Repairs
An android fights eternity
BGM while writing: Death Stranding - An Endless Beach
I wish they were with me right now.
The android looked at the display output to her right, adorned with flashes of colour she barely understood the meaning of.
Hoping it’d change to something she’d recogise, she flicks some switches to the left of a maintenance table she overlooks,
and turns back to the display in anticipation.
The screen goes blank.
Her heart stops.
A console terminal cursor pings in a quick monotonous pattern.
Her heart follows suit, pulsing in the same quick pattern.
She shakily reaches for the corresponding keyboard, or the one she hopes is corresponding amongst the stack of boards,
and types the set of commands she remembers her maker typing time and time again.
I hope I’m getting this right.
Once she finishes typing, the screen displays a text-based progress bar, indicating that at least something is happening,
though what specifically in this lengthy process she can no longer recall. But she recognises that it’s a good thing, in
any case. Only now does she feel comfortable enough to look down at the table; looking at a mess of wires, cables, and
sensors feeding in and out of a torso much like her own. Metal alloys and plastic fibres of varying types make up the
outer shell of this torso, much of it showing many signs of age. This oddly-human-shaped torso has two accompanying legs
attached at one end; one more discoloured and rusted than the other, and both held in place on the table by bulky curved
metal braces. The android knew this was necessary due to the plugs on the inside of the metal braces, meant to send
information such as balance algorithms and gyro sensor data to and from the body, though she couldn’t help looking at
them as if they were cruel restraints keeping the body pinned down. Snapping herself from this thought, she reminded
herself that even if that were the case, it’s not like the body before her could move, since the consciousness that
normally resides there was elsewhere.
She turned from the table for a moment to look at a row of data servers in an adjoining room, shielded by thick glass
and a heavy door. The android watches the blinking lights, wondering if any of them are from the soul currently placed
inside the crude stack of storage. Feeling a pang of guilt in her chest, she quickly turns back to the maintenance table,
but this doesn’t help.
>Remember the process. Just like last time, you can do it. You have to do it.
Taking a second to breath and calm down, she slowly pans her vision back up the body as her gaze nears the head. Checking
the sockets where arms would go, she pokes into them to get out any dust or broken wires that would affect the alignment
of new arms. Confident she’d done all she could, and finally looks up and tries to scan the body’s head. A peaceful
expression adorns its face, it’s eyes closed as if it were asleep. She could mistake the mouth being in the shape of a
small smile, but thinks it’s likely her imagining things to make herself feel better. The scalp is detached to reveal a
colourful array of lights and impossibly small readout nested inside a hazy clear-blue enclosure. She tries to locate
one specific readout, an impossible task had her maker not once many years ago shown her which to look for, and mentally
notes the series of digits it displays. She then finds another keyboard among the pile on the maintenance table’s
adjoining desk, and copies out the same digits before hesitantly pressing Enter
. There used to be a screen on which she
could verify her input was correct, but that broke a long time ago, so now she must simply hope she’s copied them
correctly, and not think about the consequences of getting it wrong. She can hear something whirr from a machine somewhere
on the floor from her input, and waits for the first screen to start flashing more colours and dialog outputs in response.
A minute passes.
Two minutes.
Five minutes.
The android continues to stare at the still-blank screen. Hoping. Praying. Once long ago this process would be near
instanteous. But each time she’s needed to repair this frame it’s taken longer and longer. Each time she mentally records
how long it takes, but dreads whenever this mental stopclock inevitably will run past it’s previous record. She fears
what would happen if..... when... this stopclock will never stop, and continue for eternity. When this stopclock will
lose all meaning knowing that she couldn’t save-
A flash.
The previously-static screen blinks into action, finally relieving the android of her counting.
27 minutes, 39.045 seconds.
She tries to reach for a chair behind her to collapse into while staring at the screen, but her hand misses and she finds
herself on the cold metal floor. Any soreness she would feel is masked by the artificial pseudo-adrenaline chemicals
coursing through her body, and any scratches she would suffer disguised by the hundreds of others adorning her own aging
shell. Only she was taught by her maker how to repair these bodies; the soul currently evicted from its body wasn’t able
to mature quickly enough to be taught those kinds of things. At least not before the two android’s maker died. She many
times considered teaching her sibling herself now that they both are older, but she herself barely remembers the process,
and much less understands it. Besides, it’s not her frame which needs more invasive and frequent maintenance, not that she
remembers exactly how many times it’s been. While she used to keep track of data such as maintenance intervals and
frequency, she’s long since given up on trying to remember, a past time long abandoned when the siblings didn’t need to
consider the concept of dying hardware. Same with the stockpile of spare parts; once rows and boxes full of spare limbs,
sensors, shell plates wouldd adorn the maintenance room and several adjoining storage bays. But now all bays are bare of
usable materials, only piled high with trashed, broken parts, and all the remaining parts that could be used lightly
dispersed in this central room. What used to be a simple process of grabbing brand-new components, is now a cycle of
constantly swapping broken hardware for slightly-less-broken hardware, until they become even more damaged than what they
used before, and continuing the cycle.
A beeping sound from some other machine jolts her up from her collapsed position on the floor, making her look around for
the source. The spots a bin of spare arms, illuminated by a fearful red light from behind. Rushing to the bin and moving
it aside, the android finds the source to be from a battery bank of some kind, unaware of what it’s meant to power.
