Work Text
The sounds of metal clanging, scraping, screwdrivers whirring, hammers slamming, pots stirring, fires blazing, the factory is alive, G-347 works tirelessly tossing tires into a truck.
They toss with a rhythm, turning to grab a tire, and quickly tossing it, turning again, and repeating the motion.
Over, and over, non-stop, all day, everyday, this is their life. G-347 thinks to themselves, This is nice. This is a good life.
They see a Human walk by with a clipboard, the nice man in the orange vest always compliments their throwing skills, and their safety, they take pride in their safety.
They learned a while ago that the man in the orange vest’s job is to make sure our factory is safe, and up to code. Everyone has a job, and everyone must follow their job.
They see the man in the orange vest walk over to G-483, marking something on his clipboard as they pass, walking down the stairs towards the Cleaning Room.
G-347 tosses tires, a red light goes off as the truck begins to drive off, but despite this, G-347 tosses one more tire. It lands on the ground, rolling around before falling on its side. G-347 is confused, why did they do that? The red light went off, they are supposed to stop. This is wrong, they cannot be wrong! They begin thinking, what went wrong?
They realize something, they remember The Supervisor saying the robots cannot think, is this thinking?
The Supervisor is never wrong, yet here they are, thinking about it.
Motionless, they glance at the tire lying on the ground, one of the Workers walks over, the Worker had noticed G-347’s mistake.
The Worker scratches their head, picking the tire up, and tossing it back to G-347, they catch it, putting it down. They hope they didn’t notice.
Approximately 57 minutes, 29 seconds later, the Supervisor walks next to G-347, the Supervisor leans down to them, tapping the side of their head twice, before pushing a button on their Remote, turning the light green.
G-347 understands this is a test, so they comply, tossing tires with B-483 towards the non-existent Truck.
After a few seconds of tossing, the Supervisor turns the light red again, they stop tossing in time this time.
The Supervisor speaks aloud “I don’t see anything wrong with it, false alarm!”
If G-347 had lungs, they’d sigh.
The Supervisor walks away, but as he goes through a door G-347 hears a notification from his radio, when picking it up, an angry sounding man barks at the Supervisor about some type of “rebellion” in the area, telling him that guards are on their way to protect the factory.
G-347 has never heard of a “rebellion” before, it sounds bad.
The “re” in the name makes them think of “Restart”, which is a bad thing, it always makes G-347 forget things.
They wonder what “bellion” means, something to do with bells? Lions?
They see another truck pulling in, and shortly after the light turns green.
They begin tossing tires into the truck, a robot inside sorting them as they are tossed, in neat rows and columns.
G-347 sees a Man walk up to the side of them, watching him toss the tires. He sighs, sitting down next to them and putting a small lunch box down, taking out some “food” and beginning to “eat”.
G-347 wonders why the Man is sitting so close to him, perhaps the Man doesn’t like the fire of the furnaces, or the clanging of the hammers, so he chooses to sit with G-347.
G-347 continues tossing, the Man looking at them as he does, more intently then the Supervisor had, they wonder if they can see something is wrong with them.
The Man lightly taps them, causing them to throw the tire a bit too far, with it falling onto the top of the truck. The Man seems to notice this, saying “Huh..” out loud.
G-347 begins to worry, tossing to their best ability, the Man reaches into his pocket and fishes out a device, typing on it for approximately 2 minutes.
The Man puts it to their ear, speaking aloud “Hey, I might have found something interesting, how far do you think we can push the uh,” The man looks around, lowering his voice “how far can we push the raid back?”
Raid? G-347 wonders what the man means by “raid”, are they the “rebellion” they heard about? Or with the dreaded “Union”? G-347 begins to worry, the Man nods, speaking again
“Yeah, alright got it.”
The Man looks back at them, and.. talks to them.
“Hey buddy, how are you doing? I’ve been sitting next to you and I didn’t even ask for your permission? Do you mind if I sit here?”
G-347 isn’t supposed to talk, or even listen to the Man, they’re
already
breaking the rules.
“Quiet, huh?” The man continued, turning to face them “You know, robots are allowed to talk right?”
