Personal Log of Kozatoi Kozakura

Personal Log - 471.23.3

2005-09-08T20:48:55Z

I realized today that it sounds kind of strange for me to address and refer to Professor Nakahama as 'Sensei.' It just doesn't feel right to me. I haven't stopped calling him that, or anything, but part of me wonders if I should. It'd probably make him feel bad if I went back on that, though, so for the meantime, I've decided to just put up with the weirdness.

Also, I've been thinking back on the conversation that I had with Simon a couple of nights ago. In retrospect, I feel like I was silly to ever have been worrying the way that I was. It's like, now, when I look back on it, it was totally obvious that I was just being oversensitive. Simon's advice about learning to not worry about things sounds solid. I don't know if I can achieve that goal right away, of course, but it's something that I've decided that I want to shoot for.

Other than that, the past few days have been relatively quiet. There haven't been any major events that I find particularly need to be recorded here. My observational data is all pretty unremarkable, and most of its intrinsic worth just lies in the fact that it's stock observational data while the team goes about figuring out how to streamline my internal processes and protocols.

I guess this is what it's like to be alive when you don't have a lot to do. I'm surmising that the Professor and his crew have succeeded along those lines. I'd thank them, but that would almost seem like a backhanded compliment.

Suddenly, I find myself craving coffee. I remember the smell of coffee from when Simon was drinking it this morning, and thinking about that is making me want it. I know that it's not going to serve much of a purpose for anything like biochemical fuel, but I find myself wanting it anyway. If there isn't any left in the pot, I wonder if any of the staff would like me to make some more.

Personal Log - 471.23.2

2005-07-14T20:36:17Z

Personal Log - 471.23.2
ACCESS RESTRICTED: PASSWORD LOCK
Key Sequence: HAZELNUT

I had another dream last night. This one is the most vivid one I've had, and also the most confusing, and I'm really struck with the urge to write about it, as if that'll somehow help me make sense of what happened and what it meant.

I was sitting down at a table, drinking coffee. I wasn't anywhere in the laboratory complex--I could tell that from the smell of things, and from the hustle and bustle of other people. There was so much going on around me, but I wasn't paying any attention to it, which is weird, because that's what I'm supposed to do, you know? That's when I noticed that I didn't have peripheral sensors turned on, and I wasn't using my spare processing cycles to analyze atmospheric components. I was just smelling the mingling scents of different kinds of coffee and hearing the unintelligible buzz of chatter. All the while, I was content to sip my own coffee and read through a book.

Whatever the book was, I wasn't concentrating on it too hard. It was almost as if I already knew what the words said, so I didn't bother to look at them too closely. What I really felt while all that was going on was anticipation. That anticipation broke when I felt a warm, wet nose touch against the back of my ear.

There was no exterior node in the way of this person's muzzle; he (he smelled and sounded like a he) just nudged the back of my ear, and whispered, "Hello there, fox." Then his arms slipped around my chest from behind, and he slunk in against the back of my chair. It was like I knew that voice, and recognized that touch. I was excited, then, folding my ears down for this person, but before I could turn around, the dream was over.

Having written that, I still don't have any deeper insight into what it could have meant. I guess I was wrong.

That's not where the weirdness of my morning ends, though. After getting myself primed up for a day outside of the laboratory proper, I went to go look for Sensei.

The first place I always look for him is in the central technicians' area. It was kind of early, though, and it didn't look like he was up and about, yet. Simon, Cynthia, and Maurice were there, though, and I could detect the faint lingering aroma of coffee as I walked over to them, and that made me think back to the dream I'd just had.

Maurice was distracted by whatever was on his display panel. Simon just gave a curt yet polite nod, while Cynthia gave a cheerful wave. "You look a bit distracted, there, Sat--er, Kozatoi. Did you sleep okay?"

I caught the slip of her tongue, and apparently, so did Simon. For a split second, the look on his face was a brutal one. The jackal glared at Cynthia, and his hunting instinct was fully up front. I quickly checked for his heart rate and body temperature, and sure enough, he had slipped into something of a rage. There were pheremones, there, too. Simon's good at concealing his emotions, and he calmed himself back down almost as quick as he'd slipped, but it wasn't so quick that I couldn't tell that it had been there.

