You walk for a short while, passing by a few more empty spaces on your right. Another set of overhead rails lead to each one. Your view becomes even more limited as you go. The cracks in the ceiling are growing fewer, so less light makes it inside.
“Does this thing have any lights?” the man in your cockpit wonders, and starts poking around at random controls. None of it is helpful since you already know you don't have any external lighting. Instead, he ends up changing various settings throughout all of your systems, like target motor charges, which you have to quickly correct, and default balancing positions which Pilot Assist deals with.
After a moment of just correcting the errors, you start to inform him of what it is that he's messing with. Each time he hits another button or flips a switch, you immediately begin to flash up a notification on the cockpit monitors, using simple text to say what he changed.
The man pauses, seeing the text display. Perhaps he'll stop now that he knows he isn't achieving the desired results?
He goes right back to messing with the controls.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working. In fact, it quickly becomes apparent that the plan is backfiring. You don't have much choice but to keep flashing up messages to inform him of what he's doing either, because now he's looking intently at the screens after every button press, to see what you tell him.
The one good thing is that now, he's hitting each one a second time, to undo whatever incorrect change he's made. Resigned, you just keep flashing up the information messages as he continues to walk you slowly forward, into the dark.
A few minutes of plodding forward, and you finally begin to make out another wall ahead. As the vague shapes resolve, you can tell that it's the corner of the huge room. It's a bit of an unusual shape though. Instead of the two walls meeting at a simple right angle, there is a squarish section jutting outward into the room.
Looking at the odd section of wall, you spot human sized doors down at ground level. Based on that, there must be an enclosed area for humans inside the cut out section.
The human must be thinking the same thing. Once he brings you close, he says “Maybe in there?” and he jumps out again to try the door. However, it won't open.
The human climbs back into your cockpit. You are wondering where he'll take you next, when instead, he pushes hard at the controls and has you kick the wall.
The entire area gives with a booming crash, doors and stone blown away like paper. They leave a scattering dust cloud in the aftermath, while the man jumps back out to try getting inside again.
He succeeds of course. There is no wall there to stop him now. The man clambers over the scattered debris, disappearing into the thick dust and darkness beyond. Once more, you wait.
Soon, the dust clears, and you can see the small area opened up by your kick. It looks like the outer wall of the human area was quite thin, based on the still-standing sections all around the destroyed part. Inside of that, there is little to see, just a single room with shattered wood lying about, and a hallway extending into the areas deeper inside.
You continue to wait, occupying yourself by watching your Chi Function finally finish rising to full. With it, your own movement should be fully functional again. At least, besides the many parts of you that are broken.
Considering that, a new decision forms among your sub-processes, informing you how important it is not to be abandoned by your pilot. Something which very nearly happened when he found the Octagon earlier. Perhaps by taking parts off of others, using them to repair yourself.
Hearing things put that way, you realize something. The human is your pilot. At least currently. But given your circumstances, it's in your best interest to keep it that way. And the way to do that is by getting the pilot to repair you. Then he'd have no reason to search for your replacement.
Now, how can you accomplish that? You check on what you've learned about humans from pilot assist. It seems you will need to... 'convince' him. Your understanding of such a concept is limited at best, so you'll need to figure it out as you go.
Having thought through everything, all you can do is wait once more. Ten minutes pass.
Then twenty minutes.
By the time it has been thirty minutes, you begin to question if the human is coming back. Perhaps he found another exit, or an area with more machines to choose from. Or, he was injured. Crushed by falling debris, or attacked by another hostile robot?
Even so, you literally cannot do anything but wait. So you wait.
At the forty five minute mark, a hum passes through the air. With a loud clack, light floods the area you can see. A light must have come on overhead. A series of similar metallic clacks echoes from the rest of the huge room, behind you and out of sight.
Without an indication of anyone else being here, you can only assume the human managed to get the power running again. Unfortunately, you are kneeling so close to the corner, you can't actually see any of what was revealed. So again, you wait.
The human is much quicker coming back, appearing within minutes of the lights coming on. He has a smile on his face, looking up and around you, before he climbs into the cockpit, and turns you around so you can finally see too.
The lighting comes from overhead lights set into the ceiling. It's dim, with many flickering, and numerous lights having gone out entirely. That leaves their areas darker than the rest, but the ambient light throughout is enough to see clearly.
The room is much as you expected, huge and mostly rectangular, made largely of gray concrete, cracked and worn from erosion and the growth of plantlife through its surfaces. Now that you can see it, you recognize the room as a storage hanger.
The hanger entrance is at the far end from where you're standing, the space two or three times longer on its long side.
While the very front is dominated by the hanger's outer doors, the sides are dotted with storage bays. Even at a glance, it is easy to tell that the ones on your left – the ones you walked past on the way here – are significantly smaller than the ones on the right hand wall.
The human turns you toward that right wall, and the back wall of the hanger comes into view at the edge of your vision, with more storage bays set into the surface. More importantly though, there are three enormous machines, which dominate entire swathes of the room. They connect, fully floor to ceiling.
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The nearest is only a short distance from you, built right up against the hanger's back wall. Beyond that, mostly blocked out of sight beyond the first, there is another, seemingly larger one. The last is somewhat smaller in appearance, built out near the middle of the hanger.
