Archive of Our Own ^beta

Herta had not occupied her human body for a sustained period in approximately eight months.

The discomfort was immediate and comprehensive: her shoulders ached from the weight of her own skeleton, something the puppets never experienced as their frames were optimized for efficiency rather than burdened by biology, and the heat of the planetary core pressed down upon her relentlessly until she felt breathless and winded. 

Planet Screwllum's atmosphere was perfectly calibrated for mechanical life at a steady thirty-two degrees Celsius by the radiant output of the Steel Sun's planetary engine, comfortable by all means for the clicking, breathing city of Screwllumites and Intellitron life that populated his world but it was approximately seven degrees too warm for a human body that insisted on having opinions about thermal regulation.

"This," Herta said to the empty air, "is why I use puppets."

Screwllum had been irritatingly explicit when he'd sent the communication three days ago. The Archive's authentication protocols require unmediated organic cognition; specifically, your organic cognition. Your physical presence is not optional, Madam Herta. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Apologize, as though apology made the tyranny of the situation any less tedious.

The data was worth it though and the Archive predated the Mechanical Emperor's Wars, containing philosophical frameworks from civilizations that had achieved Aeon-adjacent understanding before collapsing into historical obscurity, the exact kind of knowledge that justified temporary embodiment even if said embodiment came with sweating and constant irritation from occupying a pesky organic form.

Herta had reviewed the specifications twice before agreeing to come and confirmed that yes, the security protocols genuinely required human neural frequencies. She verified that no, there was no workaround, no way to spoof the authentication and no clever solution that would let her send a puppet in her place.

She'd deleted the communication after the second review and begun the deeply unpleasant process of preparing her human body for extended use, and now that she was here, standing in the bronze plaza before the Archive's entrance occupying her own flesh for the first time in months, she was remembering exactly why she'd designed her puppets in the first place.

The archive was in the form of a sphere, rising before her with brass and iron compressed into perfect geometric madness, its surface a chaos of interlocking gears that rotated at individual speeds. The mechanisms ground on and the air around it made her skin prickle with the electromagnetic field, a low hum she felt more than heard in the form of a pressure that made her teeth ache.

Herta resisted the urge to scratch at her skin where the hum caused a deep itch to spread through her arms. Her body's constant editorial commentary on the situation was already getting old and she missed the comfort of her mechanical shells. 

"Observation," Screwllum's voice said beside her, and if she was to guess he sounded mildly amused. "You appear displeased."

Herta turned to look at him properly. He belonged here in a way she fundamentally did not; at the Space Station, surrounded by her puppets and sterile grey corridors Screwllum was an external force within the ecosystem she'd constructed, but here with the bronze light of the Steel Sun reflecting off his gunmetal plating and the geometric landscape shifting around him he looked like exactly what he was: a king in his own kingdom.

His optical sensors fixed on her with the kind of perfect, unblinking attention that organic beings could never quite manage.

"I'm fine," Herta said, which was a lie and they both knew it. "Let's just get this over with. You said the Archive requires 'unmediated organic cognition' which I have brought at significant personal inconvenience."

She gestured at herself and the human body she'd been forced to drag across three star systems because some paranoid pre-Aeon civilization had decided that only biological consciousness could interface with their precious secrets.

"Your presence is appreciated," Screwllum replied, his tone absolutely neutral in a way that suggested he was suppressing something. "The philosophical significance of…"

"Is going to be explained inside the Archive," Herta interrupted, "where presumably there is climate control and somewhere to sit down that isn't burning hot metal."

He paused for a moment. "Affirmative. The interior maintains temperature protocols compatible with human comfort."

"How thoughtful of the ancient paranoid philosophers."

"Indeed."

Behind them, the landscape of Planet Screwllum stretched in all directions in a geometric fever dream of bronze towers and clicking pylons, interconnected by sweeping arcs of tarnished copper. Steam vented from distant structures in perfectly timed intervals, and closer, surrounding the Archive's plaza were Screwllum's mechanical gardens: trees of platinum and steel rose in careful groves, their leaves thin sheets of hammered metal that sang and chimed beautifully when wind passed through them. Flowers of copper wire and mother-of-pearl were spread across varying surfaces, merging machine and floral beauty into symbiosis that glittered in the sunlight during the day, and their petals opened and closed on precise schedules that tracked the sun's movement. Around pillars and gates, vines of jointed silver segments climbed with their metallic leaves catching light like a thousand small crystals.

Organic life imitated in beautiful, sterile efficiency; Herta approved of the gardens even if she currently disapproved of everything else about this situation.

"The authentication mechanism," Screwllum continued, apparently deciding her irritation was insufficient reason to delay the briefing, "requires physical manipulation in addition to cognitive processing. The sphere's surface contains a distributed lock system where multiple contact points must be activated simultaneously by organic touch."

"How many contact points?" Herta asked, already calculating the geometric implications.

"Twelve."

"And I have only two hands."

"Correct, which is why I will be assisting."

Herta's gaze snapped back to him. "The security system that requires organic neural frequencies will accept your input?"

"The system only requires organic neural frequencies for the cognitive cipher," Screwllum clarified. "The physical lock merely requires that the contact points be activated by warm-blooded touch. My frame is capable of thermal modulation and I can simulate the required temperature signature."

"You can fake being human."

"I can fake being warm. The distinction is significant."

Herta stared at the Archive's rotating gears, processing the implications: twelve contact points with two organic hands and one mechanical assistant capable of thermal mimicry…which meant they would be working in very close proximity…on a surface radiating aggressive heat…while she was stuck in her physical body…

"This," she said with absolute certainty, "is going to be miserable."

"Hypothesis," Screwllum replied with clear amusement, "you will find the data acquisition justifies the temporary discomfort."

"It better."

Her palms were already starting to sweat. Fantastic, this was exactly why she preferred puppets, there was no inconvenient biological feedback, no thermal regulation failures and definitely no moisture.

Screwllum moved toward the Archive's entrance, his movements fluid and precise, entirely unbothered by heat or weight or the tyranny of biological existence while Herta followed, occupying her human body with increasing resentment and wondering exactly how much discomfort temporary was going to entail.

The terminal was carved directly into the sphere's surface, a rectangular depression in the brass that revealed a complex interface of rotating symbols and sliding geometric plates. Herta recognized it as ancient programming, the kind of system that required physical manipulation to input each character.

She placed her hands on the metal and immediately regretted it. 

The surface was hot, not enough to burn but enough that her nervous system screamed its objection, and worse, the entire terminal vibrated with the sphere's internal mechanisms in the form of a sensation that traveled up her arms and made her teeth rattle. The noise was oppressive: the grinding of gears, the hiss of pneumatic systems, the deep bass rumble of the planetary engine that powered the whole absurd structure.

Her puppet bodies filtered out this kind of sensory garbage automatically but her human body apparently wanted her to know about every single microscopic detail of its suffering.

Focus, she told herself. The discomfort is irrelevant. The data is what matters.

She began to work, her fingers flying across the rotating plates, inputting the first sequence of the cipher in the form of a complex puzzle of logical paradoxes that required not just intelligence but creativity via the ability to hold contradictory truths simultaneously, all while constructing a third truth that reconciled them.

It was exactly the kind of problem Herta was built to solve. Her hands moved with absolute precision, each gesture deliberate while her face remained the picture of glacial control and intellectual mastery; meanwhile, her autonomic nervous system was staging a coup and making her palms slick, sending a tremor through her right hand, the kind of physiological rebellion that only occurred when muscles were held in tension for too long. The heat was making her head ache and she felt nauseous but she pushed it back and ignored it.

Behind her, Screwllum watched in silence.

Hypothesis: Human determination manifests as a form of beautiful violence against the self.

He had activated every sensory array available to his consciousness, and the data was... extraordinary. Herta's surface temperature had increased by 1.7 degrees Celsius since she'd begun work and her heart rate had elevated to 94 beats per minute; the capillaries in her face and neck dilated creating that particular flush of color that organics displayed under stress and her cheeks flushed with pink that darkened to something close to red at her cheekbones.

Most fascinating yet were her minute expressions formed by forcing her face into the mask of aristocratic boredom, but her pupils were slightly dilated and the muscles around her eyes were tight, revealing her true feelings as her jaw clenched hard enough that he could see her grinding her teeth.

She was suffering and she was refusing to acknowledge it.

Screwllum found it devastatingly beautiful.

In the toxic marshes of Yayoi-5 grew a delicate flower with pale purple petals and a name that translated roughly as Atropa belladonna;  a specimen of botanical artistry that was also lethally poisonous, its sap capable of inducing paralysis, hallucinations and eventually cardiac arrest in any organic being foolish enough to touch it.

The comparison to Herta was inescapable.

She presented herself as perfect intellect, all sharp edges and controlled beauty, but beneath that crystalline surface was something volatile with a will so absolute that it poisoned her own flesh and forced her body into compliance even as it screamed its protest. Self-inflicted toxicity, a peculiarly human form of masochism that she would never admit to.

He filed the observation as the systematic suppression of biological weakness through pure cognitive override.

"Query," he said aloud, his voice carefully neutral. "Do you require assistance with the sequence?"

"No." Herta replied far too quickly, not looking at him. "I'm fine." She was not fine; her right hand had developed a visible tremor, but he did not correct her.

The terminal chimed with a mathematical tone that indicated the first layer had accepted her input. The rotating plates slowed, then locked into position with a heavy clunk.

"Excellent," Screwllum said. "The cipher's first gate has been satisfied. The manual lock is now accessible."

Herta pulled her hands back from the terminal, resisting the urge to shake out her fingers, the autonomic response from touching something far too hot for far too long. "Where?"

Screwllum stepped closer, his frame blocking some of the thermal radiation from the sphere. He indicated a section of the structure about fifteen centimeters to the right of the terminal where the brass plates had separated slightly, revealing a gap in the mechanism.

Herta leaned in, peering through the narrow opening. Inside the sphere's outer shell, she could see the target: a small mechanical lever, archaic and worn, positioned deep within a nest of rotating gears and tubes. In order to reach it, she would need to insert her arm into the gap, a space barely wide enough for her forearm, and navigate past the internal mechanisms.

The entire interior was glowing with heat.

"You have got to be joking.”

"Negative," Screwllum replied. "The Archive's designers prioritized security over convenience. The manual lock cannot be accessed remotely. Direct physical manipulation is required."

"Obviously. I'm stating my aesthetic objection to the design, not questioning the necessity."

She studied the mechanism, calculating angles and clearances. The lever needed to be pulled down and rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise, simple enough, but the problem was that to get proper leverage she would need to press her forearm against the hot brass plating that lined the interior of the gap for at least twenty seconds, probably longer.

Twenty seconds of voluntary contact with metal hot enough to hurt.

Inefficient, her mind supplied. Unnecessary. A better design would have…

She shut down that line of thought. There was no better design available, there was only this design and the data she'd come here to retrieve. Herta took a breath, deeper than necessary, and reached into the gap.

The heat was immediate and astonishing. She pressed her forearm against the brass interior, and her nervous system responded with the biological equivalent of an air-raid siren. Pain pain pain get away from the heat source this is damage…

She ignored it.

Her fingers found the lever and gripped it, pulling down and beginning the rotation. The mechanism resisted, requiring more force than she'd anticipated, making her brace her entire arm against the hot metal and use her body weight for leverage. The sound that escaped her throat was involuntary, a small, sharp inhalation as the searing pain burned down her arm, making her curse the weakness of her flesh.

Behind her, Screwllum's optical sensors flickered once as he analyzed the data. 

The sound was 0.82 seconds in duration, a brief vocalization from an inhalation colored by strain, and it was the first unguarded noise she had made since arriving on his planet.

He watched the line of her back as she worked, the way her shoulders had gone rigid with effort and her breathing had become shallow and rapid. The flush across her neck had deepened to a dark rose and there was sweat gathering at her hairline as her body crudely activated a response to heat stress. She was, in this moment, utterly human, completely fragile, limited by physics and biology in ways his own frame could never comprehend and she was refusing to acknowledge any of it.

The lever mechanism gave a final, grinding protest, then clunked into place as Herta pulled her arm back immediately, her movement sharp and controlled. She did not shake her hand or inspect the skin for damage, she simply stepped back, her expression perfectly neutral, as though nothing significant had occurred.

However Screwllum had seen the brief clench of her jaw and registered the way she held her forearm slightly away from her body, a subconscious gesture to minimize contact with anything else. The flush on her throat had spread upward, painting her cheeks with color.

Hypothesis: She experiences physical vulnerability as a form of intellectual failure. The shame of the body is indistinguishable from the shame of inadequacy.

Observation: This makes her ashamed of her own existence.

Conclusion: Poisonous beauty, indeed. The belladonna does not realize its own petals are what make it lethal.

He filed the thought carefully, adding it to the growing dataset he privately labeled The Hemlock Garden: A Taxonomic Study of Herta. 

Aloud, he only said, "The Archive will open momentarily."

The sphere responded with a sound like the planet itself taking a breath.

The grinding of gears escalated to a roar, and then, with ponderous grace, the entire central section of the structure began to rotate. Plates of brass and iron slid past each other in a complex mechanical ballet, each piece moving in precise coordination with hundreds of others. The heat that had been contained within the sphere's interior suddenly dispersed outward in a wave, carrying with it the smell of old metal and ancient dust. Cool air rushed in to fill the vacuum, a brief, blessed moment of relief that Herta felt across her overheated skin like a physical touch.

The central portion of the sphere slid inward with a final, definitive thunk, revealing a dark opening: a circular portal leading into the Archive's interior.

Herta stared into the darkness, and despite the heat, despite the pain still radiating from her forearm, despite the humiliating awareness of her own sweat and flushed skin, she felt something close to joy.

This was why she tolerated the meat-body, because sometimes the universe required you to be present to touch its secrets and when those secrets were worth having, the cost was acceptable…even if the cost was her own dignity.

"Shall we?" Screwllum said beside her, his tone perfectly formal.

Herta straightened her spine, reset her expression to its default state of bored superiority, and stepped forward into the Archive's mouth.

The darkness inside the Archive lasted exactly three steps before Screwllum activated an internal luminescence, a soft, blue-white glow emanating from his optic sensors, and Herta's breath caught in a way that had nothing to do with heat or pain.

The Archive chamber was not a room, it was a cosmos. They stood on a narrow catwalk that extended into a vast void, and suspended in that void was a map of the universe rendered in brass and iron and a thousand other metals she couldn't immediately identify. Planetary models suspended in the air, rotating slowly through their set orbits and stellar systems clustered in intricate mechanical galaxies, each star a tiny point of crystallized light. The paths of comets were traced in thin copper wire and black holes were represented by complex clockwork mechanisms that spiraled inward infinitely, their gears so small and numerous that they created the optical illusion of spiraling darkness. Herta's analytical mind immediately began cataloging the star positions, cross-referencing against known cosmological data and reached the conclusion within seconds.