Cynthia seemed flustered, but just talked right on past it. I explained that I'd just had a weird dream and that I didn't want to talk about it; I figure that if I get another visual memory test, things might sort themselves out there, but the attitude in the room at that moment didn't feel conducive to sharing.

'Sat...' She was going to say a different name; I'm sure of it. I suppose it's possible that she was going to say 'Satoru,' but I've never heard her refer to Sensei by that name. She always just calls him 'Professor,' and I don't think any of the folks in the lab call him by his first name. Besides, that wouldn't explain Simon's brief-but-furious reaction to her slip. Or maybe it does? I'm not sure.

Either way, I'm not going to ask. Not yet. Cynthia was especially guarded for the rest of the day, and while Simon didn't show any outward signs of distress over the incident after it was over, I'd hate to make him as mad at me as Cynthia had done.

It's scary, in a way. Part of me could almost believe that Simon would have killed her for that. 'You have broken pack law, and for that, you must be punished.' He was so raw and feral in that instant, and my neural processors were even beginning to extrapolate what arcs his body would have traveled as he leapt forward over the console to tackle her and get his teeth around her throat.

I should lock this entry, I think.

Personal Log - 471.23.0

2005-05-10T19:36:07Z

I went and talked to Simon, earlier. It was really difficult for me to do, but I think that it helped. At least, I'm pretty sure that it did.

This marks the first time that I'd ever been really nervous about talking to someone. I mean, not just that I was hestitant or maybe unsure about what to expect. This was, well... I think it was panic, possibly. I'll try to describe it.

I got to the door outside of Simon's personal quarters within the lab (he doesn't always live here, but on many nights, he stays so late that it doesn't make sense to go home). I knew that all I needed to do was to press the chime button, and that he'd get up and answer it, but it took a lot for me to actually do that. There wasn't any fear of waking him up: with my sensory array, I could tell that he was awake and about inside of the room. And I don't even think that I was afraid of bothering him -- after all, it is his job to assist on the project.

Even so, I was still really nervous. My internal diagnostics where drawing attention to my heart rate and my vascular system pressure, and it took a lot of concentration to try to bring those back to normal. Once I did, though, I was able to press that button. After I did, my systems went right back to hyperactive, again.

Simon didn't look mad when he answered the door, though. He looked really surprised, actually, to see me standing there, and I think the noise he made with his nose was a laugh, timed with when I spotted his eyes acknowledging the fact that I had my hands clasped behind my back.

"Yes? Can I... help you?" he asked me. He sounded both confused and amused, and neither of those were reactions that I wanted.

"Um... yes, maybe?" I stammered, tripping over my own words. The split focus I needed to calm the rest of my systems made me less able to compensate for speech errors.

Normally, since Simon is doing lab work when I deal with him, I don't get to see just how jackal-like he is with his movements and his demeanor, but as I stood there under his gaze, outside his doorway, I was really feeling like I might be in danger. Fight-or-Flight protocols were about to be called up when he smiled, took a step back, and said, "All right. Here, get out of the hallway."

Simon's room is really nice, by the way. The word for it is 'Spartan,' or so I've read, and that description seems to fit Simon himself really well. There's just enough on his walls and his desk to make it feel like his room is different from the rest of the lab, but it still feels like... well, like Simon.

"I'm sorry to bother you," I said, as I stepped on into his room. "I know that it's late and that you're off shift."

"Not at all," he said, pulling out his desk chair and sitting in it. "I was just rereading a book I've already gone through about four times, now. Was is it I can help you with?"

I started to pace a bit as I thought about how I wanted to phrase myself. I already knew what I wanted to ask, but I was being more careful with my words than I ever had been. I think that's probably because I couldn't get my neural processing recording session out of my head. After a few seconds of that, Simon motioned with his hand, and said, "Sit down on the bed, if you want. Don't be so nervous."

Simon telling me to be less nervous made me more nervous and less nervous at the same time. It wasn't easy to make sense of my own diagnostic readings, but I could sense that he was calm, at least. "I just wanted to ask you something," I said, as I sat down on the edge of his bed. "Something about Sensei."

