Current-day city of Bant.
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Ania Jakon slipped skillfully past the two Officers who stood watch outside the J.I.S.F. (Jakon Industrial Storage Facility) with relative ease.
Not only was she an employee and partial owner of this particular facility, but she was the one who drew up all of the tour route plans for the Officers who patrolled the place, so she had a pretty informed idea of who would be where and when they would be there.
Was that cheating?
She didn't think so.
Those idiots could hardly be called Officers anyway, as little as they were trained, and as little as they did around the place.
Their Captain and Site Supervisor was a simple-minded yet despicably ambitious man by the name of Grom Royson, and they posed just as much of a threat to her as he did, which was very little.
Ania and Grom were like oil and water.
She, an avid Scientist and Engineer.
He, a stubborn and old-fashioned Soldier.
They had never seen eye to eye, nor would they ever, if she had it her way.
Their opinions were always the complete opposite of one another, and outside of that, the man was more cowardly than courageous.
She knew that he secretly hated the Gatemen Automaton and would see them decommissioned and dismantled one day, if it were up to him.
If it were up to her, she would see him and his lazy, incompetent, sneaky Officers all tossed over the walls and into the searing desert.
Bah.
She shook the thought of the man and his minions out of her mind and focused on the task at hand.
Her weekly visit.
Bant was a ghost town come sundown, and very few people would be out and about, save mayhap the more rowdy of the Dwarves, and a handful of third-shift workers who favored the late pubs.
This worked in Ania's favor, as she was far less likely to be spotted moving in and around the factory district.
She couldn't have that.
Her secret must remain just that: a secret.
She couldn't stomach the thought of what would happen should she...
Should THEY be found out...
She pulled her cowl lower over her face and shuffled as quietly down the hallway as possible.
The building would be empty save for a handful of cleaning staff, and Ania was friends with nearly all of them.
Nearly.
She didn't care to find out if any of the ones that she wasn't friendly with were around at the moment.
Ania had worked for her brother Davien and his wife for nearly as long as the main operational facility had been open, and she had used that time to build two very important things with her downtime.
The connections and rapport that she now had with most of the other workers,
And this.
Her singular most prized possession.
She took the path that she took every time she came.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
Down the stairs she went to an old and neglected storage room.
The mostly rusted numbers on the door read 402.
Ania took out the small silver key and slipped it into the keyhole.
The mechanism turned smoothly as if it had hardly been ill-kept.
Dust and rust showered her in a light hail as the doors' internal gears twisted and turned with a series of faint clicks and clangs.
The door swung ajar just wide enough for the slim human girl to fit.
She slipped into the small dark room and closed the door behind her, the lock giving off a soft click as it resettled.
Ania didn't want or need the light.
There would soon be more than enough.
She moved swiftly to the back and carefully removed the thin metal panel covering the old maintenance hatch that was built into the rear of the unused storage space.
It was her favorite place to keep...
Well, just about anything.
Ania knelt and ran her hands across the floor in the nearly pitch-black inlet before her until they both came in contact with a stiff, worn set of armored Dwarven boots.
"There you are."
She said softly to the inactive Gateman who sat against the cold, damp wall in the dark.
Several thick cobwebs lined its tarnished face cover and the sectional plates that covered its wooden torso.
Ania affectionately swept them away, clearing her throat of irritants as she diligently polished the sentient machine with her terry cloth.
"I'm sorry it's been a while, Buddy, as always... They keep me quite busy around here, and I couldn't risk you being found. Not just yet..."
She tilted the dormant Automaton's head forward gently, just far enough for its chin to press down softly on the small, inlaid plate on its upper chest.
With a faint click and hiss, the plate sank in just a bit, and an even smaller plate at the base of the machine's neck slid to the side.
Beneath the second plate was a tiny red switch.
Ania flicked it to the right.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then suddenly, the entire Automaton shuddered from head to toe before going still once again.
