look, staring into the air of that hospital room, there was no more those tics, his face was a hard mask. Ubi gave thanks when Anna arrived.
- How's the hand? - He asked.
- Good, really it was nothing.
- Anne, I want you to understand that it was not intentional, Hugh did not want to hurt you, he just doesn't yet control his new body very well and he was as scared as you. Just don't take it too seriously.
- All right, I'm over it. No big deal.
- Seriously. Do not be worried. Ah... would you like to try again?
- To visit Hugh!? - Anne replied astonished. - But he seemed to get angry with my visit, maybe I am not a good influence.
- Nonsense! If he show a lot of fear, apprehension, anger, or what is more likely in your case, love, friendship, affection, that's all I want from him. This is exactly what is missing for him. Pay a visit to him today, make it for me.
- Okay, I'm going, what time?
Ubi got everything fixed, and he got Anne's appointment for a visit to Hugh. Ubi said that Anne was engaged to Hugh, a fact that from now on would be accepted by the bureaucracy and that would open doors for her. But the truth is that the fear of Ubi was responsible for he give his assignment to Anne, he did not want to face Hugh. There was actually a confrontation between two fears; the first was the fear of the newness that he had done, the moral and ethical issue of his accomplishment, and the second was the concern about a failure, if the new Hugh did not correspond to his expectations of cure than Hugh actually shows all of Ubi's error.
At second visit Ubi spied Anne like a hawk stare a prey. From his solitary room Ubi looked at the screen that showed Hugh and Anne, indeed he was analyzing the image. Everything recorded to be unraveled, measured, tested.
Anne came close to Hugh, he looked at her but remained static. More than that...
Ubi ran a computer program to analyze completely Hugh, and that went to the limit of analyzing the air he exhaled to decompose and identify their molecules, showed his findings in a phrase that flashed in front of screens of Ubi - no sign of emotion. And the analysis continues, respiration, heart and brain, but the message remained - no sign of emotion. Anne there, with her youthful face, looking into the eyes of Hugh... - No sign of emotion.
Anne did not need a computer, or in-depth analysis nor even a sophisticated program to understand Hugh's coldness. She still boldly sat up and took his hand, stroking it gently, and stood there with sad eyes.
After an hour Ubi had his hand on his forehead and his elbow supported his head on the table, a clear sign of discouragement. No more looking for the message - no sign of significant emotions - which remained on the screen. He finally realized that his biggest fear was failure.
Over time it became clear that Hugh had serious problems.
“... Ahah! What a miracle eh?! What good is saying that Hugh is an improvement? Say that he has the intelligence of a child of four years old, he can recognize objects, he is able to logic operations and he can draw certain conclusions. The fact is that he can't feel. That's it! He's just a machine. No matter if he learns by himself, no matter if he can improve himself. The fact that he doesn't show feelings towards the reality that surrounds him is that his epitaph whiles a living being. Long ago machines are able to analyze music, managing to understand the structural nuances of music and characterize music as sad or happy, but is actually just a mathematical calculation of probabilities, this not means these machines can feel the sadness of the music. Hugh is a fiasco and Ubi should pay for his mistakes...”
//AmateurProgrammers/sapiens/sentients/olivar/
Ubi with great effort and skill, managed to postponements of meetings of the CHUG, always bringing a question about the qualifications of the person who should take his place and move to care for Hugh. As many scientists, doctors, programmers, educators, etc, wanted this place, the dispute brought a lot of problems to Sophie, including the worst kind, political problem. Because of this stratagem Ubi was still ahead of the recovery process of Hugh.
Miracles happened and were a source of joy for everybody on the Internet, except for the skeptics - who are always present in everything. In a few days Hugh could learn to control his vision, learned to control his hand, learned to walk, run and jump. He could speak and understand short sentences. But despite all this, he did not seem to have memories of his previous life, or demonstrate the complexity of feelings, or coordinate difficult ideas and plans.
Visits to Hugh were released by CHUG very rarely. Ubi gave all his visits to Anne. Frances got two more, in which; she hugged Hugh, kissed him, cried at his side, recalled passages in their lives, told how she was feeling lonely, that her life did not make sense without him, but always calling him like Louis. Hugh's eyes remained cold front that torrent of maternal warmth emanating from that melodramatic mother.
