If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?...If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can! -J.R.R. Tolkien
Designation: Sanitatem
Assignment: Construction
She was still a youngling when she read those words, recognizing her name and understanding what an assignment meant, but not quite comprehending the words themselves. Construction? Why? She didn’t know what assignments entailed or what it meant for her but she did know that she had no interest in construction work. Could she not do something else once she was old enough and big enough to?
It was when she was still a youngling that she already began to ask questions.
Most people simply told her that it was the way of things, that this was how things were and that she simply needed to accept that her future assignment in society was construction work. But why? Some told her it was to maintain balance, others told her that it was to keep the majority of the population in check, some tried to explain that it was because of her frame type-that it was best suited for that sort of work. Others refused to outright answer her and avoided the topic altogether. But why? What was so bad about asking why? Why couldn’t she explore other options, why couldn’t she do something else?
She didn’t like construction, even at this young age she knew that it wasn’t her, that it couldn’t be for her. It didn’t feel...right. Like someone was trying to get her to be something that she wasn’t, like they were trying to keep her from doing something that she wanted to do. She had no interest in construction...why couldn’t she explore other options?
It was questions like these, inquisitive and curious in nature, that she posed to her carrier when everyone else refused to give her an answer to them. Her carrier, who answered her questions and she knew would never lie to her.
“Some people wish to keep others down, little one. It isn’t anything you or I have done, but there are terrible people out there in the world. Ones who have things better than we do and wish to keep things the way that they are to preserve their way of life.”
“I wish I had an answer for you, but you just remember my little bright spark, if you think you can find a way to do what you want and to do something that makes you happy...you fight for it. You do everything in your power to make it happen. People will try to keep you down, tell you that you can’t do it, that you aren’t built for it,” She paused to touch the underneath of Sani’s chin, tilting her optics up to meet hers with that familiar warm smile that she had come to associate with her carrier.
“Don’t listen to any of them. You are just as important as they are, if not more. You are just as smart and just as capable. So you fight whatever they have to say, alright?”
Bright green hues locked onto her, soaking up her every word as the much younger femme nodded her helm, “I will, carrier. I promise.”
A kiss to her forehelm followed with a smile, “That’s my bright spark.”
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It was these words that she would carry with her wherever she went, to fight and do what she wanted to do. To ignore those that would tell her otherwise. She wanted to be free from the constraints of this place, free from the constraints of her designated assignment that she’d had since she was old enough to carry a frame.
She might not know exactly what she wanted from life, but she knew that it wasn’t that.
When she found her first medical text abandoned in the street, it almost felt like fate might as well have come right up to her and dropped it into her lap. Curiosity caused her to pick it up in the first place, but it was an understanding and fascination with it that caused her to refuse to put it down.
Despite the fact that she had a talent for remembering everything, down to the smallest and most seemingly insignificant detail, when she finished reading it she paused to think about it and then read it a second time, and then a third and a fourth. Her passion for this old abandoned text was not lost on her carrier at the time, and as a special occasion she managed to buy her another one, this one more current than the one that her youngling had come across.
The second text was never put down either, as Sanitatem consumed the knowledge that had been placed before her with a renewed vigor, not that her vigor in the first text needed to be renewed at all, so engrossed she was in the texts. Passion seemed to be in low quantities in this day and age, but watching her youngling read those medical texts it became apparent very quickly that Sanitatem had passion in spades, passion and drive both.
Before long she was writing theories and thoughts on the texts in a datapad, drawing designs and using vernacular that most her age wouldn’t even think to use, scribbling things on the walls when the datapad wouldn’t work and pointing out parts of hers and her carrier’s frame and jabbering excitedly about what the scientific names and explanations were for each part she could think of at that given time.
A few stellar cycles later and her carrier gifted her with her first small medical kit. It was old, clearly second hand, but Sanitatem didn’t care about that, so overcome with glee that she almost knocked her carrier right over when she hugged her.
It was the last time she’d receive any gift from her carrier.
