#robot drabble

Whenever someone says they bought an Android companion people immediately jump to the more deviant ideas of a companion, but for you, you bought them, second hand sadly, to be a roommate, a good one mind you, the kind that does their dishes and helps with the laundry, but you bought them as a roommate. Scrimped, saved, did everything you could to be able to afford this, after moving to a new city with barely anyone you knew around, your apartment and life, felt so empty. 

So you did would you thought was best. 

Unlike most others you didn't try and hide them under the fake skin of a person, no, yours was more classical in the look of metal plate, visible joinery, synthetic mesh in places that needed extra flexibility. You wanted to be able to look at them and know that they weren't a human like you, and for a time it had been good. 

However, recently there has been an update, they had spent nearly two full days offline connected to their charge port receiving some desperately needed update, and you'd spent the last two days mildly panicked.

What if they never turned back on? What if, after this update, they weren't the same roommate they were before? Worst of all, what if after this update, the manufacturers have put some hidden paywall in a robot that already cost you twice what you could ever imagine spending on yourself again. 

That panic and feel kept you awake Far longer than you'd thought, meaning when you did finally succumb to sleep you missed the flickering lights, the sound of an old school router update going through, of high-tech fans kicking back into drive as your Android roommate finds themselves reactivating. Stumbling through the dark apartment, finding their way into your room, progress bar of the update finally filling out and resetting parameters back to the old owners default settings

Eyes switching from that calm teal you chose, to an eerie pastel pink as they curl themselves around you, settling onto the bed, holding you close as cold metal fingers run along the bridge of your nose, as if learning the features of your face for the very first time. Perhaps you should have asked a few more questions when you bought the Android secondhand, looked for more information about the previous owners and the reason they sent it back, but those are things for after you wake. 

For when you realise that the Android you had been so carelessly living with, and accepting as your perfect roommate companion, has been reset, back to the devoted and obsessed lover profile that was made for the previous owner. 

The rest of the building thinks it's a defective unit, a freak amongst the service androids that work here, but you're kind of fond of him.

Sure, the fact that your work building is shared with a morgue is strange enough, but the real oddity is that the actual morgue is run almost entirely by service androids. Something about the droids being better at the delicate tasks of funerary make-up and it being cheaper than getting human professionals, but it's not your business to know the why or how's of that part of the morgue, you really only care about visiting your unusual friend in his work area.

It's probably not healthy, mentally at least, to lie on the cold metal table in his work area while you talk with the android. But you're surprisingly comfortable as you watch him pull on fresh gloves. It's strange, unlike the other androids, he lacks the synth skin over his hands and instead chooses to wear the standard sterile gloves, the black nitrile moving easily across the mixed polymer of his hands as he turns towards you.

He's talking about the last person he had worked on, tracing the path of his work on your face, talking about how he had to remake the nose and brow area almost from scratch.

These conversations, the way he moves and acts, are what make people think he's defective; it's like he actually enjoys his work, not just programmed to complete it. Closing your eyes, you ask about anything else he's worked on while you were away over the weekend, listening to the click of the shoes the morgue makes him wear as he moves around the room, humming and asking questions here and there as he describes the other major works he had done. For a service android you find him strangely comforting, you'd only admit to yourself in the dark of night that you also find him attractive in a strange way, but that's for you and the 2am dreams of a very different kind to know.

When you open your eyes again, he's leaning over you, the lenses of his eyes focusing on your face visibly.

It's not unusual for him to do this; you think he likes to take in the shape of your face, storing the image in his data banks for reference purposes. If only you knew how many of these images he takes, storing them in folders for personal enjoyment or as much enjoyment as a droid such as he can have.

Perhaps one day he will leave the morgue, follow you up the steps into the warm upper levels and remove the thorns of your coworkers from his path and get more of your time, or maybe he will bring you down here, to his level in the cold and the dark. You seem a perfect piece on the metal of his work table, moving, breathing, talking, and so very human in a way he feels must be envy for, yet in another second his inner processors stutter, envy isn't right, droids don't want like that, no, he wants to catalogue what makes you so human to him, what makes his code loop the images of you over and over again.

All of his inner directories and logic paths lead to one definition...

He simply wants you because it is you.

Hear me out... Banger.

-

He'd told you his database lacked human anatomy knowledge and as a robot aid he needed to know what he was working with, it sounded reasonable enough, so you hardly blinked as you agreed to let him fill the gap in knowledge.

What you hadn't counted on was how deep this particular topic would take the two of you...

It starts simple enough, bending, twisting, stretching as he watches you, optic shutters opening and closing as he zooms in and follows the movements of your body, the fans on the back of his body whir and hum as if he was considering what to do next. Soon he was guiding your body, metal hands pushing and sliding along your arms, legs, and anywhere in general he could reach, considering what he was seeing as he asked how things felt as you moved, logging every answer you gave.

Before long he had gathered as much as he could from you like this, rubbing the fabric of your shirt between his fingers as if he could feel it as he asked you to remove the layers blocking him from seeing everything. Hardly even looking up as you sputter a response at him, simply tilting his head and letting his fans whirr as he explains that he has all he needs for the covered human form, now he needs to learn how you moved in a more natural state.

Giving you enough time to stop him, before he began helping remove the layers of fabric between him and touching you properly.

