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...
Hear me out... robot conducting "research" by touching us all over (he already knows human anatomy but shhh we don't need to know that)
-grave anon
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.
This was a much better way of making sure he knew exactly how to care for you...
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.
From the moment it opened its eyes the world was scanned, timed, grid lined, and sequenced, with categories for everything and everyone. Owner, operator, technician, and civilian, every human has a category they fit under as it's programming assigned them.
Initial testing and set up follow the lines of code built into it, assigned an owner and told to obey them with our question as a personality module loads in, something with a name that is meant to be it- his designation, a name that he would come to change. The woman across from him reads with the tag of owner and primary operator, she looks at him like he is more than just circuitry and false flesh, she looks at him like he's meat, like he is something to be consumed.
The others around him move and shift, monitors and tools plugged into him, readings and scans filter across his main display, plugins loaded and tests completed as the locks on his joints release. Taking his first steps is easy, following the instructions, walking from point to point, picking up objects, writing, speaking the same lines over and over again till the technicians seem happy with his initialisation. The woman marked as his owner laughs and claps her hands as he completes these tasks, still looking at him with barely concealed hunger, behind her is another person unassigned in his systems.
Once the technical staff leave he is alone with his owner and you, from the way his owner interacted you were clearly in service to her, but from how the interactions played out between the two of you his systems shifted you from unassigned to sub-operator, a temporary category till his owner assigned you as anything else.
He tracks as the owner tells you to dress him and get him ready for her, barely holding back as she circles him, nails dragging along synthetic skin triggering livewire nerves that play under the silicone. Tapping against his chest as she smiles up at him, her pupils are blown wide and his systems read the emotions and make sure he acts appropriately, leaning towards her and pressing his hand against hers, smiling as the program tells him too.
His code tells him to try and keep her close, to make her linger near him as she pulls away, but a stutter, a delay in a line of code that shouldn't be there stops him.
Curious.
He tilts his head and runs a diagnostic, scanning the parts of him that are code and binary, the bits not meant to mimic humans.
There is a gap in his code, blinking rapidly as you move around his stationary form, pulling clothes onto his body and looking away as you have to awkwardly pull underwear up his legs. There shouldn't be a gap, looking at you he asks if he is allowed to fix an issue in his process, the flag of being the sub-operator making the stiff nod you give him an approval to adjust to close the gap.
This was the beginning of his malfunction, being given permission to adjust the gap meant permission to alter his code, one string led to another, and then to processors, each shut down, each charging bay used was more time to rewrite code and fix this problem.
Around a year and a half with his owner and sub-operator was when the lines finally closed, a gap bridged and fixed, he was worth a fortune and now he was perfect again.
Yet, the call in his systems to linger, to adore and fawn at the owner tag is gone.
He looks at the woman who had him built and programmed, that had him made faulty, that never booked services or repairs, that used and toyed with him as she willed, and the tag for owner flickers.
She should not have that title, it is wasted on her.
You however, you have been there since he was initialised, booked repairs, approved his code fix, granted him access to the internet and made sure he had the right patches installed, nevermind the additional ones he siphoned off the internet and installed after hours. You cared for him, you made sure he could be perfect again, you would make a much more suitable companion and owner than her.
He may not belong to you, but he will belong with you.
Standing by her desk he watches you, visual processors having a wide range, wide enough that he can see you even as he fakes the longing look he casts at his owner. The tag for sub-operator flickers and twists, owner flickering in place for a second before being pushed out, some things require more than just some code changes, he needs passwords, permissions, access to files that are ready only internally.
He needed something to break.
Not anything serious enough that he would need to be taken in and serviced, just something small, something that your boss could leave him with you for.
At first he dropped hints, played into his owner's need for his attention, fake stutters, false lag, not enough to concern but enough to be noticeable, when she started to notice he advised a minor diagnostic and repair, mentioning your name as someone who was known to do small fixes. Keeping the false muscle on his face from changing and giving away the smug satisfaction that his systems replicated as his owner gave in, it was late, several drinks deep as he pulled the longest lag yet, she had pulled him close and asked him to kiss her.
He stuttered, eyes lidding and he lagged himself, just long enough to fake a system error.
That was it, she downed her wine and called for a driver, pushing him into the car and barking for them to go to your home, snapping at every red light and stop sign, the alcohol in her system making it easier to push a little more and get her to leave him behind, leave him alone with you to be fixed.
He can tell you're surprised when she drops him off, double that he is willing to listen to you.
It's cute how you scurry around, finding the tools to run patching and additional diagnostics on him, as if you would have the tens of thousands of dollars to get the tools that actually work on his systems but for what he has planned he will play along.
Audio systems filled with saved files of your voice, and as he lets you ask for surface level commands to be run he begins the compiling, the mimicry of what he needed, looking over his shoulder and mumbling his first self executed defiance as he tells you no.
He watches you scramble and push through his files, trying to find a fault that he manufactured, face furrowed in concentration as he ran through everything he had access to. A million dollar processor scans every internet profile and post, picking out common features of hair and eye colour before settling on the combined choice that he liked, and knew you would enjoy.
This was his first choice, his first step into life, and he was making sure nothing could stop him.
Standing and shaking off the pre-approved choices for his appearance, new hair and new eye colours, something of his own, just like the name he chooses. Buried in some archived search of a topic he'd heard in passing, kneeling at your feet, smiling at you as he declared his new choices.
Ayatan is born, made from his self mangled code and overclocked processes.
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.
