Work Text:
The soft clinking of silverware on ceramic was the only noise around the dining table at which they all sat, mother and father across from her as she picked at the braised lamb shank upon her plate. Her appetite evaded her as she dwelled on the question she had mused for days now, a question that would need father's approval and mother to back down, individually difficult tasks. But together? A monumental hurdle.
"Tessa dear, what's the matter now? Did those drones ruin your dinner again?" Mothers voice drifted across the table with the presence of fingernails down a chalk board, and the involuntary flinch that twitched through her sent silver singing of ceramic once again.
"N-No mother, it's fine…" That was a disservice to the drones who had prepared their dinner, but one she could only offer in lieu of blaming them for a failure they hadn't made. Across the table, mother huffed with an expression Tessa didn't look at, but one she knew meant mother had ignored her reply.
"Then why are you picking at your dinner? Normally you eat lamb like a starving urchin." As mother's fake laughter tittered across the table, Tessa dug her fork into a chunk of meat and watched as it almost fell apart onto her fork. Popping the small chunk into her mouth and relishing the sensation for a few seconds, she spoke again, emboldened for but a moment.
"I wanted to ask father something, a-actually." Daring to glance up, Tessa's eyes managed to work their way all the way up to mother's displeased frown, before she ducked her gaze away and over to father's plate as he set his wine glass down with an authoritative thunk.
"What is it, Tessa?" Direct as usual, her father's tone was hardly her mother's disapproving clucking, but his gruffness was a strange comfort.
"I was... Interested in a technician’s course… a-at JCJenson of course!" Her hasty addition momentarily occupied her focus, just long enough for her to summon the last of her courage to prepare for Mother's-
"Tessa, why on earth would you want to mess around with those filthy walking scrap heaps!? A delicate girl like you doing such a dirty job? Absolutely-"
"Louisa." The single word, not particularly stressed or forceful, from Father shut Mother up in a heartbeat, accompanied by the snap of her ever-present fan closing abruptly. Father was silent for a few seconds as he took another sip of his wine, before with the clunk of it returning to the table, he continued. "This is the first I have heard of this. When did you decide this, Tessa?"
Swallowing the trepidation as much as she could, Tessa poked at her shank in an attempt to distract herself further, spearing another chunk of meat and dipping it back into the broth at the bottom of her plate. "W-Well.. I wanted to do s-something, what with me finishing school…"
She almost grimaced, almost betrayed her opinions on St Peter's, the utter hellhole of posh bints that it had been, all of whom tittered and laughed at gossip. Abigail's fake laugh, Vanessa's utterly overwhelming designer perfume that made her smell like a dog, Tessa wouldn't trade her monotonous existence in the gilded cage for any semblance of that place.
The sobering thought reinforced her, buoyed her onwards. "I-I'd like to try it, just to see what it's about. I-It'd help me with the company too! Get my foot in the door! I know you wanted me to look at joining, father, b-but I'm not sure I could do much around the office.."
Her father was silent for several seconds, seconds that seemed to tick by ever more agonisingly as he simply stared into space, lost in silent thought. Seconds became minutes as Tessa quietly squirmed under his gaze every time it drifted towards her, holding for several seconds as he seemed to stare through her very core as she weaved tanned fingers in between each other nervously.
"Well, I for one-" Mother's attempt to break the silence, her own tone hinting at discomfort in the silence, but it was quickly quashed by Father's.
"Louisa." With a hmph and a snap of her fan as it opened, Mother fell silent again as Father rumbled a reply. "Perhaps it could be good to keep you occupied. And as far as I'm concerned, you spending your time benefitting the company is better than you wasting your time around the manor."
Tessa blinked at her lamb in surprise. That had been… surprisingly easy to get Father's permission. But then he rumbled again as he lifted his wine glass. "I will permit it, on one condition."
"Y-Yes Father." His tone was authoritative and decisive, and Tessa knew full well that there was no negotiating with it - it was a diktat, her submission to it was a prerequisite as much as it was a formality.
