#352-tow

A mouthful of oil and machinery. Sardonic clicks of gears that didn’t want to turn. Grease and the backlash of shorting circuits. The whine and grind of metal on metal; threatening to wear down and not work as well as it could’ve. A mercurial core of chemistry and kinetics constantly fizzing and fissuring. A stomach of nausea and nuclear war.

When it--she--looked at herself; when she caught glimpses, she didn’t know what she was supposed to be acknowledging. There was an error message hidden somewhere in her facade. There was a problem with her code that kept her from fully processing the depiction of her “self”. There had been, before, no signs of awareness--spacial awareness, yes, but no...recognition of individuality. She served a purpose, a functioning design.

 If she didn’t have that, what did she have?

“Happiness.” She tried the word that Kellan had said, watching her mouth move in the mirror. “Joy.” One hand rose to touch her cheek, and she tried to smile. She watched herself. She tried again. “J-joy.” There was a jitter to it, so she avoided saying it aloud and chose a known synonym. “G-g-g--” Glee couldn’t get past her lips. Frustrated, she dropped her hand.

Then she realized--she was frustrated. An emotion. Her mainframe spiked; beeping warnings. She froze, waiting to acknowledge something her internal core tried to decipher, desperately avoiding kernel panic. 

And then it came to her:

352 never considered herself or the world colorful. Yes, the colors were there, and factually, everything was very colorful. Larei’s lips were red, Master’s eyes were gold, so on and so forth. But it never mattered. It had nothing to do with her orders, or anything she was programmed to care about.

But now that she’s met Kellan, every color has meaning. It has to, for her to properly tell what Kellan’s mood is.

The strange robot put up no protest as Kellan and BB carried her back to their ship, simply observing them through impassable eyes and no doubt logging data carefully- after all, that's what they would do. Kellan worried and BB fussed and they both hurriedly set about cleaning the caked on dirt and tangled plants, storing away bits and pieces in jars of clear liquid to study later. It quickly became apparent that  although the software and internal workings were mostly undamaged, most of the being's frame needed repairing or flat-out replacing in order to work properly. BB quickly set about recycling broken pieces of the ships' hull that had scattered on impact, shaping them into replacement limb panels and carefully refitting their guest with tough new metal.

Kellan was investigating the back of the ship when she spotted a companion-sized cryo tube, giving herself a fright when she released a small blue creature from stasis, who immediately began to climb her and ended up spending most of the next few days pinned to her shoulder, much to BB's amusement. He'd sniffed the creature who lay on the floor of what was formerly the cargo bay and quickly picked up the situation, running back and forth with pieces for BB to use (and occasionally, alarmingly, plasma soldiering irons), seemingly eager to help as well. The small band of travellers took to snoozing in the bay, watching the stars blossom across the sky and dance reflected in the ocean that their homeworld hadn't had. It was beautiful to BB, and frightening to Kellan, who was so unused to seeing the stars, subterranean as she was (or had been).