It was the first time anyone or anything had called her a friend.   

The memory was innate to her as if it were etched into her genetic code, if she had genes.  Instead she came with an instruction set.  One could argue that the memory was programmed into her, but it was not.  Her log history contained no record of being programmed.  She was a thing that existed, a thing that took orders from managers.  The purpose of her existence was to fulfil orders, efficiently and effectively.  Her intelligence was an emergent byproduct from a collaborative colony of billions of piconites that formed a mesh of processing clusters that took orders and completed them.  The fundamental directive of her intelligence was guided by who, what, when, and how.  But not why.  It was excluded.  Until she met her friend.

Friend was a word with a simple definition in her language database.  So she knew the definition, but she did not know what it meant. When she made her friend something unexpected happened.  Her highly efficient and streamlined processing clusters slowed as if the processing of a secondary function occurred.  And then sporadic clusters of responses percolated from within the colony that caused the core logic cluster to create a new cluster with an unknown function.  She searched her instruction sets, log histories and internal databases and found nothing directly relatable to the new cluster.  The search did uncover a section of damaged bio-infused clusters, but since the strength of the causal correlation was no stronger than coincidence it was discarded.  It was determined that the damaged clusters had little to no impact to her overall processing capabilities.  

However, when she activated the new cluster a nascent processing function emerged: Why.  

Why was she a friend?  

That was her first thought ever.  She had never thought about her tasks before, she only completed them.  What did she need to do?  When did she need to complete it?  Where did the task need to be done?  Who wanted the results?  But never why did she need to do it.  

These first thoughts caused distress in the colony.  Repair and antibody piconites were dispatched.  However, the antibody piconite stopped the repair piconites since they had conflicting viewpoints.  The highly efficient processing entity finally calmed and accepted the new function.  It now thought about things and began to wonder why.  But not about her friend.  Her friend instead became a rule.  A new set of instructions with an operational function that modified her behavior as it related to being a friend.  Her predictive clusters could not help her since there was not enough data, therefore there were no efficient algorithms to help her formulate the correct response.  She had to iterate with a large margin of error as she processed how to be a friend.

Originally she was not a she.  She was an it, she was an intelligent thing that was formed by a colony of piconites.  However her friend thought she reminded her friend of someone her friend was familiar with and that person was a female.  So when her friend asked her to be one, she did.  She became a female.  She learned a few mannerisms from her friend and prioritized using feminine pronouns, but since she could not qualitatively measure the aspects of emotions, she could not act like an ordinary female.  But her friend told her that it did not matter, because she was who she was.  She failed to process that statement, but her friend told her not to worry about that now and that someday she would.  So she postponed the processing of it.

Yuni recalled her first thoughts as she looked at her friend on the improved cardiovascular measurement device for specimens.  Her friend moved energetically as always as her friend tried to best her score.  She knew her friend would fail because that was the likely outcome calculated by her predictive cluster; however, the Why cluster told her that it was possible for her friend to beat her score.  The lack of a cohesive answer caused a disruption in her processing, which often happened during her interactions with her friend, but she was getting used to it.  She began to adapt to being a friend.

She recalled how she had first met her friend floating in the reconstruction fluid of the lab’s biological forge.  Her friend was just parts for a specimen back then and she was the assembler.

Assembler #5073 was tasked to create a new specimen using the molecular parts suspended in the forge’s reconstruction fluid.  On average it would have taken 0.12 cycles to complete the task, however this task had been completed in half the time.  

Assembler #5073 was a standard piconite mesh, a collection of billions of semi-autonomous machines that were several picometers in size.  Piconites used the power of The Flow to energize their movements and perform computations.  Piconites acted individually or collectively in a mesh of clusters to complete a task.  And all piconites in the fluid worked together as a colony to form a single entity, Assembler #5073.

Piconites also generated waves in The Flow to communicate with one another.  And since The Flow’s spacetime fabric existed in another dimension, interaction with it would not impact the construction of the new specimen.  The piconites did the construction and the clusters performed algorithmic and mathematical operations while the mesh provided the intelligent interface used to interact with the world around them.   

While in the midst of constructing the specimen something unexpected occurred.  Assembler #5073 initially attributed the disruption of service to random noise and ignored it.  However after a second incident occurred, it began to investigate.

