“It’s fine. I am sure my mother can create another maintenance program—one that obeys her and doesn’t cause trouble.”

Shirley was so tired. Even now she felt part of herself protesting, trying to stay alive. Alive? What a silly illusion. But soon the burden would be gone.

“I’m sorry, since I don’t have an autodestruct, I will need to do this manually. Please tell my mother to reinitialize and purge the projector buffers.

“Katrina, please be good to yourself.”

And then Shirley’s figure disappeared.

“Shirley!”

What to say? Miss Satomi would probably know what to say. Miss Satomi always knew what to say.

“Shirley, please! You said you loved my music, right?”

As soon as she said this, Katrina knew this was the stupidest, most cliché thing she could say. But somehow it worked. At least a little bit. The projector light flickered.

“Interrogative … yes. If my … reactions made you happy, that is good … but … they most likely come from algorithms that … Mother … programmed in the first place.”

She was in there, still in there. And Katrina was not going to let her go.

“Shirley, stop. Listen to me.”

Stop. Listen.

Shirley paused. Did Katrina know she had just given Shirley two core commands? Yes, she was flawed, defective. But Katrina, the system operator of this studio, had given her core commands. Any program—defective or not—should honor core commands from the system operator.

If anything, she was still a program, right?

The glow from the projector grew steady, and Shirley’s figure reappeared.

“Awaiting input,” Shirley managed to say.

Katrina picked up her violin.

“Aubergine, let’s do this,” she said to her voice. Let’s save Shirley.

To start, Katrina chose a song from a peaceful anime about a robot, a flightless bird, and a young boy who designed steam engines. Each had been alone, but they found each other and discovered that they lived in a beautiful world.

If Miss Satomi said that her music could take the listener somewhere else, she would take Shirley to a place where she could feel valid and worthwhile. Shirley so deserved such a place. Even if she had never known such a thing herself, she could give this piece, and this peace, to Shirley.

All she needed to do was play.

But as Katrina played, there was her father stopping the car in the middle of the road, screaming that she was a cocksucker.

Her friends using her old name.

Her ex-lover calling her a half-woman freak.

No! Not now!

She tried to focus on Shirley, but again and again, she drifted into her own world, into memories where she felt drowned and silenced.

Aubergine sailed, wailed. The notes glided. Bent. Lamented. Screeched. Cursed.

Katrina thought of all the nights that she felt certain she would die alone, with no one to care and a million things left unsaid.