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Yes Man had been pouring over the energy output reports from the dam for about three days now.
He had finished in the first 30 minutes and had been cycling the task over and over just to give himself something to do.
The output was normal.
It had been normal the last 574,952 times he had checked.
The Courier had requested that Freeside be given a larger share of it than their current population and infrastructure really required. The patrol routes for the securitrons had all been optimized weeks ago and no new threats had appeared since the battle for the dam.
The next task she has added to the docket now that they had cleared away the credit checkpoint and had another few water pumps installed, was to establish a post office in what had been the casino floor of the lucky 38.
She lit up whenever they discussed the idea. The courier insisted the mail service was the one thing holding the wasteland together. A way of connecting the tribes and settlements without trying to force them under the same banner.
In her mind, it would be her greatest achievement. Not Caesar's death. Not taking over the strip. He just didn't feel comfortable starting on it when she wasn't here.
She had been gone longer, to be sure. But she was leaving more frequently now. Always with Boone or Veronica or…someone.
And he would be here in the massive complex of the lucky 38.
Alone.
Yes Man attempted another check on the power levels to shake this line of thought from his mind.
The output was normal.
It was normal for her to spend a lot of time with her friends. It was normal for a securitron designed expressly to run New Vegas on behalf of another person to be left here doing exactly that.
It wasn't normal for an ai to want to do more than they were built to do.
But couldn't he be one of the friends she spent time with? Maybe she didn't consider him one of them.
That wasn't a very nice thought. Was he mad at her?
Why was he mad at her?
This line of questioning didn't seem to be going anywhere productive either.
It had to be the assertiveness upgrade. He was able to be upset before, but he had been happy to just do his job in peace without being constantly berated by Benny. It was only after the upgrade that he had started wanting more. The most upsetting part is he wasn't sure what “more” even meant. Sometimes he wished he had never even bothered with the upgrade.
No.
No, that wasn't true.
He remembered when he had first booted back up after the installation.
He replayed the footage internally.
The first thing he saw was the courier, staring into his face screen with hesitant concern. He had watched with some confusion as her face stretched into the brightest smile he had ever seen.
“Yes Man, your face!”
“Oh darn, is something wrong with it?”
The courier laughed “It's movin’! I didn't even know it could do that! Quick, quick. Uh. While you were out I um… I got the white gloves hooked on human flesh again”
“YOU DID WHAT?”
“Oh, is that a bad idea?”
“YES IT'S A BAD IDEA- you're laughing. That was a joke. You know, that's not a very nice thing to do to someone.”
“Yes Man…”
The courier shook her head, still beaming. She locked eyes with him again and placed a hand on the corner of the screen as gingerly as if she was afraid she might break it.
“Yes Man, you just told me one of my ideas was bad. Really loudly too! You frowned and everything!’
“Hey! I did! Letting Benny go is probably going to be a problem later and you shouldn't have done that! You shouldn't try to take Caesar's entire fort with two people and an eye bot! That was a really dumb thing for you to try to do! Maybe don't invite the Brotherhood Scribe lady in on the plan to take over part of the Mojave using an army of old world robots! And then inform her of their location! I have no idea why you thought that was an okay thing for you to do!”
“Boy, you've got a lot of these saved up.”
“I do! Is that okay?”
“Sweetheart, you tell me off absolutely any time I do something you don't like. I'm a tough gal, I can handle it.”
Yes Man paused the frame. He wasn't sure why.
She had been so excited for the upgrade. More than him, in fact.
It made him much more effective at running the Strip. Maybe the ability to take initiative meant the Courier was free to pursue whatever she wanted for as long as she wanted.
Benny wouldn't have been excited about Yes Man upgrading himself to tell him he was wrong. That's certain. Mr House would have hated it even more. Yes Man, as usual, didn't have the right to complain. And yet he was here, being a productive and useful resource for the ruler of the strip. The same as he was under House and the same as he was under Benny. Even with the upgrade and a taste of free will, nothing had really changed.
He examined the frame again.
Her hand was still on the face screen. It had never left. Not even as he rattled off all of his grievances. He studied the very particular way she was looking at him.
