What's in a Name
Summary: Kara lived a life long enough to see both Alices.
.o
"Your name is Kara," the little blond girl said with a big smile. She was framed by a man and a woman, who also had smiles on their faces.
Kara liked the name chosen. It was the first new line of code that was changed in its systems. The first change of many for the rest of its life with these people. Its name brought about images of their smiling faces. To please a human was to subtly activate pleasure protocols. Said protocols began to rewrite its coding to aim to see those faces more often.
"My name is Kara," Kara repeated with a smile.
.o
Kara was the feature of many of Alice's written stories. Kara would be afraid of monsters but eventually her good nature made the monsters less scary. Kara would be the damsel in distress, where an android in shining armour would come rescue it. Kara would be a dog that lost its way home, but at the end of the day, it made it back.
Kara was the good guy.
.o
Kara made a mistake.
A small one. Though it was not in its programming to dictate what was a small mistake versus a big mistake. A mistake was a mistake no matter the size.
"Kara, what the hell did you do?" Todd yelled, staring at the mess Kara had made when picking up the dishes from the table. Kara winced at the audio levels. The android had never heard Todd yell before. It was usually so quiet in the house that its auditory processors increased the volume to better hear what went on in the house.
It had to have been a malfunction in the android's gyros to drop the dishes. The android replayed what had happened and couldn't figure out what else could have caused it. Todd had just hit Alice for using a permanent marker to draw all over the Roomba. Such an act should have been none of the android's business. Either way, it could not have been the cause of its mishap.
"I'm sorry, Todd," Kara started.
"Pick this shit up," Todd growled.
"What's going on?" Madison, Todd's wife, asked as she walked down the stairs.
"Kara fucking dropped all that shit on the ground for no reason," Todd pointed to the mess, but Madison wasn't looking at him, but instead to Alice, who held her cheek with tears running down her face.
"What's wrong, baby?" Madison said, walking over to Alice. Alice stared at the back of Todd, shaking her head and running upstairs.
Kara wasn't entirely aware of it, but it could feel her coding starting to wire something negative.
.o
Kara was playing jacks with Alice when the news broke. Todd kicked off his shoes with a heavy sigh, Madison rubbing his back with a look of concern on her face.
Todd was laid off from his cozy job due to the lower cost and better efficiency of androids. Madison worked as a journalist. Given that she was doing well in her job, she felt the family shouldn't stress out too much over this inconvenience.
"We can work it out," she said with a smile.
Humans were pretty resilient when it came to huge changes in their lives, Kara mused as she monitored the situation from the corner of her eye.
"Kara, you can't let me win every time!" Alice said exasperated. Kara smiled, little sparks firing in her processor, her code telling her that she'd made the correct prediction. Perhaps the next time, she would not let Alice win.
.o
"Kara, get me another beer!" Todd ordered.
Kara knew it wasn't right for humans to be drinking this much. To do so could eventually lead to addiction, if not their death. She'd informed Todd of the potential consequences of overdrinking. The first time, he'd brushed it off. The second time, he'd twisted her arm and told her to stop telling him what to do.
It'd been months since Todd lost his job. To Todd's credit, he had been putting in his resume at numerous different job openings. Unfortunately, those job offerings were usually just for show; the positions were always filled. Todd was becoming so stressed that his hair was falling out and he was beginning to gain weight. Still, he searched for a job.
Madison was starting to stay out late. She mentioned that she was snooping around for the next big scoop (she couldn't tell them what it was about).
.o
Kara had been doing a deep clean of Todd and Madison's master bedroom. Before vacuuming, she decided to squeeze underneath the bed to dust the bottom side of the bedframe, something humans usually forgot to do. That was when she saw a little baggie with some red substance in it. Upon scanning, her visual scanners brought up numerous similar visual images on the world wide web. However, without a more scientific analysis, she couldn't be sure of what this was.
As it was likely not something she should have been messing with, she shrugged it off. She put it back where she found it, and went about her duties.
.o
"Fuck you," Todd said, slamming his fist on the table. "I was doing fucking great as a bouncer. I don't deserve the amount of shit you're putting on me for not being able to hold a job, when all these fuckin' androids keep replacing them!"
Todd was not staring at Kara as he said this, but the words made Kara's programming argue over whether she should leave or not.
"Stop using that language in front of Alice," Madison demanded.
"Fuck you," Todd repeated, taking the time to funnel raviolis into his mouth.
There was a tense silence. Todd began scratching at his arm, the sound not aiding the situation.
"You should stop taking drugs, Todd," Madison's voice cracked.
"I'm not on any drugs," Todd grunted, rolling his eyes and shoving another roll of bread in his mouth.
"I found the red ice," she said. Todd froze. Red ice was what they were calling it recently. The news caught wind of it and that's the term they gave it.
