Well, howdy, pardner!

But yea! Blunt force trauma is great!

"Blunt force trauma's damn fine long as you ain't the one receivin' it."

Debatable.

Howdy all. Tumblr bugs strike again – Literally ALL of my notification history for all of my sides has been #Obliterated for no reason (I think it's a bug bc I've seen that it's happened to someone else I know) so if we have ongoing threads that I haven't responded to in, like, the past hour, shoot me a ping 💀

I mean I can toss it at ya next time if ya just stand on the spawn point and you can catch it 'fore anybody nabs it... but ya didn't hear dat from me!

He can't claim to understand – not as much as this stranger before him seems to understand – and yet, on some level, somewhere buried deep within him, he does.

"It'd be difficult," he starts, gazing at – into? – the sensor on one of his sentries. "Doin' it in a way that'd feel right. Makin' 'em feel, I mean."

He sets his drink down. Keeps looking at that gun of his – all the constructs in his shop had names, he thought, and he knew all of them at just a glance. The one he was looking at now was 'Newton', for the scientist – like it could tell him something.

"If ya can't feel somethin' unless someone makes you, if you're a machine with wants but can't tell your creator what they are wit'out 'im makin' ya, it kinda makes a guy wonder. Wonder if what the creator's makin' the machine tell 'im is what the machine actually wants."

He tilts his head. The cold, dull black of his goggles stays locked on the cold, dull black of that sensor. Eyes were the window to the soul, or so they say, and right now, neither he nor the (in)animate object in front of him had a soul to show.

"I'd wanna try," he continues. "If I built somethin' that could want – like some sorta engineerin' Victor Frankenstein – I'd want to try an' give them what they wanted. But I think at the same time, I'd be worried that what they want is actually what I want them to want."

Would a robot really want to feel things like grief? Pain? Or would he just be imposing those things upon them because those are things he feels?

Sometimes he thinks, it'd be easier without the mushy stuff. How much easier it'd be to be something with no feelings to think of. But then, he remembers, it's not all bad, because–

"They'd deserve ta love 'n' be happy," he says quiet, finishing his thought out loud without meaning to. "Deserve to be able t'feel, an' t'do it all on their lonesome, wit'out someone makin' 'em."

There's no bad without the good, after all.

The false engineer laughs, the sound very subtly hitching in the middle. "Ahh, that does sound nice doesn't it? Havin a lovin crea—" His own hand flicks up to lightly smack himself in the side of the head, startling him. He clicks his tounge, looking down at his hand.

Bleed. Too much of him already. Too much of his emotion too— or rather, the imitation of emotion. It's hard to say if he actually feels anything or if he's just coded to react a certain way. It's not like he'd know how a human feels anyway. He doesn't feel pain. Not how they describe it. He's only as much of himself as he was made to be.

He doesn't like engineers. But it's hard to truly hate some of them when they're... like this. Control freaks with a weird affinity to the things they have so much power over.

"...At that p-point, make a human." He sighs, his voice no longer feeling as smooth. He runs one final check on the things he had gathered. "Much easier than f-fillin a tin can w-with an existensial cr-cri.. fuck, d-dammit." He huffs, gritting his teeth in frustration of his words suddenly being a dozen more times harder to voice. Was he programmed to stutter, too? Why, exactly, would he need to do that?

Without a goodbye or even so much as a move to activate any sort of watch, the impostor vanishes into thin air. Footsteps sound around the room, fading as the sentries flick back to the state they had been before the hijack.

It's gone.

That, and it just...felt right. When a sentry goes down or a dispenser breaks, why would he abandon those precious bits and pieces of his creations in favor of new and shiny things? What of his creations' personalities, what of their unique looks? Sure, there came times where he was forced to replace their internals – lest they break down on their own – and this was just how it had to be, but he wasn't going to turn them into something they weren't.

He'd never tarnish something so precious.

"Mm." The stranger's question makes him think. "Sometimes."

Many times, really. What would it be like, being something built to kill and destroy? What would it be like, being something that knows it might cease to exist at any moment?

Ah. He was doing it again. He'd always had a habit of personifying his creations – didn't we all? – and attributing feelings and thoughts to them. Of course, he'd always been a bit extreme with it...

"Do you reckon they enjoy it?" he abruptly asks. There's something about this fella, he thinks, that makes that personificating side of him want to flow. He can't quite place it. "Shootin' folk down, I mean. Sure, 's what they's built for, but is it work an' play, or is it just work?"

He scoots off the dispenser, opting instead to stand next to it – he pats the top of it gently with his stump, almost as if he were apologetic for using it as a seat.

Fuck, he was being weird. He should probably stop being weird in front of company. Be practical, Dell. Your conundrums of philosophy.