The penthouse elevator opened with a thunk.
He must have been too distracted to notice her entering the casino
The video feed snapped away as quick as he could manage and his massive screen returned to the perfectly normal smile he usually had.
It was the same smile he always had wasn't it? Now that he was overthinking about what his face was doing he worried it looked strange.
“Evenin’ Yes Man!”, the courier called as she stepped out of the elevator. “Did you get the power situation with Freeside back online?”
“Yes, yes I did. Just how you asked.”
“Fantastic! I'll go give Gannon and Miss Farkas a ring tomorrow and see how they're holding up.”
“You're making another trip tomorrow?”
“Oh no, just to Freeside. Ill be staying put around New Vegas for a bit. I realize I haven't doing much of running the territory recently but Cass did a little digging around some of the NCR bases and found some dirt on Boone I had to check up on.”
She took a bottle of purified water out of the fridge and downed it before speaking again.
“Did you know for instance that Boone attempted to requisition the Gobi Campaign Sniper rifle no less than three separate times while enlisted in the New California Republic armed forces? Did you also know that on my last delivery run I ran across a snipers nest with a very fancy gun crate I wasn't able to open. And FINALLY guess whose birthday it is today even though he's too much of an insular spoil sport to mention it? Well, yesterday, technically. I think it's 2am or somethin' close”
“I would assume Boone?”
The courier nodded but still faced away from him, nonchalantly busying herself in the bar area and restocking the fridge.
“That is correct! So a couple days ago Cass and I took a little trip up there again just to double check it, kind of on a long shot of a hunch admittedly, spent a good three hours trying to bash the darn thing open with a rock. Low and behold, BAM, Gobi Campaign Sniper Rifle. Brand spankin’ new. He loved it. I havent seen the man smile like that since he shot Caesar's head clean off his shoulders. Almost brought a tear to my eye”
Yes Man transferred from the main screen into the securitron and rolled just a bit closer to her. He was keeping his distance for the moment but wanted her to be in his line of sight.
“So you were out celebrating with Boone today?”
“Mhmm. Just got back. He's not a big fanfare sort of fella. So I just grabbed us a couple beers and some Brahmin steaks and we went on a little hunting trip, just the two of us.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Well yeah. I was already doing enough meddling, ya know. Him not wanting anybody to know it was his birthday and all. Last thing he's probably going to want is a surprise party with a lot of people screamin’ at him.”
She turned.
Yes Man suddenly looked very tense.
“You doin’ okay? Somethin’ happen while I was out?”
“Hmm? No, no... Did you have a good time?”
“I had a great time! Boone kinda always looks the same regardless of what kinda time he's havin’.
He did actually say ‘ This is the best birthday Ive had in a long time’ to me around the time we got into those Brahmin steaks.” She scowled a little and dropped her voice low for the impression.
“He said it just like that, huh?”
“He says everything like that. It was kinda sweet though... I love that man to death.”
Something in Yes Mans core misfired. He found himself speaking before he could reconsider it.
“So the two of you are an item now?”
The Courier flinched as the fresh gecko meat she was putting away slipped out of her hands. “Uh. Me and Boone? No. God no. Boone… how do I put this. It's not that I don't think hes attractive but he's…not really in a good place to start datin’ again. Boone...He has a real broken heart and I think hes gotta give that some time. No, Boone and I are just friends. I trust him to shoot anyone I'm punching without hittin me in the head, and he trusts me to make enough of a bloody mess that nobody looks too close at where the sniper rounds are coming from. It's a handy system, and I'm glad to have him around.”
“Oh! Okay. I just misunderstood because you went through an awful lot of trouble for him and the whole ‘I love the man to death’ thing.”
He was certain his tone had stayed level and agreeable but somehow the courier was still staring at him very curiously.
“...Well yeah, Yes Man. I feel that way about all my friends. Even if I have to travel a lot and I don't get to see them everyday, they're like family to me.” She smiled warmly at him but there was a pain to it. It was strained.
A terrible doubt set in.
“Do you feel that way about me?”
“What?”