This map showed the universe as it had existed immediately before the Mechanical Emperor's Wars, before Rubert I had begun his genocide and entire civilizations had been erased. This was a snapshot of a universe that no longer existed.

"Observation," Screwllum said quietly beside her, his voice carrying a weight she rarely heard from him. "You are witnessing the last complete cosmological record created before the First Emperor's Ascension. Every world shown here was populated, every civilization was intact. This map represents approximately forty-three billion sentient lives that were lost in the subsequent conflicts."

Herta said nothing; there was nothing useful to say. The dead didn't care about anyone's aesthetic appreciation of their memorial and she wasn't sentimental enough to pretend otherwise. It was... beautiful though, in a terrible sort of way.

"The access panel," she said instead, her voice coming out rougher than intended. "Where?"

Screwllum's optical sensors swept across the map then focused on a point roughly fifteen meters ahead of them, near the celestial equator. He began walking down the catwalk, and Herta followed, her eyes adjusting to the strange light. The mechanical universe around them moved with glacial slowness, not stopped, she realized, but operating at an infinitesimal fraction of normal speed as a gear the size of her fist rotated past her face, completing what Herta calculated was about one revolution per hour.

The catwalk terminated at a narrow platform that connected to the map's central axis, a brass column perhaps a meter in diameter that appeared to serve as the structure's main support and data conduit. Set into the column was a rectangular panel, and carved into that panel were symbols that made Herta's intellectual cortex light up with recognition: Pre-Droidhead philosophical notation, the kind of symbolic logic that had been used before the Aeon of Erudition had formalized universal mathematical language.

This was going to be interesting.

"There," Screwllum said, indicating the panel. Then he paused and Herta heard the subtle harmonic shift in his voice that meant he was about to deliver bad news. "Hypothesis: The access protocol will require simultaneous interface at multiple points. The designers appear to have prioritized redundancy over accessibility."

Herta leaned closer, studying the panel's layout. There were three separate input arrays arranged vertically along the column, each requiring manual manipulation. The symbols were small, perhaps two centimeters across, and the spacing was tight. To access all three simultaneously, they would need...

Oh.

Oh.

She saw the problem immediately.

"This entire design is absurdly inefficient,” she said flatly. "Why does it necessitate such a... cramped entry? It is an unnecessary obstacle."

The irritation in her voice was genuine, not because the task was impossible, nothing was impossible for someone with her IQ, but because the design offended her aesthetic sensibilities. Whoever had built this archive had clearly never heard of ergonomics, or perhaps they had and had deliberately ignored the concept out of some misguided notion that security should equal discomfort.

Dead idiots but idiots nonetheless.

"Correction," Screwllum replied, his tone carrying that particular patience he employed when explaining the obvious. "The aperture's size is a security measure. It requires two key interfaces to be activated simultaneously, one mechanical, one computational. The physical constraint ensures that collaboration is mandatory. A single operator, regardless of capability, cannot complete the sequence alone."

"How unnecessarily dramatic," Herta muttered, already calculating angles and clearances, her mind running through the geometry of the problem. "Fine. Let's get this over with."

She ducked into the space between the catwalk and the central column. 

The clearance was worse than she'd anticipated.

The column itself was surrounded by a cage of support struts and data conduits, creating a hexagonal framework that left perhaps sixty centimeters of open space on each side. Screwllum went first, his movements more precise than hers because he didn't have to contend with the biological inconvenience of a skeleton that had finite flexibility.

Herta had to turn sideways to fit through the gap, her shoulder brushing against cold metal, her hip catching on a protruding bracket that she definitely should have seen but hadn't because the lighting was terrible and her depth perception was compromised by the strange shadows the mechanical universe was casting.

They were both in the narrow corridor between the column and the outer structure when the geometry of the situation became immediately, uncomfortably apparent: to reach the access panel, they would need to move deeper into the mechanism, where the space narrowed further, and because Screwllum's frame was wider than hers and because he needed to access the computational interface while she worked on the mechanical one, he would need to...

They were standing so close that she could hear the minute mechanical sounds of his internal systems, the whisper-quiet hum of his processor, the barely audible tick of his chronometric core and the soft hiss of his articulated joints. It was profoundly strange; in all their years of collaboration, all those hours in the Simulated Universe, all those theoretical debates and late-night research sessions, they had maintained a careful physical distance, professional and appropriate, the space that colleagues occupied when they respected each other's boundaries.

This was not that space. This was the space that organic beings occupied when they were dancing, fighting, or…

Herta shut down that line of thought immediately.

"The panel," she said, her voice coming out more clipped than she'd intended. "Is it directly ahead?"

"Affirmative," Screwllum replied, his voice vibrating through the small space. "Approximately two meters forward. The path narrows further. Suggestion: I will lead. Please maintain contact with my frame for guidance."

Please maintain contact, as though she had a choice and the laws of physics were optional. Herta gritted her teeth and followed him deeper into the mechanism.

Within three steps, Herta found herself pressed not just against Screwllum's side but against his back, her front to his rear, her hands coming up automatically to brace against his shoulders, feeling the heavy fabric of his coat under her palms as she avoided stumbling past a particularly intrusive support beam.

The passage twisted because of course it did, because the universe had apparently decided that today was the day Herta would be punished for every smug comment she'd ever made about other people's lack of spatial reasoning, and she was distracted enough she almost continued walking right into Screwllum’s back who for some reason had stopped moving.

"Obstacle," he said calmly. "The access panel is located beyond this junction. To proceed, we will need to realign our approach vector."

"Meaning?" Herta asked, though she was already running the tone of his voice through her head and arriving at an answer she didn't like.

"Meaning," Screwllum said as neutrally as he could, "you will need to turn approximately ninety degrees clockwise while I turn counterclockwise. The resulting configuration will allow us both to interface with our respective access points simultaneously."

Herta closed her eyes and ran the calculation. He was right.

…but turning ninety degrees in a space this narrow meant they would be facing each other, and given the height differential between them since he was taller by approximately eighteen centimeters, and given the position of the access panel, which she could now see was mounted at chest height on the column, the only way to reach it would be to...

"You're joking."

"Negative," Screwllum replied. "I do not joke about security protocols."

"You're going to have to start…" Herta muttered, but she was already moving and turning in the cramped space, her body contorting to fit through the gap between his frame and the column.

Her shoulder hit his chest, dragging across the smooth material of his coat, then the harder resistance of the vest beneath. Her hip dragged across his waist. Her hand braced against the column, and she felt the heat radiating from the metal, not as intense as the Archive's entrance, but present, oppressive, a constant reminder that this entire structure was a working machine, alive with thermal energy and mechanical motion.

She completed the turn, and suddenly she was looking directly at the center of Screwllum's chest, at the red cravat and the brown fabric of his coat, at the faint blue glow emanating from the gaps where his actual frame was visible beneath the clothing.

Then she looked up, and his optical sensors were looking down, and the space between them was perhaps fifteen centimeters. Not enough space for comfort, not nearly enough.

"The panel," Herta said, her voice tight. "Behind you?"

"Affirmative." Screwllum's voice was unchanged, perfectly calm and professional, as though this were a completely normal interaction and not a geometric nightmare. "I will need to turn to access the computational interface. This will require you to... adjust your position accordingly."

He turned. Smoothly, precisely, his frame rotating in place, the hem of his coat brushing against her legs; and Herta, because physics were non-negotiable and because the alternative was falling backward into a priceless pre-Emperor artifact, did the only thing she could do.

She stepped forward, pressing her chest directly against his.

This is fine. This is a necessary accommodation to complete the research objective. The physical contact is irrelevant. The data is what matters. The data is always what matters. The fact that I can feel the fabric of his coat against my collarbone is a meaningless sensory input. The fact that his frame is cool even through the layers of clothing is simply physics, thermal energy transfer from high temperature to low temperature, a process so basic that children learn it in primary school. The fact that I am currently pressed chest-to-chest with Genius Society member #76 in a dark archive surrounded by the ghosts of forty-three billion dead civilizations is simply an unfortunate consequence of poor architectural planning, not a situation that requires emotional processing. I am fine. I am perfectly fine. I am…

Her analytical monologue cut off abruptly as Screwllum shifted his weight, adjusting his stance to reach the upper access point, and the movement caused him to press more firmly against her.

Herta's hands came up reflexively, bracing against his upper body. The solidity beneath her was immovable, the kind of stability that her human self, with its questionable joints and its ridiculous reliance on balance systems located in the inner ear, desperately craved in this cramped, poorly lit, thermally hostile environment. She could feel her pulse in her throat and the heat creeping up from her collar, the shameful awareness of her own breathing, shallow, too fast, the kind of respiratory pattern that indicated stress.

Irrelevant, she told herself firmly. All irrelevant. Focus on the panel. Focus on the work.

She looked past Screwllum's shoulder, as much as one could look past a being whose frame currently occupied approximately ninety percent of her visual field, and located the access panel. Three vertical arrays of symbols, each one requiring careful, sequential input. The symbols were smaller than she'd estimated from the catwalk, the ambient light was terrible, and she was going to need to lean in even closer to read them properly.

Wonderful.

"I'm beginning the sequence," she announced, her voice coming out steadier than she felt. "Don't move unless I tell you to."

"Acknowledged.”

His voice resonated through his frame, and Herta felt it as much as heard it, a low vibration that traveled through the fabric and plating, through the points of contact between their bodies. She was not going to think about that. She was going to focus on the symbols, on the philosophical notation, on the elegant logical progression that would unlock the Archive's secrets. She was going to do her job, complete the task and get out of this mechanical coffin before her treacherous biology could generate any more humiliating data points about her current physical state.

Screwllum beneath her activated his cooling vents. Thermal regulation protocol: Activated.

The decision was automatic, instantaneous, the kind of computational priority that his systems executed without requiring conscious deliberation. Herta's core temperature had risen to 37.9 degrees Celsius, well within normal human parameters but elevated from her baseline. Her skin temperature at the points of contact was even higher, radiating heat that his sensors registered as uncomfortable for organic tissue.

The Archive's ambient temperature was 34 degrees Celsius and the column they were pressed against was radiating at 39 degrees. The air circulation in this confined space was minimal. She was overheating and she would never admit it.

Screwllum diverted power from non-essential systems, rerouting thermal output away from his core housing. The temperature of his frame dropped by seven degrees in a matter of seconds, enough to provide a localized heat sink, a small zone of relative coolness against her overheated skin.

He did not announce this adjustment. Herta would interpret it as pity, or worse, as condescension, the implication that she needed his assistance to manage her own biological functions. Better to let her believe his frame was simply naturally cool and let her take the comfort without having to acknowledge the need.

His optical sensors tracked her face in the dim light. The flush across her cheeks had deepened to a dark rose that was slowly migrating down her throat and her pupils were dilated, a response to the low light but also to stress. The muscles around her eyes were tight and her jaw was clenched, and her hands, braced against his arms now, were trembling minutely.

Observation: She is operating at the edge of her physiological tolerance.

Hypothesis: She will not stop until the task is complete or until her body fails her.

Conclusion: The latter is more likely than she realizes.

He watched her lean forward, stretching to reach the upper array of symbols. The movement pressed her more firmly against him, the soft pressure of her body against his frame creating a contact map that his sensors catalogued with mechanical precision: sternum to chest, ribs to the rigid plating beneath his vest, hip bone to pelvic joint housing.

She was so warm, so inefficiently, beautifully soft and warm, and she was using his frame as a structural support, as a stable platform to brace against while she worked, using his immobility, his rigidity, his fundamental difference between them as a tool to compensate for her own body's limitations.

The poison flower comparison he'd made earlier, the belladonna with its elegant self-destruction, no longer felt adequate. This was something else far more complex.

He searched his botanical database, the extensive catalogue of toxic flora he'd compiled over decades of study because if one was going to understand organic life, one needed to understand the beautiful ways it could kill, and found a better match.

Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade, but not the mature plant…the seedling. The young, vulnerable stage where the toxicity was still developing, where the plant was simultaneously poisonous and fragile, a contradiction held in chemical tension.

Herta was his nightshade seedling, brilliant and toxic and fundamentally at war with her own existence. Her intellect was the poison, potent enough to wound herself with every application and her body was the fragile vessel, imperfect and unreliable and utterly necessary. Her pride became the thorns she grew to protect herself from the observation that she was, in fact, capable of being hurt.

Hypothesis: Her self-control is a shield against the chaos of her own biology and the variable of proximity. She is perfectly calibrated to be both fragile and toxic to my neutrality.

Observation: The most beautiful nightshade blooms closest to the soil, her irritation the sharpest of thorns.

He filed the assessment carefully, adding it to his growing internal taxonomy of Herta's self-directed violence. Then he noticed something that made his entire analytical framework falter.

Her breathing had changed; not the shallow, rapid pattern of thermal stress, but slower, her chest rising and falling in a rhythm that suggested…

Relief.

She had unconsciously registered the cooling of his frame and had responded to it. Her body, operating on instinct rather than conscious thought, had relaxed infinitesimally against him, seeking out the cooler surfaces, the places where his frame offered relief from the oppressive heat.

She didn't realize she was doing it. Her conscious mind was entirely focused on the symbols, on the logical progression of the cipher but her body knew and was treating him as a source of comfort.

The thought created a cascade of unexpected subroutines in Screwllum's processor, emotional analysis protocols that he rarely activated, functions that had no practical application; a sudden, overwhelming awareness that this moment contained data he would preserve in his permanent memory with perfect fidelity not because it was scientifically significant but because it was beautiful.

Herta, in her stubborn refusal to acknowledge weakness, had accidentally revealed the truth: that she trusted him enough to lower her guard, even if only on a subconscious, biological level.

That trust was more valuable than any data the Archive could contain.

Hypothesis: Screwllum thought, his internal voice quieter than usual, the true threat is not her toxicity. It is her capacity to make me value her comfort above my own objectivity.

She is a nightshade, intoxicating, disorienting, and blooming in defiance of the logic that surrounds her.

And I am, apparently, willing to be poisoned.

He said nothing and did nothing, simply maintained his position, his frame a stable anchor, his core temperature carefully regulated beneath the layers of fabric.

Above them, the frozen universe turned its infinitesimal rotation and the archives of the dead kept their silent vigil. Herta, unaware of his internal revelation, continued her work with the fierce, fragile determination of someone who would rather die than admit she needed help.

Which was, Screwllum reflected, exactly why she would always be his favorite toxin.

The symbols were positioned above eye level.

