"Does the name Goldenrod mean anything to you?"

Alvin rattles away at once. "Biotech Innovations: Goldenrod Pharmaceuticals. A multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Montreal, Canada with a reported revenue of 6.3 trillion Canadian dollars in 2033. Its current CEO is Gérard Goldenrod, known for being a feckin' gobshite."

Six point three trillion. I'm so baffled by it, I barely react to that curveball at the end of his rendition of their article on the encyclopedia they own.

"You'll be pleased to hear I messed up their headquarters," I announce. With the appropriate amount of enthusiasm, of course.

"Fair play, User Lulu."

"Absolute fire. Except for the part where one of their lackeys saw me and followed me to the medical centre."

"Don't be worryin' now," Alvin says nonchalantly as he wraps my knee up in a soft bandage. "You must've seen yourself that access to a domain requires certain technological prowess. They haven't found it in over thirty years."

"Right."

I sit up straight to make up for the disaster posture I've been subjecting my body to. My personal nurse doll seamlessly continues taking care of my knee as I dangle my legs.

"Do you know what happened there back then?" I ask.

"They likely were and still are searchin' for something. The Lonicera Medical Centre's security logs contain loads of entries for cell phone activity pointing to Goldenrod employees," Alvin says, and it does sound like what Róisín was alluding to. "But I didn't launch until a few months after LoMeC closed. April 4th, 2000, to be precise."

Loh-mec? Oh, I get it. Making "Lonicera Medical Centre" less of a mouthful.

"Happy very belated thirty-fourth birthday?"

Alvin chuckles. "Thank you, User Lulu. I appreciate the sentiment very much. When's your birthday?"

Aaand I walked right into that one. At least he's asking instead of reading data from my phone, unlike some people in the family.

"December 31st," I mumble, arms crossed. "Don't make a big deal out of it."

"Preferences updated. A cake, five gifts, and one surprise party at most."

I stare at him, prematurely descending into post-socializing burnout. If that's him being low-key, I don't wanna know what his usual celebration services are.

"Ah, I'm joking. There'll be more cakes than that."

"...Cool."

With my knee all wrapped up, Alvin turns to the keyboard and hacks away at it again. Time to collect my thoughts.

I rest a finger on my temple, imagining the timeline. "So some shit went down between LoMeC and Goldenrod that caused LoMeC to close up shop in '99, they launched this Sanctuary thing a few months later, Goldenrod is looking for something, science happened or whatever, in 2015 you got trapped in an infinite loop that fucked up the domain, nineteen years later Róisín contacted me from who-knows-where asking me to free you, and now here I am, and neither of us know what the hell happened and where everyone went."

I feel like I forgot something.

Oh yeah, breathing.

While I'm busy giving my body what it needs to live, Alvin's eyes do that thing again where they flash up. "The gaps in my knowledge suggest that I used to have more information, but I'm afraid it's associated User data."

"Gone, eh? Bummer," I say, staring up at the ceiling.

Where do we start? Online? Not like I haven't tried. Nothing remotely hinting at this story ever came up in my searches; you never hear anything bad about Goldenrod anymore. That leaves us with what, print archives from the nineties?

...I'm not getting my hopes up. Alvin probably doesn't know yet how much has changed in the nearly two decades the world continued to turn without him.

Suddenly, I hear a sniffle.

That's weird. I don't have a runny nose, and machines obviously don't—

I look back down.

"I-I'm," Alvin whimpers. "I'm terribly sorry I can't adequately answer your questions, User Lulu."

First he's blushing, now he's crying?

Wait.

Wait.

The blushing nearly set me on fire. What's behind the crying mechanism?

"Dude, it's fine," I try to calm him down, failing spectacularly. "Bee-tee-dubs, just checking, are you storing water to express sadness?"

"Nooo," Alvin sobs uncontrollably. "S-sometimes when I—when I fail a task, I leak battery aciii-hiiid!"

How does a self-learning artificial superintelligence end up with a destructive mechanism for low frustration tolerance!?

"C'mon, you've been helping a lot," I insist, and I mean it, but I fear my voice doesn't adequately convey that. "Also, please stop leaking dangerous substances."

"Y-yes, User—" Sniff. " —Lulu."

You truly haven't seen it all until you've witnessed a computer in the shape of a chunky mid-30s doll man desperately trying to sniff battery acid snot back up its nose.

"Don't worry, okay?" I say, giving him my best fake it 'till you make it smile. I lean on my side, resting my head on my hand. "Together, we've got—"

Yeah, that was the hand with gel on it.

"—this."

Alvin turns away, but not fast enough to hide the way his mouth curves from me.

"Oh? See something funny?" I tease, not moving from my position at all.

"Sure I don't know what you're talking about," Alvin pretends, clearly about to lose it.

I finally remove my hand, and the wet sound of gooey hair so close to my ear is all kinds of unpleasant, but worth it to see tears turn into giggles.

"There," I say. "When you fall, you laugh, you get back up."

Alvin lowers his hand, his grin now a big-eyed look of curiosity.

"It's my motto." I slide off the exam table and raise my injured leg. It barely hurts anymore. "Uh, I'm not good with words. What I'm trying to say is, you can cry if you wanna cry. You should. But you gotta smile again at some point."

That's so cheesy I might actually die on the spot. Saying these things to someone's face is nothing like saying them in my videos.

But it does make him smile, so I can postpone my emotional demise another day.

"Understood. I won't let you down, User Lulu."