Electric Sheep || an Android AU
@the-pillar
His awareness of the world filters through a film: The smooth but blurry passage of time, nights melding into days and weeks into months. Sound perceived in the dimmest and most logical sense only, just enough for his hazard sensors to deem the distant bustle of urban city life as a non-threat. The shutting down of his faculties piece by piece to conserve dwindling power: Temperature control settings disabled, soon followed by artillery, then the voicebox. His vision - high definition and powered by the most pioneering fiberoptics technology of the time - was last to go, cutting out one day with a click and a low-pitched whir. Finally, in the last attempt to preserve what little of his programmed consciousness remained, the power cell in his chest ticked its final tick, and put itself in hibernation.
The android’s once-sleek chrome and navy chassis dulled in the elements. Its synthetic hair matted with grime from the smog billowing from smokestacks and passing trucks. With each rainfall its joints caked with mud and sandy grit, the wires beneath the panels of his arms and legs degrading to rust. For an eternity it lay in the massive landfill which made its home, limbs strewn at awkward angles, the corners of its rubberized face torn and dinged, no longer distinguishable from the heaps of rotted food and torn mattresses and shattered glass around it. Time passed.
At once: Light. Brilliant light, so much it blinded him, his LED pupils flicking from neon green to red to white to adjust to the proper mode. The most minimal sensations returned to him: His body lying against something flat and cold. Movement first to his right, then behind him, too slow to be a threat but unexpected enough that the compartments fused to his forearms strained in failed attempts to slide back; his weapons system was still nonfunctional. He could not move. It was his mouth which slid open, not of his own volition, to communicate in a voice not his own: Cool, mechanical, and nongendered, not from the steel and titanium composing his vocal chords, but from deep in his chest cavity, the same one which now glowed a cyan blue in a palm-sized circle:
‘SYSTEM RESUMING. WARNING. POWER REMAINING: TWELVE PERCENT.’