On the other hand the visits of Anne were less agitated. Ubi instructed Anne to help in the recovery process of Hugh. The main problem of Ubi is to know about the memory of Hugh. Hugh would be Hugh only if he could have the memories of Hugh. Anne tried to help him how to speak but the results was disappointing.
Ubi was asleep in complete exhaustion, even there on the sofa, when all the alarms in the house soared. With one leap he saw that Hugh was in trouble. Ubi paid more attention in the data than in the image of the face of Hugh expressing pain, or in the violent spasm that made Hugh jump out of that bed. As the nurse Cida with his feminine strength tried to hold him in bed, she was thrown against the wall. Only with help from others nurses Hugh was immobilized with thick straps on the bed. But his spasms have not stopped. Not fifteen minutes had passed and Ubi entered that hospital room, opened his computer and looked Hugh from head to toe, only to find a living being on fire.
- What is wrong with him?
- I do not know, simply should not be happening. - Ubi responded to Cida and opened his arms as if he could not do anything else.
- Should we give to him some medicine?
- I do not know. Just do not know there is no physiological explanation for this. But for now let it be. He is not at risk.
The spasms of Hugh continued for a few minutes yet. So in a last spasm, he forced the straps so tightly that made its mark on his skin, his head would lift and his teeth chattered so hard it looked like they would break. His closed eyes betrayed his eyeballs bulging they turned quickly from side to side. He gave a dreadful scream in a mixture of pain and hatred. And then everything just stopped.
Ubi immediately looked at his hand computer amazed because Hugh was getting calm down, he saw in the data that the physical situation of Hugh was the calmest as possible. Immediately he tried to calm Cida and other nurses on that room, which were getting ready for emergency measures. Everything was slowly returning to normality, they untied the straps of Hugh and everyone left the room except Ubi, who took a deep breath, sat down beside the bed and ran his hand across Hugh's brow. Hugh's eyes opened and his eyes were completely different from what Ubi had seen so far, he had sharp-eyed in a mix of surprise and seeks to recognize the place, eyes bright, active, and conscious, at the end they staring the eyes of Ubi, Ubi was chocked.
- Father! Are you? You are my father, is not it? Father? Yeah, you're my father. What ...? The tree ... The wind ... Mother! Where's my mother? - Hugh's hand tightly clutched the arm of Ubi.
While Ubi hugged his son, tears began to fall from Ubi's eyes without control and vented all that he had bottled up inside him, the dam crumbled. He embraced Hugh and kissed his face and tears fall, but the excitement was fading and Ubi got his reason back until that stop him completely. The smile faded and was replaced by a serious expression. The tears were wiped while he remembered the eyes of the ghosts. His chest showed deep breaths because finally he realized the implications.
- Father - Hugh said softly, with sorrow and fatigue - Is my mother died?
Ubi with serious expression merely nod. Then he took the hands of Hugh, but soon dropped them as if he caught in something improper.
Ubi took a deep breath, sat closest to Hugh on bed and holding on his shoulder, approached from his ear to speak softly, as if that would make any difference, because the sound on this room could be increased by more than fifty times by any of those busybody ghosts. Everyone would hear everything better than if they were personally within that room.
- Be strong son. The accident was terrible. I will ask you to be strong right now, I... I want you to take a sedative, I do not want that you have to deal with more than one thing at a time. Rest now please. You must know that I'll be here, right here.
Ubi immediately extended the cap to Hugh. Incredible that he had that medicine with him, but it was no coincidence, he had a sedative for your own use, in recent days he was only able to sleep thanks to this drug.
Hugh would say more but the harsh gestures of his father made he agree, and so he took the capsule and then a weakness come over his body. Ubi was there until he fell asleep. Ubi went away knowing that Hugh will just wake up on the next day. A long night was beginning to Ubi, and no remedy would cause him to sleep, simply because he didn't want to sleep. He knew that the other day had to tell Hugh what he had done and that would be very difficult.
“... Success! Total success! Sorry pessimists, but life conspires to success for the good, the