Spoiler! :
“Now, open your eyes,” came a voice from somewhere near. My eyes flickered open quietly and I saw a man with blond hair and blue eyes sitting in front of me. The corners of his mouth were turned up and his eyes sparkled. I didn't understand this emotion on his face or what it was for. Why was his mouth this way? What caused this... happiness?
“Good morning,” he told me.
“Good morning,” I replied.
“Do you know who I am?”
“You are my professor,” I said. He stood up and looked down at me.
“Is the system working properly?”
“No problem.”
“Then your name is... Kokoro.”
I was a robot made by a lonely scientist. Some said that it was a miracle, making a robot that looked exactly like a human. I was perfectly made, moving and speaking. I was a “miracle” to say the least. But I was still missing just one thing. One thing that couldn't be made. That thing is called a “heart”. A program. Humans have this program built in from before they're born, but I was without.
I was made by my professor, a genius, in a bacteria-free laboratory. He used to smile at me with that puzzling smile of his. In the beginning, when I was new to this lab, he was always excited and seemed extremely happy whenever he saw me, showing a smiled so wide and emotions in his eyes I could never fathom. I never understood what that meant, and it seemed as if, over the years, his smiles faltered. “I want to teach and share with you, the happiness and sadness of mankind,” he would say. “That is my wish.” As a robot, I never understood.
He tried to teach me this through voice and music. He would sing songs that usually involved “happiness” or “love”. His words while singing always came out with many different emotions attached. Yet whenever I sang the same words, they were flat and unemotional. I wanted to know what this was, why I couldn't sing like he could. I wanted what the humans had, I wanted a “heart” and feelings that could be noticed and accepted by the outside world.
He always seemed so happy, but sometimes, when he wasn't aware that I was operating, I saw him with a wet face. The source of the wetness was his eyes. Tears, they were called.
I knew everything about humans, it was in my programming. They laughed when they were happy, cried when they were sad, and sometimes were conflicted and didn't even know how to feel, themselves. One thing that always bothered me was a human's ability to hold all of these feelings inside of their limited knowledge base. I knew everything that could be known by man, I knew more than these people, yet they experienced more than I. How could that be?
His tall figure was not facing me. He had his eyes focused on the computer with the glowing red words of “error”. He was startled as I tugged gently on his lab coat and pointed to the sheet music. His eyes turned blank and he suddenly embraced me tightly, as if he wanted someone to comfort him. “I can see my reflection in your empty eyes. What does that mean to you?” he cried, the wetness seeping into my shirt.
I was an immortal being. I could withstand plagues and old age. But that was only me. My professor could not say the same. For him, time was not infinite. But right then I didn't understand yet.
“Why do you cry?” I asked.
Every day, on schedule, I would wake up. My professor would smile as he always did and unplug the wires from my limbs. Every day he would tap his fingers on the many keys of the many computers and try his hardest to make up the one program I was lacking.
As the days passed, my professor got thinner and withered away until he was unable to tap his fingers on the keys anymore. As his eyes began losing their shine, he turned to me with a smile, the large green words “Project Complete” written on the computer screens. “Kokoro,” he whispered in his raspy voice, “Don't ever open this system” he told me. “It might be too much for you.”
A few hundred years passed before me, left alone by the world. The once bacteria-free laboratory withering, faltering, and dying as well. I, the robot of miracle, wanted to make a wish. I wanted to know the thing that man was working on, until the end of his life. This “heart” that he made for me, I wanted to experience.
Hundreds of years with no one by my side. A blank stare always upon my face. I didn't understand. As the world turned and changed around me, twigs growing into enormous trees and my professor getting thinner until he was merely bone, I didn't know what I was supposed to do, what to feel. What was the program, the “heart” that I yearned for?
“Hey Koko, come here,” he shouted. I peeked my head out from the laboratory doors. He was standing tall, waiting for me over by a small tree.
“Yes, Professor?” I asked in my monotone voice.
“You see this tree?”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Do you know what will happen to this tree?”
“Yes, Professor.” The small wimpy branches moved as the light breeze brushed against them in the winter air. He looked at me expectantly, his long blond hair - held back with a thin tie – blowing as well. “The tree will grow into a larger tree and, in hundreds of years, it will die.”
He smiled and patted my head. “Yes, but only after spreading its seeds. That is the fate of every living thing. As one grows old, they spread seeds all over. Be it literal, or more figurative, everyone leaves something behind when they pass on.”
“But in time, even the seeds they left behind will wither and die, Professor.”