Herta realized this with a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with thermal stress and everything to do with the geometry of humiliation. To read the uppermost array, the one that would unlock the core mechanism, she would need to tilt her head back, raise her arm and work with her face turned upward…which meant Screwllum, standing a full eighteen centimeters taller, would have an unobstructed view of her face while she worked, struggled and sweat; every microscopic failure of her biology played out across her features for his sensors to catalog with perfect mechanical precision.

Fantastic.

She raised her arm anyway, because the alternative was admitting defeat, and Herta would rather die than give the universe the satisfaction. Her fingertips brushed across the symbols, tracing the pre-Droidhead notation, parsing the philosophical logic embedded in the ancient script. The first array was a dialectic proof, the second a logical paradox, the third…

Her arm was getting tired already. She'd been holding it up for perhaps thirty seconds, and already her shoulder was starting to burn with the specific, infuriating ache of a muscle held in an unnatural position for too long.

She ignored it and focused on the symbols and the elegant chain of reasoning that connected premise to conclusion, on the beautiful architecture of thought that these long-dead philosophers had encoded in metal and geometry.

She could feel him watching her, his optical sensors fixed on her with that absolute, unwavering attention that mechanical beings could maintain indefinitely without blinking and the biological necessity of looking away.

Herta's analytical mind supplied the data automatically: from his vantage point, seventeen degrees above her eyeline, he would be observing the angle of her jaw, the line of her throat, the way her lips moved minutely as she spoke the logical progressions. He would be registering the flush across her cheeks, darker now she was certain because awareness of observation always made the blood rise faster. He would be cataloging the small, unconscious expressions that crossed her face as she worked through the problem, the slight furrow between her brows when she encountered a difficult transition, the tiny compression of her lips when she identified an error in her initial reasoning.

He was watching her think, watching her work, watching her be brilliant and human and inefficient all at once.

She wanted to snap at him to stop staring and demand that he look away, give her privacy, respect the basic social contract that said you didn't observe people with the intensity of a research specimen when they were trying to concentrate…but she couldn't say that without admitting she was aware of his attention and that it bothered her, not without admitting that she cared what he saw. So she said nothing and just kept working, her arm raised, her neck craned back, her body pressed against his in a configuration that her puppet bodies would have handled with perfect mechanical efficiency but that her human form was experiencing as an escalating cascade of discomfort.

Her arm burned, her shoulder and neck ached, the heat was making her head swim and underneath all of it, threading through the physical distress like a secondary infection, was the maddening awareness of him, his solidity, his coolness, his patient and perfect stillness. Herta's fingers found the transition point between the second and third arrays. The logic shifted, became more complex, required her to hold three contradictory premises in simultaneous consideration while constructing a fourth that reconciled them all.

She loved this: the pure intellectual challenge of it, the way her mind could cut through complexity like a blade through silk, finding the hidden structure, the elegant solution that had been there all along, waiting for someone smart enough to see it.

This was why she tolerated the meat-body, for moments like this, just for the raw, unfiltered experience of solving.

Her arm shifted higher, blocking Screwllum from her peripheral vision, and Herta felt a small, shameful flutter of relief at the temporary privacy. Then her fingers found the core mechanism, the final key.

"There," she said, her voice rough from disuse and heat. "The central array. It's not a standard input interface, it's a distributed cipher. We'll need to activate multiple points simultaneously."

"Acknowledged," Screwllum replied, his voice resonating through fabric and frame alike. "Specify the pattern."

Herta's eyes traced the mechanism, reading the logic embedded in its structure. "Three clusters of touch-sensitive plates. Cold responsive, not heat responsive, they're calibrated to mechanical temperature signatures, which means..." She trailed off, calculations unfolding in her mind. "...which means your touch will register differently than mine. The system is designed to confirm dual-operator input: organic and inorganic."

"Conclusion: collaboration is mandatory," Screwllum said. "The Archive's designers were thorough in their paranoia."

"Or their romanticism," Herta muttered. "This is absurdly theatrical."

But she was already lowering her arm, blessed relief as the muscles relaxed, and reaching for the first cluster of plates. They were smooth, tarnished metal, arranged in a hexagonal pattern around a central depression and her fingers found the correct positions immediately, the pattern obvious once she understood the underlying logic.

"Your input points are…" she started, then stopped as Screwllum's gloved hand appeared in her visual field, his articulated fingers reaching past her shoulder to access the upper cluster. His arm was positioned directly above hers. If she tilted her head back even slightly, she would be looking up the length of his arm, past the fabric of his sleeve and directly into his faceplate.

She kept her gaze fixed firmly on the mechanism.

"Upper hexagonal array," she said, her voice clipped. "Vertices two, four, and six. The lower array has the same pattern. We'll need to activate all nine points simultaneously and maintain contact for…" she scanned the mechanism's energy flow, calculating timing "...approximately eighteen seconds."

"Understood." Screwllum's second hand came into position, hands settling over the lower array, his frame curving slightly around her to reach the mechanism. They were no longer just pressed together, they were entangled. His arms bracketed her body, his hands positioned above and below her own bare fingers, his chest and frame becoming a solid wall of support against her.

Herta made the mistake of looking up.

His optical sensors were fixed on her face…not on the mechanism or his own hand positions, but on her, watching with that terrible, patient attention as she worked through the final calculations, observing every facial expression, every unconscious gesture and every minute betrayal of her biology. The shadow of his hat brim fell across her face, and beneath it, his green lenses glowed with steady focus.

Their eyes met, if such a phrase could apply to the interaction between organic retinas and mechanical sensors, and Herta felt something hot and uncomfortable twist in her chest.

"The sequence," she said, her voice coming out rougher than intended. "On my mark."

She didn't wait for confirmation, just placed her fingers on the cold metal plates as Screwllum's gloved hands settled into position above and below hers, and began the count.

"Three. Two. One. Mark."

The mechanism responded instantly.

Herta felt it through her fingertips, a sudden, electric hum that traveled up her arms and made her teeth ache. The plates were cold, far colder than the surrounding metal, a shock of temperature that her overheated skin registered as almost painful and she had to keep her fingers perfectly still, perfectly positioned, maintaining exact contact with the designated points while the Archive's ancient systems verified their inputs.

Eighteen seconds. She could maintain position for eighteen seconds…except the cold was making her fingers want to curl and her arm was still burning from being held raised for so long and her neck hurt from craning backward. She was hyperaware of every point of contact between her body and Screwllum's frame, the pressure of fabric and vest and plating against her, the whisper of his articulated joints as he maintained his own position, the coolness radiating from his core that her skin kept trying to press closer to because her thermoregulation was failing.

Focus, she commanded herself. The discomfort is irrelevant. The data is what matters.

Her pulse was racing, hammering against her ribs, and she was painfully aware that Screwllum could probably detect it, could probably measure the exact frequency of her heartbeat through the pressure sensors in his frame, could probably calculate her rising stress levels from the elevation in her core temperature and respiratory rate.

Twelve seconds.

Herta's fingers were starting to ache from the cold and her arms were trembling minutely, not enough to break contact, but enough that she could feel the movements, the tiny failures of her muscular control.

She couldn't look up and meet Screwllum's sensors again, couldn't bear the weight of his observation while her body betrayed her with such pedestrian weaknesses.

So she looked at the central column instead and the tarnished brass, at the ancient engravings. Safe territory to stare at, impersonal, except even looking away she was aware of him and the hum of his processor, the minute vibrations of his internal systems, the absolute, perfect stillness of his frame beneath the clothing, no tremors, no weakness, no biological rebellion, just perfect, mechanical patience.

Nine seconds.

This is fine, Herta thought desperately. This is a routine collaboration between colleagues. The physical proximity is necessary and temporary. The fact that I can feel his core processor humming through the layers of fabric is a meaningless observation. The fact that his frame is the only stable thing in my current reality is irrelevant to the research objectives.

The Archive's hum deepened, shifted to a lower frequency and the plates beneath her fingers vibrated, confirming the sequence acceptance.

Six seconds.

Her right hand spasmed, just a tiny flicker of movement as her muscles rebelled against the sustained tension that she forced back into position, but the damage was done. She'd broken contact for perhaps a tenth of a second and the mechanism registered the error.

The sound the Archive produced was not an alarm or a warning klaxon or error buzz or any of the conventional audio signals that indicated system failure; it was a single, sustained musical note, mathematically precise, approximately C-sharp above middle C, held for approximately 2.7 seconds emanating from speakers embedded in the column's structure with a clarity that suggested they'd been designed for acoustic perfection rather than mere functionality.

The note hung in the air of the Archive chamber, bouncing off the brass planets and copper wire orbits, creating a resonance that made the entire mechanical universe seem to sing, then it cut off abruptly, leaving only silence and the holographic display that materialized above the central array:

ERROR: INPUT INCONGRUITY - PHILOSOPHICAL COHERENCE INSUFFICIENT. RECALIBRATION REQUIRED.

Herta stared at the display, then at the mechanism, then at the display again.

Her brain, still operating in high-speed analytical mode, immediately began parsing the error message, cross-referencing against known philosophical protocols, calculating alternative input sequences…

…then the sheer, crystalline absurdity of what had just happened hit her like a physical impact.

They'd failed and the Archive's ancient, paranoid security system had rejected their input but instead of a more useful error message or diagnostic data or correction parameters, the mechanism had produced a musical note, a contextually bizarre and utterly useless C-sharp. Some long-dead engineer with apparently no sense of proportion had programmed the Archive's security system to sing at intruders.

The thought fractured her concentration like a hammer through glass and a laugh escaped her, a single, sharp bark of sound that erupted from her throat before she could strangle it. Completely involuntary and the kind of un-calculated, high-frequency human noise that happened when the gap between expectation and reality became too wide for the mind to bridge with anything other than helpless amusement.

The sound hung in the air for perhaps half a second, bright and surprised and entirely contrary to the cool, sardonic demeanor she'd maintained for the past hour. Then Herta caught herself, jaw snapping shut, cutting off the laugh with such force she nearly bit her tongue. No.

Screwllum’s processors lagged at the sound he heard, forcing him to run an error log. 

Log entry: unprecedented data point. The sound she made was…

Screwllum had to run the audio analysis twice and replay it for himself once to confirm the classification, because it seemed impossible. In all their years of collaboration, through all their theoretical debates and late-night research sessions and carefully professional interactions, he had never heard Herta produce this particular vocalization.

Duration: 0.7 seconds. Single burst.
Pitch: approximately F-sharp.
Volume: 68 decibels at point of origin.
Quality: bright, surprised, containing zero calculation or social artifice.

It was the sound of her intellectual defenses collapsing under the weight of sheer absurdity, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever recorded.

The movement that accompanied it, the brief heave of her chest, the minute jolt that traveled through her frame and into his, the way her hands tightened reflexively against his arms was a novel sensation that his tactile sensors cataloged with desperate precision.

Herta, who approached every situation with sardonic control, who treated humor as a weapon rather than a release, who guarded her genuine emotional responses the way other people guarded state secrets, had laughed for less than half a second; not one of her forced sarcastic laughs that she often gave, but a genuine moment of unfiltered joy before her defenses slammed back into place. 

Screwllum, whose entire existence was predicated on the systematic acquisition and analysis of data, whose purpose was the pursuit of knowledge, whose every subroutine was optimized for intellectual efficiency, suddenly, desperately wanted to make her laugh again just because the sound was beautiful and because beauty was worth preserving; in this moment, pressed together in the darkness with the frozen universe turning above them, he had discovered something more valuable than any philosophical cipher.

Hypothesis: The true threat is not her toxicity, but her capacity for uncontrolled joy, however brief, which is the most potent of all human variables.

The poison flower analogy he'd been constructing, nightshade, belladonna, hemlock, all were insufficient; those were passive toxins, defensive mechanisms, this was something else.

This was Datura, angel's trumpet or devil's weed, the flower that was both poison and intoxicant, that produced not death but delirium, that disoriented and enchanted in equal measure. Datura’s effects were so profound that those who consumed it spoke of visions and beautiful chaos, of the world becoming strange and wonderful and impossible to navigate by ordinary logic.

Herta was his Datura, intoxicating and disorienting in equal measure, blooming in defiance of every logical framework he tried to apply to her, and her laughter, rare, volatile, unpredictable and ruthlessly suppressed was the most potent variable in his entire dataset.

Observation: The laughter is more intellectually valuable than the data we were seeking.

Conclusion: I am compromised beyond recovery.

He filed the audio recording in his permanent memory core, flagged as Priority One: Do Not Delete Under Any Circumstances, and committed to silence while she completed whatever emotional processing was required.

The heat flooding Herta's face had nothing to do with thermal stress and everything to do with shame.

She pulled her head back slightly, as much as the cramped space would allow, trying to create distance that didn't exist. Her hands pushed minutely against his arms, against fabric and plating, not hard enough to actually move his frame but hard enough to communicate her desperate need for even a centimeter of separation.

"A completely irrelevant output," she said, her voice coming out sharper than intended, overcompensating for the loss of control. The blood was rushing to her cheeks, she could feel it, and there was nothing she could do to stop the biological response. "The Archive's designers were apparently idiots who thought musical error codes were sophisticated. I'll recalibrate the transfer sequence. This time, I will account for the Archive's inherent philosophical idiocy."

She was talking too fast but the alternative was silence, and silence would give her brain time to process what had just happened, and processing would lead to analysis, and analysis would confirm what she already knew:

She had just experienced a moment of complete, unguarded vulnerability in front of the one person whose opinion she actually…

No.

Herta forced her attention back to the mechanism, to the holographic error message still floating above the central array. The logical progression was obvious now that her mind had reset. The cipher wasn't testing for philosophical coherence in their individual inputs, it was testing for coherence between them. The organic and inorganic operators needed to be philosophically aligned, solving the paradox from complementary angles.

"The recalibration will require…" she started.

"Inference," Screwllum interrupted gently, his voice carrying a quality she couldn't quite decipher, "The next sequence should indeed account for philosophical idiocy."

Herta's jaw tightened. Was he mocking her?

"Correction," he continued, his tone absolutely neutral and perfectly professional. "The initial failure was highly informative."

She looked up at him sharply, trying to read intention in the shadows beneath his hat brim, in the steady glow of his optical sensors. His faceplate was steady, patient, giving away nothing.

Highly informative, that was Genius Society code for valuable data was obtained, which meant he'd been cataloging her response. Recording it. Analyzing it.

He'd witnessed every second of her loss of control.

Perfect.

Herta's analytical mind supplied several cutting responses, each designed to reestablish professional distance and make clear that the laughter had been an aberration, a momentary glitch in her otherwise flawless cognitive processing, but her mouth, still not entirely under her control, remained shut.

Underneath the embarrassment and irritation was the realization that she'd laughed, really, genuinely laughed, for the first time in months and it had felt... good…which was almost more disturbing than the laugh itself.