"You can entertain yourself with your little hobby until you are twenty-four. Then you will leave it behind and I will prepare you to take over my role when I retired." Twenty-four. Her breath hitched for a second. Six years, that’s all she was getting to try out her life's passion.
Beside Father, Mother gave another huff. "James, she doesn't need six years to mess around with those filthy droids-"
"I have no use for her until she is old enough to put such childish distractions behind her." Stern words drew an instinctive flinch out of her, even when she wasn't being addressed directly this time. In fact, it was almost as if they had forgotten she was there, even though they both doubtless knew she was listening. "She will grow out of it, but if she is to do so, she may as well pick up something useful from the experience. Six years is ample enough time."
How does such a victory feel like a defeat?
"Now, good afternoon, everyone." The woman at the front of the room wore an almost wry grin on her face as she stepped back from the small desk where she had deposited her bag and jacket a handful of seconds prior. "Welcome to your first class in the JCJenson technicians’ program. I'm sure you've all read through the course materiel, but for those whose memories might be slipping, this is your six-month qualification course to qualify you to work on JCJenson branded Worker Drones."
The first thing Tessa had noticed when she had sat in the room was how different it felt to St Peter's - whereas her highly selective girls’ high school had been stuffy and uptight, the JCJenson Technical Education Qualification College - TEQ for short, as she had been informed by one of the student secretaries - was more like a university. Or at least, the universities she had visited with St Peter's during the career’s week.
Now that had been a low point of Year 12.
But the classroom at TEQ was so different. Polished wood and marble were traded for quick pour concrete and linoleum, the smart wooden desks were replaced with cheap tables made of laminated wood, and chairs that gave her back an ache no matter how she sat. It was a stark change from the luxury that she had become accustomed to throughout her years. Mother and Father had been right, this was hardly a suitable place for someone like her.
It was perfect.
"Now a few formalities first. We will be working hands on for the majority of these tutorial classes, so your readings will need to be done before class." Reaching into the bag she had brought with her, the tutor withdrew something that Tessa immediately recognised, drawing her slightly forwards in the still uncomfortable chair. The woman hefted the lump of carefully machined metal above her head as if she had barely a care in the world about its wellbeing. "This is a Lambdic servo motor - by the end of this session you will all be intimately familiar with it. This is the basis of JCJenson's worker drones, so if you can't wrap your head around this, well. Tough shit."
Tessa could hardly help the grin creeping onto her lips as the tutor brought her hands together in a soft clap as the class gave a few chuckles. "Now, for those who don't know, my name is Maria. I'm both your course tutor and a senior technician at JCJenson, where I've worked for eleven years now. When I started, JCJ was just rolling out the D-5 series of worker drones, and we've come a long way from them to the new V-X series that came out a few months back."
"Now, for the most part you will be trained on JCJenson drones as far back as the E series, as just about anything else beyond that will be honestly not worth repairing. I'm sure several of you are familiar with that old C-11 Series that UNSW has kept running since 3007, and yes worker drones can last for upwards of thirty, nearly forty years, but so little of that drone is original that I question if you can even call it the same drone at this point." Waving her hand dismissively, Maria tapped at the tablet in her grasp, having set the servomotor down, and shortly thereafter the projector clicked on. "Now, we'll start with some basic introductions…"
"Welcome to week 13 - you are all now officially halfway towards your qualifications." The tutor, whom Tessa had long since learned was named Maria, gave that same wry grin she had thirteen weeks prior as she stood in front of a table with a sheet covering a suspiciously shaped lump upon it. Even with the distance between her and Tessa, and the sheet concealing the actual object, Tessa could identify exactly what laid underneath. After all, she had done the weekly class preparation. "This is where we shift from the small scale to the actual meat of the course."
