Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

"Deep breaths, deep breaths," Taylor muttered to herself as she rocked back and forth in her chair, trying not to freak out. It was hard not to, with her currently experiencing every Tinker's worst nightmare. Her creations are going rogue and taking their own initiative. Sure, so far, they had only decided to build something while trashing the place, but soon, they would start to realize that killing all the humans somehow meant that the preservation of human life was the utmost priority. Probably some bullshit about how by killing 99.9 percent of all humans, they had enough resources to preserve the rest of them!

"Deep breaths! Deep Breaths!" Taylor repeated to herself louder, trying to break herself out of her catastrophizing. She looked around the room desperately, hoping to find anything to grab her attention away from the images of robot armageddon. All she could see was detritus and debris scattered throughout her lab, the now singular FrankenHelper hammering a dent out of its own chassis, and the uh….. Personal company bot was currently flexing its fingers. Her fingers? Flexing fingers that belong to something that may or may not have traditional English pronouns.

The sound of a partly disassembled server rack crashing into the ground was what finally broke Taylor out of her near-fatal downward slope toward a stress-induced heart attack. That and the CRT monitor whacking her in the shin as it slid across the ground.

"Motherfucker!" Taylor swore as she started to rub away pain. Just another piece of broken equipment, and she was going to have to recycle that damn monitor now. Best Buy was no longer taking CRTs for free as the government program expired, and she didn't have the 30 dollars to spare.

Where the hell were the Constructionbots? They should have at least cleaned up this mess by now!

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"Uh, Boss?" V1:NE, or Vinnie to the rest of the crew, hesitantly said to the Foreman. "We're running out of space to put the scrap." The foreman bot slowly lowered his clipboard, strategically putting his optics between it and his hard hat to glare at Vinnie.

"Fugging A, how can we possibly be running out of space?!" He started to exclaim. The foreman bot was programmed with various yelling levels, perfectly emulating a flesh-and-blood construction foreman. Right now, he was using his "how is this possibly a problem" level of annoyance.

"Why aren't ya giving it all to Joey?!" He yelled at the bot, "Do I have to explain everything to ya idiots?" level of yelling.

"Well," Vinnie started to say, his own optics glancing over to where Joey was. "He's…"

"Being himself." The Foreman sighed as he clanged his clipboard against his head. Joey. He would ask what the Bosslady was thinking when she made Joey like that, but she had nothing to do with Joey being Joey. You had to work hard every day to be like Joey.

"Well," Vinnie started to whisper conspiratorially before he was cut off.

"No, Vinnie. Just because we're programmed to act like a bunch of stereotypical New Jersey construction Workers doesn't mean we are a bunch of stereotypical New Jersey construction workers. We don't gots mob ties, so we can't make him disappear, or make him sleep with the fishes. Not only will the Bosslady be pissed, we're rated for a depth of 300 meters in case we needs to do underwater work."

A loud industrial fart shook the windows on the abandoned warehouses they were currently demolishing and scrapping.

"Can we at least shove him in and make him walk home? It'll make me and the boys feel better." The Foreman was about to object when a loud belch interrupted his train of thought.

"Okay. Yous get all the scrap processed, we can dump him in the Bay and make him swim home." The Foreman said, much to the cheers of the nearby bots. Honestly, if the fat bastard wasn't the only mobile foundry/recycler that they had, they would have kicked his shiny metal ass long ago.

And so the work continued quickly, everyone looking forward to throwing Joey into the Bay. But as always, something else threw a massive wrench into the smooth operation of the machinery.

"Boss! The cops are here!" Vinnie said as he rushed back from the window.

"Run! We don't gots permits!" The Foreman said as he bolted towards the escape tunnel. The rest of the crew followed suit, panicking as they gathered their tools and bolted before they got hit by citations and court appearances! Permit violations were administration law violations! You don't have a right to an attorney for those!

Joey was the last one into the tunnel, slamming and locking the hatch shut behind him in a cloud of noxious smelting gasses.

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"Did….Did you see that?" Officer Kowalski of the Brockton Bay Police Department said to his partner. It was supposed to be a routine call about someone inhabiting one of the derelict warehouses near the piers. Probably just some of the local homeless trying to keep dry and warm, maybe a scrapper who wasn't aware they had been looted of easy-to-access copper long ago.

"A bunch of New Jersian sounding robots in construction vests and hard hats?" Officer Smith said simply, wondering if now was a good day to start drinking on the job.