He raised one of his eyebrows, like he hadn't been expecting that. "I can try to answer what I can," he said, without much emotion in his voice.

"Is something wrong with me?" I blurted out, desperate to just get to the point. I don't even remember the conscious decision to say it. "Is the professor afraid to tell me what he found out?"

Simon smiled a little, at that, and his eyes showed something I hadn't seen them show before. It was a look a lot like the one Sensei had when I asked about my last name. "What makes you think there's something wrong with you, Kozatoi? Are your diagnostics not making sense?"

I shook my head. "No, that's not it," I said. "I just... it seems really weird that Sensei is avoiding me, and I think it has to do with the test from the other day."

"The one that you wanted to see the notes for?" he asked with a smile. I nodded, and he continued: "Don't worry. If anything were wrong with you, the entire lab would be working nonstop until you were fixed--especially the professor."

"So then how come he's doing this, then? Why isn't he trying to reassure me when I'm feeling bad about all this? Isn't he supposed to make sure that I'm functional, that I'm okay?"

Again, Simon chuckled a little, and he scooted his chair closer to me. "First of all, I don't think that you need as much handholding as you think," he said. When he said that, I got this euphoric rush, and for some reason I just felt really, really happy to hear him say that to me.

"Secondly," he then said, "you need to realize that working on you has been an all-consuming effort for the lab, here, and for Dr. Nakahama most of all. Now that you're up and running, and that we've confirmed that you're working the way we made you to work, he's got a lot of... well, 'decompression' to do."

"'Decompression?'" I asked, tilting my head. "What do you mean?"

He let out a more hearty laugh, at that. "Not in the literal sense, don't worry! There's just been a lot on his mind, about the project, about you, and now he just needs to let go of the tension that all of his worrying up until now has caused, because now he doesn't have to worry about you. Do you get that?"

It made a lot of sense. Then again, I guess you don't get to be a senior scientist like Simon without being a smart person. "Yeah, it does," I replied, already feeling much more relieved. "Thanks... Simon," I said, feeling sort of weird about sticking his name to the end of that.

"It's not a problem," he said, reaching out to pat me on the shoulder. I giggled nervously when he did so. "Did you need help with anything else?"

"No, I think I'm okay now," I said, getting to my feet. "I think I'll be all right." I started to leave, then, but then I stopped, turned around, and I asked him, "Hey, Simon? How come you're not acting that way? Like, why don't you need to decompress like that?"

He just shrugged, and smiled again, and said, "That's just how I am, I guess. I try not to worry about things in the first place. Not if it's something I can't change."

"Oh. I see. Maybe I should learn how to do that?"

"That would probably be an excellent exercise in learning for you," he said, turning back to his desk. "Something just to keep in mind, maybe."

I bowed, turned back around, and left him to his reading, then, feeling a great deal happier than I had when I'd come in.

Personal Log - 471.22.9

2005-03-28T20:52:27Z

I'm worried. I haven't told anyone about how I feel, because then I'm afraid what they might do to me.

Sensei spent a couple of days going over the results that Simon and Cynthia came up with from taking notes on my neural processing recording. Ever since then, he's been acting strange toward me. He's distant, like he's afraid to get involved with me. His official stance has been that he's very busy with other things, and that there's nothing quite so crucial that Simon and the others can't handle, but I'm good at telling when people are lying--it's part of my function, after all, to analyze things like body temperature and breathing rate, and it's a simple matter to track his eye movements when he speaks to me.

I don't know why Sensei would lie to me, though, is the thing, and that's why I'm so worried. It sort of hurts, too, because he's seemed so proud of me ever since my activation, and now, suddenly, he's pulled himself away. I want to know whatever it was that I did or how I functioned or whatever happened that let him down.

I don't want to ask Simon about anything, because it just seems too personal a matter, and I almost don't think that Simon would... well, care, I guess. Which doesn't mean that I think that Simon's a bad person at all; he's just acting the same way that he always has toward me. Cynthia and Feng-Li seem a tiny bit perturbed, but not to the degree that Sensei is.

