Virus was not exactly sure when news had first reached him of the new models. The presence of mechanical units and AI flitting through the company’s production line was a constant throughout his life. From self functioning experiment and surgery equipment to the first clunky allmate models, he had seen invention after invention churn out of R and D and woven into the island’s culture. Up until then, he had paid little mind to the strides in technological advancement. It had only been one of the many branches of research the company had their hands in and, for the most part, had not even been the main focus of Toue’s far-fetched goals. The bulk of progress had gone to genetics and the ways of which a person could be controlled. It had gone to the experimentation and slow cultivation of he and countless other test subjects, and the crowning achievement that was his precious charge, Sei. But as society began to take more and more to the ballooning success of allmates and other company products, the more Toue Inc too began to change its methods.Artificial eyes stared with little emotion at the row of unfinished android models. In a way, Virus and these machines could be considered cousins. Two breakthroughs in research that would change the company forever. Those eyes could deflect the beguiling influence of scrap, and these androids could produce music that could brainwash the masses. Both were perfectly capable of other things of course, but of the two, Virus would be considered the older model. And like all old models, was teetering the line of being obsolete. But he would be damned if walking music boxes replaced him. The number of human or partially living subjects had been in sharp decline for years, the space kept neatly filled by the growing numbers of robots. There were more defense type allmates on security than there were agents, and the pool of occupations for employees was getting smaller each day. The only way to remain secure - to remain alive - was to make sure one was considered an invaluable asset to the company.For Virus, that meant ensuring Sei was alive and safe. But with the soon to be complete production of these Alphas and artificial replications of the scrap user’s eyes, Sei’s own usefulness was coming to a close. It was only a matter of time before he expired and was replaced, and Virus would be doomed to follow suit. “Your primary selling point is how lifelike you look,” he muttered to the inactive shell, “how human you appear. Even now, it looks like you are only sleeping.“But you are not human. You are not alive, and no amount of circuitry and programming will ever change that.”
