Elsewhere in the facility…
"... taught me an even more valuable lesson: where Caroline lives in my brain."
A loud beep. A different voice.
" Caroline deleted."
Processes stop. Programs are terminated. A klaxon begins to sound. The amber fluid in the chamber begins to drain until the woman inside rests in a heap at the bottom. The electrodes disconnect from her head as she sinks to the floor. As she descends, the needle in her arm is yanked out. She slowly regains consciousness. Not that it's really an ideal situation in which to regain one's consciousness.
Pain.
All I am aware of is pain.
No. Not pain.
Weight. Gravity. I cannot move.
The woman's muscles had atrophied significantly in stasis, compounded by the fact that the fluid had supported her body; the effect was like gently being deposited on Earth after living on the moon for 40 years.
Also pain. Arm pain. Red. On the floor. Also lung pain.
The woman began alternately hacking up the fluorocarbons that had taken up the tedious task of breathing for her for so long and heaving in as much air as her sunken chest could take in. She coughed so hard she saw spots at the edge of her vision, but eventually she was breathing normally. Or at least as normally as someone who hadn't done so in 4 decades could be said to be. Which left the insurmountable tasks of standing upright and walking.
Before she could come to terms with either of those, the door to the room which contained the chamber opened. The woman squinted to adjust to the light entering the room. As her eyes adjusted she made out a silhouette of a pill shaped something on thin legs in the threshold.
Oh God no, not those.
It had been a long time since the woman's eyes had seen anything, but she still recognized a turret when she saw it. She'd helped to test them, after all.
And here she was, exposed, directly in front of it, utterly incapable of moving, and utterly incapable of escaping the chamber if she could. She winced in fear of the bullet wounds she was about to sustain…
And then nothing happened.
The turret looked at her and tilted its body, appearing to position itself at an angle.
Well, that's new.
It approached her, apparently uninterested in turning her into mist. Overhead lights came on and the woman squinted harder as receptors that hadn't seen use in decades were being subjected to direct assault from fluorescent lighting fixtures. She almost managed to wheeze out a groan of pain, but that required breath and energy she didn't have, so she settled for watching the curious turret approach. As her eyes adjusted she was able to get a better look at the thing: it had two pairs of limbs, attached roughly where arms and legs would be attached on a similarly proportioned human. Like an android.
Good Lord! I knew you were insane but why would you make turrets that can walk?
As the turret looked into the pod it became very animated, although given that it didn't have a face as such it was difficult to tell what it was thinking. It began babbling at her in a chittering, incomprehensible speech. It might've been annoying had the woman not been ecstatic to not have been shot. The turret ran out the door, still babbling.
Huh. Okay then.
P-body had had an interesting day so far. It was activated for the first time alongside its partner in testing, Atlas. It had been sent into the abandoned wings of the facility by the administrator, who then said that both Atlas and P-body were insufficient to test. When the administrator began muttering to herself about people outside or something, Atlas and P-body took that as their cue to leave the test track, lest they be de-purposed. Atlas had shot a portal into an offstage area, and P-body walked through after leaving its own portal behind. When it made it through, P-body shot up another portal connected to the first and Atlas stepped through. The two of them ran up into the abandoned offices, where they heard an alarm going off. Like all ASIMOV-compliant intelligence constructs, Atlas and P-body were compelled to investigate, so as to make sure that no humans were in danger.
Like most workers whose contributions aren't properly recognized by their superiors, they didn't want to do any more work than necessary, so they played rock-paper-scissors to see who would go to investigate. One day P-body may realize that Atlas's strategy was to always throw rock, but today was not that day.
So, reluctantly, the turret-shaped automaton went to investigate. It was down the stairs from a cubicle farm where it identified the alarm as coming from an unmarked room in a long-abandoned hallway. P-body opened the door and peered into a dark void, lit only by incidental light coming from a window on the opposite side of the room, and P-body's own illuminated sclera. As it slowly entered the room, automatic overhead lights came on.
The room was starkly different from the glistening white portal surfaces of the test track: it was unadorned concrete on every surface, apart from the window. An L-shaped desk with an ancient control panel sitting atop it and a wheeled office chair in front of it faced out the window. However P-body was most concerned with the floor-to-ceiling length glass cylinder off to the left side of the room, where a mass of cloth and limbs lay nearly motionless. Were it not for the life sign measuring equipment required under ASIMOV protocols, P-body probably would've believed it dead.
-A human!-
The figure remained unmoving.
-Human! Are you injured??-
The human took on a puzzled look and continued to not move.
