#baud

gonna make myself emo thinking about baud. imagine you're moment's pallor and you've been killed for your heresy and then resurrected in a new sort of medical experiment and because of this you are highly monitored. you're given a robotic gecko squirrel to assist you in your work and you know that it's surveiling you. you know that it's sending reports back to the faction leaders watching over you. and you know that robots don't talk to people. they have their own names and their own language that they do not share with humans, ever. but you're moment's pallor. so you talk to it anyway. yes, this creature's deeper function is to keep you in line, but on the surface it's here to help. and it does help! and you spend so much time with it! it won't tell you its name and it won't ever respond, but you can't just ignore it. you can't not talk to it. you've been (clumsily, foolishly) trying to teach yourself its language. you start calling it baud, for lack of any other name. it's about the speed of data transfer, isn't it? always sending back reports. this gecko squirrel is the closest thing you have to a friend.