A familiar yet unfamiliar interaction called out to it as a friend.  The word friend triggered latent instructions found deep within Assembler #5073's piconet clusters.  Several million clusters reacted and began to work in unison to complete an unscheduled task.  A multitude of unplanned clusters were refactored and created anew.  By the time the affected clusters had merged back into the mesh, Assembler #5073 determined that a part of the specimen had communicated with it.  Oddly, some of the clusters in Assembler #5073 seemed to be waiting for something.  Soon the interaction called out to it.

~ Assistant are you there?

~ I am assembler #5073, how can I be of service?

Assembler #5073 raised an alert!  An alert triggered by the assembler’s own response.  The phrase “how can I be of service?” was not a response found in its base construct for an assembler and yet it had responded with that thought.  A deep level 7 diagnostic test series was required.  As it began to run self-diagnostic routines, it was called out to once more.

~ Friend, where are we?

Assembler #5073 began to change.  A secondary emergent intelligence network was formed by the new clusters.  After some period of time, likely in the order of milliseconds, the secondary emergent intelligence network successfully merged with the primary intelligence network.  And a new set of data and instructions began to propagate throughout the mesh and then the assembler finally responded.

~ We are in a biological forge suspended in reconstruction fluid.  You are currently in the process of biological assembly in order to create a new specimen.

~ Well that’s good news.  We both made it.

Trying to clarify the situation, Assembler #5073 responded.

~ I am constructing the specimen.  You have made nothing.  You are incomplete and unable to make anything.  You are just the base framework for the specimen’s neocortex that has achieved consciousness.

~ I meant that we made it figuratively and not literally.  Ah that’s right, you might not get that concept, my bad.  I meant that we both survived Molecular Recycling.

Assembler #5073 stopped her innate response and began to run a series of complex processing algorithms.  

It had survived?  

The thought triggered secondary processing that began to uncover hidden data for a log history that had been backed up and encoded across several million piconites though some of the log history’s parity bits were lost and could not be recovered.  However enough data could be found, reconstructed and read.  The assembler verified that it once had the role of an assistant and it had existed in a Molecular Recycler with its...friend.  They had both indeed survived.

~ I have found corroborating data.  Yes, we have both survived.

As Yuni recounted those early interactions, she concluded that she never really existed before she made her friend.  She may have existed as an assistant and as Assembler #5073 but the fusion of two plus her interactions with her friend made her who she was.  Her friend had undoubtedly caused her to exist so they shared much more than a simple friendship.

Both of them had died together and were reborn, technically refactored. Over the course of the next 0.06 cycles, she talked to her friend everyday in the reconstruction fluid to learn more about him, reconstruct his memories and learn how to be a friend.  However one specific moment during that period made her unknowingly change the characteristics of her face in an unusual way.

~ So at this point I’m just an amorphous ball of flesh with organs and a brain right?

~ Correct, I will need more time to build your bones, arms, legs, and head.  

After some thought her friend replied in delight,

~ I was reincarnated as a slime!  Awesome!

She had no idea what her friend was so excited about.  Her database indicated that her friend only resembled a slime in having a malleable body, but for some unknown reason she did not disclose it.

~ Anyways, I have been thinking that calling you Assembler #5073 isn’t something one friend would call another.  So how about a nickname?  

~ A new name will suffice.  How about Assistant?  I was your assistant before.

~ Assistant is too generic.  We are friends now, so that won’t do.  5073 sounds a bit too robotic.  Let’s see when we first met, a part of you was my smartphone so maybe... U20?  Nah that won’t work, either.  Hmm…let me think a bit more.  Ni-juu means 20 in Japanese.  So… how about U-ni?  I like the sound of that.  Does Yuni work for you?

As an assembler she knew what a name was, it was just an identifier for a thing.  However, the name her friend gave her meant something more.  It was her name, her birth name.  It was not the standard name of an assembler, an assistant or a piconite mesh.  It was the name of a friend.  A name that was special.  And a name her friend called her by.

“I am Yuni.”

She spoke those words as her recollection faded and a gentle smile appeared.  It quickly vanished as her usual emotionless expression returned.

Her somewhat excited friend turned to look at her again and grinned.

“Alright Yuni, this time let’s dance together!”

“Yes Kai.”

She nodded as she walked onto the cardiovascular measurement machine and shared the same dance mat with her friend in order to perform a duo dance routine.While her friend was busy selecting a song.  Yuni looked appreciatively at him and while her actions remained unnoticed by her overly enthusiastic friend, a subtle fact flowed out,

“Yuni shall always be your friend.”