12. 1268… B.C.
Having not been impressed by Buttons’ room, but trying not to show it, Rippa followed Buttons and Goggles down to the ground floor and into the tea room, which was on the opposite side of the kitchen.
The three sat down, Buttons and Rippa together on a three-seater sofa, and Goggles on the other side across the coffee table. The maids brought tea and scones. The tea was just hot enough and had a pleasantly complex fragrance that made Rippa wonder where she could buy this. She noted Goggles pouring some milk into his tea. Buttons, on the other hand, added a spoonful of strawberry jam. Rippa was shocked to see that, but decided not to comment on it.
“So, what do you think of our little dwelling?” Goggles inquired over his teacup.
“It feels very cozy,” Rippa gave her opinion, “and I like the clock. It’s cute.”
Goggles and Buttons seemed to be satisfied.
“You are always welcome here,” said Buttons. “Make yourself at home.”
“Yes, Miss Rippa. Think of this place as a family vacation home.”
Rippa thanked them. It was quite nice of them, really.
“So, Buttons told me you have some questions?” Goggles changed the topic.
“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot,” said Rippa, reaching for a scone, but Buttons was going for the same one, so she took another. “How old is Buttons?”
“I’m eleven,” Buttons butted in.
“Yes, she’s eleven,” Goggles confirmed.
Rippa grunted. “No, I mean… how long has she been eleven?”
“Aha, I see,” Goggles understood what Rippa was really asking. “Well, she’s been eleven for quite many years.”
“Like, when? When was the clone made?” asked Rippa, sipping her tea. It was so good.
“Per your modern calendar, 1268—,” answered Goggles.
Rippa’s eyes went wide. She almost spit out her tea, but managed to hold it in. Bewildered, she looked at Buttons.
“-B.C.,” Goggles added.
Rippa sprayed tea all over Buttons.
Madam J.D. had swooped in and taken Buttons upstairs to get her cleaned and changed. A couple of maids had also come and they were now cleaning up the mess Rippa had made.
“I’m sorry about that,” Rippa apologized, wiping her mouth and chin with a towel the maids had given her.
Goggles had remained in his seat, with his legs crossed, silently sipping his tea.
“No, no. I timed my answer for the moment you were facing Buttons,” Goggles confessed.
“What? Why would you do that?”
“Comedy.”
Rippa opened her mouth, then closed it. She wondered who the punchline was. Her? Buttons? ‘Well, since it was Buttons who’d gotten all drenched…’ Rippa felt she was seeing a new aspect of the relationship between Buttons and Goggles. It seemed it wasn’t all ojousama and her butler, or a creation and its creator. It felt a bit more like pals.
She opened her mouth again. “Well, that wasn’t very funny.”
Goggles smiled faintly.
“So, erm… if Buttons is…,” Rippa tried a quick math but gave up. “How old are you, then?” she asked.
“Unlike Buttons, I do not occupy a human body. I just materialize as you see,” Goggles, as usual, got straight to the point. “So the concept of age doesn’t apply to me.”
“But—“
“But I do understand your question. I have been around since the early 16th century.”
Rippa wiped her eyebrows. ‘The fuck?’
“Let us say…” Goggles ran a finger around his teacup’s rim as he searched for ways to make it easy for Rippa to understand. “Let us say Buttons had been alone for too long, so she called for reinforcement.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Rippa objected. “Then who cloned the dead girl? Who made Buttons?”
“Aha, I see where the confusion lies!” Goggles beamed. “You see, Miss Rippa, Buttons is the pilot. She built the mech herself.”
Rippa was overwhelmed. ‘What the fuck, what the actual fuck?’ Then she remembered. Buttons’ praise about how well Rippa controlled her VTuber model. The Evangelion comparison. How she wished she could do better…
“Oh, my god…” Rippa tried to wrap her head around it. If Buttons was the pilot, then what even was she? “So Buttons is not the girl’s clone?”
Goggles sighed. “The body is a fully functioning replica of the girl, yes, but think of it as a laptop with a working BIOS but no OS. It cannot become her… or anyone.”
“Like brain-dead?” Rippa ventured an analogy.
“Not exactly. The brain is alive and healthy. Buttons controls the body through it.”
“Like Evangelion…”
“In a way, yes.”
At this moment, Buttons came back in a clean white one-piece dress with a wide blue ribbon around the waist. She sat next to Rippa and allowed a maid to pour her a new cup of tea.
Rippa inched away from Buttons.
The kid, of course, noticed this. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, now that she knows you have been around for thousands of years, it is natural she is a little creeped out by that,” Goggles explained in Rippa’s stead.