In an instant it seemed her entire world had been turned upside down. She had her carrier and then she didn’t, and for a long time her texts were forgotten, unable to be looked at without remembering her caretaker and the fact that she wasn’t there with her anymore. The medical texts were too painful of a reminder of what little she had being torn away from her, so they sat alone and forgotten as she continued through her life, orphaned and alone, trying to survive and get by with what she was supposed to be doing, construction.
A youngling she might still be, but she was not so young that she couldn’t not work. It wouldn’t be long before she reached her adulthood at that point, something that some might consider to be a small miracle considering her current circumstances. Though it did not stop her from feeling unlucky.
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Stellar cycles went by and no longer was she a youngling but rather a young adult; tired and exhausted from a very long sol’s work. Construction might not have been what she had wanted to do, what she felt like she was meant to do, but it was something at least, and being alone it helped her to get by, to survive while she grieved her loss and tried as best she could.
That was all anyone could do, after all, try.
Tossing a set of work tools on the old crate where she kept her things, she rolled her neck a little with a grimace to work out the kinks that had already started to form over the course of the day before she headed off to the single washrack. She was covered in filth, dust, debris...the way it clogged everything up was an absolute nightmare, the way it made her joints stiffen made her feel more bogged down than she should, even when fatigue was set in.
At least a good hot wash to get the grime and dust off her plating would help, at the very least to relax a little before restarting the day over again in the morning. Stepping into the washrack she turned the heat up as much as she dared to go and just...stood there, thinking.
It had been a while since her carrier’s passing, it seemed like an eternity had passed since she’d been forced to strike out on her own, just old enough to do so but young enough to have wanted a family to stay with.
Too old to be wanted, she reminded herself.
Such things like that weighed on her, the feeling of not being good enough, young enough for a new family, and a slew of other deprecating statements that made her frown into the water as it fell onto her face and frame. Fame, glory, none of that ever mattered to her, and they were very poor replacements for what she really wanted. Some mecha had the gladiatorial pits to make up for whatever they were missing in their lives, but those weren’t really her style. Beating someone within an inch of their life, or to the death, wasn’t something that had or ever would, appeal to her.
She had always wanted to help people, not hurt them.
Even so, that hadn’t stopped others, bullies mostly, from trying to hurt her. Even now, standing there as an adult she could hear the taunts and remember bigger, better off younglings physically pushing her around, the names that they called her and the jabs, physically and otherwise, that they threw in her direction.
She remembered everything, every face, every taunt, every jab. She avoided those faces when she could, fought back when she had to. She might not be from Kaon, having been sparked just outside of the city itself, but she was just as much of a scrapper, just as likely to fight back at those that would seek to try to bring her down, she had that at least, that same fighting spirit.
“Some people wish to keep others down.”
Truer words had never been spoken and her carrier’s words range in her audials every time the thoughts began to cross her mind. Like a familiar bell in her head, gone but never forgotten. Her memory never failed her, but if there was ever a time where it finally did, her carrier would always remain, a friendly and warm voice to guide her as she tried to survive through the life that she had been thrown into.
“Don’t listen to any of them. You are just as important as they are, if not more. You are just as smart and just as capable. So you fight whatever they have to say, alright?”
Her optics seemed to almost furrow at the wall, water and cleanser dripping down her faceplates even as it seemed forgotten that she was even in the washrack to begin with. Would she be proud of what she had become, she wondered? Was she looking at her from whatever afterlife she had gone to, beaming with pride and joy at what her bitlet had grown up to become? Or would she be ashamed of her, saddened by the fact that she had seemingly given up and let the universe make the decisions for her?
It was thoughts like these that weighed more than anything else on Sanitatem’s mind. More than the bullies who taunted her, more than the people who told her time and time again that what she was thinking about was folly, that it wasn’t in her destiny. It was the thoughts of her carrier, the face beaming down at her as she reminded her to keep going, to fight.