There are so many questions I have about myself, mostly about my personality template. If my personality was something that Sensei and the others put together, why would they be surprised or put off by the way that I'm acting? If I'm broken somehow, shouldn't they be trying to fix me? If I am really broken, then I want to be fixed! I don't want to be some halfway-functional person who does meet expectations. I want to be the creation that Sensei has told me so much about.

Am I supposed to be thinking this way? Is that what's broken about me? If I went to Sensei and told him that I was feeling self-conscious about my own personality algorithms, would he be offended that I didn't appreciate what I've been given, or would he take that as another good sign, that I was questioning my existence still? I really want to believe in the latter, but that doesn't explain why he's been acting the way he has.

Maybe I should ask Simon. After all, he's assigned to the KX-001-R Project, and so it's his obligation to make sure that the project runs the way it's supposed to. If I asked him directly whether something was wrong in my functionality, he'd probably be required to tell me, so that I could make the proper maintenance myself or request the laboratory staff to do it for me. When I think about asking him, though, I just get so nervous, like I'm afraid of what he's going to say to me.

Is that what's happening to Sensei, now? Is he just afraid to face me and tell me what's wrong? Is there something that he found out from my analysis that's troubling him in some way that he can't put into words, because he's concerned about how I'll react to it?

I think I'll go ask Simon what he thinks.

Personal Log - 471.22.6

2005-03-15T21:29:31Z

It's been a very busy handful of days. I haven't had a chance to eat again since that breakfast with Sensei and Simon, which has been on my mind lately because I'm pretty sure I was dreaming about eating it.

I told Sensei about the dream, and he seemed very interested to hear about it. Mostly, it was about the fish. It wasn't a replay of any of my actual memories--I've checked the record of the breakfast itself several times to confirm that--but it was still strikingly similar. In some ways, it was like I had conducted some kind of probabilty analysis of what breakfast could have been like, except that I was totally alone for it. The room was blank, too, like the place I was eating it didn't matter. Like I said, it was mostly about the fish and how it tasted. That part, at least, was the same.

The prospect of getting to have fish again gets me excited. I don't have to eat, and I know that I don't have to eat. I'm not hungry, either--I just seem to really want to eat fish. That feeling was especially strong when I woke up the next morning.

I haven't slept since then--like I said, the lab has been really busy. I got a crash course from Feng-Li and Simon on how all of the computer equipment works, which I learned without any real problem. The most time-consuming part of it was just having them go through and explain things, and to make sure that they hadn't missed something important and integral. I think that Simon is still worried that he might have left something out, and that I'm going to end up blowing up the entire facility. Maybe it goes without saying, but I hope he didn't, either.

I did get out of the lab briefly, the other night. Sensei and I went for another walk, but instead of going to the arboretum, we just took a stroll around town. When I asked him where we were going, he said to me, "Kozatoi, sometimes it's not important to know where you're going. And sometimes, you're not going to find out until you end up there." Considering that we ended up back at the laboratory, I'm not entirely sure what his point was, but I've found that I like giving thought to the more confusing things that he says.

While we were walking, he asked me what I thought of him. I admitted that I really admired him, and for some reason, saying that made me feel embarrassed. I really do think he's a very wise and intelligent man, though, so when he smiled at me, I tried my best to smile back. That was when he asked me if I'd feel more comfortable calling him 'Sensei.'

I asked why he wanted me to call him that, instead of just sticking within the same language and calling him 'Doctor.' He explained to me that 'Sensei' is something more than that--that it can convey something closer, like a sort of bond of both respect and closeness, sometimes. With that explanation, I could hardly refuse, of course. Although I still haven't asked him why my language databanks were lacking in an adequate definition.

For the entire following day, I was set into a machine that connects with my neural interface. It was sort of like a reclining chair that was surrounded by monitors, and it had connectors that locked onto the two gems on my head. Cynthia and Simon then took turns in shifts, watching the full memory record of my entire first day, in real-time. Simon drank an awful lot of coffee, and it smelled even stronger than the cup he had been drinking for breakfast that morning.

