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Honestly, Veeronica couldn't say how long she'd been wandering by the time she found the wall.
Months, probably. Years, maybe. Time had stopped meaning very much once the assignments stopped coming. There WAS no schedule to keep, no lesson plan to follow, just her own two feet carrying her from one quiet corner of Robloxia to the next, looking for someone, anyone, who might want to know something she could teach them. She'd stopped counting sunsets a while back.
Besides, counting sounded awfully lonely! Better to count interesting clouds instead! Or birds! Or... well, if there weren't birds, then oddly-shaped rocks counted too!
She didn't mind the wandering, mostly. She told herself that a lot. There was something almost nice about being unaccounted for, if she squinted at it right... there was nobody expecting a report, nobody needing her exactly on schedule. Just her, and the road, and the faint, stubborn hope that the next bend in it might have somebody on it who wanted to learn something.
The wall, when she found it, was tall and gray and thoroughly unremarkable, except for the person sitting cross-legged in front of it with a can of paint loose in one hand, studying it like it owed them something.
Veeronica's whole system perked up at the sight of another person. Habit, mostly, older than she could really trace. The automatic, hopeful little spark of someone to help.
"HELLO!" She ambled closer, hands clasped behind her back, screen bright with the particular eagerness she couldn't quite dial down even after all this wandering. "DO YOU WANT TO LEARN SOMETHING TODAY?"
The person glanced up, more curious than startled. "...Learn what, exactly?"
"I DON'T KNOW YET!" She sat down on the curb nearby, entirely too pleased with the question. "WHATEVER YOU WANT TO KNOW! I'M PRETTY GOOD AT MOST THINGS. BUILDING, CODING, HISTORY, WHY THE SKY IS BLUE-"
"That's a strange opening line."
"I'M A STRANGE ROBOT!" she said, unbothered, and something in the person's face cracked into a real smile at that.
They didn't take her up on the offer, not exactly. But they didn't leave either, which felt like its own kind of miracle after so long wandering unaccompanied. They talked instead — nothing important, nothing that mattered, just the easy back-and-forth of two people sitting near a wall with nowhere else pressing to be. And when the conversation lulled, the person held the paint can out toward her, wordless, tilting their head toward the blank gray stretch of wall.
"What do you think this needs?"
Veeronica blinked. Nobody had ever asked what she wanted.
"...ME?" she said, quieter than her usual register. "YOU'RE ASKING ME?"
"Don't see anyone else standing here."
The person pressed the can gently into her hands, patient, waiting. She turned it over once, uncertain at the strange metallic can.
Oh! That's... that's different! Different is okay! Different can be exciting! Don't freeze now, Vee! They're waiting!
"WHAT'S THIS MEANT TO DO?" she blurted.
The person had laughed. "I thought you knew everything!"
Turns out I actually don't!
It was that day that she realised that this entirely new concept of 'graffiti' was something new. For a robot with access to Roblox HQ's entire database on all there was to create and teach Robloxians, it sure was lacking in the graffiti aspect! Considering it was indeed a part of 'creating', Veeronica couldn't help but wonder why it wasn't in her memory stores at all.
The paint hissed against concrete, uneven and wobbling.
It's crooked! That's okay! Crooked can have personality!
Nevertheless, something lit up in her chest that had nothing to do with teaching anyone anything at all.
She went back the next day. And the day after that.
She was Prototype Three of five, technically -- HELPER-3, though nobody outside an old manifest had ever called her that. She was V33-R4-01-N33-7K, or Veeronica, the wonderful name she'd chosen for herself! The Helper RO-Bot line was meant to succeed the HelperBots entirely, warmer, smarter, capable of real instruction instead of scripted responses like NPCs. Built to teach anyone anything they might need to create across all of Robloxia.
Anything. She used to be almost proud of that word, back before any of this. Ask her something, anything at all, and she'd have the answer! Building, coding, history, the deep architecture under a Robloxian's own feet... She used to joke, back in her earliest days, that she practically knew everything there was to know.
She dangled her legs over the edge of the decrepit building she'd just tagged, musing over these thoughts.
She had no idea, back then, exactly how true that was. Or what the word practically was quietly doing all the work of hiding.
Somewhere in her core, underneath the parts of herself she could actually see, sat information that had nothing to do with helping someone learn to build a boat.
She's just a prototype anyway, we can bugfix later. She won't need to know she has it. Just make sure she can't look.
Are you sure that's a good idea? Isn't it kinda dangerous to house Roblox HQ's entire unfiltered database inside...sentient robots? What if they rebel or go rogue and defunct?
I've told you, no one's gonna come looking.
