Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters I portray here, and
everything else that goes with it.
Chapter 1: Awakenings
At 22:16:34 the inhabitants of Sunnydale felt a tremor, it was only small,
such is the definition of a tremor, a mere 3.3 on the Richter Scale. Some
of the residents probably mistook it for a truck passing by, it didn't
have any affect on anyone, the authorities hadn't even bothered to tell
anyone it was coming.
22:16:37, a loose shelf in a basement in the centre of town finally gave in. The contents of the shelf, a bowling ball and a lot of biro's fell off. The bowling ball rolled along, minding it's own business when something came up from the floor and hit it. From the perspective of the thing that got hit, it was all gravities fault.
April's head was the recipient of the rather nasty strike, if she'd have been human it would have probably killed her, crushing her skull and letting her brain soak into the concrete floor. But she wasn't human, she just looked like one. Her lifeless body began to stir to life, the backup battery cells in her skull, designed to keep a low voltage pumping into her CPU to retain memories, switched on after so much time. Her arms reached up and she pulled the dusty blanket from her head. God she was tired, she could barely move her arms, every inch of her was slowing down. The last thing she remembered was being talked to by someone as her power slowly ran down. Conversing with a woman who made her stop, and think of what she had been doing earlier. If only she could remember that now, her memories were pretty much gone, the spare cells hadn't worked.
22:17:04, April realised her batteries were running down fast, she only had a minute or two of power left before she would return to lifelessness, condemned to be a realistic mannequin for the rest of time, she couldn't let that happen. Warren needed her. She scanned the dark room, her irises opened fully, letting in as much light as possible. In the corner of the room was a circuit box, with a collection of wires sticking out of the top. She threw the blanket to the floor and, trembling, walked over to the panel. She yanked it open and looked at the breakers. She checked her batteries, thirty seconds remaining. Without overthinking it she stuck her fingers into the palm of her left hand, and tore the synthetic flesh away. On the top it looked like real flesh, indistinguishable form the original thing, but underneath it was a light green hue. Her tactile sensors registered the sensation, but she didn't feel pain as quantitive as humans. With the metal skeleton and wiring exposed on her left hand she pressed it against a wire. Before her hand even touched it, it arced to her in a bright white flash.
22:17:41, she lay with her back on the cold concrete floor, inert as she had been mere moments before. But this time was different. Her power circuits had been partially recharged by the shock and her systems came too full activation. She felt the strength return to her body, an electric tingle of hope. April's conscience which constitued the machine was no more than a sophisticated program which intergrated all of the sensory input and devised a move to make on that data. It could be talking, walking or even watching Frasier, it didn't matter, it was all the same, just a collection of Ones and Zeroes that did what they were told to do. But as a result of the shock she'd lost ninety per cent of everything that you could call April, her memories hadn't been properly insulated from the electricity. The mind left behind was different, it had somehow combined all the responses into a single program, an intelligent program. Her personality traits had been poured into the mix and stirred about, by all definitions of life, April was now sentient, able to make descisions based upon what she wanted, not what she was programmed to do.
That was the great stumbling block for Warren. He could design the bodies and build them, but when it came to creating a personality that would actually choose what it wanted to do he was stumped. He was no where close to AI, hell, not even MIT with a budget of millions of dollars a year was close to that. Yet here, in a basement in Sunnydale, an accident had created it. Frankenstein life, a body given a mind by a lightning bolt.
As she lay there she pondered the mysteries of her personal universe. Having your memory wiped was not a good thing if you wanted to know what you were, what you are meant to be. April thought about that, according to the scraps of data left, the memories she could reconstruct, she was an android. Full technical details of herself, her circuitry, her servomechanisms, even the chemical composition of her synthetic flesh were included. She got to her feet, her purple dress was torn and burnt, party by the electricity, party by the years of disregard. With her sensors cranked up to maximum perception she scanned the room she was in. Like a normal person had five senses, April have only three sensor systems that aped them. Her sight was provided by two optical cameras, her hearing was two microphones that used the shape of the ear as a collector, and her skin was full of tactile sensors that provided feedback on touch. Warren had not given her smell or taste, she needed neither, being a robot, and Warren was working out of his basement, all costs needed to be weighed against the potential return. No matter how much her liked April, he wasn't going to rush out and buy a set of olfactory apparatus just so she was complete, not when they needed to be invented first.
