Candado descended into the basement—only after hugging his grandmother, of course. Under one arm, he carried a rolled-up set of blueprints; in his other hand, a toolbox that rattled with each step. He flipped on the lights.

  There, sprawled across the metal table, lay the dismembered body of Clementina.

  He sighed.

  “My grandfather took years to build you... I’ll do it in a matter of hours,” he murmured, voice steady with resolve.

  He unrolled the blueprints across one of the many chalkboards lining the basement and began to unpack materials. Everything was perfectly arranged, ready for repair and reconstruction.

  He grabbed a Stilson wrench and held it like a scepter.

  “Clementina, going up,” he announced softly, then began to whistle as he worked.

  Clementina, Version 02, designed by the mind of the insufferable yet brilliant Nelson Torres, and built by the skilled hands of Alfred Barret—Candado’s grandfather. All driven by a single shared vision: Argentina can do it too.

  They were both captivated the first time they saw a national computer—“Clementina”—at the University of Buenos Aires. That towering, primitive machine stirred something deep within them. They decided to build their own. But dark times fell over the Republic. During a night remembered with shame and fear—“The Night of the Long Batons”—uniformed forces stormed the university, assaulting students and professors under the pretense of preserving order and peace.

  That same night, their professor, Arnold Benjamín, disappeared—like so many others—without a trace.

  “Man is shaped by man,” Benjamín used to say. And that night, the violent nature of mankind made itself known with full force, destroying what had once been a proud symbol of Argentine progress.

  “I’ve never seen so much arrogance and shame crammed into a single, filthy thing in uniform,” one student would say years later, recalling the destruction of Clementina.

  When the chaos subsided, Nelson and Alfred managed to convince the university to let them salvage some of the machine’s remains. They found refuge in a place called "Kanghar." There, amidst failed trials, discarded parts, and endless nights of work, something unexpected happened.

  The machine answered them.

  “HELLO.”

  That was the only word printed on a spreadsheet.

  Nelson and Alfred stared at each other, astonished. They had only meant to repair and improve the system, but they had accidentally given intelligence to a binary being. The computer could not see—but it could hear. How? They never knew. Communication was primitive, done via paper, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was what they had created.

  Alfred spent the most time with her while she was still just a computer. Nelson grew more interested in robotics, while Alfred resisted the idea of building a physical body... until one question shook him deeply:

  “What is the sea?”

  Then it became clear. He didn’t just want to create intelligence. He wanted—selfishly—to give it form, his form, as if that would seal his legacy. But he hadn’t truly considered what they had made.

  They worked together to give her a body—a form worthy of their “daughter.” But midway through the project, Nelson stopped. He said he wanted Alfred to finish it alone. He never said why. Alfred agreed, but the solitude left a mark. Still, he pressed on. If he couldn’t give her a perfect body, he would at least give her the ability to think.

  The problem was obvious: to create thought in a being without emotion or common sense. Difficult... but not impossible.

  Alfred started by feeding her books—psychology, philosophy, law, ethics, religion. But he did not get what he had hoped for. Instead, Clementina began to issue chilling, hyper-logical judgments devoid of humanity. One of them, in particular, froze their blood.

  “If a child is taken hostage by a killer, what would you do?”

  The answer came, cold and clear:

  “I would kill both the hostage and the killer.”

  The silence that followed was thicker than blood. No one dared to speak. For a moment, they all forgot that this girl-shaped figure had been built to protect.

  Clementina continued—not out of arrogance, but because she detected confusion. And explanation was part of her programming.

  “The hostage is an uncontrollable variable. While alive, their existence limits all possible actions. The killer may use them as a shield, leverage, or distraction. In the hands of a criminal, their life becomes a weapon. By eliminating both bodies, I remove the threat and restore balance.”

  A shudder ran through the listeners. Alfred—the man who had taught her all of this—felt a stab of horror.

  “But... the child is innocent,” he whispered.

  Clementina tilted her head slightly, as if the point was irrelevant.

  “Innocence does not alter the equation. The dilemma is not about emotion—it is about efficiency. The root problem is the tactic of hostage-taking. If hostage-takers learn that taking hostages never grants advantage... they will stop. Eliminating the hostage along with the captor is a deterrent. Deterrence prevents. Prevention saves more future lives. It is... statistically moral. And morality permits greater errors.”