With a handful of motions, Maria carefully removed the sheet, exposing the partially dissected form of a worker drone laying upon the table, its polymer-nanocarbon casing unlatched and resting in place, just barely revealing the inner workings of the drone. "This is the culmination of the small scale work we've been doing, assembled into one package. This is an E-12 series worker drone, they're currently being phased out in favour of the J-10 series. This one came into JCJ earlier today for decommissioning due to damage after an accident. Your task this afternoon is to pull this drone apart and catalogue the damage that it sustained, and where it came from if applicable."
"Should we be expecting anything?" A voice from behind Tessa spoke up, and Maria paused for a second before offering a small shrug.
"Not a clue, all I was told is that the unit was no longer serviceable, and would need to be decommissioned." Maria folded her arms, but shortly thereafter unfolded her right arm and gestured at the worker. "Come up and take a look."
The noise of a dozen or so people standing filled the room, but Tessa's desk at the front of the room allowed her to slip right into the front of the crowd that built around the tables upon which the worker rested, giving her a proper look at the worker drone's body. The battery had clearly been disconnected going off the lack of error message on the visor, likely as a safety precaution, lest the drone accidentally combust at a rather inopportune moment, but otherwise the externals of the drone seemed fine at a first glance.
It was then that Tessa paused for a moment, gaze caught momentarily upon the rather notable physical features of the worker drone. The subtle swell of the chest meant to imitate a woman's body, which alone told Tessa that this drone had been at least programmed as female, but also the somewhat slender figure that showed that this drone wasn't just an off-the-shelf model.
Carefully, Tessa reached out and delicately lifted the disconnected chest piece, making an effort to not pull anything out of place with the shell as she set the polymer-nanocarbon upon the drone's legs. A cursory glance at the internals furthermore didn't spark any immediate warning signs, even as heads around her craned to get a better look at the drone's compact and tightly packed torso cavity. Though she had seen diagrams, the sheer lack of internal room was enough to catch her somewhat off-guard, she would have struggled to fit just about anything else in there.
"That… a non-standard cooling system."
The quiet comment from one of her classmates spawned a clamour of activity as realisation spread like a bushfire, each of them searching for, and finding judging solely off the increasing volume, more and more after-market modifications to the body of the worker. New cooling fans, an after-market heat regulation system, increased oil reservoirs, a secondary oil pump and even mountings for additional battery banks. Shortly thereafter, there was a soft crack that drew Tessa's attention, only to watch as the top half of the worker's head was removed, only for even more chatter to spike up. Additional processors and a larger personality matrix, along with a top-of-the-line emotional interface, albeit a few generations old.
Tessa wasn't looking there, averting her gaze at the almost perverse scene of her classmates pulling this worker apart as if it were an exotic animals’ carcass. Instead, she lifted the workers left hand into her own, gently turning it over to reveal the small bracelet that had been wrapped around its wrist, a dainty little black thing encrusted with a small, purple gemstone.
A moment of profoundness came over her. This worker wasn't simply a drone - it had been a companion, maybe even someone's partner. It had been lovingly cared for, modified with some of the most expensive kit on the market, adorned with jewellery and personal touches that spoke to the drone’s personality, and she didn't doubt that the owner saying goodbye was probably a difficult experience.
This worker had been alive. It hadn't simply broken down, it had lived and died the same as any human.
Her passion, her interest in the inside of this worker and how it ticked, dried up like a billabong in the summer. Suddenly it wasn't so engrossing. It felt wrong to dig around inside this body, like she had no right to pick it apart for her own interests.
The personality engram probably wasn't even salvageable, that was the simple fact of older drones - most couldn't have their personalities forward-ported to new bodies, especially not a leap from an E series to a V-X.
Gently, Tessa's grip on the worker's left hand shifted from simply cupping its lifeless hand, to clasping it gently as she mourned the life lost for several seconds. And then a thought came over her.
"Phew…. Haah. Just… a little more to the left, on the table."
Dutifully, and without remark, the two male worker drones hefted the upper end of the drone's torso onto the table sitting at the foot of her bed without so much as struggling, leaving Tessa to grunt in a rather unladylike manner as she strained her muscles to swing the worker's legs up onto the table in turn. With a heaved sigh of relief, Tessa allowed the drone's feet to drop onto the table somewhat carelessly as she stumbled over to collapse backwards onto her bed and drew ragged breaths.
