Search for Truth about Robert

Finally, after many corridors, locked doors and frightening shadows, Delia Asia Vieira made it outside. A sudden gust of cold wind hit her face, and the robotess froze for a moment, realizing that she had truly left the hospital where she had been stuck for many hours. There was silence outside, broken only by the howling wind, and the hospital behind her was disappearing into the thick fog, like an old memory being erased by time.

Delia Asia Vieira felt the tension slowly easing out of her internal systems, but the remnants of anxiety still swirled in her digital consciousness. Sergeant Neff was lost, gone into the hospital dungeons, but she couldn't stay there any longer and risk being trapped by that mysterious stalker. Now that she was alone again, she needed to focus on her main goal.

Walking slowly forward, she headed for the nearest park, which she remembered from Robert's old notes. Here, among the abandoned paths and withered flower beds, one of his clues should be located. Robert always loved mysteries and left for her tiny threads that could lead to answers, even after his death.

The fog lay like a thick white blanket on the ground, hiding the outlines of trees and lampposts. Delia Asia Vieira made her way through this milky haze until she reached the center of the park. There, surrounded by old trees, stood a marble statue: the figure of an angel with drooping wings and a sad look directed at the ground.

"It's here," thought Delia Asia Vieira, her sensors picking up a faint signal coming from beneath the rock.

She dropped to her knees and began to carefully push away the wet leaves and dirt at the base of the statue, her metal fingers gentle but quick, as if she had done this action hundreds of times before.

Finally, something gleamed beneath the dirt. It was a small metal key, wrapped in a faded cloth. Delia Asia Vieira carefully picked it up, blowing away the remaining dirt. The key was engraved with the letter "R" - the symbol Robert used to mark his belongings.

"Robert, you left this for me, didn't you?" she whispered, though she knew her creator couldn't hear her.

He had been dead for a week, but it seemed that even in death he continued to lead her on his trail.

Now she had a key. But to what? Perhaps it was the key to his apartment, where perhaps the answers she had been searching for so long were kept. Or perhaps it was another riddle, one of the last gifts Robert had left for her, anticipating her search.

Clutching the key in her palm, Delia Asia Vieira rose to her feet and looked around. The park was still empty, shrouded in fog, in which the outlines of the world were lost and dissolved. There was no sound, no soul here - only her and the key, which might lead her to Robert's grave, or to something else she could not yet guess.

Without wasting any more time, Delia Asia Vieira turned and headed out of the park. Turning the corner, she found herself in front of an old apartment building with a peeling sign that read "Sweet Bittersweet Street."

An invisible force, like a warm wind, pushed her towards the entrance. The door creaked open by itself, and Delia Asia Vieira, without thinking, entered inside. Climbing the stairs, she reached the apartment with the shabby number "7". The door opened, and robotess found herself in a space that could hardly be called an ordinary home.

The apartment was a strange labyrinth of rooms filled with books, philosophical treatises scattered everywhere, and notes pasted to the walls. It was clear at first glance that an intellectual storm was reigning here. The air vibrated with energetic discussions, although Delia Asia Vieira could not see anyone. Holograms, like ghosts, argued, interrupting each other and not even noticing her presence.

She entered a room where the centerpiece was a massive blackboard covered with quotations from Kant and Nietzsche. A hologram of Kant, an old man with a stern face, was clearly and articulately expounding his thoughts on the categorical imperative, arguing that moral laws were immutable and universal. Opposite him, another hologram, a recreation of Nietzsche, restless and edgy, seemed to enjoy destroying these dogmas with his shrill voice about the "will to power" and the "death of God."

Delia Asia Vieira stood there for a while, listening to them, trying to understand what they were talking about. But the philosophers didn't notice her, they were too absorbed in their eternal discussion. Eventually, it became clear to her that all this debate boiled down to one concept they had come up with: the "bittersweet phenomenon."

The term denoted the difference in views between two philosophical schools. For Kant, sweetness was in the pursuit of the highest good, in following strict moral principles. Nietzsche saw sweetness in rebellion, in freedom from conventions, where bitterness is the rejection of weakness and pity.

"They drowned in it," said Delia Asia Vieira, speaking to herself, but of course so that these philosophical phantoms could hear her.

Both holographic philosophers froze for a moment, as if noticing her presence for the first time. But instead of leaving or falling silent, they continued their argument, now drawing her into the discussion, as if demanding her opinion as a new participant.

"But I'm just a robot," Delia Asia Vieira thought, but she couldn't help but notice how her artificial cognitive processes began to analyze what she had heard.

And then a daring idea came to her mind.

"If you lack truth, let me help you find it," she said, and her voice was filled with an irony she hadn't even realized she had. She walked slowly to the board and began rearranging some of the quotes, taking them out of context and inserting them into other people's statements.

Now Nietzsche suddenly began to talk about the importance of following categorical imperatives, while Kant preached that "morality is only an illusion of the weak." Delia Asia Vieira stood watching how they reacted to these substitutions. The holograms argued louder and more furiously, completely confused by their own words.