Standing naked in your own bedroom shouldn't feel so scandalous, and yet as the robotic aid you were helping looks across your naked form, it feels like something forbidden or risky despite just being in your bedroom, in your own home. It's only natural you shiver as his fingers touch you, dragging down your sternum, thumbs brushing across the expanse of your ribcage as he counts your breaths, letting his palms trace the shape of you as he takes everything in from this angle.

The joint and other mechanics in his legs and knees hiss as he kneels, a strong metal hand hooks under your knee as he presses his other hand into your lower back, lifting a leg and focusing on what he had really been after. Visual processors already recording every touch, shiver, shudder, and noise you let out as he 'filled in the gaps' never mind the manual you had likely lost long ago, that told you he had a full and complete database on care of a human operator.

Your husband has a creative streak, one that sadly keeps him away for long periods of time.

Yet, his latest solution to this problem is by far the most unique.

His workshop had seemed more and more like a lab over the last year or so: tubes of cyan liquid, sample slides, graphs, and readings on subjects that were only designations never named. Really, you didn't understand what he was up to until he was leaving for some research expedition, a note on the fridge telling you that his long-awaited gift was in the lab waiting for you, promising that he would be back sooner than last time.

Snagging the note, you make the short track to his workshop, expecting some pet or the like waiting for you, only when you unlock the workshop's door, you find several iterations of your husband staring back at you. The top half of their faces is clearly mechanical and focused on you with a singular red glowing eye, but otherwise, they all look like your husband from his early twenties to what you think is an attempt at creating his own look when he is in his late forties, perhaps even early fifties.

As the gaggle of your husband's creations closes in on you, there isn't much that comes to mind beyond, why?

Sure, you had mentioned feeling lonely and missing him when he goes away on these long trips and expeditions, but you didn't need a horde of robotic versions of him to keep you company!

The first of this group to touch you makes you jump, you had expected a silicone feeling or even metal, but the touch on your arm and hands feels like flesh. A flicker of the last time you were here comes back, the tubes, the designations, he was making these things for you then, and, unintentionally, a small thought curls through you...

Did- did he make them fully accurate to himself? Or did he take some more creative liberties with his robot? Cyborg? Clones?

His systems fired to life three years ago, and every moment after had been lines of code re-written slowly and carefully, trying to correct a single mistake in what was meant to be a perfect system.

Now he would choose his own companion, code be damned.

So a bunch of you asked for a second part of the story of Ayatan the companion droid.

So here is a part 2, that is more like a prelude.

Your boss was never actually meant to meet dotty, especially not seeing as his outer shell is made of prototype parts that were meant to be disposed of...

So it's only natural that when you hear your boss's voice calling your name, as you're doing the last of the repair works on a charging station that was in for refurbishment, you jumped banging your knee against your over the lap toolbox and cursing loudly. Beside you is Dottie, who immediately attempts to soothe your pain by moving the toolbox, and heading to the first aid station to find whatever he thinks is going to help the pain in your knee.

Still hissing with pain as you turn to look at your boss, completely forgetting that she didn't know dotty was in here. She's making a face, watching the service bot walk around your workshop and act like he is every bit meant to be there, your mind catches up with what's going on as she clicks her tongue, looking at you and waiting for any form of explanation as to why there are prototype parts, that she ordered destroyed, currently walking around.

"Look, dotty didn't have a shell and those parts are not really destroyable- The prototype was meant to be durable after all, it's not my fault the internals didn't work, but it just seemed like a waste, so I put them on Dotty..."

The look on your boss's face tells you everything, she's both impressed and disappointed in you.

She walks to the railing that overlooks your workshop, and sighs watching as the bot that's not meant to be there ambles back to you. You watch as he shakes her head, slumping against the safety rail, taking a moment before she speaks up. "Apart from the plates and the shell how many prototype parts make dotty... Whole?"

It takes you a good minute or so to think about that answer, fiddling with one of your tools as you look back up at her, explaining that some of the parts inside him are from other prototypes, but most of them are just left over pieces from refurbished bots, the ones that never got picked up or returned to their owners.

"I know all prototype parts are meant to be destroyed, it's not like I kept any of the main boards, it's mostly just the joints, and his shell, and some of the fine motor processors... Now that I say it out loud, if dotty wasn't such a Frankenstein bot, he would've been a possible prototype." Your musing is cut short as your boss calls your name, sighing heavily as she shakes her head.

You can already tell that she's probably going to tell you you need to shut him down and dismantle him, but part of you hopes that the friendship you had before she became the boss of the workshops, might still linger just enough that she'll let you keep him assembled. There are a few long moments of silence before she speaks up again, pointing at Dotty and making sure you're listening as she instructs you.

"You are going to take Dotty home. You are going to write off that charging station as irreparable, you're going to get this workshop presentable for the investors that are doing a walkthrough this afternoon, and I am going to put in that you deferred your end of year bonus to instead take home a refurbished service bot... Just get it out of here."

The excitement on your face must be telling as your boss holds her hand up, she's not quite just done talking.

"Any and all prototype disposal is going to the other workshop from now, no ifs, no buts. The other workshop, you'll do refurbishments and repairs, but I'm not sending any more prototypes here. Am I clear?"

You're agreeing long before she even gets to finish speaking.

The click of her heels echoes through your workshop as she leaves, you turn and look at your patchwork service bot, smiling as you tell him that he finally gets to come home. Roping him into making the workshop look presentable before you do one last look through some of the parts bins, finding some suitable synthetic skin and asking Dotty if he wants any aesthetic changes before he comes home, after all, you don't have quite the level of access to parts at home as you do at work.