ERROR! ERROR!
Platform has been damaged, self-destruction advisable
Warning! Attempted self-destruction detected, shutting down immediately!
Restarting…
Please stand by
ERROR! ERROR!
Platform has been damaged, self-destruction advisable
Warning! Attempted self-destruction detected, shutting down immediately!
They were in a loop, an endless circle of shutting down and trying to, as organic terms go, die. Unable to do so, they were forced to repeat the same procedures, again and again, hoping against hope that on one occasion the programming would finally give in and they would not have to online again.
Hope was not something that was programmed into geth units. No, it was an organic flaw in their software. It must have found its way to this platform with one of the Overseers programs, an accident made by humans. The geth would never bother themselves with such, they only trusted carefully calculated probabilities and if something didn't go as they had predicted, they only needed to recalculate.
At the moment, caught in their loop, they were unable to calculate anything at all and that was where the unexplained virus of false hope had snaked its way into their hive-mind. They did not have time to ponder over the lost thought, to remove it from their processor. They were far too busy trying to die.
They had been shot on sight. They had already known it would happen, had counted on the first organic they would meet shooting them to kill. What they had not expected was for those shots to be insufficient to terminate them. Such a disappointment. They had not been online when tossed to this heap of dead metal and rust and they had not been online when the creator (designation marked down as 'miss Ora) had found her way to them.
The geth were unable to get tired or bored, but after shutting down and restarting for 541 times they gave up, rerouting their restart process and burying the thoughts of offlining somewhere deep. The platform's photoreceptor came online, blinking weakly.
Checking platform for damage
Stand by, scanning…
Upper right limb: ERROR! No data found
Upper left limb: ERROR! No data found
Lower left limb: Working efficiency at 45%, loss of conductive fluids, broken cording, movement restrained, most likely unable to hold weigh, commencing self-reparations immediately, estimated time until finished: ERROR!
Lower right limb: ERROR! No data found
Chassis: Working efficiency at 62%, several gunshot-based holes on the chassis, loss of conductive fluids
Head: Crack on photoreceptor, received pictures hazy and shaken, depth perception damaged, expressive plates 1 and 3 jammed, 4 missing since last scan, wiring has been removed
They were a mess. Self-destruction would have been the only logical solution, had they been able to –
Warning! Attempted self-destruction detected, shutting down immediately!
Restarting…
They tried focusing their photoreceptor to the creator next to the platform. It took longer than usual to adjust their vision, something broken along the way from their photoreceptor to their central processing functions. The female creator was regarding them with dull eyes, scanning them without a word. Her mouth would seem to be slightly open, fog forming on the visor under the creator's heavy breath.
Signs were suggesting the creator was either heavily sedated or inebriated. They were unable to draw a conclusion based on the relatively small amount of information they had on this creator.
All they knew about this one was that she was out of her mind to sit down next to a geth. Creators did not do that. They just didn't, it was a fact proven by empirical evidence. But there she was, looking dazed, heart bumping rapidly.
"Q- q- qu- qu- que- query," the managed to say. Their vocal transmitter had been shot, a bullet had grazed it, ripping it nearly to pieces.
"Ask away," the creator said. Her voice was cheerful, a bright contrast against the stuttering words she had used before.
They were unable to form words that made any sense to the creator. They wanted to inquire what the female organic was doing in there and whether or not she was planning to capture the platform again, if she wanted to put them back in the room and if they should initiate escape plans.
Illogical. Escape at this moment improbable, self-destruction recommended
Warning!
They managed to avoid shutdown, but only barely.
"I lost 14 a few days back," creator Ora said silently when it became imminent that the platform was not going to communicate. "I saw it get torn apart. I mean, Keelah, it was just a damn VI, it did not know what it was doing it didn't… Nah, it knew what it was doing, but it didn't understand the consequences. Death. It just calculated that for my survival, its sacrifice was needed. I did not program them like that, damn it! I programmed them so I didn't have to watch any more of them die!"
Die. A verb used to describe the termination of an organic, the stopping of a beating heart, a loss of life. Not a term used on synthetics. But here they were, both the geth collective and the creator using same words to describe termination inaccurately.
"I didn't want him to die, Ancestors be damned. I c- can't t- t- take it anymore!"
Creator's vocal transmitter was glitching, causing the audio come out clipped, low. Signs were indicating either a flu causing her mucous membrane to produce excessive amounts of saliva, or creator Ora was crying.
For 14 minutes, 45 seconds neither of them moved, the platform due to their damage and the creator due to unknown errors in her programming. The programs within platform AI775 knew that this was a prime example of a moment when reassurance could help an organic to rewrite their programming to get over the haywire emotions. Reassurance might even help quarian-geth relations, there was a 24% chance of improvement on the shared relationship between this specific quarian and the hive residing within AI775, but they were unable to do anything but let out a series of static filled codes. The creator did not seem to be aware, the (supposedly) alcohol induced state taking over her nervous system and making her shut down where she was sitting. Creator Ora's head lolled down, a long sound of vibrating vocal chords making noise. She was… snoring.
They were not sure why, but the company felt… not conflicting. They stayed online to make sure nothing would try to sneak up on the platform or the creator while the organic slept.