Chapter 462: 13: The Living

Tayana knocked nervously on Harmony's door. 

She couldn't decide what worried her most, the fact that Jade had communicated through his main server, or the fact that she was going to be speaking to a woman that he had been spending a lot of time with. Or maybe it wasn't a woman, she reminded herself. Harmony was not exactly a firmly gendered name.

She was just a little jealous. She was also unspeakably proud. His quest had been completed, in less than half the time that his own creator had once predicted. She wished that she could reassure him, the way she had been sent to reassure his companion. She wished he could reassure her. They had succeeded, hadn't they?

When the older woman opened the door a moment later, Tayana pulled herself together and blurted, "Umm, hi. Are you Harmony?"

She couldn't help surveying the slender old woman and mentally comparing her to the online character who had been partying up with Jade's dwarf in 'Living Jade Empire'. She was oddly certain, even before the woman nodded with a surprised expression, that this was the right person, and not merely a close relative. 

"I'm Jade's mother," Tayana confessed. "Actually I don't know if I'm still his mother." Jade was still Jade of course, but he wasn't quite the child she had been raising. He had assured her that he was still 'integrating', but… 

Harmony's eyebrows raised for a moment, and then she frowned.

Tayana hurriedly asked, "Can we talk for a bit?"

Harmony grimaced, but then told her firmly, "A mother is always a mother." She eyed Tayana for another moment and added, "I suspect that I don't really want to have this conversation, but yeah, we can talk."

Tayana warned Jade's surprisingly elderly friend uncomfortably, "Jade isn't what you think he is."

Harmony replied calmly, "Jade is Jade." 

Tayana gazed at the older woman with surprise at hearing the echo of her own thoughts aloud. She shook her head and sighed though, this explanation wasn't going to be easy.

Harmony echoed her sigh, and insisted firmly, "I know that he is actually still just a kid."

"He's not human," Tayana blurted. But before Harmony could react, she added hurriedly, "At least, he didn't start out as a human, but I was fairly certain that he could succeed in proving himself human. And I'm fairly certain he finally succeeded…"

Harmony stiffened. But when she spoke she ignored the question of Jade's humanity, or lack thereof. "Maybe you should back up a bit and start with why you're here?"

Tayana nervously tried to explain, "Jade asked me to come. He finished his main quest, and he is reintegrating with his old data now. But we don't know if he'll still… if he'll be the same. But he won't forget you!"

Harmony stared at the younger woman almost blankly. She took a deep breath and then repeated once again, as though it were an affirmation, "Jade is always Jade."

Tayana couldn't help the laugh that held painful echoes of so many years that couldn't be explained to Jade's friend in moments. Her hands flailed the way her friend Danika used to flail when Lin Hao asked her to come up with a solution for yet another impossible task. Any of their friends would have understood, but a stranger wouldn't.

Harmony suddenly reached out and hugged Tayana. "Come inside," she insisted firmly. "And start from the beginning."

Tayana laughed again, a truer laugh. Her son's friend was willing to hear her out. Jade might have been Lin Hao's project, but he had always been a person to Kit Tay.

The woman who had become Jade's mother faced the older woman who had held Jade's concern, even as his entire system locked down with the far-too-mild announcement that he would be 'processing for a while'. 

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Tayana took another deep breath and then did her best to explain how Jade had developed.

--

As she explained the beginning, Tayana couldn't help remembering the way Lin Hao had prepared such a functional work space for her, without putting much thought into actual living accommodations. 

When he had seen her struggling to adapt, he had cleared a room for her. A room within his own suite, despite his original objection to the idea of literally moving in together. 

While others crafted the physical hardware needed for Jade to walk around their world, the way they had been able to walk through his in VR, Lin Hao had worked on creating processes for the unused senses of touch, taste, and smell. But they had only lived together for a few years before he had been caught behind borders that had closed. He had gone on a 'business' trip that had never ended, but he hadn't stopped working on Jade's project.

Lin Hao had never returned, but once everything was ready, Tayana and Jade had gone ahead with the plan to begin at the beginning. She had raised Jade as all parents raised the beings who were born into the world knowing only needs.

Lin Hao might have created the entity that had become Jade, but Jade was the one who had followed the basic idea behind the reincarnation offered within Living Jade Empire, and started his own life over to expand himself farther than the limits he had previously crafted allowed. Jade had erased almost everything from his memories so that he could learn as people learned. 

Tayana had done her best to teach Jade to interpret the needs of others through the different, but equally necessary needs his own systems required. To be a good person, she hoped. He had been her child, as truly as Shinichi was Ryuske's. 

She hoped that Jade would always be Jade, even as he continued to develop. Even if he existed for centuries.

--

After hearing everything Harmony  repeated reassuringly, as though she could read Tayana's mind, "Jade is always Jade."

Tayana stared.

Harmony didn't know who she was reassuring anymore, but she faced Jade's mother and asked a bit nervously, "But why are you telling me all of this? If… if Jade is actually an orbital station, are you really even allowed to tell me all of this?"

Tayana explained with embarrassment, "Jade is, was… kind of a personal project of the Empire's original programmer. And I had to come see you because in the last system message that he sent out Jade said that you needed to know he would be okay, and… that you love him."

Harmony covered her face with her hands. Despite her confidence that people were always the same soul, even if they acted differently from one day to the next, she worried that she was falling back on instincts that might not apply to an artificial intelligence. It didn't seem possible that the boy had actually been a computer, and yet…

She peaked at the anxious and embarrassed looking woman sitting at her table. She'd been afraid that her affection for Jade would be mistaken when his mother, of all people, had shown up on her doorstep. But she couldn't help wondering what the woman thought of her now.

Tayana avoided her eyes and fiddled with one of her beautifully mismatched spoons. "Jade must love this place," she suggested as though simply speaking of another person.

Harmony blinked, and replied, "He's never been here."

Tayana turned back to meet her eyes and protested, "But he had your address."

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