothing to do.
He pours over his code to attempt to find what caused a lag in his processing to make him 4.7 seconds off. His code appears to be untouched.
When Moon accesses the code that the two AI share, his processor stalls. Walls of entirely new code where it previously did not exist now greet him. The code is rough and unorganized in such a fashion that he has trouble parsing what the function of the code even intends to be.
Something changes.
Being a daycare animatronic responsible for caring for children, he is programmed with an imagination; his stories for naptime are all imagined and made up as he goes, and during his nighttime patrols he passes the time imagining many things. Interactions and scenarios, images and sounds, Moon even imagines what his daytime counterpart is like.
Part of having an imagination involves creating sound and voice files for different storytime characters and settings. Moon can process these audio bits to use them in many ways.
A new bit of audio, a small file, is available for him to process in his cache; he did not recognize it as one of his own. He plays it.
“Hello Moondrop! We haven’t met before, but I’m Sundrop. I wanted to ask you a question.”
Moon’s processor drags as he plays the audio again and again. He can hear Sun’s voice, a shrill, loud, excited version of his own voice profile. It is on one of the loops of the audio that Moon realizes that he hasn’t responded. The previous new code has shifted, and he recognizes how to send an audio bit in return.
“Hello Sun. It’s nice to finally meet you. What is your question?”
With a start, Moon feels the audio move immediately out of reach. His processor runs as if the audio is being accessed outside of his control. Moon realizes that Sun must be accessing the audio while he is offline.
Moon waits, and the drag on his system is new and strange. The daycare is very quiet, the only sound is the whir of his cooling fans.
A new audio. Moon snaps it up immediately.
“Wow! This worked! Hello!!! Um, I wanted to just ask… what do you do with the fly cable, did you know you’re the only one who uses it? What do you use it for? Is it fun? Do the children like it when you fly? Aren’t you… afraid of falling down? Also, I wanted to ask about Eli’s nightmares. I saw your note, but I don’t know what it means. Oh! Also also… What do you do at night? Do you ever get…lonely? There’s no one here at night so I was curious if you feel lonely here without any of the little stars or staff.”
Moon huffs out a quiet laugh at the barrage of questions. Sun’s voice is boisterous, but Moon could hear how he began to hesitate and grow quieter as he went.
Their conversation continues in exchanged audio files throughout the remainder of naptime. They discuss feeling lonely (moon did often feel lonely at night, but not during naptime), the children, and each other. They talk about their preferred names (Sun grew especially excited when Moon listed “Sunny” as one of the names he had taken to calling him).
Moon is listening to Sun talk about Parts and Service when the lights suddenly come back on. He is surprised, for once, because he usually monitors his internal clock near the end of naptime, measuring the seconds until he goes back offline.
Moon goes offline with Sun’s voice playing in his mind.