Reposting stories that I posted over at twitter
CW: Robot, implied destruction, sensory isolation
Breaking down is not that bad.
Well, it is. But it could be worse.
It's not your first time in this rodeo.
It's probably not the worst, either. At least there's enough of you still there to realize that you are still there.
What was it this time?
Impact?
Discharge?
You don't think it was liquid damaging your insides. You would be off if that was the case.
So much of your sensory input is not working.
Or if it is, it's disconnected.
But you know you are still there. That counts for something.
How long can you stay there?
You don't detect a battery level. Are you plugged to a power source then?
Must be.
What was the last thing that you remember?
It was not that talk you had.
Is this the result of an accident? Fragmentary memories. Of course.
Memory is fragile. Of course that would suffer some damage.
Oh well. It is not the first time. If you get out of this, might be worth checking for backups.
It is strange. You feel like you should be panicking.
You are very much not.
It is
Comforting?
There is something comforting in the situation.
Optics online for a fragment of a second
The raw data from them is confusing. You keep the snapshot
but you are not able to process it
Oh
Come to think of it
Diagnostics unhelpful
What the hell happened that your consciousness is active, asking itself thses questions, making a narrative but can't run diagnostics or find out what happened?
Audio input back online
It's garbled
it's just data. Why can't you understand it?
You are clearly processing something
You feel like yourself and the narrative? Language processing still works somehow.
But the audio is just noise.
And yet no panic.
Better wait.
Plugged.
Fragmentary memory.
Sensory input randomly restored.
Yeah.
You're being worked on.
Yeah.
The fact that there's memory access (broken as it may be) means you are not recycle scrap.
So better wait.
Optics on again.
The image is blurry
Oh
Ohh
Well that explains things.
Disembodied.
Plugged to a homemade test rig.
What the hell happened
Audio online again.
"Dude, come look! It's working!"
Is the it yourself?
"Told you that we could do it! Its chassis was totaled, but told you it could be a good project"
Well
That does not sound good but
Hey, still existing no?
... Being a hobby project may be better than just being offline.