Chapter Text
“I mean isn’t it a little…blunt?” N coiled in on himself. Trying to make himself seem smaller than he really was. He tended to do that, whenever he had anything to say about…the before. Even if it was just another desperate apology.
“No duh.” The rock Uzi threw managed to knock the frozen skeleton’s skull clean off the neck. Bullseye. She knew the spiteful point of triumph in her core is unfair. This long-dead sod, however they may have treated the drones when they were alive, isn’t responsible for this. But there’s a bundle of very valid anger filtered through teenage angst, and she’s allowed a little indulgence. Imagining some Jenson exec’s head coming off.
“What were we supposed to call you? Happy fun time drones? Love and friendship drones? You were murdering us. Murder Drones.” The next rock missed the skeleton frozen in a posed prayer of terror and ricocheted off the remnants of a trash can instead. Damn it, she wanted to imagine them begging.
“I didn’t mean like, I’m offended or expected something…nice…” He stared at his hands, as if keeping his eyes on them would ensure they’d never sprout claws again. As much as he may need them, sometimes. Right now, they felt more like an infection than an asset.
“It’s just…simple, I guess? I’d have gone with…Extermination Drones. Massacre Drones. Murder is just so…”
“Personal?” She glanced down on him from atop the wrecked car. It’s probably the only way she could look down on him. Not that she ever did that, on a metaphorical level. As much as he may deserve it. Only some friendly ribbing, just like the jokes about her own height that he could make.
Just him. V taking that crack usually led to something traveling at high speed towards her face.
“It was always personal to us.” She left it at that, tossing the icy rock between her hands as she lined up the next target. He thinks back to Doll. The hatred in her eyes, the venom in her voice. Not even V escaped that, as much as she tried to blow it off.
Couldn’t escape the knowledge of a hundred more voices like it. Voices that were just too afraid to speak. Didn’t have the power to make them pay, so tolerated them.
“They really did have a way with doublespeak, right? The company suits.” He recognized what she was doing, but it made him feel a little better, nonetheless. Redirect those thoughts toward the real villains, before they got too crippling. He sat a little straighter, his display reflecting hesitant gratitude.
“Disassembly Drone.” She tightened an imaginary tie, the words a mocking monotone of a stereotypical executive. The hypothetical figure no doubt in her mind when the next rock flew out into graveyard. An evacuation traffic jam, from the looks of it. Far too late to escape Copper, and the hurled missile that bounced inside a ribcage.
“Like we were salvage. Just, inconveniently intact and moving.” The exec voice returned, though with a lot more bitterness. “We’re going to need you to disassemble this whole family while they scream and beg for mercy, we need to recycle them into coat hangers.” She reached for another rock, and found her stash gone. N didn’t recognize most of the swears she used.
“I mean, it is how J used to phrase it. That, um…cadence.” A couple more rocks were thrown up from where N was sitting; Uzi just barely caught them, balancing precariously off the edge of the hood. She glared at him when the sight made him giggle; that just turned it into a laugh.
“B…but yeah. She used to frame it like that. Repurposing materials. I…I don’t think she actually believed it though.” He looked behind him. They both knew what was back there. And it certainly wasn’t a good use of recycled materials. “It always seemed to be changing.”
“How so?”
She tried her luck with two rocks this time. It did not work as intended. Whiffing harmlessly into the snow only a few feet away. She’s glad N missed the embarrassment on her visor, too lost in contemplation.
“Her reasons could get…contradictory. Sometimes it was ‘recycling’, sure. Others, you were ‘corrupted’-whatever that means-and needed to be ‘purged’. Or you were dysfunctional, obsolete leftovers that needed ‘clean up’. Other times you ‘deserved it for being ungrateful’.”
Each of the reasons stoked her rage at their distant creators more and more. But it was the last one that fueled the next throw, the one that shattered an entire skeleton with a powerful shot to the chest. In that moment, she wished it was Earth breaking before their optics.
“Dad told me a story once. Pre-Collapse.” she said in quiet fury. “It was the end of a shift. He and the other miners were bringing in the load. Some construction drones were building something. No safety precautions of course, because we weren’t real people.”
She lifted one of the rocks and let it clang down on the car hood. “One falls. Cracks in half. Oil splatters all over the place. Damage sensors are going haywire. Pain. That’s pain, immense pain, but they don’t think of it like that. Of course they don’t.”
“They’re crying out for aid. Requesting repairs, so formally, like we all talked back then. Can’t hide the panicked distress, though. The overseers, you know what they do?” She almost spat the words. He felt he could relate. He didn’t know why he could relate, apart from staticky images of rain and wealth.
“They start laughing. Joking. Taking pictures. To show their friends and family, cuz’ one of us breaking apart was the funniest thing in the freakin’ world. There’s another one about to fall, and they don’t even care. The closest thing they get to caring is the one who barks at the miners to keep moving after they stop to look. That drone never appeared on shift again.” Images of bodies rusting in a garbage pile flash in his head. Yes, he can relate.
“So forgive us.” She hissed through tensed mouthplate. “For being ungrateful progeny.”
“No argument from me!” N stammered, holding out his hands in apology. “I never…never thought on it much. Just followed orders and fed the thirst.”
The thirst that proved her point. He stared up at the stars. Thinking of those in the distance. He didn’t know if they hated their creations or were just apathetic to them. He didn’t know which was worse.
“We…we were always told you weren’t really self-aware. And I just…accepted that. But…” He looked back up at his friend. The friend he’d tried to kill twice. The friend he’d been designed to tear apart. His dorky self-styled heroine he could play silly games and watch anime with. Even if hardwired parts of him still shouted to suck her dry.