She might have only been forced to carry the worker drone from her the chauffer's car to the door, but Tessa was acutely aware she was not very strong.
For several seconds she gazed up at the canopy over her bed, embroidered with the constellations over New Adelaide that had long since been drowned out by the ambient light glow of the city, no matter how distant it was. Seconds bled into minutes as Tessa caught her breath, staring up at the faux abyss of the nights sky as she really grasped the gravity of the situation.
She had a worker drone. Her own worker drone, not Fathers, not Mothers, not the family's and not JCJenson's. Her own.
Admittedly, it needed a lot of work. They'd figured out in class that the drone had suffered a breakdown of its personality matrix and had a deteriorated motherboard that had resulted in a fried central processor and corrupted memory banks. That meant replacing a lot of the drones’shardware and completing a fresh install of its software, and unfortunately that probably also included its personality engram, not to mention repairing the wear and tear that the drone had suffered over the course of its life.
But hopefully she could manage that on her own. It couldn't be too hard, especially given they were studying exactly this sort of thing in class.
And that was without mentioning that a lot of the kit that was in this drone was already in good nick - she could easily reuse the entire cooling system and battery mountings. The oil pumps easily passed muster, and the servos were fresh rebuilds that Tessa could easily get a couple years of life out of. Even the vocal modulator and optics seemed fine, but they were both fragile and finnicky at the best of times.
Fixing determination onto her face, Tessa rocked her legs forwards and sat upright, looking at the limp worker on her table with growing resolve. Humming to herself as she stood, she stepped around to stand against the long side of the table and examine the worker's face as she spoke to the unmoving drone. It didn't feel right, simply listing off her designation - E-12X1062023 - so Tessa gave the worker a name, at least until she could pick for herself. "Let's see what we can do, E…"
Thinking of E still put her in a foul mood.
Well.. Maybe not foul, but it didn't make her happy. She had been given the mother of all prizes, a nearly perfectly intact E series worker drone in near perfect nick, and she'd managed to screw up its repair so badly that the thing was damn near worthless. Her 'test' had cost her five days of work, including two testing and actuating servos, all for her first attempt at a system test to crash and burn horrifically, as a hundred amps shot through wire rated for twenty, and in a heartbeat burned the insulation off every single wire Tessa could see, filling her room with noxious white smoke.
The good news was that most of the drone's internals that she had replaced had survived and were in good enough condition to use E essentially as a spare parts box, but the drone's wiring and surge protection was entirely ruined by the exposure to massive amperage. Frankly, she could have taken out E's wiring and rebuilt her from the ground up, but that was not only beyond her skill level, but would have been more effort than it was worth.
Her subsequent attempts had fared little better. Her second try had been born more out of frustration at herself over her colossal mistake with E, and had predictably resulted in another failure. But subsequent attempts over the past eight or so months hadn't simply been handed to her as E had been. Instead, she had taken to delving into the disassembly plant, where workers were decommissioned and disposed of - slowly but surely.
But the demand for worker drones was clearly demonstrated at the disassembly plant, as a backlog of drones marked for disposal had resulted in the almost apocalyptic sight of worker drones dumped in enormous piles dozens of metres high, all in various states of disrepair and left to simply rot away.
It had seemed like a scene out of Terminator - they sure as hell didn't make films like that anymore. Now days it was all effects and personality engrams of dead actors, and that was without touching the whole topic of a potential machine uprising.
The workers at the plant, however, had been in stark contrast to the bleak landscape they worked at - for the two men, Jim and David, who worked the gate had been more than happy to let her have her pick of the workers that were otherwise slated to rot away on the scrap heaps, or be burned to ash within the molten heart of the foundry. They had showed her to where the most recent deliveries had dumped their claim of souls, and had then helped her lug her selected drone back to the car all but once.