"Well, that just means the crazy is contagious," Officer Kowalski said as he reached for his radio to report it. "The PRT is going to quarantine us for the obvious Cape Power incident."

"I can't believe I'm actually happy to turn this over to the PRT." Officer Smith said as he slowly sat down on an empty wire spool. He was feeling a bit light-headed. This was bizarre even for this fugging city.

"Fugging A! It's spreading!"

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"Helper probably ate them too." Taylor moaned as she stared at the ceiling. Yeah, she could make more, but she needed materials for that, materials that Frankenhelper had used up. They weren't that smart, just slightly more advanced Roombas with spot welders, but dammit, they could clean up this mess!

"Maybe I can get you to clean up," Taylor muttered as she stood up, gesturing vaguely to the robot now flexing its toes. Obviously going through some calibration process. Right. Program a cleaning routine, get it going, then go upstairs, out through the now fake coal chute, and then to bed and pretend this day didn't happen by sleeping for a week straight. Sounds like a plan.

Taylor slid the keyboard out of the one server rack that wasn't damaged and was fully functional. The fact that it was connected to the computer attached to the workbench that the new robot was on explained that. At least she could work with something here. Taylor pulled up the SDK she used for her inventions, and waited for it to load, and then just stared.

"What?" Taylor said as she blinked. There was just a massive blank spot in the robot's programming. No, not a blank spot, a black box. She couldn't see any of the actual processing it did. She could occasionally see a command it gave and the information it received, but the actual processing? It was like a psychological blind spot; there was something there, but you just couldn't comprehend there was something there, so your brain said there was nothing. That wasn't how programming or computers worked, even with Tinker bullshit.

She grabbed at the edges, for lack of a better term, and pulled out something. It seemed to be a motor control program, and she felt her Tinker power start to kick in. She made minor adjustments to it, optimizing it, before compiling it and returning it to the black box. She blinked as she watched the compiled program disappear into the non-existent code.

Taylor could feel the anxiety building up in her chest, but it was pushed aside by another feeling that she was starting to become very familiar with. Tinker Fugue. This had been a usual state for the past three months, ever since her discharge from the hospital and becoming homebound. But this time, she felt grounded. She still had one foot in the door of her surroundings. She felt her hands fly across the keyboard, but her focus was on what she actually wanted to do, not what her power seemed to want to do. She programmed the cleaning algorithms that she wanted, compiling them, then ripping them apart to redo, re-optimizing them before compiling them, repeating the process an obscene amount of times.

Taylor felt slightly shaky when she finally finished that to her and her power's satisfaction. She leaned back in her chair and dragged the finished ostentatiously optimized code over to the black box that was the "Companion" bot's code. She watched as it greedily absorbed and implemented it, the non-bubble shifting slightly before it settled down. It was amazing. Her SDK was a goddamn TUI with some basic graphics abilities for when she needed to visualize something. But it was rendering something non-existent. Not something that didn't exist; that was what a lot of computer animation was used for, but flat-out rendering a pocket of nothing.

Her hand twitched as a feeling built in her stomach, rerouting her train of thought. It was a "companion" bot, after all. She wouldn't do anything like 'that' with it, even if it had been a long time since she had any physical contact. And even if her skin was this weird metallic metamaterial, judging from the specs on the SDK, it was a dead ringer for feeling like human flesh.

Taylor shuddered a bit at that thought. She needed to come up with a less creepy way of getting that idea across without saying human flesh. Human mimicry? No, that sounded like a horror monster. Taylor went back to typing rapidly on the computer, mostly to try to clear her head from those thoughts.

She already had enough issues; she didn't need to think of herself as some sort of weird Frankenstein creator.

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Tutorial complete.

The computerized not-voice said in Lisa's head. Well, brain, that was the only part of her that could be considered 'her' anymore. She should be a lot more upset about that. She should be, if the various shitty movies Alec watched around the Loft were in any way accurate, torn between undiscriminating homicidal rage and complete existential horror at her cold unfeeling-

Dysphoria Compensator and Sense Emulation-

Yes yes. She had gotten the rundown of all that good stuff when she had first woken up. The bits of soft, hard, and firmware that kept her from freaking out at being put into a robot shell. At worst, she was somewhat put out at the fact her robot body was 'fully functional'. She was going to have some very strong words with the pervert who decided to-

Her blood was boiling in her veins as her eyeballs bubbled. Skin cracking and melting, her suit fusing into her charred flesh. She tried to scream, but the molten air incinerated the lining of her lungs-

ALERT

Lisa took a shuddering breath even though she didn't really need to. There were so many redundancies built into her new body that the mechanical lungs weren't required to oxygenize what little organic bits she still had. But it helped center herself, and it made her feel human.