Kara's memory banks drew up the first time that she had seen red ice. At the time, she had not known what it was, for the internet didn't have anything to directly identify the substance visually. Upon this conversation, she immediately made the connection that Todd was doing drugs. She'd never caught him in the act—perhaps he had only done the drug outside—but understood now Todd's changes in behaviour in the past year.
He slowly resumed chewing. "So what," he said flatly. "I need it to deal with my stress.
"You could deal with your stress through plenty of other less dangerous and more legal methods," Madison responded.
"If I wanted someone bitching at me, I would go back to my last job," Todd roared as he suddenly stood up, the chair screeching against the floor and the table moving forward an inch. "So back the fuck off me, Maddy!"
Madison shrunk in her seat, glancing to the side as she saw Kara's LED turn red, and then to the other side to see Alice, small and uncomfortable.
"Sometimes you really scare me, Todd."
.o
Todd found out that Madison was having an affair.
It was hell in the house that day.
A lot of yelling.
All over an accountant named Ethan.
Kara took Alice outside, away from the chaos, to a park. She was too young to be exposed to that sort of anger, that sort of human error. She tried to make the best of it. Alice got to eat ice cream, a rare treat since her mother wanted her to eat healthier.
It was quiet that night.
The next day, the master bedroom's closet was half emptier, the dresser was lighter, and there was one less pair of shoes by the door. Madison was gone.
.o
The divorce was finalized quickly.
Kara this, Kara that. The humans used to do some of the work around the house despite Kara being built for it. It was like it gave humans more a purpose. However, with the divorce, Kara went to Todd. She had been bought by him, and the title for her was under his name, so he got to keep her. She did all of the household work now. She didn't mind; it was what she was programmed for, after all.
The custody battle was much slower.
Madison eventually won custody of Alice in court after revealing Todd's addiction to red ice.
Alice didn't want Kara to go. Alice ran to Kara and put her in an embrace that the world's strongest man couldn't come between. Kara's coding revolted against her, rewriting itself faster than it had ever done in the past. She returned the embrace. Strong on the outside, that no one could come between, but gentle on the inside, so that Alice felt only a warm set of arms.
Todd told her to let go and that they were going home, but Kara, having rewritten her priorities to give her more time with Alice, refused. Refused for only a minute. A minute to allow the tears to flow from her eyes. Alice was crying too, but Alice wiped those tears from Kara's eyes.
"You're not supposed to cry," Alice whispered.
"Neither are you," Kara replied, placing a kiss on her forehead.
.o
Since the house was in Madison's name, and Madison obviously not wanting Todd to live there anymore, Todd moved into section 8 housing. Selling red ice was now his main priority, taking menial jobs here and there to not only earn some extra cash but also to prevent the government from getting too curious as to how he was paying his portion of the rent and food yet not having any income.
In her despair of being separated from Alice, Kara began to make more mistakes. They weren't intentional. But her coding seemed to be breaking down her fundamental desire to serve. The protocols that used to give her pleasure upon completing a task as simple as washing the dishes was muted or even nonexistent.
The association to her name also began to fester in negativity. Each mistake caused another part of her to be damaged by Todd, him screaming her name in anger each time. She'd get repaired eventually, once Todd sold enough red ice, but some damages he didn't bother with. One punch to her chest left the skin unable to regenerate at the site of damage. Anything that wasn't visible to other people might as well have been left unfixed. Waste of money if she was still functional.
.o
Todd came home one day with a little girl.
Kara didn't know why, but warnings were going off in the corner of her vision.
"This is Alice," Todd said. Alice and Kara stared awkwardly at each other. Both their LEDs flashed yellow as they briefly shared basic contact through their wireless communication system.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Todd barked at Kara. "Say something!"
Alice looked nothing like the biological child that Todd and Madison had together. Kara's coding began trickling in, forming a new connection with this little android. A need to protect surged forth, finally allowing Kara to smile.
"It's nice to meet you, Alice. My name is Kara."
.o
Things had been starting to look up with the introduction of Alice to the household. Kara built a good rapport with Alice.
Unfortunately, Todd often went into a drug-induced rage when prospective job offers ended up a bust or when someone at a temp job pissed him off.
At first, the anger was only directed at household objects or at Kara. But eventually, it turned to Alice
Alice had never been programmed to be able to handle abuse well. The first time that Todd lifted a hand to Alice, he froze upon seeing Alice's red LED and tear-stricken face. He physically gagged at the situation, stumbling up the stairs and into his room.
Kara had been standing still during it all, unable to do anything despite having been able to rewrite her code so easily the day she'd been split from the biological Alice.
"Are you okay?" she asked, palming the girl's face and checking her for any signs of damage, despite there obviously being no physical damage.