That once had been the first time, when she had been too proud to accept help until she had stepped in a puddle and sunk up to her shins, utterly ruining her jeans in the process.
Not that the trip had accomplished anything major - she'd wasted the aforementioned worker hurriedly trying to fix up E by transferring her already damaged personality matrix to the new body.
But this worker, number eight if the various serial numbers on scattered parts around her new workroom were to be believed, was looking promising, almost as promising as E had been. Mostly intact head, but she had replaced its shattered display and the vocal modulator too, for good measure. Most damage to the optic also tended to mess up the modulator, at least on H-K series droids with their compact internals and reinforced dermal plating.
The torso had also looked pretty good, hard not to with the reinforced dermal plating of an industrial model, though she had been somewhat unsure about the damage to the oil pumps - just dents and dings, signs they would surely need to be replaced eventually, but they seemed oil tight at the very least, which was all she was really looking for in this test. If this worker managed to power on without shorting itself out, or imploding due to some damage Tessa hadn't noticed, then she'd put the 'good' parts she had accrued over her various attempts into it.
"O.. kay. Positive feedback from the battery so you're… getting power from it." As the worker sat motionless despite the supplied power to its core, Tessa stared at the drone with its chest piece missing, biting her lower lip as she looked at the unmoving masculine worker that was still seemingly devoid of power on her workbench. An inauspicious start, to say the very least. "Then… why aren't you turning on..."
Cautiously, and after ensuring she was wearing both her gloves, and her welding goggles, Tessa crouched down to get a better view of the connection to the worker's head from inside the chest cavity. Gently reaching inside with her insulated gloves, Tessa gently nudged a handful of wires aside, nervously applying pressure to each of them one at a time, testing each for resistance that they should have been giving. It wasn't until she got to the black wrapped cable that ran from the battery into the drone's head that she found the problem, as the cable in question loosely shifted under her finger.
Pursing her lips in momentary frustration, Tessa pulled her head back and withdrew her hand from the worker's chest, stepping around to peer into the workers head for a moment, for such was all she needed to spot the place where the connector had failed. Reaching over to flick the power off, Tessa gave it a second for the charge to bleed from the system, before reaching in and reconnecting the motherboard to the power supply and flicking the switch with impatient anticipation.
And as she did so, her expectations plunged, as she stared at the crack in the emotional interface.
But she barely had the chance to do so, before the drone before her displayed a hint of life as its display flickered with little more than a spattering of pixels. Yet it was life that she had not seen on one of her projects before now, and so it had her scarpering around to stand over its display nervously, softly calling out to it as she not so subtly read its serial designation. "Uhm… hello? H-47K39593637?"
"... I-I-Identification re-re-re-re-recogni-ii-i-i-ised, H-47K39593637." With a burst of life, the worker's screen flickered on, the same standard, light blue display that she had seen on just about every drone in the manor. The worrying stutter of a drone with something wrong between its motherboard and vocal modulator filled her work room, but Tessa hardly noticed in that moment, the pensive grimace that had adorned her face at the sight of the damaged emotional interface momentarily forgotten in the excitement.
"Holy crap, you work! Yes!" Pumping her fist in momentary celebration, Tessa grinned at the drone. "Alright - override Seven-Eight-Romeo-Victor-India-Charlie-Three. Service mode initiate. Run system diagnostic."
"Ser-ser-er-vice mode enga-ga-gaged." The drone's stutter had graduated from irksome to worrisome, there was clearly something majorly wrong with this worker's hardware, but it was something that Tessa could hopefully fix. Sure, chopping and changing parts would not be an efficient way to go about fixing this drone, but it was a way she was at least competent at. Abruptly, the drone's stuttering voice changed to a prerecorded human one, issuing instructions that Tessa recognised from class, technician directives regarding maintenance. "ERROR: This worker drone has encountered damage to its emotional modulator. Contact JCJenson for further instruction."
A groan bubbled from her lips. Trust the one bloody drone I get working to be buggered.