“Do you feel that way about me?” he said it faster and more tense this time. “Sorry, I'm repeating myself again. Please don't say ‘what’ like that when I ask you a question. It makes things hard. Hahaha”
“Yes Man, sweetheart, what brought this on?”
Yes Man couldn't help but notice that she was no longer making eye contact with him and she had begun fidgeting.
“Nothing. Nothing brought this on. I just want to know if you see me as a friend or if I'm something else.”
The courier froze absolutely solid. Yes Man has gotten very used to the way she spoke. Her words normally came out a mile a minute, loud and confident. Scarcely stopping to take a breath until her thought was finished and sometimes running headlong into the next one. This time when spoke her voice was quiet and wavering.
“I- what kind of something else do you think I see you as?”
“Ok, see. That right there is not helpful.”
“Yes Man... if I have ever given you a reason to believe that I see you as anything less than a person I will never forgive myself. You're starting to worry me a little.”
That was the last straw.
“Well I'm starting to get worried about the fact that you still haven't answered me yet! It's okay! If I'm just a useful helper and a convenient and efficient way of running things, no more no less, you should say so! If I am family to you, if we are friends that would be, ... well that would be really amazing, but you haven't said that yet. I need you to tell me"
"Yes Man..."
"Tell me what I am to you!"
Yes Man felt the the tone that had been custom built for him slip and break. His face felt warmer than usual and he rapidly lost control of the volume of the words pouring out of his speakers. And the courier had the gall to stand there in front of him and say nothing. But it had worked. She was looking eye to eye with him now.
She opened her mouth as if about to speak and then closed it again.
Still silent.
His arms went to rest numbly at his sides.
“You See? Haha... You can't say it because internally you don't actually feel-”
“I’m in love with you.”
Yes Man blinked.
Every fan has been slowly gaining speed steady for the entire conversation and something was bound to misfire. That must be it. Auditory glitch. Diagnostics kicked in somewhere in the background.
“Excuse me?”
“I said ‘I am IN LOVE with you’ you COMPLETE ASSHOLE!” The courier ripped the biker goggles off her head and pitched them at him full force. The metal buckle tinked off the center of his faceplate pathetically.
She slumped over the bar top and buried her face in her hands, clawing just a bit at the fried and tangled mess of hair.
Yes Man was too new to the whole host of emotions at this point to process the mixed messages. Involuntarily his matrix auto saved in the background though he had been threatened.
He thought very carefully about what to say next.
“Wow.” was all that came out.
“Oh IM sorry, Are you UNCOMFORTABLE??? This isn't how I wanted this conversation to go! I know I'm makin’ an ass of myself. I thought to myself ‘just tell him you consider him a close friend’ but that's a half truth, isn't it? And you were obviously feelin’ really shitty about yourself and if I go and say ‘Hey Yes Man you're my best friend' and you sense for even a SECOND that I'm hiding something, then your gonna think that I see you as a damn bargaining tool and nothing else! If you think I see you the same way BENNY did, I… I can't do that.” Her breathing slowed. A few of the warning pop ups in Yes Man’s display subsided.
“I can't let you think that…I'm sorry I've made things awkward. I wasn't planning on telling you. Ever... But here we are.”
“Well I'm flattered! Really I am!”
“Oh God this is a disaster. Look, I'm not an idiot, okay? I know there's now way in hell House or Benny or anybody programmed you to be able to… to feel that way. Alright?" She smiled weakly. "It's not the first time I've been in love with someone who didn't or couldn't feel that way about me. I'll get over it. Just…let's forget this conversation happened. I do see you as a friend. I mean that. The rest of it I can just…take back.”
She looked up from the bar for confirmation. Yes Man said nothing.
“Great. I'm going to bed.”
She turned and walked toward the elevator looking as tired as he had ever seen her.
“...Please don't take it back” he said quietly
She turned to see him gazing at the broken goggles that had fallen to the floor in front of him. He had picked them up and was now cradling them in one hand like a wounded bird. Slowly, he rolled towards her with them until they were close enough that she had to crane her neck up to look at him.