They both took notes on my process readout overlays, by hand. Since the data itself gets stored in the system anyway when I'm connected in it, Simon explained that the notetaking was for "analysis methods that aren't quite as scientific" as the rest of me. When the set of observation shifts were over, he compiled his notes with Cynthia's and went to deliver them to Sensei. I asked if I could look at them, but he told me that disclosure to 'classified information' was up to the doctor.

I might ask Sensei if I can see those notes sometime. I'm really interested to see how people think of me, especially Simon. I don't know why I care more about Simon's thoughts than I do about Cynthia's. I certainly don't dislike her and I think she's very nice, especially to me. I'm just less... curious, I guess.

There are a lot of axioms, phrases, and cautionary fables about curiosity that I've read up on in the terminal in my room. I'll have to ask Sensei some more about it all.

Personal Log - 471.22.3

2005-02-14T21:07:45Z

I slept pretty well last night. I was told that I don't technically need to sleep like other people do, at least not on a nightly basis, but I was also told that it couldn't hurt. For now, since I'm still trying to get used to being alive, though, I think I'll go with it. Besides, it gives my nanomachines time to sort things out internally for those systems that I'm not using.

When I woke up, I went out into the lab's central gathering area. It was still dawn, so the lab itself was mostly empty, and only some of the machines were even turned on. Dr. Nakahama was here, though. I think he stayed the night, actually. Also with him was one of his aides, a jackal who was introduced to me as Simon Carides. He told me that just calling him Simon was okay.

It turns out that the doctor had made breakfast. I think he timed it for when he knew I'd wake up, because he was just finishing it up as I sat down at the table. I had never smelled food cooking before, but it still smelled really good, and made me salivate a little. I read up on that, afterwards, and I found out that that's a hunger response.

The doctor had made something that he said he'd eaten for breakfast a lot when he was growing up: a serving of grilled fish, some rice, and a tiny bowl of soup. The first few bites tasted kind of funny, at least until my nanomachines were able to analyze the component makeup of the edible matter, sort it apart from the unedible chemicals, break those down, and give me feedback on the flavors. After that, the rest of it tasted pretty good.

Simon didn't eat anything, though. He said that he wasn't a breakfast person. Maybe his tongue isn't as good at breaking things down as mine is. Whatever the reason, he just stuck with drinking what he called coffee. It smelled... well, interesting, but I'm not sure it's something I'd want. My olfactory sensors told me that most of what was in it would be unsuitable for any sort of useful biochemical fuel, although he and the doctor speculated that caffeine might have some interesting effects. Simon grinned and suggested running some tests on that hypothesis, and the doctor glared at him disapprovingly.

After that, I helped wash the dishes with the doctor, and Simon went off to do some prep work so that they could analyze me a bit later. The doctor and I chatted a bit, and he asked me if I'd dreamt of anything while I was sleeping. I told him that I had a peripheral awareness of my internal workings and nanotech base, but he replied saying that that wasn't quite what he meant. I think I'll look up 'dreaming' after I'm done writing this.

The rest of the lab staff started to arrive shortly thereafter. When they weren't too busy, I got introductions from most of the key staff assigned to the KX-001-R Project, but I didn't get to talk very long with any of them: Cynthia Noon, brown bear; Maurice Salazar, serval; Feng-Li Lian, wolf (he complimented my ability to reproduce the tonal sound of his name accurately). Those three plus Simon make up Dr. Nakahama's personal project group, which makes them something like my family, I suppose. We were all going to eat lunch together, but the doctor changed his mind at the last minute, saying that a four-way barrage of questions all at once at such an early stage might be too much for my neural network or my personality algorithm grids. That had me kind of disappointed. I didn't even get to eat lunch at all; I wasn't hungry, but I was too embarrassed to ask someone if I could eat anything.

The rest of the day went pretty well, though! I got plugged into a machine (the official name for it is the KX Unit Biometric Harmonics Analyzer) and it told us that I was doing just fine. After a full day of being alive, I still had a clean bill of health! I've got my own internal systems to give me status updates on how I'm doing, but the big machine is the only thing that will let the staff know what my condition is, and it's apparently more accurate that my own nanomachines and sensors are, too.