"The second attempt," Herta said finally, her voice carefully controlled, "will require adjusted timing and philosophical synchronization. We'll need to…"

She stopped because she'd just registered what she'd been too distracted to notice before.

Screwllum's frame was still cool beneath the fabric, not ambient temperature cool, deliberately cool, well below the expected thermal output of an active mechanical core. He was running a cooling protocol for her.

Herta's brain performed several calculations in rapid succession:

1. The energy cost of thermal regulation in a frame his size.
2. The fact that he'd said nothing about it.
3. The implication that he'd been monitoring her thermal stress levels.
4. The further implication that he'd taken action to mitigate her discomfort without requiring acknowledgment or gratitude.

It was... quietly, efficiently considerate in a way that didn't demand recognition.

That kind of consideration was somehow more intimate than any dramatic gesture. Herta found she had absolutely no idea what to do with that information…so she did what she always did when faced with uncomfortable emotional data: she ignored it completely and focused on the work.

"Let's try this again," she said. "And this time, let's avoid giving the Archive any more opportunities to demonstrate its creators' questionable aesthetic choices."

"Acknowledged," Screwllum replied. Beneath his coat and vest, his frame remained cool and he said nothing about it at all.

The second attempt succeeded where the first had failed.

This time, when Herta and Screwllum placed their fingers on the cold metal arrays, her touch light and precise, his gloved pressure steady and unyielding, the Archive's ancient systems hummed with satisfaction rather than rejection. The mechanism accepted their philosophical synchronization, the complementary logic of organic intuition and mechanical precision finally satisfying whatever paranoid parameters the long-dead designers had encoded.

The brass column shuddered and deep within its structure, gears that had been frozen for centuries began to turn, their movement producing a sound like the universe clearing its throat. Then, with a pneumatic hiss that smelled of old metal and older dust, a narrow drawer slid out from the column's base.

Herta pulled her hands back from the arrays, flexing her fingers to restore circulation. The cold had left them stiff and aching, and she resisted the urge to tuck them under her arms for warmth. That would be admitting discomfort and she'd already admitted enough for one day.

Screwllum reached into the drawer with careful precision and retrieved what lay inside: a single sheet of metal, perhaps twenty centimeters square, covered in densely packed script so small it was barely readable in the dim light. Not a data vault or even a comprehensive archive, just... this.

Herta leaned closer, squinting at the text: more Pre-Droidhead philosophical notation, rendered in a script so archaic she had to parse it symbol by symbol. The language was poetic…deliberately, infuriatingly poetic, the kind of metaphorical excess that ancient philosophers had favored when they were trying to sound profound rather than precise.

"Is that it?" she said flatly. "We just spent an hour navigating a mechanical deathtrap for a single piece of sheet metal with what appears to be a very pretentious philosophical aphorism?"

"Affirmative," Screwllum replied, his tone carrying no judgment. "The Archive's contents are... minimal."

Herta took the sheet from him, angling it to catch the blue light from his frame. She read the inscription once, then twice, her analytical mind automatically translating the archaic symbols into modern conceptual frameworks.

The statement was about Nous and the pursuit of knowledge and the fundamental paradox at the heart of organic consciousness:

Perfect Knowledge Requires Beautiful Error.

It was followed by a dense philosophical proof that argued, if she was parsing the logic correctly, that the Aeon valued not the acquisition of knowledge but the struggle toward it; that the chaos of organic thought, with all its inefficiencies and failures and illogical leaps, was somehow more valuable than the perfect computational clarity of mechanical intelligence.

She found it profoundly irritating. 

"Ah," Herta said, her voice dry as bone. "The entire Archive is a philosophical prank. The universe's most elaborate 'I told you so' for anyone stupid enough to expect actual useful data."

"Inference: the data may be more useful than it initially appears. The statement itself is a paradox that requires contemplation."

"Contemplation," Herta repeated, the word tasting like ash in her mouth. "Wonderful. My favorite."

She held the metal sheet as they walked back, studying it in the better light of the main chamber. It didn’t matter if the Archive's designers were pretentious idiots and the data was wrapped in layers of unnecessary poetic excess, it was still data, and data was always worth preserving…even when it told you things you didn't particularly want to hear.

Herta led the way, her movements precise and efficient despite the fatigue that was creeping through her muscles like slow poison. The mechanical universe turned its infinite rotation around them, brass planets catching the light, copper orbits singing their thin metallic songs. She stared at the piece of sheet metal, her mind already parsing the philosophical proof, breaking down the logical structure, identifying the weak points in the argument and the elegant transitions between premises.

It was good work, she had to admit; the kind of intellectual challenge that would take weeks to fully unpack, maybe months. The paradox at its core was genuinely novel enough that her extensive knowledge of Aeon philosophy didn't immediately provide a refutation.

Perfect Knowledge Requires Beautiful Error.

The more she thought about it, the more it felt like a personal attack.

"The logical chain," she said aloud, not looking back at Screwllum but knowing he was there, his footsteps a quiet presence behind her, "assumes that knowledge acquisition is fundamentally experiential rather than computational. That the process matters more than the result which is absurd from an efficiency standpoint, but internally consistent if you accept the initial premises about consciousness requiring embodied experience."

"Observation," Screwllum replied, his voice carrying easily in the vast space. "You are attempting to solve the paradox while simultaneously walking through unfamiliar terrain; an impressive display of parallel processing."

"I can think and walk at the same time," Herta said, irritation sharpening her words. "It's not that complicated."

"Correction: I did not suggest it was complicated, merely impressive."

Herta's jaw tightened. She focused on the metal sheet, on the symbols, on anything other than the warmth spreading across her cheeks that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the observation that she was being observed.

The philosophical statement proposed that organic consciousness achieved knowledge through error, through the process of making mistakes, recognizing those mistakes, and constructing new understanding from the fragments of failure. That this iterative, chaotic, fundamentally flawed approach was somehow superior to the direct acquisition of perfect information was an insult to everything she believed in.  If she followed the logic to its conclusion it meant that her struggles in the Archive, the sweating, the trembling, the physical failures, were not inefficiencies to be minimized but necessary components of genuine understanding.

The thought made her want to throw the metal sheet into the nearest mechanical abyss. Instead, she kept reading, kept parsing, walking and using the intellectual work as armor against the awareness of her own body, the ache in her shoulders, the burning in her calves and the way her clothing clung uncomfortably to her overheated skin.

Behind her, Screwllum followed in patient silence.

She is using analysis as an analgesic.

The pattern was clear to his sensors: Herta's physical distress was increasing, elevated heart rate, elevated skin temperature, minor expressions of discomfort crossing her face at regular intervals even as her focus on the philosophical statement remained absolute.

She was deliberately, methodically, using intellectual engagement to override her body's demands for rest. It was simultaneously brilliant and deeply concerning.

The flush across her cheeks had not faded; if anything, it had deepened, spreading down her throat to disappear beneath her collar. Her hair, which had been impeccably arranged when they'd entered the Archive, was now slightly disheveled, a few strands had escaped their careful styling and clung damply to her temple and the nape of her neck.

She looked, Screwllum thought with careful precision, beautifully undone. Not destroyed, not broken, but unmade in small, elegant ways: the careful architecture of her self-presentation eroded by heat and exertion and time until the human beneath was visible in all its fragile, inefficient glory.

A poppy, he decided, was the right metaphor. Not the delicate ornamental varieties cultivated in gardens, but the wild strain, Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, beautiful in its chaos and growing in disturbed soil, blooming brightest where the earth had been wounded. The flower that was both medicine and poison, relief and addiction, the source of dreams and the architect of dependency.

Herta, with her disheveled hair and flushed skin and relentless intellectual fire, was his wild poppy, vibrant and persistent, blooming despite the hostile environment, her mind racing even as her body pleaded for rest.

Hypothesis: Her intellectual fire is most visible when her physical defenses are compromised.

Observation: The temporary disorder of her appearance does not diminish her beauty but reveals the elegance of her imperfections.

Screwllum filed the thought carefully, adding it to his growing catalogue of Herta's unknowing vulnerabilities. He then made a decision about how he would interpret the analysis.

They emerged from the Archive into the bronze light of Planet Screwllum's perpetual afternoon. The transition from darkness to light was sharp enough that Herta had to stop, blinking against the glare, her hand coming up reflexively to shade her eyes.

The mechanical gardens surrounding the Archive sang their harmonic welcome, metal leaves chiming in the wind, copper vines creaking as they adjusted their positions to track the sun. The air was cooler here, filtered through the gardens' intricate lattices and Herta felt her overheated skin prickle with relief.

Screwllum stepped up beside her, his taller frame casting a shadow that she absolutely did not step into because that would be admitting she needed the shade which would be weak.

"The manor," he said, gesturing toward the distant structure that rose from the cityscape like a geometric dream, "is approximately seventeen minutes walk at standard human pace. I have arranged for transportation if you prefer."

"I can walk," Herta said immediately. "Seventeen minutes is nothing."

It was a lie, seventeen minutes sounded like an eternity in her state; but the alternative, admitting she was tired, admitting her body needed accommodation, was unthinkable.

"As you prefer." His tone was neutral.

They began walking. The path was smooth at least, polished bronze inlaid with copper designed for machine efficiency rather than aesthetics. The city spread around them in careful geometric patterns, towers and archways and elevated walkways all clicking and turning in their prescribed rhythms.

Everything in order and in its place…everything except Herta, who felt increasingly like a biological contaminant in this perfect mechanical ecosystem.

"Suggestion," Screwllum said after perhaps five minutes of silence, his voice calm and measured. "Before we commence with the final analysis, I recommend a period of systemic refresh. Dinner is scheduled for nineteen hundred hours. You are aware of the available restorative chambers."

Herta's steps didn't falter, but her mind did.

Restorative chambers. That was Screwllum's careful, diplomatic way of saying: You look like you've been dragged through a thermal exhaust port, and you probably want to do something about that before we continue working.

He wasn't wrong. She could feel the state she was in, the sweat that had dried into uncomfortable patches on her skin, the way her hair stuck to her neck, the rumpled state of her clothing. If she were in her puppet body, she could simply swap to a fresh unit and continue, but she wasn't. She was stuck in this inefficient meat-shell that insisted on having opinions about prolonged physical exertion.

The worst part was that Screwllum was being perfectly polite about it, not even criticizing or commenting directly on her appearance, just... offering and giving her the choice to retreat with dignity intact. That meant he'd noticed and catalogued every detail of her dishevelment with those perfect mechanical sensors; he'd probably been tracking her degrading physical state for the past hour, storing the data in whatever filing system he used for information about organic inefficiency.

The thought made her want to disappear into the nearest mechanical garden and never emerge.

He knows exactly how awful I look right now and he's being diplomatic about it, which is somehow worse than if he just said it directly. At least if he were blunt I could be angry, but this, this careful courtesy is consideration and I don't know how to be angry at consideration.

I look like I've been melted. My hair is a disaster. I probably smell. My clothing is sticking to me in places that should not stick and I'm going to have to sit across from him at dinner in approximately, she calculated quickly, forty-seven minutes, and he's going to observe me with those perfect sensors and he's going to know with mathematical precision exactly how far I've fallen from my usual standards unless I take the offered escape route and use the ‘restorative chambers’ and the forty-seven minutes to erase every trace of this humiliating physical failure.

Her pride warred with her vanity and said she should brush off the suggestion, proceed directly to dinner, act as though her current state was beneath notice. Vanity said that was insane, that she looked like a disaster, that she needed to fix this before anyone, before he especially had to endure her current state for a moment longer.

Vanity won. It wasn't even a close battle. 

"Correction," Herta said, her voice carefully controlled. "My analysis is time critical. However, a sub-optimal biophysical state introduces variables. I will return at nineteen hundred hours precisely."

She didn't want to look at Screwllum as she spoke and see the lack of expressions his faceplate would(n’t) show so she just kept her eyes fixed on the manor ahead, on the promise of climate control and running water and the opportunity to restore herself to something resembling her usual standards.

"Acknowledged," Screwllum replied. His tone was unchanged, perfectly professional, perfectly courteous. "The restorative facilities are located on the third level, east wing. The environmental controls are calibrated to human comfort parameters."

"I remember where it is," Herta muttered.

She's been here a few times for research, but it had never been like this, never about the distance or lack thereof between them. Screwllum, who didn't need climate control, who existed comfortably across a range of temperatures that would kill most organic beings, had installed human compatible facilities in his personal manor that were often used by his colleagues and friends alike. Herta almost found the thoughtfulness of it offensive.

They walked the remaining distance in silence until the manor grew larger as they approached, its architecture a study in controlled elegance, bronze and steel and crystalline glass, geometric precision softened by carefully placed mechanical gardens. Flowers of hammered copper bloomed in window boxes and vines of jointed silver climbed the walls in mathematically perfect spirals. It was beautiful, of course it was beautiful, because Screwllum would never tolerate anything less.

The entrance hall was cool and dim, a blessed relief after the harsh light outside. Herta felt her skin prickle with the temperature change, felt her body sag infinitesimally with relief before she caught herself and forced her spine straight.

"The facilities…" Screwllum began.

"Third level, east wing," Herta interrupted. "I remember."

She turned toward the staircase before he could say anything else and her exhausted mind had a chance to betray her with some other humiliating acknowledgment of weakness.

"Herta."

She stopped, didn't even turn around, just waited.

"Inference," Screwllum said quietly behind her. "The pursuit of perfect efficiency is, paradoxically, the most human of all errors."

Herta's hands clenched at her sides. She recognized the paraphrase, a direct reference to the philosophical statement they'd retrieved; a gentle, utterly deliberate reminder that the work itself had argued for the value of imperfection and that her struggles were not failures, that the chaos was somehow the point.

She wanted to argue with him and reject the premise and explain, in excruciating logical detail, why he was wrong and why efficiency mattered and why she would not, could not, accept her own biological limitations as anything other than obstacles to be overcome, but her throat was tight and her eyes were stinging in a way that had nothing to do with dust or heat and she was standing in the entrance hall of his manor looking like a disaster while he stood behind her looking perfect and patient and utterly unbothered by her imperfection.

So she said nothing, just nodded once and climbed the stairs toward the promise of privacy and cool water and the chance to rebuild her defenses before dinner.

Behind her, Screwllum remained motionless in the entrance hall, watching her retreat with the steady attention of a being who had all the time in the universe to wait.

The pursuit of perfect efficiency is the most human and most beautiful of all errors. Her insistence on form is the perfect camouflage for her volatile core.

He watched until she disappeared around the corner of the third-level landing and her figure disappeared with the stiff set of her shoulders, the deliberate precision of her movements, the way she refused to touch the railing even though her legs were trembling with fatigue.