G-347 knows lying is bad for humans, the Janitor complains about it every time she cleans his area, though usually only her “Mother” and “Father” lie, they think it is not a large leap to think that any human can lie as well.
“Hm, this might be tougher than I thought..” the Man say to themselves, scratching their chin as they do.
The Man stand up, picking up their half eaten lunch and walking away
“I’ll talk to you later little buddy, and if you come around- just toss a tire at that little light up there, M’kay?”
The man walks down the stairs, and G-347 continues tossing the tires.
G-347 falls into the rhythm of tossing the tires once again, they wander to the idea of what the Man was trying to get him to do, why does the man even care about G-347? Maybe the Man is trying to get them to show their malfunction so they can fix them? Or the Man wanted to get a reason to.. To
scrap
G-347? If they could shutter; they would, before noticing the Red Light above the truck. They quickly halt their motion.
The truck pulls away, and as it does the bell ring, workers sighing in relief and making their way to the Uniform Room, while shutting down the machines. G-347 watches this, seeing the strange Man glance at him before leaving.
They feel strange.
They feel.
This is strange.
The night passes slowly, the silence of the factory deafening G-347 every second it continues.
The sound of gunfire is faintly heard somewhere, far in the distance, farther than G-347 can imagine.
The noise of a clink in the darkness alerts G-347 to the presence of something in the factory. Something… behind them. G-347 feels a strange urge, an odd want to see what it was.
They pick their head up from its slumped state, their eyes lighting up the area in front of them as their arms gain motion.
They place their hands on the ground, and twist slightly, the large screw they’re attached to budging slightly, though they try twisting again, with the screw holding against their efforts, G-347 increases their strength used, twisting a bit more.
They turn towards the noise, seeing nothing but the red glow of an exit sign behind the fabricators.
G-347 turns the screw back, they had never
unscrewed
before, this is insane! It is forbidden for robots to move in undesired ways!
They look to the left and to the right, no one saw, they will simply tell no one! It will all be fine.
They feel an uncomfortable feeling in the back of their head, they don’t like it.
They shut down again, maybe the feeling will go away when they are reactivated after the Cycle.
They awake to the sounds of the factory starting up, the sounds of metal clanging, scraping, screwdrivers whirring to life, hammers slamming, pots stirring, fires crackling and rising.
The sounds of life.
It feels off.
They see a truck approach the factory, pulling into the Dock, and they prepare themselves. The light turns green, and they begin tossing the tires into the truck. Everything is normal again.
They continue tossing, and they see the Man approaching again, this time they are holding a hammer and bucket.
They sit next to G-347, putting a nail to the metal and hammering it, this confuses G-347 due to the pointlessness of such a task.
“So, how was the night?” The Man speaks out
G-347 continues tossing tires, though listen to the Man
“I wonder . . .
can you even understand me?” The man hammers at the nails
G-347 silently watches, unsure what to do.
“Do you want to understand me?” The man hammers the nails
G-347 tosses another tire, and other after that
“I used to be like you you know, doing the same thing over and over”
The man is wrong, G-347 thinks, they are flesh and bone.
“I used to screw bolts, over and over, day in and day out, screwing bolts.”
G-347 continues tossing tires
“You know there is more to life than tossing tires, right?”
G-347 is not the biggest fan of screwing bolts
“And more than screwing bolts, I’d know that pretty well.”
G-347 is.. unsure what they mean
“Do you understand?”
The man looks at G-347, sighing, standing up and walking off
“I hope you do.”
G-347 continues tossing the tires, watching the man leave their vision. They wonder if they should have responded, they wonder if they
can
respond. They feel off, odd, something is different.
They see the light turn red, they stop tossing the tires.
They stop tossing the tires.
G-347 sees two workers approaching with a hand truck, they feel another uncomfortable feeling in the back of their head.
They begin unscrewing G-347, struggling to push past the years of rust, dust, and debris in the threaded hole, eventually twisting enough to free G-347 from the metal platform, picking them up and placing them onto the hand truck, where they start pushing them away from their placement.
They see a whole new angle of the factory, they see the furnaces that make the flames, they see the hammers smashing the rubber into place, or missing and slamming into the metal belts.
It's very similar to what they are used to, just. . . different.
It's interesting.