Right. She would have some very mild, annoyed words with the person who decided to put her in this shell. And compliment them on the anti-PTSD Tinker bullshit they added into it.

New protocols added

Lisa sighed, glad that she could still do that. She just spent a few hours in various weird simulations covering all sorts of things that her body could do. She had no idea why she would ever have to fistfight Scion of all people, but she had training for that now. She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bench.

Alright, what now?

Lisa felt her eye twitch. However, she was in no mood to appreciate how synchronized her body was to her subconscious. Cleaning protocols? Cleaning protocols!? This Mad Tinker took her brain from what had been left after Lung had finished, put into a miracle of Tinker science just so she could play maid!? Oh, the strength of the words that she was going to give her had risen exponentially-

Then, the second set of protocols hit. Companion protocols. Lisa stopped, her anger draining away. If she wanted, she could have actually watched the various biofeedback monitors and gizmos showing how her brain activity changed when that happened, but she was far too distracted. The companion protocols were just that. For a companion.

Lisa processed them all, then processed them again, and then a third time with her Pollentia Buffer completely off and analyzing every single bit. But the results were the same, beyond discovering a small input error on the third go-around that was automatically corrected.

The Mad Tinker. Wasn't.

"She doesn't know," Lisa whispered to herself. How could she not know? How could you not know that you built a life support system for a human brain and then built an entire body to house that-

Lisa cringed as an infodump hit her all at once. She was starting to hate that feature; the migraine was over a lot faster than her Thinker headaches, but it was the difference between a low throbbing and an icepick tied to a brick smashing through her temples. But she got the gist. Helperbots 1-6 found her, panicked as her body failed on them, and refused to let the first directive fail.

She sardonically snorted. A bunch of unfeeling, unthinking machines were some of the best people in the Bay. Figures.

She looked over the Companion protocols a fourth time, now looking at them with a compassionate eye instead of a conspiratorial eye. They were such simple things, such simple desires in the end. The full functionality had been the Helperbots ensuring quality of life for her sake, not the Tinker's. The Tinker just wanted company. She was isolated, cut off. Her trigger event was the desire to make friends, to have someone to talk to.

Lisa gave a sad little smile as she closed the protocols. Alright. If only for a little bit. After all, she did save her life, even if it was in the most unusual and roundabout way.

Lisa finally got off the table, putting her full weight on her feet. After a few stumbling steps, she quickly found her balance.

"Never thought I would be 'happy' to weigh over 400 pounds," Lisa muttered to herself. It was tough to be upset about a rapid gain in body weight when it came with something called a 'Particle Projector Cannon' built into your left arm. Even if it turned out to be fancy scientific wording for a video projector. She knew that old monitors used something called an 'electron gun' to work, so the 'PPC' probably was something along those lines.

A soft snore drew her attention back to the present. Hmmm. She seemed to be all over the place. At that thought, a health monitoring program was activated, and started to run a scan. She rolled her eyes, dismissing the program. Case in point.

With an ever-softening thump, Lisa made her way toward the snoring sound as she learned how to cushion her footfalls properly. Her Not-so-Mad Tinker was slumped over a keyboard, sitting in a hastily assembled chair. She glanced over at the surviving Helper Bot that was tightening a bolt on the chair while another mismatched servo arm attempted to keep the entire contraption upright.

"Tinker Fugue?" Lisa said, blinking a bit as her voice sounded odd. It didn't sound like her-she didn't have a head anymore, technically speaking. Meaning no bone conduction. A code script flashed at the edge of her vision and started to run, updating one of the many drivers that kept her alive and sane.

The Helper bot just nodded a sensor probe before a third arm shot out to keep a part of an arm on the chair from falling off.

"I got her," Lisa said, her voice now sounding right. She carefully picked up the Tinker, Taylor, her little information HUD helpfully told her, into a gentle princess carry. Helper Bot seemed to relax right as the entire chair, made out of random scrap, fell apart around it. Taylor didn't even seem to twitch, only wiggled closer to the soft warmth that was Lisa's torso.

