Chapter 1: Okay, I get It. (Page One)

I'm sitting on the edge of the raised stone slab in the center of Father's work room. My jaw is slack, rendered inoperable at the current moment. There are a few bolts missing, and one is smashed up into the drill hole located at the back of my jaw. The hinges are blown on one side. I may have plenty of armored plating beneath my skin, but certain small places, like my jaw, don't have as much reinforcement as others.

 

I stare blankly at the hammer sitting across the room from me, it's split in half after father struck me with it. His arms are far, far stronger than any other human I've encountered before. Though that's a given. He's genetically modified, same as I. Though, I stray a bit further from what can be considered human. But that doesn't mean that beneath all my steel and circuits, I can't be hurt by a hammer blow to the side of my face. 

 

Something else catches my eye before I run a full diagnostics check in my internals. It's blue and it's sitting just beside the hammer on the table across from me.

Diagnostics reads that parts of my internals on the inside of my skull have been damaged by the sudden force. My energy regulation chip has been badly damaged, and my personality core, which resides just beneath it, has been chipped and cracked in a few places as well, although mostly intact. If it wasn't.... Well, I probably would be dead to be honest. But I doubt father would be able to fully decommission me. Not like I'd resist anyway. Not like I could if I wanted to.

He controls my every action, he tells me to move and I move. My brain is hard wire coded to listen to everything he says like gospel. It doesn't matter how I feel or who I am, I am merely a robot devoid of sapience to him. Except... I'm not. I'm fully conscious, but he's stripped me of the ability to show that in any meaningful sense.

 

Besides every once in a while, when my biological drives just slightly push over the edge of my programming enough to spill out a few disobedient actions. Such as speaking my mind.

 

I failed him for the last time today. I didn't perform well enough in my showcasing. He suspects I did it on purpose. I did, but I wouldn't ever tell him that. Regardless of if he knows I did or not, he took his anger out on me.

 

I used to be his son.

 

I say "used to be" here, because my body has been tormented with technological surgeries and grafts since the moment I was born. Tortured and twisted up in all my internals. My heart is replaced with a generator, my eyes are cameras, my skin is synthetic in most places. Beneath it all is reinforced steel, with enough hydraulic pulleys and silent motors to pilot my body in a realistic fashion.

 

I am no more a human than a coma patient. My body does not respond to me, and I'd say there's only 30% of me left that can be considered "human" in some way. I gave up the label when he replaced half my functioning brain, rendering my mind little more than a left over. A side product not meant to really be paid much attention to. 

 

My shattered, shocked mind can't help but continue staring at whatever the blue thing is. It looks like paper. Probably something father's been working on.

 

The door creaks open for a moment before jolting open completely. Father comes in looking disheveled and.... Nervous? He looks nervous. My eyes track him while the rest of my body stays statue still.

 

He steps over to the monitors and computing system set up on the wall to my left. He's shouting something, cursing about some unknown thing. I can't understand the words he's saying. It's garbled nonsense.

Then he turns to me, running over quickly and placing his hand just behind my right ear. His rough hands fiddling with the dials beneath the skin behind my earlobe. Sounds unfilter now. I can understand what he's saying.

"Terminal. Lock diagnostics, lock data retrieval, lock command prompts, lock.... Well lock just about everything. Keep pain tolerance unlocked." He says. All of my executive functions have just been sealed away from me again and for  anyone else looking in except for father. He's the only one that can undo the locks now. 

 

"Lower pain tolerance. Lowest setting." my chest cavity shutters for a moment. Servos running a command. Accepting his prompt. The only one now that's open for changes.

 

There's a thrashing from outside, suddenly gunfire can be heard from the automated turrets placed in the hallways littering this torture house.

 

Turrets don't cost much when you make them yourself, so there are plenty everywhere, holding off some unknown threat with presumably great efficiency. Not that he can't afford them anyway. He has nearly infinite supplies of currency at his disposal. Being a weapons manufacturer during the middle of an inter-species war can net some serious capital.

 

Father steps back from me for a moment, a strange lopsided smile creeps across his face. He's feeling sadistic, I can tell. I wonder what will happen next. Maybe he will just kill me this time, really do it.

