Prompt: She wanted me to break it.

Human's didn't get upgrades.

Kaliph didn't understand that. Why shouldn't they have family plans that allowed them to stay forever young? The updates kept him invigorated, even though he was only fifteen. How could humans function without them?

Releasing the plug from his power node, Kaliph tugged the cord from his wrist and strolled next to Carina, the human. She was standing with her back ramrod-straight, eyes dulled. If he didn't know better he would have assumed she was in power-save mode.

But humans didn't have a power-save mode.

Scrolling text rolled over Kaliph's vision as he examined Carina, lines and angles aligning with her figure. His central database rattled off her age, height, weight, body mass at a rapid-fire rate that he mostly ignored. The most interesting schematic approximated her death date, and the graph ballooned in his view. A gently sloping curve as she aged.

Age, death date, all were alien terms to Kaliph. He would never die. He would just get upgraded.

"Things aren't looking so good for you, Carina." He whispered, hands behind his back as he walked circles around her. True to her nature as a good servant, Carina stayed incredibly still, fingers betraying the slightest fidget of irritation.

"My servers are predicting the date of your untimely -- or perhaps it is timely -- demise. I wouldn't know about demise, would I? I bet your skin will wither and fall off of your body, and then your bones will turn into dust and I'll use you as fertilizer for the garden. Plants don't die either, Carina, but you do. So what does that make you?"

He picked at one of the ports in his palm while Carina's face blushed a blotchy scarlet. Blushing was illogical, so Kaliph didn't have to worry about it. The same with crying. There was simply no evolutionary or biological need for it, so he and the rest of the populus had it removed long ago. Carina was an anomaly with her bloodred cheeks and splotchy neck, eyes damp as Kaliph taunted her, joked about her death.

In a way it was enjoyable, poking fun at the servants. They reacted in the strangest ways, chest rising and falling irregularly instead of at the perfect rhythm prescribed by the updates. They wept, saline tears trickling down their heat-warmed cheeks.

Humans were warm, whereas Kaliph's heart was ice-cold. He needed to keep coolant in his diet to make sure his processor wouldn't overload, but the humans didn't. They ate the strangest things, green tubers from the garden and scraps of meat.

Kaliph only needed powerpacks, nutritious and balanced as demanded by the updates. Humans had the strangest urge called hunger that hollowed their stomachs and cheeks. One time Kaliph had held food from one servant because he found it so fascinating, the way the servant boy withered and shrunk from his previous stature.

The servant had recovered later, and Kaliph found it to be a most enlightening experience.

"Who will remember you when you're gone?" He sneered, watching as water welled at Carina's eyelids. "I have servers and databanks, a legacy trailed through code that any idiot could follow. I'll live forever. But you, Carina, you're worthless. You're as worthless as the dust in the garden."

Her palm slammed into his cheek in a vicious slap, denting the plexiplating. Kaliph ran a tongue over his teeth and the plating popped back out again. There was no pain, only the reverb from her sudden attack that echoed in his ears.

He wheeled on Carina, raising a hand to strike her as she had stuck him. How dare a servant so much as touch someone like Kaliph? It wasn't worth his time to punish the filthy servant girl, but he looked forward to her cry of pain as he brought his fist down upon her...

Kaliph's eyes met Carina's as she sunk to the floor, her mouth a small 'o' of shock. Once-blushing cheeks had faded to a sickly pale shade of white, tears dampening her plain face. She knew she had stepped out of line, and she knew what came next.

But Kaliph's arm was frozen in its joint, unable to bear down on the servant in what would be a bone-shattering punch. Probably just a circuit on the fritz, he told himself as he lowered his arm to his side, fingers twitching. A strange feeling bloomed across his chest as he watched Carina standing there. Time for another update, they still haven't worked out glitches like this.

"Don't let it happen again, er -- what was your name again?"

Carina's expression collapsed in the face of the insult, head bowing. Utterly defeated.

As if Kaliph could forget her name.

And years later, though it seemed mere seconds to Kaliph, his databoard recorded that Carina had passed away. His parents bore him the news at dinner, all nonchalance, and he kept up a stiff mask of indifference throughout the meal.

When he was alone in his room, however, he did the impossible.

Kaliph wept.