The Gateman's eye covers opened slowly, and pale turquoise light flooded the small chamber.
Ania breathed a sigh of relief, a wry smile painting her pale, sweat-caked face.
It was still functional.
As it should be.
As it always would be, should all go well.
And so far?
All was good.
Ania's kit-bashed Gateman was "alive and well," so to speak.
She was the proudest goblin in the pen, that was for sure.
She leaned in and looked the thing in its inorganic eyes just as it stretched, rotating its head at the end of its thick, mechanical neck, using its sturdy arms to move itself into a more suitable sitting position.
"Uuum... Hey, Titan..."
She said sheepishly.
She didn't know why, but she thought she could feel its disappointment radiating from its core.
She was sure she was just imagining it.
Titan lifted its head just enough for its eyes to level with those of its creator.
It blinked several times slowly before shifting its face into a smile that mimicked hers.
The Gateman responded, its soft, boyish voice hardly above a whisper.
"Verbal contact initiated... System booting up... Cerebral charge at... 8%"
Turquoise light pulsating from his mouth with every word emulated.
Ania had cobbled her friend together over the past two years from stolen, broken, and discarded parts, and its hesitant, jerky range of motion showed just that.
Ania placed her hand on the Automaton's chest.
She could feel the gears, parts, and fans vibrating softly as they moved in smooth, effortless synergy.
It was functional.
It... No, HE was hers.
She answered him just as quietly as she was bathed in the soft light that he emitted.
"Weird... You haven't properly retained your charge... Hmm. How are you feeling?"
Titan sat forward just a bit. His eyes rolled backward rapidly several times as his Aether-powered "brain" activated his scanning sequence.
His voice crackled softly through its mouth parts.
"I am... Sentient. I am capable of very nearly anything that you are capable of."
Ania rolled her caramel-colored eyes and leaned back, sitting across from the Gateman with her back against the opposing wall on the small inlet.
"Nah... You are a machine... You have a lot you can do, but your options are limited. You can't really feel, per se... You can't know sadness. You can't become happy... You can't love."
Ania averted her eyes from the Automaton.
She knew that he couldn't understand her on a level that would make this interaction embarrassing, but she felt awkward nonetheless.
Titan's Aetheral mind struggled to process what she had been talking about and settled on learning and defining the words.
"Love?... Loading... Love... L.O.V.E... ERROR!"
The light that shone through the Gatemen's eyes flickered several times before resolidifying into the twin beams that illuminated the room.
"You are correct, Ania. I cannot perform this action... How does one LOVE?"
Ania hadn't a clue how to answer the question without explaining what feelings were, and how they worked.
She simply didn't have the time for that at the moment.
"Hellz, man... I don't suppose I truly know. I guess it's more of a... thought or a... capitulation? A driving force that makes you want to... to DO. A deep and unspeakable connection between two people."
She reached up and tapped gently at her temple, impressing even herself with her random yet intriguing answer.
She had never actually taken the time to think about what love or emotions were.
She was a woman of science, and science didn't make much room for one's personal feelings.
Titan sat in silence, scanning her face and storing bits of information in the Aether core unit that was his equivalent of a brain.
Gatemen were programmed to be intellectually empathic, and they could absorb and digest knowledge at speeds that rivaled the most well-educated organic beings.
The Automaton was inquisitive by nature, and Ania had decoupled its mental limiters, letting her personal Gateman ask even more questions in ways that others would never imagine.
"So... You know very little of this LOVE, and yet you tell me what I can and cannot do concerning it? Is it a habit of humans to judge so easily when they have little to no knowledge of said subject?"
The Gatemen couldn't have possibly known that it was being quite rude in its approach, so Ania let the abrasive question slide before her legendary temper got the best of her.
That lasted for approximately 0.5 seconds.
She shot forward and yanked Titan forward by the polished metallic bars that made its clavicles.
Her face stopped but an inch from his.