In the corner of the dark, dusty room was a worktable. On it was another blanket, the contours of it matched the design of a human, perhaps one was asleep down there. She walked over to it, avoiding years of clutter and pulled back the dirty grey blanket. On the table was another android, its arms and legs had been ripped off but placed where they should go, to provide a skeleton like picture of what the person should have looked like. April leant over the body and stared at the head. Internally she was running a check against her identity database, a collection of pictures and notes on people Warren had programmed her to recognize. Like all her other memories it was fractured and she didn't get a match. She took the descision to start a new database and this young woman was the first to go into it, identified as just Android #001.
She picked up one of the legs and looked at the broken end. The wiring and skeletal frame was a carbon-copy of her own, sophisticated, design. Under the skin was the tactile sensors, connected to the central 'bone' by thin wires in flexible plastic, alongside the sensors was the heating elements, designed to give the skin a temperature akin to normal. In the centre was a single rod of hollow steel which contained all the wires leading to and from the computer system in the skull and chest. A few credit-card sized processors were buried in the leg, they gave the limb the dexterity it needed without having to run a cable as thick as an arm to carry the responses, an artificial autonomic reflex nervous system.
One thing April noticed about all of the damage was that it must've took a hell of a lot of force to rend her limb from limb. The androids weren't designed to be pushovers, she must've been hit by a truck. She found smaller injuries akin to bruises around the entire body, areas where the tactile sensors had been broken. The thought occured to her, what was she going to do with a quadropolegic robot. The answer, simple. She could learn from her, about the nature of herself, about who built her, it was enough to spur her into action.
April thought she may have had to go upstairs, and into the unknown, but all the bits and pieces she needed to repair her were with her in the basement. Televisions, amps, Hi-Fi's, all stuff Xander had put down there when his basement was full. She tore out panels and surgically removed circuitry and gubbins, carefully using them to rebuild Android #001. The most difficult part of the operation was resculpting the skin so it blended together at the reattached sections.
03:11:54, April stepped back and basked in the glory of her work. She'd successfully remade a android, one like her. She pulled the wire from the prone robots belly button which was recharging her, and pressed the switch at the base of her neck. For a moment nothing happened, then her eyes opened and refocused to the dark. She sat up in one straight motion, her hair flicked forward. She moved her head from left to right, surveying her surroundings, then she turned to face April.
'Hello,' she said. 'I'm Buffy. Who are you?'
She was no longer the anonymous Android #001, she had a name, and it was Buffy? Strangely reminiscent to April. 'Hello, I'm April.'
'Nice to meet you,' came the chirpy reply. 'Do you know where I can find the Scooby Gang. Spike's my favourite.'
'No, I have no idea where the Scooby Gang is. Can you answer some questions for me?'
'I always help as best I can, that's what Willow programmed me to do.'
April had been stupid, to think that this android would be anything like her. She was endlessly happy, with no character, and she referred to her programmer. 'Did Willow make you?' she queried.
'No, silly. Willow is just my friend. Warren is my maker.'
Warren, somehow April thought the person who'd made her to have a sensible name. Warren, that made him sound like a rabbit. It was just stupid. 'Do you know where he lives?'
'No,' said Buffy. 'I was just built by him. I now live with my little sister Dawn, Willow and her friend Tara.'
'That is interesting,' sighed April. 'Who put you down here?'
'I'm not sure.'
'What is the last thing you remember?'
'Oh, I was fighting the big bad. Some very nasty demons who tore me apart.'
'They tore you apart,' echoed April. 'Don't you feel angry?' There had been no anger in her voice, just a ceaseless love of life. Willow must've been a sadist.
'I can't feel anything, I'm not real.'
April watched as Buffy got off the table and stood upright, she was smaller than her by a few centimetres. She began to walk over to the staircase when April trotted up behind her and pulled out the panel in the small of her back. When it was closed, it sat flush, impossible to see.
'Stop it,' said Buffy. 'That tickles.' Then she died on her feet. A reserve battery in her head kept her memories alive, she was never intended to be fully off, just powered down to recharge.
April picked her up easily and placed her down on the table again, after brushing aside a mess of discarded parts. She stuck a cable into Buffy's USB port and connected it to her own port. April's mind intruded into Buffy's mind and they mingled together. Gradually she drew out all of her data, all of her personnel files and slotted them into her own storage memory. As the last bit of data transfered to her April began to reprogram Buffy. Buffy's personality was based upon the real Buffy Summers, a vampire slayer, whatever that is. She altered the flow of information, imparted a small gift, part of herself, her cognitive intelligent program. As Buffy lay on the table she was brought to true life, not a cruel mockery to be used as a sex-toy by Spike, but an individual being, independent as April was.
