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Riley had not been observing the conversations on Deus chat lately, despite how much interest she'd shown in it before. In fact, her interest had only grown - but it had stolen her attention from the hypothetical, to the theoretical. She'd moved on to trying to actually figure out the process with which she would move her consciousness from the physical, to the digital. Considering what they already did with golems, she didn't feel like this was going to be a terribly difficult project when she'd started - but the issue she'd immediately been blocked with was that a mind did not want to accept being 'switched on' without a corresponding body to accompany it. Her brain wasn't accepting digital body waves in place of the actual flesh of a golem. There were instant rejections, at first. No matter how well she tried to train her mind to accept a new state of being, once she entered the pod and her brainwave transfer attempted to implement consciousness within the digital program she'd coded to simulate life, it would fail.

And the results had been a little less pleasant than her body was willing to take.

When Haddy found her, the pod she'd been laying in was screaming with warnings as it brought her back to her own mind. It hissed as it opened, and Riley was unceremoniously dumped out of it onto the floor. She was awake, but too dizzy to move.

And quite frankly, she had the smell of someone who'd foregone hygiene for a few days, too.

Riley couldn't really respond, at first. She was limp in Haddy's arms, but breathing, and clearly conscious. Her eyes were half-lidded but open, staring up at the ceiling with completely blown out pupils. She let out a long, disappointed sigh. It rattled in her lungs noisily.

"I don't know. No sense of time in there." It had been two full days in the pod, unfrozen, as the system tried over and over to pull her consciousness out of her own mind and into a software management program.

She'd been awake for it. She had to be. And at some point, she'd lost track of - everything.

And maybe gone a little mad.

The question made Riley smile, a small and faint twitch of her lips.

"I can walk." *She assured Haddy, even as she stumbled and leaned her weight against the shorter woman. Still, her jelly legs solidified enough to be able to move, as they walked out of the lab. She'd left everything running. She couldn't force herself to care.

"I'm so close, Haddy," She whispered, resting her face against the girls hair. "I can feel it."

"I would, inevitably, reprogram the watch to stop bothering me during work hours. Which, by the way, is all the time. Your plan is sweet, but inefficient. Watches will never replace you."

She didn't fight the demand, perfectly content to just let Haddy drag her wherever, in that moment. She was, after all, completely useless in this state. She couldn't very well return to her work when she could hardly think, or even stand. There were limits even Riley had to accept.

So she let the woman take her where she wished, with slow, dragging steps and a lolling head that kept trying to rest on top of Haddy's.

Riley was sat down on the edge of the tub, and when the water was turned on she whined a little. She wanted to sleep, not bathe. Little did she know, she could always just do both. But as she watched the tub fill her eyes fluttered sleepily, and she dragged her hands over her coat to pull it off of her shoulders. The rest of her clothing came next, though she had enough trouble with the boots that she'd almost tilted over and fallen into the water prematurely.

Eventually she was undressed, and she swiveled around to let her feet soak in the water.

"It's too hot." She informed Haddy, wiggling her toes in the heat.

"I know how bath temperature works." She mumbled back, attempting to offer a flat look of her own but too tired to muster it. "I just needed it a little cooler, today.. need to wake up." She yawned, punctuating her comment, and then slid her body into the bathtub. It was big, which she wasn't used to, and her entire body managed to fit with only the bend of her knees. She groaned helplessly when all that hot water started seeping into her muscles, and without really meaning to her entire head slid down under the water. Her dreadlocks bobbed up above the water, not yet soaked enough to keep them from floating.

She felt weightless, there. It almost reminded her of the pods for a moment. Exhaustion crept into her mind when she thought of them, and her work, still waiting. So close to completion. The answers had been right there, she just needed to reach a little farther, push a little harder..

She blew bubbles up and opened her eyes underwater.

Riley could see her waiting, patient as ever, from under the water.

She blew an impressively big bubble in response.