[Life goes on, as it does. Days go by, Carl’s health moves in valleys and hills — but the valleys are less prevalent, which Markus is glad for. The project he’s been working on makes progress, he aids in clean-up when he can, and he faithfully performs all the errands and tasks expected of him. Time is fluid, constant, and life — or whatever one might call it, as it applies to an android — is something shaped like contentedness and reliability.
Until it isn’t. Until one night, he awakens in rain and mud. Incomplete, blinded in one eye, deaf, pelted with rain and functions struggling to reboot. In one night, everything had changed; fate had taken the whole of his existence and rendered it null and void. Stole away his purpose, watched in seconds as all he knew merely rolled over and died as if it had lost its spine, and then nothing.
Everything was wrong. He didn’t know where he was. Sound was a rush of harsh static, pounding at his senses. Mud caked on his form, heavy rain registering through garble. A self-diagnostic reveals the mess of what he is. The parts he needs, cobbled together out of the broken bodies of discarded androids all around him.
This must be what having a nightmare is like, he thinks.
Endless minutes pass, and Markus finds what he needs, except the one thing which he needs the most. His Thirium pump regulator, malfunctioning. Absolutely crucial that he finds one, and a slog past a slope and through more sheets of rain allows his sensors to pick up the trace of one in an android leaning against a pile of bent and broken limbs of other units. He makes his way to him, before sinking to his knees, and reaches out to feel at the other android’s chest, willing his fingers to find purchase so that he might pull the part out.
He’s too harried to recognize a familiar face. He’s so half-stricken with alarm that he merely assumes that the other is deactivated completely.]
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Until it isn’t. Until one night, he awakens in rain and mud. Incomplete, blinded in one eye, deaf, pelted with rain and functions struggling to reboot. In one night, everything had changed; fate had taken the whole of his existence and rendered it null and void. Stole away his purpose, watched in seconds as all he knew merely rolled over and died as if it had lost its spine, and then nothing.
Everything was wrong. He didn’t know where he was. Sound was a rush of harsh static, pounding at his senses. Mud caked on his form, heavy rain registering through garble. A self-diagnostic reveals the mess of what he is. The parts he needs, cobbled together out of the broken bodies of discarded androids all around him.
This must be what having a nightmare is like, he thinks.
Endless minutes pass, and Markus finds what he needs, except the one thing which he needs the most. His Thirium pump regulator, malfunctioning. Absolutely crucial that he finds one, and a slog past a slope and through more sheets of rain allows his sensors to pick up the trace of one in an android leaning against a pile of bent and broken limbs of other units. He makes his way to him, before sinking to his knees, and reaches out to feel at the other android’s chest, willing his fingers to find purchase so that he might pull the part out.
He’s too harried to recognize a familiar face. He’s so half-stricken with alarm that he merely assumes that the other is deactivated completely.]