A little direction arrow flashed into her vision, giving her direction. Lisa had only been conscious for maybe a couple of hours in this robot body, and already she had no idea how she had gotten anything done before. Gently, she followed it to a metal staircase, a gentle prod showing her that it could withstand her newly increased weight. She knew the stairs could support her weight, with the little analytics telling her the approximate weight limit. But there was knowing something and knowing something.

She felt that little things like that would keep her feeling human in the future.

"Hmmm." Lisa let out a little hmmm of concern. She was in front of a metal wall, the staircase ending there. There might be a little switch or a button to be pressed, but the girl in her arms kept her from seeing clearly.

"Mmmmm…. Open." Taylor said in her sleep, and the door before her slid forward without a sound. Lisa wanted to facepalm. Of course, it was voice-activated. She would have her arms full all the time, and there would be plenty of things moving around, so motion-activated was a bad idea.

Lisa stepped out of the stairwell. And into what could only be called a hospital ward crammed into a basement. Lisa blinked and then blinked some more as if that would affect the optics that were her eyes now. Several filters overlaid her vision. Air quality, EM, thermals, and chemical analysis; the picture they painted was clear.

The room was about as sterile as you could make an old basement. The faint scent of antiseptic, the white noise from a large air purifier, a slightly elevated amount of ozone from a UV light operating. There was an elevated amount of particles in the air but far lower than a basement in a house this old should.

Lisa walked a few more steps forward, jumping a little when the door behind her closed, causing a dull thumping sound when her feet hit the floor again. She looked behind her, a little disturbed by how much her new neck rotated around. The door wasn't there anymore. Well, of course, it was there; she could see the little flaws and tells that showed there was something off. But that was with her Tinkertech eyes; it would look like an old coal chute to anyone else with their puny organic eyeballs.

Lisa chewed her lip. Her inflated ego was latching onto things it really shouldn't. A movement from the Tinker-Taylor in her arms brought her back to Earth. The cleaning protocols and the companion protocols, combined with a flash of information from the handful of computer systems still on the Network in the lab to give Lisa a much more complete picture.

Acquired Hyposplenism via infection. Her immune system was shot, leaving her at risk of major infections if she left the house. Leaving the house with a respirator and goggles, fearing what would happen if either failed? And then going to the packed livestock yard that was a high school when even an errant cough could send you to the hospital?

Lisa couldn't help but hug the girl slightly closer to her out of sympathy. She had it rough, they both had. Lisa slowly walked over to the bed over in the corner, the bed unmade as she didn't have anyone to impress. Without any difficulty with her new strength, Lisa easily put the girl onto the bed, gently positioning her to make her comfortable.

With great care and concentration, she took off Taylor's glasses and put them on the bedside table next to the prescription bottles. Satisfied that she didn't cause any damage to something expensive and delicate, Lisa started by taking off Taylor's slippers. She let out a little snort of amusement. Despite being a Tinker, she was still a teenage girl. Rainbow striped socks, worn out and stretched, so clearly loved by their owner.

Lisa debated taking off her sweater, but there was no way she could get that off without disturbing her, and cutting it off would be rude. Ruining a girl's comfy hoodie was a horrible crime. Instead, she took the blankets and pulled them up over the dozing girl before a hand weakly wrapped itself around her wrist.

"Please don't go," The sleepy girl muttered, looking up at Lisa with bleary eyes and desperate hope.

"Okay," Lisa said with such quickness and certainty that she herself was surprised at it. A quick glance at the bed and a brief pop-up told her that the bed was a repurposed hospital bed, a bariatric one. It should be able to support both of their weight.

Slowly and carefully, Lisa crawled into bed, Taylor wiggling out of the way. Lisa wasn't going to let her get away with that. With as powerful of a sweep as she dared to risk, she cuddled up to her chest. Which she was a little annoyed with as it was a good cup size and a half larger than she had been previously. She had a few suspicions about where Helper had gotten his data on 'quality of life' from.

"I need to cut off the Helperbots from the internet," Taylor muttered, her face going flush. The sensor suite built into her torso was perfectly monitoring Taylor's health with the aid of the companion protocols, mapping the increase in heat on her face. Lisa said nothing but stroked her hair, guiding the girl back to sleep.

'Yeah. A short while,' Lisa thought to herself as she enabled herself to go to sleep, making sure to keep the health monitors running in the background as she nodded off.

'She did save my life; I should return the favor.'







(I actually have fan art of Lisa here)