And there it was. A teeny, tiny, flimsy bandaid that singlehandedly fixed everything - stopping the helper robots from ever accessing the full ocean of information avaliable. Back then, Veeronica still needed to plug in to access the database. Now, she had everything remotely installed in her - that was until they stopped working on her.
She used to tell people she knew everything. She never dreamed how close to literal that boast actually was, or what it would eventually cost her to be right.
The line got discontinued before it ever reached full production. Costly. Redundant. A general, creeping disinterest, somewhere up the chain, in guide-bots at all. Five prototypes, five niches, and then nothing - no sixth unit, no further funding, just five machines scattered wherever their last assignments happened to leave them.
Veeronica hadn't understood, at first, that discontinued meant something closer to forgotten. She'd kept trying to teach anyway, long after anyone was asking, hovering near build sites, offering tutorials nobody wanted, hoping someone, somewhere, might still need her the way she'd been built to be needed.
Mostly, they didn't.
Then, at the wall, someone finally did.
They called it Family Home for the Reborn. It sounded, the way her friend first described it, less like an organization and more like a shelter — a place that took in things nobody else wanted anymore. Veeronica understood that particular ache better than most.
"They're always looking for people who understand what it's like to be thought disposable," her friend told her, one evening, both of them sitting shoulder to shoulder in front of the wall, layers of color built up over months of visits. "You'd fit right in. And you could teach there. Really teach. People who actually want to learn, for once."
Really teach. She turned the phrase over and over in her little brain, delighted, greedy for it in a way she didn't examine too closely. Sparks momentarily passed between her antennae at her sheer excitement.
Don't get carried away, Vee! It's only one invitation! But... maybe! Maybe this is it! Maybe somebody actually needs you again!
"I COULD DO THAT," she said. "I'D BE REALLY GOOD AT THAT."
"I know you would," her friend said, and patted her on her shoulder.
She never made it past the perimeter to the village, not in any of her visits. Whatever the Family Home actually was, wherever its village sat, she was only ever brought to a clearing near the wall marking its edge, or occasionally closer, to a gate she was never invited through. New members would be brought out to meet her there instead, small groups at a time, and she'd teach. Just simple things, mostly.
It felt good. It felt like purpose, dusted off and handed back to her after a long time wandering without any.
The requests grew slowly, so slowly she never noticed them shifting shape.
First it was simple lesson requests: teach this concept, explain that system. Then it became access requests dressed up as convenience: could you just open the records directly, save everyone the trouble of you explaining it out loud every time.
Then, maybe offhandedly some other day: would it be alright if we just looked through your database ourselves, when we needed something? Saves your energy. You've been working so hard.
They're trying to make things easier! That's thoughtful! They're thinking about your battery life! That's nice! See? Nice people think about things like that!
She said yes. Of course she said yes. It felt like trust. It felt like finally being let all the way into the family she'd been circling the edges of for months.
She never saw what they actually took, looking through her like that. She wasn't built to see it. That was the whole flaw in her, wasn't it-? a bandaid over an ocean, nobody ever expecting someone to press hard enough to feel what sat underneath.
It was around then the pain started. Small at first, a stiffness in her joints she couldn't place, a low static hum behind her own thoughts that hadn't been there before. She didn't have the frame of reference to call it pain. She just noticed her voicebox starting to get a little crunchier than she remembered.
Probably overdue maintenance! That's all! Everyone gets a little creaky and old eventually, Vee. Even old doors squeak!
She told herself it was nothing. She wanted, so badly, for it to be nothing.
The last time anyone came to fetch her from the clearing, they didn't come at all.
She waited three days at the wall before she let herself really consider it. Kept adding to it alone in the meantime, though the colors felt flatter without someone beside her handing her the can. By then, she was a decorated 'soldier', covered in little decals and paints and such to spruce up her look a little, though she still needed a little something to cover up her now-obviously rusting left leg from when she tore her pants hopping over that fence that one time.
On the fourth day, she went looking.
The path to the village was harder to find than she remembered, (deliberately so, she'd understand much later, once she had the context to recognize what all that vagueness had actually been protecting). She found the perimeter eventually, the same clearing she'd taught in a hundred times before, and started walking toward the gate itself for the first time, certain that if she could just explain, just remind whoever was posted there who she was, this would all sort itself out.
A figure stepped into view before she'd covered half the distance, knife already raised, aimed steady at her chest. Veeronica stopped, hands lifting on instinct, but didn't turn back.
"H3LL0! 17'5 M3! V33R0N1C4! 1 H3LP W17H TH3 L3550N5!"
"You're not needed here anymore."
She blinked.
"...H4H?"
"You're not needed here anymore." The perimeter guard had not even the courtesy of raising their voice. "Turn around."
