Chapter Text
Jong-seok sat in his basement. He had only been home from the army for a short while and the PTSD was catching up with him, leaving him feeling unmotivated. He hadn’t done much but sit around for the past few weeks and was in desperate need of a distraction. His radio played a familiar tune, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the current sorrows he was feeling; that was until a certain song came on and he got an idea.
The song now playing had sparked a memory of his. Before he joined the army, he had a passion for creating small, but highly detailed figurines. He would do this while he listened to the radio, for the melodies would inspire him. Over the years, his hobby had been pushed into the back of his mind, but this is exactly what he needed to temporarily forget about his troubles.
He stood up and walked over to the many piles of boxes he had stashed in his basement. He didn’t remember where he had placed his crafting supplies, but was sure that he would locate them with enough digging around. After going through boxes and boxes of personal trinkets, he was surprised with the contents of the next box. In it was one of his war androids which he had packed up with the others not too long ago, after his service in the war was over. He opened the next few boxes and found the rest that he had brought home.
There were only six of them, the rest being too damaged to be salvageable; even these six were highly scratched and marred. He picked one up out of its box and placed it upright. To his dismay, one of its arms clunked to the floor, its joints being too weak and broken to support it anymore. The other one was barely hanging on and looked like it would fall off at a glance as well. He then attempted to power the android on, being careful as to not bump it the wrong way and break it even more. Hope filled his heart as the android’s eyes lit up their white color, but it was crushed as it short-circuited and starting falling to the floor, him barely being able to catch it in time.\
Jong-seok sighed. “Rest in peace, soldier, rest in peace,” he told it with a heavy heart before solemnly boxing it up again.
He then set to lifting the others out of their boxes, his task of finding his craft supplies forgotten. The others were thankfully in better shape than the previous one, but were still not free from both external and internal damage. None of them would power on, and they would all require refurbishing if they were to be used again.
That was it! He could take his figurine crafting skills and repurpose the androids into life-size models!
His goal was now set, and like a true soldier, he wasn’t giving up on his objective until it was finished.
_____
It had been a week since Jong-seok had set out to repairing his androids and so far, he had been successful. He had gotten them all to power on and they responded to the various commands he had given them. Something had just felt… off about them though. He had realized that while they were androids, everything about them felt too robotic to be “fun and intricate” figurines. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t changed their appearances yet, but their rigid nature surely wasn’t helping.
The problem was, he wasn’t sure how to fix this. He had never had to program personalities into his androids as their only purpose was for war and to be able to follow battle commands and tactics. He could plug himself into their memory chips and copy his personality traits that his systems had collected, but was unsure of the risks he could potentially be putting himself in.
After a week of making no progress, Jong-seok finally gave in and decided to take the risk. He attached an adapter to one of their memory chips and plugged the other end into an outlet on the side of his head. He made his systems copy and transfer his recorded personality traits and habits, and to his surprise, he got a notification saying the transfer had been successful.
His cooling systems whirred to life as he nervously pressed the power button on the android. Its white eyes lit up and blinked a few times before focusing on him. It straightened itself up immediately.
“At ease, solider,” Jong-seok told it, the android visibly relaxing.
He wasn’t sure how to test if it had worked. Did he just start a conversation with it? While Jong-seok was a usually talkative fellow, the idea of speaking casually with an android who he used to command was unbelievably foreign and uncomfortable for him.
The android’s eyes narrowed, observing him. “Permission to speak, sir?” it asked.
Jong-seok’s eyes widened. “Uhm,” he stuttered, “Yes, solider, go ahead.” He replied, curious of what the android was planning on saying. The androids had never spoken on their own before, so this was good news thus far.
“You seem to be deep in thought, sir, is there something bothering you?” it questioned, its synthetic voice laced with genuine concern.
Well this is certainly a step ahead, Jong-seok thought to himself. The android was expressing real emotion, and it was extremely refreshing to finally hear.
“No, soldier. Nothing that you should be concerned about. I was just thinking about how it is good to see you up and running correctly again.” Jong-seok gave in reply.
“I apologize if I troubled you, sir, I- Systems have reached a low state of battery- 5% remaining.” The android cut off suddenly and shut down.
Jong-seok let out a sigh. He was finally making progress but had foolishly forgotten to charge the android while he was working. He plugged the android in and set to programming the others’ personalities as well, finding himself filled with a newfound excitement.
_____
“Attention, troops!” This was it. He was testing them all together after having finished integrating their personalities. He crossed his mechanical fingers, praying that it would work.
“Attention!” The five androids exclaimed, their synthetic voices making it sound like they had sung it in harmonics together.
“Now, at ease, soldiers.” He directed.
“At ease, sir!” They chorused again.
Jong-seok didn’t know if they were singing on purpose or if their voices were just blending together that way, but the artificial tone they produced sounded intriguing.