Finding the output cable, her eyes follow it like animal tracks as far as she can, until her eyes meet with her siblings’
data server across the glass divide. Panic envelopes the android as she rushes to find a spare battery, attempting to
dispel any intrusive thoughts of a world without the only thing that matters to her. Trudging through a loose pile of more
unused and already-depleted battery parts, she manages to find what she needs, and sprints back to implant it into the
bank. After tripping over her own hands in a blind panic for what seems an eternity, the beeping stops, and the red light
disappears, fading back into a soft-but-faint blue.
I can’t keep doing this.
No, I have to.
The android tries to push aside her exhaustion, not just from the last few hours, but from the last countless repair
cycles.
Every cycle she fears what if it’s the last.
Every cycle she fears that she’dll fail to bring her sibling back.
Every cycle she increasingly avoids looking to the data server, for fear that her sibling will be trapped in there,
unable to communicate with her.
She lowers her head, drowned by these thoughts, wishing more than anything to be consoled by the only other soul she
has.
She curses this world she’s been given.
She curses her maker for not building her sibling as robustly has her.
She curses time itself, for constantly continuing on and on, and the cause of what will be the two androids’ inevitable end.
She looks to her hands, repeatedly counting each digit in an attempt to calm her breathing. She touches them to her face,
feeling their odd warmth despite the metal that comprises her palm, and brushes them up to her hairline, pushing and
tucking away loose synthetic strands that were in her field of vision. Her gaze fixes once again onto the maintenance
table, and the android reminds herself that she has to keep doing everything she can for her sibling, that her exhaustion
and hatred for the world they try to survive in can’t stop her. She tries to remember the repair sequence her creator
taught her, and began the final stages of bringing her sibling back.
The android returned to the bin of synthetic arms, glaring daggers at the deleted battery she removed earlier. As tempted
as she was to grab it to throw through one of the storage room doorways, she decided it wasn’t worth expending her little
remaining mental energy on a wasted venture. Instead she began to dig through the bin to find the least damaged arm
components, rifling past rusted poles and dislocated joints in the process. Most had at least minor damage, but she found
one that looked near-pristine, and another that suffered some rusted dents in a plate on the forearm. Inspecting the
shoulder socket connection ports, she checked the various small cables surrounding the main extrusion that would fit into
the torso, and dusted off any dirt or cobwebs she found. Walking back to the body on the table, the android straightened
out each limp limb before placing them down in position on the table, and slotted them into the torso, waiting for a
confirmatory clack sound. Only after hearing both in turn did she position back to the main display screen for the final
time.
Okay, time to bring you back.
Glancing momentarily at the data server, she begins the process for returning her sibling back into the still-empty shell
laying before her.
Three commands. Then it’s over.
Firstly, she connects her terminal to the server in the adjoining room. She’s grateful that this step goes smoothly, as
previous repair cycles suffered from connection issues which she had to troubleshoot. Yet another failing system that
she doesn’t understand enough to fix on her own.
Next, she verifies the state of the server. She isn’t able to communicate with her sibling directly while undergoing
repairs, so for her own sanity runs partition checks and compares data types and file sizes. She understands that some
drives could fail, but doesn’t know how that would affect her sibling. She’s wondered before if it would be like some
diseases her maker would sometimes tell her about, memory loss from age or trauma, or if it would be a completely unique
experience. But she’s never thought about it for long, as there’s no way to know, and the idea of her sibling no longer
being recognisable fills her with an uncontrollable dread. Watching the instruction finishing up, the android watches the
display list all available drives and their current state, sighing in relief to read that all data is still there. Though
she spots a number of drives and partitions being listed as damaged or unusable; the system seemed to at least avoid
attempting to use them, so there was some redundancy in place, but knowing that her future self now has another problem
to contend with....
Glancing over towards the shell adorning the central maintenance table, she runs one last mental check that everything
seems in place, that all damaged components were replaced as much as circumstances allows, and that it’s connected properly
to the terminal. Hesitantly typing out the last command she remembers her maker imparting onto her, the android girl at
last begins the transfer of her sibling’s consciousness and very being back into the body before her. She doesn’t know how
long it’ll take for it to complete anymore, if it will at all, but all she can do is wait. Exhausted and spent, but
refusing to leave until the process is complete.
Stepping towards the table, her hands clasp her sibling’s face as she closes her eyes in prayer; not to any higher being
or entity, but to the jungle of machines around her, that they might continue functioning. As she curses their creator,
the source of all her fears and worries, she’s thankful for at least having been granted another soul like herself to
share the world with. Her sole remaining joy in the world, who she’ll do anything to protect.
The android can feel the exhaustion she’s been pushing away for all this time catch up to her, barely able to stand.
Releasing her hands from the shell temporarily, she uses her foot to drag the chair she earlier missed towards herself,
and sits down as close to the maintenance table as she’s able. Softly grabbing the hand of her sibling’s shell, and
resting her forehead against her other forearm on the edge of the table, she finally allows herself to rest, listening
to the monotonous beeping of the terminal as it continues the transfer process. She once again closes her eyes, repeating
her silent prayer to no one, and waits for her sibling to wake up.
I can’t keep doing this.
But I will.
For as long as we can.