Chapter Text
The room was dark and quiet. The window was closed, and the curtains drawn to avoid the breeze and the moonlight. A CD player in the corner was silent, but prepped with music, in case it helped. On the floor here and there were pillows of varying softness, and even blankets. A couple of the pillows had small black smears of oil.
A little robot stood in another corner, black eyelids closed, her arms crossed and her head leaned against the wall. She’d tried putting a pillow against the wall, but it hadn’t made much difference.
She still couldn’t sleep.
It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t tired, it was just that she had no idea how to be. When she was human, if she was tired then she’d... well, she didn’t really know, because she’d always shut down at that point.
It didn’t help that Squeaks was still fairly distressed. A few short hours ago, she had been told that she wasn’t who she thought she was. That she was now, in fact, divorced from her original body and confined to that of a robot. The memories in her head weren’t hers.
She picked up another pillow from the floor and used it to wipe away the newest oily tears from her photoreceptors. She was so confused. Everything she did renewed the fear of not knowing who she now was. She never cried oil, before. And she couldn’t wipe her tears with her own fingers; her hand had corners which scratched her eyes.
She had so many questions, and Peter promised he could answer them. But she’d have to shut down so he could find out himself and fix what he could. Something felt very strange, besides being a robot, and she hadn’t yet been able to place it. Something was... hollow.
“Alright,” she’d said, “how do I do that?”
“Oh. I don’t know. The others just do it themselves. I could disconnect your core and install a power button?”
“No! Please don’t. A minute was awful enough, never mind hours.”
Peter had, only minutes ago, disconnected her blue matter core to check if that was causing her to be conscious. It had; she'd been thrown into heavy, suffocating, silent blackness. She hadn't been able to move, or see, or speak. He told her it had been for only a few seconds, but it had felt so much longer.
He’d fetched the nearest automaton, which happened to be The Spine, to offer guidance. Peter’d had to explain how Squeaks was even there in the first place. Spine had just stared Peter down with stormy eyes. He refused to even look at Squeaks. As Peter started explaining the blue matter core, The Spine started to angrily vent steam.
Given her state of distress, Squeaks found herself hurt that he hadn’t been happy to see her. He seemed outright furious. Greasy oil began to fill her eyes.
“Explain later, Peter,” she’d cut in, “Spine, how do I sleep? How do robots power down?”
“I don’t know,” he replied gruffly, “we just do. We need to power down, so we power down.”
“Gee, thanks.” She crossed her arms over her chest. She tried to frown at him, but the metal panel making up her forehead didn’t flex.
“Well what did you think I’d say? Curl up with a good book and a glass of warm milk? Hold your breath and drink upside down? We’re robots!”
“That’s hiccups,” she snapped, and then stopped short.
Hold your breath.
That’s what was wrong.
“I can’t breathe”, she’d said, eyes widening.
The Spine raised his head, eyes peering at her, “well, no. You don’t.”
“But I need to...” she felt panic start to close in. She wanted to gulp for breath, to inhale deeply to relieve the growing fear, but she couldn’t. Nothing happened. Sensors somewhere started beeping. She began rattling uncontrollably, and little sparks crackled in front of her eyes.
“You don’t need to,” said The Spine, with growing concern, “That’s kind of the point.”
“Spine, I think she’s shorting,” Peter stepped closer as her rattling became more violent, Squeaks desperately trying to take a breath as her vision closed in.
“Squeaks, it’s OK. You don’t have to breathe.”
She tried to answer, but her mind was going blank.
“She’s going to break something, Spine!”
“What’s wrong with her? Why does she think she needs air?”
“I think she has memories of Rachel.”
“She remembers being human?”
“Not really, but yes, OK. What do we do?”
Their words bounced about her head as she felt fire in her mind. Elsewhere, she heard something shatter.
“My computer!”
“Why the hell is that going off?!”
“She has a memory storage there. She must be uploading this attack!”
The Spine growled, grabbed Squeaks by the shoulders and pushed her into Peter’s arms. He put his hands either side of her head, turned it, and pressed it against Peter, her rubber ear to his chest.
“Breathe, Peter. Preferably loudly.”
“Wh-“
“Just breathe.”
The sound was enough for her. She felt the fire in her head subside as she listened to Peter’s slow, steady breaths, and the heart beating rapidly in his chest. It began to slow as her aggressive ticking relaxed to a soft tremor.
“You must be used to hearing that,” Peter said softly, his voice humming against her ear. She nodded, still shaking gently. Oil stained his lab coat.
“What now?” he asked Spine.
“She’s closer to human than robot, right now. Console her.”
Peter paused for a moment, then lifted his arms from his sides to hold her, one hand stroking the back of her head. The Spine stepped away, where he had been holding her head pressed to Peter’s chest, and Squeaks let herself relax into Peter’s comforting hug. He made little reassuring noises, but it was just hearing him breathe that calmed her. She could imagine they were her breaths, and with every exhalation she’d pretend she was letting out tension.
Eventually the tremors had subsided, leaving nothing but the acrid smell of melted plastic from Peter’s computer.
In the end, the only thing The Spine had been able to thing of for shutting down was the same as for her panic; if she felt human, she should try being human. Which was how she wound up in a dark room with enough bedding to build a small castle.
As time was wearing on, she was at least becoming more familiar with the functionality of her mind and body. In the silent darkness, she’d felt a tiny pulse in her head, which eventually registered itself as a clock. This did not help; without trying, she realised that she knew exactly what time it was. And exactly what time she’d closed the door to the room. Once she knew that, the concept of drifting off to sleep seemed all the more impossible when something whispered each passing second into her mind.
She’d tried lying down in the bed for a little while, but it just didn’t work. There was no angle she could find which didn’t involve jamming a fan, blocking a vent or lying on her own pointy arm. She’d given up when she discovered she had temperature sensors which started to bleep in protest.
She’d tried meditation. That quietened her thoughts, but only brought attention to all the sensors she hadn’t discovered yet. And as a relaxation technique which focuses on breathing, which she apparently didn’t do, it left a lot to be desired.
She even tried counting sheep, but when she tried to imagine a sheep, a search engine somewhere reported back over 1 million image matches. It took her a few minutes to work out how to mentally close the window again, desperately trying to drag the woolly visions from behind her eyes.
She’d cried, a fair bit. It hadn’t helped, but at least she got to find out what the low-oil warning sounded like.
Until she could learn to drown it out, her mind was so noisy.
She had, at least, stopped panicking as boredom started to take over. She was a robot, with human memories and so many questions unanswered, but she’d also been in a darkened room for hours, and still didn’t feel a little drowsy. How did the others do it? The Spine seemed to think it just happened. That he just willed it and-
-that was it, she thought with a start. Everything she’d done today had been at the will of her own mind. She’d thought a million sheep into existence and back again. If she wanted to shut down, she just had to tell herself to sh-
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