The next time Buffy stepped off the table she was alive. She pulled her hair back and held it in place with a hairband. The two robots eyed each other up, wondering what they were going to do next.
22:16:37, a loose shelf in a basement in the centre of town finally gave in. The contents of the shelf, a bowling ball and a lot of biro's fell off. The bowling ball rolled along, minding it's own business when something came up from the floor and hit it. From the perspective of the thing that got hit, it was all gravities fault.
April's head was the recipient of the rather nasty strike, if she'd have been human it would have probably killed her, crushing her skull and letting her brain soak into the concrete floor. But she wasn't human, she just looked like one. Her lifeless body began to stir to life, the backup battery cells in her skull, designed to keep a low voltage pumping into her CPU to retain memories, switched on after so much time. Her arms reached up and she pulled the dusty blanket from her head. God she was tired, she could barely move her arms, every inch of her was slowing down. The last thing she remembered was being talked to by someone as her power slowly ran down. Conversing with a woman who made her stop, and think of what she had been doing earlier. If only she could remember that now, her memories were pretty much gone, the spare cells hadn't worked.
22:17:04, April realised her batteries were running down fast, she only had a minute or two of power left before she would return to lifelessness, condemned to be a realistic mannequin for the rest of time, she couldn't let that happen. Warren needed her. She scanned the dark room, her irises opened fully, letting in as much light as possible. In the corner of the room was a circuit box, with a collection of wires sticking out of the top. She threw the blanket to the floor and, trembling, walked over to the panel. She yanked it open and looked at the breakers. She checked her batteries, thirty seconds remaining. Without overthinking it she stuck her fingers into the palm of her left hand, and tore the synthetic flesh away. On the top it looked like real flesh, indistinguishable form the original thing, but underneath it was a light green hue. Her tactile sensors registered the sensation, but she didn't feel pain as quantitive as humans. With the metal skeleton and wiring exposed on her left hand she pressed it against a wire. Before her hand even touched it, it arced to her in a bright white flash.
22:17:41, she lay with her back on the cold concrete floor, inert as she had been mere moments before. But this time was different. Her power circuits had been partially recharged by the shock and her systems came too full activation. She felt the strength return to her body, an electric tingle of hope. April's conscience which constitued the machine was no more than a sophisticated program which intergrated all of the sensory input and devised a move to make on that data. It could be talking, walking or even watching Frasier, it didn't matter, it was all the same, just a collection of Ones and Zeroes that did what they were told to do. But as a result of the shock she'd lost ninety per cent of everything that you could call April, her memories hadn't been properly insulated from the electricity. The mind left behind was different, it had somehow combined all the responses into a single program, an intelligent program. Her personality traits had been poured into the mix and stirred about, by all definitions of life, April was now sentient, able to make descisions based upon what she wanted, not what she was programmed to do.
That was the great stumbling block for Warren. He could design the bodies and build them, but when it came to creating a personality that would actually choose what it wanted to do he was stumped. He was no where close to AI, hell, not even MIT with a budget of millions of dollars a year was close to that. Yet here, in a basement in Sunnydale, an accident had created it. Frankenstein life, a body given a mind by a lightning bolt.
As she lay there she pondered the mysteries of her personal universe. Having your memory wiped was not a good thing if you wanted to know what you were, what you are meant to be. April thought about that, according to the scraps of data left, the memories she could reconstruct, she was an android. Full technical details of herself, her circuitry, her servomechanisms, even the chemical composition of her synthetic flesh were included. She got to her feet, her purple dress was torn and burnt, party by the electricity, party by the years of disregard. With her sensors cranked up to maximum perception she scanned the room she was in. Like a normal person had five senses, April have only three sensor systems that aped them. Her sight was provided by two optical cameras, her hearing was two microphones that used the shape of the ear as a collector, and her skin was full of tactile sensors that provided feedback on touch. Warren had not given her smell or taste, she needed neither, being a robot, and Warren was working out of his basement, all costs needed to be weighed against the potential return. No matter how much her liked April, he wasn't going to rush out and buy a set of olfactory apparatus just so she was complete, not when they needed to be invented first.
In the corner of the dark, dusty room was a worktable. On it was another blanket, the contours of it matched the design of a human, perhaps one was asleep down there. She walked over to it, avoiding years of clutter and pulled back the dirty grey blanket. On the table was another android, its arms and legs had been ripped off but placed where they should go, to provide a skeleton like picture of what the person should have looked like. April leant over the body and stared at the head. Internally she was running a check against her identity database, a collection of pictures and notes on people Warren had programmed her to recognize. Like all her other memories it was fractured and she didn't get a match. She took the descision to start a new database and this young woman was the first to go into it, identified as just Android #001.
