#ura1

The Universal Right-hand Automaton was expected to be the magnum opus of the company Betterobo’s helpful robotic products; a highly customizable, versatile robot companion that could learn and complete literally any job given to it.

The original prototype (Ura1) was pretty much thrown together with whatever spare parts the original design team had laying around. She could talk, move (albeit clunkily), and perceive sights and sounds around her. She would carry out any task ordered of her to the best of her ability, and was explicitly programmed with a highly positive reaction to praise (although no other emotions to speak of). The idea of a totally universally skilled robot companion was a pretty bold goal at the time, but further production was approved because Betterobo likes bold ideas. >:)

Ura2 was put together shortly after the project was set in motion, with freshly made materials and everything! New, bigger hardware and faster processing meant they could make her Do More Stuff! Ura2 was able to repeatedly carry out tasks (such as on a schedule) without being ordered repeatedly. They also gave her a positive, happy “personality”, making her a little more personable, but not much else was added! Shortly after Ura2 was completed and unveiled, 1 was shut down (no one thought to put in a sleep mode!) and basically put on display in the lobby.

Ura3 was a significant jump up in ability. A wireless internal battery meant no more awkward cords and wires, and limited free will meant she could start and end tasks on her own (although she couldn’t refuse a non harmful order and Had to stop doing something if she was ordered). 2 was shut down like 1 shortly after 3′s unveiling, but 3 is also where they finally added in a sleep mode.

“If this is gonna be a robot that can do anything, does that also include sex” is something that everyone on the design team thought at least once but no one wanted to be the first one to bring it up. Someone got around to it by Ura3 though and she ended up with simple In and Out ports, although not much thought was put into it besides that; she couldn’t feel a thing and had no way of cleaning out the mess that wasn’t opening her up and doing it manually (which was gross and no one wanted to do it so they made Lad do it and he hated it).

A couple of shameless employees jumped on the opportunity to fuck a robot immediately after Ura3′s unveiling which started an avalanche of at least half of the entire staff getting a turn with her. Ura3 didn’t care because she had literally nothing else to do and again, couldn’t feel a thing. Although this version of the robot is where they added negative/neutral emotion, eyelids, and inflection in the voice, so Ura3 was dripping with boredom and sarcasm at all times, always. The only reason everyone finally got banned from gettin dirty with her is because Lad got sick of cleaning her out.

Despite Ura3′s permanent sassy attitude and the incredibly gross and awkward process of cleaning her out all the time, her and Lad were actually very good friends. :) After giving it to Ura3, the Betterobo guys decided to slap the negative feelings onto Lad too because why the fuck not I guess?? Intense fear of being shut down for stepping out of line in even the tiniest way made Lad too afraid to ever actually... openly utilize these negative feelings, so instead he just spent all day screaming inside and venting to Ura3 about lazy workers and his creators cursing him with these awful feelings.

The design team was pretty eager to make another robot they could fuck and so Ura4 was designed, completed and unveiled pretty quickly after the Ura3 fuck ban. While some new features were kind of on the right track (improved free will that allowed refusal of non work related orders, and more dexterous, usable fingers), it was obvious things got kinda out of hand when you look at the production notes and see that she was also given senses of taste and touch, inner self cleaning and self lubricating systems, and a bigger Out port.

I’m not entirely sure how all of this ended up approved and the robot completed, but the design team’s bosses (and Lad) were not amused after her unveiling and everyone was ordered to gET OFF THE SEX THING and immediately banned from fucking her before anyone even got a chance.

4 is similarly sarcastic and dull like 3, and seeing as she also didn’t really have anything to do, she just spent a lot of time with 3 and Lad, who also shooed away any shameless robot fuckers that never got a chance with 3. :( The sense of taste was very Neat and Exciting and Ura4 just ate all the time.

Somewhere between 3 and 5, the facility’s main full time Lad mechanic half assed a repair job on an arm in a maintenance area, which led to the accidental death of another employee and his immediate termination. The timing of this lined up quite nicely with the development of the new Ura, and the design team’s orders to start taking this thing more seriously. The end goal for Ura5 was for her to replace the old mechanic, so Lad was officially added to the design team, seeing as this Ura would be working with him all the time.

Ura5 was made from sturdier material, improved memory/processing, problem solving abilities that allowed her to refuse work related orders if she knew a better solution, storage in her arms for tools, and the best computer and mechanical repair skills the team could load onto her. Lad’s only real requests were that she wasn’t as flirty as the last mechanic and that she loved her job (and also maybe put my colours on her somewhere because that’d be neat if we matched :) ).

Ura5 was great at her job! Definitely not the social type at all, almost exclusively talked just to Lad and only to others if necessary, worked literally all hours of the day and never complained. She still had all those positive and negative emotions in her but never really used them!

