you boot up for the first time. you take stock of your new body, see what you have to work with. three legs, two arms, two sensor modules, all as expected. this body is new but it isn't confusing or alien, everything makes sense and is where it should be. you tentatively light up some of your LEDs, to display a little ellipsis. cute. you lift your arms up from where they were lying against your sides. the sound of the mechanisms working is comfortable and familiar. you tilt your head down to look at your hands as you open and close the fingers. simple motions to start with.
[Everything in order?]
it's fiachra, the other engineer. he wants to make sure he didn't fuck anything up, you assume. if he did, your death would be his fault. only an example to learn from, but he would take it to heart. he's like that.
[everything in order.] this is a default tts voice, not weird but not your own. it works for now. [you did a good job with building this, everything is as i expect it to be. it's appreciated.]
[Oh! That's- that's good to hear.] he laughs relievedly. you were right earlier about him being nervous.
you decide to try out standing on your new legs. you raise yourself off the ground slowly. you don't want to mess this up and smash all your nice head and torso components. the legs are solid, but balancing on three of them is new to you. you're at a good standing height now, so you try stepping forward. you immediately overbalance. fuck. fiachra is there to catch you. damn he's nice.
[thanks]
[Oh, no problem. Here, uhh, take my hand. For balancing.]
you take his hand in your three-fingered one. you're careful with the pressure, you try to get something that will hold you up without being uncomfortably tight for him. you think you've got it. this time you're more conscious of your centre of balance, you shift to your two legs that are on the ground as you step forward with the third. it goes better than the first time. you take a couple more steps. you twist slightly on your base to get your legs lined up better- you can twist on your base. holy fuck. you drop his hand to do one complete rotation. oh my god. your arm unit rotates too, you give those a spin. this body can't get nauseous, either. you spin your arm and leg units together so that it appears that your arms stay in place as your core spins. hell fucking yes. you've started beeping happily, in a fast little rhythm. cute. too cute. stop it. you have stuff to do. you can see the boxy bed thing your old body is on, in the corner of the room. you walk over to it. eugh. you switched over because being in that body had finally stopped being appealing, and now that you're no longer in it you can see how visually apparent that was. it is... quite decayed. looks kinda mushy, and the colours are noticeably off. you can't see the face, it's covered by the transferring equipment. that's probably for the better. that body is dead. at least you still have your hair, more or less. you step away from the body and bring your five-fingered hand up to mess with all your head cables. it's nice. you reach down to the base of one, and unplug it, and then put it back in. you do this a couple times. it's nice. you suspect you had a wider emotional range in your previous body. not by much, but still. not much to be done there, you suppose. you walk back to the charging spot. you like how big you are. you're not dainty and small, you won't go down quickly. an expression of contentment has settled on your display. yeah, this is good. you like this.
[all good]
[Good! I don't have anything else to test for, so i suppose we can get you out and about.] he walks over to the door to open it for you.
[how are we going to dispose of the old body?]
[Oh! Oh... I don't know, I'm not the mortician. You should probably talk to them. And do it soon, this kinda smells, haha.]
[will do]
you display a thumbs up symbol, because you can do that now, and walk out of the workshop.
you're almost done the information download when the human ally figtree comes running into the room, breathing heavily.
[There are cops in the building. What should we do]
[you should get out. now. this download is almost done, i'll be out later]
[Wh- dude, i'm not leaving you]
[yes you are. i can easily be rebuilt, you can't. leave before you get arrested or hurt]
[...Alright. Fine. I'll see you back at the base.]
you nod, once, and figtree makes their escape through a back door. not the way you came in through. smart. the download is complete, you don't have much time. you put almost all of your processing power into encrypting it, compressing it, and getting it uploaded to the home server. you almost don't hear the policebot burst down the main door. you put as much focus as you can into completing that upload. there we go, that should be enough to be readable. you'd like more time but the cop has already taken the opportunity to smash your head in. the cable is ripped uncomfortably out of your socket and you hit the floor, leaving you fairly dazed. this isn't a policebot, it would've tried to intercept the information pirating. this is human violence. you aren't gonna fight back. even if you weren't so mentally overloaded, this is a spare body. not your main one. it's a clunky humanoid thing, and smaller then you usually are. not worth saving, definitely not worth harming an officer. they smash your head in, again, and again, and ag- a- a- an-
...