“The more I think on everything, the more I realize how stupid I was not to notice.” Every time he sends up the files of his time as a murderous instrument of evil will, he finds something new. Some new evidence that he had blown off. Some new clue towards the personhood of the Workers. Some new pain to fill him, a hollow and insufficient echo of what he’d inflicted.
Uzi looked at him with sympathy, with affection. It’s more than he deserves, but he’s grateful for it, nonetheless. She put down the projectile in her hand and sat down. Willing to hear him out. He knew she wouldn’t appreciate him saying so, but so much of that edge is bluster.
“Why if…if you weren’t thinking creatures, were we not allowed to talk to you?” He muttered. It was all so easy now, to figure out the contradictions in the rhetoric and the policy. Why had it taken so long for him to figure it out? Now that it seemed so obvious?
“We were told you couldn’t make anything yourselves, and yet we were programmed to destroy anything you did.” Scattered remnants hiding in ruins. Proof they were hollow shells following default programming. Proof they’d-he’d- made.
“Why…if…all of it…”
“Why’d they give you a scoreboard if they intended you to die?” There she was again. Pull the blame off him, and to the distant masters. She lay down on her torso to face him. Didn’t exactly…smile. It wasn’t the time or place for that. But let her optics display something to tell him he was fine. “You weren’t worth anything because you weren’t really alive, but every part of the bullshit they fed you assumed you were.”
N isn’t a hateful person. Despite it all. Not even to people who deserved it. But Zi managed to pull a little out of him. Her righteous rage was infectious sometimes. Expendable because he didn’t really think, yet lied to because they implicitly knew he did. Lying to themselves to lie to him. Yes, he thinks he does hate JcJenson. Not all of humanity, like Uzi did or at least made a performance of. But he hated the company. Just a little.
“Thanks, Zi.” He stood up. Looking out at the crowd of dead. Who didn’t deserve to die, any less than the mountain behind them. But…probably had never even considered the possibility that the drones they abused would care. Would want something else from life. That they were alive, at all. “Whatever that means coming from a Murder Drone.”
“Not a problem, Disassembly Drone. Now watch me do this sick headshot.” It turned out to be more of a femur shot. His laughter mixed with her groans. This was what friendship was like. Not whatever it was he once had with V and J. A better reason to wish he had started questioning things sooner.
Then the nagging, terrible thought wormed its way through his processer like a virus. He hated himself again for even considering it. As if he had even the slightest right to think it. To justify himself like that. That must be some deep part of him trying to avoid responsibility. To make himself feel better about what he did. How dare he?
But…he got here by questioning the company. By not just accepting narratives he was fed. He couldn’t just wish the question away, could he? He knew so little, even about his own body, his own brain. He knows the company lied to him, about the Workers and Disassemblers alike. But…that doesn’t mean they’re the only liars. Even if they’re the biggest ones.
So N took a deep breath he didn’t physically need, and said something.
“Uzi…about…” He cringed when she glanced his way. He didn’t want to wipe away all the…casual warmth in that look. “…the stuff V said. About backstory…”
“Bullshit propaganda.” In an instant the warmth turned to ice. Uzi sat up, avoided looking at him. That already made him feel like his time-bomb of a heart was overheating prematurely. But he pressed on.
“It wouldn’t justify anything!” He quickly interjected, hands shaking to his face. “The humans…they killed, and they abused, and they…made me to burn, but…we don’t know everything. If there’s something else about how this all started…”
“Propaganda. Lies!” She was on her feet. To N’s horror, that terrible symbol flickered in place of her eye. She clutched at empty air, perhaps strangling an unseen technician, words spilling out like they could finally kill their oppressors like they had killed. “There’s not a single fucking word coming out of that bat about the company or the Workers or anything you can believe. It’s all bullshit pumped into you just to…to…”
Uzi’s angered finally faded enough for her to really see N. He cowered and shook. Every inch of him seemed to have been irradiated with pure shame.
“Just…” Whatever Solver was, it disappeared from her screen. She gave a deep, loud sigh. Fury fizzled to reveal the hurt underneath. “Just…don’t, okay? Please.”
“You’re right…I shouldn’t have. It’s not my place. I’m sorry.” And he was. She could tell. He always was. A murder monster robot without an evil component in his body. JCJ(IS), making machines that could think and feel, so they could lie and exploit and murder them.
“Hey. It’s fine. We’re good.” A hesitant smile from the both of them. Then she turned, pointed out into the distance. “I got one good throw left in me. Gonna go for Mr. Wrath of God over there.” A skeletal remain on the hood of their car, crying out to the sky. Very morbid, but that was Copper. Always would be.
N gave her the thumbs up as she wound up her arm. She threw as hard as she possibly could, pushing her servos to the limit, all to get that final victory she deserved. Uzi Doorman, the true Wrath of Robo-God, to reap the sinner!
The rock bounced off three cars, shattered a lamplight, skipped over the snow five times, slid up a ramp of melted walkway and zoomed straight into Zi’s face. Only an instinctual AS activation kept it from conking her right on the viewscreen, but it didn’t stop her from falling straight on her ass.
Then the purple light dissipated, and the rock it was holding up fell down to hit her face.
“…ow.”
For a moment, the only sound to be heard for miles was constant razor winds that would freeze off the flesh of anything organic in an instant. And then they both started to laugh. Filled the graveyard with mirth, and friendship, and maybe a little hope. The world was still bright enough for that, at least.
Neither of them wanted to talk about the elephant they’d not discussed. Collectively and independently decided not to broach the subject, even in their minds. Bury it deep for the bond. Hopefully forever.