Chapter Text
Beginning the final diagnostics scan signaled that your life was ending.
Well, this part of it. You think it might depend on how you define “life” and at this point you’ve got too much going on to wax fake philosophical on what it really even means to be alive. Especially when it doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrapping up the wetware portion of it.
Really you didn't see how you didn't think of this sooner. You spent so long looking for robots and studying their programming, figuring out what made them tick and make them do what you wanted. Not for this reason, but a guy can have a hobby that helps pay the bills. It taking this direction definitely fucking added to them.
You branched out from just fucking with other people’s shit and figured out how to make your own robot. It sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is. Basically anyone with the right tools could make one. Grab some hardware, attach a computer to it, string some code together, and give it a power source. Add some sensors if you’re feeling fancy. A simple machine is nothing to brag about.
And you didn’t want this to be a simple machine, you wanted to make it you.
The hardware was the easy part. It was mostly finding and acquiring parts that met your standards and your previous work experience gave you more than enough places to start looking. The more abstract shit like the outer casing was harder. A lot of late mornings researching different alloys trying to understand what percentage of aluminum made something not worth your time and how to get a specific blend without anyone asking too many questions. You had enough of those on your own.
The facial plates had to be more flexible, able to move in tandem and convey expression. It was a lot of extra work to not actually bring much practical benefit, but again, this wasn’t just a machine. This was you.
Maybe you briefly entertained the idea of maybe making some sort of silicone covering for situations where you would want to be more subtle about the robot thing. But that got tossed out pretty quickly. That shit ages fast and ends up looking creepy as fuck. So you decided to steer away from uncanny valley and embrace being a sick looking robot.
Customizing it helped ground you when you had to lean away from the tech side of biotech. Biology was never really your thing and not being gold meant you had put all of your focus in those inorganic skills since you didn’t have any psionics to help back you if you fucked up. It’s weird, looking at biological and artificial neural networks, laser etching in familiar patterns to keep your hands as busy as your pan while you were trying to figure out how to start with one and end with the other only to see how similar they were.
It wasn’t weirder than realizing that this might actually have a solid chance of working and not just frying your pan trying to do some stupid shit you weren’t meant to. This could work.
A chime brings your attention back to your screen. The scan is complete.
This is going to work.
You look away from your screen and look at it, you, lying ready on a table. You did good. It looks great. You wouldn’t mind spending time in that between changing out your outer plates and you even gave it some “piercings.” Figure you might as well keep something familiar on your face to help get used to it becoming made of metal.
And then you look off to the side of it, where the wires connected to it led, down the table and on the other side of the room to a glass recuperacoon for your body to rest indefinitely. You’d probably end up spending more time in there than the amount of time you spent in your actual coon throughout your life. Not really what you think your friends meant when they said you needed more sleep. You’re going to be beyond sleep soon.
You take a deep breath and execute your final program as a living, breathing troll and make your way into it.
You'd probably figure out a way to not need your body at some point. What would you do then? Get rid of it? Probably not. You never really got rid of anything. The mess surrounding you is a testament to that and how much of a sentimental fuck you can be. You’d probably just seal it and use it as another surface to pile things onto. You don’t think any amount of code is going to get you out of that habit.
You step in and lay down in the modified nutritional slime and wait, too wired to really register how cold it felt. Your nerves aren’t really helping either as you start wondering if this was just working out too well for you and you somehow missed something important. Still, you buzzing with the anticipation of something happening, good or bad.
You hear a low hum from around you.
The buzz is now literal as an electric current runs through the slime and you are left paralyzed with a steadily increasing static that encompasses all of you. Despite being submerged in liquid you feel like you are on fire and you are painfully aware of everything in your surroundings. This clarity that only enhances your agony. You feel it. You feel everything so much brighter and louder and more.
Until you don't.
Until your body is no longer able process the amount of stimulus it’s getting and simply chooses not to.
It's dark.
And then there is nothing.
Your vision comes back into focus slowly as you open your eyes and see a familiar crack in the ceiling. You think you're opening your eyes at least. It takes you longer than you want to admit to realize you’re adjusting your lenses.
Oh shit, it actually worked.
Slowly, you lift yourself with a weight that you simultaneously do and don’t recognize as your own. The whole thing is disorienting. At first you wonder if the way you perceive things and the way you understand them are out of sync. But then you get it, they aren’t out of sync, you’ve just have never gotten this much information about your surroundings at the same time before.
The closest comparison is it's like you're playing an fps. You are you, yes, but are above and around you and know things you otherwise wouldn’t if you had only just been perceiving from the perspective of someone seeing only what was in front of them. You’re doing a lot more than that now as even something as innocuous as your block floods you with information and even sitting still you are moving faster than you ever thought possible.
It’s a lot. It’s exhilarating.
You get off the table and check your balance, shifting your weight from one strutpod to the other before moving towards the mirror. Your steps grow more sure as you continue, getting more confident that you aren’t going to break this in the dumbest way possible.
And then you see yourself.
The silhouette matches the one you were expecting even if the features were off. Skin lighter and shinier than you were expecting and eyes glowing a menacing red. Some cobalt glints back at you and you can’t help but smile at the image of a pierced robot.
It works. Your face moves and all of the bullshit and work was worth it.
But there is still one final thing you need to try to know if you’ve really pushed every limit you can.
You go back to your husktop, all of the readings displayed are already known to you, and you minimize the window. You open your browser and click on a bookmark you had saved just for this moment.
A familiar window pops up asking you the same question you had answered hundreds, if not thousands of times before. You click the box, lying for the first time, and wait. A check mark appears and there are no words to describe the sheer amount of power you feel.
“i = in;” you smirk.