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When an individual spends their entire life in a single location with a single companion and occasional video feed of two crackpot scientists for their only company, it would surprise no one to find that their social skills are in need of sharpening.
It wasn’t that Crow didn’t like to talk to people; one would have to be very unobservant and at least partially hard of hearing to think that. He just had a very limited social pool, only ever physically interacting with his creator. Ever since his activation around a month ago, the golden robot had been a chatty shadow to Joel, following him and inundating him with barrage after barrage of questions and occasional snarky comments. However, now that Joel had explicitly instructed Crow to stay on the bridge and give him some alone time during his regular session of tinkering, he was on the fast track to breaking his record of bored silence.
His third encore of tapping his claw-hands against the console was interrupted by a faint whirring noise. Crow popped upright, looking to each side before noticing the camera dangling from the railing.
“Oh. Hi Cambot.”
Joel had introduced Crow to his latest creation (Crow’s sibling?) a little over a week ago, and he still wasn’t sure how to react to the new addition. The new bot didn’t exude a strong presence; their body currently only consisted of a faded pink plastic chassis, a camera on a metal arm, and a white handle that kept them connected to a thin yet sturdy railing that led through the doors into the theater. Their most notable characteristic, at least in Crow’s eyes, is that they lacked the ability to speak. It might have been easier for Crow to know how he felt about this new robot if he could carry a conversation with them, but with Cambot’s quiet nature and non-distinct appearance, the golden robot often forgot that his new companion was even there.
The camera panned from side to side, curiously scoping out the room before focusing on Crow.
“Joel’s off inventing or something,” Crow said, his chin sitting atop his clasped hands. “He said I should stay here to give him some alone time. I swear, you wake a guy up by jabbing him with your beak while watching him sleep one time, and suddenly he’s sitting you down for a talk about ‘personal boundaries’ and junk like that.”
Cambot remained unmoved, but emitted a hard whirr.
“Okay, maybe it was four times,” Crow huffed. “And the two times with the shower. And the incident with the closet, but what else am I supposed to do all day? It’s not like I’ve got anyone else to talk to.”
Cambot pulled backward, the aperture of their camera widening. Their inner workings made a whine like a deflating balloon.
Crow looked up at them suddenly, his arms folding on the console. “Oh.”
The door to the hallway began to open, with the red robot gliding toward the exit. Crow popped to attention, following the camera as they began to zoom away.
“T-that’s not what I meant!” he sputtered. “I just… well, you… you’re not exactly easy to hold a conversation with!”
The second door slid open. Cambot persisted onward, ignoring the gold robot jogging to keep up with them.
Crow grunted. “Geez, you’re sensitive. Hey, I can’t go that fast! Slow down so I can apologize, you jerk!”
The smaller robot stopped before the third door, swiveling their camera around.
“I don’t exactly have a lot experience talking to people,” Crow grumbled. “And, like, you don’t really talk. Or have a face. So I’m bad at this. And I’m sorry. There.”
Cambot let out a low hum. They scooted closer to Crow, pointing their camera dangerously close to the robot’s eyes.
“Hey!” Crow exclaimed, taking a step back. “You’re not recording with that, are you? Or are you always recording? Are you gonna use this for blackmail?”
The camera moved from left to right, as though Cambot was shaking their head.
Crow gave a skeptical look. “Is that a ‘no, I’m not recording,’ or a ‘no, I’m not using this recording for blackmail?”
Cambot began to slowly nod before switching to the shaking motion, then lowering the camera, giving up on emoting altogether.
“You’re not giving me much to work with here.”
Cambot’s processor made a light chirping noise.
“…are you laughing?”
Cambot nodded again. Crow gave them a thoughtful look, gingerly placing a hand on his faded red chassis.
“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “Is that good? Are we having a conversation?”
The camera arm pointed down the hallway back to the bridge before returning to its position. Crow’s eyes followed Cambot’s gesture, considering their suggestion for a moment.
“Actually,” Crow said, a hint of mischief in his voice, “Joel’s not going to care if we go looking around on our own, right?”