He looked upon me sadly, “I suppose. But those seeds will grow and spread even more seeds, and those seeds will do the same.” He looked at me and pushed my hair behind my ear. “Even with no brain, one lives on in peoples memories. But with no heart, one never lives from the beginning.”
I stared blankly, wondering if he was trying to get a reaction from me by dangling my only missing program in my face.
“Do you know what 'kokoro' means?”
“Yes, Professor. In Japanese 'kokoro' is the word for 'heart'.”
“Yes, but it's not just ones heart. It's also the feelings and thoughts connected to the heart, as well as the soul.”
“It is also the name you presented me with, Professor.”
He chuckled and closed his eyes. “Yes. Yes it is.”
I defied his warning. The old computer, still operating just as I, lit up with the bright light of my professor's work. Tapping a few keys at a time, the keys I watched him tap so many years ago. I plugged the large wires into my shoulder and waited for the program to upload.
I gasped, my ears rang and a small pressure grew inside my chest. My heart awakened and pounded painfully deep inside. Now it began to move, the miracle accelerating. I closed my eyes as the feelings, the “kokoro”, began to take over. Salt water leaked from my eyes and I held up my hands in front of me, the drops of water gently falling onto them. Why won't my tears stop? My heart beat came alive even more and accelerated. I looked at my hands, the shaking getting worse. Why am I trembling? I grabbed at my chest, the overwhelming feelings pouring into me. Is this my desired “heart”?
One hand clutching at my chest, my heartbeat still increasing, it felt like it would burst from my body. I remember when that man took me outside in the season of fall, crazily jumping through the bright leaves and laughing as he tried to explain “fun” and “enjoyment”. I didn't understand back then.
As the feelings ran through my body, my heartbeat still accelerating, I laughed with the tears still streaming down my face. The memories now I looked back on as 'happy' somehow felt painful. How deep and touching these feelings are.
I ran outside and felt the warm breeze against my face. The flowers on the ground, they were beautiful and bright. I ran around everywhere, letting the happiness I finally found resonate within me. This is what he wanted me to feel. The things he could not explain. The joyful things he knew, the sorrowful things he knew. Everything was so deep and painful.
I then began to realize the reason I was born. Surely it's lonely with no one by your side. Yes, that day, that time, in all those memories the “heart” was overflowing. I remembered the time he played in those leaves. He was so happy but I didn't understand his “happiness” or his “heart”. Then I smiled, looking back and realizing everything he felt, everything he wanted to teach me.
Finally, I can sing this. These real and true words, I am dedicating them to you. My heart and my world, they are all for you.
Thank you for bringing me into this world, for letting me experience the joys surrounding my life. Thank you for the happy days you spent with me by my side. Thank you for everything you gave me.
The first miracle was that you gave me life. The second miracle was the time we spent together.
I ran all over the field outside of the run-down lab that day. Picking flowers and throwing them all over the place where you gave me life. Here. I give these flowers to you. All of these flowers, these feelings I hadn't known. I will give them to you. I will sing forever, for all eternity. Thank you. Thank you. Now I can stay with you forever in this place where you gave me life. Together with you, thank you.
“A message is... being received... The source is...from the future,” the stoic voice of the computer told the blond professor.
“For me?” he asked himself.
It reached across a few hundred years, this message. A singing voice from an angel of the future, a song sung straight from her heart. A shape began to emerge from near the professor's chair. A shape of the robot he could not give a heart to. But this one was different. As she sang her thank you's out to him, the emotions shone through.
She opened her eyes and his reflection was no longer in the emptiness.. She collapsed into tears and hugged his legs close to her. Her love and appreciation shone through her heart more than anything he had ever witnessed before.
His smile grew and he knelt down in front of her. The tears of happiness streamed down both of their faces as they hugged each other to themselves.
The first miracle was that you were born. The second miracle was time we spent together. The third miracle was a truly sincere heart from the future.
He held her hand and hugged her as passionately as they both possibly could. He tried to hold on as tightly as he was able to but the time from the future was limited and she faded away. The look she held, though, when she left, was enough for him to be happy and the tears of joy flooded painfully hard. She had grasped her heart and was thankful for everything he had ever given her.
The fourth miracle was that two miracles had occurred at the same time. One was a sudden communication from the future, another one was a program modification. With this program modification she finally obtained the 'heart' that she yearned for. Though his life ended, he entrusted her the key to the miracle.
The program was exactly a miracle. The robot that obtained the “heart” kept running. She basked in all of her feelings. But the miracle lasted only a moment. The “heart” was too much for her to withstand. In the end, the machine shortened and was never to move again. However, at the very last moment, her face still held a beautiful smile. And she looked like, she truly did look like,
An angel.
“Thank you.
“Father.”
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