She never did get around to that fighting after all….did she? Are you proud of me, carrier?
She didn’t know how long she was in there for, a few kliks? Cycles? Whatever the time frame it was long enough for her to half fall into recharge just standing there, lost in her thoughts and long enough for the water and cleanser mix to start to go cold and prompt her to turn it off, get out, and grab an old raggedy towel to dry herself off with.
Even then she was still lost in her thoughts, as she looked around the old and dingy homestead. It was the same one she’d grown up in, modest and being held together with ingenuity and sheer will power it seemed like these days, but it was what she had for a home. All she had left for a home, considering those that she considered family were long gone now.
She frowned and grunted as she tossed the towel to the side as she fell upon her berth, causing it to land in the open crate where the rest of her things collected dust, what few possessions she could afford to have little more than old familial trinkets tossed to the side to be forgotten about. As it did it knocked a small tool over and into the crate as well, the tool knocking against something inside with a small chink.
The noise she likely would not have noticed, if not for the fact that the impact turned on a datapad long since abandoned inside the crate. From the corner of her emerald optics she saw the soft, white glow of the datapad, beckoning her it seemed almost. Her helm turned to regard it, staring at the white over the lip of the crate before she sighed and sat up, hesitating for a moment as she weighed her options in her mind.
She could simply leave it be until it ran out of power, but who knew how long that would take and chances were the light would keep her from recharging in peace. Which meant that her best option would be to get up, and turn it off.
There was a pause before she did just that, sitting up all the way before sliding out of the berth to walk over to the crate, sifting through the few things that she had before she picked up the datapad that was at the very bottom, of course, and reached to turn it off..
Support structures, innervation, and vascularization are three of the many different main components within the structure of ones servo. These, along with sensitivity nodes scattered about the surface is what this chapter will cover…
Seeing the text glowing on the datapad before her...oh did that bring back the memories. She didn’t need the reminder of the things that she had been so heavily interested in when she was younger, and seeing them brought a twinge of pain, the feeling of loss that she often associated with the thoughts that went to her carrier...but it also brought something else. It was almost like a tingle, a thrill of delight that zipped up her spinal strut to the base of her neck, made her servos twitch with excitement and her expression light up like a star in the night sky.
“If you think you can find a way to do what you want and to do something that makes you happy...you fight for it. You do everything in your power to make it happen.”
A thrill and delight it might have brought, but such a feeling was halted and soon replaced by guilt as her expression dropped and darkened. She had promised her that she would fight for what she wanted, fight for it with every part of her being and she had broken that promise. Her carrier couldn’t be proud of her wherever she was at...she hadn’t made her proud at all. She had simply let life sweep her away and tell her what she was even if she felt the opposite, and now there was nothing more that she could do about it.
Not true and you know it, Sanitatem, you could still change that, you’re still young and you still have some fight left in you. You could still make her proud of you.
The thought came so suddenly to her it brought her expression to one of surprise. No, surely it was too late by now, she was too old. A young adult she might be but she wasn’t young enough to be able to go somewhere else, try to force her way into a profession that clearly never wanted her in it to begin with.
It just wasn’t possible...right?
But what if it was? She had made a promise a very long time ago that she would do everything that she could do to make what she wanted a reality. That she would strike out for herself and fight claw and denta to make it happen.
Didn’t she owe it to herself to at least try, after everything that has happened so far?
“People will try to keep you down, tell you that you can’t do it, that you aren’t built for it. Don’t listen to any of them. You are just as important as they are, if not more. You are just as smart and just as capable. So you fight whatever they have to say, alright?”
The thought of her carrier’s words brought a twitch of a smile to her face as she read over the words on the datapad, again and again, almost like a mantra, a silent promise.
“Alright carrier, you’ve worn me down. I’ll try.”
If that meant she would have to fight in the Pit itself, she’d try. If it meant that she could be free...free to be herself, then it would be worth it, no matter the scars she got along the way.
No matter what, she would make her carrier proud of her.