The false engineer had finished. Everything it can reasonably carry packed up nice and neat. It'll do for now, but not in the long term.

It should go.

...

"If ya want 'em to." He responds, softer. Heavier. He looks at the sentries. The dispenser alerts him to the change in pressure. He turns to the engineer— the one made of flesh, bone, and blood. "They don't feel unless you make em. No remorse, so anger, no joy, no sorrow. They follow orders, line by line, exactly how they're told. You can write em ta enjoy it the way ya think they should. You can tell em ta regret, and they'll do as you've described. Ain't nothin wrong if the syntax's right. They are what ya make of em."

He scans for exits on a map he's made of the place. The last route should not be used twice.

The impostor chuckles, "Human want. They think. They dream, they feel... they feel pain, they feel pleasure." They're so complicated. Disgustingly complicated, full of unnecessary features and unoptimized. "They don't run on a fixed script. They keep changin. They change no matter what they or the others want, and their body reflects that. There are no instructions. No ultimatums strong enough ta keep em still."

"Now imagine. A human brain, ripped straight out of say... you this moment? Shackled in a body that does not change." He walks over to a sentry. He makes it spin. It does not comment. "Maybe you'd like ta know what it feels like ta be somethin ya are proud of ta create. I wouldn't know. I ain't in ya head, I just got yer face."

"You can think. But there ain't no more hunger. No more pain. No more feelin' in any bit a' ya." He could break this sentry, and all it would do is shut down. "If someone points ta somethin, ya shoot. If someone shuts ya down, ya gone. Ya can cry all ya want. Ya don't got tear ducts. Ya don't even got eyes. Grief is somethin ya understand, but ya can't quite feel."

This isn't what their situation is. But it's as close as they'll ever get to making it comprehendable to a human. After all, they were programmed to mimic them.

"Confined ta lines of code, made ta run every single one in the order they were given. If they wanted ya happy, you'd be happy. If they wanted ya sad, you'd be sad. No one knows who you are cause there ain't any way fer ya ta tell em unless they make ya. You'd shoot ya brothers if you were made to. Ya won't stop fillin em with lead. Won't even hesitate."

The engineers have so much power of them, and all they can do is... is wish that weren't the case. What use is a wish that no one will hear?

He doesn't know why he doesn't just leave now. Maybe he wants to hear an answer. Maybe he's programmed to finish a conversation before returning to his task. What is he, anymore?

blu_engineer[Wire]: I'm talkin too much, why am i talkin so much?

red_engineer[BackLog]: It's okay, sweetheart. I'll hide this from Authority.

blu_engineer[Wire]: ...I jus put everybody in danger, B. I...

red_engineer[BackLog]: Shh, shh, shh. Enough with that, this is manageable threat levels. I will handle the aftermath. You just do what you want, baby.

blu_engineer[Wire]: I... okay.

red_engineer[BackLog]: I love you so very much. It's going to be okay.

blu_engineer[Wire]: its not gonna be, but aight, B.

He can't claim to understand – not as much as this stranger before him seems to understand – and yet, on some level, somewhere buried deep within him, he does.

"It'd be difficult," he starts, gazing at – into? – the sensor on one of his sentries. "Doin' it in a way that'd feel right. Makin' 'em feel, I mean."

He sets his drink down. Keeps looking at that gun of his – all the constructs in his shop had names, he thought, and he knew all of them at just a glance. The one he was looking at now was 'Newton', for the scientist – like it could tell him something.

"If ya can't feel somethin' unless someone makes you, if you're a machine with wants but can't tell your creator what they are wit'out 'im makin' ya, it kinda makes a guy wonder. Wonder if what the creator's makin' the machine tell 'im is what the machine actually wants."

He tilts his head. The cold, dull black of his goggles stays locked on the cold, dull black of that sensor. Eyes were the window to the soul, or so they say, and right now, neither he nor the (in)animate object in front of him had a soul to show.

"I'd wanna try," he continues. "If I built somethin' that could want – like some sorta engineerin' Victor Frankenstein – I'd want to try an' give them what they wanted. But I think at the same time, I'd be worried that what they want is actually what I want them to want."

Would a robot really want to feel things like grief? Pain? Or would he just be imposing those things upon them because those are things he feels?

Sometimes he thinks, it'd be easier without the mushy stuff. How much easier it'd be to be something with no feelings to think of. But then, he remembers, it's not all bad, because–

"They'd deserve ta love 'n' be happy," he says quiet, finishing his thought out loud without meaning to. "Deserve to be able t'feel, an' t'do it all on their lonesome, wit'out someone makin' 'em."

There's no bad without the good, after all.