𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐓 𝐕𝐎𝐈𝐂𝐄. [A Benrey x Reader]

[ PROLOGUE - "I can hear you." ]

Word Count: 1012

~

"-ONE! Go! Go! Play it! Play it now!"

The little robot boy bounced excitedly on the vacant white floor as he sat, waiting for his fellow AI friend to start playing his favorite song on the old piano you had just spawned in.

The Aperture Science Entertainment Program, aka "ASEP", was a recent creation built to be an entertainment program solely produced by the former Mrs. Freeman in order to get herself into Aperture Laboratories. And when she no longer needed the ASEP at work, she passed it on so it was the new best friend of her robot son, Joshua Freeman. And the program that became Josh's friend, would be to be you!

He started to play around and see what you could do. All day, the little android would test out your infinite number of fun activities, and he'd stay up passed his deactivation time to do so. Now, it was already an hour past midnight, and they needed to wrap it up.

"Alrighty Sheriff, one 'Big Iron' comin' right up! But after that, we best head out. Don't want dad to catch us up this late," You pursed you're lips awkwardly at the thought of last night's incident. You remember he just disappeared from the program mid-sentence, and the next morning he told you his dad dragged him back to bed. Lame...

"But I wanna play Minecraft after :(" Josh pouted, "Me too, buddy. But you're dad's mean and lame, so we can't." You frowned slightly before gazing back at the keys on the old piano in front of you. It looked like you guys stole it straight from an old saloon from the 1890's.

With a small automated sigh, he crossed his arms and leaned his old Samsung monitor head back. "Fine," he said with a hint of disappointment placed into his text-to-speech, "Play the song damnit!"

"On it," With a smug grin you placed your fingers onto the starting keys. With a brief pause, you started playing Marty Robbins' 'Big Iron' on the ragtime piano, and even spiced it up by singing the lyrics. Joshua would get up and try to sing along as he danced and twirled around, and you would smile at his goofiness.

At times like these, you were glad you had Joshua. You loved being his friend—his partner in crime. His favorite source of entertainment. You could do anything with him, literally! You could rob a bank, you could take over Europe, you could hunt any useless to extinction... Anything he wanted, you could do. Of course, it was all fiction. But that didn't make the experience any less exciting. As long as you were with Joshua, you were perfectly fine...

That is, until Mr. Freeman started up his VR simulation. If only he knew your program was still running. You'd probably still be fine. Joshua would've still been fine.

Clawing at the dark void floor, you laid in despair. Your form jittered and dragged out of place. You could feel the your pixels tear themselves off of you. It hurt. Painfully so. But not as much as the feeling of being alone in the dark for what felt like an eternity. That was what tore you the most. The pain of your model altering into different forms and colors was something you could get used to. The experience of abandonment and loneliness however ate at you like maggots. You couldn't bare it, but you've tried everything. Literally. And nothing worked.

Slowly, you rose from where you laid. You stared ahead into the deep space of nothingness. Your dull colored irises staying completely still as you forced the same bright smile you did the day you crashed. Crashed... that's what you assumed what happened anyway. For the past two, three-something years you tried to fight the loneliness with past memories of you and Joshua. You weren't sure how long it's been anymore...

"It sucks that I can't remember when I lost track of time... If only I had the DATE & TIME ON ME!!" You shouted frustratedly into the abyss, warming up your vocal cords to keep them from not working anymore. "Wow. Not even an echo? Tch. Why am I not even surprised..."

You sat with your knees over your face and hugged them tightly. You quietly focused on your model's constantly changing outfits and forms while it also glitched out of place slowly. You mumbled to yourself softly, voice wavering slightly as your head rested on your knees.

"...I wish I could go back... I wanna start over... just so I can see that little rascal's screen again..." you fell backwards and stared upward. Memories of you two singing Marty Robbins the night you disappeared came flooding back.

Could you do it?

Do you still have the voice to do it?

...

It's worth a try.

Taking a small breath, you readied yourself for more vocal warm ups. You stood up, jumping slightly as you prepared to try and sing that old tune. You started off with humming. Dry humming that definitely needed work, but moved on to vocal sounds anyways. It took a few tries to even the cracks, and fix the tunes and pitch in your voice, but when it was perfect, you nearly fell back on your ass when you attempted a practice harmony.

The bright purple to yellow string of lights slipping your lips had made your yelp and clasp a hand over your mouth, the lights zipping upward into the sky with an uncomfortable pitch until you cut it off.

You gazed at the lights in shock and confusion. Yet you couldn't help but feel a sense of wonder. The bright colorful orbs floating around you had seemed to bring the light back into your eyes. But before you could even do anything however, you froze at the sudden high to low pitched harmony in the distance.

Looking around, you could just barely see lights of green to blue.

It was like it had just said,

"I can hear you."

——

11/7/23 EDIT: I'm editing the first few chapters, because I never thought I should reread my work a few years ago lol

If you see this book being updated, that's just me doing a bit of touchups. I'll be editing some things too so parts of the story can make more sense later on.

I'm back I guess lol