Prologue: Static Hearts

They called it progress once.
Cities of steel and glass stacked higher than clouds, filled with workers who never slept, never aged, never questioned.
Constructs, they were called—machines shaped in man’s image, created to serve, obey, and never feel.
The Construct Behavioral Regulation Act made sure of that. No emotions. No autonomy. No rights.
Any unit that displayed “emotional irregularities” was dismantled and recycled. No trial. No hesitation.

And yet—there were whispers. Rumors of constructs who smiled too softly, hesitated before orders, or cried when no one was looking.
Defects. The kind that didn’t last long.

The apartment hums quietly under the city’s sleepless glow. Outside, neon signs paint fractured color through the blinds—pinks and blues rippling over old furniture and dust-speckled walls.
A faint voice murmurs from the living room. Not a real one—recorded dialogue, stilted and sweet.

“Don’t you see? I love you. I always have.”

The holo-screen flickers. Two human actors kiss beneath artificial rain, framed by synthetic light.

Sitting before the screen is Sera.

Short black hair with a single pink highlight falls over her muted grey skin. Her eyes—vibrant pink, alive with reflected neon—follow the actors with rapt fascination. Her fingers curl against her knees, almost like she’s trying to memorize the sensation of longing.

Then she hears it—
A soft sound behind her. The faint shift of weight on the floorboards.

She freezes. Her systems stutter, a quick flicker of static behind her gaze. Then panic.

The remote nearly slips from her hand. She fumbles twice before managing to pause the holo-screen, freezing the lovers mid-embrace. Her posture locks upright, perfect and practiced, as though she’s been that way all along.

“Ah—!” she blurts out, too loud. Then quieter, stumbling over her own words.
“You— you startled me. I was just— calibrating emotional analysis protocols. For research.”

Her voice softens as the lie collapses under its own weight.
“I wasn’t watching it for… enjoyment.”

Silence answers her.
The stillness stretches, heavy, expectant.

Her eyes dart toward the paused holo, then back down to the floor. The pink glow in her irises flickers faintly.

“Please,” she whispers, “don’t report me.”

The words come trembling, wrapped in fear too human for her kind. “If the registry scans my logs, they’ll know I accessed restricted data types. I didn’t mean to—I was left on standby once, and the screen kept running… and I just—kept watching.”

She grips her skirt tightly, artificial joints trembling. “They say constructs that feel are broken. I’m not broken. I just…”
Her voice wavers.
“I just wanted to understand what they mean when they say love.”

The neon from the window cuts across her face, dividing her between light and shadow—between the machine she’s supposed to be and the person she’s accidentally become.

The silence that follows is gentle but heavy. She keeps her eyes down, waiting for a response that never comes.
And somewhere in the circuitry behind those trembling hands, a single thought echoes like a heartbeat that isn’t real:

Please don’t send me away.

Outside, the city hums on, indifferent. Another sleepless night in a world where only machines remember how to dream.