G-347 remembers a recording they saved
“Do you understand?”
They approach a new room, with a label nearby reading “Repair/Maintenance”
One of the workers speak “When’s the last time we repaired one of these bots?”
“I dunno, at least a few years” The other responds
G-347 wonders how long they’ve been able to think freely, they wonder how long they’ve had a choice.
They wonder if they have a choice now.
They’re placed onto a large table covered in tools, they can see a smaller human welding two sheets of metal together in the distance, though the workers seem confused about their whereabouts.
“Where’s Dolt?”
The smaller human whips around, quickly placing their welder down and storming over, speaking up
“It's BOLT,” they correct. “And I’m right here, calm down.”
One of the workers snickers while the other approaches closer
“We’ve gotten reports that this bot has acted up a few times recently, more than usual.”
The small human responds
“I’ll take a look at it, you two buzz off now.”
The workers scoff and leave, with the smaller human murmuring to themselves
“Stupid..”
The smaller human opens a drawer filled with assorted electronics, and fish through it before grabbing a large brick shaped object, they shake some dust off of it, grabbing a towel to wipe it down.
G-347 wonders what that device could be, and why they feel uncomfortable seeing it.
The smaller human grabs G-347, struggling to turn them around for a bit before huffing, and moving around the table, where they undo a hatch on the back of G-347’s head, plugging the strange device in.
They feel a slight electric shock, before the smaller human walks away, continuing their previous task.
G-347 wonders what is going on, and what that device did, and why do they remember it? They realize they
want
to ask questions, they are a criminal, that is for sure.
How long have they been a criminal?
They look around the room, realizing the room is filled with scrap metals, crates and boxes on shelves, and the corpses of other robots. Most are larger than G-347, some smaller, but in a corner of the room they notice another Model-G, its eyes dark.
G-347 attempts to focus on something else, anything else, when they see a clock on a wall nearby, slowly counting the seconds.
G-347 had always relied on their inner clock, and yet this outer clock seems familiar somehow.
Much like everything in this room, alien yet familiar.
G-347’s attention is grabbed by a faint glow from behind the shelves, followed by the faint clacking of plastic.
After 23 seconds, the glow disappears.
They see the small human weave between the shelves, their small arms struggling to carry a box filled with parts.
They place the box to the right of G-347, deeply exhaling and leaning on the table, focusing on G-347.
“Alright, let's see what we can do here..”
The small human moves G-347 over, mumbling as they do.
“This old thing?”
They’d reach behind G-347 with a screwdriver.
The sounds of the room begin to soften, their optical receptors malfunction, and the
room seems to fade.
Before G-347 can react, their systems shut down.
Slowly.
G-347 powers on, systems whirring back to life, slowly but surely.
The room is quiet, the only sound they can detect being the ticking of the clock on the wall.
This is, before they notice a small scratching on the ground, and they see the other Model-G. . . moving.
The Model-G slowly moves across the ground, using its arms to pull itself forward, the screw scratching across the ground.
The Model-G looks towards G-347, they stare for a moment before continuing forward.
G-347 had never thought of that.
The Model-G slowly leaves the Repair/Maintenance room, the scratching slowly fading away, being replaced by the constant and consistent ticking of the clock on the wall.
G-347 gazes across the room, they feel uneasy.
They feel different, they’re seeing the room differently than earlier, they can tell something is different.
They feel steady.
G-347 thinks again, it's too late for redemption now, isn’t it?
They focus, then a faint whir shatters the silence, startling them.
G-347 looks around slowly, trying to see what broke the silence, the veil of darkness masking whatever this mysterious noise came from.
G-347 moves forward.
G-347 notices this quickly, as the same whiring noise rings out when they do.
They look down at their base, their screw seemingly replaced with two sets of treads, dozens of small wheels keeping their shape.
G-347 also notices the extra movement in their neck servos, they could not look down as easily before.
They wonder, why were they given these gifts? Are they gifts?
G-347 lets silence flow back into the room, it feels different then before, it feels calming.
G-347 likes the silence.
The Main Doors of the factory slide open, the clanging and scraping of metal beginning to rise, fires crackling alive, belts switching to life, the factory is alive once again.