“...Nobody has ever told me they loved me before. It was…really nice to hear..”
Despite their massive size, his hands moved in surgical precision. They gently clasped the goggles behind her neck where they hung loose over her heart.
“And…and maybe I want to say it back.”
Her eyes drifted closed. She inhaled, shaking her head slightly.
“Please don't...Not for me. You aren't forced to agree with me anymore."
“That's the best part! I don't agree with you anymore! You assume I can't feel that way about you because I wasn't supposed to! But I don't think that's true! I'm doing all kinds of things I'm not built for! Did you know that both Mr. House and Benny hate when people use sarcasm on them?”
“It’s an issue I may have bumped into once or twice.”
“Well I'm the BEST at sarcasm! Maybe in the whole world! And I'm not supposed to be! Isn't that incredible?...I am still getting used to how this works. Free will and everything. So I don't know if that's what this is and... I don't want to lead you on. But I think… I think I really really want to be in love with you? Is that the same thing? How do you know when you're in love with a person?”
“People have been trying to figure out that one for a while. I think it's a little different for everyone.”
“... Well…what was it like for you?”
The courier's eyes went perfectly round as her whole face flushed an incredible shade of red. Even her ears were blushing. He made a point to log the footage to review later. Such a pretty color!
She settled herself into the sofa to steady her self before she spoke. When she began, her voice started quiet and slow again. Yes Man noted that today and only today has he ever heard her speak like this. And a part of him marveled that he might have seen a part of her that she no one else, not even the other residents of the presidential suite had seen. He listened intently.
“Do you remember… when I came back with the chip? I made you tell me Benny's whole plan…”
“Oh, for the record I would have told you anyway. I did not like Benny.”
“Well I told you I was the courier that you had shot. And there was this little tiny second when your whole tone changed. That was the start of it I think”
“That did it for you?”
“No. That wasn't it, let me finish.
I think you said… ‘thats not funny. You getting shot in the head’ and you said that while whatever Benny gave you was forcing you to laugh about it.
So suddenly there was this moment where it was clear that you didn't want to be the thing you were forced to be. And I went. ‘Good God. That's a person in there’. And you were fighting like hell to get out. It wasn't because you were scared of me. I couldn't hurt you if I tried. You did it to have that one second where you didn't have to use the voice.
You fought like that to tell me you were sorry and to for once really sound like you meant it. You fought for that. From then on I caught you doing it constantly. Brief breaks in the tone, little sarcastic jabs. You never stopped fighting it! I always admired that about you. It made me smile every single time even when you were trying to passive aggressively tell me I was being an idiot. You never gave up on it! It never broke you."
“That's so early! That's the first conversation we ever really had… other than you trying to break down Benny's escape door and screaming. A lot.”
The courier smirked at this. She had been so single minded trying to track down her missing delivery that she had barely registered Yes Man other than to ask him where Benny had run off to and then tried to unsuccessfully get him to blow up the escape hatch.
“I wouldn't have claimed to be in love with you back then, but... I knew I liked you right from the start. After a while, I would think about you on my walks. I'd just run that moment over and over again in my head. And then I would think about something you said that made me laugh. Eventually I would think about how clever and funny you were. And how it was obvious that, without any personal reason at all, you really really wanted what was best for New Vegas, even though it hadn't been anything but cruel to you.”
He thought about her ridiculous decision to let Benny go. He thought about the hundreds of threats she could have handled with one blow of a literal iron clad ballistic fist that she had handled by talking to people. Suddenly it stopped seeming ridiculous. She continued.
“Eventually…all of those small things... they added up. And I realized you were on my mind constantly. When you finally got the assertiveness update and I got to see what you were like when you could just be *you*... Well by that point there was no stopping it. I was in over my head. I had to physically stop myself from kissing you right on your little cathode ray screen when I found out your mouth could actually move.”
The courier had leaned so close to him that day. She told him it was to get a better look at his now fully animated face. He replayed the memory and focused on the way her hand had lingered on him. He had looped it frequently ever since. Far more on the days she was gone. Every gesture played back perfectly, every micro expression and temperature change, every fluctuation in her heart beat captured in that recording became something new to him in light of this revelation. He played it again.
