For One More Day With You 6

"Last night, I had a dream about you…
Joie tapped his hands on his lap and the recharge table. Spending time with his friend had finally paid off the night before as he'd been struck by the almighty muse in his recharge cycle. He'd come up with quite the catchy, pleasant little tune, complete with actual lyrics! Once again, Félicité sat with a mechanism to allow for access to the public forums in his lap.
"Okay, the good news is we will be able to afford a ride on a light-circuit autobus out of here, going directly to Wolfgang, scheduled to leave tomorrow morning. There's plenty of seats left." He reported. Joie smiled.
"Excellent."
"However, there is bad news. The fees we earned last night have only allowed for one proper seat…"
"W-Well, I suppose we can go separate, or we can see if Blur can give us some more work or-"
"One proper seat AND a cargo slot." He finished.
"But, Feli, we don't have any luggage we need seats."
"Many light-circuit autobuses, including this one, allow for passenger-en-cargo transport." He said. Joie grimaced after a second of computing this information.
"Oh…well…um."
"Yeah."
"That sounds interesting I suppose. You should-"
"Don't you start with that "I suck, you're amazing" nonsense. We're rolling a die." He said.
Félicité present the die to his silver friend, twenty two sides. They each dropped it on the recharge table. Félicité rolled a nineteen while Joie rolled a six. Joie would be the "luggage."
When Joie woke up again, he realized he'd dreamed again. But he had no singing to accompany it. Instead, he and Félicité wracked their systems to remember proper deconstruction procedures for purposes of maintenance, only in this case it was for travel. Joie tried to keep himself still as his friend moved his hand all about his body, trying to find the release points.
"You know…" Joie stated, as his friend popped one of his arms loose from his center. "This is the first time I will be disassembled by someone who not only isn't my instructor or myself, but also isn't silver." He said. Félicité chuckled as he folded the arm up neatly.
"Don't worry, my dear. You can trust me." He said, working on the second arm. The second arm popped off and the gold chanced a glance inside his friend. The inside of robots nowadays truly was a sight. Their bodies possessed cores, smooth, plastic like metal that moved about and clung to and held in place their extremities while encasing their "organs" like a cocoon. This sensitive inside was only briefly visible before being over covered with the arm slot's flaps. Félicité did the same with this arm and placed it next to the first one. He needed some verbal guidance from Joie for the legs, as they were longer and somewhat different from his own, but after a few minutes Joie was halfway disassembled and fitted into a golden cache. Had he been completely disassembled his motor like innards would've also been separated and removed, his core bottled and his entire system shut down.
"Are you alright in there?" Félicité asked, concerned. He had a difficult time imagining how someone could feel comfortable and NOT totally vulnerable while in such a state. Joie tried to reassure him.
"Don't worry, Feli. The public forums have virtual parks and cafés I can go to during the ride. It'll be like a small vacation, this autobus ride." He assured him. Really, Joie knew that this was yet another lie. Parks and cafés would not entertain him for they would not be able to take his mind off his dreams. The night before, when he'd received a lovely song, he'd dreamed about his gold friend. They were dancing together, making music and being very talented, complementing each other. But the night after, he'd dreamed of his friend again. Félicité, Tron bless him, had found a way for Joie to travel to Earth. But there was only way for one person. No matter how much Félicité argued and begged for Joie to go, live his dream, be happy amongst the humans, Joie would not leave. The dream Joie insisted, though the observing real Joie had no idea why, that if he could not be with Félicité, then he would not be happy. Earth was not enough for him, if it meant he had to separate from Félicité. Joie was not sure if this was truly the choice he would make but whether or not that didn't bother him. The certainty, the drive with which he insisted on being with Félicité, and knowing that were they to separate life would not be worth it for him that disturbed him. The two hadn't even known each other for hardly a week, why did he feel so attached? He went over his song, Digital Love he called it, as the light-circuit autobus trucked along the country side. Perhaps, if he could complete it on his own, he could give it to his gold friend as a gift of endearment. After all, Félicité HAD inspired the thing. Perhaps his genius truly was rubbing off on Joie.