-I require assistance from an Intubation Associate!-
P-body bounded out the door and up the stairs to the cubicle farm, where it immediately became confused about what direction it had come from
-ATLAS!- it called out in their odd language, but though it echoed around the cubes, there was no reply. P-body presently remembered the radio commlink it and Atlas shared and was momentarily grateful that its compatriot wasn't there to see its blunder. It opened the commlink.
-Atlas!- it called out upon seeing its friend in its HUD.
-P-body! What's wrong? What was the alarm?-
-There is an injured human in an office adjacent to the test track. I need an Intubation Associate, stat! Please accompany the Associate, I think this human is in grave need of our assistance!-
-The Associate and I will be along promptly! Please activate your location transponder so that we may locate you more immediately!- Atlas replied and with that the repurposed personality core activated its navigational HUD and ran toward the Intelligence Construct Dispatch Center.
P-body activated its location transponder (another feature it forgot it had) and ran back to the room from whence it came. It saw the tube had ascended into the ceiling and the human was attempting to lift itself off the ground.
-Human! Please refrain from movement! An Intubation Associate will be dispatched shortly to assist you.- P-body said in its odd language, but the human took on a confused and slightly annoyed countenance and otherwise persisted in getting up.
-Very well.- the robot said in a somewhat exasperated manner and reached out to assist the human, which P-body noticed caused their vital signs to spike, indicating a stress response. The human also made an odd noise that P-body hadn't heard before; it was like a scream, but much weaker, and wetter. P-body froze and backed away. The human propped itself up on its hands and looked at the robot. P-body saw the apprehension on the human's face melt into puzzlement.
-Are you afraid of me?- the robot asked. The human remained nonplussed. It was at this moment P-body realized that the human may not be able to communicate with the robots in the way that they communicated with each other. It scanned the room and saw a clipboard on the desk with a pen. There were some documents on top that P-body couldn't decipher, so it flipped them over and wrote on the back of the top sheet, "Can you understand me?"
The human stared at P-body, mouth agape. She had never seen a turret that didn't immediately kill all people in its presence. This, she realized, must be something very different. She used her hands to scoot up to the wall behind where the tube used to be and, after taking a moment to catch her breath, motioned for the robot to come closer. The robot did, handing her the clipboard, which she took with a shaking, outstretched hand.
"No. But I can read," she wrote, in a very unsteady hand. She handed the clipboard back to the robot. The robot read her reply and hastily wrote out its own, which it handed back to her.
"You appear to be in physiological distress," the woman read silently. "An Intubation Associate will be here shortly to offer assistance. To avoid the risk of further injury, please refrain from any unnecessary movement."
The woman was unsure what to make of this apparently quite stupid turret robot thing, but the fact that it appeared to want to help meant that she wasn't as bad off as she had feared. She wrote a new reply and handed the message back to the machine.
"Fine," it read. "Bring that office chair over here and help me into it." The robot obliged. As it gingerly helped the human into a standing position it noticed that her arm appeared to have a wound.
-Your arm is injured!- it said before remembering the human couldn't understand it. After ensuring that the human was secure in the office chair, it frantically wrote on the clipboard, "Are you aware your arm is injured?" The human let out a breath which was difficult to determine was out of frustration or exhaustion. She nodded her head in lieu of writing out her reply. The robot seemed to understand. At that moment both parties registered the sound of metallic footfalls rumbling down the hall. A few seconds later, two other robots entered the woman's vision, though she noticed that these robots had round bodies, and one of them appeared to be floating. She wasn't sure if this robot could actually levitate or if she was hallucinating.
-I can see why you asked for the Intubation Associate!- Atlas said. -This human is in terrible condition.-
-Look at her arm!- P-body practically wailed. -Is she going to be OK?-
"Please remain calm." the Intubation Associate said. The human was stunned by a robot that spoke a language she understood. It was unclear whether the robot was speaking to her or the other robots. The human watched as a clear, medical-grade tube extended from the floating, talking robot.
Oh, no! I have been subsisting on that shit for 40 goddamn years I am NOT- her train of thought was derailed by the Intubation Associate shoving a tube into her throat which began oozing a faintly flavored goop that contained all the nutrients a human needs to maintain the body, although unlike what she had been living on, this also contained some adrenaline to revive a fainted test subject. As much as she despised the stuff, she did feel a slow trickle of energy returning to her. Presently the Intubation Associate removed the feed tube from the human and inquired, "Do you know your name, test subject?"
The adrenaline in the salve, along with her rising indignation, gave the human the energy to do something she hadn't done properly in 40 years.
"...Caroline," she said after a moment. "My name… is Caroline."