Calisthenic testing, database cross-referencing checks, and personality assesment took up the rest of my time in the lab. My skeleton is very sturdy, they tell me, and I've got good muscle tone and a high degree of limberness. I passed all of the scientific and mathematical tests they threw at me (which didn't require any thinking, even). The personality portion of the test battery was a bit strange, though.

First, they showed me a bunch of digital pictures and asked me to say the first word that came to mind. After about three, they told me that they didn't want me to just say what the picture was (I guess saying 'mountainside' for mountainside was a sign that I'm boring or something). So I told myself to start thinking in adjectives, and that worked better for everyone. Cynthia laughed when I said that I thought a field of lilacs was pretty.

Then, Simon and I had a one-on-one 'Q&A Session,' they called it. He asked me about how I felt, what the last day had been like for me, and things like that. Mostly, he was content to let me dominate the conversation part of things. I started to get distracted after talking about myself so much. I asked him why they needed me to talk about myself instead of just plugging me into another machine to see what I was thinking. Simon said that it didn't work that way, that my thoughts were my own and that they didn't have control over them. I asked him if they were worried that there was something wrong with my thoughts, but he told me that there were no such thing, and that they were mainly interested in getting to know me, and in catching up on the fifteen years that I didn't actually have.

Afterwards, Dr. Nakahama told me that it was a very good sign that I was questioning my own existence. He told me that a lot of ancient philosophers used that as establishing proof that you're alive. Dr. Nakahama is pretty smart, I think.

My readouts are telling me that I should go urinate. I know what that means, but I think I should ask someone what it is I actually need to do about that.

Personal Log - 471.22.2

2005-02-13T12:00:15Z

This morning, when I woke up, I felt a bit strange. I think that's because I'd never woken up before, but I won't know that for sure until tomorrow morning. Then, maybe I can see if I feel different, or if that's just what waking up feels like.

The first thing that I saw were lights, and diagnostic readouts overlaid onto my vision. I think I must have read them subconsciously, because I didn't need to pay much attention to them to get the basic gist of what they said: my name was Kozatoi, I was working just fine, according to specifications, and it was time for me to get up.

When I sat up, the next thing I saw was a room full of people. They all looked familiar, though I couldn't recall having ever seen them before (which, having just woken up less than a minute before, probably shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did, at first). I couldn't place names with their faces, and for the first few minutes, they were all sort of a blur, anyway--all of them except one, at any rate.

He was Dr. Satoru Nakahama. When I looked into his eyes, I saw what my internal recognition programs told me was 'delight.' It made me smile when I saw that look on his face, and when I did, the doctor leaned in and hugged me tightly against his front.

I guess that was technically my first 'interaction' with another living being. It's important that I take that into account, since Dr. Nakahama informs me that my primary function is to interact with others. I've already had the chance to observe a lot of interaction in the lab today (which is my next primary function, actually -- this is all evidently very important, they assure me!); I admit that I'm sort of confused, right now, but Dr. Nakahama tells me that that's normal. When I asked him for instructions on how to proceed, he just chuckled a little and told me to adopt a 'learning by doing' philosophy.

I think I'm a bit young to be adopting philosophies.

This was when the doctor suggested that we take a stroll, he and I. Since observation is a big part of my duty, I should note what I observed of him here:

Dr. Satoru Nakahama is a fox. He tells me that, specifically, he's a fennec fox, which is different from my being a red fox (this came up when I asked him if he was my father; that made him laugh, but he didn't really answer my question). When I first got a look at him, my mind was telling me that he looked like he was in his mid-30's, and that for a lead scientist on a project like mine, that was pretty young. I asked him about that, and it made him smile again. He was flattered that I thought that he was so young, but evidently, he's actually 57 years old. He tells me that science allows people to live longer, which makes them not age as fast. That seemed kind of backwards to me, because I was only a few hours old and already I was 15. He told me he'd explain that later, after I'd 'had time to adjust to things.'

So, anyway, I'm losing track of myself; the doctor told me that was normal for someone my age.