"Shutdown." Issuing the instruction as she turned away, the worker drone audibly went limp behind her, giving her the peace of mind to pull off her left glove and flick through the quick reference handbook she held in her right. Passing through the advice for several series of drones, eventually she worked her way through the E models to the H-K series and abruptly came to a screeching halt.
"Oh, come the f-…" The curse died on her lips as she nervously glanced at the door, before continuing in a slightly higher pitched voice. "-bloody hell on!"
There had been a reason she had tried the H-K series of drones - they were more robust, intended for more physical labor and work in industry. It would have been a massive boon to her plans if she had gotten one of them online, which had been why she was so willing to take one that had suffered damage, even to the head.
But with that positive came a fairly major negative. The H-K series were designed to be less prone to damage, with increased dermal plating, anti-crush structuring and enhanced servomotors, but all those additions had left them prone to more severe damaged to critical systems. If a H-K series broke, it usually broke for good.
An emotional modulator wasn't the end of the world, but the effort of sourcing a new one, specifically for a H-K series' compact head would be a pain in the ass. Whilst she could go buy one (or even just walk in and take one from the production line based solely on the authority of the name 'Elliott'), that would entirely undermine the point of the exercise she was undertaking.
And so, with reluctance, Tessa flicked the power off and heaved a groan into her hands. Why wasn't five months training enough!?
"You are going to work!"
Speaking more to the drone's form than the drone itself, Tessa stared intently down at the new drone on her workbench, trying her best to forget that not two weeks prior it had been that H-K industrial drone laying there. That particular drone had been salvaged for the parts that she had put into it, and then what few good parts, bespoke to the H-K line as they may have been, that had remained within it, before she had reluctantly ordered the household drones to take it back to the scrapyard in preparation for her next attempt.
And this one was going to work. She had to.
Toying with the bracelet that E had been wearing all those moons ago, and that she had taken to wearing on her own left wrist, Tessa's focus remained on the worker drone that was laying on her workbench as she picked over everything that could cause problems. This time she had bench tested the components in the J-10X series corporate drone, running each of them through stress testing to ensure she hadn't missed anything like she had with the H-K.
Admittedly, this drone was in fairly good nick. Sure, her central processor was outdated, and the firmware was essentially obsolete, but the J-10 series were themselves obsolete, with even the J-10X spec being replaced by the V-X line. This particular drone had seemingly been a JCJenson model, just judging by the corporate branding that rested upon the drone's right shoulder blade, but if it was then the drone's presence on the scrapheap made little to no sense.
After all, the drone was in fairly good nick, it would only take a handful of updates to get its firm and software up to date, and most of the internals were in good shape. Yes, some of it was running a little slow, but that was just how older drones got, especially once support for their makes was suspended in favour of their replacements. What Tessa couldn't update to working spec was easily replaceable, even if some of it was notionally incompatible.
She'd only had to replace the empty void where the drone's battery should have been, and that had only taken her a handful of minutes to find a suitable replacement - it wasn't her first J-10 series, and they hardly had bespoke hardware. What she had spent most of her time on was making very, very slow and careful inspections of just about anything that she could imagine would cause a critical failure.
The drone's processing core was still in place, her wig had been momentarily moved aside to expose the inner workings of the drone's skull, from which Tessa had managed to assure the fitness of the central processor, motherboard, memory banks, RAM and just about everything else in her head. The only thing she hadn't managed to get at was the gyro, but a bit of quick thinking, and the delivery of an endoscope for her toolkit, had allowed her to ascertain that the worker's gyro was in perfectly fine condition.
Her wiring and surge protection was also in good shape, and Tessa had taken extra care to double, then triple check the rating of the wire as to not overload it during testing. The worker's optical sensors ran their calibration testing perfectly, her audio sensors worked just fine, as did her servos, actuators and shock absorbers. Tessa had even checked her fuel pump - the face full of oil she had earned, in turn, told her exactly how well that worked.
What was there really still to test?
Other than her nerves…
Taking a steeling breath, Tessa stepped back from the worker drone and gazed up at the ceiling, drawing a heavy breath that quickly turned into a heavy sigh. Please let this work.
