@cephalone
Darrell tried to open his eye, but the darkness didn’t lift. He couldn’t pick himself off the... the ground? He couldn’t actually tell what he was on top of-- his sense of touch was gone, save for a dim awareness in one hand. Or, he considered as his mind drifted into lavender fog, was it that he’d never had any more than that? Yes, that seemed like the case, he only had the one hand-- and no eyelids on his camera, either. That was normal.
He spent a lot of his time in the dark. Dad spent a lot of time with him, of course, but with attending to his grown-up work stuff, eating, sleeping-- that still left more than half of the 24-hour day for Darrell to spend alone. He’d tried shutting Darrell down during these quiet periods, but found it not worth the time he had to spend calming the AI back down to state where he was ready for the day. So, his dad’s new plan was to cart the machines to different rooms and give them a dark, silent experience that was more like sleep and less like temporary death.
The door cracking open and the light in the room being switched on made him metaphorically light up with excitement-- not that he could indicate this in any visual way. All that would be seen was a twitching of his hand and the humming of electronics springing to activity.
“Daddy!?” Darrell called with the enthusiasm of an abandoned puppy. As if anyone else would ever come in through that door.