date & time : november 11th 2178, 11:54 pm location : purgatory; tech infirmary closed : @theonwyndham
Fear paved way to paranoia. Paranoia bred a careful Android. A careful Android meant as few a trips to the robotics infirmary as possible. Precisely none, in fact. A conscious effort on PAM’s behalf to ensure her neural network remained untouched by the prison personnel, blissfully unaware of the Emotions bank that resided within and as a consequence, free of the clutches of the people that might erase the progress of her Creator. Her ‘brain’ far more precious than anything else attached. Though she would come to learn that the cost of one to spare the other proved equally high regardless of how she put it:
Without her limbs she could not operate to maximum efficiency. Result: her termination.
To actively avoid repair was a basic violation of her supposedly ingrained code. Result: re-programming.
As part of her repairs, they decide to rummage through the contents of her neural network and discover codes that existed outside of their mandate. Result: termination.
She had once read that Time heals all wounds. If that is so, then Time was determined to make her its enemy, and in exchange for its seconds, Time had made worse what she had hoped was only a minor fracture.
Organics. Synthetics. Hybrids. They were all their own brand of savagery. And yet as she cradled her mangled arm in an attempt to assume normalcy, her compassion for them did not lessen. Nothing was loved because it was faultless— and perfection in Purgatory did not exist. People would always bow to their pressure points. Even machines would break when the right amount of pressure was applied. PAM had the misfortune of both.
Desperation had driven her to the tech infirmary wing under the cover of night. Night, being the hours designated to allow inmates and human guard their rest while the androids assumed their role rather than any literal darkness. Security near the android’s infirmary would be almost non-existent. The Purgatory Androids were programmed to achieve many impressive feats, to execute excellence that exceeded their Organic counterparts; self-repair was not one of them. Not even PAM was exempted to this rule, but she learned. With the right tools and the correct manual, she would happily claim the title of the first Purgatory Android to successfully self-repair, not that anyone else shared this same ambition— or any ambition in fact.
A combination of a lack of heat signature and movement determined that the infirmary was unoccupied. With no small bravery on her part, PAM helped herself inside, cutting a direct path to the nearest examination table. Under the harsh artificial light she might’ve flinched had the state of her arm been reflected on any of the other inmates, where pain was a very real and (upon observation) a thoroughly overwhelming sensation. As she herself was unfamiliar to the concept of pain, she imagined it to be a lot like fear; a virus that overwhelmed her central processing unit with foreign information that assaulted her sensory perception. Much like how she felt now upon her optical sensors detecting a sudden heat signature from outside the corridor, slowing as they approached the swinging doors.
PAM froze. Quite literally. Staring vacantly at the far wall as she tried to pass for a broken droid neglected by its carer; a loser in the competition of duty against comfort. Comfort would always win when given the opportunity.
Only when the doors swung open to admit its second guest did PAM realise too late the small repair tool still fixed in her grasp. You see? Fear does that to you. Distorts, cripples, making it difficult to decipher practical, logical information upon the flooding of unsolicited messages.