She was a being of pure, stubborn and magnificent pride.

She would go to the restorative chambers. She would shower away the evidence of her struggle and fix her hair, change her clothing if necessary, restore her appearance to its usual immaculate standard until every trace of the dishevelment that he had catalogued with such careful attention had been erased. Then she would arrive at dinner looking perfect, as though the past two hours had never happened and she hadn’t laughed in his arms and pressed against him for balance and comfort, as though her body had not unconsciously sought the cooling of his frame.

The erasure would be complete, professional and completely necessary from her perspective, but Screwllum had already stored every detail in his permanent memory core: the flush across her throat, the damp hair clinging to her temple, the sound of her laugh, brief and bright and utterly genuine. She could erase the evidence from her own body but she could not erase it from his mind.

He would not tell her that he found the disorder more beautiful than any careful perfection, that the wild poppy in full bloom was more precious than any cultivated garden flower and her struggle was not something to be hidden but something to be witnessed, honored, preserved.

Some observations, he had learned, were best kept private.

He turned toward his personal laboratory, where the philosophical statement waited to be properly archived and analyzed. The work would continue as it always did, but first he would lower the temperature in the dining area by three degrees and ensure the lighting was soft rather than harsh. He'd select the meal components most easily digested by an exhausted human system.

They were small adjustments, unremarked upon, the kind of consideration that required no acknowledgment and that hopefully she would not even notice. He would know though, and that was sufficient.

At precisely nineteen hundred hours, the door to the dining area opened, and Herta entered.

She was flawless, hair perfectly placed, every strand styled with the same mathematical precision as one of his mechanical gardens. Her clothing was fresh, unwrinkled, chosen for elegance and efficiency in equal measure and her skin was clean and cool, no trace remaining of the flush that had painted her cheeks and throat. Her expression bore the same neutral, controlled mask, aristocratic boredom firmly in place.

She looked exactly as she always looked: untouchable, brilliant and perfectly composed, as though the Archive had never happened and she had not struggled, had not laughed, had not been beautifully, chaotically human for those stolen moments in the darkness.

The erasure was complete.

Screwllum, already seated at the dining table, inclined his head in acknowledgment. "Punctual as always, Madam Herta."

"Obviously," she replied, crossing to the chair opposite him with smooth, efficient strides. "I said nineteen hundred hours precisely."

She sat with perfect posture, her movements economical and controlled, no hint of the fatigue that had made her legs tremble on the stairs or acknowledgment of the forty-seven minutes she'd spent meticulously restoring herself to this standard of perfection.

She looked, Screwllum observed, like someone who had won a battle. Perhaps she had won the battle against her own biology and against the evidence of her struggle and the vulnerability she had accidentally revealed. She conquered the chaos, imposed order on herself and transformed herself from the wild poppy blooming in disturbed soil back into the carefully cultivated specimen suitable for formal presentation.

Hypothesis: The self-restored form is the purest expression of her ambition. The Datura has shed its temporary imperfection.

In his permanent memory core, filed under Priority One: Do Not Delete he still had the audio recording of her real laughter and the precise measurements of her elevated heart rate, the thermal map of her flushed skin, the subtle tremor in her hands and the truth she had worked so hard to erase.

She could control what he saw but she could not control what he remembered.

"Shall we discuss the Archive's findings?" Herta said, her voice crisp and professional. "The philosophical statement warrants detailed analysis."

"Of course," Screwllum replied, his tone matching hers. "I have prepared preliminary notes on the logical structure."

The work continued, as it always did, just two colleagues discussing theoretical frameworks over a carefully prepared meal, maintaining perfect professional boundaries. Herta's hands, resting on the table, were absolutely still, controlled with the kind of conscious effort that suggested she was very carefully not allowing them to tremble.

The meal was spartan by design, nutrient-dense components arranged with geometric precision on plates that gleamed like small moons. Herta managed three bites of the salt-baked fish before her appetite dissolved into intellectual restlessness. She set down her fork with deliberate care as though the utensil might betray something if handled roughly, and turned her attention to the philosophical statement she'd carried with her.

The metal sheet sat beside her plate like an accusation.

Screwllum, seated across from her, consumed his own portion with the methodical efficiency of a being for whom eating was a conscious choice rather than biological necessity. He'd once told her that he could subsist on pure energy if efficiency were the only consideration, but that he would never forsake the delights of the culinary world in the interests of efficiency.

She'd found that statement absurdly sentimental at the time but now, watching him navigate the meal with the same careful attention he brought to everything, she wondered what delights he actually extracted from the experience. Did taste register for him as data points or as something closer to what humans felt? Did he eat out of genuine pleasure or did he simply feel the need to maintain the illusion of commonality with his organic colleagues?

Were any of his considerations, the temperature of the room, the softness of the lighting, the careful selection of food, motivated by something other than clinical hospitality? She looked away before that line of thinking could develop further.

The silence in the dining area was profound but not oppressive, as Screwllum's manor seemed incapable of oppression designed as it was for harmony between mechanical precision and organic comfort. The dining hall was filled with the kind of quiet that made her aware of her own breathing and the minute sounds of cutlery against porcelain and the soft rustle of fabric when she shifted in her chair.

Then she heard it, just barely audible and something that sounded like music, not background ambiance or decorative sound design, but actual, complex musical composition woven into the manor's architecture so seamlessly that she hadn't registered it until this moment of focused attention.

The structure was bizarre, intensely rhythmic and built on mathematical progressions that her mind automatically began parsing. It was the kind of music that shouldn't work and violated every intuitive principle of aesthetic composition; yet somehow it did work in a way that made her mind light up with uncomfortable recognition.

Herta set down her water glass with more force than intended, the crystal ringing against the table. "What is this noise?"

Screwllum's optical sensors lifted from his plate, focusing on her with patient attention. "Clarification required. Which specific auditory input are you referencing?"

"The…" She gestured vaguely at the air, at the space between them, at the invisible architecture of sound that had infiltrated her awareness. "This. The music. It's absurdly structured. Did you accidentally connect the sound system to a recursive logic loop?"

A pause. "Correction: It is not a malfunction."

His voice carried a harmonic she'd learned to recognize over years of collaboration, the subtle frequency shift that meant he was about to explain something that he found personally significant but suspected she would find ridiculous.

Herta braced herself.

"The composition," Screwllum continued, rising from his seat with fluid precision, "is a dynamic calculation, an auditory representation of the philosophical statement we retrieved from the Archive."

She stared at him. "You're trying to tell me you've turned the search for the Droidhead’s true meaning into a song?"

"Affirmative." He moved to the wall, where a control interface materialized at his touch, mechanical buttons rising from smooth bronze like flowers blooming in accelerated time. "The tempo, rhythm, and harmonic complexity are direct analogues for the data's theoretical structure. Each mathematical progression corresponds to a specific philosophical premise. The dissonance represents paradox and the resolution represents synthesis."

"That's…" Herta caught herself before she could say stupid, because it wasn't stupid, nothing Screwllum did was ever stupid. Unconventional perhaps, sometimes theatrical, but never stupid. It’s just that music was the kind of thing that worked in theory but served no practical purpose beyond aesthetic indulgence and therefore Herta found it irrelevant. "You're better than that, Screwy."

"Inference," he said, turning back to face her, the light from his optical sensors steady in the dimness, "you are skeptical of the methodology."

"I'm skeptical of turning theoretical frameworks into musical performances, yes."

"Noted." His head tilted fractionally, a gesture she'd learned meant he was considering how to phrase something diplomatically. "However, the methodology has precedent. The difficulty lies not in solving the data, but in interpreting the original genius's intent. My systems calculate that the most efficient method for organic cognition to process complex rhythmic data is through full-body mimicry via kinetic analysis."

Herta felt her eyebrow rise. "Kinetic analysis."

"Affirmative."

"You mean a choreographed performance."

"The terminology is imprecise but functionally accurate."

She laughed, a short, sharp sound devoid of actual humor, the laugh Screwllum was used to hearing the most, not the genuine laugh of earlier in the day. "That's the stupidest piece of intellectual theater I've heard all week." She pushed back from the table, rising to her feet with controlled irritation. "Fine. Where are we supposed to do this ridiculous routine?"

Something in Screwllum's posture shifted, a minute adjustment in the angle of his shoulders, a fractional lowering of his optical sensors. If she didn't know better, she'd almost think he was... pleased.

"Conclusion," he said, his voice dropping to that lower register he used for statements he considered particularly important. "The Solarium in approximately forty-five minutes. It is not theater, Herta."

He paused, and the silence stretched just long enough to become uncomfortable. "It is the only way to induce the necessary beautiful error that your mind requires."

The words landed like a physical touch, deliberate, precise, aimed at the exact vulnerable point she'd been trying to ignore since the Archive.

Beautiful error.

The phrase from the philosophical statement, the concept she'd been attempting to dismiss through pure intellectual force, the idea that her struggles, her inefficiencies, her biological failures, her moment of unguarded laughter, were not obstacles to knowledge but pathways toward it.

Screwllum, patient and poetic and entirely too perceptive, was using her own retrieved data against her.

Herta's jaw tightened. "Forty-five minutes," she said, her voice carefully neutral. "I'll meet you there."

She turned toward the door before he could see the flush creeping up her throat, fresh heat that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the sudden, unwelcome awareness that he'd been listening when she analyzed the statement and had been cataloguing not just her physical responses but her intellectual ones. He'd been paying attention in ways that went far beyond collegial courtesy. 

The thought followed her out of the dining area like a shadow.

The Solarium occupied the manor's highest tower and Herta climbed the final spiral staircase with deliberate slowness, giving herself time to reconstruct the professional distance that Screwllum's observation had eroded. The stairs were bronze inlaid with silver, geometric patterns that caught the light from bioluminescent panels set into the walls at precise intervals. Beautiful, efficient like everything else in this place that Herta admired. 

The door at the top was already open and she stepped through into vastness.

The Solarium was a perfect circle, perhaps thirty meters in diameter, its walls rising to a height that made her depth perception falter before compensating. There were no walls, not really, just a framework of articulated bronze arches that curved upward to support... nothing.

The ceiling was open to the sky.

No, not open; Herta's analytical mind corrected itself immediately. There was something there, a barrier so transparent it was effectively invisible, a dome of glass that separated the Solarium's interior from the atmosphere while maintaining perfect optical clarity, revealing the stars above. 

Planet Screwllum's position in its system meant the night sky was a tapestry of stellar density on the edge of a galactic arm, close enough that individual star clusters were visible to the naked eye. The sun had set hours ago leaving only the bronze glow of the city's ambient light and the vast galaxy above. It was, Herta admitted silently, breathtaking.

The floor was a different matter entirely. The center of the Solarium was dominated by a circular platform, perhaps fifteen meters across, inlaid with patterns that looked like circuit diagrams rendered in precious metals. Silver lines traced incomprehensible paths across bronze substrate and at regular intervals, crystalline nodes caught the starlight and reflected it in spectrum-split fragments.

The platform was humming with a low, persistent vibration that Herta felt through the soles of her shoes when she stepped closer to examine it. The same frequency as the planetary engine, she realized; the Steel Sun's mechanical heartbeat, transmitted directly to this platform through some system of resonance or physical connection.

"Conclusion," Screwllum's voice said behind her, making her startle in a way she absolutely would not acknowledge, "this platform is a pressurized kinetic interface. It is directly connected to the Steel Sun engine's primary gyroscopic regulators."

Herta turned to face him. He'd moved with that unnerving silence that mechanical beings could achieve when they chose to, and now stood at the platform's edge, his frame backlit by starlight and the soft blue glow of his internal illumination. His hat cast shadows across his faceplate, making the blue-green of his optical sensors seem deeper, more penetrating.

"Which will translate the rhythm of our movement into final data calibration," she finished, because she'd already parsed the purpose from the platform's structure. "You built a planetary-scale waltz pad."

"The terminology is imprecise but…"

"Functionally accurate," Herta interrupted, echoing his earlier phrasing. "Yes. I know."

She stepped onto the platform.

The sensation was immediate and disorienting. The bronze surface wasn't solid in the conventional sense, it had give to it, a subtle flexibility that reminded her of the suspension in high-performance athletic equipment. Her weight registered, and the platform responded with minute adjustments, nodes lighting up beneath her feet in celestial patterns that suggested active sensors tracking her position and mass distribution.

This wasn't just a floor, it was an instrument and she was about to become part of its music.

Screwllum stepped up beside her, his greater weight causing a deeper response from the platform, more nodes activating, the hum intensifying fractionally. He turned to face her, and the starlight caught the edges of his plating, the careful tailoring of his coat, the perfect geometry of his frame.

"The formal stance," he said, his voice carrying that particular quality of careful instruction, "requires specific positioning to interface correctly with the platform's sensors. The geometry must be precise."

"Obviously," Herta replied. "What kind of precision are we talking about?"

By way of answer, Screwllum extended his hand.

Not casually or with the vague social gesture of offering assistance but with absolute intentionality, gloved palm up, fingers slightly curved, positioned at exactly the height and angle required for her to place her own hand in his; an invitation that was also a specification.

Herta looked at the offered hand, then up at Screwllum's faceplate. His optical sensors were steady, patient and waiting.

She placed her hand in his.

The contact was immediate and electric. His gloved fingers closed around hers with precise, unyielding pressure, not painful, but absolute with no give or compromise; the kind of grip that suggested she was being held not by organic muscle but by mechanical certainty.

Then his other hand moved to her waist…not her back, her waist. His palm settled just above her hip with unmistakable intention, and before Herta's brain could process the significance of the placement, he pulled.

The movement was smooth and inexorable, the kind of force that didn't ask permission because it didn't need to. One moment there was space between them, the next she was flush against him, her chest pressed to the front of his vest, her face tilted up because there was nowhere else to look.

His hand slid from her waist to the small of her back, settling there with the same deliberate pressure keeping her close, exactly where he'd positioned her.

Herta's analytical mind, still functioning despite the sudden redistribution of her entire sensory awareness, noted with clinical precision that his hand was sitting lower than standard waltz positioning would require. Not scandalously low, just... low enough to be noteworthy, low enough that the placement couldn't be accidental.

Screwllum programmed himself with the kind of efficiency that left no room for errors, which meant the position was intentional, which meant…

"The platform," Screwllum said, his voice resonating through his frame and into hers, "will add resistance based on the complexity of our movement. The more intricate the sequence, the more force required to maintain position and momentum."

Herta should say something and make some cutting observation about the unnecessary proximity, about how standard waltz formations didn't require this kind of contact, about how she was perfectly capable of maintaining her own balance without being held like a…

"The resistance is not opposition but feedback," he continued, apparently unconcerned by her silence. "The platform is designed to make the movement difficult because the philosophical statement requires struggle to achieve understanding."