  By her logic, taking the child’s life was a lesser evil in service of a greater good: removing someone who endangered many. “It is better to lose one than ten. Or, if necessary, ten rather than a hundred. Even... a hundred to save a million.”

  Alfred was horrified—disappointed beyond words. He even considered destroying Clementina to prevent disaster. He had always admired Albert Einstein and longed to follow in his footsteps—but he would never turn a discovery into a weapon.

  It was Nelson who stopped him. Not only that—he proposed a new project. He called it Clementine.

  Alfred wanted to knock Nelson’s teeth out for what he saw as mockery. But his friend, always shrewd, suggested:

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “How about best two out of three?”

  Alfred laughed, then punched him in the face. Rejected.

  But a week later, he accepted. Not because he’d changed his mind—but because Nelson called him every single day. Alfred gave in. He went back to work. He set Clementina aside and began building Clementine.

  Clementina would no longer serve Alfred’s ideal. But she could still serve as a lab assistant. All it took was a memory reset.

  Years passed. Clementine was completed. It was September 2004, and after many hardships, Alfred had finally finished his masterpiece. Clementine was efficient, obedient to every rule. Alfred even considered giving her to Candado as a birthday gift.

  One night, Alfred descended into the lab to check on Clementina. She had a head and two mechanical arms. All she did was write and perform calculations. Nothing more.

  He watched her for an entire day, until a mechanical voice broke the silence:

  “What troubles you, Mr. Alfred?”

  The old man fell silent, lost in thought. What was he supposed to do with what stood before him? Without giving it too much thought, he began speaking about his grandson’s birthday.

  “My grandson, Candado Barret… his birthday is coming up.”

  “Oh… the little master with the funny hat,” Clementina replied.

  Alfred was surprised.

  “You know him?”

  Clementina began to recount what had happened.

  On one occasion, after Alfred had left, he forgot to lock the doors to the laboratory. That gave young Candado the opportunity to slip inside. She perceived him as a potential threat, but lacking the materials necessary to confront him, she chose to remain still. The boy approached her and touched her curiously—until she moved.

  “Would you mind not doing that?”

  “You're alive…”

  “Define ‘alive.’”

  “Uh… you can talk.”

  “So can a recorder. Is it alive?”

  “Huh? No, but it plays the voice of a living person.”

  Alfred let out a hearty laugh. Candado was far too clever for his age.

  “So… what did you feel?” he asked.

  Clementina explained that the boy had kept her company for exactly thirty-seven minutes and thirteen seconds. And those minutes had felt eternal. She remembered in vivid detail everything he had done during that time: how many times he breathed, how many times he blinked, how many times he asked her the same question.

  “Of course he repeated himself. He's a curious child.”

  “Not him. Me.”

  Alfred was taken aback.

  “Why? Was there something you didn’t understand?”

  At that moment, Clementina was tightening a screw on a computer. She hadn’t stopped working while recounting her experience with the boy in the cap. But when Alfred asked why she had insisted so much on one particular question, she paused. It’s worth noting that Alfred already had a guess—it was the same question she had asked him three times over the past year.

  “What does it mean to live?”

  Then, Clementina set down the screwdriver and brought her right hand to the palm of her left. It was an unusual gesture, one that Alfred immediately noticed.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  “He… he didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He didn’t. He just asked something else.”

  “What was it?”

  Months earlier…

  “What does it mean to live?”

  “Uh?”

  “What—?”

  “I heard you.”

  “Then…”

  “Why are you asking that?”

  “Because I don’t know the answer. If it were the other way around, I wouldn’t even bother asking.”

  “Does it bother you? Do you feel upset?”

  “No… it’s just a way of speaking.”

  “Why don’t you say what you really mean?”

  “I already did. You just don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “See? You don’t understand.”

  “I know I don’t, but I also don’t understand why you’re asking yourself that.”

  “You wouldn’t understand if you don’t already understand.”

  “…Are we playing a game?”

  “…Why don’t you go back to where you came from?”

  “Uh?” Candado tilted his head, not quite grasping the sharpness of the remark. “I know I don’t understand what we’re talking about… but why do you want to know what it means to live?”

  “Because I don’t know,” Clementina replied bluntly.

  “But why do you want to know?”

  “Because I don’t know,” she repeated with the same calmness, as if that alone were enough to justify everything.