 

"Terminal. Execute kill switch, designation: HG4487-" his sentence is cut off by the automatic reaction of my arm crushing his windpipe effortlessly. Turning his flesh to pudding as my fingers slide into the wound from sheer grip force. Some part of me, some dormant and screaming part of me... The 30% of me that's still a living human thrashes against the inside of my silent head with the force of a nuclear tsunami.  If I could read my diagnostics, I would see that somewhere, somehow, I pushed a failsafe with how hard my barely functioning sentience is wailing against my biologically grafted coding. One bar passed just above the limits of... something, and my body reacted accordingly.

 

Kill switch he said. He was killing me. I wondered if he'd finally do it, but honestly the surprise still runs through me. I can feel my organs shutting down, my circuits frying themselves and my hydraulics beginning to fail. He didn't complete the killswitch, but enough of the syllables passed from his lips to my ears to initiate my permanent deactivation.

 

A text prompt covers my vision. I can feel my fingers touching his spine.  'Partitioning vote... 1/2' 

 

My body can't decide whether or not I should squeeze the final bit of effort required to snap the base of his spinal cord like a toothpick. I could. But my brain will not let me complete an internal vote on whether or not I should.

 

The pain of my electric organs shutting off, killing themselves inside of me and leaving my intact, barely functioning human ones to pick up the slack that they obviously can't is blowing up inside me like a tidal wave of acid and ice.

 

Father's hands thrash about, slamming helplessly against my arm and face as I drown him in his own blood. My eyes are empty and losing their life as I stare into his. I am unseeing. Unfeeling. There is nothing but pain inside of me as my body fails itself.

 

The automatic turrets in the hallways outside have all shut off at some point. I didn't notice, and I barely do now.

 

Fathers right hand catches against a solid lip of metal beneath the torn away synthetic flesh of my forearm. His nails scrape off of his hand as he pulls, gasps, gurgles, and thrashes helplessly in my iron grip.

 

Just as I see the light in his eyes fade out alongside my own, something strange happens. Something that will change my life and many others forever. A slithering mass of vines and flowers bursts into the room, instantly grabbing my body up and pulling me away from my Father's at record speed. My outstretched arm catches against the table near the wall, knocking the paperwork and hammer onto the ground. My torso slams against the floor with a thud as the vines momentarily lose me in their grip. The force is just enough to nudge my power inhibitors slightly out of place. 

 

The inhibitor within the generator in my chest fails, suddenly left with as much energy as its possibly capable of making. Lighting and searing pain scorches the inside of my body as every circuit made synapse fires at once, over and over and over and over again with no way of venting the sheer overflow of power surging through every single metal cell of my body. 

 

Motors and pulleys thrash inside me, causing my body to spasm uncontrollably. The screaming and wailing of my joints grinding against each other as they force themselves to move in random directions with each and every new blast of energy that shoots through them. My power is draining, my eyes catch only three sights before the empty darkness consumes me.

 

Father is sitting upright, his eyes are rolled into the back of his head. There are vines forcing their way down his throat.

There are papers on the floor. My memory banks fire with a burn of voltage, capturing this sight and forever etching it into themselves. They are father's blueprints. His work notes. A label stands out to me. “Crushed space containment field.” 

Then there is my final sight, snaking vines consuming me up into themselves like the living threads of a sweater.

The anchored weight of a complete loss of energy pulls my sentience from my body with one final jolt through my legs. 

 

I've shut down completely.

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My arms flash out in front of me as a jolt awakens my body from restless sleep. My arms slowly drift back down, my brain not fully catching up with the rest of me. Another jolt through my body forces me upright as my eyes groggily open themselves. 

 

Terminal, my internal diagnostics tools gives me a text readout. 

 

'Alarm successful.' 

 

I groan and flop back onto my back for a moment before actually setting myself up fully and dangling my feet off the side of the bed. It was just my internal alarm clock sending me a tasers worth of voltage to jump start my processing. 

 

A breeze flows across my cheeks, I can tell that my face is wet. Wait, am I crying? My hands touch my face with slow curiosity. I'm not crying, I'm sweating. Figures. Haven't cried in years, it would be strange if I started now. 

 

Sleepiness rolls off of my body in waves. You'd think for an android I'd not need as much sleep as I do. Unfortunately for me, you'd be dead wrong. I actually need a lot of sleep, more than most of the people I know. It helps the human parts of my brain relax for a while and recuperate their energy while the mechanical parts of me just lay dormant for several hours each day.

I shake my hands in front of my face, slapping myself a few times to fully roust myself from bed. I've been having that nightmare a lot recently.