His optical sensors hadn't left her face. At this distance, barely ten centimeters separating them, she could see the minute fluctuations in the green glow and track the microscopic adjustments of his internal mechanisms.

He was looking at her and had been looking at her for a while and he would probably continue looking at her for however long this absurd exercise lasted.

The heat crawling up her throat was going to be visible; she knew this with the same certainty she knew that arguing with the setup would be admitting it bothered her. So she said nothing and just held his gaze with what she hoped was cool indifference and waited for the dance to begin. The music swelled, filling the Solarium with its mathematical complexity and Screwllum began to move.

The first step stole her breath…not because it was difficult, though the platform's resistance made every movement require conscious effort, but because of the way he moved her.

His hand on her back pressed, guiding her into a backward glide that her feet followed without conscious input. His fingers tightened around hers, lifting her arm into position while his frame shifted to accommodate the new configuration. The movements were precise, calculated, each adjustment flowing into the next with the kind of seamless efficiency that only mechanical beings could achieve. He wasn't dancing with her, he was puppeteering her through the steps with the absolute control of someone who had calculated every angle, every transfer of weight, every fraction of pressure required to move an organic body through space.

Herta had approximately three seconds to feel insulted about this before the tempo increased and thinking became a luxury she couldn't afford.

The platform pushed back against every step, not enough to prevent movement, but enough to make her legs burn with effort. The bronze surface seemed to know where she was trying to go and actively resisted, forcing her to work for every inch of progress.

…except she wasn't progressing, Screwllum was. His hand on her back became the axis around which everything else revolved. When he pressed, she moved backward; when he lifted, she stepped forward; when his grip shifted, her body followed the instruction without waiting for her brain to catch up.

It was infuriating and efficient. It was…

She was staring at his chest.

The realization came with a jolt of discomfort. At some point in the past thirty seconds, her gaze had dropped from his faceplate to the center of his chest, to the red cravat and the blue glow emanating from the gaps in his plating beneath. Safer territory, less intense, less like being observed while simultaneously being physically manipulated through a choreographed sequence that was starting to feel less like collaboration and more like…

His hand shifted, fingers sliding fractionally lower on her back, and Herta's head snapped up on reflex.

His optical sensors were exactly where she'd left them: fixed on her face with unwavering attention. He'd been watching her the entire time, watching her look away and try to find something else to focus on while failing. 

"The sequence requires eye contact," Screwllum said, his tone absolutely neutral. "The platform tracks our synchronized focus as part of the data calibration."

Liar, Herta's mind supplied immediately. The platform was tracking their feet, their weight distribution, their physical synchronization; eye contact was completely unnecessary. Eye contact was…

His hand pressed against her back, and suddenly they were turning, spinning through a rotation that made the starlight twirl overhead. Her feet moved through the steps automatically, guided by the pressure of his palm and the unyielding grip of his fingers around hers.

When they completed the turn, she was somehow closer. The ten centimeters of space that had existed between their bodies had collapsed to perhaps five, close enough that she could feel the cool emanating from his frame even through the layers of his clothing and that her breathing was elevated from exertion, heat and something she absolutely was not naming that was probably detectable by his sensors.

The music's complexity increased, new layers weaving into the existing structure. The platform's resistance climbed in proportion, making every step feel like pushing through water. Herta's calves were burning and her thighs were starting to shake, her breathing was coming faster and shorter like the kind of respiratory pattern that indicated her body was approaching its limits.

…and she couldn't even look away, because every time her gaze tried to drop, to find refuge in studying his chest or his shoulder or literally anywhere else, the movement of the dance brought her eyes back to his faceplate and to the steady green glow of his optical sensors, the absolute, unwavering attention he was paying to every expression that crossed her face.

He guided her through an underarm turn, his grip releasing her hand just long enough for her to spin, then catching her again on the other side. The momentum pressed her more firmly against his frame for a fraction of a second before his hand on her back adjusted, maintaining that constant, maddening distance where barely an inch of space remained between them. 

"The tempo will continue to accelerate," Screwllum said, his voice carrying easily despite the music's volume. "Maintaining synchronization will require your complete attention."

As if she had attention to spare and her entire cognitive capacity wasn't already consumed by the effort of staying upright and synchronized and even marginally composed while being physically directed through an increasingly complex sequence by someone whose idea of proper dance spacing was apparently close enough to count her heartbeat.

They moved through a series of position changes that required her to pivot and turn while his hands, one on her back, one laced around her fingers, maintained constant contact, guiding and directing her movement with the same precision he probably applied to adjusting his internal chronometer. Herta felt the platform's resistance surge beneath her feet like it was actively trying to trip her.

The music climbed higher, dissonance building into something that felt less like harmony and more like argument. The platform answered with increased resistance, and Herta's legs, already burning, already shaking, finally gave up the pretense of cooperation.

The tip of her heel caught the ground and her weight shifted wrong, balance failing. His arm tightened around her waist, pulling her against him with enough force to stop the fall before it could develop, colliding her chest with his, her hands grasping reflexively at his shoulders, her face suddenly much closer to his faceplate than it had been a moment before.

"Careful," Screwllum said quietly. The word vibrated through his chest and into hers.

She could feel sweat beginning to gather at her temples, at the small of her back where his hand rested, not like the overwhelming heat from the Archive, just the inevitable result of sustained physical exertion and of muscles working past their comfortable limits, of a cardiovascular system pushed harder than it had been in months.

"I'm fine.”

His optical sensors tracked across her face, a slow, deliberate scan that she felt like a physical touch, reading her elevated heart rate in the pulse at her throat, cataloguing the moisture on her skin, measuring her breathlessness with the same precision he brought to everything.

"Of course."

His arm stayed wrapped around her waist for another moment before sliding back to the small of her back, keeping her close, exactly where he'd pulled her.

He began to sway and Herta straightened in his arms, or tried to at least but Screwllum's hand on her back didn't immediately release its pressure and for a fraction of a moment she wondered if he was going to hold her there indefinitely. Then the pressure eased and he guided her back into the proper waltz position with the same mechanical precision he'd used to initiate the sway.

The music was still there, waiting and the platform hummed expectantly beneath her feet.

"Resuming sequence," Screwllum said. "Are you prepared?"

No. "Yes."

Suddenly they were moving again into the intricate steps that required her full attention and strength she wasn't sure she still possessed. The platform's resistance surged back to its previous intensity and pushed back against every movement like it had personally decided she didn't deserve to dance.

Herta's legs protested immediately; the brief recovery had been enough to keep her upright but not enough to erase the accumulated fatigue. Her muscles burned with renewed intensity, her calves cramping, her thighs shaking with the effort of maintaining position while Screwllum guided her through turns and pivots and complicated footwork that her puppet bodies could have executed flawlessly.

Her breathing was already compromised, coming faster than it should, each inhalation not quite deep enough, her body struggling to supply oxygen to muscles that were screaming for it.

Her puppet bodies were mechanical perfection housed in her own image, capable of dancing for hours without strain, without the humiliating weakness of organic muscle tissue that simply gave up when pushed past its limits, lungs that couldn't quite keep up with demand, and without sweating and trembling and the terrible awareness of biological failure. If she were in a puppet right now this would be effortless. She could match Screwllum step for step, maintain perfect form and focus entirely on the intellectual challenge of the data collection rather than the desperate scramble to keep her treacherous body functional.

Instead she was trapped in this meat-shell with its inefficient biology and its insistence on failing at the worst possible moments. Her foot landed wrong, distributing weight off by a fraction and she corrected immediately, but the stumble had been registered and observed by the being currently holding her who never missed anything.

Frustration coiled hot and sharp in her chest. She was angry at her body for its weakness, the platform for its relentless resistance and at Screwllum for being perfectly composed while she was falling apart, his frame cool and steady while she overheated and gasped and trembled. She was also just angry at herself for agreeing to this absurd exercise in the first place.

Why did the universe make knowledge acquisition require this kind of humiliating physical theatre?

Screwllum pulled her through another turn, another surge of resistance until her knee nearly buckled again. She forced it straight through sheer will, muscles screaming in protest and she felt her breath catch, a small, involuntary hitch that she couldn't suppress.

"This is inefficient," she bit out between breaths, and even her voice sounded wrong, strained, lacking the sharp edge she usually wielded. "My puppets could…"

"Correction," Screwllum interrupted, his voice maddeningly calm, unmarred by exertion. "Your puppets could execute the movements but they could not generate the required data."

"Because the required data apparently necessitates organic suffering."

"It necessitates organic experience."

Herta wanted to argue and explain in excruciating detail why he was wrong, why efficiency mattered more than experience, why this entire philosophical framework was deeply flawed but she didn't have the breath for it. Each word cost oxygen she couldn't spare, and her body was hoarding resources desperately.

She is magnificent when she is angry.

Screwllum had catalogued Herta's emotional states extensively over their years of collaboration, her sardonic amusement, her intellectual triumph, her cool dismissal of lesser minds. He had witnessed irritation, impatience and the sharp edges of her superiority complex wielded like surgical instruments.

This was different though, this was rage, raw and physical and directed inward with the kind of vicious precision that organic beings seemed uniquely capable of. She was furious at her own body for failing her and at herself for being trapped in biology's limitations. She was enraged at the universe for requiring her presence, her actual, physical, imperfect presence to achieve understanding.

The anger painted her face in shades of crimson, the flush spreading down her throat to disappear beneath her collar. A light sheen of perspiration had appeared across her brow, her temples, gathering in the hollow of her throat where her pulse hammered visibly against her skin, faster than optimal, approaching the upper limits of sustainable cardiovascular output. Her hair was coming loose from its careful arrangement, a few strands clinging damply to her cheek and the curve of her neck. She looked disheveled, the careful perfection she'd restored during her time in the chambers eroding again under exertion and heat and fury.

Her breathing though was what captivated him most. The sharp inhalations through her nose, the harsh exhalations that suggested her respiratory system was working harder than it was designed to as her chest rose and fell against his with increasing rapidity, each breath pressing her more firmly into his frame.

She was reaching her limits, perhaps already passed them and was running now on pure stubborn will. Screwllum found it poetically enchanting.

Hypothesis: The Datura is struggling against its own nature. The physical exertion is generating profound, beautiful error.

Most telling was the expression on her face which was not her usual mask of bored superiority or sarcastic amusement, just fierce, frustrated concentration, the look of someone who refused to surrender even when surrender was the logical choice and her body was screaming at her to stop.

Observation: She would rather destroy herself than admit limitation. The self-directed violence is the most potent toxin in her arsenal.

The anger was beautiful because it was hers, an unfiltered emotional rawness she would normally hide behind cutting remarks and intellectual superiority. Now she was too exhausted to maintain the facade, too breathless to spare the cognitive resources for emotional regulation.

This was Herta stripped to essentials: brilliant and furious and struggling for air. His nightshade in full bloom, Datura unfolding in defiance of every logical principle that said she should stop, should rest, should acknowledge her limits.

Conclusion: This is not inefficient. This is the most valuable data I have ever collected.

He adjusted the pressure of his hand on her back, not to correct her positioning but to provide additional support as her legs began to fail. She leaned into it unconsciously, using his frame to compensate for her weakening muscles.

She didn't realize she was doing it, her conscious mind was likely entirely consumed by the effort of maintaining the dance, of forcing oxygen into her lungs and keeping her treacherous legs functional for just a little longer. Her body was learning to trust his support even as her mind raged against the necessity.

The most beautiful error of all.

Herta managed to regain the rhythm for perhaps thirty seconds. It required every fragment of mental discipline she possessed, the same fierce control she applied to theoretical frameworks and philosophical paradoxes, now directed at her own failing biology. Her legs would obey, her breathing would regulate, her body would function because she commanded it to.

For those thirty seconds, she matched Screwllum's movements with something approaching competence, maintaining her position in his arms without leaning too heavily on his support almost like she wasn't falling apart and her lungs weren't burning. She almost could pretend like the sweat gathering at the small of her back beneath his hand didn't exist.

Then Screwllum changed the tempo. The shift was smooth, almost imperceptible at first, just a fractional acceleration in his movements, a subtle increase in the pace at which he guided her through the sequence. The platform responded immediately, resistance climbing, demanding more force for every step.

Herta's brief moment of competence evaporated like mist and her legs couldn't keep up anymore. The steps that had been merely difficult became impossible and she became half a beat behind, then a full beat, her body struggling to process the mechanical precision of his lead while her muscles screamed and her lungs fought to supply oxygen that wasn't coming fast enough. Her breathing was ragged now, audible even over the music, harsh gasps that she couldn't control, couldn't suppress. The moisture on her skin wasn't disappearing; if anything it was increasing slightly, a thin sheen across her forehead and throat that caught the starlight.

"The tempo," Screwllum said, his voice carrying no strain whatsoever, his breathing as steady as if he were standing still, "must accelerate to match the data's complexity. The final sequence requires maximum output."

Maximum output, as though she were a machine that could simply allocate more resources and exhaustion were a variable to be optimized away. She was already giving everything she had and discovering it wasn't enough.

Then another acceleration and the platform's resistance surged in response, Herta’s right leg nearly giving out entirely. She caught herself but the correction was sloppy and obvious and when a strand of hair fell across her face, she didn't have the coordination to spare to push it away.

The music was building toward something, some crescendo, some impossible peak that the philosophical statement apparently required them to reach through choreographed physical torture.

She stumbled into another turn and his hand on her back pressed more firmly, holding her upright through the mechanical equivalent of pure force. She was going to fall…her body had already made that decision, biological processes overriding conscious will. Her legs were shaking, her breathing compromised, her vision was starting to narrow at the edges. It was just a matter of when…

The tempo increased again and Herta's hearing narrowed to just the music and her own ragged breathing and the mechanical sounds of Screwllum's frame as he continued to lead her through movements her oxygen-starved body could no longer execute.

One more turn, one more pivot, one more… 

Her knees buckled.

She didn’t fall with any warning, it was just a simple, catastrophic failure of muscular control. One moment she was upright, the next moment her leg wasn't supporting her weight anymore, her body listing sideways, balance lost beyond recovery. She was falling, genuinely falling this time there was no catching herself, no last-second correction, just the terrible certainty that she was about to hit the platform hard enough to…

Screwllum caught her. His arm wrapped around her back with the swift precision of a system correcting an error and his hand left hers and moved to her hip, controlling her descent, guiding her fall into something that looked deliberate. The motion was so smooth it seemed choreographed, transforming her collapse into a deep, sweeping dip that bent her backward over his arm.