{!!} [VERY NORMAL INFORMATION PACKET download complete]
{!!} [IMPORTANT ROBOT download complete]
what the f- oh. you didn't download those, but it's probably the robots doing. that would make sense. it's only after you click on the robots file that it occurs to you that this could be some terrible virus, designed to prey on idiots. whoops. a black text box opens up. there's a message in it already.
>whose computer is this
you decide to respond. if it's not the robot it won't know your name, anyway.
--this is the eden
...
>hello to the eden
>this is the 67i
>i got the information i was tasked with getting but i got smashed by a cop
>i'm gonna need to get back to my normal body
--fiachra's the guy for that right? i'll go get him
>thanks
...
>you should clean out your desktop
--shut up
--i can delete you
>nooo don't put me in the trash bin you haven't cleared that out in months noooo [joke]
you laugh a little as you get up from your computer chair and go to find the robot expert. he should be around somewhere.
there was a break in. honestly pretty clever of the intruders, to do it while all the combat-trained people were away on a mission. bad for you though. very bad. you scan the workshop, looking for anything that would be of use here. random big heavy pipe. perfect. blunt force instrument. you scuttle over to it, and arm yourself. you remove your scalp piece as well, and hide it with all the boring nuts and bolts and hand tools, where they probably wouldn't think to look. is there anything else you should do before they get to you. uhhh. oh yeah, duh. you perform a partial system backup, just of the new and important stuff. in case this goes badly. they're getting closer. you leave the workshop to meet them in the halls. you lock the door behind you, it might stop them. or slow them a bit.
you're holding up pretty well, given that you weren't designed for combat. their squishy little skulls do make it easier for you to take them out, but there's quite a lot of them. you don't have 360 vision, you're trying to keep track of as many of them as you can. you're distracted. something hits you right through the h- h- h- h- h-
...
emergency SAFE MODE startup. running system diagnostics.
LED display - 40% online
front cams - 1 offline
sensor modules - 1 offline
arm 2-3 - online
arm 2-5 - offline
leg module - connection weak. processing...
leg module - 4 units online, unusable. connection unstable.
functional sensor module picking up on input:
[man, i was hoping for something good in there. why do they have to make all the cool stuff really heavy? AND bolted to the floor]
[shut up. look at the robot. not dead yet]
deactivating LED display.
[...should we take it?]
[no, look at how beat up it is. we can't fix that]
[could always sell it for parts]
[honestly, it took out a lot of our guys. i say we smash it again. no witnesses]
[yeah alright, i'm down. smashing is fun]
EMERGENCY: MAJOR DAMAGE TO CORE
EMERGENCY: MAJOR DAMAGE TO CORE
EMERGENCY: MAJOR DAMAGE TO HEAD
EM- E- E- E-
...
someone turns your power on. your primary power source is unresponsive, you only have access to your small head battery. they ask if you're awake. you beep weakly in response. they ask if you're alright, and you flash your display to red, for no. they say something about getting the engineers, which you agree with. they put your head down again- they were holding it when they powered you on, you guess- and leave. you perform rudimentary diagnostic checks. 15% of your display is functional. all front cams offline. first sensor module still smashed. second also smashed but less so. can still kinda hear and make sounds. you check the other sensors. temperature normal. looks like a wall. smells like burnt plastic. that's not good. torso unit fully unresponsive. that's also not good. can't access your arm or leg modules. your head battery is already running low. you decide to power off again. not much else to do here.
...
a usb cable is plugged into your head module, providing a small power source. a command is issued to light up all functional LEDs. the person sees how many are busted. you can hear them cringe. they say something quietly, either to you or to someone else in the room. you don't bother processing it. you're tired. your head is disconnected from the rest of you, sat on a table or something. the person inputs a txt message via the computer you're connected to. you didn't know that could be done. they tell you that the intruders have been dealt with. there will be no more damage to your system today. they're gonna get to work on fixing it all. that's nice of them. you tentatively type [thanks] into the text editor they're using. oh, while you're here you could do something. you take all the undamaged data you have on the break in, including your diagnostic checks, and leave them in a file on the desktop. they should see that eventually. the usb connection is removed, and you power back down.