Eventually Félicité spotted their destination on the horizon. There were twin skyscrapers in the middle of the city, likely the crown jewel of the place and also likely where the databanks were being held. Félicité was fascinated by the sight and he wished Joie could see it. He still felt bad about his friend having to be scrunched up in the under belly of this autobus for all four hours of the ride. He got out as soon as the passengers were allowed and retrieved his gold cache as quickly as he could.
Joie saw light somewhere in the middle of a city. Félicité had sat himself down on a little sheltered rest area that was another autobus stop. He lifted the lid off his cache and pulled Joie's head and torso-the two were attached-out and sat them down with him.
"You alright, Joie?" He asked. Joie flashed appreciatively at him with his visor.
"I'm fine, thanks. Composed a song during the trip." He must've been quite proud of himself, what with how quickly he told his friend about it.
"In a dark, claustrophobic space you compose a song? I couldn't do that my friend." Félicité chuckled. He wondered, curiously, if his friend was just designed to function well in misery. "Right, let's get you assembled so we can check out those data banks. They're only a few blocks away, you know."
"Alright!" Joie was excited; he'd not suffered in that little bin for nothing.
Ocean was a word Joie had never seen before. As was blood. Blood was the same thing as animal fluid, but on Earth there was a word for it because humans themselves were technically animals. Apparently, both blood and ocean were plentiful on Earth; almost every animal had some sort of blood and more than half of the planet was covered with salt water. There were about five oceans on the planet Earth yet plenty of animal, including sentient life, was still able to survive there. Joie was fascinated. Humans, miraculously, looked very similar to Crescendoans (the only sentient organic beings on Alto, making up a very small minority) and did indeed love music. So many people were able to live like royalty just because they were talented musicians. Such a thing was unheard of in Joie's country.
Joie devoured the information. Félicité also busied himself with reading about Earth, though not their culture; their distance. Earth's sun, which most Altoans called "Lantern" (a human word for a type of artificial light) was the closest one from the one that their planet orbited. It was also the only sun in its system, whereas the solar system Alto was a part of was home to four different suns. One which the planets orbited, two which orbited each other as well as the aforementioned sun, and a fourth, red dwarf somewhere beyond Alto, farther away from the main sun. There were special holidays and festivals held during the times of the year when the two "mating dance suns" were visible in the sky during the day as well as night. Félicité was fascinated by this thought; the humans had only one sun and did not celebrate such holy days and were also more violent than any robot. What fascinated him even more was that, apparently, the humans were aware of the mating dance suns. They KNEW these suns were the closest to their own and even gave them names; Alpha and Beta Centauri. Yet the humans seemed to be blissfully unaware of the existence and the life supporting state of Alto and indeed of the Altoans themselves. It was very fascinating. They were like distant relatives, orphaned at birth and now unaware of each other.
"Feli." Joie called, breaking the gold robot from his philosophical thoughts. "Did you know that music is inherent to humans and that there are hundreds if not thousands of different languages and dialects spoken on their planet? Not only that, but they base many words on languages that are no longer spoke, such as Latin and Gaelic." He said, fascinated. "Think of all the different songs one could make with all that!" Félicité could understand Joie's excitement; amongst robotic Altoans, only three or four different languages were spoken and for the most part, robots did not bother to keep track of how many dialects existed amongst Crescendoans, unless they worked directly with them. There were three main languages, based on and honoring the three countries of the planet unifying triple entente. A fourth unofficial language was made by "enthusiasts" who admired Crescendoan culture and believed that they were under-appreciated.  Joie delighted in realizing that the humans would have called them "Crescendophiles."
"What do you think, Joie? It IS the closest star to our own; we could probably afford a ship that could get there…eventually." He said. Joie cringed.
"No. No I don't want to go to Earth." He said. Joie's dream, in which he would have to choose between Earth and Félicité, scared him into non-action.
"Well then, WHY are we learning all this stuff about humans? I thought you wanted to go to them, be a prosperous musician who is treated like a god! Like these folks." Félicité pointed to a picture of a group called "The Beatles" one of the most popular "bands" in human history.
"No. No, we'll never be able to go to Earth. Instead…we should become human ourselves!" He said.
And that was when everything started on the road to Hell.