Carefully securing the drone's white polymer-nanocarbon chest piece back to the rest of her chassis, Tessa moved around to the head of the workbench, set about doing the same for the drone's cranial plating, making sure to keep its wig out of the seams as she secured the head in place. It was as she was tightening the final screw that the tick of uncertainty kicked in, and her left hand trembled around the screwdriver in its grasp - had she really checked everything?
Nothing for it.
Quashing the uncertainty as best she could, which consisted mainly of simply brushing it aside and trying to ignore it, Tessa flicked on the drone's power supply and watched as her display rippled with a flicker of pixels that drew a bated breath from Tessa. Yet unlike with the H-K series before her, this drone properly completed its booting process, as her optic displayed a half dozen loading messages, before arriving at an empty prompt screen. Clearing her throat, Tessa's hands scrambled for the technician’s manual on the shelf of the workbench, flicking through to the J series pages and finding the relevant words. "Initiate 'Start Protocol Sierra One-Nine', launch in safe mode, override code Juliet-Charlie-Juliet-One-Oh."
The worker's prompt screen typed the words as she spoke them, coming to a stop as she finished talking as it hung for several seconds, waiting for further remarks. As three seconds ticked past, the drone's display transformed into a loading wheel, spinning for several seconds as it thought, before the wheel turned into a bar that stretched almost entirely across it's display, slowly filling as Tessa stared, entirely lacking the heart to do anything else but wait with bated breath as it inched closer and closer to the end.
She had no idea how long it took for the worker to boot in safe mode, but what Tessa did know was that she watched almost every second of it as that bar crept closer and closer to the end, before finally the progress bar met the edge, and promptly vanished, leaving the worker's screen black.
Tessa blinked, and when she opened her eyes, the worker stared back at her with what seemed like.. Surprise?
"Gah!" Jumping in surprise, Tessa took a step back as the worker's gaze followed her blankly for several seconds as she recovered, silently observing her. "U-Uh… Oh, you're in safe mode, duh."
Lightly smacking her forehead in realisation, Tessa glanced down at the technician’s manual for further instruction. "Alright… J-10X111001, run full system diagnostic."
"Running full system diagnostic." As the worker's eyes disappeared behind a dozen boxes and logs that opened over her display, Tessa considered the drone. The worker's voice was… different. Tessa barely saw the female workers around the manor, but from the limited interactions she had with them, their monotonous voices seemed to be all tuned to the same settings. This worker's voice somehow had notably more character in it, even despite the monotonous, flat tone that safe mode forced of the vocal modulator.
It only took a minute or so, but eventually the worker's eyes returned to the front of the display as it emotionlessly delivered the results. "System operability nominal, no outstanding flags. Functionality estimated at 91.8%, system degradation within nominal parameters."
Well shit… That was good - better than good. Pausing for a second to draw one last breath, Tessa gave a heavy exhale. "Exit safe mode, initiate boot."
The worker's blank eyes vanished for a second, before the usual signs of a boot began to flicker across her display. A handful of boxes and prompts that closed as fast as they opened, a flash of a loading wheel before a pair of eyes stared right back at Tessa for a second, before bursting with character and personality as they finally, marvellously, drifted away from their locked position at the centre of the display. "Uh-"
The worker's voice, now with such character and life, was clearly feminine, confirming what Tessa had already figured from the wig and the chest piece. It had a somewhat smug, but clearly confident tone underneath the audible confusion, a wonderful dichotomy that Tessa had no idea could be in a drone. It was perfect - she was perfect.
Unable to constrain herself any longer, Tessa gave a noise of elation and wrapped the worker in a tight hug as she half pulled the drone upright. "EEE! You work! Yes!"
"Gah- who are you?!" At the worker's baffled question, Tessa released the worker from her embrace, instead holding her up by the shoulders, meeting the worker's somewhat shellshocked gaze. A second danced by before realisation landed - she probably had no idea where she was, or what had happened.