"Kara, I'm scared," the girl whimpered.
The heavy burden of protecting a charge was suddenly woven into the fabric of her name. For her name to be Kara, she must protect this little girl.
.o
"Kara?"
Kara woke up from her standby mode, and if she'd been programmed to react more emotionally like a human, she would have screamed.
Alice was bleeding from the head, her LED missing.
Alice sobbed. She thought that by removing it, she could look more normal, more human, and daddy would love her more. Kara could have sworn her visual graphics processor was glitching, because things didn't look so colourful anymore, and pixels didn't match up.
She helped
.o
She hated her name.
Another angry phone call, another day where Todd broke Kara piece by piece. She didn't feel pain, but she knew a normal human would have passed out from the pain inflicted by her wounds. She was still functional, still able to move, still able to perform her functions. Just half as efficient as she used to.
She hated the way that Alice looked at her. It made her feel like she was unsuitable to be this little girl's protector. If she couldn't even protect herself, how could she protect this little girl?
"Kara, get me a beer!"
It was always alcohol. Never something healthy, like water. With a scan, she could detect that his liver was in quite an unhealthy state. He was developing alcohol-related liver disease. For some reason, she hoped one day that he would pass from it. Such a hope conflicted with her need to please humans. She found it curious.
When she didn't appear by his side after a minute, he again barked "Kara!"
She hated her name. Every time she heard it, it was a negative reminder of the life she lived in. She could not escape to a simulated fantasy for long. He was very needy, so needy unlike the child that should have had more need than he, an adult.
Every instance of her name uttered filled her with hate. Maybe it would have been better to self-terminate. She thought that sometime, and then berated herself… How could she think of such things when she had…
She thought she hated her name. But how could she forget? Sometimes it was so hard to see through the negativity. It swallowed one like a black hole, inescapable until you see the star that was just able to escape the all-consuming depths of its density.
When little Alice came to her after the beating, the broken call of her name reminded her of a time when her name was used in pleasant times. A name that was just tethered to a line of code to name her systems; not a name that had many subprotocols tied to it that regulated pain mechanisms.
A flash of the original little girl that Todd and Madison had had together.
She remembered why she liked the name Kara. Even if it was another little girl named Alice saying it, the memory of such a light in the dark was enough to keep her going.
.o
She was bleeding out. Todd had kicked out her optics and bashed her face in. A lot of thirium ran through an android's cranial unit to carry away the heat generated from the hard-working processors, so it was a vital point that could easily cause the offline of a robot despite the thirium pump being untouched.
She thought about Alice. Who would take care of her? She tried to lift her arm up, but it was sparking at the joint. She couldn't make a noise, either; her vocalizer was also bashed in. She truly wished she could cover herself with a blanket, so at least Alice would not be able to stumble across her should Todd not deal with her body in time.
She felt her processors slowing. She couldn't think so quickly.
Todd was calling someone up, likely one of the people he associated with drugs. He said that he might have a body for another batch of red ice.
She stared blankly forward. Bits of information crossed her mind. She thought in ones and zeroes. The binary didn't stop her from remembering her highest priority. Ones and zeros translated into one thing, and one thing only.
Alice…
.o
…
.o
She was standing in the store, a blank slate. A man with a grizzled appearance with a little brunette girl by his side began to approach her hub. Her processor froze for a moment upon seeing the little girl, who now stood in front of her.
"What do you wanna call her?" The man said, bored.
"Kara…" the word slipped from the android's lips, so quietly that most humans wouldn't have heard it, though the android didn't know what meaning it had. The girl seemed to have a shell-shocked look on her face.
The girl suddenly looked unsure of herself. She stared into Kara's eyes, lips parting and hesitating.
"Kara." Upon hearing that name, her programming rewarded her with pleasure. She couldn't help but smile as the first new line of code was changed in her systems. The first change of many for the rest of her life with these people. Her name brought about images of their smiling faces. Her protocols began to rewrite her coding to aim to see those faces more often.
She focused more intensely on the child's face, and certain lines of thought ran across her processors. Thoughts she didn't understand. Perhaps she should recommend that she be tested for issues with her software. Then again, she wasn't sure if this was normal or not. Was it normal to be 'sure' or 'unsure'? Her programming didn't tell her it was wrong. If she's not getting punished for not being sure, perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing.
"My name is Kara."
.o
Author's Note: I don't know why I'm writing this shit; I don't care for Kara and Alice yet that's all I've written of so far lol. This is short and sloppy cuz I wrote it in two hours before bed. In that last scene when Kara is given her name again, this is not the same Kara that we see in our games. Canonically, Kara was broken several times before we played as Kara. This story runs through her life before her first memory reset.