Chapter Text
(inspired by a TikTok made by idk_some_random_name)
They're alive, they're awake
While the rest of the world is asleep
Below the mine shaft roads, it will all unfold
There's a world going on underground
Morgan rhythmically swayed to the rigid beat in the dim room, her bright white grin and the clean lens of her glasses acting as reflectors to mark wherever she went.
She always played this song among many others when repairing one of the androids, and RE-001 made no attempt to hide her annoyance at the repetition.
“Okay, now you’re being a killjoy,” said Morgan, despite her content expression remaining.
“It’s a little hard to be happy while someone’s prodding around in your chest because of a gli-gli-gli-”
RE-001’s upper body twitched with each stutter, but Morgan casually reached through her sea green hair and held down a button behind her ear.
RE-001 fell limp against the table, her eyes growing dull. They subtly glowed blue as her body roused awake again.
“Glitch,” she finished, aggravated by the ironic interruption.
“Hey, at least you’ve got a technician to fix you in less than an afternoon,” Morgan said with a shrug, “If a human body “catches a glitch”, we have to stay home for days in pain and spend our life savings on medicine.”
RE-001 had to admit that did sound awful, even though they’ve never had to worry about money.
“Do they blame your glitch on you?” they asked.
Morgan shrugged.
“Not unless the “glitch” is mental,” she said.
RE-001 didn’t react to that. Instead, their mind ventured into the near past.
They were waiting tables, as usual, in the lobby area. It had been a busy night due to the holiday weekend. While that meant extra time off of work for humans, it meant the opposite for the workers of any Robo Entertainment establishment.
RE-001 had been handling a particularly difficult table. It was a large group of friends who couldn’t stop talking over one another, and often got frustrated when they had to repeat themselves. The ones who spoke over their friends also became frustrated whenever they were asked to pay attention to RE-001 and get their orders together.
Even when RE-001 used his new hearing software to filter out the background noise, the data would get mixed up and some words would still be missed.
At some point, the flow of information clogged up in his mind, and before he could even process what was happening, the word “ERROR” obscured his vision.
The patrons at the table inflated with both excitement and shock. Their gasps and shouts eventually brought in more attention from the other diners. Some even pulled out their phones to record the odd display.
In a minute, RE-001 was pulled to the side by workers into a wheelchair as another waiter took over.
“We’re sorry about that. I can take care of you for the rest of the night!” greeted the new waiter.
As RE-001 was wheeled to the back of the building, she could vaguely hear the heated voice of Mr. Kingsley.
“What’s wrong with it now?”
“We don’t know. It ran into an error while serving a table.”
It.
That word brought her back to the present.
“I’m mostly made of scrapped parts from female models. The least people could do is say “she” when talking about me.”
“So that’s what you’ve been thinking about,” said Morgan, “I was wondering why you went so quiet on me.”
“I’m okay with “he”, too, since I have some male parts,” continued RE-001, “But I guess “they” makes the most sense since my body comes from several different bots.”
Morgan hummed in agreement, more focused on her task now that it was clear that RE-001 was just going to keep talking without any regard for her reply.
“Even some of the customers call me “she” because I mostly look and sound like a woman, so everyone might as well run with it,” they said, “Anything but “it” or “that”. I feel like if I get called a “thing” again, I’m gonna scream.”
“People call all of the robots “things”. It’s nothing personal,” said Morgan.
RE-001 groaned.
“I know it’s not,” they said, “But–”
Before they could think of a rebuttal, the glitch ceased their body and caused them to spasm and stutter.
Morgan reached behind RE-001’s ear again and held down two buttons.
“Let’s just power you down for now.”