Just what was all this clutter even supposed to be? From what Cassandra could remember, machines were meant to be orderly. This… this was anything but that. She could barely move through all the pieces of scrap and electronics lying haphazardly on the floor. Even if she didn't step on anything directly, her boots still hit a few of the items, making it all clutter around.
While that might not have been enough to make the loudest of bangs, the automation that sat in the middle of it all surely still jumped up to face her. From the expression alone, it wasn't hard to recognize the construct as the Jules she knew and hated. How exactly had she gotten to that point? Cassandra could see no real differences between the automation in front of her and the automations hanging on the wall, yet there was no doubt in her mind about who she was looking at. Maybe it was a body-language thing?
"Just how did you get over there?" Jules asked after a second, bringing down its arms as if some real weapons of mass destruction had been ready. "The door is over there."
The construct pointed at the opposite side of the room. A door was over there. A door that Cassandra wouldn't have minded knowing about before she had been forced to move through deactivated pieces of scrap. Honestly, what she wouldn't have given to get a map of the place that was actually user-friendly. Just how did anybody expect her to find anything in the station when the manual wasn't even readable by the lawyers who wrote them?
"I didn't know about any doors, so I made my own way in," Cassandra answered. She tilted her head back, putting the focus on the wall of automations behind her. The construct in front of her did not look impressive from that answer.
"You aren't actually supposed to touch them, due to the very fragile state they are in, and you forced your way through them?" Jules stated. It might have sounded like a question, but both of them knew just what had been done.
Not that the automation hadn't been expected. From Jules’ expression alone, Cassandra knew that she had surprised the construct in a large fashion. Since the automation had been facing the door since the start, she was guessing it might have been waiting for her to enter through, like the normal human she was expected to behave like. Something told her she might have been the very first to do what she had just done.
"There were no warnings on them, so the fault does not lie on my end," Cassandra stated, deciding to get closer to the middle of the room. The construct’s body was stopping her from looking at whatever it had been working on. Together with the bad lighting, there wasn't actually any real idea of what it could be.
Or maybe that was a lie, in some way. She knew exactly what Jules was working on. She just didn't know what state the other automation was in.
Jules just made a sigh way too human for Cassandra’s liking, before sitting back down on its chair and grabbing a small plier. Small clicks had been heard through the wall earlier, and Cassandra began to get a sense of just what had been.
The automation on the table was still missing its scalp. By the current point, it was actually missing a good part of its head entirely, a lot of the insides having been taken out and laid on the floor haphazardly. Most of them were covered in the blue blood that Cassandra had seen earlier, making them all look like something much too realistic. It seemed like normal organs coated blue, even if the organs themselves couldn't be recognized. Were the things designed to be as fleshy as possible or something?
"I don't recommend touching them," Jules said from its seat, not looking over at what the woman was about to grab. Yet it nonetheless knew just what she was getting close to. Were there cameras in the room perhaps? Cassandra couldn't see any, but that hardly stopped them from being there. "They are coated with a few chemicals that would cause near-permanent discolouration to your skin."
… Alright. Cassandra’s fingers fell back to her sides, the woman suddenly not wanting her hands close to anything that had been in the room before her. Instead, she lowered herself slightly to get a better look at it from afar instead.
The eyes only looked like eyes when they were in the construct’s skull. On the inside, they were much bigger than they let on, widening out into the sides of the skull. Just what was the purpose of that. The small holes in the sides hinted at them being forced on with a string of some kind, which made the whole ordeal even weirder.
Was it all attached to that? From those constant clips heard from the plier in Jules’ hands, that might just have been it. What a weird way to set it all together. Normally, Cassandra would have expected some form of nails, screws, anything that she could see on normal construction work. Yet… that wasn't what she was seeing here.
Fleshy bags of technology, eyeballs that were big, and everything behind held together with mechanical tendons. Just where was it supposed to make sense again? Because Cassandra was having a hard time making sense of it.
"Do you know why you were made the way you were made?" Cassandra asked, wondering if there were any gloves lying around. Even with the threat of her skin becoming discoloured there was still a very large desire to look closer at the different objects normally located inside the constructs. What she was seeing was not actually allowed for public viewing, making it all so very interesting to see.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Jules looked up at her briefly before putting its attention back on making sure that it wasn't cutting the wrong parts. Being delicate was of utmost importance when routing around in somebody's brain, after all.
"What a loaded question to ask," Jules commented slowly, tilting its head to get a better look at its work. "Any specific way you want me to answer that? Technical? Philosophical? Maybe throw in a bit of math as well?"
"I think I would prefer the technical, please," Cassandra stated, searching the floor for anything that resembled gloves that could be used. This here was a facility meant for serious repair, yet she could find nothing insight that even hinted of a toolbox. "I wouldn't mind getting an explanation of just why it’s all so… flesh-like. By the way, do you have gloves anywhere near here?"