“Hey, I’m not a creepy old man pretending to be a little girl,” said Buttons, adding jam to her tea. “An elf kid might be hundreds of years old, but is still a kid, no?”
Rippa took a deep breath and thought about it. ‘Well… she raises a good point.’
“See? Yeah, I might be a few thousand years old in your time, but I’m still a child. Unlike a certain middle-aged someone who hangs around a little kid.”
Goggles almost spilled his tea. “Oh, the audacity! The ingratitude! You called me all the way out here only to make me your butler, and you do this to me?”
Buttons stuck her tongue out.
“Guys, guys, chill!” Rippa intervened. She, however, noted that Goggles was genuinely treating Buttons as a kid. ‘Well, if her own people treat her like a kid, maybe she really is one.’
***
Rippa resisted the urge to tell Mom about Buttons’ age right away. Instead, she was planning to tell both her parents about Buttons when Dad came back from his work in the evening. About Buttons being the pilot of the replica body. About the manor, the orchards, and other stuff she had learned that day.
Rippa had come back after a very nice lunch at Buttons’ manor, or palace, as the little kid called it. For some reason, the alien child was a huge fan of Indian cuisine and introduced Rippa to the world of curries.
“I always say to Goggles, Chicken Makhni is a good entry point for novices,” Buttons had said, recommending the dish. She had not had any guests prior to Rippa, so it was the first time the argument was put to the test, and much to Buttons’ relief, Chicken Makhni was indeed very good. Rippa had since looked up some Indian dishes on Google.
Rippa had some time to think before Dad came home. ‘What really changed?’ she asked herself.
For one, Buttons and Goggles were a lot older than they looked. By thousands of years, at least. Yet, judging by how Goggles treated Buttons, she was still a child by their alien standards. So, no big change there.
Two, Rippa’s family had thought Goggles had created the clone girl and named her Buttons, but no, the human-shaped body was merely a vessel with no self. The real Buttons was the one who had built the replica and had been piloting it ever since. So, quite a significant change in Rippa’s understanding of ‘who’ and ‘what’ Buttons was, but the motivation behind the replica body’s creation still remained intact.
Three, Rippa had to abandon the holodeck thinking. The spaceship was huge! That’d mean their tech was so advanced they could hide such a huge thing undetected by the earthlings. Either that, or the teleportation was so advanced that Goggles could just beam Rippa up to some distant alien planet, which in turn would mean that Goggles, or whatever tech he employed, was so powerful beyond human imagination.
Rippa’s mom and dad agreed with her assessment in general, but they nitpicked.
“Could also be a pocket dimension,” Dad suggested, regarding the… place. “That nevertheless doesn’t downgrade Goggles’ power, though,” he added.
As for Buttons’ age, Mom offered an explanation. She argued that experience and growing responsibilities matured a person. But as was the case with Rippa, one could remain immature despite many years under one’s belt.
“Hey!” Rippa objected, but Mom and Dad brushed her off.
“So, if Goggles is taking care of everything, then there’s no room for Buttons to grow,” Mom concluded.
“Maybe that’s what she wants? After all, it was Buttons who had called Goggles to come and help her,” Rippa mused. “Maybe she doesn’t want to grow up and wants to remain carefree.”
“You can relate, huh?” Dad jabbed.
“Oh, the poor thing must have been so lonely,” Mom clasped her hands. “You said Goggles came sometime in the 16th century?”
“Yeah.”
“And Buttons was all alone before that… for two thousand years…”
“Anyway, so, the alien kid Buttons whom we speak of… is this… brainworm controlling the body?” Dad changed the topic.
“Dear!” Mom objected to that classification.
Rippa, on the other hand, nodded. “Yeah, something like that, I guess.”
“And Goggles is… only appearing as human, just because,” Dad went on. “So my question is… do we wanna know what they really look like?”
Rippa and Mom exchanged looks and shook their heads. “Nah~”
The family then spent five or so minutes telling and comparing what each thought a typical alien would look like, but then realized their concept of aliens had been too influenced by sci-fi fiction and thus too human-centric.
“Right, in summary, they are more ancient and powerful than we thought, but other than that, no big changes?” Dad summarized, rescuing the discussion from derailment.
“I guess so,” Mom agreed.
Rippa thought Mom and Dad sounded like they were trying to convince themselves. But then again, she liked Buttons, so this was… kinda alright.
After that, the family went to Buttons’ palace to have a look. The kid was overjoyed that Mamapin and Papapin finally came and showed them around the place. She was especially eager to show them her statue clock. When they saw the brass Buttons in a tutu, Mom and Dad took out their phones to check the time, which made Rippa burst out laughing.
Goggles celebrated the occasion by installing a beer tap next to Rippa’s soda fountain in the kitchen, much to Dad’s delight.