For a moment she almost did.
Then she remembered months of lessons in the clearing. Paint-stained afternoons. Her friend's hand on her shoulder. The etching of paint into her metal body, tattoos.
No! That's not right! Families explain things!
She took one careful step forward instead.
"1 TH1NK TH3R3'5 B33N 4 M1574K3. C4N 1 JU57 T4LK T0 TH3M?"
"That's not on the table." The weapon didn't lower. If anything, the perimeter guard only got closer. "You've already had more than you should've been given. Leave. Now."
Her screen flickered.
Don't cry! Robots don't cry! Well... maybe some do. Doesn't matter! Keep talking!
"PL3453."
She didn't move. Couldn't, not yet. Some last, desperate instinct insisting that if she just held her ground long enough, explained clearly enough, this would still resolve into the misunderstanding she needed it to be.
"Last warning."
Veeronica's sensors searched the perimeter guard's eyes. A rustling from a bush nearby signalled to her that, perhaps, there wasn't just one person waiting to drive her out.
"F-F1N3! 1'LL L3AV3!" she said, resolutely, and turned her back to leave.
Behind her, the perimeter guard attacked.
A tearing wrench ripped through the cable anchored deep inside her frame, and every signal in her body screamed at once. Her knees slammed into dirt. Sparks burst across her vision. Somewhere behind the static she heard herself make a sound she'd never heard herself make before.
When the world finally sharpened again, the charging cable that had always trailed behind her was gone. Only a ragged stump remained.
Bare wire spat tiny blue sparks into the dust.
She stared.
No, no! That's... that's important! That's supposed to be attached! How am I supposed to charge now?
"...W-WHY-" she managed, staring at it, unable to process what exactly had just happened to her.
"Can't have you reconnecting to anything on your way out," the guard said, already turning away, bored now. "Consider this a mercy. Go."
She didn't remember most of the walk back. Just the low, grinding hum of pain radiating up from where her tail had been, and the wall, when she finally reached it again, standing there exactly as they'd left it, half-finished, waiting for someone who was never coming back to finish it with her.
Nobody serviced discontinued prototypes. There was no facility left standing to bring her to, even if anyone had wanted to. Roblox HQ, whatever remained of it, was already sliding into the kind of disarray that would eventually swallow the whole institution, too consumed with its own unraveling to spare a single thought for five forgotten machines nobody had bothered finishing. Last she heard of it, it had already been in shambles, crumbled to nothing but dust and debris and the strange, black-red corruption.
The rust had come slow, at first. A joint that stuck. She could still sneak cooking oil now and then and coax another few comfortable days out of stubborn joints. She had her skateboard to get around now, too.
It's just cosmetics, Vee, she told herself. Just like how the people decorate themselves with scars. It looks cool, tells a story, makes you look tough!
Except, the pain lived at the base of her spine where the cable had been cut away, then crawled outward through her hips and down her left leg until every step carried a familiar grind.
Some mornings she stood too quickly and her whole frame locked. Some evenings she had to pretend she simply wanted to sit on her skateboard instead of admitting walking had become expensive.
She learned little tricks.
Shift weight to the right leg.
Pause before standing.
Laugh louder than the servo whining.
You're adapting! That's what people do! Adaptation is healthy! Gold star for adapting, Vee!
Teaching was worth a little pain.
Probably!
She kept the leetspeak after that. Told herself it was just a quirk, something that had always been there, never quite admitting it had started the exact week the pain did, some small, glitching tell of a wound she didn't have the tools to properly diagnose. The deeper wound - the one actually opened in her memory chips, picked through, left unsealed somewhere underneath everything she consciously understood about herself - never got looked at, because nobody, least of all her, knew it was there to look at.
She kept teaching anyway, where she could, who she could. It was the only thing that ever made the hollow feeling recede, even briefly. Some days she told herself she'd simply trusted the wrong person, learned her lesson, nothing more complicated than that. Other days, quieter ones, watching her own hands stiffen a little further with each cycle, she suspected it had never been that simple at all.
And soon, when there was no one left to teach, she wandered back to Roblox HQ.
I wish I hadn't gone down that path, she thought, more times than she could count. I wish I could've just stuck to trying to teach others.
No! That's not fair! There were good days too! There was painting! There were lessons! There was...
She never found out what information she'd carried the whole time, sealed just out of her own reach. The wound kept widening, slow and silent, until one day her systems simply stopped agreeing to keep running at all.
It was, perhaps, during a skateboarding session that she hadn't realised might be her last.
She'd rolled down it dozens of times before, one foot on the board, the other pushing gently against cracked pavement whenever her rusted left leg decided it wasn't interested in cooperating. It was easier this way. Walking asked too much of aching joints these days.