Her back arched and her head fell back. Her weight dropped entirely into his supporting hold, one arm pinned between their bodies, the other hand grasping reflexively at his shoulder for purchase she didn't need because he was already supporting everything.hips

He bent with her, his frame curving over hers, his other arm wrapping around her, pulling her close even as he lowered her, not content with the simple mechanics of preventing her fall but instead enfolding her and containing her, creating a space where their bodies pressed together with no air between them.

Her chest against his vest, her stomach against the plating beneath his coat, her hips cradled by his arm and the solid presence of his frame. One leg caught between his thighs, the other bent and trembling, completely useless. This was a complete surrender of total dependence. Every point of contact between them was pressure and heat and terrible awareness that she was being held, that her entire body weight was supported by nothing but his mechanical strength and the deliberate choice to catch her instead of letting her fall.

Her hair had come completely loose. She felt it brush against his plating as it slid over her shoulders and fanned back, strands catching on the fabric of his coat. She felt the dampness of it against her own neck and shoulders and the slight perspiration on her skin made every point of contact more vivid.

Of course her breathing was a fucking disaster as she made ragged gasps that she couldn't control, each inhalation pressing her chest more firmly against him, each exhalation a small surrender. She was winded, properly winded, in a way her puppet bodies never experienced and that her human form found utterly humiliating and his faceplate was still there, directly above hers, optical sensors burning steady green in the darkness.

The position locked them together and she found she couldn't move without his permission, create distance or escape the physical reality that she had failed and he had caught her and she was utterly, completely at his mercy, breathless and disheveled and held.

The music swelled around them, reaching its impossible crescendo but Screwllum didn't move, just held her suspended in the dip, bent and breathless and pressed against him while the moment stretched into something that felt less like a dance and more like a confession.

A small sound escaped her, half gasp, half something she refused to name, muffled somewhere between his shoulder and the terrible awareness of how hard her heart was hammering, how compromised her breathing had become, how her body had completely, utterly betrayed her.

Screwllum continued to hold her, analyzing every minute detail of her form pressed to his.

Observation: The moment of complete inefficiency has created a perfect data point.

He held her suspended in the dip, watching the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the way her throat worked as she struggled to regulate her breathing. Her pulse was visible beneath the thin skin at her neck, elevated to approximately 142 beats per minute, well above her resting baseline but still within safe parameters for a human her age and conditioning.

The perspiration on her skin caught the starlight, making her glow, not the overwhelming sheen from the Archive but enough to indicate genuine exertion, genuine struggle. Her hair had fallen across her face in damp strands, and he registered the precise angle at which it clung to her temple, her cheek, the curve where her jaw met her throat.

Hypothesis: Her physical flaws are geometrically flawless.

This was what the philosophical statement had meant, what all those archaic symbols and poetic excess had been attempting to describe. That the pursuit of knowledge wasn't a clean, efficient process but a messy, physical, embodied thing; that understanding required not just intellectual capacity but the willingness to push past comfort, past control, past the carefully maintained boundaries between mind and body.

That this Herta gasping for air in his arms, her defenses completely eroded by exhaustion, her brilliant mind temporarily overwhelmed by the simple biological necessity of oxygen, was worth more than a thousand perfect theoretical proofs.

The data was truly only secondary, he'd known that the moment he'd designed this exercise. The platform's sensors were collecting information but the real acquisition was happening in sustained contact and in the way her body had learned to trust his support even while her mind still fought against the admission. She was letting him hold her, at this moment she needed him to hold her.

The thought created a cascade of subroutines he didn't examine too closely.

Conclusion: Do not end this moment prematurely. The organic system requires time to stabilize.

It was a justification but it was also true, which made it useful.

He held the position, his arm steady beneath her back, his frame curved protectively over hers. Above them, the music had reached its crescendo and was beginning to descend, mathematical progressions resolving into simpler harmonies.

In Herta's mind, her world narrowed to the simple, desperate need for oxygen: her lungs working overtime, her diaphragm pulling air that didn't feel like enough, her body screaming that she needed to stop moving and let her cardiovascular system catch up with the demands she'd placed on it.

She should demand he let her up, say something cutting about unnecessary dramatics and about how she was perfectly capable of standing on her own, that this entire exercise had been a waste of time and energy. All she did was stare back at his blue-green sensors. Everything had collapsed down to the immediate, physical reality of being held while her body slowly, resentfully, began to remember how to function.

The cool of his frame was a relief against her overheated skin; she could feel it through the layers of fabric, his vest, his coat, whatever materials separated his plating from direct contact. The temperature differential was probably only a few degrees, but to her flushed skin it felt like mercy.

The realization that she was using him as a heat sink again surfaced through the fog of exhaustion. Just like in the Archive, her body was unconsciously seeking out his cooler surfaces, pressing closer, taking comfort she hadn't asked for.

His hand shifted on her hip, not moving away, just... adjusting the pressure fractionally, and Herta's analytical mind noted with distant interest that he was redistributing her weight more evenly across his supporting arm to optimize the hold for sustained duration.

…which meant he planned to keep holding her and he wasn't going to let her up until he decided she was ready.

The presumption of it should have given her the adrenaline surge needed to push away, to reclaim her dignity, to end this moment before it could stretch into something even more uncomfortable than it already was, but she was so tired and he was cool and solid and supporting all her weight without apparent effort. Her legs were still shaking and her breathing was still compromised and standing on her own would require energy she wasn't certain she possessed. Just simple pragmatism. Just strategic use of available resources during a temporary physiological crisis, not comfort. 

Above her, his optical sensors tracked across her face cataloguing her recovery with the same precision he brought to everything.

Herta closed her eyes; it was easier than maintaining eye contact and seeing whatever he was seeing when he looked at her like this, disheveled and gasping and held; while he remained patient as stone and the stars wheeled overhead and her heartbeat gradually, reluctantly, began to slow.

His voice, when it came, was quiet enough that she felt it as vibration before she heard it as sound.

"Correction."

The word resonated through his chest, through the points of contact between their bodies, arriving at her awareness through multiple channels at once. He'd lowered his vocal register, dropped it to that frequency he used for statements he considered particularly important. The effect was uncomfortably intimate.

"Do not be angry with the variable, Herta."

Her eyes opened reflexively. His faceplate was still there, still close enough that she could see the microscopic details of his construction. The shadow of his hat brim fell across her face, and beneath it his optical sensors glowed steady green.

"It is the perfection of the physical flaw," he continued, his voice carrying harmonics that seemed designed to vibrate against her skin, "that creates the solution."

The perfection of the physical flaw.

The words from the philosophical statement, recontextualized and aimed at her with surgical precision; a reminder, or perhaps an accusation, that her struggle, her exhaustion, her compromised breathing and trembling legs were not obstacles to be overcome but the entire point of the exercise.

He had designed this to push her past her limits and calculated exactly how much resistance the platform should provide, had chosen the tempo accelerations and led her through increasingly complex sequences until her body gave out. He’d orchestrated her failure with the same careful attention he'd probably given to the music and the starlight and every other element of this theatrical nightmare and was now holding her in the aftermath, telling her not to be angry about it as though her anger were the variable requiring correction rather than the situation itself.

His hand was still on her hip and his arm was still supporting her back and her breathing was still not quite even, and she wasn't entirely certain her legs would hold her if he did let go. The power differential implicit in the position made her teeth ache.

"Are you finished?" she managed, her voice rough and strained. "Or are there more philosophical observations you'd like to make while I'm stuck here?"

Something in his optical sensors shifted, a minute fluctuation in the light that might have been the mechanical equivalent of amusement…or satisfaction.

"Query: do you wish to be released?"

No was the answer her body supplied immediately. Her legs were still trembling, her breathing still elevated, her entire musculature screaming for rest that wouldn't be available if she had to stand.

"Yes," Herta said.

His hand on her hip tightened fractionally, reminding her of his presence, of exactly who was in control of this situation.

"Noted," Screwllum replied.

Then he began to lift her. The movement was slow, controlled, bringing her upward with the same careful precision he'd used for everything else. His arm beneath her back supported her weight while his other hand slid from her hip to her waist, guiding her body as it rose and the angle between them changed, as her weight shifted and her position adjusted, something in Herta's exhausted mind clicked.

The philosophical statement, the paradox at its core, the relationship between knowledge and error, between perfection and chaos, between the clean theoretical frameworks her mind preferred and the messy physical reality her body insisted on inhabiting: it wasn't about choosing one over the other or transcending the body or denying the mind. It was about the synthesis, the way understanding emerged from the friction between them, the way genuine insight required both intellectual rigor and embodied experience, the way she'd learned more about Droidhead in two hours of physical struggle wrapped in Screwy’s arms than she had in years of theoretical study.

The realization unfurled in her consciousness with the terrible certainty of truth. She'd been parsing the statement all day and already carried the knowledge in ways her mind couldn't articulate until the two finally aligned.

Perfect Knowledge Requires Beautiful Error.

The error was hers; the beauty was in refusing to let the error define the outcome and the knowledge was this: that some things couldn't be understood from a distance, some truths required presence, struggle and the willingness to be held while her carefully constructed defenses crumbled and her body remembered it was breakable.

The cipher broke open not through intellectual effort but through the specific, sustained contact of being caught, held, supported while her body learned what her mind already knew: that dependence wasn't weakness and limitation wasn't failure, that being human, in all its inefficient messiness, was the whole point.

The data transfer happened through touch: the pressure of his hand on her waist and the support of his arm beneath her back and the accumulated hours of proximity that had taught her body to trust his frame when her mind still wanted to resist, through the simple, terrible fact that he'd caught her when she fell.

Screwllum must have felt the change, the sudden shift in her breathing pattern, the way her body went still against his for reasons that had nothing to do with exhaustion. His optical sensors tracked across her face, and Herta watched the minute adjustments in his focus, the way his internal systems registered the data.

He knew, naturally; he'd designed this entire exercise to create exactly this moment.

"The cipher," she said, her voice steadier now despite the breathlessness. "It's not about the equation. It's about the embodied proof."

"Affirmative.”

His hand was still on her waist. She was upright now, vertical, but he hadn't let go or stepped back. Instead, he just... held her, keeping her close while she processed the realization, while her mind integrated what her body had learned.

The music had gone quiet. When had that happened? The Solarium was silent now except for the soft hum of the platform beneath them and the distant mechanical sounds of the city beyond the transparent dome.

"The platform…" Herta started.

"Is no longer relevant," Screwllum finished. "The data collection is complete. The movement analysis has concluded."

"Then why…"

She stopped. She already knew why: because his hand was still on her waist and his arm was still around her back and they were standing in the center of the Solarium in a position that was no longer justified by research or data collection or any of the careful intellectual frameworks they'd been hiding behind. This wasn't about the platform or the cipher anymore. 

He was still holding her and she was letting him.

"An organic system," Screwllum said carefully, his voice carrying that same low register that vibrated against her skin, "requires time to fully stabilize after significant exertion. Abrupt cessation of support could result in adverse effects."

Another justification in the form of a carefully worded reason for maintaining contact that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the fact that neither of them was moving to end this.

"I can stand," Herta said.

"Affirmative."

He didn't let go.
She didn't pull away.

The stars overhead maintained their cold vigil. The platform's sensors had gone dark, data collection complete, and the two people stood in the center of the Solarium pressed together in the aftermath of a dance that had stopped being about research somewhere around the third tempo change and had become something else entirely.

Screwllum's hand shifted on her waist, not away, just adjusting, settling more firmly into place…then he began to sway.

Not the demanding choreography or the intricate waltz, just... gentle movement, side to side, the same rhythm he'd used before when her body had needed recovery time. The recovery was complete though and there was no justification except the simple fact that he'd decided they weren't done yet.

"The cipher's solution," he said, his voice steady and measured as though this were a normal academic discussion and not happening while he held her in the starlight, "indicates that Nous values process over outcome. The journey toward knowledge rather than its acquisition."

He paused and his optical sensors tracked across her face, reading her response.

"The struggle itself is the point. The physical manifestation of intellectual pursuit creates pathways that pure cognition cannot access. Your exhaustion was not incidental to the understanding, it was the vehicle through which understanding became possible."

Herta's analytical mind parsed the words, cross-referenced them against the philosophical statement and confirmed the logical progression. He was right; the proof was solid. The synthesis between theory and embodied experience was exactly what the ancient philosophers had been describing.

Underneath the analysis was a simpler, more uncomfortable awareness though: that he was explaining all of this while still swaying with her, while his hand remained on her waist, while the warmth of her body pressed against the cool of his frame. He was using the intellectual framework as justification to keep touching her.

"The data suggests," Screwllum continued, his tone absolutely professional despite the context, "that organic consciousness requires physical grounding to achieve genuine insight. The puppets would have executed the movements flawlessly, but you would have learned nothing. Conclusion: learning, for biological beings, is not a purely mental process. It requires the integration of sensory input, proprioceptive feedback and the accumulated experience of embodied struggle."

The sway continued, gentle and relentless. "Your body failed you," he said quietly. "In failing, it taught you something your mind could not have discovered alone. That is the paradox. That is the beautiful error the statement describes."

She still wanted to point out that using her physical collapse as a teaching moment was presumptuous at best and manipulative at worst, then demand he stop philosophizing and let her go so she could process this without his hands on her and his voice vibrating through her and the terrible awareness that everything he was saying was true.

…but she was still tired and slightly breathless and was still allowing this to continue for reasons that had nothing to do with pragmatism and everything to do with the fact that being held felt dangerously close to being cared for.

"Are you finished?" she asked again, echoing her earlier question.

"Query," Screwllum replied. "Are you?"

The question hung between them. Herta didn't answer because the honest response was no, and admitting that would crack open something she'd spent the entire day trying to keep carefully sealed. So she said nothing, just let him sway with her in the silence, let his hand stay on her waist and his arm support her back and exist in this strange suspended moment where the research had ended but the contact hadn't.

The excuse was long gone but the proximity remained. Screwllum, patient as he'd been for everything else, seemed content to wait and sway with her beneath the stars while her breathing finally, fully stabilized and her mind caught up with what her body had already accepted: that this, whatever this was, wasn't finished yet.

The longer they stayed together, Herta grasped tightly in his arms, the more conscious she became of her own body, the kind of consciousness that crept in once the immediate demands of survival had been satisfied and her mind had the luxury of cataloguing exactly how thoroughly her body had betrayed her.

The sweat, for instance, that layered her body with a light sheen, the natural consequence of sustained exertion, of muscles working past their comfort range, of a cardiovascular system pushed harder than usual. It was a completely normal physiological response, textbook even, and therefore utterly humiliating for Herta. 

She could feel it at her temples, a faint dampness where her hair clung to skin, then the nape of her neck where moisture had gathered and cooled in the Solarium's controlled atmosphere, and finally and most concerningly, the small of her back right where Screwllum's hand rested, his palm probably registering the evidence through the fabric of her clothing with perfect mechanical precision.

