Sinthia liked bringing things back to Darcy's shop. Most often they were bits and pieces, tiny things, but useful for the repair of the far more populous generation that were 'younger' than Sinthia. They didn't really have ages and she knew that, but it was easy enough to adapt the terms to life as it had survived.
She brought back a half-full box this time, and a little softball-sized pokobot with a broken wing and cracked eye, and destroyed foot huddled in her jacket. "Darcy. Can you fix him?" she asked, slowly setting it and the assembled bits that had come off it in the course of being tossed away like so much trash, with her usual lack of preamble. It was unusual for Sinthia to bring anything home alive; it wasn't how EDEN had written her programming.
And yet here they both were, and Sinthia with her unnaturally blue-framed camera-eyes was focused solely on the shop's owner, waiting to hear if she could repair the thing that had sadly and brokenly chirped its way into Sinthia's care.
Darcy poked around in the box of parts for a minute before replying. She always loved the things Sinthia brought her and wanted to make sure she had all the necessary bits and bobs to do repairs to the little pokobot.
"looks like I should have everything here to fix him up. It'll be a patch job, for sure, but he'll fly and chirp." She picked up the little bot and inspected the eye socket. "It looks like most broken connectors in the eye, and those will be a bit of a bitch to replace. I'll have to take him offline for a bit to get inside and make sure that's all that's wrong. The wing needs replacing, but I can whip one of those up easy with the parts you've brought me."
"He's hurt," Sinthia murmured, apropros of absolutely nothing, since biologically neither she nor the little 'bot around which she still held her cupped hands could feel. But she kept contact with the household thing; it was a sort of universal remote, it would learn--in a sense--commands and follow around the owners to repeat them to the necessary lower-order objects like viewing and privacy screens, autochefs and the like.
She held onto it on the side of its intact wing, really a round repulsor disk with the infrared array that it would sweep over the input sensor for whatever it was 'talking' to; it buzzed and trilled at her when she gave it a command to be still for Darcy when she picked it up, as if it were a bird likely to fly off. "Do you think they can feel it? When they're thrown away?" she asks, carefully inspecting the broken polymer of its wing and eye. She had no oils on her fingers to harm the wiring anyway.
"I think they do. After all, it's a learning bot, why wouldn't it pick up variants of feelings?" Darcy handed the bot back to Sinthia and reached into a nearby box to pull out the gear she'd need for the repair job. She attached a headlamp and magnifier onto the headset and popped in on, then laid out small bot parts and welding gear on the workshop bench.
"It's sad to me, when they're in bad shape, they did what they were made to do and just because some newer model came out, they get tossed like so much rubble." She dug around in the box for a few more parts before turning back to Sin. "Luckily for them, I seem to have created a 'bot haven of sorts. You and a few others bring me the little guys and I fix them up and either sell them to good folks or I keep them myself."
"They always look sad. Like they know I'm one of them," she says, cradling the large-softball-sized thing as if it were a flesh and blood animal. "I think I'd like to keep him. He could help."
And she wanted companionship. It wasn't so bad an ordeal, she supposed, to have the little thing live with her. It wouldn't require nearly the amount of work that a biological animal would.
"It's totally possible they can. I think bots are much more aware and intuitive than anyone gives them credit for." Darcy picked a screwdriver out of the rubble on her desk and started piecing together a wing for the little guy. "I think that would be good for the both of you, honestly. You'd appreciate him more than anyone else would."
She finished up the wing and placed it aside before gathering up the stuff to make a new eye for the little guy. Darcy tended to zone out while she assembled things, but honestly it's because she got so involved, not because she was being rude.. on purpose anyways. Hopefully, Sinthia understood her quietness was because she wanted to make sure to do this right.
"Do you think it could teach me to be more human?" she asked, comfortable with the quiet broken only by the whirring of tools and machines, and the clink of mechanical parts.
This was the environment she lived in; she was a tool to be used, and esthetics and comforts weren't part of the equation that involved her, as far as EDEN was concerned.
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loopinvariant2014-06-29 11:43 pm
no subject
She brought back a half-full box this time, and a little softball-sized pokobot with a broken wing and cracked eye, and destroyed foot huddled in her jacket. "Darcy. Can you fix him?" she asked, slowly setting it and the assembled bits that had come off it in the course of being tossed away like so much trash, with her usual lack of preamble. It was unusual for Sinthia to bring anything home alive; it wasn't how EDEN had written her programming.
And yet here they both were, and Sinthia with her unnaturally blue-framed camera-eyes was focused solely on the shop's owner, waiting to hear if she could repair the thing that had sadly and brokenly chirped its way into Sinthia's care.
no subject
"looks like I should have everything here to fix him up. It'll be a patch job, for sure, but he'll fly and chirp." She picked up the little bot and inspected the eye socket. "It looks like most broken connectors in the eye, and those will be a bit of a bitch to replace. I'll have to take him offline for a bit to get inside and make sure that's all that's wrong. The wing needs replacing, but I can whip one of those up easy with the parts you've brought me."
no subject
She held onto it on the side of its intact wing, really a round repulsor disk with the infrared array that it would sweep over the input sensor for whatever it was 'talking' to; it buzzed and trilled at her when she gave it a command to be still for Darcy when she picked it up, as if it were a bird likely to fly off. "Do you think they can feel it? When they're thrown away?" she asks, carefully inspecting the broken polymer of its wing and eye. She had no oils on her fingers to harm the wiring anyway.
"He looks like he can."
no subject
"It's sad to me, when they're in bad shape, they did what they were made to do and just because some newer model came out, they get tossed like so much rubble." She dug around in the box for a few more parts before turning back to Sin. "Luckily for them, I seem to have created a 'bot haven of sorts. You and a few others bring me the little guys and I fix them up and either sell them to good folks or I keep them myself."
no subject
And she wanted companionship. It wasn't so bad an ordeal, she supposed, to have the little thing live with her. It wouldn't require nearly the amount of work that a biological animal would.
no subject
She finished up the wing and placed it aside before gathering up the stuff to make a new eye for the little guy. Darcy tended to zone out while she assembled things, but honestly it's because she got so involved, not because she was being rude.. on purpose anyways. Hopefully, Sinthia understood her quietness was because she wanted to make sure to do this right.
no subject
This was the environment she lived in; she was a tool to be used, and esthetics and comforts weren't part of the equation that involved her, as far as EDEN was concerned.