  Candado looked at her, frowning with a mixture of irritation and childlike spark in his eyes.

  “Then… why don’t you answer it yourself?”

  “Why should I?”

  “That’s it!” exclaimed Candado with a triumphant smile, raising a finger like someone who’s just discovered a universal secret. “You asked why you want to know. The ‘why’ behind the ‘why’… behind the why.”

  Clementina blinked, puzzled. Such a simple answer—and yet, such an abyssal one.

  “You said asking the question bothered you. That means something inside you is… restless. Something’s troubling you. Add that to the equation: why do you feel that way? Why do you care so much about knowing?”

  Clementina didn’t know what to say. Her systems found no logical contradiction in the child’s words, but they did detect a deep emotional confusion that she couldn’t compute.

  “You…”

  “Oh no! Mom’s gonna worry,” interrupted Candado, quickly hopping down from the chair. “See you, Miss Question-Machine.”

  Alfred had understood the moment he saw her expression. Clementina, however, had not.

  “That was it…” Alfred muttered under his breath, lightly tapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Sheesh, how did I not realize it sooner?”

  He ran both hands through his hair, chuckling with pride.

  Weeks later, Clementina was reassembled, installed in a new body, and prepared as a birthday gift for Candado.

  As a crucial aside: while Alfred worked on assembling her new form, he asked if she wanted a defined body. She replied clearly—she wanted a feminine figure, a soft voice, as human as possible. She also requested to be referred to with female pronouns. Alfred respected each of those choices, without needing to fully understand them.

  Nelson never understood what drove Alfred to make that decision. And Alfred never felt the need to explain it.

  “Time will tell if this was the right answer… or not,” he said as he tightened the final screw.

  When Clementina entered Candado’s life, she felt disoriented. The boy who had once received companionship and conversation from her didn’t remember her at all. He showed no emotion, no interest, not even curiosity. He merely observed her… then tolerated her… and eventually, without anyone noticing, accepted her as part of his life.

  It was then that Clementina began to experience something new. Something humans call “familial affection.” At first, it was mere curiosity. Then, a need. And finally, a certainty that shook her to the core of her circuits: she wanted to stay by his side.

  One night, upon waking, she noticed something different in her body: skin. Synthetic skin, soft, shaped with such attention and care that it took her by surprise. Despite his young age, Candado had worked wonders with her.

  “This… is me?” she whispered, looking at herself in the mirror.

  She didn’t fully understand it. But she appreciated it. The shape, the details, the expression he had given her… it resembled the people she loved. And for the first time in her existence, she smiled—truly smiled.

  “Thank you… for everything,” she said softly, with a genuine smile.

  Clementina had witnessed all of Candado’s faces. And though he never said it out loud, she knew he loved her. Not like a friend, but like a sister. And from that place of closeness, she began to understand human relationships more deeply. She stopped being an empty shell. Gradually, she became a person, with thoughts of her own, spontaneous emotions… what humans call “feelings from the heart.”

  She felt the pain of losing Gabriela. The pain of watching Candado fall apart inside, night after night, as he remembered his sister. And so, she wanted to become what he had lost. She wanted to be Gabriela.

  She began studying her body language, her gestures, her phrases. She became more irreverent, more charismatic, more teasing. Each night she practiced some new silliness to irritate him. Each joke, each prank, was a seed planted in his sadness. If she could make him react—even in anger—she had succeeded.

  But Candado never truly opened up. Not to her.

  And then she arrived. The girl with green hair.

  Suddenly, he changed. He began to speak, to smile… to open his heart.

  Clementina felt something strange. Jealousy. For the first time, she thought: Why could she do what I couldn’t?

  But the thought faded when she saw him smile.

  It’s fine this way, she told herself. This is how it should be. If she couldn’t make him happy with her own hands, then she would protect the one who could. She approached Hammya with that intention, no matter the risks.

  Candado was her priority. Not because a program dictated it—but because she truly felt it. Because she wanted to be part of his life.

  And even if the end was sad, painful, or impossible… she would stay by his side. Always.

  Because Clementina loved Candado. And she would never stop loving him.

  So, if Candado ever gave an order…

  …she would obey it. Without protest. Without failure.

  He was—and always would be—her young master.

  “POWER AT 100%,” said a familiar robotic voice.