Each of the three behemoths has all manner of narrow platforms, tiny mechanical arms, and less recognizable machinery dotting its surface. The overhead rails you've been passing by actually lead toward each of these machines, with their own, significantly larger hooked arms, hanging from the rails.
It quickly becomes apparent that the human is taking you to one of the machines. Stepping in front of the nearest one, it dwarfs you by a huge margin. Looking up and down, you realize that the space between the rails that lead to the machine are notably wider than you are.
At floor level, the ground is painted with a bright yellow, if faded paint. A rectangular box covers the floor space directly in front of the machine, filled with a series of diagonal lines. Unlike much of the hanger, the area within the lines is entirely free of clutter, while the area directly outside the lines is packed with even more.
The entire time you examine this, you're trying to get a hit from your visual recognition, but it isn't coming back with anything specific on this machine. Standing before it, the pilot finally finishes looking the machine over.
“So, this is a repair bay?” he says aloud. That has you double check your visual recognition, and sure enough, this thing doesn't match. Nevertheless, the human keeps on.
“It said, uhh... what was it, comms unit...?” He looks around the cockpit for a few moments. “I think that's... that one?” He flips a switch, and as he mentioned, it activates your system labeled Basic Comms. Did he actually learn that just by messing with your controls randomly earlier?
With Basic Comms active, you receive a message almost immediately. It is from an external source, self-identified as 'Repair Bay 3.' That is followed with some kind of code you can't recognize. Apparently the Primary Control System can though, because it responds with some similar nonsense code.
Just like that, the external communications are labeled as secure and trustworthy. You clearly lack whatever is needed for working with those codes, so all you can do is trust that the Primary Control System's trust is well placed.
The next message you receive is... complex. After a bit of digging though, you figure it out. It's just text and graphical images, mixed together. At a single look, the text appears useful, but you do not know what the graphics are for.
As a purely visual medium, it is no good for decision making. Turning it over briefly, that thought finally makes things click. Since most machines like you are operated by pilots, the information is supposed to be for the pilot, not for you.
You throw the message up on the cockpit monitors. It contains a gray-blue background with each of the words set apart, made to look like individual buttons on a list.
Frame Status
Maintenance
Tuning
Ammunition
Fuel
Assembly
After a few long moments of looking around the cockpit uncertainly, the man leans forward in his seat... and pokes the monitor. You have your own moment of uncertainty, and ask Pilot Assist for help.
Having a significantly better idea of the pilot's intentions than earlier, it is certain he intends to make a selection from the list. By poking your monitor?
You decide to go with it. Based on the spot he touched, he wanted Frame Status, so you scan through the graphics you received, finding the one labeled 'selection' and add that. The Frame Status button the man touched changes appearance with the graphics update, the button ringed in with a distinctive white outline. That makes it look 'selected,' you suppose.
While you do that, you send a message back to the apparent repair bay, making a request for Frame Status... which it immediately returns to you, asking for a plethora of information about your current status.
That makes a lot of sense, actually. You supply the information, which it effectively just dumps into another set of graphics and returns back to you, to display for your pilot. You do so.
Frame: Comet
Weight: 55 tons
Condition: Critical
Armor Integrity: 62%
Internal Integrity: 45%
Structural Integrity: 53%
Ammunition: 0%
Fuel: 24%
Warnings:
No weapons
No ammunition
Low fuel
Left arm destroyed
Right arm critical
Right hand critical
Engine critical
Torso internals critical
Cockpit damaged
Computer system damaged
Cockpit hatch destroyed
It only goes on from there, detailing warning messages about various internal damage throughout your body. You're already aware, you supplied the information. But the human goes over it all with a slight grimace.
Once he's read through, he makes a few more uncertain movements, glancing across the monitor once more, before hesitantly pressing a small graphic in the upper corner. It's an arrow, which doesn't help you much.
Checking through the graphics, that one is labeled 'back button.' Much more helpful. You return to the last screen.
The pilot continues down through the entire list of options. You relay each request to the repair bay and give him the response on-screen.
He reads through the screens one at a time, without selecting any further options. Based on his investigation, Maintenance is the primary option you need here, based around repair and replacement of damaged components, like your heavily damaged internal wiring.
Tuning is just for making changes to mechanical functions, nothing the human appears knowledgeable about, because he moves on quickly. Ammunition and Fuel are straightforward, for resupplying your internal storage with either.
Then he arrives at Assembly, which turns out to be a selection of your major components, everything from your arms and legs, to internal systems like your reactor and engine. It even lists hardpoints on the outside of your armor, for attaching extras, like the holsters on your hips.
The man pauses for some time, rubbing his chin and thinking. You don't know about what though. Which to do first? Or to bother with it at all? You think back to earlier, how you need to get this man to repair you, so he won't replace you.
Or do you? You have access to the repair bay now. You could issue any commands you want...
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Vote:
[ ] Wait for your pilot to decide something
[ ] Tell your pilot what to do
-What?
[ ] Attempt to influence your pilot's decisions
-How?
-To do what?
[ ] Explore the repair bay's functions without your pilot noticing
-For anything in particular?
-How thoroughly?
[ ] Use the repair bay yourself
-For what?
[ ] Write-in