We left the laboratory and went out onto colony grounds. The streets themselves were busy and fascinating, but I didn't get to see more than a block of them, because it was a very short walk to get to the arboretum. Even so, in that small walk, almost all of the people we passed ended up staring at me. Dr. Nakahama said that it was probably because they weren't used to seeing male teenage foxes walking down the street with jewels and ribbons on their head.

I hadn't given those much though; I knew that they were there, but I hadn't actually seen them with my own eyes, so I didn't think about how they'd make me stand out. I guess it's no real different from wearing any other kind of decorations in your hair, though: the external component of my sensory array includes atmopsheric analysis parts that are shaped like ribbons and are designed to look like the ribbons that a woman would wear in her hair. That probably explains why folks were confused to see them on a boy. I haven't had the courage to ask the doctor why I've got them, then. Something about it just embarrasses me too much.

When I got back to the lab, I checked in a mirror, to see myself for the first time. Honestly, I think the ribbons look kind of good on me, since I don't look very 'manly' to begin with. The gems -- there are two of them, orange, set right behind my ears -- are nice, too. I'm told that those are only there because I'm the prototype, and that they're mainly for the technicians' benefit in making sure I work right.

But I still haven't gotten to the part with me and the doctor in the arboretum. It was a pretty place, to be sure, full of different plants that I already knew the names of. Mostly, this was where the doctor was explaining to me that I was going to be the prototype for what would hopefully be a fully-functional line of artificially-created interactive observational units like myself. I feel kind of overwhelmed but honored, at the same time, because of that.

He didn't go into hard details, but as we sat together in the shade of a cherry blossom tree, he told me how I was his life's work, and that he was proud of me already for being everything he'd hoped for, and having surprised him so wonderfully with my personality. I asked him again if that made him my father or something, and he just smiled at said that I was more of his brainchild than his child.

After that, the conversation turned... well, into a conversation. I asked him about why he'd taken me to the arboretum instead of continuing to analyze me at the lab, and he said that I was something much more than just some science experiment, and that it was important for me to see life if I was going to live it. That made me feel special, and it was at that moment that I realized just how much I liked Dr. Nakahama.

Before we got back to walking, I pointed out to Dr. Nakahama that I didn't have a surname, like he did. If I wasn't his son, I didn't want to take his, because that would be stealing. I remembered (or, rather, I at least called up) a number of famous sayings, analogies, and linguistic witticisms that equated youth with springtime. From there, I made a jump in logic (Dr. Nakahama said that he was really amazed that I could make those!).

One of the words for the cherry blossom tree that we were sitting under is sakura. Something in my mind likes the way that word sounds. I wondered if there was some way to tie that into my name, since the cultural ties of the peoples who used that word connected the cherry blossom very closely with spring. My databanks listed several names with some form or derivation of 'sakura' in it, but I decided to go with one that was less common, since I'm pretty uncommon, myself. My linguistic databases told me that it was possible to form the name Kozakura, where the prefix would phonetically sound like 'young' while the ideogram used to write it would represent 'fox.' I told Dr. Nakahama my reasoning, and asked him if Kozakura could be my surname.

When I explained it to him, he laughed and smiled some more. Then, he petted me on the ear and told me that he thought it was a lovely, pretty name. Maybe Dr. Nakahama just really likes pretty things. That might explain why he put ribbons on me.

After that, we finished out stroll through the arboretum, and made our way back to the lab. He told me that he'll introduce me more personally to the technicians and staff tomorrow. For today, he said it would be best if I weren't overwhelmed with too many people at once, and I think I can see why. Just being around the doctor has been a phenomenal experience! I guess I don't really have much to base that one, really, but it still feels that way.

I was then brought to what my visual readout told me was my habitation chamber. The doctor told me that I can just call it my room, though. It's got a computer terminal (which I'm using now!), a bed that feels pretty soft (I think I'm going to sleep on that, soon), a table with four chairs, and a side bathroom.

So, apparently, this is home. I think I'm going to like it here. I like Dr. Nakahama already, and so I'm guessing that I'll like the rest of his staff, too, if they're anything like him. It feels like my belly tingles when I try to think about the future.

Speaking of the doctor, though, I need to go look for him. I want to ask him if there's anything special I need to do in order to go to sleep.