Turn 38

--- Maya ---

“How’re you feeling, mija?”

She blinked away the last of her drowsiness, before fighting to sit up. “Whash up?”

“I’m just checking to make sure you’re feeling better today.” Her mamá explained. “Last night you were really looking out of it.”

“Oh, um…” She rubbed at her eyes, feeling a dull ache throughout her skull. “I’ve got a migraine from hell…” She admitted warily.

“Figured as much.” Her mamá frowned. “You remember what happened right?”

“I had a nosebleed?” She asked more than said, because while she knew that was the answer she also felt it was a bigger deal than all the other nosebleeds she’d gotten as a kid for some reason.

“A bad one.” Her mamá nodded. “It lasted a lot longer than the ones you usually get, and we were honestly considering taking you to the hospital if they went on any longer.”

“I doubt it was that bad.”

“The towel I have to throw away begs to differ.” Her mother stated dryly.

(Note to self, come up with a way of always getting blood out of clothes for future patrols.)

The whispers gave her a few ideas, though their muttering did nothing to help her headache. “I don’t suppose we have any ibuprofen or something?”

“Yeah, you’re staying in bed today.” Her mother decided firmly.

“What why?!” She whined.

“You lost a fair amount of blood yesterday, and you’ve still got a headache today. You’re getting some bedrest mija, whether you like it or not. Especially since you’ve got the first day of school tomorrow.” Her mamá explained, with no room to argue.

(Not that I can.) She thought bitterly before letting loose a long-winded sigh. “Fine.”

“Good.” Her mamá nodded. “I’ll bring you up some desayuno, so sit tight and don’t get out of bed.”

“I know.” She groaned.

“And now I know you know.” Her mamá threw back cheekily as she left. “Te amo, mija.”

“Yo también te amo, mamá.” She responded, feeling something warm in her chest despite the aching in her head.

---

(You know, working when we’re supposed to be on bed rest is not the most intelligent of our decisions.) Her inner reason warned her.

“Maybe but if I had to stay in bed with nothing to do all day I’d go stir crazy.” She reminded herself.

(Bit late on the crazy part.)

“Yeah, because I’ve got you.”

(Digressing, if you are bent on the unwise decision of working, what exactly are you working on?) Her inner reason asked before she could worsen her headache by arguing with herself.

“Well, given how violent DM-1 has been lately and the fact that we’ve got a more organic minion cooking, I figured it’d be a good idea to go through our minion protocols and try to figure out why he keeps attacking everything.” She explained as she shifted through said protocols on her laptop.

(Reasonable.) Her own reason agreed.

(Of course, she does.)

(And have you discovered any idea why our little drone keeps acting the way he does?) Her inner logic queried as she ignored her lesser self.

(Hey!)

“Yes, and no?” She admitted a little unsurely. “I mean I’ve found the section that should be responsible for any violent behavior, but it doesn’t seem to actually say why he keeps attacking everything.”

(Maybe it has to do with his learning protocols?) Her inner madness offered.

“His what?”

(Oh, you didn’t notice? If you scroll about half a page up you’ll find this section on learned behavior that grants him a semblance of sentience and or sapience depending on how much he’s developed.)

She did as the voice in head compelled and read the madness written script.

“That sounds really bad, especially in my head.” She told her other-self as she found what her other-other self was talking about. “Huh… so apparently our drones are apparently fully capable of developing the intelligence of a four-year-old.”

(That’s disturbing for several reasons.)

“Yeah, I mean we could forcibly de-fang him from committing violence but… we’d essentially be forcibly chaining parts of his developing personality.” She agreed with a touch of unease.

(That’s not a good thing…)

(No, it is not.)

“Well, what do we do?!” She growled in frustration. “I mean we can’t have him attacking out other minions around the lab, especially the squishy ones!”

(Oh, those aren’t at risk.)

“What do you mean?” She asked, feeling another revelation coming from her inner madness.

(Ooh, I like that.) Said madness laughed, before getting back on topic. (Anyway, yeah, if you shift through this and a few other sections here and in our growing minion’s ‘instincts’ we rigged all of them to treat each other like family. Well, our idea of a family anyway, so there might be some sibling rivalry for our affection.)

“That’s… I can’t tell if that’s better or worse given the situation.”

(Mm, depends on your perspective.)

---

Feeling her migraine beginning to act up, she closed her laptop and stood up in attempt to distract herself from the moral quandaries that came with creating life.

“Izzy?” She blinked, noticing her younger sister watching her from around the doorframe. “Is everything alright?”

The middle schooler frowned. “I should be asking you that.”

“Mm, I’m doing fine.” She assured her sister. “Just got a migraine that’s not going away.”

That obviously didn’t do anything to reassure her baby sister.

(Hey I’m trying here!)

“You pushed yourself too hard again.”

“I, what?” She blinked.

“You pushed yourself too hard, and now you’re messed up again.” Izzy repeated as her frown deepened.

“I didn’t,” She sighed. “Izzy I didn’t push myself too hard, I just had a really bad nosebleed. Remember how I used to get those all the time.”

Izzy scoffed at that. “Yeah, but you forget I share a room with you. And I saw how much typing you were doing on your computer.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lots of people spend time on their computer. Hell, some people spend all week on it, so I very much doubt one day on the computer gave me a nosebleed.”

Izzy just stared at her for a moment. “You know, I tried reading some of the stuff you were typing, and I know that math that complicated is not normal.”

“I’ve taken up programming as a hobby.” She admitted in full honesty. “It’s a bit more complicated than regular math, even by high school standards, and especially by middle school standards, hermanita.”

“Maybe, but I saw how many headache pills you were popping.” Izzy argued. “When you start needing medicine to deal with a headache it’s time to back off, not dive in.”

“Oh, come on it wasn’t that bad.”

Izzy glared at her for another moment before walking over to Maya’s desk, picking up a medicine bottle, and silently tossing it over.

“What’s this fo…” She trailed off as she realized the bottle that had been nearly full yesterday was now nearly empty. “Oh…”

“Yeah, oh…” Izzy laughed mirthlessly, a sound that came off as (wrong) from someone so young. “I don’t know what’s been going on with you for the last month, but this is like the third time I’ve seen you like this!”

“Hermanita, I-”

“No!” Izzy cut her off with angry tears. “I don’t care! If you don’t slow down, I’m going to mom and dad, and Tommy and Vi, and, and someone is going to do something to make you slow down!”

She didn’t know what to say and so she just kept quiet instead.

“This is your last chance Maya, if you hurt yourself again, I’m making sure everyone knows.”

There wasn’t anything she could say as Izzy stormed out of the room leaving her alone with herself.

“Shit.”

---

After her fight with Izzy, or rather Izzy’s intervention with her behavior, she found she couldn’t work up the will to do much more than lay in bed for the rest of the day.

And when Izzy came back to the room to settle in for bed herself, her little sister didn’t say a word to her as she faced the wall and pretended Maya wasn’t there.

(Woke up with a migraine, got grounded to the house, found out my drone might be sentient, and made my sister cry… Fuck today.)