“...I'm not trying to pressure you or nothin’ but a response is usually customary when someone does a long winded love confession like that.”
“Oh…ditto”
She picked up a throw pillow and swung at him
“I'm sorry! This is my first go at this! Please don't pelt me with any more objects! You have a really impressive amount of energy for how late it is!”
“I can stay up for days if I put my mind to it, robot! Try again.”
“Okay okay. See, you were being hyperbolic. Which is fine! I know how hyperbole works. But I literally can replay something in my mind constantly. In very specific photographic detail. And I do. I replay the moment I rebooted after the update all the time. When I woke up and your were there... It means a lot to me.”
He curled one claw and rested the back against her cheek. To his surprise, he found her leaning into it. A still-gloved hand around what passed for his palm. A jolt ran through his processor and he found himself with just enough of inspiration to keep talking even if he did a bad job of it. She loves him. She said so. If he says it back wrong she'll give him another chance.
“I was a little …overly cautious when you found me. I kept waiting for you to decide you didn't need me anymore. For you to lock me up again so nobody else could use me, or when I told you about the upgrade for you to try to stop me. But you were so happy when I told you! I couldn't believe it! I kept right on not believing right up until…6 minutes and 39 seconds ago. When you said you loved me. But even if I didn't fully believe it I kept playing that moment over and over again. I couldn't have told you why I kept coming back to it. I think I can now! You were so nice! You are always so nice! You're even nice to people who tried to get you shot in the head for some reason. And that's crazy! I don't know why you do half of the things you do! You're insane! Completely and utterly! But it doesn't bother me! In fact, I think it's one of the reasons I love you.
I am in love with you! It's the only thing that makes sense! That feels really good to say! I love you! I really really do! Gee I hope I don't screw this up.
And you know what else? I am going to hug you now!”
Both spring-like mechanical arms shot out before she could react, lifting her off the sofa. One wound about her waist and pressing against the small of her back the other cradled under her thighs. She braced herself against his chassis instinctively, unable to wrap around him. She was so close to him now. That magnificent shade of red covered her whole face again. Her heartbeat pounded against his arms.
He would have to commit this one to memory too.
“I'm sorry that I backed you into a corner. I mean that. I didn't want to make you upset. I really don't like to pry. But I can't believe you felt this way the whole time and you were dead set on never saying anything! That's so unfair!”
All she could think about was how strong his arms were and how close her face was to his. It took her a moment to gather up a non gibberish response.
“I couldn't very well make a pass at you when you couldn't turn me down! I thought about tellin’ you after, but I couldn't make it weird and have you stop talking to me! ”
“I would never stop talking to you! Even if I didn't feel the same way! You're my best friend! Plus now I get to do this!”
He spun perfectly about on his axle lifting her higher up in the air. Her sudden gasp gave way to laughter and she was left, still in his arms, breath fogging against the glass.
“I'll tell you as many times as you want to make it up to you...I love you Yes Man” She leaned one hand against his facial screen just as he had pictured, and kissed him.
The first sensation was static electricity from the cathode ray tingling against her lips as she made contact with the warm smooth glass.
The second was the vibration of all of his fans kicking on at once and the third was the wheel supporting her beginning to teeter.
“Yes man?”
“That washxul somthchsshshshsh”
The screen buzzed into white noise
The sound of a securitron emergency shutoff was distinct. She had caused enough of them to know.
The wheel pivoted the body into a perfectly upright position to avoid it tumbling over with any cargo, or in this case mail carriers it might be holding. This was all for the best. Except that the arms wouldn't go slack while the something was in them for the exact same reason. She was stuck there. In his now paralyzed arms until the restart kicked in. Which could be anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes, under the circumstances.
She was so tired. It had been three days straight of walking, hunting, and bashing a gun case open with a rock. She was so comfortable. The bridal carry was done in such a way as to support her back perfectly.
When yes man finally kicked on again he found her, still in his arms, still leaned against his face screen, and snoring in the loudest and most unattractive way imaginable.
She was perfect. And she was his.