Test #44

                                    

                                          
Tadashi's POV
                          
Cherry comes through the door of my workroom to find me clenching a pencil between my teeth and darting around a stationary Baymax mumbling crazily to myself. She sighs in exasperation and says, "Tadashi, Aunt Cass hasn't seen you home and you didn't stop for lunch again today. Just like yesterday, and the day before. Please get some sleep."
                          
"No, no, I can't," I reply absent-mindedly, taking the pencil out my mouth and prodding the limbs of my robot, "Baymax keeps moving oddly, like a stick's up his butt."
"Are you sure you didn't just accidentally make something that goes up his butt?" she says drily. I dare to ignore her and keep examining the robot, stopping every so often to yawn long and hard.
                          
Cherry sighs impatiently again and walks to me, making me look at her. Her expression is full of concern, and I finally stop obsessing and focus on my girlfriend trying to help me.
"It's still going to be here tomorrow after you've had a full eight hours. Tadashi, I'm starting to become worried - and me being worried is rare, so you better be worried too. Please get home and to sleep, 'Dash."
                          
I pause in yawning and look at her incredulously. "I can't just stop, Cherry! I have a feeling I'm so close! I just need to do this one thing-"
"And that thing will still be here tomorrow, like I said," she repeats, more firmly, but she doesn't get it. She doesn't understaaand. This project is driving me crazy; thinking of everybody this could help on such a massive scale is motivating me more than any project has before. I just want to do all of it as soon as I can, because then it can help as many people as it can faster.
                          
Cherry's face is still worried. I'm caught between wanting to carry on and wanting to get back home so I can be with the important people in my life and think more about proposing and go to sleep.
                          
Whilst I've been battling both halves of my brain, Cherry has circled Baymax and examined the skeleton and wiring. She kneels down to the latch at the back for access to the endoskeleton, looks inside, then stands up and with her hands on her hips says sternly, "Tadashi, don't you think that if you change the skeleton to carbon fibre, the actuators need to be changed to suit the new model?"
                          
I look at my girlfriend like I've just woken up. She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow, pulling me over and showing me the titanium actuators from sixteen tests ago, before we changed the primary material to carbon fiber which isn't compatible. 
                          
I say remorsefully, "I need to go to sleep, don't I?"
She simply nods. "Yes. Yes you do. Now, just write down what you need to do for tomorrow, and then we'll go back home to the cafe and go to sleep, yeah?"
I nod with her. "Yeah, okay. Let's go."
                          
I write down, Turn titanium to carbon fibre actuators, then pull my cap low onto my head and hang onto Cherry's arm as we walk out the room. She locks the door for me, then we go pack up her spreadsheets she's been working on for a sea waste machine for when she comes back, and we walk outside the college. I'm surprised to find that it's close to dark, the sky streaking with purple that's soon turning to blue-black.
                          
She drives the bike, a very good choice, me secured around her waist. In my sleepy state, I mumble with an admiring smile on my face, "You're going to be an amazing wife," and she shouts through the wind, "What did you say?"
"Uh, nothing," I reply loudly, and shake my head to wake myself up more - I really need to get to sleep.
                          
If I'm gonna make this robot and ask my girlfriend to marry her, I'm guessing it's preferable to be awake for it.