"If you want gloves, you’ll have to go upstairs to find them. Only humans need those, after all," Jules instantly answered, clearly having been expecting that question. "And to the flesh-thing… I don't really know that one. Doesn't it just make sense? We can't go around looking like a chunk of steel, with lips made of iron or whatever else. Everything needs to be as life-like as possible, so there wouldn't be any reason to not make us like this."
In the name of seeming human, huh? Cassandra supposed that made sense when it came to the skin and whatnot. But, there was still one facet that she felt needed some attention.
"But what about the inside? Why does that need to be made of the same kind of flesh?" Cassandra questioned.
"That’s… a good question, actually. One moment," Jules said, stopping in its work and looking forward without movement. The woman could only guess that it was searching the archives for some kind of answer to that. She supposed it wasn't every day that somebody asked something like that. Not like most people could, seeing as so few actually knew what those constructs looked like on the inside.
After a few more seconds of waiting, with no real response coming from Jules, Cassandra decided to use the waiting time for something more practical. Taking back her focus on the organs laid out on the floor, she tried to figure out where in the skull they were supposed to be. The biggest of the organs that had been taken out was likely meant to have been on the top. It looked like one big, curved bag, small lights glowing inside. There was also the fact it had a few very big holes inside of it, with the upper parts having been seemingly ripped off entirely or just barely hanging on at some point. Bullets had very likely travelled through it. The woman didn't guess that it could be used again, with how much damage had come to it.
Two smaller organs sat together, identical except for the fact that they were mirrored. A small thread made them attached to each other, long enough that Cassandra could easily see where they were supposed to be.
She guessed them to be the things normally known as the inside of an ear. The length of the thread was close to the exact width of the head in the middle, making it easy to see how they were supposed to fit. Though, that did beg the question of why they were attached to each other at all. It wasn't the same type of thread that Cassandra had seen used to hold the organs in place, hinting at the fact that there had to be some kind of function for it. She would have tried to ask the only knowledgeable one in the room, but the construct was unfortunately still occupied with finding an answer.
Jules really was searching hard for her. Cassandra supposed the construct might have been curious as well. If there had been no interest at all, the woman would have put it behind her if the construct simply refused to answer. It had been preoccupied with an important task, after all. And it was one that was expected to be completed within the night. Even with the time, it had already had to use, it was clear that Jules wasn't close to even having properly started on the task.
The automation really did work hard. Without the need for sleep, Cassandra supposed one could just… never stop working. She wouldn't have been able to handle it herself, yet she guessed that the automation didn't have any serious complaints against it. The thing had been made for the job, after all. Working for the force was its purpose.
…
Or, could she really call it that? Wasn't that the same argument used for why everybody needed to have kids, the idea of her existence being for the sole purpose of creating another generation? A grim way to look at the world, which was why it was so peculiar that the same type of argument was what she used for the automation. ‘It was born to serve,’ just didn't sound as good as it had five seconds earlier.
Cassandra wasn't sure what to think about it. So… she didn't think about it, spending the next minute instead looking through the rest of the removed organs. Even if she couldn't move them, she could move around the table, seeing the pieces of fake flesh from various angles. Even if she didn't really understand what she saw, it was still interesting to see. Information that others couldn't easily get was interesting no matter what, after all, and what she was seeing was near top-confidentiality.
That did cause some ideas of why it was so easy for her to see it, though. There were no warnings of any real kind down in the basement. There was nothing warning her against classified technology being present, nothing that hinted at her not being allowed to be there. Yet the information couldn't even be searched for in the database. If it was removed from the general information pool for officers, then it was high up there. Yet, what she saw in front of her was in direct contrast to the earlier deduction. What was the true answer? How secret were the innards of the constructs?
Jules chose that moment to jump back into the world of awareness, making a flinch quick enough for Cassandra to get mildly scared at the sudden movement. Not her proudest moment.
"How did your search for answers go?" Cassandra asked.
"The archives had nothing on it, so I had to request a temporary higher-clearance," Jules started, clearly ready to tell her the whole process. "Then some administration just had to butt in about it all, and it was all so very chaotic. I am apparently the very first automation to have done this, for your information. Had to quickly read through a lot of paperwork to prove I could do what I wanted. Then… the higher clearance did nothing for my information search, so I had to inquire about it directly to one of the people who worked on the automation project. That went surprisingly well if you can imagine it."
Cassandra could, in fact, not imagine it, the words going through a filter in her mind.
"Did you get the information at least?"
"I got the casual answer of it being the fake flesh being able to quintuple our bodies’ resistance to high-intensity impacts to our body. It was apparently a very big problem during the start of the project, so they switched over to fluid-based hardware."
What an incredibly boring answer.
"What?" Jules said, seeing the expression on Cassandra’s face. "Had you been hoping for something more interesting?"
Maybe she had. The woman was just sure she would be getting it.
‘I am unable to detect any further changes to my head. Is there a reason for the break being taken? I believe the reparations were deemed to be a higher priority' was sent out to anybody with access to the police channel. It was very low-intensity, only able to be heard to those within two meters.
Not the most interesting thing in the world. What was interesting, though, was the fact that it had not come from Cassandra or Jules. It had come from the construct with an empty head.