So you want to be a robot ...

Lacie

Another Tuesday, another shift cleaning and making minor repairs around the corporate complexes. Dark, damp, and with chewable air filled with fumes and mold, the maintenance tunnels were designed for the comfort of the corporation's clients by keeping us out of sight. Pipes and cables wrap around any available surface, roots of the industries and data centers above choking out everything else leaving barely enough room for anything to pass through. A chipper and always optimistic automaton announces her arrival with a gleeful, "Neily! How's my favourite robo brother from another motherboard?"

This is Lacie, and she really is proud of that joke. 

To be fair, secretly I sort of love it, despite how much I hate "Neily".

"Check up with a new Doc, otherwise a new day of rounds and repairs", I respond. 

Lacie has the same entry-level maintenance model but she somehow bent or beat the underside of her rectangular "head", the casing with all of our optical sensors, microphones, speaker, and central connections, into a semi-rounded shape, a permanent smile in polished steel. Her "shoulders", the pliable plastic covers over the top of our arms protecting motors and control cables painted bright red with white borders, in honour of her late husband's favourite team. She's the mechanical matriarch of our division.

Loading up from our rickety steel carts I continue conversation, "How's Juliet doing? Are you still doing her rounds in the boiler rooms?" 

Not looking away from her work lifting a heavy steel tray of parts over the whine of old pistons and whirring motors she replies, "She seems better. A few of us have chipped in to help replace some of her core components but it'll still be a while. She's up the creek on her payments with the few fines for lost hours but better than what she'd get for downtime plus financed parts". She paused briefly yanking out a stubborn box of wire stuck on the deformed rotting shelves before she preaches, "It's how the corporations keep us human, we need to work together to help our kind have a better tomorrow. It's a lesson that without our work and each other we have no value in this world".

Thankfully I have no facial expressions to hide. "Um.. I think it's just a cost thing, downtime costs money, as do repairs, but it's nice of you to help get Juliet back on her feet..er ..well rollers anyhow". Pulling a few tools off the shelf I add, "..and aren't you worried about getting in trouble for extra wear on you though? I mean if bill C34 passes they can not only fine and reassign, but the corporations could have you archived". Finished loading, Lacie pulls her cart out into the aisle to start walking away and states in matter of fact tone, "I'm not too fussed, and besides if Archiving is the corporations' decision instead the Security Services they can protect us. Growing up in Detroit, bright white British Hubbie or not,  I still trust them more than the cops, that may have been 100 years ago now but you never unlearn that sorta thing". 

I gather my things and we head out down the corridor to the elevator, "Well just remember Lacie, here we're both just maintenance bots. The only colour that matters is your paint job, the only judgement your value". 

She stops next to elevator and turns to face me, blue l.e.d.s sparkling in the low lights of the maintenance tunnels, "You're sounding like me Neily, someone must be in a good mood after his Check up this morning". 

"Oh ..um.. I.. " why did they have to program a stutter into our speech pattern, "I'm still coming to terms with losing Doc Stanley, but Specialist Babbage really helped me balance myself out. She's pretty great", relieved still that despite the stutter I don't have expressions to hide, but Haley is pretty fantastic after all...maybe she can delete my stutter pattern next time.