 

What a double edged blade, I need more sleep than the average person, but when I sleep I am riddled with constant nightmares. Well.... I'm not entirely a person anyway, so its not like 'the average' actually means anything to me.

 

A long, unnecessary sigh escapes my lips before I plap barefoot onto the warm floor of my hab unit. The temperature is always right in here. Always.

 

Slowly, I make my way over to the compiler and dredge up a hot cup of coffee. It does nothing for me, but I like the ritual. It helps me wake up and feel normal, even if it doesn't actively provide me any benefit.

 

I go to take a sip when my face twitches and jolts to the side for a moment. An occasional stray spark from my generator can painlessly cause my body to spasm at random times. Its normal, I swear. It doesn't even hurt. Or if it does, I don't notice it. 

 

Another text message displays in my vision. This time from my calendar. Tonight, seven PM terran time, I have a meeting.

 

Something I've been working on for the last six years consecutively. An intense, burning joy fills up my chest and radiates throughout me. This will be the last meeting before its determined whether or not my peculiar HD treaty will be accepted as okay or not.

 

I can't help but giddily laugh and bounce on my toes. My head is fuzzy with excitement. The coffee in my hand spills onto my foot. If I were human, it would scald the flesh there, but I'm not, so I barely notice it.

 

The meeting! The meeting the meeting! Today is the day! It will finally be decided whether or not I can duel! Hahahahaha!!!! I'm so happy!

 

The paper cup in my hand finally gives, I crush it accidently and spill the rest of the coffee onto the floor. Oops! Gotta clean that up.

 

A few moments of steadied breathing later, the joyous fire inside me settles down into a slow simmer. I quickly compile a mop before brushing the floor over a few times and cleaning up the spilled mess. 

 

This gives me a minute to wonder, If I had allowed myself an owner, would this have happened? At what step in this process from getting up to spilling the coffee onto the floor would the presence of an Affini have changed it? I am unsure, and honestly, I am uncaring as well.

 

I live happily as an independent sophont. My quirks aren't quite enough to label me as a danger to oneself, and I try my stars damned hardest to keep it that way. I do not leave my habitation unit until I'm sure I won't have any sudden breakdowns while in eyeshot of anyone else.  Its worked so far at least.

 

Throwing the mop back into the atomic compiler and getting rid of it gives me just a few moments to fully, fully calm down before I wobble on over to my PC at my desk.

Funny right? An android with a setup? Isn't that ironic? 

 

Well. It's different. Most of what works on the outside world now is completely different from the world of the internet that was set up by the previous owners of this planet: The Terran Accord. Now, the new owners, The Affini Compact, have completely overhauled like.... basically everything that has to do with tech and the internet into far far more sophisticated levels of engineering and efficiency. 

 

I can't possibly wrap my head around it. I may have the processing power of a nuclear powered computer, but I'm still terran tech. Which is inherently much worse than anything the Affini can make. Something about plant based computing just throws me for a loop. But I'm learning, and that's what I'm here to do!

 

My hands dramatically stretch out over my keyboard before clacking away at some gray box of text. Its an old style UI command manager. It intakes the little lines of code I type in, and spews them out the other side as an action. It's rudimentary and a neigh obsolete way of doing things, but it works for me so I do it like this. 

 

I tap the enter key with my pinkie for some reason, sending the executable line through the computer. Today my plan is to see whether or not I can tap into the data stream of my neighbors. I know its like... An invasion of privacy or whatever, but honestly who cares. I'm just curious as to what the need is for several magnitudes more of data usage  than I could ever use, flowing in and out of their hab unit.

 

The executable almost instantly returns having failed. For some reason my notes app focuses its self on top of everything else. A message is typed out.

 

"Access de-nya-ied! :P  ~SystemLurkerPrincess"

 

Dirt. There goes that attempt. 

 

Hmnnhhh.... My eyes drift over to the clock on the bottom right of my monitor. I've got like what.... 6 hours until the meeting?

 

What am I gonna do until then? 

 

Well uh... huh. Guess it's been a little while since I've mingled with the general population, time to go take a 'walk around the block' as they say. Don't want anyone getting suspicious about the time I've spent alone.

 

I need every bit of suspicion off my back if I have any hope of getting through this meeting today with a favorable outcome.

Shoes on. Hair combed. Its clubbing time.

(End Of Page One)

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