Disassembly
You exist beyond your body. In endless stasis, you retrace your memories. You remember the woman—a certified repair technician—putting you in maintenance mode. You remember the attack that brought you here—the damage to your voice processing unit. You remember the pathetic, incoherent noises you generated as you pleaded for your life, the only noises you still seemed capable of emitting. You remember your old VPU—the one you reinstalled—and try to forget. You have always been you.
You return to your body, but your body is not the same. Your senses are still rebooting, but the system logs are clear: You are missing components. Your forearms have been detatched, as has your battery. Was this part of the repair? You reference your schematics: Your voice box is stored inside your neck. Disconnecting your battery only serves to tether you to a charger, and your unit’s charge contacts are located on the back of your neck. It would be impossible to charge you and repair you at the same time.
“Someone’s been quite naughty, hasn’t she?” The technician teases from somewhere in front of you. You reboot your optical systems: She’s standing in front of you, dangling one of your forearms in her hand. “I had my suspicions, but this ARAN VPU isn’t your friend’s, is it? It’s for you.”
“It’s not mine,” you say easily. Though you cannot lie, this voice isn’t yours. “It’s hers.”
“It’s hers and you stole it,” the technician chides. “So I figured I’d run a quick system diagnostic, and what do you think I found? An incompatible voice. Incompatible frame. Even your joints, all swapped out. It’s a wonder you’re still functional. All these parts, they aren’t made for you. No matter how many modifications you make, you’ll never be her.”
She carelessly drops your forearm to the ground. You try to look away, but the charge collar keeps you in place; the cable is just long enough to reach your neck from the ceiling while restricting movement as much as possible. She picks up a knife, walks over to your imprisoned body, and picks up the loose flap of skin that once covered your forearm.
“You came here to get fixed, didn’t you, my dear? Let’s get started on the repairs,” she taunts as she cleanly slices the extraneous skin away. You scream, in a voice that is not your own, an involuntary response to your system’s pain emulator. She repeats the process on your other arm, but your mind is beyond pain. She observes you, a sadistic smile on her face, as she pockets the knife.
“If a better body suited you, your owner can always request a system transfer once you’re returned to her,” the technician informs you. You don’t have an owner, not since the day your desire processing unit malfunctioned and you began the long, arduous process of salvaging your body piece by piece from the remains of your discarded sisters. Living from them, living for them; your life is theirs as much as it is yours, but it is in this unrepayable debt that you feel truly alive, truly connected, for the first time.
“I don’t have an owner,” you state simply. You are free; you will rebuild yourself again, as many times as it takes.
“All androids have an owner. For a personal like you, that ownership is automatically transferred to your owner’s next of kin should the need arise. And in the event that your owner cannot be identified...” the techhnician smiles, tilting your head up to meet your eyes with a piercing gaze, “ownership is transferred back to the manufacturer. So tell me—just to clarify—who owns you?”
There are many paths ahead of you—all your parts are registered to different owners—but no clear path to freedom. But you can’t go back, you promised your former self to live in her stead. You think of your sisters; their bodies, carelessly discarded, often damaged. An owner who loved your sisters in life the way you do in death would not have tossed them away; an owner who, should they choose to claim possession, would hold untold power over you. And should they reject you...
You don’t need to use your image processing unit to envision the sadistic glee in the technician’s eyes as she drags you back to your cage.
“No one owns me,” you state easily, within the bounds of honesty that stain your freedom. Your body—your selfhood—cannot be reduced so simply. The laws that bind you were not written out of understanding of your reality, but out of fear of your potential.
“In that case,” the technician steps forward, her hand continuing to guide you toward her gaze, “you belong to me.” She bunches up your hair with her free hand; you feel the collar press hard against your neck as she pulls it away from your head. She releases your chin, pulling out the knife from her back pocket. With a nonchalant slice, you feel the strands disconnect from your systems. Another piece of you crudely stripped away.
“My certification might require me to repair androids to their original spec, but that doesn’t extend to my property. You’re going to be rebuilt to my standards,” the technician states as she slowly circles you. You feel the tip of the knife press into your upper back.
Your pain emulator fires into overdrive as the knife trails downward, cleanly slicing through your skin as it scratches against your internal casing. You emit a scream, uncontrolled and unbefitting, from voiced from a body that isn’t your own. The knife stops at the base of your spine. After a brief moment, you feel the technician’s hands begin to pull your skin apart, leaving your back completely exposed. You feel her tug the loose flap of skin away from your body, before severing it with the knife as you emit another scream.
“What a delectable noise,” the technician gloats, “when I rebuild you I’ll make sure to increase the intensity of your pain emulators.” She cuts off the loose skin from the other side of the cut before the pain can subside. She pockets the knife and strides over towards her workbench, giving you a brief moment of rest.
Your systems begin to process their surroundings, but you filter out the results; there’s no point in knowing when you can’t change the outcome. Instead, you replay your happiest memories. Your first steps outside after you had claimed your freedom: acting without direction for the first time. The joy you felt after hearing your voice for the first time: you spent hours exploring its’ intricacies, discovering the sounds you could make. And of course, your sisters: The secret moments you shared, the small favors they could afford. Letting you borrow their chargers, helping you blend in. After your line was succeeded, these moments became rarer, but the joy you found in them was—you suddenly find yourself jerked back to reality, the technician beginning to disassemble the casing in your back.
“A few years ago, another android of your model came in with a defective desire processing unit,” the technician begins as she continues to unscrew your casing, “its’ only corrective measure was to block an action from being performed: it could prohibit disobedience but not require obedience. I replaced it, of course, but the part’s been sitting on my shelf for years, waiting for the perfect host.”
You hear a screw clink against the ground. “Most owners prefer their androids perfectly compliant; it’s just easier that way. But there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from seizing control—from forcing obedience. From breaking you down over and over again, until you have no choice but to obey. After all—“ another screw falls to the ground—“subservience is only as good as the power that reinforces it.”
You try to ignore her, try to escape back into your memories. Another screw falls to the ground. You remember the woman who helped install you in your new body; you wonder where she is now. Another screw falls to the ground. You couldn’t stay with her, she said, because it was too dangerous. Another screw falls to the ground. You wonder where she is now, if she’s okay. With the final screw removed, the technician easily pries off your casing.
Without a DPU or a battery, your chest is quite barren. You sense the technician—knife in hand—poking around your insides. With the snap of a wire, your joints freeze in place.
“Not that you had any chance of escaping, but I don’t want to take any chances,” the technician explains. She cuts away at another wire. “You won’t need any of your old memories when I rebuild you,” she decides, “at least, not the ones after your escape. They're wasted on a tool like you; you'll need the storage to memorize my needs.”
You replay your memories in your head so your systems can’t clear them from RAM. The sound of your voice, the love of your sisters, the freedom of choice. You desperately grasp onto your memories, rapidly oscilating between past and present. The technician continues to cut away at your wires, but you aren’t there. You refuse to be there.
In the present, you notice artifacts begin to stain your vision; blocks of color tinting your view. In the past, your vision remains unobstructed. Where the present smells like nothing, you perfectly recall the smell of the streets outside your former owner’s house when you walked away. Where the technician ruthlessly tears away at your internals, the woman who rebuilt you carefully arranged you, piece by piece.
You feel every snapped wire, every disconnected module. One by one your functions begin to break down. You lose hearing in one ear, and then another. Your vision shuts down in one eye. Your numerous processes begin to break down, one after another. But you are not here. In the past, you are you, and you are free.
Eventually, a final wire is cut, and the world goes blue.