Before she could stop herself, her voice rang out loudly within the confines of the storage room.
"LOOK HERE YOU STUPID FACKIN' AUTOMATON! YOU DON'T KNOW ME! AAAUUUUGH, I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY I'M TALKING TO YOU!"
Ania's eyes snapped open as wide as they would go without her eyeballs rolling out, and she slapped both of her hands over her mouth.
She stayed as still as possible, waiting for someone to burst through the door.
Luckily for her and her Gatemen, that never happened.
Titan lifted its arms and gently placed its hands on the livid woman's shoulders, willing her back into a sitting position before leaning back again and crossing its legs before it.
"I... I apologize. I didn't mean to upset yo-"
He started, but Ania silenced him with a raised hand.
"Bah, you don't know anything about apologizing just yet, so don't bother wasting energy on those words. You don't feel. You only analyze. You don't know how to actually care..."
Titan's mind absorbed the words and answered in kind and with what it perceived as kindness.
"I will never be able to ACTUALLY CARE until someone teaches me what that means."
He said, his inorganic yet beautiful eye-holes locking onto her glazed over orbs.
Ania was taken aback.
"And... You think that's me?"
She said, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on her folded arms.
The Gatemen's voice vibrated across the silence.
"The possibility is there."
He said.
Ania cocked her head to one side, eyeing the machine curiously.
It had been learning very quickly from their weekly conversations, and she was growing more and more confident that she would soon be able to get him out of here, and maybe even out of Bant.
She laughed and rolled her eyes, dismissing the Automaton's words, but not fully.
"I think you may have a few screw loose, dude!"
She said, trying not to let the inorganic beings' words bother her so much.
Titan's expression shifted from a split second before the predictable Automaton responded just as obviously as she thought he would.
"Hmm... After a cursory scan, I don't sense that anything is wrong with my physical-"
Ania interrupted the Gatemen.
He was such a realist.
"Forget it, Buddy... Just forget it."
She chuckled to both him and herself while shaking her head, tussling her short, curly brown locks.
She looked him into his observational orbs with a sad grin.
"I need to get going, just wanted to check in on you... I'll be back just as soon as I can, okay?
Titan knew no sadness.
No sense of loneliness or detachment.
He did, however, have a sense of time.
Somewhere deep within, he set his little timer for two days short of a tenday.
She would return then, as she always did.
"Goodbye until then... Entering critical charge mode... 15%..."
He said as he manually shut down all of his non-essential functions.
The little red switch at the back of his neck flipped into the off position by the force of his will.
His body settled against the wall once more.
Ania gave her personal Gateman a once-over once more before moving to make her exit, checking all of his limb hinges, his armor plates, his external components, and all of the small clips, screws, and straps that held it all together.
All of him.
He was as good as he would get.
That is until...
She hastily rummaged through the small satchel that hung from her left hip, fishing for the main reason that she had come outside of her visit, of course.
In the darkness of the storage room, she pulled from her bag a small silver box.
Within it was the shimmering shard of a Theodoran Quartz core.
The Aether-charged stone lit the small chamber, bathing both her and Titan in a faint yet somehow palpable light.
"A gift from your aunt, Amoura..."
She said in hushed tones barely above a whisper.
She stood and unscrewed several bolts that were at the very top of Titan's head, revealing a small socket that she had installed as one of the many, many customizations that she had made to this Gateman unit.
"May this keep your morals pure and straight should the time come that they ever be tested..."
She thought aloud as she pressed the shard into place with her right thumb.
One of its sharpened edges slid over her finger, leaving behind the smallest of cuts, and a tiny drop of her blood dripped into the housing as she yanked her hand away in pain and surprise.
Before she could even yelp, a bright flash of light exploded forth from Titan's head, and she stumbled backward, covering her eyes from the intense light as she did.
Her foot caught the boot of her Gateman, and before she could regain her balance, she fell backward, slamming her head into the wall behind her.
All was black.