"Oh! Right, sorry! Just haven't got one of you guys working before, y'know? But you're my first success!" The J-10X stared back at her blankly, and Tessa lost some of her enthusiasm in that moment, before regaining her footing. "Well- uh, I'm Tessa. Tessa James Elliott-"
"Ms Elliott!" The J-10X seemed to chirp in surprise, or rather, recognition, at her name, something that made Tessa blink blankly for a second, as the drone rattled off what seemed to be a premade script. Her suspicions were only confirmed when her display briefly flashed with ‘Corporate introduction.mp4’ and the progress bar that rapidly progressed as she spoke. “I am Serial Designation J-10X111001, property of JCJenson in SPAAAAACEE!!!! Incorporated and am at your disposal. How may I assist you?
"A-Ah, yeah, that'd be moi. Anyway, I found you in the uh…" It was only as she was halfway through annunciating the word 'scrapyard' that she realised that such a fact could be a little traumatic to the worker. But the expectant expression on the worker's face drew from her a hastily improvised fib that didn't work grammatically. ".. Slated for decommissioning storage. Figured I could fix you up - I'm trying to be a technician for JCJ, y'know?"
".. Decommissioned… Yes, I was slated for decommissioning." The J-10X's tone dropped somewhat, but didn't seem depressive. Instead, she looked almost frustrated and somewhat bitter. "My productivity dropped beyond the expected parameters for a corporate drone. 3.3% in my fifth year, 0.8% below the maximum permissible. JCJenson deemed my performance insufficient and retired me, as is standard policy."
".. Right." Her croaked remark was all she could manage at the blunt reality. This had been a perfectly serviceable worker drone, a J-10X, not exactly a cheap model, even five years on from their introduction, and JCJ had tossed her aside the moment she began to miss performance quotas. This drone was a person, there was a duty from JCJ to treat her with at least a modicum of respect. Even resale would have been a better fate than being tossed onto a scrap heap. "W-Well, given that you've been uh.. Decommissioned, in accordance with the provisions of the Drone Ownership Act of 3027, I, Tessa James Elliott, hereby take ownership of you effective immediately, with the rights granted to me by the JCJenson corporate charter."
The J-10X was silent for three seconds, for Tessa counted each of them in her head as she prayed that the words the family lawyer had given her were strong enough to pass muster. They might not exactly hold up in court, but JCJenson wasn't going to take her to court over a single J-10X worker drone that they had decided to throw away.
"Acknowledged. How can I help, boss?" Tessa gave a blink at the sudden shift in attitude but let out a sigh a heartbeat later. It had worked.
"Well! Firstly, I want you to have this." Undoing E's bracelet from her wrist, Tessa held it out to the worker drone, who visibly hesitated at the offering. Gently bowing her hand in an encouraging gesture, Tessa urged her onwards. "It's a sign that you're owned by me, not by JCJenson or my parents."
That was all the encouragement the worker needed, as she affixed the bracelet to her own wrist as Tessa continued onwards. "Next, you're gonna need a name, don't wanna keep callin' you 'J-10X111001', y'know? So y'should pick whatever strikes your fancy-"
"No. Drones possessing unique, individual names is against Corporate regulations, as it would promote individuality that would hamper productivity." The stern stonewalling drew a croak from Tessa, catching her entirely flatfooted as she blinked blankly at the J-10X. For several seconds, the J-10X stared at Tessa unflinchingly, before Tessa averted her gaze bashfully, scratching the back of her head.
"W-Well.. How about 'J' then? It's part'a your designation anyway!" Hurriedly justifying her suggestion, before the drone could interject with an abject refusal, Tessa was relieved to watch the drone think for several seconds, before giving a nod.
"Acceptable. Are there any further items of note?"
Tessa gave a nod and a clap. "Just one - we need to get you some clothes."
J blinked, then looked down at her white, near perfectly smooth polymer-nanocarbon body before a blush burst to life across her display as her arms covered her form. "Oh my robo-God."