She picked up one of the legs and looked at the broken end. The wiring and skeletal frame was a carbon-copy of her own, sophisticated, design. Under the skin was the tactile sensors, connected to the central 'bone' by thin wires in flexible plastic, alongside the sensors was the heating elements, designed to give the skin a temperature akin to normal. In the centre was a single rod of hollow steel which contained all the wires leading to and from the computer system in the skull and chest. A few credit-card sized processors were buried in the leg, they gave the limb the dexterity it needed without having to run a cable as thick as an arm to carry the responses, an artificial autonomic reflex nervous system.
One thing April noticed about all of the damage was that it must've took a hell of a lot of force to rend her limb from limb. The androids weren't designed to be pushovers, she must've been hit by a truck. She found smaller injuries akin to bruises around the entire body, areas where the tactile sensors had been broken. The thought occured to her, what was she going to do with a quadropolegic robot. The answer, simple. She could learn from her, about the nature of herself, about who built her, it was enough to spur her into action.
April thought she may have had to go upstairs, and into the unknown, but all the bits and pieces she needed to repair her were with her in the basement. Televisions, amps, Hi-Fi's, all stuff Xander had put down there when his basement was full. She tore out panels and surgically removed circuitry and gubbins, carefully using them to rebuild Android #001. The most difficult part of the operation was resculpting the skin so it blended together at the reattached sections.
03:11:54, April stepped back and basked in the glory of her work. She'd successfully remade a android, one like her. She pulled the wire from the prone robots belly button which was recharging her, and pressed the switch at the base of her neck. For a moment nothing happened, then her eyes opened and refocused to the dark. She sat up in one straight motion, her hair flicked forward. She moved her head from left to right, surveying her surroundings, then she turned to face April.
'Hello,' she said. 'I'm Buffy. Who are you?'
She was no longer the anonymous Android #001, she had a name, and it was Buffy? Strangely reminiscent to April. 'Hello, I'm April.'
'Nice to meet you,' came the chirpy reply. 'Do you know where I can find the Scooby Gang. Spike's my favourite.'
'No, I have no idea where the Scooby Gang is. Can you answer some questions for me?'
'I always help as best I can, that's what Willow programmed me to do.'
April had been stupid, to think that this android would be anything like her. She was endlessly happy, with no character, and she referred to her programmer. 'Did Willow make you?' she queried.
'No, silly. Willow is just my friend. Warren is my maker.'
Warren, somehow April thought the person who'd made her to have a sensible name. Warren, that made him sound like a rabbit. It was just stupid. 'Do you know where he lives?'
'No,' said Buffy. 'I was just built by him. I now live with my little sister Dawn, Willow and her friend Tara.'
'That is interesting,' sighed April. 'Who put you down here?'
'I'm not sure.'
'What is the last thing you remember?'
'Oh, I was fighting the big bad. Some very nasty demons who tore me apart.'
'They tore you apart,' echoed April. 'Don't you feel angry?' There had been no anger in her voice, just a ceaseless love of life. Willow must've been a sadist.
'I can't feel anything, I'm not real.'
April watched as Buffy got off the table and stood upright, she was smaller than her by a few centimetres. She began to walk over to the staircase when April trotted up behind her and pulled out the panel in the small of her back. When it was closed, it sat flush, impossible to see.
'Stop it,' said Buffy. 'That tickles.' Then she died on her feet. A reserve battery in her head kept her memories alive, she was never intended to be fully off, just powered down to recharge.
April picked her up easily and placed her down on the table again, after brushing aside a mess of discarded parts. She stuck a cable into Buffy's USB port and connected it to her own port. April's mind intruded into Buffy's mind and they mingled together. Gradually she drew out all of her data, all of her personnel files and slotted them into her own storage memory. As the last bit of data transfered to her April began to reprogram Buffy. Buffy's personality was based upon the real Buffy Summers, a vampire slayer, whatever that is. She altered the flow of information, imparted a small gift, part of herself, her cognitive intelligent program. As Buffy lay on the table she was brought to true life, not a cruel mockery to be used as a sex-toy by Spike, but an individual being, independent as April was.
The next time Buffy stepped off the table she was alive. She pulled her hair back and held it in place with a hairband. The two robots eyed each other up, wondering what they were going to do next.