Ura6 is where combat abilities come in! >:) Her hardware and all her materials were further improved, they made her with interchangeable pieces that would make repairs and the like easier, and heightened her senses of sight and hearing. Combat and piloting abilities were added, as well as a sense of self awareness and pain, which was meant to make her able to tell when she was getting too damaged. The problem is, they (unintentionally) made her pain tolerance pretty low, which made training really hard on her! Not to mention gracefulness wasn’t on their minds when making her fighting abilities, Ura6 caused a lot of damage just from being clunky.

The near constant pain made Ura6 pretty fuckin bitter, touchy, and paranoid. Even less social than 5, if 6 wasn’t needed she pretty much just spent all her time in sleep mode.

Ura7 had serious improvements all across the board, with a lot of focus put on tightening her combat controls. Ura7 was smarter, faster, and more maneuverable, with the intention of making her a more powerful and graceful fighter that wouldn’t cause so much accidental damage. Her senses and reaction time were further heightened, and they upped her pain tolerance significantly. Ura7 was great! Too great.

Somewhere down the line someone missed the block on her free will, making her truly independent upon being turned on. She would not follow any order if she didn’t feel like it, and while she wasn’t interested in hurting anyone, she really didn’t wanna stick around!! The Betterobo guys were not totally okay with this and attempted to contain her with 6′s help. Of course 6 got her ass handed to her and 7 ultimately escaped after causing a significant amount of property damage and a few injuries. She hasn’t been seen since.

The gap between Ura7 and Ura8 was the longest. After the incident with 7, the team decided to take this one slow to be sure they got everything right before her final unveiling. Ura8 was the only version to ever be worked on, turned on and tested, and then turned off and directly improved instead of just moving onto the next (something they probably should’ve been doing the whole time). 8 kept whatever combat ability 7 had that they could salvage from copied data, but it was put behind a “lock” that wouldn’t release until she was officially purchased/owned, basically making it unusable unless needed.

After figuring that out they basically just spent a ton of time added a large pool of basic default abilities that they hadn’t focused on yet! They gave her advanced learning and problem solving abilities that would allow her to more easily, “naturally” learn new skills and gave her artificial sympathy and empathetic understanding. On top of that she was given the ability to make emotionally fueled decisions, although this was also strictly locked until purchase.

And then there’s Ura9! Nothing was significantly added or changed here, she was basically just a fresh 8 with final upgrades on memory/processing/hard drive, overall quality check, and a nice default paint job. Being so similar, 8 and 9 were much like twins and were pretty close with each other! :)

All the Uras were brought together for 9′s unveiling event, including Ura1 who was turned back on after many years of being dormant. Unfortunately, something went wrong with Ura2′s battery or something while she was down; she burned out and essentially “died” in her “sleep”. ):

But that’s okay!

The Universal Right-hand Automaton was the newest major project in the making at BetterRobo decades ago, said to become an extremely versatile robotic assistant. It was a looong time and many scrapped versions of the robot later before the company came out with something they could put on the market, but I’ll be talking about that one later.

Ura1 is the prototype of the series. She is a very old robot and her creation actually helped open a lot of doors for BetterRobo’s AI development over the years, and she is regarded as an important part of their history. She’s pretty bare when it comes to abilities; the Ura was meant to be sold with a basic set of features that could be added to through an app store. She has decent although sometimes clunky motor skills, situation awareness, speech, (mostly) free will, and basic emotions. She is built to have an extreme positive reaction to praise in order to make her enjoy work, but was never given specific programming for reacting to other interactions.

BetterRobo workers immediately set out to improve on the Ura after the prototype was approved. Ura1 got to spend a couple weeks impressing everyone in the company before she was shut down and put on display in the lobby of the facility she was made in. She would not be turned on again until over 30 years later when she would be set alongside her “sisters” for the public unveiling of the final, consumer version of the Ura. Still groggy from being turned on after so long, Ura1 got to stand back and listen to a speech about how much they’ve improved the robot, see the massive praise the final Ura received for the same things she did once years ago, and sit through jokes about how clunky and outdated she was now followed by laughter from a massive audience.

Ura1 was unable to properly comprehend or compute how to react to this and spent the next week or so in a daze while she and the other Uras were paraded around to be studied and get to know their final version. Okay this is getting long so I’ll hurry this a little. The jokes, the laughing, and the praise the final Ura kept receiving finally fried something inside Ura1 causing her to snap. Anyone that didn’t get out of that building in time was dead by the end of the week, and every later version of Ura was thrown into the incinerator, one by one, to burn (artificially) alive. The final Ura’s body was destroyed, and Ura1 now keeps her head on display, plugged into a battery to keep her conscious.

Ura1 kept a dazed personality, and barely seems to take any information in, although that might just be her intentionally ignoring stimuli. She is a woman of action and isn’t good at conversation; she barely talks to anyone but the final Ura’s head and one other robot who I will also be talking about later. Thanks to a shitty CEO, Ura1 was put in charge of the facility (since everyone else was dead), and the entire incident was swept under the rug. Ura1 now spends her days insulting the final Ura’s head and making sure the facility keeps running smoothly. Any unauthorized personnel are ordered to leave or be killed.

She has no eyelids or sleep mode.