“Now you, soldier,” he pointed to the android on the far right who blinked expectantly, “What is the date and time?” Jong-seok had also taken to adding useful skills and settings into the androids’ programming.
“It is October 10th, sir, and the time is 3:25 a.m. (I thought I’d just drop all these easter egg numbers, haha). This is also the first day that all of our systems have been officially been re-launched.” It answered.
“Thank you, soldier. I’m assuming that everything is working correctly, unless you have yet to inform me otherwise?” Jong-seok replied.
“Yes, sir. Everything is operational and working as it should. Right, everyone?” the middle android inquired.
“Correct!” all of them replied in unison.
If Jong-seok still had lips, he would have broken out into the biggest smile. He had done it. The androids were back and working again, this time for far less grim purposes.
“Excellent.” He replied. “That is all for now, you may return to your positions and retire for the day.” He instructed.
All five of them turned around and walked towards the wall. He was keeping them lined up there while he worked on them. Suddenly one of them tripped over a cord that was left lying about and fell to the ground, his hand falling off in the process. Jong-seok wasn’t exactly surprised, he had yet to fix their appearances and parts yet, but what he was surprised at was this android’s display of clumsiness. His efforts to make them humanized had been more fruitful than he thought.
The other androids halted in their movements and peered down at their fallen comrade. His scratched-up face looked terrified, either from messing up his orders or from losing an appendage, Jong-seok speculated.
“It’s alright, solider. It can be fixed; I was planning on that anyway.” He reassured him.
The fallen android looked relieved after hearing his words. Thankfully, no more accidents occurred as his friends helped him up and walked over to the wall, the five of them then entering a sleep-like state.
Jong-seok then picked up his detached hand, guessing that it was time to start thinking about refurbishing their looks. He had a hard decision to make, what theme should they revolve around?
_____
Three days passed and Jong-seok had finally decided on a theme. His efforts to keep his mind off the war were mostly fruitless, for he was a soldier at heart, and had decided on giving his new androids a nautical theme. Now, it was just deciding how to distinguish between the five of them. They all had the same personality traits programmed into their memory chips, so it was up to their appearances to tell them apart. Jong-seok was also hoping that they would pick up different speech patterns over time.
For now, he decided to tell them apart by colors: white, red, blue, yellow, and green respectively.
He wanted them to appear as human as they could, so he changed their eye shapes and gave them basic facial features along with ears. The final step was their hair. Jong-seok was unsure how to approach this, for he had none of his own and had not for a while.
He settled on what he knew best, military weapons. The androids still had their battle programming in them, so why not make it so they could be used again if need be? Using the shapes he knew, he created a few hairstyles which he had seen before and assumed were popular, as well has made up his own weaponized hair-dos. He was stuck on white though, no more weapons he thought of would make interesting haircuts. Eventually, for nostalgic reasons, he went with a hairstyle like his before he became a cyborg.
Jong-seok was finally done. The androids looked brand new, except for the fact that he had kept their mostly white and black color scheme. He was elated, but what was he going to do with them? He had spent all this time fixing and creating them, but what for? He didn’t want them to just sit around, they were living androids.
He sat at his desk, tapping his pencil to the beat of a song that was stuck in his head. It was a song that had become hugely popular in Vinyl City; he believed that the artist was a DJ by the name of Subatomic Supernova. He started singing the tune and…
That’s when it hit him. What if he programmed the androids to sing? They had already showed capabilities when they answered his inquiries in unison. He just had to program them accordingly.
Jong-seok immediately took to finding all that he could about music. After enough discoveries, he began uploading lessons on music theory and instrument playing, as well as further modifying their voices to accommodate singing. He thought that maybe he was being too hasty, but quickly discarded the thought because he knew that music making would further occupy him.
Jong-seok questioned why he had never thought of making music before; he did take delight in listening to it enough. He concluded that it’s never too late to start a hobby, though, and now he had the assistance of his androids.
After he had uploaded everything he could find on music to their systems, he powered them on. Their eyes dilated, processing the new information fed into their robotic brains. They then looked at him in anticipation. He looked over them with a sense of pride; everything seemed to be working correctly and their new cosmetics made them look more alive and cheerful.
“Attention, troops!” Jong-seok sang.
Their eyes lit up and the corners of their mouths upturned.
“Attention!” They chorused cheerfully in return.
Jong-seok thought he would combust from happiness, he wished he could smile in return to show them how happy he was.
“Troops- Wait a minute, I haven’t given you names, have I?” he asked.
“No, sir. Nothing but our serial numbers. We’re the tenth models from series ten.” Replied the white android.
Jong-seok thought for a moment. The tenth models from the tenth series…
“Well then, 1010. Welcome! It’s good to see you again.” He greeted, the colorful androids grinning in response.