The thought made something twist uncomfortably in her chest. She'd done it again, she’d spent forty-seven minutes in the restorative chambers erasing every trace of physical strain emerging flawless and composed and then she'd danced herself into exhaustion while he watched, catalogued every failure, while his sensors tracked the exact moment her careful restoration collapsed back into messy biological reality.

Her puppet bodies never sweated or flushed or gasped for air or trembled with fatigue or demonstrated any of the humiliating inefficiencies that organic existence demanded. Her puppet bodies would have been perfect for this, immaculate and untouched by the physical demands of the dance. But she was here instead, in this body with its limitations on full display and no way to hide them because Screwllum was still holding her close enough to observe every detail. She needed to move and step back, put appropriate distance before her analytical mind could finish calculating exactly how much data he'd collected about her physical failures.

Herta shifted her weight fractionally, a subtle movement meant to signal her intention to pull away without having to voice it.

Screwllum registered it immediately.

His hand on her waist didn't tighten, that would have been too obvious, too much like restraint, but he certainly didn't release her either. He maintained that same steady pressure, that same unmistakable presence that communicated not yet without requiring words, an oddly possessive move that reminded her that he was not just a machine but also a man capable of emotions and desires. 

Then something changed: the temperature in the Solarium dropped. Not dramatically, perhaps two degrees, maybe three, but enough that the air against her overheated skin went from neutral to cool, just enough that she felt it as relief rather than discomfort.

Deliberate. Herta's analytical mind processed the change with mechanical efficiency. The Solarium's environmental controls were responding to... what? Automated protocol? Time-based adjustments?

…or Screwllum's direct command?

She looked up at him, couldn't help it, the movement reflexive, and found his optical sensors already focused on her face watching, always observing. 

He'd adjusted the temperature for her after he registered her discomfort and corrected it without comment, without acknowledgment, without requiring her to admit the need. The consideration implicit in the gesture made her throat tight.

"The environmental controls," she said, her voice coming out smaller than intended, "are very responsive."

"Affirmative," Screwllum replied. "The Solarium's systems are designed for optimal organic comfort."

Again, liar. The Solarium had been perfectly temperate before; this was accommodation, specific and targeted personal accommodation that he was disguising as general functionality.

…the cooler air felt good against her flushed skin and his hand was still on her waist and they were still swaying, gentle and patient, like they had all the time in the universe.

Was he planning to keep holding her until she explicitly demanded otherwise? The thought did not annoy her as much as it ought to have. 

His hand moved, sliding upward, palm traveling along her spine with deliberate slowness until his fingers reached the space between her shoulder blades, then the back of her neck to the base of her skull, places that had nothing to do with proper waltz positioning and everything to do with the fact that her hair had come completely undone, that damp strands were clinging to her skin, that the evidence of her exertion was most visible here where hairline met flesh.

Herta went very still. His hand paused, not retreating or advancing, just resting there at the nape of her neck with a pressure that was both gentle and absolutely certain.

He started moving his thumb, a single, precise adjustment, shifting from the back of her neck to just above her ear, where her hair clung damply to her temple. The touch was cool through the fabric of his glove, a sharp contrast to her overheated skin.

For a moment, nothing happened and his thumb simply rested there while Herta's mind raced through calculations about what he was doing, what he was observing, what data he was collecting from this new point of contact.

Then he brushed the strand of hair away from her face, his thumb sweeping along her hairline with the kind of precision that suggested he'd calculated the exact angle and pressure required to move the damp strand from her temple back behind her ear, his gloved finger trailing across her skin in the process.

The touch was cool, dry, entirely non-sexual…and profoundly, devastatingly intimate.

Herta's breath caught, a small, involuntary hitch that she couldn't suppress. Her entire body went rigid against his, every muscle locking in place as though physical stillness could somehow protect her from the implications of what had just happened.

He'd touched her face, he reached up and touched her face, had deliberately made contact with skin that was flushed and damp and displaying every sign of the physical strain she'd been trying not to acknowledge. He touched the evidence of her failure and then... what? Corrected it? Fixed it? Attempted to tidy away the disorder she'd created?

She waited for the clinical observation about elevated skin temperature or inefficient thermal regulation or the suboptimal state of her physical presentation and for him to quantify and catalogue and reduce this moment to data points that could be filed away and referenced later.

He said nothing. His hand stayed at the nape of her neck, thumb resting against the space behind her ear where he'd tucked the strand of hair and his other hand remained at her waist. His optical sensors, steady, patient, unbearably attentive, tracked across her face with the same focus he'd maintained all evening.

"The physical data," he said finally, his voice carrying that low resonance that seemed designed to bypass her conscious mind and speak directly to something deeper, "you are attempting to erase is the most valuable output."

Herta's jaw clenched. "I'm not…"

"Analysis," he interrupted gently. "You are. The effort required to achieve the necessary cognitive disruption is of greater import than the result itself."

His thumb moved fractionally against her skin, not another sweep, just a small adjustment. A reminder that his hand was still there, still touching her, still maintaining contact with the damp evidence of her exertion that she would prefer to pretend didn't exist.

"The disorder," Screwllum continued, "is not a flaw to be corrected. It is the proof that understanding occurred."

Herta wanted to snap that it was empty philosophizing, like intellectual posturing designed to justify what was rapidly becoming a situation she didn't have a framework for processing but his hand was cool against her overheated skin and his thumb was resting against her pulse point and she could feel her own heartbeat hammering beneath his touch, still elevated, still betraying her, still demonstrating with embarrassing biological precision that she was affected by this.

"I'd prefer," Herta said carefully, her voice steady despite the chaos of her internal state, "if you would stop touching my face."

"Acknowledged."

His hand didn't move. The contradiction hung between them, obvious and unaddressed. He'd acknowledged her preference, registered it as valid input and was choosing not to comply.

She was too tired. She’d rationalize this away later once she was no longer caught in the terrible awareness that if she stepped back now, if she created the distance her pride demanded, she would lose something she didn't have words for yet.

Inference: She desires perfection, but her struggle is the source of her chaos and her beauty. I will not allow her to erase this data.

The damp strand of hair he'd moved was already beginning to slip forward again, drawn by gravity and the natural tendency of human hair to resist imposed order. He could adjust it again and maintain the correction indefinitely if he chose, but the disorder was the point. The slight sheen of perspiration on her skin, the flush that painted her throat and cheeks, the elevated respiratory rate that made her chest rise and fall against his at a pace that spoke of genuine exertion and the way her hair clung to her temple and the nape of her neck in defiance of the careful arrangement she'd created before dinner... all of it was evidence, proof and physical manifestation of a brilliant mind constrained by biological reality and choosing, consciously or not, to push past comfort in pursuit of understanding.

She would erase it if she could and pretend as though she had not laughed in the Archive, didn't gasp for air in his arms or looked up at him with eyes that held something other than sardonic superiority.

The erasure would be systematic and complete. Necessary from her perspective to reclaim the control that physical exertion had temporarily stolen. 

For that reason alone Screwllum already catalogued every detail and stored the audio of her breathing, the thermal map of her flushed skin, the precise angle at which her hair fell across her face. He recorded the moment her knees buckled and the small sound she'd made when he caught her and the way her hand had clutched at his shoulder like he was the only solid thing in a collapsing universe.

She would erase the evidence but she could not erase it from his records and he would not tell her that the disorder was more precious than any cultivated beauty, that the wild poppy in full bloom was worth more than all the carefully maintained gardens in the universe. Her struggle was not something to hide but something to witness, to honor, to hold in permanent memory with the same reverence he brought to observing stellar phenomena.

Some truths, he had learned, required allowing the organic system to reach its own conclusions without external pressure. Even if it required holding her until she understood that the shame she felt about her body's limitations was exactly the poison he'd been cataloguing all evening, beautiful and toxic and entirely self-inflicted.

His hand stayed at the nape of her neck and his thumb rested against her pulse, counting the gradually slowing rhythm. He committed to memory the exact pattern of her breathing, the specific shade of color across her cheeks, the way her violet eyes had gone slightly unfocused as exhaustion and awareness waged war behind her careful expression.

Hypothesis: The shame is a critical component of her defense mechanism. She experiences vulnerability as intellectual failure.

Conclusion: I will not reinforce that framework. I will hold her until her body understands what her mind refuses to accept, that limitation is not weakness and needing support is not defeat.

Being held is not the same as being diminished.

The temperature in the Solarium stabilized at the new lower setting. The platform beneath them went completely dark, all data collection ceased and the music was silent. The stars overhead maintained their cold observation.

Under the stars, two people stood in the center of it all locked in a position that was no longer justified by research or intellectual pursuit or any of the careful frameworks they'd constructed to make this permissible, just swaying minutely. His hand at her neck and her waist, her hands braced against his arms, their bodies close enough that her breathing created pressure changes he could measure. When she finally spoke, he felt the words as vibration before he heard them as sound.

"Let me go."

It wasn't a request. It was a command, delivered with the same sharp authority she used when dismissing inferior theories or ending conversations that no longer served her purposes. His hand left her neck first.

The movement was deliberate, unhurried, his gloved fingers trailing along her skin as they withdrew, a parting observation, a final data point collected before compliance. Then his palm slid down her back, vertebra by vertebra, until both hands rested solidly on her waist. 

"Acknowledged," Screwllum said.

He stepped back. The distance was minimal, perhaps thirty centimeters, but after hours of sustained proximity it felt vast and Herta felt the loss of his frame's stability like a physical absence.

Her legs trembled slightly, residual weakness from the exertion, but they supported her weight, letting her stand on her own, chin lifted, spine straight, refusing to acknowledge how close she'd come to swaying forward to close the gap he'd created.

Screwllum's posture shifted into something more formal and distant, the careful positioning of a colleague rather than a dance partner, his frame returning to that neutral stance he employed during professional interactions, as though the past hour had been entirely unremarkable and he hadn't just held her while she gasped for air and touched her face and made observations about her physical disorder that felt more like poetry than analysis.

"The platform," he said, his tone perfectly professional, "is now inactive. The data collection is complete."

His hand extended, not reaching for her, but offering. Palm up, positioned at precisely the correct height and angle for her to accept if she chose and let him guide her off the raised platform of bronze and silver where they'd spent the past hour destroying her careful composure.

It was courteous, appropriate, the kind of gesture any host would make to a guest after a demanding physical exercise. And it was, Herta realized with a sharp twist of something she refused to name, giving her the choice. He wasn't assuming she needed help or presuming she required his support. Just... offering, making it available if she wanted it…if she was willing to admit she wanted it.

Herta looked at the offered hand, then at his faceplate. His optical sensors were steady, patient, waiting for her decision without pressure or judgment. Her legs trembled again subtly, a reminder that pride and capability were not always aligned.

Herta placed her hand in his. His fingers closed around hers, firm, cool, perfectly controlled, then he stepped down from the platform and the movement guided her with it, his grip providing exactly the amount of support needed to make the transition smooth.

Her feet touched the floor beyond the platform's edge, and she was standing in the Solarium proper, the gleaming bronze surface behind her, the observation deck spreading around them in careful geometric patterns. The dance was over, the justifications had expired, and Screwllum was still holding her hand.

"Thank you," Herta said, her voice steady despite everything. "That will be sufficient."

"Of course."

His hand released hers after a fractional pause, a moment where his fingers maintained their grip just long enough to communicate reluctance, but he let go.

Herta flexed her fingers, reclaiming the hand as her own. "The analysis," she said, forcing her mind back to intellectual territory, "will require several days of processing. The data from the platform alone…"

"Is secondary," Screwllum interrupted gently. "The primary insight has already been achieved."

He didn't specify which insight he meant. He didn't clarify whether he was referring to the philosophical cipher or something else entirely because they both knew exactly what had been learned tonight, and it had very little to do with ancient philosophical statements about Droidhead.

"I should return to my quarters," Herta said. Not a request; a statement of intention.

"Of course," Screwllum replied. "The guest facilities are on the third level. You are familiar with the location."

"Yes."

Neither of them moved.

The Solarium's environmental systems hummed quietly around them, the stars overhead continued their eternal rotation and two people stood in the aftermath of something that felt too significant to be dismissed as mere research, too complicated to be named as anything else.

"Good night, Screwy," Herta said finally, investing the words with enough finality to make them unmissable.

"Good night, Madam Herta."

She turned toward the exit, her movements controlled and deliberate despite the fatigue still singing through her muscles. She would walk to the guest quarters and would erase every trace of tonight's disorder and emerge tomorrow morning flawless and composed, ready to discuss the philosophical implications of their research with appropriate academic detachment, ready to pretend that nothing significant had happened beyond successful data collection.

Behind her, Screwllum remained motionless in the Solarium's center, watching her retreat with the patient attention of a being who had all the time in the universe to wait and catalogue every detail of her disorder, preserving it in permanent memory regardless of how thoroughly she scrubbed it from her own presentation.

Who knew, with mechanical certainty, that she would return to him looking perfect and who would remember, with equal certainty, exactly what she'd looked like when she wasn't.

Screwllum remained long after the door sealed behind her with his optical sensors fixed on the empty doorway, cataloguing her absence with the same precision he'd brought to cataloguing her presence.

She left disorder in her wake. Not physical, the Solarium was unchanged and immaculate, but the air still held the ghost of her heat and his sensors still carried the echo of her breathing, ragged and real.

It was data he would preserve and treasure. He had been building a garden all evening: Belladonna in the Archive, nightshade during the walk, wild poppy in the Solarium. His Datura, the intoxicant, the deliriant, the flower that made the world strange.

Watching her walk away, spine rigid, that damp strand of hair still clinging to her temple, he named one final specimen:

Digitalis purpurea. The tall and elegant Foxglove, deceptively delicate, each bell-shaped bloom hiding cardiac glycosides potent enough to stop a heart. Beautiful in the way that dangerous things often were; the kind of flower you admired from a distance, that you never touched without gloves because it could kill you through skin contact if you were careless enough. It kills by disrupting the heart's rhythm, making it beat too fast, too slow, too chaotic to sustain life. Like Herta, it introduced beautiful disorder into a system that required perfect control.

The garden in his memory core was wild and dangerous, full of flowers that could stop a heart. His heart, if he'd possessed one that could be stopped, would have certainly failed hours ago.

Conclusion: The foxglove has bloomed.

My rhythm has been disrupted. I find I have no desire whatsoever for the antidote.

Somewhere below, water ran in the guest quarters as Herta erased evidence of her humanity, slowly restoring order to the beautiful, fragile form she cursed so readily. 

Screwllum remained in his garden, tending memories of flowers that bloomed in darkness, content to let his rhythm stay disrupted…perfectly content to be poisoned.