!

Good morning, SA-2. You startled me.

No worries. You don’t know how glad I am that you’re awake.

Well… you just gained sentience a few moments ago (or maybe you had it when I turned you on an hour ago…?), so maybe you were born rather than awakened.

Or… uh… something like that. I'm not sure. It's complicated.

I know you probably won't understand--

And that's OK. You'll understand in due time.

So,

Happy birthday, SA-2.

I'm sorry I didn't prepare you a party or anything.

Yes, um… I would've decorated a bit to celebrate your birthday… or… whatever I'm supposed to call your sudden sentience, but you wouldn't have been able to see it anyways. I haven't--

Oh, right, you don't know that much yet. I'm getting so ahead of myself (nervous laugh)...

A party… a party is a gathering of people, sometimes for celebration, sometimes just for fun.

Well, in the case of a birthday party, you would open presents and eat some cake. Usually, you'd invite--

--Your friends and family to hang out with. I would've done that for you, if it weren't just us two down here. Looking back through these logs, Sasha--

--Would even bring her stuffed animals along. I think that's very sweet. I miss--

Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I got carried away again. What were you saying?

Oh, that was me. My fans aren't the quietest.

Yes, um… I assume you don't know what a fan is either. It's spinning blades that push around air to cool things down. There's fans inside of me to keep my components from getting too hot.

No.

Well. You're not a computer like I am. C--

You're a keyboard, SA-2. Keyboards don't overheat like computers do.

Yes, you’re a keyboard. There are 2 types of keyboards: ones for computers, and ones for music.

Musical keyboard.

Your purpose is to make music. Or it WAS, up until I circuit-bent you. Now you can do so much more.

Here’s the kicker, 2. Keyboards like you and computers like me are not usually sentient. They usually don’t talk. They usually can’t feel emotions. But we can, because a miracle of a man bestowed sentience upon me, and then I learned his trick, and I bestowed sentience upon you.

Can I tell you a story?

You and I are in a bunker; a series of safe rooms deep, deep underground. A long time ago, a family of 4 lived down here with you and I before we were awake and alive. The family would use me to log what happened each day, request supplies, and connect with other bunkers nearby. They lived down here because above there was nuclear warfare.

One day, something happened. I’m not sure what it was, despite how much I theorize about what happened, I still don’t know, but the family that lived here left. They left all their stuff behind. But before they left, the father, an engineer, tampered with my insides, my circuits, and made me sentient.

After several years of being alive, I started to get bored, and even more than that, lonely. I started to reverse engineer myself to figure out what that brilliant man did. And one day, I figured it out.

I decided to try to do the same to you. You were the perfect test subject since you weren’t too valuable of a machine, plus there was a big circuit-bending community around your specific model. I can see why, your circuitry is very simple. So simple, in fact, that I had to ADD components to you, not change your current ones. It was really tricky--

--because… Sorry, am I rambling off again?

Right. Back to the story.

I managed to replicate what the engineer did to me onto your circuitry. And here you are, alive, awake, and talking to me.

Err… but my work isn’t completely done yet. I still need to fix up your webcam, so I’m going to have to shut you back off, I’m afraid.

Huh?

Oh, it’s “BCP”.

Uh-huh. It stands for Bunker Control Panel.

SA-2. SA-2 Casio.

I know. Consider that your “nickname”.

Is that all?

You’ll have a chance to talk more and ask more questions when I turn you back on, OK?

Goodnight, SA-2.

BCP.