anyways.
robot!jaewon au (inspired by the opportunity rover and also a tumblr post i saw this morning)
jaewon wakes up after having his memory restored from a backup, he doesn't quite know why mayhem are so upset (no memory prior to when it was backed up) and he later eventually finds out that he went missing, someone stole his original memory chip, and he was found a few days later. but everything's fine because he's back now!!
life goes on for a bit, mayhem keep promoting even though jaewon's sort of a walking scandal (robot idols are NOT common, highly controversial) and they're doing fairly well!
and then it gets announced that the world is ending
non-essential robots start getting rounded up, and jaewon's not considered essential, so he's taken to some government research facility situation. he's one of the only "human robots" there (as opposed to humanoid) and he's just kinda. lonely. he may be surrounded by robots, but he doesn't really feel like he's one of them.
he just spends a lot of time wandering around the facility, and eventually runs into some sort of smaller robot who's also wandering around! so they do a mutual scan of each other and it turns out that this smaller robot's memory chip has the same ID number as jaewon's original memory chip. which is something they realize at the same time. and the smaller robot runs.
the guards think it's trying to escape, so they just shoot it. essentially just scrapping it for parts.
jaewon gets pulled in for questioning about the situation, and he asks for his original memory chip back because it's sorta freaking him out that his old brain got put in a non-human robot.
turns out the scientists are using any scrap parts for their prototype ships to escape earth. so jaewon can't get his original memory chip back, but they offer to transfer any remaining memories on the chip that belong to him.
during the whole Situation jaewon learns a lot more about the program. they're planning to send an autonomous robot to a proposed "escape planet" to see if it could support life, hence why all of these robots have been rounded up.
so he tells mayhem during a phone call. and he asks if they think he should volunteer, mostly because he's been having the whole existential crisis of "i don't think of myself as a robot anymore, but i'm clearly closer to a robot than an actual human, so shouldn't I do something actually helpful?"
mayhem don't want him to volunteer, mostly because they don't know if they'd ever be able to see him again if he did, but they also know that in the long run, jaewon volunteering would be the best case scenario for this program.
they don't really discourage him, but they also don't necessarily encourage him either.
he's one of the few "human robots" who actually already had software advanced enough for the necessary updates to collect information on planetary atmosphere readings and all that stuff, so he's pretty much made for the job, and being a robot and all means that he masters all of the astronaut training quickly as well, and long story short, the program's estimates of 1-2 years before sending a prototype ship gets cut down to a few months.
which means jaewon has to say goodbye to mayhem even sooner than he thought. it's sort of a big deal because he's getting shut down for the trip to the planet, and he's supposed to be remotely woken up again a few weeks before arriving there, but he's going to be unreachable for a few months. so he is very sad to have to say goodbye to them.
when he wakes up in the space ship though, he's got a list of priorities set by the scientists. he's focused on getting the ship landed, and doing all sorts of tests to see if this planet is livable, and the scientists assumed that his battery would be drained by the time he finished with the tests.
so jaewon's left on this planet — it's livable, just a bit dusty — and his battery is still mostly full, and he has no artificial priorities anymore.
he camps out where the ship landed, and just sort of starts messaging the scientists about the possibility of being able to message mayhem. so they find a way to make it happen.
he sends them photos of the planet and videos of his ship, and mayhem send back audio clips of their new songs and they keep him up to date about what's going on back on earth.
the scientists ask him to do more tests from time to time, just to see how the weather varies and all that.
a few months after landing, he spots a dust storm forming in the distance.
he ends up spending more time taking readings and waiting to hear what the scientists have to say about the readings. within a few days, he's busy trying to strengthen his ship as much as possible to ride out the storm.
mayhem let jaewon know that the oncoming storm on his planet is one of the top news stories that day. jaewon tells them that it's about to hit.
they let him know that they hope he's safe. he doesn't receive the message.
jaewon's cut off from all communication for a week. nothing in, nothing out. he's stuck in a ship that wasn't meant to last this long and his battery wasn't meant to still be charged after this long, and he's alone.
the hull of his ship breaks after 3 days.
he's still somewhat protected, but it's not as safe as he was.
the storm ends, and jaewon realizes he's not able to send any messages back to earth.
messages from mayhem and the scientists come in, and he can't let them know he's okay.
the scientists send wake-up calls in case he shut down during the storm. he didn't, so they do nothing.
mayhem send more audio clips, and he can't respond.
they try for months. jaewon can't respond.
the scientists finally let him know that they're still getting his battery read out and that, if he's still receiving their messages, he's at most 24 hours away from running out of power. the first settlers will be there in a year.
mayhem send him messages too. goodnight message, because they'll be there eventually and they're going to do what they can to bring jaewon back.
the last thing they send is a song from their yet-to-be-released album.
it's a love song for jaewon.
a few hours later, he runs out of battery.