Cambot didn’t make any gestures of disagreement, which Crow took as a cue to start disconnecting the robot from his position on the railing.
“I’m not gonna drop you, ya big baby,” Crow snarked as Cambot wriggled in protest. “We both know that rail doesn’t even begin to go around the whole satellite, and I’ve got an idea I think you’ll like. Want to take a look around in the lower decks?”
Cambot’s body buzzed in Crow’s arms as he whirred.
“I found out where Joel keeps the RAM chips yesterday. Want to go steal some before he moves the hiding place again?”
After a half-second of quiet contemplation, Cambot chirped happily.
Joel set down his screwdriver, glancing at the blueprints he had laid out for his current project. While the schematics were important for making something functional, the inventor rarely found himself following his own instructions exactly. His best work was built on spur of the moment ideas and improvised materials; one look at Crow was enough to see that. Still, there was something to be said for bringing an idea to life through careful planning. There was only so much that improvisation could do before falling into chaos.
THUMP.
“You didn’t hear that! We’re not doing anything in here!”
Speaking of chaos.
Joel sighed, pulling himself to his feet. Well, it had been a productive thirty-two minutes, and he was impressed by how much work he was able to get done before Crow stuck his beak into trouble, so he might as well call it a day. Removing the elastic keeping his hair out of his face, Joel made his way to the adjacent room at a casual pace.
“Hold still, will you? I’m pretty sure I know how to—okay, maybe I don’t, but how hard could it be to operate a drill?”
Okay, maybe at a brisk pace.
The door to the cargo bay wooshed open as Joel approached, revealing a started robot sitting among a mess of upcycled robot parts and random junk, though those two categories overlapped more than one would think. Next to Crow was an upside-down red plastic sled topped with a traffic cone that was mostly concealed by a familiar pink plastic casing; a casing which Crow was in the process of attaching two conjoined plastic bowling pins to.
The engineer’s mouth opened in shock. “Cambot?”
The pink robot raised their camera, their white handle lifting like an eyebrow.
“Don’t they look great?” Crow beamed.
Joel ran a hand through his hair. “I… I’m not sure what to say.”
Cambot whirred happily, his body—no, it was a head now, Joel supposed—turning toward Crow.
“I told you he’d like it,” Crow patted the sled that now served as his sibling’s torso. “See, I didn’t think it was really fair that Cambot didn’t have a face or anything, so we started putting together a new body for ‘em! I thought they could use the sled to hold film for their camera, and I glued together a couple of the bowling pins you had left over from making me so they could have eyes. I even found a marker to give them pupils.”
Joel knelt down to take a closer look at Crow’s handiwork. “Can’t he see through his camera, though?”
Crow rolled his eyes. “Well yeah, but that’s not on his face.”
“Couldn’t you have put his face on the camera?”
“Couldn’t you have given him a face in the first place?” Crow bit back.
Joel shrugged. “That’s fair.”
Cambot made a quick humming noise.
“You do like it, don’t you?” Crow said, a hint of worried doubt in his voice.
Joel stood back up, taking a step back to get a wider look. He smiled.
“Of course I do,” he laughed. “You two did this all by yourselves?”
“Well, there’s not exactly anyone else up here,” Crow pointed out.
Joel put a hand on each of his robots’ heads, as if tussling their hair. “You guys are really something special.”
Cambot whirred as Crow’s arms bounced, content with the praise. Cambot’s head scooted forward in an attempt to balance completely on their new body instead of leaning back on the overturned box of parts. They remained upright for a few seconds before the sled fell over, jostling the box behind them and unceremoniously dumping the robot’s head into Crow’s lap.
“It’s a work in progress,” Crow shrugged. “You can help us make improvements, right?”
Joel put a hand to his chin, picking up a small gumball machine that had rolled out of the box. “Sure thing, Crow. I think I need to add a little more to what I was working on, first. And you two need to start cleaning up the mess you made in here.”
Crow crossed his arms. “You can’t make me do anything.”
“I can find a new hiding place for the RAM chips.”
“...you make a convincing argument.”