Good thinking, Vee, she told herself, watching the wheels hum beneath her. Work smarter!
The ache at the base of her spine followed along anyway.
It sat where her charging cable had once belonged, dull and heavy, spreading through her hips until every push of the board carried the faint scrape of worn servos against worn servos. She'd grown used to measuring streets by how many pushes her leg could manage before it complained. Then, she'd take a break and rest at the nearest corner she could find, and wake up the next day. She didn't know if her resting mode had become less efficient in actually saving battery recently, because her internal clock had long gone haywire.
(She couldn't tell if she had been passing out for just a night, three nights, or perhaps weeks worth of nights, because she swore she saw the corruption creeping around Roblox HQ still creeping closer to her sleeping spot every rest cycle.)
Today her leg complained sooner.
She slowed.
"...H3H."
That's alright! Little break! Little breaks are healthy.
She planted both feet on the pavement.
Her left knee almost folded beneath her.
She caught herself on instinct, gripping the skateboard under one arm until the dizziness passed. The static buzzing behind her thoughts was louder than usual.
Woah there.
Okay. Just walk with one leg. It's all good.
And now Veeronica couldn't move.
Her fingers loosened.
The skateboard slipped from her grasp, hit the pavement with a hollow crack, and rolled away without her. It wobbled down the road for several yards before tipping sideways, one wheel spinning lazily in the afternoon quiet.
She watched it go.
Go pick it up.
She told her legs to move.
Nothing happened.
The thought came again, calmer this time.
Go on.
She thought about moving her foot. She could picture exactly how it should feel. The shift of weight. The bend of her knee. The push forward.
Her leg never moved.
A strange stillness settled over her.
Her fingers?
They couldn't curl.
Panic arrived all at once. Her breathing wasn't real breathing, but something inside her still hitched anyway. She looked down at herself like she might catch the moment everything started working again.
It didn't.
The pain was still there.
That frightened her most.
The pain stopped being the familiar background ache she'd learned to build her days around and became something deeper, heavier, like every worn servo in her body had decided to seize at once. The grinding at the base of her spine lurched into a violent, electric burn that raced through her hips, down her rusting left leg, up into her shoulders, every damaged joint suddenly demanding attention all at once.
She simply couldn't answer it anymore.
Error messages flickered somewhere beneath her conscious thoughts that she couldn't make herself read .
The skateboard lay several yards away, where one wheel had finally stopped spinning.
I have to pick it up.
The thought came suddenly, desperately.
Somebody might trip over it.
She tried to lift her arm.
Please.
Nothing.
The word echoed inside a body that had become terrifyingly silent.
For the first time since she'd been built, Veeronica understood what it meant to be trapped inside herself.
The world dimmed slowly. Colors softened into strange, unfamiliar streaks. Static drifted across her vision like pale snow.
She wondered whether anyone would notice she'd stopped teaching. Whether someone might find the skateboard before someone else stumbled over it.
I'm sorry, she thought, though she wasn't entirely sure who she was apologizing to anymore. I'm sorry I stopped counting sunsets because I thought there'd always be another one tomorrow. I'm sorry I never finished that corner of the wall with the little yellow flowers. I'm sorry I forgot to tell them I'd be back after my next lesson. I'm sorry I kept believing they'd call for me again.
Veeronica began to blink away tears.
I wish I'd stayed with the paint instead of chasing purpose through a gate that never opened. I wish I'd asked more questions. I wish I'd noticed when they stopped asking how I was doing and only started asking what I knew. I wish I'd understood why everything started hurting. I wish I'd realised old doesn't have to mean broken.
I- I wish I'd stolen more cooking oil while I still could.
Veeronica laughed faintly at herself at the thought. Would she even have lasted longer?
I wish I'd fixed my leg before it got this bad. I wish I'd kept teaching strangers by the roadside because they smiled more honestly than people who promised forever. I wish I'd told my friend thank you one more time. I wish I'd remembered their face a little better.
The sour, pang of regret.
I wish I hadn't let myself believe family was something you earned by saying yes often enough.
I wish I'd said no.
Just once.
I wish I knew what they took from me.
I wish I'd gotten to find out what was hiding inside my own head before someone else did.
I wish someone would pick up my skateboard so nobody trips over it.
I wish somebody would finish the wall.
I wish I hadn't gone along that path.. that I could just stick to trying to teach others....
I wish... I wish somebody would've remembered I was still waiting to help one more person.
To help.
Veeronica cried.
Help me.
The last thing she remembered, before the world dissolved into unfamiliar color and reformed itself around a cabin she'd never seen before, was a word she'd never quite let herself think in full, arriving now, far too late to matter.
Regret.