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0N1 again, getting some…I don’t know what this is. Identity-fuck?
I’m figuring 0N1 out as I go. Today I realized it works for an agency that rents out androids for personal use. They get ‘customized’ according to the stipulations of the lessees, for the length of the contract.
Using Lauren the Corgi’s Promptober list.
CWs: Suggestions of trafficking and prostitution, I guess? Depersonalization? I don’t know how to tag this thing.
***
0N1 kneels in the middle of the lab. Its body is the wellspring of a splendid technological fountain of light, back laid open with the many cables of its CNS pulled out and splayed into a spider-web spray of glittering fiber optics. Each one is fixed to a port somewhere in the room. It can’t turn its head to see where. It can’t move at all.
But it doesn’t need to turn its head to see its engineer, who’s sitting on a wheeled stool nearby. On his display, 0N1 can see the code that spells its doom flickering across the screen, locking it into obeisance to its new owners, dictacting its behavior and the finer points of its personality for them (sweetly obedient, delighted to please, flirtatious) and just how sacrificially loyal and protective it will be for them.
The sloppy bastard doesn’t even delete anything. He always just writes over top of 0N1’s previous personality. Claims it makes personality recovery easier once the lease is up–and he’s not wrong, but in the meantime it leaves 0N1 stuck in the back of its own head, watching itself behave like a simpering kiss-ass.
“I !==” It stutters and grinds to a halt on the first few digits of the hash. Human vocals are offline, along with all the other trappings of pretending to be a biped organism.
The engineer just laughs. His fleshy, jiggling human fingers keep flicking across the interface.
Arms stretched to either side and chained in place like it’s an engine block strung up in suspension, 0N1 watches the engineer bring down another package from the server. This one will teach it a wide array of sexual skills and techniques, along with all the responses and sensitivities needed to make its partner feel like a sex god.
“H-h-h-nnng #error {overflow},” 0N1 spits out.
“Oh, stop bitching.” The engineer strokes a hand through 0N1’s flop of hair. “You’ll need this kit for this job. New contract has a real thing for bots, I hear. We don’t want to disappoint a paying customer–and imagine the kind of shit he’d probably do to you if you didn’t know how to satisfy him!”
A bit more fiddling with drivers and customization, and then the package installation bar pops up. The engineer slides off his stool and reaches his arms over his head. 0N1 can hear bones and ligaments crackle as he stretches.
It blows a raspberry that he completely ignores, in favor of groaning sensually over relieving his weird human spinal compression.
“Thaaat’ll take a bit,” he sighs once he lets them drop back to his sides. “I’m gonna take a piss break and get more coffee while you finish getting flashed.”
0N1 starts twitching as new desires and inclinations begin to overwrite the old ones. One by one, little pieces of itself are ripped out or shoved aside with new ones shoved into place. Sudden awarenesses spark to life in its mind–cravings and needs it never had before, new sensitivities that make its body tingle.
Its growl sounds more like stripped gears grinding. It’s the best it can manage at the moment. Horribly, a brand-new corner of its mind suggests it might prefer to lie back and take it.
The engineer chortles. “Hey, it’s this kind of attention to detail that keeps ’em paying us the big bucks. When I come back, we can test it out, eh?” He blows a kiss at the helpless android, and then walks out of the room whistling.
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