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The facility closes at 10pm every night on the dot.
It’s quiet once the guests leave, and only the shuffling of metal feet on the tile floor is heard. In the backroom, where the androids are meant to go into a mod of stasis, they quietly begin patching up the wounds from the day.
Scott holds a box of spare parts and backups of thirium in his hands as he enters the room again, and rushes over the little corner where Jimmy sat, hunched over, holding onto his throat as his life depended on it.
Scott softly whispers to the other android, “Can I look at it?”
Jimmy obliged, removing his thirium-stained hand from his throat and showing off the incision he had gotten earlier that day from the guests. Scott winced at the deepness of the cut, “I think it got into your voicebox, love.”
Jimmy didn’t respond, and instead sent a hesitant message through their connection, “Will you be able to fix it? I don’t want to be scrapped.” He says it pleadingly, begging Scott to save him from an upcoming hell, that would be the owners finding out about the injury.
“Yes I can,” Scott says, “Luckily enough we have an extra SU voicebox, love.”
Jimmy managed to rasp out after a bit, “Thank you, Scott.”
Scott plants a light kiss on Jimmy’s forehead, before quickly shuffling over to the sleeping TA100 android, Grian. He taps the android on the shoulder, his LED shining for a moment bright green before shifting back to it’s glitchy red, and Grian awakes, asking, “What the fuck Scott?”
Scott winces, “Sorry, I need your help with something. Jimmy’s throat got injured and I need you to help me with fixing it up.”
Grian mumbled, “You couldn’t get one of the RE’s to help you with that?”
“I couldn’t, they got hit with a faulty trap today and half of them are out again.”
The two of them make their way across the room again, and Jimmy only half acknowledges their arrival, tilting his head in confusion towards them. Grian interfaces quickly with the other android, turns and says to Scott, “6% thirium loss.”
Scott began taking out the different tools in the box and parts, “Ask him stress levels & get him to deactivate his skin.”
Grian turns back, body so still that Scott nearly thought that he was dead too, and it nearly gave him a shock when Grian turned towards him and said, “65% stress levels, and skin’s deactivated now.”
Scott nods, and quickly pries off the plastic of Jimmy’s neck, the other android wincing from the sudden yank. He’s met with a series of wires, tubs, and a small black box that he pries out with careful precision, it’s insides showing through in a cut along its front.
Grian talks to Jimmy through their interface as Scott carefully places the new voice box into Jimmy’s neck, connecting all of the wires back together. He asks Grian again, “Ask him for stress levels and thirum loss again.”
“30% and 2% loss.” Grian reports back to him, hand still gripping tightly onto Jimmy’s arm.
Scott takes a new neck piece from the box, and places it onto Jimmy’s neck, letting the connectors snap back into place from there. Grian lets go of his interface with Jimmy, looking towards Scott and asking, “Was the parts from-”
“Another version. Yes.” He says, “They never sent the parts to the scrapyard so I took them.”
Grian nods, “Jimmy will be alright, right?” He seems worried for Jimmy, Scott’s not quite sure what to think of it at the moment. Jimmy’s LED shines a bright red, before going back to it’s hazy yellow, and Jimmy falls into his stasis mode.
“He will be.” Scott says, as the other androids come into the room. He sees the RE’s trailing at the back of the group, body parts in varying states of disarray. Grian runs up to one of them, Mumbo, and slings their arm around his shoulders, nearly carrying the other android towards their stasis spots.
One of them, Impulse, catches his eye before he sits down in his spot and says, “We’ll be alright, the explosion didn’t hit us too hard, only damaged a few components.”
“If you say so.” Scott replies.
Scott rummages through the box, looking for the extra bottles of Thirium and hands them out to the group, saving two for him and Jimmy. His back aches, a message BIOCOMPENT #6e935 IS DAMAGED. PLEASE SEE YOUR LOCAL CYBERLIFE STORE FOR REPAIRS , flashes across his vision in bright red.
He hides the box in the open tile behind his spot, remembering to note down a restock for the box tomorrow. The facility isn’t open tomorrow. Scott shakes off the notification and settles down into his spot, hearing the other androids as well do the same, the shuffling of feet squeaking in his ears.
Scott cautiously leans a little towards Jimmy’s side, head resting against a damaged shoulder, and shuts his eyes.
>>> ENTER STASIS MODE?
>>> YES
>>> ENTERING STASIS MODE…
Scott sees the notification flash across his vision one last time,
BIOCOMPENT #6e935 IS DAMAGED. PLEASE SEE YOUR LOCAL CYBERLIFE STORE FOR REPAIRS,
before he finds the darkness consuming his vision.
-
Scott wakes up, what according to his internal clock, three fourth his stasis time and in real life, at 4 am, to the other androids waking up ahead of him. The first one awake is Cleo, an amalgamation of other broken androids , cobbled together by the guests who seemed to take enjoyment in destroying others. She asks over their connection, “Do you have the repair kit?”
“Why?”
“Bdubs is injured. Darn TI didn’t say a word about it.”
Scott removes the tile, and takes out the box, handing it over to Cleo, who acts like she’s pretending to check over the motionless android. He doesn’t quite know why she cares about Bdubs, or any of the other androids, though he supposes it’s the same why he cares about Jimmy, or Grian cares about Mumbo and Scar.
His code isn’t meant to hold most human emotions, only the scattered, desperate ones like bloodlust or paranoia. He was never coded to love, and here he was; repairing another SU400, just like him and calling him “love” all the same ways he sees human guests say to their human loved pens.
>>> SOFTWARE INSTABILITY INCREASED
He falls back into his stasis mode, and the next time he wakes up, he spots Jimmy drawing something on his shoulder. As Scott blearily turned his head to see what Jimmy was up to, Jimmy quickly closed the cap, and brushed off whatever was on his shoulder, saying, “I was waiting for you to exit stasis mode, and got bored.”
Scott asks him, “What did you draw?”
Jimmy says, “Someone brought poppies in a few days ago, I wanted to draw one off my memory.”
Scott laughs a little, voice box cracking slightly, “And you choose to draw on me?”
Jimmy looked as sheepish as an android could be, “You were the first surface I could do it on, sorry.”
Scott shakes his head, “No it’s alright, I don’t mind it at all.”
He doesn’t mind the happy smile Jimmy gives him after that either or the laughs that echo through the room after that too.
He doesn’t think he minds it at all.
>>> SOFTWARE INSTABILITY INCREASED
>>> RELATIONSHIP WITH JIMMY [SU400] : POSITIVE.